Pepukaye Bardouille is the Director of the Bridgetown Initiative and Special Advisor in the Prime Minister’s Office of Barbados. Kerrie Symmonds is Barbados’ Minister of Energy and Business and Senior Minister coordinating Productive Sectors.

When conflict erupts in one region, consequences can reverberate across the globe. Beyond the tragic human toll, the economic impact is palpable. In 2022, the war in Ukraine illustrated this clearly: fractured supply chains and soaring oil prices sent fuel import bills skyrocketing. And again, today, as oil prices spike amidst conflict in the Middle East, the stakes could not be higher, in particular for Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

For SIDS, resilience and energy have always been inseparable. When a hurricane hits, power lines fall. When shipments stall, oil dependence becomes a liability. Yet these countries also hold a strategic advantage in the form of abundant wind, sun, waves, and in many cases geothermal resources.

Harnessed effectively, these can power entire economies cost-effectively. With this in mind, SIDS have set some of the world’s most ambitious climate targets, with several pledging 100% renewable electricity within the next decade or two. And they have made progress: installed renewable capacity across SIDS tripled from 3.3 GW in 2014 to 9.4 GW in 2024.

But execution and financing still lag well behind ambition – and in the midst of an oil shock, closing that gap isn’t a policy preference for SIDS. It’s a matter of survival.

Lessons from Barbados

Barbados offers an example of what a credible pathway looks like. Its 50MW Lamberts and Castle project will be the country’s first utility-scale onshore wind farm and one of the largest in the Caribbean – building on a renewables base that already supplies 16% of power capacity.

Developed as a public-private partnership, it evolved from a 10MW concept into a utility-scale investment. That journey holds several lessons for other SIDS looking to accelerate their energy transition.

First, be honest about what is politically palatable and ensure the population shares in the upside. Many SIDS operate state utilities that view private power producers as threats to sovereignty or revenue. But private actors often bring the capital and expertise that large-scale projects require.

The answer is smart design. Barbados models this well, pairing private generation ownership with structures that ensure national benefit, including opportunities for citizens to invest directly.

Second, ensure that the financials really work. Small islands face high per-megawatt costs, which logistics compound: transporting and installing large wind turbines can require port reinforcements, specialist cranes, and road widening.

These numbers rarely appear in headline budgets but can quietly kill a deal. Financing packages must therefore cover not just generation, but storage, grid upgrades, and the full logistics chain. These are too often treated as afterthoughts when they are, in practice, the difference between a project that gets built and one that doesn’t.

Collaboration required

Third, development partners must streamline energy transition support without compromising sustainability. Environmental and social studies, bird and bat surveys, community consultations, and grid analyses all take time, and rightly so. But their multiyear development timelines before a tender is issued are incompatible with 2030 or even 2035 energy targets.

SIDS need simplified processes with upfront permitting clarity, clearer regulatory pathways, and predefined safeguards. Development partners must move from project-by-project structuring to practical, time-sensitive and replicable models that reduce procedural drag while upholding environmental rigor.

Fourth, recognize that land access is critical to national energy security. In land-constrained countries, which most SIDS are, a handful of parcels can determine whether critical capacity is built. In Barbados, we expanded the Lamberts and Castle wind project site from 30MW to 50MW through careful planning and negotiation. These decisions can make or break a project’s financials, so landowners must be partners in the process, not obstacles to it.

Finally, mandate ‘all of government’ teams with the stamina to deliver. The Lamberts and Castle project advanced because the Ministry of Energy and Business, Barbados National Energy Company, Barbados Light and Power, community stakeholders and International Finance Corporation – the government’s transaction adviser – worked as a unified team.

Cheaper electricity and greater security

Energy transition projects need cross-agency partners empowered to make timely decisions, and a shared mission – all cemented by the ability to remove bottlenecks at the highest level. Institutional collaboration is not a nice-to-have, it is the engine of delivery.

Resilience cannot be outsourced, nor achieved through pledges alone. It must be built: panel by panel, battery by battery, turbine by turbine, grid by grid.

Building on the progress at Lamberts and Castle, Barbados is exploring the possibility of tripling its wind energy capacity through a public–private partnership model. Importantly, this expansion will not compromise food security. Wind turbines typically occupy less than 5% of the land area, allowing the remaining space to continue supporting agricultural production, another key resilience priority for Barbados.

In Barbados, new turbines will soon turn in the same trade winds that once powered sugar windmills, this time delivering cheaper electricity, greater economic security, and the ability to meet climate goals on our own terms. By putting renewables at the heart of resilience, SIDS can secure energy independence and lead the world in climate and economic security.

The post How small island states can make renewables the bedrock of resilience appeared first on Climate Home News.

How small island states can make renewables the bedrock of resilience

For the past two decades, low-level cloud cover has been declining, increasing the amount of sunlight absorbed by Earth and amplifying global warming.

As global temperatures have reached record highs in recent years, there has been concern that the decline in cloudiness may be enhancing warming more than previously expected.

In a new study, published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Letters, we investigate how the decline in global cloudiness affects the Earth’s “energy imbalance” – the difference between absorbed solar energy and heat radiated into space that results in global warming.

This imbalance has more than doubled over the past 20 years, as greenhouse gases have trapped more heat in the atmosphere.

We find that, since 2003, the decrease of cloudiness has been responsible for half of the increase of Earth’s energy imbalance.

Analysing the drivers of global changes to cloud cover, we find that the decrease in cloudiness over the past two decades has been primarily driven by humans, rather than being caused by natural variations in Earth’s climate.

Taken together, our findings mean that scientists can even more confidently attribute recent warming to human activities.

Low-level clouds and warming

Low-level clouds are those that have a base below 6,500 feet (2,000 metres) above Earth and include stratus, stratocumulus and cumulus. They are typically found over large areas of the global ocean, where there is a large moisture supply from evaporation.

These clouds have a powerful impact on the Earth’s climate because they reflect a substantial fraction of incoming sunlight back into space.

By acting as the Earth’s “sunscreen”, they keep the climate cooler than it would otherwise be.

Satellite observations reveal a global decline in these low-level clouds since the turn of the millennium. This is shown in the chart below, where the black line represents the average percentage of the Earth covered by low-level clouds and the dashed line the downward trend.

Our research shows that the decline in cloudiness over the past 20 years has played a major role in increasing the Earth’s energy imbalance and, therefore, warming.

The Earth’s energy imbalance is the difference between the amount of energy arriving at the Earth from the sun and what is reflected and radiated back to space.

Rising greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are upsetting this balance by trapping more energy in the atmosphere, leading to warming.

A less cloudy atmosphere also helps supercharge the energy imbalance, because it means more sunlight reaches the Earth.

In our research, we use a simple model to assess how changes in low-level clouds between July 2003 and June 2024 contributed to the Earth’s energy imbalance.

We find that, averaged globally, changes in low-level cloudiness caused an extra 0.22 watts per metre squared (W/m2) per decade of absorbed sunlight. This amounts to exactly half of the concurrent increase in Earth’s energy imbalance over the same time period.

This is shown in the chart below, where the green line represents the increase in the Earth’s energy imbalance over 2003-24 and the black line shows the contribution of low-level clouds to that trend.

Why is cloudiness changing?

Scientists have attributed declining cloud cover in the 21st century to three main causes.

The first is a decrease in human-caused aerosol emissions over recent decades. Aerosols – tiny, light‑scattering particles produced mainly by burning fossil fuels – influence the formation of clouds, by acting as “seeds” for cloud droplets to form.

In recent years, aerosol emissions have been reduced due to efforts to clean up air pollution, such as cleaner shipping fuel regulations. Cleaner air has resulted in a decline in cloudiness.

Second, increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has led to a warmer and drier atmosphere, which also helps to dissipate clouds.

Although a warmer atmosphere generally holds more water vapour in absolute terms, what matters for clouds is the “relative humidity” of the air, which has been declining in many places. This is a measure of how “saturated” the air is, or how much water vapour the air contains compared to the maximum it could hold.

Finally, cloud cover decreases have also been linked to ocean surface warming, which affects atmospheric humidity and, thus, cloudiness. Reduced cloudiness leads to more sunlight being absorbed at the ocean surface – and more warming. This amplifying loop is known as a “cloud feedback”.

However, the exact strength of these three effects on cloud cover is still unclear.

In fact, cloud feedbacks are among the main uncertainties in climate model projections of global warming.

Attributing low-cloud cover changes

In the next step of our study, we explore how the three human-caused factors mentioned above – aerosols, greenhouse gases and cloud feedback – contributed to recent low-level cloud changes.

We also look at the extent to which cloud changes could be explained by natural climate variability, which causes substantial year-to-year fluctuations in cloudiness and energy imbalance.

To do this, we use a statistical technique known as “cloud-controlling factor analysis”.

This analysis involves calculating the sensitivity of clouds to their “controlling factors”, including meteorological variables, such as temperature, humidity and winds, as well as aerosol concentrations.

To calculate how each factor contributed to the bigger picture of declining cloud cover, we combine sensitivity calculations with observed trends in meteorology and aerosol emissions.

This analysis allows us to attribute trends in cloud cover to known physical drivers: either natural climate variability, or human activities linked to aerosols, greenhouse gases and cloud feedback.

Our research finds that about 40% of the low-level cloud decrease since 2003 was driven by warming of the ocean surface – in other words, the cloud feedback process. This is followed by the effects of greenhouse gases (21%) and aerosols (14%).

Natural climate variability accounts for just 3% of the low-level cloud trend.

(The remaining 23% of the trend cannot be explained by our statistical method. This could be due to the limitations of cloud, temperature, humidity and aerosol concentration observations.)

The chart below shows how human-driven factors – the sum of aerosol effects (red), greenhouse gas emissions (pink) and cloud feedback (burgundy) – were responsible for almost three quarters of the decrease in low-level cloudiness over 2003-24. Natural climate variability (blue), on the other hand, played a minor role.

Thus, our analysis indicates that, at global scales, the observed cloud decrease is primarily driven by humans, rather than being caused by natural variations in Earth’s climate.

And, since low-level clouds contribute to half of the energy imbalance increase over the same period, it follows that a significant part of recent rises in energy imbalance can also be attributed to humans.

Clouds in climate models

So, should we be concerned that this cloudiness decrease means the Earth could see more warming than already anticipated?

To answer this, we looked at whether the climate models used by scientists to project future global warming accurately simulate recent declines in low-cloud cover.

While the models produce a wide range of outcomes, we found that, on average, the simulated changes in low-level cloudiness changes are in close agreement with real-world trends.

This is reassuring, as it means the effects of low-cloud cover are already accounted for in existing warming projections.

However, questions still remain around what is driving recent increases to the Earth’s energy imbalance, which have outpaced projections made by climate models.

Our findings rule out declines in low-level clouds as the reason that climate models have been underestimating the Earth’s energy imbalance, and, as a result, warming. But it is still possible that models are underrepresenting future global warming to some extent.

Low-level clouds are just one of several drivers of changes in energy imbalance. Future work will therefore need to assess other observed and simulated drivers of energy imbalance changes: for example, the impact of upper-level clouds, or changes in water vapour or sea ice.

Finally, it is important to stress that, while our findings are reassuring, they should certainly not make us complacent about the current global warming trend. The impacts of climate change are serious enough as they are – even if there is no evidence of a missing amplifying feedback in our projections.

Mapped: How climate change affects extreme weather around the world

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19.03.26

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Global temperature

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06.03.26

Analysis: What are the causes of recent record-high global temperatures?

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UNEP: New country climate plans ‘barely move needle’ on expected warming

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04.11.25

The post Guest post: How declining cloudiness is accelerating global warming appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Guest post: How declining cloudiness is accelerating global warming

A Dutch startup thinks it has the answer to two of Europe’s biggest energy transition conundrums – long-duration storage batteries that are free from critical minerals and powered by rust. 

In a pilot project in February, Amsterdam-based Ore Energy supplied four days of uninterrupted power to a research facility operated by France’s EDF electricity utility using a battery made of little more than iron pellets, water and air. That followed a grid installation in the Netherlands last year.

“These are the first instances of grid-connected iron-air batteries in Europe,” Yakup Koç, Ore Energy’s chief operating officer, told Climate Home News. “With these deployments, we’ve proven that the technology really works.”

Using abundant, cheap materials that can be sourced locally across Europe, iron-air batteries store and release electricity through a simple, chemical process: rusting and de-rusting.

“Rusting refers to discharging, and de-rusting refers to charging,” Koç said. “When discharging, air is drawn in and reacts with the iron, forming rust and releasing electricity in the process. To recharge, the oxygen is removed, and the rust reverts to iron, ready to go again.”

Energy transition’s “missing link”

Batteries able to store solar and wind power over longer periods of time than conventional lithium-ion batteries are often described as the “missing link” in the energy transition.

Technology such as Ore Energy’s could hold particular appeal for Europe as it strives to reduce its exposure to volatile critical mineral supply chains and boost its production of batteries for power storage and electric vehicles (EVs) instead of relying so heavily on imports from China.

“There are no critical raw materials in our batteries … which means we are truly independent of supply chain issues in that sense,” Koç said.

It also makes them cheaper than established batteries, which mostly use either lithium iron phosphate (LFP) or lithium nickel cobalt manganese oxide (NMC) chemistries.

“Critical raw materials are expensive,” Koç adds. “Because we’re using abundant resources, our cost price can be as much as 10 times lower than lithium.”

Europe sprints for storage capacity

Wind and solar make up the fastest-growing energy sources globally, but bridging inherent supply fluctuations requires batteries capable of storing energy for far longer than currently possible with a typical lithium-ion battery.

Demand for battery energy storage systems has surged and it currently accounts for 15% of global battery demand, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Multi-day storage capabilities will become increasingly important as renewable integration booms, said Zeenat Hameed, principal analyst for energy storage at Wood Mackenzie.

“Under net-zero scenarios, the average duration of newly installed storage assets may need to increase from around 2.5 hours today to roughly 20 hours to manage multi-day variability in wind and solar generation,” she told Climate Home News.

Europe added a record 27.1 GWh of new batteries in 2025, bringing total capacity to 77.3 GWh, according to a recent report by industry group SolarPower Europe, adding that capacity must increase 10-fold by 2030 to meet its needs.

With about 90% of battery-storage applications relying on Chinese lithium batteries, steps to diversify suppliers are also seen as vital to shore up energy security.

Innovation that can help reduce or diversify battery mineral supplies and demand – for example, technologies that do not require critical minerals – could play a key role in shoring up energy security, the IEA says.

Uncomplicated alternative?

This is where iron-air comes in.

Koç said Ore’s system can be configured to store energy anywhere between 24 and 100 hours, and is capable of being reused over a lifespan of as much as 20 years.

Each battery storage unit ships in standard 40-foot containers, a similar size as lithium-ion systems, and can be connected and operational within days of arriving on site.

Ore Energy is not the only company in the race to bring iron-air to the market.

US-based Form Energy, which has also developed an iron-air battery system, has partnered with Xcel Energy on a 10-megawatt (MW) iron-air system in Minnesota at a retiring coal plant. They have also announced plans to provide a 300-MW iron-air system to power a new Google data centre.

Beyond iron-air, a broader range of long-duration energy storage (LDES) technologies is taking shape. US-based Noon Energy is developing a carbon-oxygen battery based on solid-oxide fuel cell technology which it says avoids “scarce metals and minerals” and targets storage durations of 100 hours and above, while E-Zinc’s zinc-air systems are another player in the ultra-long-duration bracket.

Mahika Sri Krishna from the LDES Council, a global organisation focused on accelerating long duration energy storage solutions, told Climate Home News a mix of different technologies would be necessary to support grid reliability as renewables gain ground.

“Medium-duration storage solutions can help manage daily variability in renewable generation, while very long-duration systems may help address less frequent but more challenging reliability events,” said Sri Krishna, a senior manager for research and analysis at the group.

Last longer, scale up faster

Iron-air faces numerous challenges to scale-up and challenge established battery technologies, however, energy experts say.

Demand for multi-day storage is not yet high enough to drive commercialisation, Hameed said, estimating that lithium-ion is expected to retain about 85% of the global storage market through 2034 as economies of scale and manufacturing innovations reduce its costs.

While iron-air’s raw materials are cheap, the overall system cost still needs to prove itself at scale, Hameed added.

At Ore Energy, the next step is moving from single- to multi-container configurations, building what Koç describes as an “energy reservoir” that can be deployed across different use cases.

The scale-up itself, he said, is less the challenge than gaining industry acceptance by building a commercial track record.

“It’s not only about customers seeing the data and knowing it works,” he said. “The whole ecosystem around a new technology has to be brought along.”

When that happens, the technology could have transformative effects on Europe’s energy transition, he said.

“Europe will not decarbonise its power system on renewables alone,” Koç said. “Without long-duration storage, Europe risks replacing dependence on fossil fuels with dependence on overbuilding, curtailment and backup generation.”

The post Dutch startup’s rust-powered batteries could help crack Europe’s energy storage gap appeared first on Climate Home News.

Dutch startup’s rust-powered batteries could help crack Europe’s energy storage gap