The global energy transition is now “unstoppable” due to “smart economics”, UN general-secretary António Guterres has said in an online speech titled: “A moment of opportunity.”
His comments coincide with two reports released today, one from International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and the other from the UN that utilises the former’s research.
Between them, the reports provide details of how the “plummeting” cost of renewables has helped the sector expand at pace, meaning that renewables now almost match fossil fuels in terms of global installed power capacity.
In 2024, 91% of renewable power projects that were commissioned were more cost effective than any new fossil-fuel alternatives, according to IRENA.
The 582 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity added to the global energy system in 2024 helped avoid fossil-fuel use valued at about $57bn, with further cost savings expected as the sector continues to grow.
In his speech, Guterres said:
“Throughout history, energy has shaped the destiny of humankind – from mastering fire, to harnessing steam, to splitting the atom. Now, we are on the cusp of a new era. Fossil fuels are running out of road. The sun is rising on a clean-energy age.”
Below, Carbon Brief details five of the key points from the reports and Guterres’ speech.
- Renewables are increasing as costs fall
- Investment in clean energy tips $2bn
- ‘Stability…in a volatile global energy landscape’
- China dominates deployment…others should now follow
- ‘Faster and fairer’ for 1.5C
Renewables are increasing as costs fall
The cost of renewable energy technologies has fallen over the past decade, with 96% of new solar and wind now costing less than new coal and gas plants, according to IRENA.
In 2024, the global average cost of electricity generated by solar photovoltaics (PV) and onshore wind was 41% and 53% cheaper, respectively, than the least-cost new fossil fuel-fired power plant.
The global average cost of solar PV has fallen to $0.43 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) and onshore wind to $0.34/kWh.
There were some small increases in costs between 2023 and 2024 for some technologies, IRENA notes. Solar PV’s levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) increased by 0.6%, onshore wind by 3%, offshore wind by 4% and bioenergy by 13%.
According to BloombergNEF, increases were broadly due to inflation and supply chain pressures. These led to the first jump in the costs of offshore wind in the UK’s renewable energy auctions, for example.
However, IRENA explains that long-term cost reductions are expected to continue, as further technological lessons are “learnt” and supply chains mature.
Alongside this drop in cost, renewable energy capacity has increased significantly over the past decade, growing by around 2,600GW, or 140%, between 2015 and 2024, according to the UN report.
Over the same period, fossil fuels increased by around 640GW, or 16%.
In 2024 alone, renewables made up 92.5% of all new electricity capacity additions, as well as 74% of electricity generation growth.
This means that the share of global installed capacity is now nearly a 1:1 ratio between fossil fuels and renewables, the UN report notes.
Between 2015 and 2024, renewables increased by 81% in terms of global annual electricity generation compared to a 13% increase for fossil fuels.
The global rollout of solar and wind is already having a significant impact on emissions, saving almost the equivalent of the EU’s annual emissions.
Despite the increase in renewable energy capacity to date, lagging investment in expanding and modernising electricity grids is “becoming a bottleneck for the energy transition”, cautions the UN report. There are at least 3,000GW of renewable power projects waiting for a grid connection.
Investment in clean energy tips $2bn
In 2024, global annual clean-energy investments exceeded $2tn for the first time, according to the UN report.
This is $800bn more than fossil-fuel investment, as shown in the chart below, up almost 70% in 10 years. It follows investment in clean energy surpassing fossil-fuel investment in 2016.
Subsequently, the number of jobs in the clean-energy sector has also continued to grow, reaching 34.8m in 2023, of which 16.2n were in the renewables sector.
According to the UN report, in 2023, the clean-energy sector added $320bn to the global economy. This accounted for 10% of GDP growth globally.
Clean energy accounted for an even higher percentage in certain regions, For example, nearly a third of the EU’s GDP came from the sector. It made up 5% in India, 6% in the US and 20% in China.
In his speech, Guterres noted that, despite clean energy increasingly driving economies, there is still “clean market distortion” with fossil fuels benefiting nine-to-one from consumption subsidies globally. He continued:
“Add to that the unaccounted costs of climate damages on people and planet – and the distortion is even greater. Countries that cling to fossil fuels are not protecting their economies – they are sabotaging them. Driving up costs. Undermining competitiveness. Locking-in stranded assets. And missing the greatest economic opportunity of the 21st century.”
The UN report notes that, in 2024, the economic losses from weather-related extreme events were estimated to be $320bn, of which 56% were uninsured.
Under IRENA’s 1.5C scenario for the energy transition, global annual GDP would increase by 1.5% between 2023 and 2050.
‘Stability…in a volatile global energy landscape’
In 2024, renewable energy helped “avoid” $467bn in fossil-fuel costs globally, according to IRENA.
This reinforces renewables’ role as “not only as the lowest-cost source of new power, but also as a key driver of energy security, economic stability and resilience in a volatile global energy landscape”.
Between 2000 and 2023, Asia saw the biggest savings from clean-energy investment, with £212bn avoided, as shown on the chart below.
This was predominantly due to China, where renewable energy is surging, helping to put the country’s emissions “into reverse” for the first time earlier this year, according to Carbon Brief analysis. (The UN report cites two articles published by Carbon Brief this year.)
In a statement released alongside the report, IRENA director-general Francesco La Camera said:
“The cost-competitiveness of renewables is today’s reality. Looking at all renewables currently in operation, the avoided fossil-fuel costs in 2024 reached up to $467bn. New renewable power outcompetes fossil fuels on cost, offering a clear path to affordable, secure and sustainable energy. This achievement is the result of years of innovation, policy direction and growing markets.”
Additionally, the continued expansion of renewable energy technologies can, says the UN report, help to protect people from the impact of geopolitical instability on international energy markets.
Around 74% of the global population lives in a country that is a net importer of fossil fuels, the report notes. As such, when oil and gas prices surge, they are left particularly vulnerable.
For example, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, gas prices reached record highs and oil prices hit their highest level since 2008, the UN report adds.
Consequently, the average energy bill globally was 20% higher than the average over the previous five years. This was more acute in countries that are particularly reliant on gas imports, such as South Korea, which spent $17bn more on gas in 2022 compared to 2021.
China dominates deployment…others should now follow
While renewable energy deployment has been increasing around the world, the distribution remains uneven, notes the UN report.
As shown in the chart, of the 4,448GW of total renewable capacity installed globally as of the end of 2024, 41% was in China, 39% in OECD countries and almost half of the remaining 20% in Brazil and India.
Africa made up just 1.5% of the capacity installed by the end of last year, despite accounting for 85% of the global population without electricity access and having a renewable energy resource potential 10 times larger than the continent’s projected electricity demand in 2040.
Since 2016, outside of China, less than one in every five dollars invested in clean energy has gone to emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs), explains the UN report.
Investment is hampered in part by higher costs in EMDEs – for example, the cost of capital for a large-scale solar PV project in one of these economies is well over twice as high as in advanced economies, adds the UN report.
To keep the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C goal within reach, annual clean-energy spending in EMDEs beyond China will need to increase by around five to seven times from 2022 levels, notes the UN report. This would see investment increase to $1.4-1.9tn a year in 2030 and to more than $2tn a year by 2035.
‘Faster and fairer’ for 1.5C
The UN and IRENA reports, along with Gueterres’ speech, highlight that, while progress in transitioning the energy sector away from fossil fuels is underway, “the transition is not yet fast enough or fair enough”.
Since the Paris Agreement came into force almost a decade ago, the collective ratcheting up of global climate ambition and action has meant that “projected global warming has been progressively declining”, the report notes.
It points to the UNEP emissions gap report, which found that warming this century under current policies have fallen from just below 4C to 3.1C. If parties’ conditional climate pledges – known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – are fully implemented, warming could fall from 3-3.5C to 2.6C.
This would be lower still, falling to 1.9C, if all net-zero pledges are fully achieved, the UN report notes.
As such, parties need to do more to take advantage of the opportunity presented by the “dawn of a new energy era”, Guterres said, as the “fossil-fuel age is flailing and failing”.
He set out six “opportunity areas”, which include NDCs, meeting surging energy demand with sustainable sources and using trade and investment to “supercharge” the energy transition.
The UN report highlights that at COP28 in Dubai, parties agreed to global targets to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030, double the annual rate of energy efficiency improvement and transition away from fossil fuels in line with global net-zero emissions by 2050.
In his speech, Guterres said “we must drastically speed up the reduction of emissions – and the reach of the clean-energy transition” to reach these goals as the “1.5C limit is in unprecedented peril”.
The impact of current plans and policies, in comparison to those needed to align with 1.5C, is shown in the chart below.
In his statement, La Camera welcomed the surge in renewables to date, but added:
“Progress is not guaranteed. Rising geopolitical tensions, trade tariffs and material supply constraints threaten to slow the momentum and drive up costs. To safeguard the gains of the energy transition, we must reinforce international cooperation, secure open and resilient supply chains, and create stable policy and investment frameworks – especially in the global south. The transition to renewables is irreversible, but its pace and fairness depend on the choices we make today.”
The post UN: Five reasons why switching to renewables is ‘smart economics’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
UN: Five reasons why switching to renewables is ‘smart economics’
Drought and heatwaves occurring together – known as “compound” events – have “surged” across the world since the early 2000s, a new study shows.
Compound drought and heat events (CDHEs) can have devastating effects, creating the ideal conditions for intense wildfires, such as Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2019-20 where bushfires burned 24m hectares and killed 33 people.
The research, published in Science Advances, finds that the increase in CDHEs is predominantly being driven by events that start with a heatwave.
The global area affected by such “heatwave-led” compound events has more than doubled between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, the study says.
The rapid increase in these events over the last 23 years cannot be explained solely by global warming, the authors note.
Since the late 1990s, feedbacks between the land and the atmosphere have become stronger, making heatwaves more likely to trigger drought conditions, they explain.
One of the study authors tells Carbon Brief that societies must pay greater attention to compound events, which can “cause severe impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and society”.
Compound events
CDHEs are extreme weather events where drought and heatwave conditions occur simultaneously – or shortly after each other – in the same region.
These events are often triggered by large-scale weather patterns, such as “blocking” highs, which can produce “prolonged” hot and dry conditions, according to the study.
Prof Sang-Wook Yeh is one of the study authors and a professor at the Ewha Womans University in South Korea. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When heatwaves and droughts occur together, the two hazards reinforce each other through land-atmosphere interactions. This amplifies surface heating and soil moisture deficits, making compound events more intense and damaging than single hazards.”
CDHEs can begin with either a heatwave or a drought.
The sequence of these extremes is important, the study says, as they have different drivers and impacts.
For example, in a CDHE where the heatwave was the precursor, increased direct sunshine causes more moisture loss from soils and plants, leading to a drought.
Conversely, in an event where the drought was the precursor, the lack of soil moisture means that less of the sun’s energy goes into evaporation and more goes into warming the Earth’s surface. This produces favourable conditions for heatwaves.
The study shows that the majority of CDHEs globally start out as a drought.
In recent years, there has been increasing focus on these events due to the devastating impact they have on agriculture, ecosystems and public health.
In Russia in the summer of 2010, a compound drought-heatwave event – and the associated wildfires – caused the death of nearly 55,000 people, the study notes.
The record-breaking Pacific north-west “heat dome” in 2021 triggered extreme drought conditions that caused “significant declines” in wheat yields, as well as in barley, canola and fruit production in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, says the study.
Increasing events
To assess how CDHEs are changing, the researchers use daily reanalysis data to identify droughts and heatwaves events. (Reanalysis data combines past observations with climate models to create a historical climate record.) Then, using an algorithm, they analyse how these events overlap in both time and space.
The study covers the period from 1980 to 2023 and the world’s land surface, excluding polar regions where CDHEs are rare.
The research finds that the area of land affected by CDHEs has “increased substantially” since the early 2000s.
Heatwave-led events have been the main contributor to this increase, the study says, with their spatial extent rising 110% between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, compared to a 59% increase for drought-led events.
The map below shows the global distribution of CDHEs over 1980-2023. The charts show the percentage of the land surface affected by a heatwave-led CDHE (red) or a drought-led CDHE (yellow) in a given year (left) and relative increase in each CDHE type (right).
The study finds that CDHEs have occurred most frequently in northern South America, the southern US, eastern Europe, central Africa and south Asia.
Threshold passed
The authors explain that the increase in heatwave-led CDHEs is related to rising global temperatures, but that this does not tell the whole story.
In the earlier 22-year period of 1980-2001, the study finds that the spatial extent of heatwave-led CDHEs rises by 1.6% per 1C of global temperature rise. For the more-recent period of 2022-23, this increases “nearly eightfold” to 13.1%.
The change suggests that the rapid increase in the heatwave-led CDHEs occurred after the global average temperature “surpasse[d] a certain temperature threshold”, the paper says.
This threshold is an absolute global average temperature of 14.3C, the authors estimate (based on an 11-year average), which the world passed around the year 2000.
Investigating the recent surge in heatwave-leading CDHEs further, the researchers find a “regime shift” in land-atmosphere dynamics “toward a persistently intensified state after the late 1990s”.
In other words, the way that drier soils drive higher surface temperatures, and vice versa, is becoming stronger, resulting in more heatwave-led compound events.
Daily data
The research has some advantages over other previous studies, Yeh says. For instance, the new work uses daily estimations of CDHEs, compared to monthly data used in past research. This is “important for capturing the detailed occurrence” of these events, says Yeh.
He adds that another advantage of their study is that it distinguishes the sequence of droughts and heatwaves, which allows them to “better understand the differences” in the characteristics of CDHEs.
Dr Meryem Tanarhte is a climate scientist at the University Hassan II in Morocco, and Dr Ruth Cerezo Mota is a climatologist and a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both scientists, who were not involved in the study, agree that the daily estimations give a clearer picture of how CDHEs are changing.
Cerezo-Mota adds that another major contribution of the study is its global focus. She tells Carbon Brief that in some regions, such as Mexico and Africa, there is a lack of studies on CDHEs:
“Not because the events do not occur, but perhaps because [these regions] do not have all the data or the expertise to do so.”
However, she notes that the reanalysis data used by the study does have limitations with how it represents rainfall in some parts of the world.
Compound impacts
The study notes that if CDHEs continue to intensify – particularly events where heatwaves are the precursors – they could drive declining crop productivity, increased wildfire frequency and severe public health crises.
These impacts could be “much more rapid and severe as global warming continues”, Yeh tells Carbon Brief.
Tanarhte notes that these events can be forecasted up to 10 days ahead in many regions. Furthermore, she says, the strongest impacts can be prevented “through preparedness and adaptation”, including through “water management for agriculture, heatwave mitigation measures and wildfire mitigation”.
The study recommends reassessing current risk management strategies for these compound events. It also suggests incorporating the sequences of drought and heatwaves into compound event analysis frameworks “to enhance climate risk management”.
Cerezo-Mota says that it is clear that the world needs to be prepared for the increased occurrence of these events. She tells Carbon Brief:
“These [risk assessments and strategies] need to be carried out at the local level to understand the complexities of each region.”
The post Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 6 March 2026: Iran energy crisis | China climate plan | Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ wind turbine
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Energy crisis
ENERGY SPIKE: US-Israeli attacks on Iran and subsequent counterattacks across the Middle East have sent energy prices “soaring”, according to Reuters. The newswire reported that the region “accounts for just under a third of global oil production and almost a fifth of gas”. The Guardian noted that shipping traffic through the strait of Hormuz, which normally ferries 20% of the world’s oil, “all but ground to a halt”. The Financial Times reported that attacks by Iran on Middle East energy facilities – notably in Qatar – triggered the “biggest rise in gas prices since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine”.
‘RISK’ AND ‘BENEFITS’: Bloomberg reported on increases in diesel prices in Europe and the US, speculating that rising fuel costs could be “a risk for president Donald Trump”. US gas producers are “poised to benefit from the big disruption in global supply”, according to CNBC. Indian government sources told the Economic Times that Russia is prepared to “fulfil India’s energy demands”. China Daily quoted experts who said “China’s energy security remains fundamentally unshaken”, thanks to “emergency stockpiles and a wide array of import channels”.
‘ESSENTIAL’ RENEWABLES: Energy analysts said governments should cut their fossil-fuel reliance by investing in renewables, “rather than just seeking non-Gulf oil and gas suppliers”, reported Climate Home News. This message was echoed by UK business secretary Peter Kyle, who said “doubling down on renewables” was “essential” amid “regional instability”, according to the Daily Telegraph.
China’s climate plan
PEAK COAL?: China has set out its next “five-year plan” at the annual “two sessions” meeting of the National People’s Congress, including its climate strategy out to 2030, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. The plan called for China to cut its carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 17% from 2026 to 2030, which “may allow for continued increase in emissions given the rate of GDP growth”, reported