Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
UK sees Labour landslide
‘HISTORIC’ RESULT: The UK Labour party has declared a “historic” victory in the country’s general election, while the Conservatives suffered their worst-ever defeat, the Financial Times reported. BusinessGreen said that Labour’s “sizeable majority” would provide the party with a “clear mandate for its ambitious green plans”. It added this includes a decarbonised power system by 2030 (more on this below), ending new oil and gas licences and a foreign policy “reset” based around international climate diplomacy.
GREEN SURGE: The UK’s Green party won three new seats in parliament, bringing its total number of MPs up to four, the Guardian reported. Across the UK, Green votes increased to around 7% from 2.7% of the vote share in 2019, from a total of 866,000 votes in 2019 to around 2m votes in 2024, according to Greenpeace. Below, Carbon Brief outlines some of the key climate players from across the parties that won seats in the early hours of this morning.
FREE WEBINAR: Following the results, Carbon Brief is hosting a free webinar at 10am UK time on Tuesday 9 July to discuss key climate issues facing the new Labour government. Carbon Brief journalists Dr Simon Evans and Molly Lempriere will be joined by Chris Stark, CEO of the Carbon Trust and former chief executive of the Climate Change Committee, Emma Pinchbeck, chief executive of Energy UK, and Camilla Born MBE, independent climate advisor and former UK senior official at COP26. Register here.
Hurricane Beryl wrecks havoc
KILLER STORM: Hurricane Beryl struck islands across the Caribbean and Venezuela this week, as the earliest category 5 hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic, reported the Associated Press. The hurricane killed at least 11 people across islands including Grenada, St Vincent and the Grenadines, as well as in northern Venezuela, Reuters said.
‘ARMAGEDDON-LIKE’: After making landfall in the Grenadian island of Carriacou on Monday, the hurricane brought “devastating winds and storm surges” to Jamaica on Wednesday, Sky News reported. Beryl is now set to hit the Cayman Islands before moving further west and reaching the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, reported the Washington Post.
RECORD SEASON: The Financial Times noted that the US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned that there was an 85% higher chance of an above-average hurricane season in the Atlantic this year. According to the FT, NOAA said the increased risk was due to a “confluence of factors”, including record-breaking ocean temperatures, the onset of the natural weather phenomenon La Niña and reduced Atlantic trade winds, which allow hurricanes to grow in strength more easily.
Biden unveils heat protections
‘REALLY, REALLY DUMB’: US president Joe Biden has launched a first-ever federal workplace standard for extreme heat, reported the Guardian. If finalised, the standard “will substantially reduce heat injuries, illnesses and deaths for over 36 million workers”, Biden said. Announcing the rules, Biden took aim at Republicans working to undo his climate measures, calling such actions “really, really dumb”, the New York Times said.
CHEVRON DOCTRINE: The US Supreme Court overturned the principle that has guided UK regulatory law for the past 40 years, known as the Chevron doctrine, reported Inside Climate News. The sweeping away of the “Goliath” of modern law will weaken the Environmental Protection Agency’s legal authority, as courts “weigh Biden’s policies to cut greenhouse gases”, the publication said.
LNG PERMITS: A federal judge has ruled that the Biden administration must resume issuing permits for new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities, the New York Times reported. The decision comes in response to a lawsuit filed by 16 Republican state attorney generals who argued that Biden’s pause on licensing, brought in to allow time to analyse how those exports affect climate change, amounted to a ban that harmed their states’ economies, it added. Bloomberg noted that the decision is “unlikely to immediately jump start approvals”.
Around the world
- CHINESE FLOODS: Local authorities in China’s Hunan province declared a “wartime” emergency after torrential rainfall led to “the most severe flooding seen in 70 years”, the South China Morning Post reported.
- BRAZILIAN FIRES: Wildfires in the Brazilian Amazon in the first half of 2024 were the worst in 20 years, with 13,489 individual fires registered, Agence France-Presse reported.
- SBTi CEO RESIGNS: The head of the Science Based Targets initiative, Luiz Amaral, who came “under fire for a controversial decision to loosen guidelines around carbon offsets”, will step down at the end of July, Bloomberg reported.
- THOMPSON FIRE: Around 28,000 residents have been forced to evacuate in northern California after a wildfire broke out as the “state simmers in a brutal and potentially historic heatwave”, the Guardian reported.
- ‘FEROCIOUS STORMS’: Seven were left dead after “ferocious storms and torrential rains” hit France, Switzerland and Italy last weekend, Agence France-Presse reported.
- INDIAN LANDSLIDES: Heavy rains in northeastern India have “triggered floods and landslides in the region”, killing at least 16 people and displacing more than 300,000 over the last two weeks, Deutsche Welle reported.
14
The number of times women are more likely to die in extreme weather disasters, according to Women’s Environmental Leadership Australia, reported the Australian Associated Press.
Latest climate research
- Tropical forest degradation due to “edge effects” – those at the edges of forests – is 200% higher than previously thought, increasing the areas more vulnerable to drought, a study published in Nature and covered by Carbon Brief found.
- As the climate warms, the cities of Hai Phong in Vietnam, Yangon in Myanmar and Bangkok in Thailand will all face increases in the peak intensity and duration of tropical cyclones, a new study published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science indicated.
- The gradual trend towards a warmer and drier climate “poses immense uncertainty for the future of British festivals” stated the author of a new “short research article” published in Weather, which examined the “more extreme weather events” in Glastonbury festival’s history.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
One of the new Labour government’s key manifesto pledges is to reach “zero-carbon electricity” by 2030. While this target is seen as extremely ambitious, the UK has already made significant progress in slashing fossil fuels while rolling out renewable power. Under the Conservatives, coal power has already been all but phased out, falling from 40% of electricity generation in 2012 to near-zero in 2024, just 12 years later. To meet its target, Labour will need to phase out unabated gas twice as fast, from 29% in 2024 to near-zero in 2030.
Spotlight
Key climate figures in the new UK parliament
After a “historic” win for the Labour party and loss for the Conservatives in the UK’s general election, Carbon Brief takes a look at who will be setting the climate agenda in the years to come.
The Labour party has secured a landslide victory in the country’s general election, winning 412 seats in parliament, up by 211 from 2019.
Former Labour leader and MP for Doncaster North Ed Miliband is expected to take on the role of energy security and net-zero secretary, leading one of Labour’s “five main missions”, to “make Britain a clean energy superpower”. This includes targeting lower energy bills, creating jobs and delivering energy security by transitioning to zero-carbon electricity by 2030, the party said.
Beyond the department of energy security and net-zero, other key ministers who will have a say in steering a range of climate and energy policy over the next five years are likely to include Louise Haigh as secretary of state for transport, Steve Reed as secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs and Rachel Reeves as chancellor of the exchequer.
Beyond government positions, a number of pro-climate action Labour MPs have won seats, including:
- Katie White in Leeds North West, who led the campaign that created Britain’s first Climate Change Act.
- Polly Billington in East Thanet, who founded the environmental network UK100.
- Melanie Onn, in Great Grimsby & Cleethorpes, who was previously deputy chief executive of trade association RenewableUK.
- Luke Murphy in Basingstoke, who was head of the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) Fair Transition Unit and associate director for the energy, climate, housing and infrastructure team.
The Green party also won four seats and the Liberal Democrats won 70.
According to research by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth in June, these two parties had the most environmentally friendly manifestos, with the Greens and Liberal Democrats scoring 39 and 32 out of 40, respectively. (Labour scored 21).
Greens MPs include co-leaders Carla Denyer, who beat Labour’s shadow culture secretary Thangam Debbonaire by 10,000 votes in Bristol Central, and Adrian Ramsay, who overturned a 22,000 Conservative majority in Waveney Valley, with a 32.1% swing to the Green Party.
Additionally, Siân Berry has won Brighton Pavilion, the seat previously held by former Green MP Caroline Lucas.
For the Liberal Democrats, it was a “record-breaking” night with the number of seats held by the party surging from 11 in 2019.
This includes Pippa Heylings for South Cambridgeshire, who was team leader for the UK’s Global Biodiverse Landscapes Fund at the multinational company PwC. She also founded the climate-focused advisory company Talking Transformation, along with other climate-focused Liberal Democrat MPs.
Watch, read, listen
CONSPIRACY INFLUENCERS: Rolling Stone took a look at how Europe’s “conspiracy influencers” have gone from a focus on Covid-19 to climate change, with conspiratorial narratives about climate action entering the mainstream.
FOOD PRICES: A “big read” in the Financial Times looked at how shifting weather patterns are “reducing crop yields and squeezing supplies”, which could create a permanent source of inflation.
ELECTION MEANING: Ahead of the UK general election, Carbon Brief’s deputy editor and senior policy editor Dr Simon Evans spoke to Michael Liebreich and Baroness Bryony Worthington about what the results mean for climate and energy on the Cleaning Up podcast.
Coming up
- 7 July: France national assembly elections, second round
- 9-11 July: NATO Summit, Washington DC
- 16-17 July: G7 trade meeting, Reggio Calabria, Italy
Pick of the jobs
- Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice, communications coordinator | Salary: Up to $38,400. Location: Fully remote, preferred location in the global south
- Uplift, senior political adviser | Salary: £46,259-£50,548. Location: London
- Sustainable Housing Observatory, senior project manager – adaptation to climate change | Salary: Unknown. Location: Paris
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 5 July 2024: Key climate MPs in new UK parliament; Hurricane Beryl; Biden calls deniers ‘really, really dumb’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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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