Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Heat dome hits North America
100F: Temperatures in New York City reached 100F (38C) for the first time since 2013, as a heat dome “crushed” the eastern side of the US, reported the Associated Press. Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston all also surpassed three-digit temperatures, it added.
CHIOS FIRES: More than 400 firefighters have been fighting wildfires on the Greek Island of Chios, with evacuation orders in place across the island, reported Reuters. Strong winds and 40C temperatures have made the fire “extremely difficult to control” amidst Greece’s first heatwave of the summer, added BBC News.
HEATWAVES: Japan is currently facing a two-week heatwave, driving up energy demand and keeping power prices high, reported Bloomberg. The Financial Times warned that temperatures could reach dangerous highs as “heat domes” continue to hit the US and Europe. The Daily Mail said the UK Health Security Agency had “activated the five-day alert amid concerns that there could be ‘a rise in deaths, particularly among those ages 65 and over or with health conditions’”.
Bonn climate talks close
BUDGET GROWTH: Reuters reported that more than 200 countries have agreed at the Bonn climate talks to increase the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) budget by 10% to €81.5m for 2026-27. (Carbon Brief has just published its in-depth summary of the Bonn intersessional.)
JUST TRANSITION: After talks stalled at COP29 last year, activists have welcomed progress on the just transition work programme (JTWP) in Bonn, reported Climate Home News. Campaigners hope the JTWP will lead to the creation of the Belém Action Mechanism at the upcoming COP30 in Brazil, helping to facilitate a just transition on the ground, the article added.
EYES ON COP30: As the two weeks of talks in Bonn came to an end, Bloomberg noted that “it’s still not clear what Brazil will need, or is aiming, to deliver” at COP30 in November. It added that, before the climate summit, most countries still need to submit new “nationally determined contributions”, detailing their plans to help meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, but, currently, less than 30 countries have done so.
Around the world
- DRILL, BABY, DRILL: US president Donald Trump has urged his government to “drill, baby, drill” as fears grew that the aftermath of attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities could cause energy prices to spike, reported Reuters.
- GREENWASHING: EU countries have abandoned anti-greenwashing negotiations, after Italy withdrew its support for the bill, according to Politico.
- SOUTH AFRICA GRANT: South Africa’s national treasury has announced that the World Bank has granted it a $1.5bn loan to help it transition to a low-carbon economy, reported the Associated Press.
- MONEYPOINT: Ireland became Europe’s sixth country to end coal power with the closure of its last coal-fired plant at Moneypoint, according to the Irish Examiner.
- RECORD DEMAND: The Times reported on the Energy Institute’s annual statistical review, which showed global demand for every main type of energy hit a record high in 2024.
$525bn
Between 2000 and 2019, 55 climate-vulnerable economies lost approximately $525bn “because of climate change’s temperature and precipitation patterns”, according to a new report from the United Nations Development Programme.
Latest climate research
- Sea turtles will likely experience “substantial habitat redistributions” under future climate change scenarios, according to a new study in Science Advances.
- Warming of the tropical Indian Ocean can increase sea ice concentration in the Arctic during winter in the northern hemisphere, a study published in Climate Dynamics has found.
- According to a study published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, a 2C temperature increase over high-mountain Alpine regions would double the frequency of “extreme summer downpours”, compared to 1991-2020 levels.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Emissions from the electricity sector in the UK have now fallen from being the largest emitter in the UK up until the mid-2010s, to the sixth-largest emitter, according to the Climate Change Committee’s latest progress report. As Carbon Brief’s chart above shows, this dramatic drop means that the electricity sector now produces fewer emissions than surface transport, industry, residential buildings, agriculture and – as of 2024 – aviation.
Spotlight
Gender clash at the climate talks
Negotiations in Bonn have laid bare divergent political and cultural stances as countries dispute gender terminology, reports Carbon Brief.
As technical discussions drew to a close in Bonn, Argentina inserted a footnote into one of the event’s many documents, defining “gender” as “two sexes, male and female”.
This seemingly innocuous move came at the end of a week-long terminology dispute, as nations debated a new “action plan” to centre gender equality in climate action.
Climate change often disproportionately harms women and can also have an outsized impact on other marginalised communities.
However, divergent political and cultural stances meant countries disagreed about the right ways to discuss these issues, ahead of a major decision later this year.
‘Global rollback’
UN climate talks are taking place amid a “global rollback” of rights for women and girls.
In some countries, notably the US and Argentina, this rollback has gone hand-in-hand with a rejection of so-called “gender ideology” and a reversal of trangender rights.
Right-wing populist leaders are also conflating environmental protection with efforts to protect women and marginalised groups.
For example, Argentine president Javier Milei has described “environmentalism”, “feminism” and “gender ideology” as “heads of the same beast” – namely, “wokeism”.
These views have manifested in unexpected places. Negotiations at a UN working group on pollution earlier this month saw the US insist that the output text stated: “Women are biologically female and men are biologically male.”
‘Strong divergence’
While the US was absent from Bonn, Argentina was a prominent voice in the gender sessions. This was despite the nation sending just one negotiator: Eliana Saissac.
Jennifer Bansard, who led the Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB) team that reported from within the Bonn talks, told Carbon Brief that Argentina took a “hard stance”:
“There’s definitely strong divergences on gender terminology and broader societal debates are affecting the talks.”
ENB’s reporting captures these disagreements. Argentina wanted to define “gender” based on a contentious 1998 statute of the international criminal court, referring to “two sexes, male and female”. Paraguay sought a similar definition.
Bansard noted that the divergence was “in both directions”, with some expressing more expansive views. Norway discussed “women and girls in all their diversity”, Canada referred to “gender-diverse people” and Iceland stated that it “[does] not support binary terms”.
Future plans
The talks also saw the Holy See – the governing arm of the Vatican City – make a rare intervention calling for a reference to “sex” rather than ”gender”. Saudi Arabia was among those flatly rejecting the notion of “gender diversity”.
These religiously conservative states have previously aligned in UN talks on gender. At COP29, they were among those reportedly blocking progress on the action plan.
In Bonn, they argued for cultural sensitivity and respect for nations’ differing laws. Claudia Rubio Giraldo, a lawyer who works with the Women and Gender Constituency, told Carbon Brief that she sympathised with this view:
“I think we all come here assuming that we are all on the same ground, understanding certain terminology…but there is a process of bridging that is necessary.”
Nevertheless, Giraldo championed an “intersectional” approach, backed by some nations, that benefits not only women, but also other marginalised groups.
NGOs also warned of parties attempting to roll back existing language on “gender mainstreaming” and “gender responsive” action.
Despite the disagreements, participants noted a constructive tone and agreed on an “informal note” to feed into future negotiations.
Yet, with the gender plan expected to be one of the more tangible outcomes from COP30, civil-society observers were cautious. Francesca Rhodes, a senior policy adviser at CARE International UK, told Carbon Brief:
“These negotiations are taking place in the wider context of a global rollback on rights and inclusive approaches to gender…Progress made must not be sidetracked by these efforts.”
Watch, read, listen
BESTING BIG OIL: The New Statesman had a feature on campaigner Sarah Finch and her victory in the supreme court in the UK last summer, which has “sunk billions of pounds worth of oil and gas projects”.
THIN ICE: Scientists at the University of Cambridge, including Prof Michael Meredith, discussed on The Naked Scientists podcast how the latest polar science is tracking climate change’s impact in Antarctica.
MAMDANI’S ‘GREEN ABUNDANCE’: The Jacobin examined how the focus of New York City mayor frontrunner Zohran Mamdani on lowering the cost of living can serve as a “blueprint” for embedding climate action in everyday life.
Coming up
- 7-25 July: 2nd Part of the 30th Annual Session of the International Seabed Authority, Kingston, Jamaica
- 11 July: IEA Oil Market Report publication
- 14-23 July: High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development 2025, UN Headquarters, New York
Pick of the jobs
- United Nations, national contractor for climate change mitigation | Salary: Unknown. Location: Baku, Azerbaijan.
- UNICEF, climate change negotiations consultant | Salary: Unknown. Location: Panama City, Panama.
- Chatham House, senior research fellow – energy transition and climate mitigation | Salary: £90,000. Location: London, England.
- Young European Greens, communications and campaigns intern | Salary: €1,500 per month. Location: Belgium.
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 27 June 2025: Heat domes; Bonn comes to a close; Gender clash in climate talks appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed 27 June 2025: Heat domes; Bonn comes to a close; Gender clash in climate talks
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).
-
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
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