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Piers Forster is Professor of Physical Climate Change and founding Director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at the University of Leeds.

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the landmark Paris Agreement, which has become a key compass in policymaking over the past years, preventing us from reaching a world with 4°C of warming. Climate ambition and implementation must continue at the pace the Paris Agreement requires.

Ten years ago, governments adopted an agreement that was supposed to keep the global average temperature “well below” 2°C above pre-industrial times and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C.

A decade later, 1.5°C is no longer a distant possibility but a lived reality.

UN accepts overshooting 1.5C warming limit – at least temporarily – is “inevitable”

The Paris Agreement is failing to meet its lowest temperature goal. Yet it has done something profound: it has steered the world away from 4°C of warming, towards a level closer to 2-something.

That is nowhere near safe, but it is not nothing.

As a climate scientist, I’ve seen the climate changing over the years. The influence humans exert on it is unequivocal. And it became clear that in a world that is shifting so rapidly, it’s key to provide decision-makers with frequent, robust updates on the state of the climate system. This is why, together with other colleagues, we created the Indicators of Global Climate Change (IGCC) initiative.

Hot seas and even hotter land bring dangerous impacts

Since 2023, we’ve been using IPCC methodologies to update key climate indicators that help us track how the climate is changing and how much of that is due to human influence. We found that global greenhouse gas emissions are at an all-time high, with around 53 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (GtCO2) having been released into the atmosphere, much higher than the approximate 41 GtCO2 in 2014.

The planet is now around 1.4°C warmer than in the late 19th century, compared with roughly 0.4°C in 1990, the year I embarked on my PhD, and about 1°C in 2015.

Land temperatures increased by 1.79°C from 1850–1900 to 2015–2024 and ocean temperatures by 1.02°C over the same period. Among the negative consequences of a warmer ocean, there’s sea level rise, which impacts coastal areas and becomes very dangerous for human settlements in those areas.

Unnervingly, this is likely the most stable and safest climate we will know for the next hundred years or more, given the carbon dioxide levels already in the atmosphere.

Capital shifting to clean energy sources

Although not as fast as humanity requires, climate policies have moved forward. The most visible change is in the power system. In 2015, renewables and nuclear made up about 24% of global electricity generation; today, they account for just over 40%.

In most of the world, new wind and solar are now cheaper than new fossil power. The economic case is better than ever to transition. The investment, innovation and policy shifts triggered or accelerated by Paris have rerouted capital in the right directions.

Taking the UK as an example, the government passed a net-zero emissions law in 2019, becoming the first major economy in the world to take such a step. The UK has also made significant progress in reducing emissions: in 2024, emissions levels were around 50% below those in 1990.

    How the Paris pact can mature

    Here’s what we need in the next 10 years for the Paris Agreement to survive its adolescence:

    First, science cannot be treated as a battleground.

    The latest IPCC cycle (AR6) had a more balanced authorship than ever before, with an approximately equal split between experts from the Global North and Global South and near parity between men and women. That diversity has strengthened, not weakened, the scientific consensus.

    Yet at this year’s COP30 climate conference, some governments tried to sideline IPCC findings and to block routine updates on the state of the climate from the final decision text – not because the numbers were wrong, but because they were angry at the glacial progress on climate finance or did not want their own climate ambitions scrutinized too closely.

    However, turning the scientific messenger into a target will not move a single dollar or tonne of CO2.

    Second, the world needs to stop obsessing over the “net” in net zero.

    The cheapest, fastest and most reliable way to slow the pace of climate change is to replace fossil fuels with renewables and, where appropriate, nuclear power, backed by storage, grids and efficiency.

    Yes, we need to plan for carbon dioxide removal and yes, we need to help nature restore its damaged ecosystems. These “net” parts of net zero remain important, but without a planned phase-out of fossil fuel production and use, the Paris temperature goals are dead.

    There are, however, glimmers of a post-fossil politics.

    Charting a path away from fossil fuels

    At COP30 in Belém, 24 countries, including major fossil fuel producers such as Australia and Colombia, backed language that points towards a managed transition away from fossil fuels.

    And 18 nations have now endorsed the proposal for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, which would, in effect, do for coal, oil and gas what earlier treaties did for nuclear weapons: cap, then wind down, the most dangerous stocks.

    Colombia seeks to speed up a “just” fossil fuel phase-out with first global conference

    The Brazilian COP presidency is also working on a fossil fuel phase-out roadmap, signaling that the politics of “how” to leave fossil fuels behind is finally catching up with the science of “why”.

    In some ways, it feels like 2014, when momentum built and delivered the Paris Agreement. The difference now is that we have the means to deliver on this vision.

    The post Why the Paris Agreement worked – and what it needs to do to survive appeared first on Climate Home News.

    Why the Paris Agreement worked – and what it needs to do to survive

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    China maximises battery recycling to shore up critical mineral supplies

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    February 9, 2026

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    Even the busiest streets of Shanghai have become noticeably quieter as sales of electric vehicles (EVs) skyrocketed in China, with charging points mushrooming in residential compounds, car parks and service stations across the megacity.

    Many Chinese drivers have upgraded their conventional vehicles to electric ones – or already replaced old EVs with newer models – incentivised by the government’s generous trade-in policies, or tempted by the latest hi-tech features such as controls powered by artificial intelligence (AI).

    “Different from conventional cars, EVs are more like fast-moving consumer goods, like smartphones,” explained Mo Ke, founder and chief analyst of Tianjin-based battery-research firm, RealLi Research. Their digital systems can become outdated quickly, so Chinese people typically change their EVs after five or six years while a conventional car can be driven much longer, he told Climate Home News.

    EV sales surpassed 16 million in China last year. Roughly 10% of all vehicles on the road were electric, and half of all new vehicles sold carried a green EV number plate, with an average of 45,000 EVs rolling off the production lines each day.

    But while fast-growing EV uptake is good news for Chinese EV and battery manufacturers, it is creating a huge volume of spent batteries.

    Tsunami of spent batteries

    Last year, China generated nearly 400,000 tonnes of old or damaged power batteries, largely consisting of vehicle batteries, according to government data. That is projected to rise to one million tonnes per year in 2030, officials forecast.

    The growing waste problem has spurred the government to launch a series of new policies aimed at regulating the country’s battery recycling industry, which though well-established is marked by a high degree of informality – especially in the lucrative repurposing sector where discarded EV batteries are given a new lease of life in less energy-intensive uses, such as power storage.

      China is determined to build a “standardised, safe and efficient” recycling system for batteries, Wang Peng, a director at China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, told a press conference as the government launched a recycling industry push in mid-January.

      A policy paper published by the government last month detailed Beijing’s plans to mandate end-of-life recycling for EVs together with their batteries to prevent them from entering the grey, informal market, and establish a digital system to track the lifecycle of every battery manufactured in the country. Under the plans, EV and battery makers will be held responsible for recycling the batteries they produce and sell.

      “The volume of the Chinese market is too big, so it has to take actions ahead of other countries,” Mo said, adding that he expected the government to release more details about implementation of the plans in the near future.

      Critical minerals choke point

      China’s strategy for the battery recycling sector could also prove a boon for the world’s largest battery producer by bolstering its supply of minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese.

      Along with the looming large-scale battery retirement, policymakers’ focus on battery recycling also reflects concern about critical minerals supplies, said Li Yifei, assistant professor of environmental studies at New York University Shanghai. “The government also felt the increasing pressure of securing resources,” he told Climate Home News.

      “When you set up an efficient battery-recycling system, you essentially secure a new source for critical minerals, and that can help you enhance economic security. That’s why the industry is so important,” Lin Xiao, chief executive of Botree Recycling Technologies, a Chinese company offering battery-recycling solutions, told Climate Home News.

      Cobalt and nickel-free electric car batteries boom in “good news” for rainforests

      China dominates global refining of several minerals critical for producing EV batteries, but it still relies on imports of the raw materials – a choke point Beijing is acutely aware of, industry experts say.

      China imports more than 90% of its cobalt, nickel and manganese, which are important ingredients for EV batteries, Hu Song, a senior researcher with the state-run China Automotive Technology and Research Centre, told China’s CCTV state broadcaster in June 2025. For lithium, the figure was around 60% in 2024, according to a separate report.

      “If [those] resources cannot be recycled, then we will keep facing strangleholds in the future,” Hu said.

      Big players gain ground

      Spent EV batteries can be reused in settings that have lower energy requirements, such as in two-wheelers or energy-storage systems. When they become too depleted for repurposing, they can be scrapped and shredded into “black mass”, a powdery mixture containing valuable metals that can be recovered.

      Reflecting the size of China’s EV market, the country already dominates global battery recycling capacity. It is home to 78% of the world’s battery pre-treatment capacity, which is for scrapping and shredding, and 89% of the capacity for refining black mass, according to 2025 forecasts by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a UK firm tracking battery supply chains.

      A number of large corporate players have emerged in the sector in recent years.

      Huayou Cobalt, a major producer of battery minerals, has built a business model for recycling, repurposing and shredding old batteries, as well as refining black mass and making new batteries using recovered materials.

      It recently signed a deal with Encory, a joint venture between BMW and Berlin-based environmental service provider Interzero, to develop cutting-edge battery-recycling technologies, with their first joint factory set to open in China this year.

        Suzhou-based Botree Recycling Technologies has developed various solutions to turn retired power batteries into new ones. Meanwhile, Brunp Recycling, the recycling arm of Chinese battery giant CATL, has built large factories to recycle lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, a type of lithium battery that does not use nickel or cobalt, as well as nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) batteries, which are more popular outside of China.

        But Mo, of RealLi Research, said much remains to be done to regulate and formalise the battery recycling industry.

        Underground workshops

        Across China, small underground workshops plague the repurposing sector, rebundling depleted batteries for sale without following industry standards or complying with health and safety requirements.

        Because these operators have lower operational costs, they are able to offer higher prices to EV owners to buy their old batteries, undercutting formal recycling companies.

        “This creates distortions in the market where legitimate players, who invest in proper detection, hazardous waste treatment and compliance, struggle to compete purely on price,” a spokesperson at CATL, the world’s largest battery manufacturer, told Climate Home News.

        Despite such challenges, CATL’s Brunp subsidiary produced 17,100 tonnes of lithium in 2024 from the 128,700 tonnes of depleted batteries it recycled that year, according to CATL’s annual report.

        Recycling expertise in demand

        Since it was founded in 2019, Botree has formed partnerships with several major clients, which together recycle about half of China’s power batteries, the company’s CEO Lin said.

        As other countries grapple with rising volumes of spent batteries, Chinese recyclers are also finding new foreign markets for their know-how.

        Botree has joined forces with Spanish consulting firm ILUNION and renewable energy company EFT-Systems to build a factory to recycle LFP batteries in Valladolid.

        The plant, scheduled to start operation in 2027, will be able to recycle 6,000 tonnes of LFPs annually when it opens, accounting for roughly 15% of demand in the Spanish market.

        “(The companies) tell us what batteries they recycle and what battery materials they want to regenerate,” Lin said. “We can design a complete process for them.”

        The post China maximises battery recycling to shore up critical mineral supplies appeared first on Climate Home News.

        China maximises battery recycling to shore up critical mineral supplies

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        A Groundbreaking Geothermal Heating and Cooling Network Saves This Colorado College Money and Water

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        February 9, 2026

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        When a former oil and gas developer partnered with Colorado Mesa University on geothermal, the school saved millions and set a new standard for energy-efficient buildings.

        By Phil McKenna

        GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.—The discussions started roughly a decade ago, when an account manager at Xcel Energy, the electricity and gas utility provider, expressed confusion, officials at Colorado Mesa University recalled.

        A Groundbreaking Geothermal Heating and Cooling Network Saves This Colorado College Money and Water

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        Georgia Power Gas Expansion Would Drive Significant Climate-Damaging Pollution

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        February 9, 2026

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        The expansion could add millions of tons of carbon pollution annually while polluting the air near vulnerable communities and ecosystems.

        By Ryan Krugman

        Georgia regulators have approved a massive expansion of natural gas power plants that could dramatically increase the state’s climate pollution, largely to support the rapid growth of data centers.

        Georgia Power Gas Expansion Would Drive Significant Climate-Damaging Pollution

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