Thanks to huge growth in solar and wind, renewable energy broke records in 2023, generating 30% of electricity worldwide.
Green energy from solar and wind made up nearly 91% of net new power capacity, compared to only 6% from fossil fuels.
While we’re still waiting for the 2024 results to come through, it’s worth taking a moment to celebrate some big achievements globally and see how Australia stacks up.
First sport, now energy. Could renewable energy be the next battleground between Australia and the UK?
Australians may not like celebrating the UK for anything, but it’s worth noting the amazing progress they made on clean energy last year.
The Thanet Offshore Wind Farm is located off the coast of Thanet district in Kent, England.
- 2024 was the first full year where the UK generated more electricity from low-carbon renewables than from fossil fuels.
- Wind power alone was incredibly close to overtaking gas as the UK’s largest single source of electricity in 2024, with the jury still out at the time of publication (we’re on team wind).
- Either way, 2024 saw the third largest fall in gas use in the last 10 years.
- 2024 was also the year they closed their last coal power plant, 142 years after opening the world’s first coal-fired power station in 1882. In doing so they joined a third of OECD nations that are now coal free.
This is a really big deal! Only three years ago, fossil fuels were generating 46% of electricity in the UK, while low carbon renewables made up 27%.
How does Australia stack up on renewable energy?
The World Economic Forum’s Energy Transition Index benchmarks 120 countries on how they’re tracking towards the clean energy transition. Though not in the top 10, (or even in the top 20), Australia is still making important progress worth celebrating.
- In October 2024, Australia generated 25% of its electricity from only the sun for the very first time.
- Since September, solar and wind saw a combined record – generating 40% of Australia’s electricity. That’s nearly halfway there!
- Rooftop solar played a huge role in this. According to the Clean Energy Council, rooftop solar alone has already surpassed coal generation capacity. This is driving dirty coal out of the grid, with it now making up a record low share of our electricity generation.
- Our solar and wind generation has quadrupled since 2015.
- We’re now the ninth-highest country globally for combined solar and wind power in terms of absolute generation.
- According to the Clean Energy Regulator, 2024 saw record levels of new renewable energy capacity being added to the grid.
Looking back at the last decade, the renewable energy growth in Australia is pretty remarkable.
But the real hero of renewable energy in Australia? South Australia!
South Australia: leading the nation on renewable energy
In South Australia, wind and solar were already contributing a remarkable 75% of the energy share in 2023, prompting the state government to bring forward its 100% renewables target by three years. The state is now aiming to reach this target by 2027.
If you live in South Australia, there’s now a 50% chance you have rooftop solar. South Australia is doing better on renewables than most countries around the world.
Bipartisan support for renewable energy, supportive policies, and strong climate laws have been instrumental in the state’s success. But there’s still time for other states to catch up. And the longer we wait, the higher the cost and the harder the transition.
So, how does nuclear energy fit in?
Short answer: it doesn’t.
Peter Dutton’s nuclear fantasy is not a plan to tackle climate change – Nationals senator Matt Canavan himself recently labeled the Coalition’s nuclear policy a ‘political fix’ that they know is a more expensive form of power.
Trying to introduce a nuclear energy system in Australia would actually slow down the roll out of renewable energy – halting the incredible momentum we’re seeing around the country and pitting nuclear vs renewable energy. The Coalition’s fossil fuel donors are thrilled, because it could take up to 20 years to get a single nuclear power plant up and running. If the Coalition gets its way we would be facing a reality where we actually extend the life of coal and burn more fossil fuels for longer. The proposal is outrageous when you consider that we’re already 40% of the way there on renewable energy – using sources that don’t produce highly radioactive waste needing to be safely stored for literally hundreds of thousands of years.
Ultimately, nuclear energy in Australia is just a dangerous distraction from the urgent work we need to do to phase out fossil fuels, using our abundance of wind and sun to complete our transition to clean sources of energy.
With a federal election coming in the first half of this year, we won’t try to predict what will happen next. But we do know that we have no time to waste in accelerating the shift away from polluting fossil fuels.
We weren’t just breaking renewable records in 2024 – we also broke heat records. 2024 was once again the hottest year on record, A trend we’ve seen repeating every year for a decade.
We need to stay the course with solutions that are cutting pollution now, not go backwards with a dangerous plan to burn more dirty fossil fuels and produce highly radioactive waste.
Here’s to more big renewable energy in 2025!
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https://www.greenpeace.org.au/article/the-race-towards-renewable-energy-big-wins-in-green-energy-in-australia-and-beyond/
On 3 November, the Brazilian presidency of the COP30 climate talks released its long-awaited “roadmap” on ending deforestation.
Ahead of the Belém summit, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made a call for a “roadmap” to halt and reverse deforestation.
Although this voluntary roadmap was outside the COP’s official agenda, it snowballed into a rallying point at the “Amazon” COP.
By the end of the summit, 93 countries had signed on to the deforestation roadmap, committing to develop voluntary pathways to reverse forest loss and degradation by 2030.
The Brazilian presidency called on countries to describe what a pathway away from deforestation could look like, what challenges and support they needed.
This call was answered by 18 countries and four negotiating blocs that offered their inputs on the roadmap, along with scores of NGOs, research centres and other groups.
Now that the roadmap has been published, Carbon Brief explains where it came from, what it entails, why some did not sign on – and what’s next.
What is a deforestation ‘roadmap’?
The “deforestation roadmap” was one of the signature announcements of the Brazilian presidency of the COP30 climate summit in Belém – albeit one that fell outside the official, negotiated outcomes.
Brazilian president Lula first proposed the deforestation and forest degradation roadmap, alongside one on the fossil fuel transition, at the leaders’ summit in Belém a few days before COP30 began.
By the end of COP30, nearly 100 countries had expressed their support for such a roadmap. This includes the EU, with its 27 member states, as well as the 56-member Coalition for Rainforest Nations.
However, this was still short of the 196 parties needed for consensus at a COP, meaning that, ultimately, the roadmap was not a formal outcome.
Instead, COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago announced during the closing plenary session that the presidency would work towards creating both deforestation and fossil-fuel phaseout roadmaps outside of the COP process.
The deforestation roadmap is the latest in a series of international pledges to put an end to forest loss.
In 2014, 39 countries pledged to end natural forest loss by 2030 at UN Climate Week, as part of the New York Declaration on Forests.
Seven years later, at COP26, more than 140 countries signed the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use. The declaration stated that countries “commit to working collectively to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030” – although conflict subsequently arose over what, exactly, countries had agreed to.
The objective of halting and reversing deforestation by 2030 was ultimately agreed in a negotiated text for the first time two years later, at COP28 in Dubai, where it was part of the global stocktake.
Unlike these previous pledges, the roadmap does not make any new commitments. It also does not “seek to reopen agreed decisions”.
Instead, the roadmap’s stated objective is to “translate forest-related outcomes into coordinated, country-led action while respecting different national circumstances, priorities and implementation challenges”.
Following the conclusion of COP30, the presidency – along with the Climate Policy Initiative thinktank – began soliciting inputs from countries, civil society organisations, Indigenous peoples, academic researchers, the private sector and other groups.
(The Climate Policy Initiative was chosen to serve as the secretariat and technical partner to the roadmap process.)
The secretariat notes that it received more than 200 contributions following this invitation. However, just 18 of these came from countries, and four from blocs – the EU, the Coalition for Rainforest Nations, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and the Least Developed Countries (LDC) blocs – themselves.
What does the roadmap say about reducing deforestation?
The roadmap was released less than a week before the COP31 climate summit is due to begin, at an event hosted by the UN Development Programme in Brasilia.
During the launch event, Do Lago highlighted recent figures showing that Brazil’s deforestation rate had fallen to its lowest level on record – dropping by more than 70% since 2022.
“Even the optimists wouldn’t believe that we were able to decrease deforestation” by as much as the country has managed in recent years, he said.
Corrêa Do Lago said that he hoped the roadmap would be a “living document” and that it could provide countries with a “practical pathway for climate action”.
The roadmap divides forest action into three complementary parts: national action, international action and financial mechanisms.
For each of the three, the document highlights current actions or instruments and the enabling conditions required to promote action. Then, it offers “COP30 presidency proposals on the way forward” on each pillar.
Under “national efforts”, the roadmap addresses the challenge of halting and reversing deforestation across five “forest dimensions”:
- Maintaining existing forests.
- Using forests sustainably while generating value for communities.
- Combatting forest degradation.
- Combatting deforestation.
- Restoration, reforestation and afforestation.
The roadmap identifies 18 policies or “implementation approaches” that countries can use to address forest loss and degradation, although it notes that the list is not intended to serve as an “exhaustive or prescriptive classification”.
This includes a wide range of approaches, including establishing or maintaining protected areas, recognising the territorial rights of Indigenous peoples, managing the spread of pests and plant diseases and restricting permits for activities associated with forest conversion.
For each of these policies, the roadmap explains the approach and gives an overview of the evidence of its effectiveness. It also gives examples of how countries are implementing that policy.
Then, the roadmap discusses the enabling conditions that need to be ensured for action to occur at the national level, such as supporting land governance and promoting environmental education.
Finally, for national action, the roadmap proposes a five-step process for countries to follow. It provides “guiding questions” that countries may consider in their work to support each step.
On “international architecture for forest action”, the roadmap discusses how various international environmental and human-rights instruments address the problem of deforestation in different ways. It says:
“Climate change, biodiversity, land degradation, Indigenous peoples and local communities’ rights, ecosystem conservation and species protection are addressed through distinct international regimes, but their objectives and implementation intersect in important ways in relation to forests.”
The roadmap highlights some of the global forest-monitoring initiatives that can support national efforts, while noting that countries’ capacity for accessing and using such information “remains uneven”. It calls for improving technical cooperation between countries and increasing capacity-building.
Finally, the roadmap discusses two cross-border issues: crime and trade. On the latter, it notes that trade measures that reward compliance are generally more effective than those that impose “additional economic and administrative burdens on exporters”.
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The roadmap’s final proposals for international action include strengthening national capacity for investigating environmental crime and prioritising trade policies that reward sustainable, deforestation-free production.
The roadmap notes that countries need an estimated $300bn per year by 2030 to halt and reverse deforestation, yet current finance reaches less than one-third of that figure.
Of this, nearly 90% comes from domestic public finance, as forest countries already dedicate “substantial effort” to protecting their domestic policies and budgets, the roadmap notes.
The roadmap offers 10 proposals for action on forest finance, including aligning domestic finance flows to support forest action, enacting effective benefits-sharing measures and strengthening the position of forests in carbon markets.
It concludes with an appeal to countries to “keep the collective dialogue going” through the conclusion of the second global stocktake in 2028.
In a statement, Kelly Stone, coordinator of the civil society network Climate Land Ambition and Rights Alliance, said:
“The forest commitments in the first global stocktake and this roadmap process are important steps, but these commitments need to translate into actual urgent action on the ground.
“This roadmap needs to be taken forward in a process where countries are working together for rapid, ambitious action on the ground to address deforestation and degradation and protect food security. We cannot afford to wait.”
Why did some countries not sign onto the roadmap at COP30?
In Belém, discussions around the deforestation roadmap were highly charged and several countries did not sign on.
Historically, India has opposed and raised concerns about top-down commitments around mitigation and land-use change. For example, the country did not sign the original Glasgow pledge on forests and land-use at COP26, objecting to “trade” being linked to forests and climate action.
In Belém, India – as part of the Like Minded Developing Countries bloc – objected to the inclusion of voluntary roadmaps outside of the COP agenda in the formal COP30 outcome.
However, in an interview after the talks concluded, the country’s minister for environment, forests and climate, Bhupender Yadav, told the Times of India that India “welcomes” the forest roadmap. He added that it additionally “endorses” Brazil’s Tropical Forest Forever Facility fund.
Russia was an early objector to the deforestation roadmap, laying out its position as early as April last year. While the country reiterated its commitment to the Glasgow forest declaration and the first global stocktake, it “does not support the development of a universal roadmap”, arguing that:
“…such initiatives are not mandated under the agreed international climate architecture and go beyond adopted decisions under the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement.”
Russia hosts the world’s largest boreal forests, which are seeing more intense wildfires. In its submission on the deforestation roadmap, Russia “underscored” that there is no “universally agreed, legally binding definition” of forest degradation, although it adds subsequently that wildfires are a “key driver” of degradation.