Despite recent shifts in federal energy policies, our analysis shows that the US transition to renewable energy is continuing.
The current administration has enacted a range of changes to prioritise fossil-fuel energy and environmental deregulation in the US, while withdrawing support for renewables.
Yet solar, wind and battery storage accounted for over 90% of new energy capacity in 2025.
This is thanks to the falling cost of renewable energy technologies, investments spurred by the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and local and state policies, according to our research at the Center for Global Sustainability, University of Maryland.
Our analysis examines recent trends in the US energy landscape, focusing on rising electricity demand, new electricity capacity additions and generation, as well as fossil-fuel production and state-level case studies.
Rising electricity demand in the US
A key shift in the calculus is the fact that US electricity demand is now projected to increase rapidly, after a period of relative stagnation.
Between 2005 and 2020, electricity demand was relatively flat, after surging in the 1990s due to growth in the economy and population, as well as rising electrification.
However, as the chart below shows, demand has grown by 7% since 2020 – and this is set to accelerate.
Rising transport electrification, along with new demand from data centres, buildings and industry are expected to drive additional electricity growth in the near term.
Our recent report finds that US electricity demand could increase by 24-34% in the next decade, relative to 2021 levels, as shown in the figure below. It shows that electricity demand would be higher if there is enhanced climate ambition, due to higher shares of electrified transport, industry and buildings.
While demand has been relatively flat over the past decade or two, there have been major shifts in the source of electricity supply over this period.
(Note that changes in generating capacity do not correspond directly to patterns in electricity demand shown earlier.)
Whereas huge numbers of gas-fired power plants were built in the 2000s, renewable energy has been the primary source of new capacity for the past decade. With demand largely flat, much of this new capacity helped offset the loss from significant coal retirements during this period.
Indeed, capacity additions from renewable energy have outpaced that of every other technology since 2011, according to our research.
Accelerating renewable-energy buildout is increasingly viewed as an immediate, low-cost and practical solution to meet demand growth.
As shown in the figure below, additions of solar, wind and battery storage capacity reached more than 90% of total additions in 2024 and 2025 at 47 gigawatts (GW) and 48GW a year, respectively.
This pace of renewable deployment is attributable to quickly declining costs, driven by improvements in manufacturing technology, maturing supply chains and better economies of scale.
Meanwhile, 112GW of coal capacity was retired over the last decade due to market forces, health concerns and clean-energy policies.
Gas-power additions have remained at a low but steady level, our research shows.
Renewables surpass coal
As a result of the shifts in generating capacity, solar generation has increased nearly tenfold over the last decade, while wind generation has doubled.
As such, solar and wind reached 9% and 10% of the generation mix last year, respectively, as shown in the chart below.
Coal generation has fallen by more than 50% over the same period, replaced by a combination of renewables and gas, which has risen steadily.
(Note that coal-power output increased in 2025, primarily due to higher gas prices, while federal policy changes forced some old plants to stay open.)
Gas generation has steadily increased in the US, reaching a 39% share of the generation mix last year. Roughly speaking, the growth in wind and solar – around 600 terawatt hours (TWh) – in the past decade was sufficient to match the decline in coal generation, while growing gas generation covered the roughly 300TWh increase in demand through 2025.
As a result, as shown in the figure below, fossil-fired electricity as a whole has fallen to 56% of the mix.
Our research shows that a rapid renewable energy buildout is occurring across states regardless of political allegiance, driven by strong economic advantages, policies such as state “renewable portfolio standards” and other environmental and health benefits.
Over the last decade, land- and wind-rich states such as Texas, Oklahoma and Iowa, have accounted for 62% of new wind capacity. Meanwhile, “sun-belt” states such as Texas, California and Florida have built 52% of new solar capacity.
Clean-energy policies have further driven renewable deployment. For example, California has a binding law requiring 100% of electricity to come from renewable and zero-carbon energy sources by 2045, with an interim target of 60% by 2030.
This has contributed to a 44% renewable generation share in the state in 2025, up from 16% only a decade ago.
Similarly, New Mexico has a legislated goal to reach 80% renewable electricity by 2040 and 100% zero-carbon electricity by 2045.
More than half of New Mexico’s electricity is now generated by renewables, up from only 9% in 2015. The state’s 3.5GW SunZia wind and transmission project is set to be the largest renewable energy project in the western hemisphere when completed.
At the same time, our research suggests that the increasing partisanship of climate policy has been a key barrier for many states.
Some states have tried to restrict climate action, spanning a potential solar-farm construction moratorium in Alabama to a ban on net-zero policy and greenhouse-gas regulation in Florida.
Renewables transcending politics
Importantly, the factors driving the transition to renewables are now frequently transcending politics.
Our research shows that lower cost, quick-to-deploy and energy-secure renewables make practical sense in many market contexts in the US – and globally. Businesses, local governments and consumers are voting with their wallets to address immediate needs.
For example, Texas leads the nation in renewable-energy expansion, despite its lack of decarbonisation goals. Texas’ deregulated power grid and lighter permitting processes, combined with its abundant renewable resources and falling technology costs, have increased renewable electricity capacity to nearly 90GW in 2025.
The state now generates more power from solar farms than coal plants.
Public health is another driver of the clean-energy transition that transcends politics, our research suggests. Oregon, for example, passed a law in 2016 to phase out all coal-generated electricity by 2035, which the state deemed “necessary for the immediate preservation of…public health and safety”.
Data centre development and energy affordability are also shaping state policy landscapes.
Virginia – which has the highest number of data centres of any US state – just passed new laws to allow for more efficient grid utilisation and to shift energy costs towards data centres while assisting low-income households with energy efficiency improvements.
The figure below shows how widespread renewable-energy development now crosses state and political divides, even though it remains constrained to some extent by geography.
Between 2010 and 2020, state and federal policies helped spur renewable energy, with particularly strong growth in states like California and North Carolina.
More recently, declining costs and improving economics have become increasingly important drivers of renewable energy expansion, even amid increasing political and policy setbacks in some regions. This has contributed to a broader dispersion of solar and wind deployment across US states between 2020 and 2025.
While most domestic economic sectors are still fossil-fuel heavy and current US energy security priorities promote continued fossil production, this fossil-fuel reliance has shifted over the past decade away from coal mining towards oil and gas drilling.
Coal production has fallen more than 40% over the last decade, tracking the decline in domestic coal consumption, as shown by the red line in the lower figure below.
In contrast, oil and gas production and exports have grown steadily since 2008, with the US becoming a net liquified natural gas (LNG) exporter over the last decade.
However, recent upheavals in the Middle East have underscored the country’s continued exposure to global fossil- energy markets.
Our research shows that renewable energy deployment in the US today is rooted in its practicality and cost-effectiveness. These advantages are allowing it to outcompete fossil-fuel technologies in terms of electricity capacity expansion, even across varying political landscapes.
Nevertheless, policy continues to influence the sector.
Coupled with parallel strategies for vehicle transport electrification, renewable deployment would offer lowered risks to consumers and businesses from fossil-fuel price volatility.
The post Guest post: How US renewable-energy growth persists despite federal policy uncertainty appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Guest post: How US renewable-energy growth persists despite federal policy uncertainty
Global fossil-fuel emissions are set to fall by around 0.5% in 2026 amid the fallout from the Hormuz crisis, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
The US-Iran war has severely disrupted trade through the strait of Hormuz, causing a spike in oil and gas prices that continues to ripple around the global economy.
Each month of disruption – and each new flashpoint, such as in Yemen – is increasing the incentive to switch to alternatives.
Those alternatives include coal, with the latest forecasts pointing to a 1.2% rise in coal demand this year – apparently supporting media claims of a “return to coal” in the wake of the crisis.
Yet Carbon Brief’s analysis shows the rise in emissions associated with this increased coal use, much of which is unrelated to Hormuz, is set to be more than offset by declines for oil and gas.
The estimated overall impact on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels in 2026 is shown in the figure below and amounts to a reduction of around 0.5% from 2025 levels.
(Fossil fuels account for two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions.)
The emissions estimates for each fossil fuel are based on the latest forecasts from the International Energy Agency (IEA) for coal, oil and gas, in light of the ongoing global energy crisis.
For example, the agency initially estimated that global coal demand would decline this year. In its 2025 coal report, published in mid-December, it said that declining coal demand in China would outweigh the impact of pro-coal policies under US president Donald Trump.
In contrast, the latest update, published in September 2026, said that global coal demand would rise by 1.2% in 2026, instead of the small decline that had been expected.
The report highlighted the boost to coal demand from higher gas prices in the wake of Hormuz. However, there are limits to this, because few countries can switch from gas to coal at large scale.
The IEA’s latest report also noted the role of a strong El Niño, which is pushing up the need for cooling and depressing hydropower output in key markets. Other short-term factors are also affecting coal demand this year, including a rising amount of “wasted” wind and solar in China.
For gas, the IEA did not initially update its previous forecast that global gas demand would rise by 2.0% in 2026, which had been published in January of this year.
Its most recent forecast – published in July – already pointed to a 0.6% drop in demand in 2026. Since then, pressure on gas demand from high prices has only grown stronger.
For oil, there has been an even more dramatic shift in forecasts since the start of the year.
In its January 2026 oil market report, the IEA forecast a rise in demand in 2026 of 930,000 barrels per day (bpd). As shown in the figure below, this has been steadily revised downwards over the course of the year, as the Hormuz crisis was first ignited – and then extended.
By September, the IEA was forecasting a 2,500,000bpd drop in oil demand in 2026, equivalent to a reduction of 2.4% from 2025 levels.
(A 15 September research note from Morgan Stanley, not available online, found a “consensus” forecast of a 2,415,000bpd drop in demand in 2026.)
While there are many short-term factors at play in the shifting forecasts for 2026, it is clear that the latest energy crisis will also affect fossil-fuel demand in the next year and beyond.
For example, whereas the IEA initially forecast that oil demand would rebound in 2027 to well above 2025 levels, it is now expecting use of the fuel to be effectively flat for two years.
This puts a question mark over its previous expectation – published in October last year – that global oil demand would not peak until as late as 2030.
“For every month the conflict lasts, the probability of permanent [oil] demand destruction increases,” wrote Sverre Alvik, vice president at consultancy DNV in a late August analysis.
As fuel prices have surged, electric vehicles (EVs) have captured record shares of major car markets, from Australia and China through to Europe, Indonesia and Thailand.
In July, EV sales nearly doubled year-on-year in “new markets”, noted Alvik, pointing to countries outside China, Europe and North America.
The IEA says the 2027 outlooks for coal and gas are interdependent, with coal demand potentially increasing again if gas prices remain elevated – or dropping back if gas prices ease.
At the same time, governments in countries that had planned to rely on imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) have been signalling shifts towards favouring domestic clean energy instead – or continuing to use coal for longer.
The current crisis, therefore, has the potential to not only lower fossil-fuel use and emissions in the short term, but also on a more lasting basis.
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The post Analysis: Global fossil-fuel emissions set to fall in 2026 amid Hormuz crisis appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Global fossil-fuel emissions set to fall in 2026 amid Hormuz crisis
Aviation is on track to be responsible for 80% of the UK’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2050, according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC).
Emissions from flying have more than doubled since 1990 – driven by rising passenger numbers – even as the climate impact of every other sector in the UK economy has fallen.
The UK does not have “credible” policies in place to reverse this trend of rising emissions, says the CCC in new advice to the government on future aviation policy.
The government has signalled its support for expanding Heathrow, the nation’s largest airport, while relying on “techno-fixes” such as “sustainable aviation fuels” (SAFs) to cut emissions.
Yet, even without Heathrow expansion, the CCC says aviation emissions are on track to be higher in 2050 than they are today – reaching 38m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2).
As the chart below shows, this would account for most of the remaining CO2 from the UK economy, all of which would need to be removed from the atmosphere in order to meet the legal target of net-zero emissions.
Expanding Heathrow would add another 2.4MtCO2 in 2050, amounting to around 5% of all the UK’s emissions. (This would increase to 4.5MtCO2 when expansion is complete in 2054.)
With a final decision on Heathrow expansion expected by 2029, the government asked the CCC for its advice on whether the plan is compatible with the UK’s climate targets.
The CCC has concluded that the UK simply lacks sufficient policies to reduce aviation emissions and “expanding Heathrow would compound the problem”. In a press briefing, CCC chair Nigel Topping told journalists:
“The UK does not currently have a credible plan to reduce [aviation emissions] in line with net-zero, so that creates a serious challenge for meeting our climate commitments.”
The “jet-zero strategy”, launched by the previous Conservative government in 2022, set out plans to cut aviation emissions. However, the Labour government has since accepted that the strategy’s expectations for SAFs, electric planes and fuel-efficiency improvements were unrealistic.
The CCC says a “credible and robust net-zero policy framework for aviation” should be set out in a revised strategy, which is planned for 2027. Only then could Heathrow expansion be aligned with the net-zero goal, adds the committee.
As part of this new strategy, the CCC says the “aviation sector needs to take responsibility for its emissions”. It says policies should be designed based on the “polluter pays” principle, requiring the aviation industry to fund its own SAFs and CO2 removal.
Specifically, the committee says funding will be needed for “engineered removal” technologies, such as direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS).
These technologies are currently “not yet available at the scale required”, but are vital for the kind of permanent CO2 removal needed to mop up aviation emissions, says the CCC.
(“Natural solutions” such as tree planting are the other main way CO2 is expected to be removed from the atmosphere. However, the CCC envisages these removals offsetting the remaining methane emissions from livestock agriculture in the UK, whereas it says “engineered removals” would be required to remove and store CO2 from flights.)
The CCC acknowledges that placing decarbonisation costs on airlines would likely lead to higher ticket prices. It estimates that this could mean an increase, in 2024 prices, of around £150 for a return trip to Alicante, Spain, and £400 for a return trip to New York by 2050.
However, it says this is preferable to a public spending approach, which would result in the roughly 50% of the population who do not fly paying for flight-related CO2 removals.
In addition, the committee notes that higher costs would help to manage demand for flights, which would otherwise be expected to increase considerably over the coming decades.
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The post CCC: Heathrow expansion could push flights to ‘80% of UK emissions by 2050’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
CCC: Heathrow expansion could push flights to ‘80% of UK emissions by 2050’
A fifth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions are linked to international trade in goods and services, a new tracker shows, spotlighting a little-studied issue that researchers say should be tackled by the UN climate process.
Currently, as part of the Paris Agreement, every country is responsible for counting and reducing the planet-heating emissions that are produced within its territory. Manufacturing countries, for example, may have high emissions even if what they make is exported for consumption elsewhere.
But new analysis from the European Climate Foundation (ECF) and climate consultancy Matière, based on the tracker’s data, shows that some countries have a high footprint of “imported emissions” from goods and services they ship in. These emissions are often ignored in the places where the products are consumed because they are not formally counted under greenhouse gas inventories.
In the European Union, for example, while domestic emissions have declined since 2015, imported emissions have remained unchanged, the analysis shows. In some countries, like Austria or Sweden, they are as high as the country’s entire annual carbon footprint.
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Former EU lead climate negotiator Jacob Werksman said that under the Paris Agreement, these traded emissions are accounted for in the countries where they are originally produced, but importing countries can also take responsibility for their consumption.
“It starts with a wide recognition by many jurisdictions around the world that we need to know the carbon content of these products, and we then need to agree what is a fair, effective, transparent and relatively easy-to-implement way of measuring that carbon in traded products,” he told a launch event for the trade emissions tracker, which contains data for different countries, sectors and gases.
Trade and its role in addressing climate change has become a higher priority at UN climate talks after a push led by emerging economies including China, India and South Africa led to the first trade and climate change dialogue held this year at the mid-year session in Bonn.
At the upcoming COP31 UN summit in Antalya, some voluntary initiatives like the Brazil-led Integrated Forum on Climate Change and Trade are expected to continue, but the issue does not feature in Türkiye’s Action Agenda of climate initiatives and formal negotiations are not scheduled on the topic.
China: the world’s top emissions exporter
As a manufacturing powerhouse, China ranks first in the new tracker as the world’s top-emitting country, but the data shows that a large chunk of the country’s carbon emissions – an amount larger than Brazil’s entire annual carbon footprint – are linked to products that are exported and consumed abroad.
Russia, Brazil, the US and the EU rank as the top destinations for Chinese trade-related emissions, which are mostly linked to components for power generation, basic metals like copper and lead, and non-metallic minerals like graphite and phosphorus.
Yet China is also the world’s top emissions importer, related mostly to agricultural products, fossil fuels and minerals brought from the US, the EU, Japan and India, among others. The US ranks second by a close margin, with both countries importing about 1.6 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent.
China’s industrial engine starts to break its fossil fuel habit
Richard Baron, ECF’s industrial policy and trade director, said Chinese clean energy products are key for reducing emissions around the world, adding that Europe is “not able to do without those technologies” for its energy transition.
“China has an emissions trading system that counts CO2 differently there. But if China and the EU were to agree on some kind of translation mechanism to say ‘this is how we measure it’, and companies can understand the protocol to navigate both markets, that would set the tone for a lot of other conversations,” he said at the platform’s launch event last week.
The analysis suggests that if the EU and China aligned their climate requirements for products, the resulting standards could influence trade flows representing about 7% of global emissions.
Baron said there’s “a plethora” of multilateral spaces to hold these discussions, including the climate and trade dialogue at the UN climate talks or the Climate Club at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which seeks to cut industrial emissions.
Trade breaks into agenda of UN climate talks – but will it have teeth?
Controversial trade measures
Instruments like the Europe’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) – a recent piece of legislation that penalises emissions-heavy imported products – are one tool that could be used to address trade-related emissions, said Antoine Oger, executive director at the Institute for European Environmental Policy.
He said a significant portion of imported emissions in Europe are already covered by CBAM, as it includes sectors like cement, iron and steel, fertilisers and aluminium. This then allows the EU “to engage in constructive dialogue with our trade partners”, he added.
But across diplomatic summits, including at UN climate talks, emerging economies have pushed back heavily against the CBAM and other trade measures. The most recent BRICS declaration adopted on Saturday by 11 such countries – including China, India and Russia – condemns “protectionism under the guise of environmental objectives”.
The declaration calls for the “elimination of such unlawful measures”, which they argue have “far-reaching negative implications for the human rights, including the rights to development, health and food security” of vulnerable communities.
“The question of responsibility is a political question,” Oger said. “These emissions exist – they are emitted somewhere to make a product that will be consumed elsewhere. So you can debate responsibility but the idea is for the two parts to recognise there’s a problem.”
The aim, he added “is not to point fingers, but to accept this is a reality of our emissions profiles and ask what we can do about it”.
The post International trade linked to 20% of global emissions – but imports ignored appeared first on Climate Home News.
International trade linked to 20% of global emissions – but imports ignored
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