Wider adoption of heat pumps could accelerate decarbonisation of heating in China’s carbon-intensive buildings and light industry sectors, a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) says.
The report, published in collaboration with Tsinghua University, finds that, by using heat pumps as part of China’s strategy to reach carbon neutrality by 2060, direct emissions for heating in buildings could fall by 75% to 70m tonnes of carbon dioxide (MtCO2) in 2050, due to increased electrification and improvements to energy efficiency.
Similarly, using heat pumps could help reduce direct emissions from heating in light industries from more than 110MtCO2 today to less than 10MtCO2 in 2050.
In 2023, China was one of the few nations to see total heat pump sales rise. However, greater policy support is still needed to accelerate uptake and help shift the buildings and light industry sectors towards less-carbon intensive energy sources, the report says.
- How much energy does China consume for heat?
- How can heat pumps help China meet its ‘dual carbon’ goals?
- How effective are heat pumps as a solution for China?
- How can policy support heat pump adoption?
How much energy does China consume for heat?
China’s final energy consumption was 107 exajoules (EJ) of energy in 2022. Within this, the IEA report says, heat consumption reached about 50EJ. China’s heat consumption equals “about one-third” of total heat consumption globally.
Around a quarter of China’s heat use is in buildings, with the remainder in industry.
In the buildings sector, heat consumption has grown faster in China than in any other country over the past decade, standing at 12EJ in 2022. This is largely due to growing demand for heat for space and water, which has “nearly tripled” direct and indirect emissions since 2000.
Since 2010, direct coal consumption for heating overall has fallen by 15%. The IEA report attributes this to policy drives beginning in the mid-2010s, initially “to improve air quality, then later to expand clean and low-carbon heating”.
However, an exception to this is district heating, namely, a centralised heating mechanism that is the dominant source of heat for urban areas in northern China. Heat pumps and other decentralised solutions are more common in southern and rural northern China.
District heating networks in northern China rely on coal for more than 80% of their heat production. It is the key driver of coal consumption in building heat provision across the country, according to the IEA.
One 2019 study found that China’s emissions from district heating alone were greater than the total CO2 emissions of the UK.
Dr Chiara Delmastro and Dr Rafael Martinez Gordon, the report’s lead authors, tell Carbon Brief:
“[This] was mostly driven by the expansion of [heat] networks in north urban China, in particular…The length of the district heat network has increased by 250% since 2010, of which the large majority is in the north.”
Delmastro and Martinez Gordon also note, however, that “China has taken action towards cleaner and more efficient heating in recent years” – for example, by shifting from using coal-fired boilers to more efficient combined heat and power plants.
Meanwhile, heat consumption for industry in 2022 totalled 38EJ. Some of this demand is for low- and medium-temperature heat (below 200C), which is generally required for light industries, as well as the pulp and paper sector and some chemical sector processes.
This demand – which could easily be served by existing state-of-the-art heat pump technology – totaled 4.7EJ in 2022 and released more than 110MtCO2 of direct emissions, the report says.
However, more than 80% of industrial demand for heat requires temperatures above 200C, predominantly for iron and steel manufacturing. Other industries that require such high temperatures include non-metallic minerals and non-ferrous metals, as well as some processes in the chemicals and petrochemicals and pulp and paper sectors. These sectors comprised the majority of industrial heat demand, consuming 33EJ in 2022.
How can heat pumps help China meet its ‘dual carbon’ goals?
Heat demand in buildings and industry in China is largely driven by coal and accounts for 40% of both China’s coal consumption and its CO2 emissions.
The IEA does note, however, that the use of coal for heat has reduced slightly, largely due to “policies to improve air quality, reduce CO2 emissions and maximise energy efficiency”.
In 2022, carbon emissions from space and water heating accounted for the vast majority of direct emissions from buildings in China, around 290MtCO2, while direct emissions from heating for light industry totalled 110MtCO2. The IEA places China’s total carbon emissions at 12,135MtCO2 in 2022.
The report provides estimates of the uptake of heat pumps in China under the “announced pledges scenario” (APS), in which governments are given the benefit of the doubt and assumed to meet all of their climate goals on time and in full.
It also looks at uptake under the “stated policies scenario” (STEPS), reflecting the IEA’s own judgement of where government policy is currently heading.
If China upholds its “dual carbon” commitments, in line with the APS, then the IEA estimates that heat pump capacity in buildings would rise to 1,400 gigawatts (GW) in 2050, meeting one-quarter of China’s heat demand for the sector.
Under the APS, China would install 100GW in buildings each year until 2050 – the equivalent of “the capacity deployed in the US, China and the EU in 2022 combined”.
Emissions from buildings heat would fall from 290MtCO2 to 80MtCO2 in 2050, a reduction of 210MtCO2, with heat pumps accounting for 30% of this decrease. The other drivers for building decarbonisation would include greater adoption of electrification, energy efficiency measures and behaviour changes.
For light industry, under the APS, approximately 1.5GW of heat pumps would be installed annually between 2025 and 2050, meeting one-fifth of heat demand in 2050.
This would contribute to “drastically” reducing carbon emissions, which would fall by 95% overall from more than 110MtCO2 to 10MtCO2. Electrification, including through use of heat pumps, would be responsible for 70% of these emissions reductions.
The report adds that two energy-intensive sectors could be well-suited to using heat pumps: the pulp and paper sector, in which around 55% of current heat demand could be provided by industrial heat pumps, and the chemical sector, for which around 18% of demand could be met.
Heat pumps would be unlikely to serve demand for other energy-intensive sectors, however, as “only a few early-stage prototypes exist for temperatures beyond 200C, all of which are far from being ready for the mass market”.
Even under the STEPS, the stock of heat pumps in buildings in China would double, reaching more than 1,100GW by 2050 and contributing to building emissions falling by more than 25%, with fuel-switching options such as coal-to-gas also playing a role.
For light industries, heat pump-led CO2 emissions reductions under STEPs would “remain limited”, as under the current policy settings, heat pumps may be “deployed slowly”. Overall, by 2050 heat-related emissions would only fall by 15%.
Significantly, the policies required to meet climate goals in China – and the rest of the world – under the APS would see some industries “strongly mobilised”, the report says. Sectors such as mining and machinery would need to expand, ramping up clean-energy technology production to meet domestic and global demand.
While this additional industrial activity would raise China’s heat demand by 5% in the APS compared with the STEPS, the associated emissions would be more than offset by the savings enabled by wider deployment of electrification and clean heating technologies.
Moreover, the deployment of heat pumps would allow for a 20% decline in the energy intensity of heat supply by 2050 – the energy demand per unit of heat – compared to today, the report says.
The alignment between expanded heat pump use and decarbonisation of the electricity system could see indirect emissions from power generation for heat drop by more than 40% by 2030 as more renewable and nuclear power comes online, it adds. By 2050, electricity’s share in heat generation could exceed 75%.
For example, the IEA states that the pulp and paper sector could see coal use “almost entirely phased out by 2050”, if China’s climate goals are met. The sector has already cut the share of coal in its energy needs from 43% in 2010 to 10% in 2022, due to electrification and coal-to-gas shifts.
Under the APS, direct coal use for space and water heating in China would fall by 75% by 2030 and would be “almost completely phased out” by 2040, with heat pumps becoming a key technology for heating in urban and rural areas by 2050.
However, significant investment would be needed in this scenario to deploy enough heat pumps to meet demand.
How effective are heat pumps as a solution for China?
With more than 250GW of installed heat pump capacity in buildings in 2023, China accounts for more than 25% of global heat pump sales and was the only major market to see heat pump sales grow in 2023, the report says. In 2022, 8% of all heating equipment sales for buildings in China were heat pumps.
They are “already the norm” for space heating and cooling in buildings in some parts of central and southern China, which do not benefit from centralised district heating. Rural areas are now seeing a growing uptake of heat pumps, due to policy support to encourage rural regions to limit coal consumption, the report adds.
The same is also true for district heating, where network operators are increasingly installing heat pumps. While the majority are “air-source” pumps operating at relatively low temperatures, some networks are beginning to use large-scale heat pumps that recycle waste heat from steel mills, sewage treatment processes and coal chemical plants.
They “offer one of the most efficient options for decarbonising heat in district heating networks, buildings and industry”, according to the report.
In terms of both direct and indirect emissions, annual carbon emissions from a heat pump currently installed in China are more than 30% lower than those from gas boilers. “Shifting from fossil fuel boilers to heat pumps”, the report says, “would reduce CO2 emissions virtually everywhere they are installed”.
Despite high upfront installation costs, heat pumps also help users save money on energy bills over their lifetimes, according to the IEA.
The image below shows the different climate zones across China. Air-to-air heat pumps are more cost-effective than both gas boilers and electric heaters in some colder climates, as well as in regions with hot summers and cold winters.
Air-to-water heat pumps save money over electric heaters, although they are only less expensive than gas boilers in areas with competitive electricity prices compared to gas.
Heat pump use in energy-intensive industries is less viable, as current technologies to generate temperatures above 200C are still largely under development.
However, for light industries, industrial heat pumps are “far cheaper” than gas and electric boilers and nearly cost-competitive with coal boilers over their lifetimes, due to their high efficiency levels, states the report.
Despite this, uptake is not widespread, due to high upfront installation costs and lack of public awareness of the effectiveness of heat pumps.
Delmastro and Martinez Gordon tell Carbon Brief:
“In certain processes alternative technologies [to heat pumps] might be less costly and more appropriate, and – depending on policy decisions – different levels of heat pump deployment may be stimulated. However, to meet China’s carbon neutrality goal, we estimate that heat pumps need to supply at least 20% of heat demand in light industries by 2050.”
The report adds that state-of-the-art heat pumps – heat pump technology that is either newly-released or close to release – are well-placed to meet heat consumption needs in the building sectors and light industry sectors, and could theoretically supply about 40% of demand.
In addition, China currently wastes heat resources that could be redirected via heat pumps. In 2021, it generated 45EJ of waste heat resources – almost equal to the combined heating demand of buildings and industry – from sources such as nuclear power plants, other power plants, industrial activity, data centres and wastewater, according to the report.
How can policy support heat pump adoption?
Heat pumps have “increasingly featured” in China’s national-level energy and climate policy as one aspect of the energy transition. For instance, the 14th “five-year plan” for a modern energy system (2021-2025) calls for the expansion of clean heating provision for end-users as part of its electrification drive.
However, Delmastro and Martinez Gordon explain that the more targeted, practical policy recommendations in the IEA report “should [fall] under the umbrella of a clear national action plan for heating decarbonisation, which is missing now in China”.
This would allow China to set quantitative targets for heat pump use that would provide a clear signal to markets and promote wider investment in R&D, manufacturing and deployment.
Meanwhile, the report suggests that more stringent performance requirements for new buildings, stronger energy performance benchmarks, inclusion of heat pump installation requirements in building codes and extension of the scope of the national emissions trading scheme (ETS) to include industry could all drive heat pump adoption.
Loans, tax credits and other financial support mechanisms could address consumer reluctance to pay high upfront installation costs, adds the report.
The northern city of Tianjin offered grants of 25,000 yuan ($3,700) for air-source heat pump purchases, but this is not a common practice – particularly in urban regions.
Raising awareness of the benefits of industrial heat pumps and reducing electricity costs for industry could accelerate uptake in light industry, the report says.
Electricity pricing incentives have already seen rural residential areas switch from using coal to using gas for heating. Similar incentives for electricity in rural parts of Beijing, as well as subsidies for installing heat pumps, mean that heat pumps are now the cheapest heating option for households in that region, based on IEA calculations.
Expanding this policy nationwide could “further increase the competitiveness of heat pumps in regions where electricity currently costs significantly more than gas”, the report states.
Other measures that could make heat pumps more attractive to consumers include combining heat pumps with solar panels or solar thermal solutions, plus adapting the power system to provide tiered electricity pricing and time-of-use power market measures.
Finally, more recovery of waste energy resources, combined with thermal energy storage technologies, could “optimise heat supply by transforming surplus electricity…into heat and storing it for use during the winter heating”, the report says.
“In northern Hebei, for example”, it adds, “heat recovered by heat pumps from renewable power and waste heat could account for 80% of the district heat supply during winter in 2050”.
The post Heat pumps could help cut China’s building CO2 emissions by 75%, says IEA appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Heat pumps could help cut China’s building CO2 emissions by 75%, says IEA
In 2026, the dangers of fossil fuel dependence have been laid bare like never before. The illegal invasion of Iran has brought pain and destruction to millions across the Middle East and triggered a global energy crisis impacting us all. Communities in the Pacific have been hit especially hard by rising fuel prices, and Australians have seen their cost-of-living woes deepen.
Such moments of crisis and upheaval can lead to positive transformation. But only when leaders act with courage and foresight.
There is no clearer statement of a government’s plans and priorities for the nation than its budget — how it plans to raise money, and what services, communities, and industries it will invest in.
As we count down the days to the 2026-27 Federal Budget, will the Albanese Government deliver a budget for our times? One that starts breaking the shackles of fossil fuels, accelerates the shift to clean energy, protects nature, and sees us work together with other countries towards a safer future for all? Or one that doubles down on coal and gas, locks in more climate chaos, and keeps us beholden to the whims of tyrants and billionaires.
Here’s what we think the moment demands, and what we’ll be looking out for when Treasurer Jim Chalmers steps up to the dispatch box on 12 May.
1. Stop fuelling the fire
2. Make big polluters pay
3. Support everyone to be part of the solution
4. Build the industries of the future
5. Build community resilience
6. Be a better neighbour
7. Protect nature
1. Stop fuelling the fire
In mid-April, Pacific governments and civil society met to redouble their efforts towards a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific. Moving beyond coal, oil and gas is fundamental to limiting warming to 1.5°C — a survival line for vulnerable communities and ecosystems. And as our Head of Pacific, Shiva Gounden, explained, it is “also a path of liberation that frees us from expensive, extractive and polluting fossil fuel imports and uplifts our communities”.
Pacific countries are at the forefront of growing global momentum towards a just transition away from fossil fuels, and it is way past time for Australia to get with the program. It is no longer a question of whether fossil fuel extraction will end, but whether that end will be appropriately managed and see communities supported through the transition, or whether it will be chaotic and disruptive.
So will this budget support the transition away from fossil fuels, or will it continue to prop up coal and gas?
When it comes to sensible moves the government can make right now, one stands out as a genuine low hanging fruit. Mining companies get a full rebate of the excise (or tax) that the rest of us pay on diesel fuel. This lowers their operating costs and acts as a large, ongoing subsidy on fossil fuel production — to the tune of $11 billion a year!
Greenpeace has long called for coal and gas companies to be removed from this outdated scheme, and for the billions in savings to be used to support the clean energy transition and to assist communities with adapting to the impacts of climate change. Will we see the government finally make this long overdue change, or will it once again cave to the fossil fuel lobby?
2. Make big polluters pay
While our communities continue to suffer the escalating costs of climate-fuelled disasters, our Government continues to support a massive expansion of Australia’s export gas industry. Gas is a dangerous fossil fuel, with every tonne of Australian gas adding to the global heating that endangers us all.
Moreover, companies like Santos and Woodside pay very little tax for the privilege of digging up and selling Australians’ natural endowment of fossil gas. Remarkably, the Government currently raises more tax from beer than from the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT) — the main tax on gas profits.
Momentum has been building to replace or supplement the PRRT with a 25% tax on gas exports. This could raise up to $17 billion a year — funds that, like savings from removing the diesel tax rebate for coal and gas companies, could be spent on supporting the clean energy transition and assisting communities with adapting to worsening fires, floods, heatwaves and other impacts of climate change.
As politicians arrive in Canberra for budget week, they will be confronted by billboards calling for a fair tax on gas exports. The push now has the support of dozens of organisations and a growing number of politicians. Let’s hope the Treasurer seizes this rare window for reform.
3. Support everyone to be part of the solution
As the price of petrol and diesel rises, electric vehicles (EVs) are helping people cut fuel use and save money. However, while EV sales have jumped since the invasion of Iran sent fuel prices rising, they still only make up a fraction of total new car sales. This budget should help more Australians switch to electric vehicles and, even more importantly, enable more Australians to get around by bike, on foot, and on public transport. This means maintaining the EV discount, investing in public and active transport, and removing tax breaks for fuel-hungry utes and vans.
Millions of Australians already enjoy the cost-saving benefits of rooftop solar, batteries, and getting off gas. This budget should enable more households, and in particular those on lower incomes, to access these benefits. This means maintaining the Cheaper Home Batteries Program, and building on the Household Energy Upgrades Fund.
4. Build the industries of the future
If we’re to transition away from fossil fuels, we need to be building the clean industries of the future.
No state is more pivotal to Australia’s energy and industrial transformation than Western Australia. The state has unrivaled potential for renewable energy development and for replacing fossil fuel exports with clean exports like green iron. Such industries offer Western Australia the promise of a vibrant economic future, and for Australia to play an outsized positive role in the world’s efforts to reduce emissions.
However, realising this potential will require focussed support from the Federal Government. Among other measures, Greenpeace has recommended establishing the Australasian Green Iron Corporation as a joint venture between the Australian and Western Australian governments, a key trading partner, a major iron ore miner and steel makers. This would unite these central players around the complex task of building a large-scale green iron industry, and unleash Western Australia’s potential as a green industrial powerhouse.
5. Build community resilience
Believe it or not, our Government continues to spend far more on subsidising fossil fuel production — and on clearing up after climate-fuelled disasters — than it does on helping communities and industries reduce disaster costs through practical, proven methods for building their resilience.
Last year, the Government estimated that the cost of recovery from disasters like the devastating 2022 east coast floods on 2019-20 fires will rise to $13.5 billion. For contrast, the Government’s Disaster Ready Fund – the main national source of funding for disaster resilience – invests just $200 million a year in grants to support disaster preparedness and resilience building. This is despite the Government’s own National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) estimating that for every dollar spent on disaster risk reduction, there is a $9.60 return on investment.
By redirecting funds currently spent on subsidising fossil fuel production, the Government can both stop incentivising climate destruction in the first place, and ensure that Australian communities and industries are better protected from worsening climate extremes.
No communities have more to lose from climate damage, or carry more knowledge of practical solutions, than Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The budget should include a dedicated First Nations climate adaptation fund, ensuring First Nations communities can develop solutions on their own terms, and access the support they need with adapting to extreme heat, coastal erosion and other escalating challenges.
6. Be a better neighbour
The global response to climate change depends on the adequate flow of support from developed economies like Australia to lower income nations with shifting to clean energy, adapting to the impacts of climate change, and addressing loss and damage.
Such support is vital to building trust and cooperation, reducing global emissions, and supporting regional and global security by enabling countries to transition away from fossil fuels and build greater resilience.
Despite its central leadership role in this year’s global climate negotiations, our Government is yet to announce its contribution to international climate finance for 2025-2030. Greenpeace recommends a commitment of $11 billion for this five year period, which is aligned with the global goal under the Paris Agreement to triple international climate finance from current levels.
This new commitment should include additional funding to address loss and damage from climate change and a substantial contribution to the Pacific Resilience Facility, ensuring support is accessible to countries and communities that need it most. It should also see Australia get firmly behind the vision of a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific.
7. Protect nature
There is no safe planet without protection of the ecosystems and biodiversity that sustain us and regulate our climate.
Last year the Parliament passed important and long overdue reforms to our national environment laws to ensure better protection for our forests and other critical ecosystems. However, the Government will need to provide sufficient funding to ensure the effective implementation of these reforms.
Greenpeace has recommended $500 million over four years to establish the National Environment Agency — the body responsible for enforcing and monitoring the new laws — and a further $50 million to Environment Information Australia for providing critical information and tools.
Further resourcing will also be required to fulfil the crucial goal of fully protecting 30% of Australian land and seas by 2030. This should include $1 billion towards ending deforestation by enabling farmers and loggers to retool away from destructive practices, $2 billion a year for restoring degraded lands, $5 billion for purchasing and creating new protected areas, and $200 million for expanding domestic and international marine protected areas.
Conclusion
This is not the first time that conflict overseas has triggered an energy crisis, or that a budget has been preceded by a summer of extreme weather disasters, highlighting the urgent need to phase out fossil fuels. What’s different in 2026 is the availability of solutions. Renewable energy is now cheaper and more accessible than ever before. Global momentum is firmly behind the transition away from fossil fuels. The Albanese Government, with its overwhelming majority, has the chance to set our nation up for the future, or keep us stranded in the past. Let’s hope it makes some smart choices.
The 2026 budget test: Will Australia break free from fossil fuels?
Anne Jellema is Executive Director of 350.org.
The war on Iran and Lebanon is a deeply unjust and devastating conflict, killing civilians at home, destroying lives, and at the same time sending shockwaves through the global economy. We, at 350.org, have calculated, drawing on price forecasts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Goldman Sachs, just how much that volatility is costing us.
Even under the IMF’s baseline scenario – a de facto “best case” scenario with a near-term end to the war and related supply chain disruptions – oil and gas price spikes are projected to cost households and businesses globally more than $600 billion by the end of the year. Under the IMF’s “adverse scenario”, with prolonged conflict and sustained price pressures, we estimate those additional costs could exceed $1 trillion, even after accounting for reduced demand.
Which is why we urgently need a power shift. Governments are under growing pressure to respond to rising fuel and food costs and deepening energy poverty. And it’s becoming clearer to both voters and elected officials that fossil dependence is not only expensive and risky, but unnecessary.
People who can are voting with their wallets: sales of solar panels and electric vehicles are increasing sharply in many countries. But the working people who have nothing to spare, ironically, are the ones stuck with using oil and gas that is either exorbitantly expensive or simply impossible to get.
Drain on households and economies
In India, street food vendors can’t get cooking gas and in the Philippines, fishermen can’t afford to take their boats to sea. A quarter of British people say that rising energy tariffs will leave them completely unable to pay their bills. This is the moment for a global push to bring abundant and affordable clean energy to all.
In April, we released Out of Pocket, our new research report on how fossil fuels are draining households and economies. We were surprised by the scale of what we found. For decades, governments have reassured people that energy price spikes are unfortunate but unavoidable – the result of distant conflicts, market forces or geopolitical shocks beyond anyone’s control. But the numbers tell a different story.
-
Santa Marta: Ministers grapple with practicalities of fossil fuel phase-out
Around 60 governments that want to make progress on transitioning away from coal, oil and gas are meeting in Colombia to work out how they can do it an equitable way -
Why the transition beyond fossil fuels depends on cities and collective action
Cities will help identify concrete pathways for an equitable shift to clean energy at the Santa Marta conference, with C40 members aiming to halve their fossil fuel use by 2030
What we are living through today is not an energy crisis. It is a fossil fuel crisis. In just the first 50 days of the Middle East conflict, soaring oil and gas prices have siphoned an estimated $158 billion–$166 billion from households and businesses worldwide. That is money extracted directly from people’s pockets and transferred, almost instantly, into fossil fuel company balance sheets. And this figure only captures the immediate impact of price spikes, not the permanent economic drain of fossil dependence. Fossil fuels don’t just cost us once, they cost us over and over again.
First, through our bills. Every time there is a war, an embargo or a supply disruption, fossil fuel prices surge. For ordinary people, this means higher costs for energy, transport and food. Many Global South countries have little or no fiscal space to buffer the shock; instead, workers and families pay the price.
Second, through our taxes. Governments around the world continue to pour vast sums of public money into fossil fuel subsidies. These are often justified as a way to protect the most vulnerable at the petrol pump or in their homes. But in reality, the benefits are overwhelmingly captured by wealthier households and corporations. The poorest 20% receive just a fraction of this support, while public finances are drained.
Third, through climate impacts. New research across more than 24,000 global locations gives a granular account of the true costs of extreme heat, sea level rise and falling agricultural yields. Using this data to update IMF modelling of the social cost of carbon, we found that fossil fuel impacts on health and livelihoods amount to over $9 trillion a year. This is the biggest subsidy of all, because these massive and mounting costs are not charged to Big Oil – they are paid for by governments and households, with the poorest shouldering the lion’s share.
Massive transfer of wealth to fossil fuel industry
Adding up direct subsidies, tax breaks and the unpaid bill for climate damages, the total transfer of wealth from the public to the fossil fuel industry amounts to $12 trillion even in a “normal” year without a global oil shock. That’s more than 50% higher than the IMF has previously estimated, and equivalent to a staggering $23 million a minute.
The fossil fuel industry has become extraordinarily adept at profiting from instability. When conflict drives up prices, companies do not lose, they gain. In the current crisis, oil producers and commodity traders are on track to secure tens of billions of dollars in additional windfall profits, even as households face rising bills and governments struggle to manage the fallout.
Fossil fuel crisis offers chance to speed up energy transition, ministers say
This growing disconnect is impossible to ignore. Investors are advised to buy into fossil fuel firms precisely because of their ability to generate profits in times of crisis. Meanwhile, ordinary people are told to tighten their belts.
In 2026, unlike during the oil shocks of the 1970s, clean energy is no longer a distant alternative. Now, even more than when gas prices spiked due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, renewables are often the cheapest option available. Solar and wind can be deployed quickly, at scale, and without the volatility that defines fossil fuel markets.
How to transition from dirty to clean energy
The solutions are clear. Governments must implement permanent windfall taxes on fossil fuel companies to ensure that extraordinary profits generated during crises are redirected to support households. These revenues can be used to reduce energy bills, invest in public services, and accelerate the rollout of clean energy.
Second, we must shift subsidies away from fossil fuels and towards renewable solutions, particularly those that can be deployed quickly and equitably, such as rooftop and community solar. This is not just about cutting emissions. It is about building a more stable, fair and resilient energy system.
Finally, we need binding plans to phase out fossil fuels altogether, replacing them with homegrown renewable energy that can shield economies from future shocks. Because what the current crisis has made clear is this: as long as we remain dependent on fossil fuels, we remain vulnerable – to conflict, to price volatility and to the escalating impacts of climate change.
The true price of fossil fuels is no longer hidden. It is visible in rising bills, strained public finances and communities pushed to the brink. And it is being paid, every day, by ordinary people around the world.
It’s time for the great power shift.
Full details on the methodology used for this report are available here.
The Great Power Shift is a new campaign by 350.org global campaign to pressure governments to bring down energy bills for good by ending fossil fuel dependence and investing in clean, affordable energy for all
The post What fossil fuels really cost us in a world at war appeared first on Climate Home News.
Computer models that use artificial intelligence (AI) cannot forecast record-breaking weather as well as traditional climate models, according to a new study.
It is well established that AI climate models have surpassed traditional, physics-based climate models for some aspects of weather forecasting.
However, new research published in Science Advances finds that AI models still “underperform” in forecasting record-breaking extreme weather events.
The authors tested how well both AI and traditional weather models could simulate thousands of record-breaking hot, cold and windy events that were recorded in 2018 and 2020.
They find that AI models underestimate both the frequency and intensity of record-breaking events.
A study author tells Carbon Brief that the analysis is a “warning shot” against replacing traditional models with AI models for weather forecasting “too quickly”.
AI weather forecasts
Extreme weather events, such as floods, heatwaves and storms, drive hundreds of billions of dollars in damages every year through the destruction of cropland, impacts on infrastructure and the loss of human life.
Many governments have developed early warning systems to prepare the general public and mobilise disaster response teams for imminent extreme weather events. These systems have been shown to minimise damages and save lives.
For decades, scientists have used numerical weather prediction models to simulate the weather days, or weeks, in advance.
These models rely on a series of complex equations that reproduce processes in the atmosphere and ocean. The equations are rooted in fundamental laws of physics, based on decades of research by climate scientists. As a result, these models are referred to as “physics-based” models.
However, AI-based climate models are gaining popularity as an alternative for weather forecasting.
Instead of using physics, these models use a statistical approach. Scientists present AI models with a large batch of historical weather data, known as training data, which teaches the model to recognise patterns and make predictions.
To produce a new forecast, the AI model draws on this bank of knowledge and follows the patterns that it knows.
There are many advantages to AI weather forecasts. For example, they use less computing power than physics-based models, because they do not have to run thousands of mathematical equations.
Furthermore, many AI models have been found to perform better than traditional physics-based models at weather forecasts.
However, these models also have drawbacks.
Study author Prof Sebastian Engelke, a professor at the research institute for statistics and information science at the University of Geneva, tells Carbon Brief that AI models “depend strongly on the training data” and are “relatively constrained to the range of this dataset”.
In other words, AI models struggle to simulate brand new weather patterns, instead tending forecast events of a similar strength to those seen before. As a result, it is unclear whether AI models can simulate unprecedented, record-breaking extreme events that, by definition, have never been seen before.
Record-breaking extremes
Extreme weather events are becoming more intense and frequent as the climate warms. Record-shattering extremes – those that break existing records by large margins – are also becoming more regular.
For example, during a 2021 heatwave in north-western US and Canada, local temperature records were broken by up to 5C. According to one study, the heatwave would have been “impossible” without human-caused climate change.
The new study explores how accurately AI and physics-based models can forecast such record-breaking extremes.
First, the authors identified every heat, cold and wind event in 2018 and 2020 that broke a record previously set between 1979 and 2017. (They chose these years due to data availability.) The authors use ERA5 reanalysis data to identify these records.
This produced a large sample size of record-breaking events. For the year 2020, the authors identified around 160,000 heat, 33,000 cold and 53,000 wind records, spread across different seasons and world regions.
For their traditional, physics-based model, the authors selected the High RESolution forecast model from the Integrated Forecasting System of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. This is “widely considered as the leading physics-based numerical weather prediction model”, according to the paper.
They also selected three “leading” AI weather models – the GraphCast model from Google Deepmind, Pangu-Weather developed by Huawei Cloud and the Fuxi model, developed by a team from Shanghai.
The authors then assessed how accurately each model could forecast the extremes observed in the year 2020.
Dr Zhongwei Zhang is the lead author on the study and a researcher at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He tells Carbon Brief that many AI weather forecast models were built for “general weather conditions”, as they use all historical weather data to train the models. Meanwhile, forecasting extremes is considered a “secondary task” by the models.
The authors explored a range of different “lead times” – in other words, how far into the future the model is forecasting. For example, a lead time of two days could mean the model uses the weather conditions at midnight on 1 January to simulate weather conditions at midnight on 3 January.
The plot below shows how accurately the models forecasted all extreme events (left) and heat extremes (right) under different lead times. This is measured using “root mean square error” – a metric of how accurate a model is, where a lower value indicates lower error and higher accuracy.
The chart on the left shows how two of the AI models (blue and green) performed better than the physics-based model (black) when forecasting all weather across the year 2020.
However, the chart on the right illustrates how the physics-based model (black) performed better than all three AI models (blue, red and green) when it came to forecasting heat extremes.
The authors note that the performance gap between AI and physics-based models is widest for lower lead times, indicating that AI models have greater difficulty making predictions in the near future.
They find similar results for cold and wind records.
In addition, the authors find that AI models generally “underpredict” temperature during heat records and “overpredict” during cold records.
The study finds that the larger the margin that the record is broken by, the less well the AI model predicts the intensity of the event.
‘Warning shot’
Study author Prof Erich Fischer is a climate scientist at ETH Zurich and a Carbon Brief contributing editor. He tells Carbon Brief that the result is “not unexpected”.
He adds that the analysis is a “warning shot” against replacing traditional models with AI models for weather forecasting “too quickly”.
The analysis, he continues, is a “warning shot” against replacing traditional models with AI models for weather forecasting “too quickly”.
AI models are likely to continue to improve, but scientists should “not yet” fully replace traditional forecasting models with AI ones, according to Fischer.
He explains that accurate forecasts are “most needed” in the runup to potential record-breaking extremes, because they are the trigger for early warning systems that help minimise damages caused by extreme weather.
Leonardo Olivetti is a PhD student at Uppsala University, who has published work on AI weather forecasting and was not involved in the study.
He tells Carbon Brief that “many other studies” have identified issues with using AI models for “extremes”, but this paper is novel for its specific focus on extremes.
Olivetti notes that AI models are already used alongside physics-based models at “some of the major weather forecasting centres around the world”. However, the study results suggest “caution against relying too heavily on these [AI] models”, he says.
Prof Martin Schultz, a professor in computational earth system science at the University of Cologne who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief that the results of the analysis are “very interesting, but not too surprising”.
He adds that the study “justifies the continued use of classical numerical weather models in operational forecasts, in spite of their tremendous computational costs”.
Advances in forecasting
The field of AI weather forecasting is evolving rapidly.
Olivetti notes that the three AI models tested in the study are an “older generation” of AI models. In the last two years, newer “probabilistic” forecast models have emerged that “claim to better capture extremes”, he explains.
The three AI models used in the analysis are “deterministic”, meaning that they only simulate one possible future outcome.
In contrast, study author Engelke tells Carbon Brief that probabilistic models “create several possible future states of the weather” and are therefore more likely to capture record-breaking extremes.
Engelke says it is “important” to evaluate the newer generation of models for their ability to forecast weather extremes.
He adds that this paper has set out a “protocol” for testing the ability of AI models to predict unprecedented extreme events, which he hopes other researchers will go on to use.
The study says that another “promising direction” for future research is to develop models that combine aspects of traditional, physics-based weather forecasts with AI models.
Engelke says this approach would be “best of both worlds”, as it would combine the ability of physics-based models to simulate record-breaking weather with the computational efficiency of AI models.
Dr Kyle Hilburn, a research scientist at Colorado State University, notes that the study does not address extreme rainfall, which he says “presents challenges for both modelling and observing”. This, he says, is an “important” area for future research.
The post Traditional models still ‘outperform AI’ for extreme weather forecasts appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Traditional models still ‘outperform AI’ for extreme weather forecasts
-
Greenhouse Gases9 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Climate Change9 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Renewable Energy6 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits
-
Greenhouse Gases10 months ago
嘉宾来稿：探究火山喷发如何影响气候预测