The number of new coal-fired power plants built around the world hit a “10-year high” in 2025, even as the global coal fleet generated less electricity, amid a “widening disconnect” in the sector.
That is according to the latest annual report from Global Energy Monitor (GEM), which finds that the world added nearly 100 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-power capacity in 2025, the equivalent of roughly 100 large coal plants.
It adds that 95% of the new coal plants were built in India and China.
Yet GEM says that the amount of electricity generated with coal fell by 0.6% in 2025 – with sharp drops in both China and India – as the fuel was displaced by record wind and solar output, among other factors.
The report notes that there have been previous dips in output from coal power and there could still be ups – as well as downs – in the near term.
For example, nearly 70% of the coal-fired units scheduled to retire globally in 2025 did not do so, due to postponements triggered by the 2022 energy crisis and policy shifts in the US.
However, GEM says that the underlying dynamics for coal power have now fundamentally shifted, as the cost of renewables has fallen and low usage hits coal profitability.
China and India dominate growth
In 2025, coal-capacity growth hit a 10-year high, with 97 gigawatts (GW) of new power plants being added, according to GEM.
(Capacity refers to the potential maximum power output, as measured in GW, whereas generation refers to power actually generated by the assets over a period of time, measured in gigawatt hours, GWh.)
This is the highest level since 2015 when 107GW began operating, as shown in the chart below. This makes 2025 the second-highest level of additions on record.
The majority of this growth came from China and India, which added 78GW and 10GW, respectively, against 9GW from all other countries.
Yet GEM points out that, even as coal capacity in China grew by 6%, the output from coal-fired power plants actually fell 1.2%. This means that each power plant would have been running less often, eroding its profitability. Similarly, capacity in India grew by 3.8%, while generation fell by 2.9%.
China and India had accounted for 87% of new coal-power capacity that came into operation in the first half of 2025. The shift up to 95% in the year as a whole highlights how increasingly just those two countries dominate the sector, GEM says.
Christine Shearer, project manager of GEM’s global coal plant tracker, said in a statement:
“In 2025, the world built more coal and used it less. Development has grown more concentrated, too – 95% of coal plant construction is now in China and India, and even they are building solar and wind fast enough to displace it.”
Both China and India saw solar and wind meet most or all of the growth in electricity demand last year.
Analysis for Carbon Brief last year showed that, in the first six months of 2025 alone, a record 212GW of solar was added in China, helping to make it the nation’s single-largest source of clean-power generation, for example.
However, the country continues to propose new coal plants. In 2025, a record 162GW of capacity was newly proposed for development or reactivated, according to GEM. This brought the overall capacity under development in the country to more than 500GW.
China’s 15th “five-year plan”, covering 2026-2030, had pledged to “promote the peaking” of coal use, while a more recent pair of policies introduced stricter controls on local governments’ coal use.
For its part, in India some 28GW of new coal capacity was newly proposed or reactivated last year, bringing the total under development to 107.3GW and under-construction capacity to 23.5GW.
The Indian government is planning to complete 85GW of new coal capacity in the next seven years, even as clean-energy expansion reaches levels that could cover all of the growth in electricity demand.
Outside of China and India, GEM says that just 32 countries have new coal plants under construction or under development, down from 38 in 2024.
Countries that have dropped plans for new coal in 2025 include South Korea, Brazil and Honduras, it says. GEM notes that the latter two mean that Latin America is now free from any new coal-power proposals.
This means that both electricity generation from coal and the construction of new coal-fired power plants are increasingly concentrated in just a few countries, as the chart below shows.
Indonesia’s coal fleet grew by 7% in 2025 to 61GW, with a quarter of the new capacity tied to nickel and aluminium processing, according to GEM.
Turkey – which is gearing up to host the COP31 international climate summit in November – has just one coal-plant proposal remaining, down from 70 in 2015.
The amount of new coal capacity that started to operate in south-east Asia fell for the third year in a row in 2025, according to GEM.
Countries in south Asia that rely on imported energy are increasingly looking to other technologies to protect themselves from fossil-fuel shocks, such as Pakistan, which is rapidly deploying solar, states the GEM report.
In Africa, plans for new coal capacity are concentrated in Zimbabwe and Zambia, the report shows, with the two countries accounting for two-thirds of planned development in the region.
‘Persistence of policies’
While new coal plants are still being built and even more are under development, GEM notes that the global electricity system is undergoing rapid changes.
Crucially, the growth of cheap renewable energy means that new coal plants do not automatically translate into higher electricity generation from coal.
Without rising output from coal power, building new plants simply results in the coal fleet running less often, further eroding its economics relative to wind and solar power.
Indeed, GEM notes that electricity generation from coal fell globally in 2025. Moreover, a recent report by thinktank Ember found that renewable energy overtook coal in 2025 to become the world’s largest source of electricity.
GEM notes that coal generation may fluctuate in the near term, in particular due to potential increases in demand driven by higher gas prices.
It adds that gas price shocks, such as the one triggered by the Iran war, can cause temporary reversals in the longer-term shift away from coal.
According to Carbon Brief analysis, at least eight countries announced plans to either increase their coal use or review plans to transition away from coal in the first month of the Iran war. However, a much-discussed “return to coal” is expected to be limited.
GEM’s report highlights that global fossil-fuel shocks can have an impact on the phase out of coal capacity over several years.
In the EU, for example, 69% of planned retirements did not take place in 2025, due to postponements that began in the 2022-23 energy crisis triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to the report. Countries across the bloc chose to retain their coal capacity amid gas supply disruptions and concerns about energy security.
Yet coal-fired power generation in the bloc is now more than 40% below 2022 levels. Again, this highlights that coal capacity does not necessarily translate into electricity generation from coal, with its associated CO2 emissions.
Overall, GEM notes that “repeated exposure to fossil-fuel price volatility is as likely to accelerate the shift toward clean energy as it is to delay it”.
GEM’s Shearer says in a statement:
“The central challenge heading into 2026 is not the availability of alternatives, but the persistence of policies that treat coal as necessary even as power systems move increasingly beyond it.”
In the US, 59% of planned retirements in 2025 did not happen, according to GEM. This was due to government intervention to keep ageing coal plants online.
Five coal-power plants have been told to remain online through federal “emergency” orders, for example, even as the coal fleet continues to face declining competitiveness.
Keeping these plants online has cost hundreds of millions of dollars and helped drive an annual increase in the average US household electricity prices of 7%, according to GEM.
Despite such measures, Trump has overseen a larger fall in coal-fired power capacity than any other US president, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Meanwhile, according to new figures from the US Energy Information Administration, solar and wind both set new records for energy production in 2025.
Despite challenges with policy and wider fossil-fuel impacts, the underlying dynamic has shifted, says GEM, as “clean energy becomes more competitive and widely deployed” around the world.
It adds that this raises the prospect of “a more sustained decoupling between coal-capacity growth and generation, particularly if clean-energy deployment continues at current rates”.
The post New coal plants hit ‘10-year’ global high in 2025 – but power output still fell appeared first on Carbon Brief.
New coal plants hit ‘10-year’ global high in 2025 – but power output still fell
SYDNEY, Monday 27 July 2026 — In response to an announcement that Woodside’s Browse to North West Shelf (Browse) Project was declared a State Significant Project by the WA Government, the following comments can be attributed to Senior Campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, Hannah Schuch:
“The WA Government must not ignore the significant risks clearly associated with Woodside’s plans to drill for gas at the pristine Scott Reef — to endangered marine life, our oceans, and our climate — all of which are valued and relied upon by Western Australians.
“The WA Environmental Protection Authority has already found Woodside’s plans to drill at Scott Reef would have unacceptable impacts on the environment without considering the climate impacts of 1.6 billion tonnes of carbon pollution associated with this disastrous proposal.
“Woodside’s gas drilling plans, including seismic blasting and carbon dumping in the heart of a precious ecosystem, pose potentially fatal risks to pygmy blue whales and genetically unique green sea turtles, and could cause a catastrophic oil spill.
“If the WA and federal governments are concerned with the prosperity of WA, they must reject Woodside’s nature and climate-wrecking proposal to drill for gas at Scott Reef.”
—ENDS—
High res images and footage of Scott Reef can be found here.
For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact Emma Sangalli on 0431 513 465 or emma.sangalli@greenpeace.org
Cook Government must recognise risks posed by Woodside’s Scott Reef drilling plans
This summer has seen Europe suffer through a series of record-breaking heatwaves.
Amid widespread media coverage of the number of deaths and the influence of climate change, the UK’s Daily Telegraph reported on new research with the incorrect headline: “Heatwaves caused by fall in pollution.”
The article was shared on social media by Richard Tice – deputy leader of the hard-right, climate-sceptic Reform UK party – along with a number of prominent rightwing commentators.
Tice claimed that “net stupid zero is contributing to rising temperatures, not helping”, adding that “we have been gaslit and lied to”.
GB News followed up with its own article, incorrectly headlined: “Britain’s scorching heatwaves caused by falling pollution levels, researchers find.”
Scientists tell Carbon Brief that the framing of heatwaves being “caused” by declining air pollution is “wrong”.
While a drop in pollution has reduced the cooling impact it has had in the past, the scientists say, Europe’s summer heatwaves are primarily becoming more extreme “as a result of greenhouse-gas-induced warming”.
Another scientist adds that “any attempt” to link this research to net-zero policies is “simply wrong”.
Fast warming
The extensive reporting around Europe’s heatwaves in recent months has often mentioned that Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent.
The new study in question aims to unpack why Europe’s summer temperatures are rising more quickly than other regions of the northern hemisphere’s mid and high latitudes.
The research – published in Geophysical Research Letters – explores the role of air pollution and, specifically, how it affects circulation patterns in the atmosphere.
(The study focuses on long-term trends in European summers and does not include the very recent heatwaves.)
Human-caused emissions of aerosols – tiny, light‑scattering particles produced mainly by burning fossil fuels – have long acted to “mask” global warming. This is largely because they absorb or reflect incoming sunlight and influence the formation and brightness of clouds.
To understand how the climate of Europe – or any region – is changing, scientists need to take into account a whole range of factors, says Prof Bjørn Samset, a research professor at Norway’s Center for International Climate Research (CICERO), who was not involved in the work.
This includes “greenhouse gases, aerosols, land-use change, natural variability and how they all interact”, he says, adding:
“The effects of air pollution on circulation, which is the topic here, has long been difficult to pin down.”
As European countries improved their air quality through the second half of the 20th century, the cooling effect of aerosols has gradually been removed.
This can boost heatwaves in two ways – directly, by letting more sunlight reach the land surface and, indirectly, by influencing the jet stream.
Using hundreds of simulations from nine climate models, the new study finds that a decline in aerosols is resulting in more frequent “quasi-stationary Rossby waves”.
Rossby waves are huge meanders in the jet stream. Occasionally, they become slow-moving – or “quasi-stationary” – which allows weather systems to get stuck over one region, leading to prolonged heatwaves.
These circulation changes have contributed to Europe’s rapidly warming summers.
However, while Europe’s heatwaves are being influenced by declining aerosols, it is “wrong” to say they are being “caused” by them, says Prof Erich Fischer, a climate scientist at ETH Zurich.
Fischer, who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief:
“Heatwaves are caused by high-pressure systems and are now much more frequent and intense because they are happening in a climate that is much warmer than 100 years ago as a result of greenhouse-gas-induced warming.
“The paper shows that the greenhouse-gas-induced summer warming had been temporarily masked by air-polluting aerosols. The full extent for European summers only becomes visible now as the air-polluting aerosols have declined.”
Samset adds:
“Air pollution never causes or removes global warming, it only temporarily moderates it.”
Study lead author Dr Pedro Roldán‐Gómez, an associate researcher at the Barcelona Supercomputer Centre, is quoted in the Daily Telegraph saying that “most” of the “excess warming” in Europe, beyond that of comparable regions in the northern hemisphere, can be linked to declining aerosols.
But, earlier in the article, the newspaper interprets this as, simply, “most of the extra heat experienced in Britain and Europe” is down to air pollution.
GB News uses a similar phrasing, reporting that “much of the additional warming across Britain and western Europe since the 1980s is linked to the sharp decline in airborne particles known as aerosols”.
This is “misleading”, says Fischer, while Roldan-Gomez tells Carbon Brief that this is a “tricky point”, which “could lead to wrong interpretations if not properly explained”. He adds:
“The contribution of greenhouse gases is, in any case, the most important factor.”
Cleaner air
The Daily Telegraph’s article was seized upon by Reform’s Richard Tice to claim that “cleaner air” was causing higher temperatures, rather than CO2.
This continued his position – refuted by long-established climate science – that CO2 does not drive global warming.
Tice also claimed in his post that net-zero policies are “contributing to rising temperatures”. Tice appears to be linking declining air pollution to a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
Samset points out that net-zero became a goal “decades later” than the cumulative efforts to reduce air pollution since the 1980s and that it is “simply wrong” to link it to the study.
“The scientific community will keep working to understand how greenhouse gas warming and air pollution interact,” he says, but “nothing we do will change the fact that the consequences of global warming are due to human-induced CO2 emissions”.
Fischer adds:
“Let us not forget that cleaning up air-polluting aerosols is highly desirable. According to the World Health Organisation, 7 million people still die prematurely every year due to air pollution.”
Clean air legislation
Finally, the Daily Telegraph article and the study itself both attribute Europe’s declining air pollution from the 1980s onwards to the Montreal Protocol.
This is a “glaring error”, Samset says, and it is “surprising that it wasn’t picked up” in the peer-review process for the study. He explains:
“The Montreal Protocol did not deal with air pollution. It dealt with ozone-depleting gases and has been an extremely successful multi-national effort against environmental damage. “
Clean air legislation was already in place in many European countries by the time the Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987, says Samset.
In response, Roldán‐Gómez says that while the protocol did not target aerosols specifically, it “boosted the clean air policies”.
The post Factcheck: No, Europe’s heatwaves are not being ‘caused’ by declining air pollution appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Factcheck: No, Europe’s heatwaves are not being ‘caused’ by declining air pollution
Empowering women through greater access to finance could “strengthen” households’ resilience to “climate shocks”, according to a new study.
Published in Climate Risk Management, it analyses the impact of financial access on “women-headed households” in sub-Saharan Africa.
The study finds that where women had formal financial access – such as through owning a bank account – households were more able to withstand short-term shocks.
It adds that “climate shocks”, such as extreme weather events and the impacts of climate change, can cause economic crises, which destabilise communities and households.
However, the authors say that in order to protect households from long-term climate vulnerabilities – including “droughts, floods and sea-level rise” – financial access would need to be paired with wider efforts to tackle gender inequality.
They add that the findings could have important implications for policy in sub-Saharan Africa, where many countries and households are vulnerable to climate disasters.
Financial inclusion
The study highlights that entrenched gender disparities mean many women still have unequal access to financial services in sub-Saharan Africa
For example, women are still less likely to have their own bank accounts and instead are often dependent on male relatives for access to finance.
The number of women with access to an account in the region had risen to 52% as of 2024, according to data from World Bank Group.
However, as shown in the chart below, the gap between men and women has also increased, rising from just under 5 percentage points in 2011 to 12 in 2024.
Using survey data from Afrobarometer, the new study analyses 25,511 women-headed households across 37 sub-Saharan countries.
The authors use the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) framework to measure “financial inclusion”. This looks at factors such as having a bank account, owning a mobile phone and having internet access.
Francis Anaisie, a co-author on the study, tells Carbon Brief the researchers were motivated by the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs). Anaisie, an economist at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, says the study specifically looked at SDGs five and 13, on gender equality and addressing climate issues. He adds:
“Financial inclusion is one of the key policy tools for empowering women or for empowerment. But as to whether this actually translates into better climate outcomes for women is not known or is limited; this study seeks to address that gap.”
The study finds households with higher levels of financial access for women had higher levels of women’s empowerment, when this is defined as the ability to make choices and have control over economic and social outcomes.
This was checked by cross-comparing financial access against different measures of women’s empowerment, such as financial security, voting rights and connection to communities.
In particular, the study found that “financially included” women had greater political and economic empowerment, such as financial security and voting rights. On some measures of social empowerment, however, the link was weaker – financial access alone was not enough to erase cultural and social barriers to gender equality.
Women and climate change
It has been well documented that women are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change than men.
Environmental shocks affect women disproportionately due to a range of factors. These include income disparities, higher rates of displacement and unequal access to land.
Financial inequality and barriers to economic resources, such as needing internet access to make digital payments, play a key role in climate vulnerability, says Tracy Kajumba. She is director for the Least Developed Countries initiative for Effective Adaptation and Resilience (LIFE-AR) interim secretariat at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).
Kajumba, who was not involved in the study, explains to Carbon Brief:
“Women are on the front line doing farming, planting, harvesting and these things that are all impacted [by climate change]. If they don’t have the income to invest either in drought-resistant crops or water-saving technologies, it becomes difficult for households to adapt.”
Calculating climate resilience
The new study measures the impact of financial inclusion on women’s empowerment and, in turn, on climate resilience.
It evaluates a household’s ability to withstand and recover from “shocks and stressors” by using a UN Food and Agriculture Organization metric for “resilience index measurement and analysis” (RIMA).
For example, questionnaires are used to gather information about households in certain areas. The data is then used, together with key indicators, to quantify a household’s resilience to food insecurity, climate variability and economic crisis, amongst other risks.
The 25,511 households surveyed across sub-Saharan Africa were found to be relatively resilient overall and had a high capacity to bounce back from climate shocks. However, they had much lower ability to adapt, in order to build protective capacity in advance of extreme events.
In addition, the study finds that women’s financial empowerment had a positive impact on a household’s ability to “absorb” a climate shock, suggesting that financial access is critical for responding to climate change.
Increased empowerment through financial access enables women to make decisions about planting crops, to access credit in emergencies and to buy or sell food at a better price, the study notes.
For example, it says increased financial access and women’s empowerment help households to deal with the immediate consequences of an extreme weather event, such as a drought. This could be through building community mutual-support networks and by enabling access to savings, to keep the household running.
Anaisie says the study shows women’s empowerment has a significant impact on climate resilience. He tells Carbon Brief:
“If we include women in the financial system, in the case of any climate issue they can save, they can be independent, they can rely on investment to absorb these shocks. This empowerment will help them to be more resilient to climate shocks…We can make progress because SDG goals are all about inclusiveness. It’s all about inclusive growth.”
However, the study notes that financial access does not necessarily create long-term change, which would make the household less vulnerable to extreme weather in the first place.
The authors suggest that lasting structural and cultural change is important for bringing about long-term resilience. They say that policies to address gender inequalities would help bring this about.
They say such policies could include gender-sensitive agricultural credit schemes, subsidised climate insurance for women farmers in drought-prone regions, joint land-titling programmes and quotas for women in local climate-adaptation committees.
Such policies would have helped women impacted by recent severe floods in Ghana to protect their savings, Anaisie explains. He tells Carbon Brief:
“Women are engaged in economic activities, especially informal activities. They have resources and money, but when the flood came in, many women lost that. If they had access to insurance, this flood wouldn’t have cost them that much.
“So, if the government comes out with financial initiatives, training, civic education and gender-focused initiatives, leadership training, women will be empowered and this will translate into their resilience with regards to climate change.”
Addressing climate vulnerability in sub-Saharan Africa
The study could have policy implications for sub-Saharan Africa, a region particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The region faces increasingly extreme weather, heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and floods, as well as food scarcity and threats to crops.
The study suggests that policies to address structural and cultural barriers to women’s financial autonomy could be a key way to build climate resilience across the region.
However, it recognises that even where financial access is expanded, gender norms and cultural constraints continue to shape women’s social empowerment. This, in turn, affects their ability to adapt to climate change in the long term.
Ultimately, addressing structural inequalities is needed to minimise climate vulnerability, says Kajumba. She adds that supporting adaptation with financial access can allow households to absorb shocks without falling into poverty – and to rebuild after climate impacts.
Kajumba says that supporting adaptation with women’s financial access can allow households to absorb shocks without falling into poverty – and to rebuild after climate impacts. She adds:
“When they are supported [with] microloans, savings and all that, you will see change in income, change in households, change in health and education for the children as well.”
However, Kajumba notes that structural inequalities still “amplify” women’s vulnerability to climate impacts and make it harder for them to exercise agency and leadership. She adds:
“The tools that are being used are not always favourable for women…When we look at women in leadership and participation, you cannot lead or you cannot participate unless you have some level of income.”
The post Access to finance ‘strengthens climate resilience’ among sub-Saharan women appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Access to finance ‘strengthens climate resilience’ among sub-Saharan women
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