Climate change in 2025... how’s the world tracking?
Despite the worrying news that 2024 was likely the hottest on record, renewable energy champion Danny Kennedy says solar power is surging globally, China is greatly outpacing the rest of the world and the choice now for the world is whether we can become clean-powered “electrostates” or fall back on our polluting “petrostate” ways, Australia included.
Kennedy says “China has surged to the lead, lapping the world in the rush to clean energy. Europe continues to push to the front of the pack while South and Southeast Asia are moving up, passing East Asia and beginning to challenge Brazil and other countries in Latin America and Australia. The African continent may surprise us in years to come. Most concerning, after the Biden clean energy burst, the US looks ready to walk off the track to rejoin Russia and other petrostates who are boycotting the race to a Net Zero world.”
”It’s a scramble for the future,” Kennedy says. Energy has long been known as “the commanding heights” of the economy, a term borrowed from warfare. Last year was decidedly mixed. Fossil fuel power still dominates. Emissions growth is not falling fast enough. Unsurprisingly, 2024 was the hottest on record breaking the UN-agreed 1.5C warming limit. But clean energy use is surging beyond even the most optimistic predictions. Some 560 GWs of clean energy was added in 2023, with an investment close to US$2 trillion, and while numbers are not yet in, it was up again in 2024.
Five countries contribute three-quarters of estimated solar capacity additions in 2024. The combined additions of China, the United States, India, Germany and Brazil are on track to make up 75% of global solar additions in 2024 according to international energy think tank Ember.
And the costs of renewables are falling fast according to US-based think tank RMI. “Solar module prices fell 35 % to 9 US cents per watt; EV batteries are now below US$100/kWh and often at cost parity with their fossil-fuelled competition. And while this is great news for the climate, RMI says that despite knowing that focusing on energy efficiency and reducing methane are the two fastest ways to cut global warming, they are also the two furthest off track.
Read Danny Kennedy’s take on everything from the pace of change, potential for Trump to derail progress and what threatened tariffs might mean in his piece for Climate & Capital Media.
