We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
High Seas Treaty milestone
OCEAN PROTECTION: The High Seas Treaty, which aims to “protect the world’s oceans and reverse damage to marine life”, will take effect next January after reaching a key milestone, BBC News reported. Morocco brought the global agreement, which was approved in 2023, to the threshold of 60 ratifications required for it to take effect. The broadcaster said: “Environmentalists heralded the milestone as a ‘monumental achievement’ and evidence that countries can work together for environmental protection.” UN chief António Guterres described it as a “lifeline for the ocean and humanity”, according to Al Jazeera.
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CLIMATE WEEK: Meanwhile, Chile and the UK joined a number of countries who have “committed to promoting ocean-based actions” in their respective national climate plans, Inside Climate News reported. Speaking at a New York Climate Week event, officials said they are considering many steps including phasing out offshore oil and gas drilling, decarbonising shipping and committing to marine ecosystem conservation. According to another Inside Climate News story, many Climate Week events are “centred around” regenerative agriculture – a method of farming that prioritises soil quality and ecosystem biodiversity. The term is now a “ubiquitous buzzword…increasingly deployed on marketing labels”, the outlet said.
OVERFISHING: Elsewhere, a “long-wrought” global agreement “aimed at reducing overfishing” took effect earlier this month, the Associated Press reported. The World Trade Organization agreement on fisheries subsidies entered into force after it was adopted by 112 countries. The AP noted that the agreement “will require countries to limit some of the $22bn in subsidies worldwide that encourage practices by fleets that deplete fish stocks and will create a ‘fish fund’ that can help developing countries implement it”. An article in the Conversation said the agreement is a “major milestone, but it’s only the beginning”.
‘Erratic’ water cycle
DELUGE TO DROUGHT: Almost two-thirds of the world’s rivers did not experience “normal” conditions in 2024, dealing with either too much or too little water, according to the World Meteorological Organization’s state of global water resources report. In its coverage, Al Jazeera said that “climate change is making the Earth’s water cycle increasingly erratic”. The report, the outlet noted, said that 2024 was the sixth year in a row with a “clear imbalance” in river basins. It was also the third consecutive year of widespread ice loss in every glacier region, the report said.
WATER IMPACTS: The report said that floods hindered agriculture in many regions in 2024, including impacting wheat harvests in Afghanistan and sweeping away almost 130,000 cows in west and central Africa. CNN’s coverage said the findings highlight “big trouble for economies and societies” dealing with the impacts of a less-predictable water cycle.. Last year was the hottest on record, with many regions “grappl[ing] with a dearth of water”, the outlet noted. Other regions, however, experienced “more floods than in other years”, a lead author on the report, Prof Stefan Uhlenbrook, told CNN. He added that some of these floods caused billions of dollars in damage.
FLOOD AFTERMATH: Meanwhile, major floods in Pakistan’s Punjab province have “wreaked havoc” on agriculture, impacting more than half a million hectares of farming land, according to the Nation. The Pakistani newspaper reported that the floods, covered in last month’s Cropped, “devastat[ed]” crops including cotton, rice, sugarcane and maize. Around 6% of Punjab’s farmland was damaged by recent floods, the newspaper said. Reuters reported that at least 220,000 hectares of rice fields flooded from the deluge between August and September. In India’s Punjab state, farmers are also dealing with the impacts of the “worst floods in four decades”, Al Jazeera said.
News and views
CASH FOR NATURE: The UK spent a record £800m on “nature protection and restoration” as part of climate aid spending last year, according to government figures obtained by Carbon Brief. The figures suggested that the country is on track to achieve its five-year pledge to provide £3bn in nature-related funds for developing countries by 2026. Meanwhile, a report from Wildlife and Countryside Link found that 38% of UK waters are in protected areas, but just 6% of land is – “far short” of the target to protect 30% of the country’s land and sea by 2030, the report said.
DEFORESTATION DELAYS: The European Commission has proposed a further one-year delay to the implementation of its anti-deforestation law, Reuters reported. The law, which is currently due to take effect this December, was already postponed by one year in late 2024. Reuters said that the commission cited concerns about IT systems. The outlet noted that both the European parliament and a majority of EU member states “must approve the delay”.
GROWING FOOD: This year looks set to see record-high production of corn, wheat, soya beans and rice, according to analysis by data scientist Dr Hannah Ritchie on her Substack, Sustainability by numbers. Looking at agricultural projections from the US Department of Agriculture, Ritchie noted that decades of steady production increases in most crops, “with the exception of sorghum and millet”, are expected to continue. Elsewhere, Australia’s ABC News reported on a new climate risk assessment that identified future farming impacts, including “shifting growing seasons…and damage to crops and livestock from extreme heat”.
VIOLENCE CONTINUES: A new Global Witness report found that 146 land and environmental defenders were killed or disappeared worldwide in 2024, Dialogue Earth reported. About 82% of those cases occurred in Latin America. Although last year had fewer murders compared to 2023, an author told the outlet that “criminalisation and other types of non-lethal attacks are on the rise”. Folha de São Paulo noted that Colombia topped the world ranking for the third consecutive year with 48 killings. The newspaper added that Indigenous peoples were victims of one-third of the attacks.
SUSTAINABLE COCOA: Increasing the cover of trees providing shade for cocoa plantations to 30% could sequester 307m tonnes of CO2-equivalent in west Africa, according to new research covered by Carbon Brief. That figure is enough to counterbalance current cocoa-related emissions in Ivory Coast and Ghana, the study notes.
COP30 INCOMING: The Brazilian government opened a funding programme worth R$12bn (£1.7bn) for “rural producers and cooperatives affected by climate events” between June 2020 and 2025, ((o))eco reported. Low rainfall in 2023 and 2024 “harmed agricultural production, especially soya beans”, the outlet noted. Elsewhere, InfoAmazonia found that deforestation and agricultural expansion means that only seven countries in the world emit more carbon than the Brazilian Amazon. Bloomberg reported that the “top US diplomat” in Brazil is due to visit COP30 host city Belém this week to discuss “deforestation and organised crime in the region”.
BIG MEAT IS WATCHING: An organisation funded by the US meat and dairy industry has “engaged in intrusive surveillance of animal rights groups”, according to DeSmog. The outlet found that the Animal Agriculture Alliance created a database of 2,400 people “linked to animal welfare and environmental groups” and “shared information with livestock companies about the romantic partners and even biological ties” of people in these groups. The organisation told DeSmog: “The Alliance shares relevant information and resources that are helpful to the food community, but does not seek to influence or direct the actions of any organisation or law enforcement.”
Spotlight
Family food at COP30
This week, Carbon Brief’s food, land and nature reporter, Yanine Quiroz, covers an initiative to serve food from the rainforest at the upcoming COP30 in November in Belém, Brazil.
Quiroz attended a press trip to Belém in September, organised by the Nature Conservancy Brazil, the Climate and Society Institute and Nature4Climate.
On the table sit bowls of cocoa, açaí, jatobá, chicory, Vitória-régia jelly and other foods typical of the Brazilian Amazon.
These foods are just a handful of the many grown in Pará by family farmers, quilombola communities, women and young people, who make up the Bragantina Network.
This network, supported by the civil-society organisation Regenera Institute and philanthropic organisation Climate and Society Institute (iCS), has pushed for a commitment from Brazil that 30% of the food served at COP30 will be sourced from family farming, agroecology and Indigenous peoples.
That would inject at least $3.3m Brazilian reals (£463,000) into family farming in Pará, according to Mauricio Alcântara, co-founder of Regenera Institute. He told Carbon Brief:
“I think this is a great achievement for family farmers.”
Alcântara said that at climate COPs, food is often “very poor and disconnected from the local culture”. The Belém summit aims to showcase the great crop diversity of Brazil’s Amazon and the sustainable practices supported by the federal government, he added.
A history of resistance
A 2024 report from Escholas Institute found that 80% of the food that reaches Belém comes from other states in Brazil, even though Pará is located in the “most biodiverse biome in the world”, Alcântara said.
That is why the Bragantina Network helps agroecological producers in Pará gain access to markets through promoting public policies. One such example is the National School Feeding Programme, which feeds 45 million children on a daily basis, Pedro Zanetti, a specialist in land-use transition, food systems and bioeconomy at iCS, told the press.
The Bragantina Network emerged in the 1990s as a movement aimed at rescuing native Amazonian seeds and products, such as cassava and manioc, that had largely disappeared from agricultural practices and diets, Maria de Nazaré Ghirardi, a family farmer and technical advisor for the Bragantina Network, said.
In Pará, there are 80 cooperatives that employ 8,000 families of farmers, according to a mapping analysis done by Regenera Institute, Frontiers of Development Institute and iCS.
Alcântara told the press:
“When we talk about the COP, in addition to generating income for many producers, it is also about showing that this food has a history. A history of climate action, community resilience, women’s empowerment and traditional communities.”
He also said that after COP30, the Bragantina Network will seek the building of public infrastructure to store the foods produced by family farms to supply the metropolitan region of Pará through public policies and the private market.
Watch, read, listen
‘GOLD RUSH’: A Mongabay video looked at the impact of gold mining on local communities, water quality and forests in the Republic of the Congo.
INDIA ISLAND ISSUES: Time reported on how India’s biodiverse Great Nicobar island is threatened by “mega” development projects put forward by the government.
NEW BLEND: The New York Times examined whether hybrid grape varieties can “solve the climate change dilemma for winemakers”.
AGRI IMPACTS: Journalist Michael Grunwald discussed his new book, “We are eating the Earth: The race to fix our food system” on US late-night talk programme, the Daily Show.
New science
- India’s government-incentivised “zero-budget natural farming” programme more than doubled farmers’ profits, improved “bird biodiversity outcomes” and maintained similar crop yields | Nature Ecology & Evolution
- Annual CO2 emissions from forest and shrub fires in China decreased over 2001-22, but increased for cropland fires, especially in the country’s north-east | Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
- Watching documentaries can increase public interest in plant-based diets in the US, according to an analysis of search queries linked to six documentaries and consumption data | Nature Food
In the diary
- 24 September: UN special high-level event on climate action | New York
- 26 September: World maritime day
- 29 September: International day of awareness of food loss and waste
- 30 September-1 October: 42nd UN-Water Meeting | Geneva, Switzerland
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org
The post Cropped 24 September 2025: High Seas Treaty milestone; ‘Erratic’ water cycle; Family food at COP30 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 24 September 2025: High Seas Treaty milestone; ‘Erratic’ water cycle; Family food at COP30
Climate Change
DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
UK, Europe and India battle heatwaves
‘MIND-BOGGLING’ MAY: The UK and continental Europe have set “mind-boggingly crazy” temperature records for May amid a deadly heatwave, reported the Financial Times. According to the Associated Press, the UK “smashed a century-old temperature record for the second time in 24 hours on Tuesday”. The newswire added that records “also fell in France, where temperatures reached 36C on Monday in the country’s south-west”. On Wednesday, Portugal hit a record May temperature of 40.3C, said BBC News.
‘BRUTAL REMINDER’: In parts of Italy, the heatwave triggered blackouts, reported Reuters. The heatwave has also been linked to more than a dozen deaths in the UK and France, including from people drowning and suffering heat-related deaths while competing in sporting events, said ABC News. Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of UN Climate Change, said the intense heatwaves were a “brutal reminder” of the cost of global warming, reported Politico. Carbon Brief has in-depth coverage of the record-shattering heatwave.
INDIA’S DEADLY HEAT: In the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, more than 100 people died within three days following an intense heatwave, reported the Khaleej Times. The publication noted that authorities urged people to stay indoors and avoid direct exposure to the heat. Meanwhile, some parts of India are “grappling with power cuts as record-breaking heat has pushed electricity demand to an all-time high”, reported Reuters.
Around the world
- CRUDE DIPS: The International Energy Agency (IEA) said global investments in oil projects will fall below $500bn in 2026, continuing a three-year decline, reported Bloomberg. Carbon Brief’s analysis of the data shows the US’s “data-centre boom” means it is now investing more in fossil-fuel power than China.
- DODGING NET-ZERO: The world’s biggest miner, Australian giant BHP, has backtracked on climate action by halting or delaying projects to cut “vast” amounts of emissions, according to a Guardian investigation.
- SOLAR SLIP: China’s new solar installations dropped for a fourth straight month, reflecting weakening domestic demand, said Bloomberg.
- NO LOGGING: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell last year to its lowest level since 2019, according to a new report, said Agence France-Presse.
- EXECUTIVE ACTION: Puerto Rico’s governor announced a state of emergency to fight a surge in coastal erosion, citing the need to protect natural resources and vulnerable communities, reported the Associated Press.
Four million
The number of homes in the UK with air conditioning, double the figure from three years ago, reported the Guardian. There are 29m households in the UK.
Latest climate research
- Carbon Brief will soon be launching a new fortnightly newsletter focused on climate research. Sign up for free today.
- LGBTQ+ households in the US are “significantly more likely” to face energy poverty and insecurity than the general population | Energy Research & Social Science
- Global rice-paddy greenhouse gas emissions have doubled over the past six decades | Nature Food
- Vegetation greening and human-caused warming are the “main drivers” of a surge in flash floods over the last decade | Science Advances
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
A Carbon Brief investigation has shed light on the impact of weather-related flooding on National Health Service (NHS) facilities across the UK. At least 67 NHS hospital wards, departments and other sites have been forced to temporarily close or relocate due to weather-related flooding. The chart above shows sites of weather-related flooding incidents at NHS facilities. The size of the circles indicates the number of incidents reported at each site.
Spotlight
How solar mini-grids can ‘help boost’ Nigeria’s economy
This week, Carbon Brief covers a new report on Nigeria’s solar mini-grid industry.
Amid the impact of the US-Iran war on the Nigerian economy, a new report has argued that solar-mini grids can help to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and create more than 200,000 jobs.
In Nigeria, Africa’s third-largest economy, the war has led to an increase in energy prices and a decrease in petrol consumption. Petrol is one of the country’s main sources of transport and household fuel. According to one estimate, prices have surged by up to 40% since the conflict commenced in February.
Although the Nigerian treasury has benefited from rising crude oil prices – the country is a major exporter of oil and gas – the impact has been most visible on the wider population.
Rising energy prices “have affected the purchasing power of workers”, Agnes Funmi Sessi, a labour union leader in Lagos, told Carbon Brief.
However, scaling the deployment of solar “mini-grids” could help the country move away from fossil fuels, stimulate rural economies and improve livelihoods, according to the new report authored by the thinktank, the Africa Policy Research Institute.
“We estimate that, by deploying over 10,000 mini-grids, the sector could create 212,688 direct full-time informal and productive-use jobs across the off-grid and under-grid market segments,” the report said.
A nascent industry
Solar “mini-grids” are small-scale, localised electricity generation and distribution systems powered by solar panels.
The report positioned Nigeria’s mini-grid sector as one of the fastest-growing in Africa, with the country having just 11 mini-grids in 2015 and 155 by 2024, along with at least 42 active developers.
Many of the companies within the sector are young and apply novel local techniques in their deployment of solar technology, the report said.
However, access to finance remains a huge barrier. According to the report, the sector may require up to $8bn to connect 35.4 million people to mini-grids.
“Most Nigerians want solar power in their homes, but it is a capital intensive business for vendors and customers,” Dr Ben Iheagwara, a renewable energy entrepreneur and policy analyst, told Carbon Brief.
The report urged the Nigerian government and its international partners to “attract private capital by de-risking investments and ensuring regulatory clarity and long-term planning”.
Other key recommendations for policymakers and stakeholders include investment in skills development and paying attention to the gender gap.
Powering rural communities
Many rural communities, which make up about 37% of the country, are disconnected from the national grid system, so often have to generate their own electricity through mini-grid systems.
According to Nigeria’s electricity regulator, NERC, a mini-grid is defined as a power generating system with an installed capacity of up to 10 megawatts.
A mini-grid can be powered by fossil fuels such as diesel or petrol, but solar power is now considered a cheaper and cleaner source.
With more than 80 million people lacking access to electricity in Nigeria, solar mini-grids are increasingly viewed as the lowest-cost electrification solution, the report said.
Watch, read, listen
MOVING FORWARD: The Energy Transition Show dug into electricity reform in South Africa, discussing the country’s coal legacy and the role of renewables.
ENERGY POVERTY: In an opinion article for Project Syndicate, executive director of the African Climate Foundation, Saliem Fakir, argued that the energy transition in emerging and developing economies is driven by economics and security rather than emissions targets.
VANISHING CITY: BBC News reported on a coastal community in Nigeria where the ocean has “already swallowed more than half of the town”.
Coming up
- 31 May: Colombia presidential elections
- 31 May-5 June: Global Environment Facility council meeting, Samarkand, Uzbekistan
- 2-5 June: The Venice Agreement for Peatlands workshop, Kisumu, Kenya
Pick of the jobs
- National Oceanography Centre, engagement assistant (external communications) | Salary: £28,254. Location: Southampton, UK
- Dangote Industries, decarbonisation specialist | Salary: Unknown. Location: Lagos, Nigeria
- City of New York, chief decarbonization officer | Salary: $261,469. Location: New York City
- Climate Central, writer and associate editor | Salary: $72,000-$75,000. Location: US (Remote)
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids appeared first on Carbon Brief.
At the African Development Bank (AfDB) annual meetings this week, several African leaders called for investments in electricity infrastructure which go beyond lighting homes to powering economies.
Applauding the AfDB for its energy programmes like Mission 300 – which aims to provide electricity access to 300 million Africans by 2030 – the Central African Republic’s President Faustin-Archange Touadera said that without power supply “we will not be able to achieve development”.
Speaking alongside him, the Republic of Congo’s President Denis Sassou Nguesso echoed this, saying that “as we need to help our people to turn towards agriculture, to turn towards livestock rearing, we also need to provide power to them.”
As the Mission 300 initiative advances, attention is increasingly shifting from simply connecting households to ensuring that electricity access translates into economic opportunities and livelihoods. That shift is driving the launch of a new Centre of Excellence for Productive Use of Energy being developed under Mission 300 by the philanthropically funded Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP).
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Kenya seeks regional coordination to build African mineral value chains
Kenyan President William Ruto is the latest African leader to announce an end to raw mineral exports as governments want to add more value to their resources -
Africa needs more than export bans to cash in on critical minerals, experts say
Restricting raw materials exports is well-intentioned but without other policies to foster domestic processing, they can backfire -
Africa records fastest-ever solar growth, as installations jump in 2025
Africa’s solar power installations have increased sharply, driven by utility-scale projects and privately financed rooftop and commercial systems
In an interview with Climate Home News, Carol Koech, GEAPP’s vice president for Africa, said the initiative is designed to ensure that electrification supports income generation, agriculture and local economic development rather than only basic household access.
Q: What is the Centre of Excellence for Productive Use of Energy aiming to achieve with Mission 300?
A: Mission 300 is increasingly being seen as a job platform and so the role of the Centre of Excellence in translating those electricity connections to jobs. So we want the centre to do four things. First, as a delivery engine, which enables countries to embed a cross-institutional advisor that supports the electrification components, but also other components that are happening in the country.
Second, we want the centre to be an innovation and strategy hub. Today, there’s really no place where you can go to find the state of the industry for productive use of energy across the globe, and we want to make the centre of excellence the place where you can go and get information about what technologies are available, where deployment is happening and how much is being deployed.
(Photo: Lighting Global/SunCulture/World Bank)
The third pillar is to coordinate and mobilise capital. We anticipate the centre coordinating internally within the ecosystem but also mobilising additional financing to help productivity. The last piece is how to scale businesses, enterprises and partnerships around this centre because we anticipate that as we grow this space, new industries will emerge and those industries will need to be supported.
Q: Why is productive use of energy becoming important under Mission 300?
A: Mission 300 gave us a bigger platform to demonstrate that energy is truly an enabler for economic development. It’s not sufficient to just provide a connection, but it is required that that connection truly translates to economic development for the communities that benefit.
We shouldn’t bring electricity and then start thinking about what people can do with it. We need to think about both at the same time and ensure electricity arrives together with the things that will make a difference in people’s lives. Historically, we’ve brought electricity and imagined a miracle would happen, but we know that hasn’t been the case.
The question is how to ensure universal access in the cheapest way while still transforming communities. Some mini-grids have been deployed in places where demand is extremely low, making them too expensive to sustain. But when mini-grids are paired with productive uses, the economics start to change. If businesses currently running on fossil fuel generators move to solar or renewable energy, operating costs fall and the business case for mini-grids becomes much stronger.
Q: How could this work in practice for agriculture and rural communities?
A: I’ll give you a practical example in our pilot country Zambia. Zambia has two programmes, they have the ASCENT programme for energy access and they also have the Zambia agribusiness and trade platform (ZATP). Some of the components of the ZATP programme – which is an agri-business program to help farmers to be productive – have a productive use component but don’t have an energy supply component. So we’re offering things like mills, processing facilities, irrigation and others. In some parts of Zambia, these productive use equipment has been supplied but has not been powered, so communities are not benefiting from that.
So the whole point is if we coordinate where the agribusiness programme is deployed together with where the energy access programme is deployed and layer those two programmes together in one place, then you could solve the energy access problem and solve productive use together and therefore have really meaningful outcomes for communities.
Q: How will the centre help both households and small businesses use electricity productively?
A: The question on whether we should electrify households or businesses is neither here nor there. We need to electrify all. The argument is really once we electrify businesses, the owners of those businesses will be able to pay what they need for their households as well as increase production for their businesses.
Electricity consumption is usually an indicator of economic development and by pushing productive use into households, especially where households are also smallholder farmers, the question becomes: how can electricity access translate to additional economic development for them? If you are connected onto a mini-grid, then you can actually use that connection to run irrigation, put in a dryer, or a cold storage system, whatever you require to improve your income but the fact that you have energy means that you can access productive use. Now, we need to ask ourselves how do these farmers or these households then get access to these appliances, because that’s another barrier.
Q&A: Will subsidy cuts for Chinese clean-tech exports hurt Africa’s solar boom?
The cost of these appliances is usually extremely high, and when you have programmes such as the ZATP running in Zambia, that’s already a public funding approach to making these appliances available and potentially reachable for farmers, either at household level, at farm level or at community level.
Q: How does this complement the already existing Mission 300 national energy compacts designed by countries?
A: Each of the national energy compacts have a productive use component, a pillar that talks about distributed renewable energy, productive use, and clean cooking. This is actually complementing the work of the countries, and this centre is like an available support, back office for countries to tap into as they implement their national energy compacts, if they have specific requirements and support for that pillar three.
So the advisers that will be embedded into countries, their role is to coordinate within country programs that are running where energy could make a difference. The advisers will be sourced from the country and so they will make sure that the donor money is coordinated to benefit the country fully. Their role will include going to ministries of agriculture or any related ministries and understanding where they are prioritising programmes that require electrification. In many cases, programmes and money have already been allocated, but this component is about how do we deploy it in a way that it actually truly brings a difference, so those advisers will do that.
Q: How will the centre address financing and private sector investment challenges?
A: What we’re really looking at is different financing mechanisms. In the past, we have provided subsidies and results-based financing to suppliers, distributors and manufacturers to help create markets for productive-use appliances. I see this as one mechanism the centre could use, but the bigger opportunity is aligning public funding across different programmes so that more of it can support productive uses, either through direct funding or subsidies.
Nigerians bet on solar as global oil shock hits wallets and power supplies
When it comes to private sector investment, the reality is that Africa’s energy sector still faces serious constraints. Most private investment has gone into power generation, particularly through independent power producers, and even then that has only been possible in places where the off-takers, usually utilities, are bankable.
To unlock more private capital, countries need the right policies, reforms and regulations, but even more importantly, utilities must become financially viable. If the off-taker is not bankable, then the project is not bankable.
Another major question is how to attract private investment into transmission infrastructure. There are different models being explored, but the reality is that public funding alone is not sufficient to achieve Mission 300, so finding new ways to mobilise private capital will be critical.
The post Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs? appeared first on Climate Home News.
Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs?
The “data-centre boom” is driving a surge in gas investment in the US, pushing its fossil-power spending ahead of China, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
A rapid expansion of data centres across the nation is at the heart of the US tech sector’s plans to continue “dominat[ing]” the global artificial intelligence (AI) industry.
High demand for electricity to power these data centres has led to companies rushing to build new gas-fired power plants across the country.
This trend, combined with “soaring” gas-turbine prices, drove a threefold increase in US gas‑power investment in 2025 – and the IEA expects this to continue throughout 2026.
As the chart below shows, Chinese investment in coal- and gas-fired power is expected to drop this year, amid domestic policy changes and the Iran war sending gas prices spiralling.
Together, these trends mean the IEA expects US investment in fossil-fuelled power plants to overtake China’s in 2026.
The IEA’s latest world energy investment report shows that spending on renewables and electricity grids continues to dominate at the global scale.
In the US, Trump administration policies such as the phase-out of tax credits for renewables has led to the IEA revising its forecast for new wind and solar power downwards.
At the same time, US electricity demand is expected to rise by an average of 2% per year from 2026 to 2030, with data centres contributing half of the overall increase.
This is leading to what the IEA calls an “AI-driven push” to build new gas-power plants in the US, the world’s largest data-centre market and largest gas producer.
Globally, orders for new gas-power plants increased to 130 gigawatts (GW) in 2025 – a 25-year high – and US demand was a “major factor” in this, according to the IEA.
Much of the demand is coming from tech companies in the US seeking to bypass grid connection queues by building “captive” gas-power plants.
As the chart below shows, since the start of 2025 these US captive data centres alone have signed off on more investment in new gas turbines than any country in the world – aside from the US itself.
Overall, investment in grid upgrades, power equipment and electricity generation to support the buildout of data-centre infrastructure around the world hit $105bn in 2025, according to the IEA.
This is more than the total invested in the energy sector across the whole of Africa – a continent where more than 600 million people do not have access to electricity.
The IEA notes that strong demand for gas-power plants for data centres in the US – and, to a lesser extent, the Middle East – is “limiting the availability of turbines for near-term deployment elsewhere in the world”.
The agency also points out that as the tech sector becomes a “major energy investor”, accounting for around 40% of all corporate power-purchase agreements, it is also “underpinning momentum” for emerging clean technologies, such as small modular nuclear reactors and advanced geothermal.
The post AI boom means US is now ‘investing more’ in fossil-fuel power than China appeared first on Carbon Brief.
AI boom means US is now ‘investing more’ in fossil-fuel power than China
DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids
Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs?
AI boom means US is now ‘investing more’ in fossil-fuel power than China
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