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?
Governments are holding “critical” talks this week on a global treaty to curb plastic pollution, as some countries and activists warn that key issues – including measures to rein in soaring plastic production – are being sidelined.
Diplomats are meeting in person in Nairobi for the first time since negotiations were suspended in chaos nearly a year ago, stymied by a long-running deadlock that pits petrostates against more ambitious nations over the reach of the UN pact.
Because nearly all plastic is made from planet-heating oil, gas and coal, the sector’s trajectory will have a major influence on global efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The four-day informal gathering, which begins on Tuesday, has been billed by the chair of the talks, Chilean ambassador Julio Cordano, as a “brainstorming” session in which countries are invited to put forward possible solutions to some of the treaty negotiations’ most divisive elements.
Cordano is expected to distill those views in a new document intended to serve as the basis for a new draft text of the future treaty, which governments would take up at the next official round of negotiations, scheduled for March 13-24, 2027.
Two earlier rounds, each billed as the final one, ended without agreement, derailed largely by a standoff over how the treaty should address plastic production, which the UN says is set to triple by 2060 without intervention.
Production curbs in the spotlight
Large fossil fuel and petrochemical producers, led by Saudi Arabia, the United States, Russia and India, have repeatedly argued that the treaty should focus only on managing plastic waste. A US State Department spokesperson told Climate Home News that Washington supports “practical, cost-effective solutions” to plastic pollution, while opposing “global plastic bans”.
A majority of countries – including most European, Latin American, African and Pacific island nations -want to limit the manufacturing of plastic to “sustainable levels”, but have not pushed for any wide-ranging ban.
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China’s coal-chemicals boom risks repeating the mistakes of the past
By reviving the problematic industry in the name of energy security, China runs the risk of higher emissions, stranded assets and setting back its ambitions as a clean energy leader -
Roadmap launched to restart deadlocked UN plastics treaty talks
The chair of the negotiations proposes informal meetings through 2026 to bridge deep divisions among countries, following the collapse of talks in Geneva last year
Ahead of what it described as “critical” talks in Nairobi, the French government said last week it had already shown flexibility and “significantly scaled back” its initial ambitions. But a French official told a meeting of EU environment ministers that without an explicit reference to the “unsustainable nature” of plastic production, the treaty would be “fundamentally unbalanced, ineffective and, worse still, could set us on the wrong path for decades to come”.
In a separate written communication, the French government lamented that informal meetings held in recent months have given “disproportionate visibility to the positions of the least ambitious states”, fuelling a “risk that partial agreements may be reached only on the issues with the broadest consensus”.
Dennis Clare, a negotiator for the Pacific island nation of Micronesia, told Climate Home News that “if we fail to address any key elements”, including overproduction, the impacts of the plastic crisis on the climate, human health and ecosystems will only grow more severe.
Fears over “political calculations”
Despite such concerns, plastics production is not mentioned in the wide-ranging list of topics Cordano has drafted for the meeting – an omission that has alarmed observers.
Christina Dixon, a campaigner at the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), said there appeared to be an attempt to write off this crucial element of the treaty as “too complicated and politically unviable”.
David Azoulay, environmental health programme director at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), said the meeting’s proposed structure was “highly concerning”. He accused the chair of “making political calculations in favour of potential short-term wins” and aiming to deliver a treaty “based on the lowest common denominator”.
Speaking to journalists last week, Cordano pushed back, insisting that “no topic is off the table” and inviting countries to bring whatever proposals they judged necessary for a successful outcome.
He added that the treaty could not be allowed to settle for just any level of ambition, and that he would not be happy with an outcome at all costs.
“This is what makes it so difficult and complex,” said Cordano, who was elected in February after his predecessor’s resignation. Countries “are trying to be creative” in finding solutions, he explained, because “the road to the objective of our work might not be so obvious”.
The post UN plastics pact talks restart amid fears production curbs will be left out appeared first on Climate Home News.
UN plastics pact talks restart amid fears production curbs will be left out
A new report from Greenpeace Australia Pacific sets out the pathway forward for Australia to be a global leader on ocean protection. With the Treaty now in force, Australia and nations around the world, have an important opportunity to drive the creation of ocean sanctuaries on the high seas, by leading with ambition, science and collaboration to ensure this landmark agreement delivers lasting protections.
The report was launched on Tuesday 23rd June at Parliament House at an event to celebrate Australia’s recent ratification and look ahead to implementation. The event was attended by Parliamentarians, Ambassadors, Departmental leaders and civil society. Thank you to everyone for celebrating with us. To ensure the Treaty is strong, fit for purpose and delivers its role of creating ocean sanctuaries on the high seas across the global ocean – multilateralism and collaboration is essential. The event hosted by Greenpeace Australia Pacific and WWF was a strong step forwards on the implementation pathway.
The Global Ocean Treaty is one of the most significant international nature agreements in history and the first focused on protecting biodiversity in the high seas. These waters cover 64% of the ocean, are home to extraordinary biodiversity, and until now, less than 1% have been fully or highly protected.
Clean power added more to global energy supplies than any other source in 2025, according to the latest Energy Institute statistical review of world energy.
Outside the Covid pandemic, it was also the first year ever in which wind and solar, when combined, contributed more new energy than any of the individual fossil fuels.
The findings illustrate the “growing prominence” of electricity in the global energy system, according to the Energy Institute, a professional membership body that took over the production of the annual statistical review from oil firm BP in 2023.
It notes that electricity demand is rising much faster, at 3% in 2025, than energy use overall at 1.7% – and that all of the new power supply came from low-carbon sources.
While it includes data on data-centre demand for the first time, the review shows that these only make up 2% of all electricity use and 15% of the increase in 2025.
(The review does not explore other sources of demand, but separate data shows electrification of industry, heat and transport is a far larger driver of growth than data centres.)
At the same time, every source of energy – including coal, oil, gas, nuclear and hydro – also reached global all-time highs in 2025, the statistical review shows.
While the 86% of “primary energy” that came from fossil fuels is a record low, their real contribution to the economy is far lower, because roughly two-thirds of their energy is lost during combustion.
Below, Carbon Brief highlights the key findings of the review in six charts.
- Global energy supplies increase 1.7% in 2025
- Fossil fuels met a record-low 86.2% of global energy supply
- The ‘primary energy fallacy’ ‘inflates fossil fuels’
- Wind and solar were biggest source of new energy in 2025
- Clean energy met all of global electricity growth in 2025
- China generates more power than the US, EU and India combined
Global energy supplies increase 1.7% in 2025
The review shows that global energy supply reached a record high in 2025, climbing 10 exajoules (EJ, 1.7%) to more than 600EJ for the first time ever.
Within this total, there were new all-time highs for every energy source: oil; coal; gas; nuclear; wind and solar; as well as hydro and other renewables. This is shown in the figure below.
Notably, coal hit a new record of 166EJ in 2025, up 0.7% from a year earlier and 2.8% above the level reached in 2014, which had been seen as a potential peak for the fuel.
Wind and solar saw the fastest growth, up by 18.3% year-on-year, as well as adding more to global supplies – in combination – than any single fuel source.
Fossil fuels met a record-low 86.2% of global energy supply
Nevertheless, on the basis of these primary energy figures, the contribution of low-carbon sources to the global energy system still looks relatively small.
The latest data shows that fossil fuels made up 86.2% of global primary energy supplies, as shown in the figure below.
The rise of nuclear power had pushed the fossil-fuel share of global energy down to 91% as long ago as 1986, before the Chernobyl disaster pulled the plug on further growth.
It is only in the past decade that clean-energy sources have started to gain more ground, as a result of the rapid expansion of wind and solar.
The ‘primary energy fallacy’ ‘inflates fossil fuels’
Crucially, however, the statistical review is based on “total energy supply” (TES), a measure of primary energy. This counts the energy stored in coal, oil, gas and nuclear fuel going into the energy system, whereas for renewables it measures the amount of electricity coming out.
Yet, most of the energy in fossil fuels is lost as waste heat during combustion.
In fact, some two-thirds of all primary energy is lost before it can be turned into useful energy that moves a car, warms a home or keeps the lights on.
This gives rise to the “primary energy fallacy”, which tends to “inflate…the perceived contribution of fossil fuels” and the difficulty of replacing them with low-carbon energy sources.
For example, the figure in the post shows that 105 units of energy went into the global transport sector – almost all of it oil – but this only generated 20 units of transport “energy services”.
In other words, less than 20% of the primary energy being used for transport actually ends up moving people or goods, while the remaining 80% was lost as waste heat.
Until 2024, the statistical review sought to address this issue by using the “substitution method” for clean-energy sources. This listed the primary energy supplied by wind and solar, for example, as the amount of fossil fuels that would have been needed to generate the same amount of electricity.
It stopped using this approach in 2025, explaining that this would reveal the higher efficiency of a clean-energy system that loses less energy during fossil-fuel combustion. It explained:
“Put simply, in future we will need to supply less energy in the form of clean electricity to undertake the same amount of work as the equivalent energy supplies from fossil fuels. Primary energy demand will decrease as the energy system increasingly electrifies and renewable electricity continues to increase its share of generation..”
Wind and solar were biggest source of new energy in 2025
With this in mind, it is all the more notable that wind and solar, in combination, were the world’s biggest source of new energy in 2025, as shown in the figure below.
Again, perhaps two-thirds of the new primary energy added by fossil fuels last year will never actually contribute useful work to the economy, because it will be lost as waste heat.
In contrast, the new energy added by wind and solar is in the form of electricity and almost all of it can be used directly to power factories, homes, appliances and electric vehicles.
Moreover, wind and solar saw the fastest growth by far, up 18% in 2025 alone. Over the past decade, they expanded fivefold, while coal, oil and gas grew by 6%, 9% and 21%, respectively.
Clean energy met all of global electricity growth in 2025
The impact of renewables is clearest in the power sector, where combined with a new record for nuclear power, they met all of the growth in global electricity demand in 2025.
This is shown in the figure below, which illustrates how fossil generation was flat last year and how wind and solar now generate more electricity than hydro or nuclear power.
The review says that wind and solar power, when combined, grew by 18% in 2025, whereas there was a small decline in coal generation balanced by a small rise for gas.
Overall, it says that global electricity generation increased by some 940 terawatt hours (TWh, 3%), roughly three times the annual demand of the UK.
Separate figures, included in the review for the first time, show that data centres used 788TWh of electricity in 2025, up 130TWh on a year earlier.
This means that data centres accounted for 2% of global electricity demand.
China generates more power than the US, EU and India combined
The Energy Institute report says that the power sector is set to play an increasingly important role, because it is growing more quickly than other parts of the global energy system.
There is also increasing political attention on the idea of using expanded clean-power supplies to rapidly electrify other parts of the economy, particularly heat and transport.
The COP31 presidency has called for countries to back a global goal for 35% of “final” energy to come from electricity by 2035, against a global average today of around 22%.
China is well ahead of the global average, with electricity making up 30% of its final energy supplies in 2025. It recently adopted a 35% by 2030 target for electrification.
One reason it has been able to do this is the huge scale of its electricity system. Indeed, China now generates more electricity than the US, EU and India combined, as shown in the figure below.
While much of the rise in China’s electricity has historically come from coal-fired generation, there was enough growth of clean-power sources to push coal down last year.
The post Six charts show how clean power was world’s largest source of new energy in 2025 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Six charts show how clean power was world’s largest source of new energy in 2025
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