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!
Stop New Coal, Oil and Gas Projects
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Countries will meet in Armenia this month to carry out the first global review of progress towards meeting key nature targets by 2030.
These targets – and the wider ambition to halt and reverse biodiversity loss around the world – were agreed in the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in 2022.
But the ambitions will not be achieved in time for the 2030 deadline unless action “accelerates rapidly”, a key UN report found.
It noted that nations are falling short on 22 of 23 nature targets, which focus on restoring ecosystems, increasing nature finance and reducing harmful subsidies.
This report and other findings will inform the global progress review taking place at the COP17 biodiversity summit in Armenia over 19-30 October.
The sections below summarise the report’s findings on where progress has – and has not – been made on each of the 23 targets.
They also rank the extent to which countries have addressed elements of each target on a national basis. Click on each target for more information. Key terms are defined throughout each section and in a glossary below.
The post COP17: Tracking progress towards the UN’s 2030 nature targets appeared first on Carbon Brief.
https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/nature-targets-2030-progress/
The amount of finance for nature delivered to date “falls far short” of what is needed to meet the UN’s global goals, according to a report released ahead of the COP17 biodiversity summit.
The global stocktaking report, prepared by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UN CBD) ahead of this month’s summit in Armenia, finds that developed nations are failing to close the $200bn “biodiversity finance gap”.
Initiatives designed to support this goal are also stumbling, with a special “framework” fund for biodiversity receiving less than $140m from developed countries in the past two years and the “landmark” Cali Fund receiving only $6,000 from private companies.
The availability of finance – or lack thereof – is likely to be a key point of contention in negotiations at COP17 in Yerevan, Armenia, which begin on 19 October.
Target for 2025 ‘not achieved’
At COP15 in 2022, 196 countries agreed to an ambitious global deal to reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, dubbed the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
Goal D of the agreement, shown below, states that countries must “close” a $700bn “biodiversity finance gap” by 2030.
This overall $700bn is made up of two parts: changes to nature-harming subsidies; and raising financial resources to support biodiversity.
Target 18 within the text calls for countries to “identify by 2025, and eliminate, phase out or reform incentives, including subsidies, harmful for biodiversity…progressively reducing them by at least $500bn per year by 2030”.
The remaining $200bn should be met by “mobilising” resources, according to target 19 of the GBF. It states that countries should “substantially and progressively increase the level of financial resources from all sources” to “at least” $200bn per year by 2030.
The overarching $200bn can be from national budgets, multilateral development banks or money “mobilised” from the private sector.
However, the target also specifically states that “at least $20bn per year by 2025 and…at least $30bn per year by 2030” should be public biodiversity funding provided to developing countries by developed countries – or others that “voluntarily assume” their obligations.
According to the global stocktaking report prepared by the CBD, between 2020 and 2023, countries mobilised a cumulative total of just $186.4bn. This is equivalent to an average of less than $50bn per year.
While the report – published on 10 September 2026 – cautions that it is “still too early to draw any conclusions”, it adds that this total “falls far short” of what is needed to close the $200bn-per-year biodiversity finance gap.
It continues to specify that the milestone of raising “at least $20bn per year by 2025” in public finance was also “likely not achieved”.
The report states that reporting countries raised a cumulative total of just $17.7bn in international public funding for biodiversity, across four years from 2020-23, as shown in the figure below. This amounts to an average of just $4.4bn per year.
These figures are supported by a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which suggests that global biodiversity finance reached $74.9-92.4bn per year between 2023 and 2025.
It adds that, of this, international public finance contributed around $16.1bn per year on average – nearly $4bn below the 2025 goal.
Moreover, the OECD report says that only $7.9bn in 2023 to $8.5bn in 2024 was “biodiversity-specific” funding, with another $5.7bn and $6.5bn, respectively, coming in the form of funds for other priorities, in which support for biodiversity was a secondary aim.
While the GBF sets targets for nature finance in 2025 and 2030, developed countries should be making similar contributions every year, according to thinktank Third World Network.
Faltering initiatives
There are two main channels of international public finance that developed countries can use to meet their biodiversity finance commitments under the GBF. These are official development finance (ODF) and the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF).
Separate figures for these channels also show financing falling behind the subtargets set out in the GBF.
This includes the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF), which was established at COP15 in 2022.
It is currently housed under the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and reports directly to the biodiversity COP.
Despite an initial flurry of pledges for the initiative, developed nations had contributed less than $400m to the fund, as of July this year, according to data shared with Carbon Brief by the GEF.
Between August 2023 and 30 June 2026, the GBFF has received only $387.2m in signed commitments from 11 countries and one subnational government (Quebec in Canada).
The figure below shows that, after the initial pledges ahead of COP16 in 2024, there have only been a handful of new contributions to the fund.
Elsewhere, the Cali fund was created at the COP16 nature negotiations in Colombia in 2024.
It is the first-ever global fund for companies profiting from genetic data to contribute to conservation goals.
According to a working paper from the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics, if all 21,690 eligible firms shared their profits according to the fund’s rules, they could raise $3.6bn for nature annually. The paper adds that, under a realistic uptake from companies, this could generate $929m annually for nature.
To date, however, the fund has received only two contributions, totalling $6,000.
Finance gap ‘fight’
Ahead of COP17 in Armenia, experts tell Carbon Brief that finance will be the most closely watched element of the stocktake of progress.
For developing countries that “hold most of the world’s biodiversity and bear the greater burden of implementation” of nature targets, the need for this financing is “very real”, says Lim Li Ching of the Third World Network speaking to Carbon Brief. She adds:
“These amounts fall far short of the GBF’s target 19. Developed countries have regrettably not met their legal obligations…[T]his failure should not be used as an excuse to pivot to the private sector or market-based mechanisms, which struggle to raise finance at scale and often deepen social and ecological harm.”
Options for private and “innovative” finance include debt-for-nature swaps, biodiversity offsets and carbon credits, but these are harder to monitor and have often faced criticism.
The Cali Fund is one avenue for companies to contribute directly to the CBD’s goals, with dedicated, transparent allocations for conservation projects and Indigenous peoples.
Dr Siva Thambisetty, associate professor of law at the London School of Economics, tells Carbon Brief that the fund is still a voluntary measure and it is up to countries “to create a constructive, ethical obligation” for companies to contribute. She adds:
“The private sector is doing what it always does: minimising outgoings and liability and maximising freedom to operate. I don’t believe the shift we need can be generated internally by businesses alone without outside pressure. States with jurisdiction over business need to take action.”
A non-profit initiative called the Cali Watch finds that “not a single government” has passed a law requiring companies to contribute to the fund. It estimates that eight companies alone should contribute more than $2bn, as part of what it calls their “Cali debt”.
Dr June Rubis, the Indigenous peoples and local communities lead on the Cali Fund’s steering committee, tells Carbon Brief that she is “worried about the pace” at which biodiversity finance is moving. Rubis continues:
“Each part of the finance architecture needs to start sending credible signals at the same time: developed countries on the $20bn commitment; donors on predictable finance for the GBFF; companies on Cali Fund contributions; and the Cali Fund itself on allocation and access. If one part moves while the others are repeatedly deferred, confidence in the wider biodiversity bargain becomes harder to sustain.”
She points out that for Indigenous peoples and local communities, “success also depends on whether finance can actually be accessed” to support communities’ priorities. She concludes:
“[H]eadline commitments matter, but so do the pathways through which money reaches people.”
