Germany's energy minister has correctly identified that it's sustainability that's crashing the German economy... First it was the pipeline supply of sustainability from Russia and now the seaborne supply of sustainability from the Gulf...

There is a misperception that fossil fuel shocks could drive *more* fossil fuel use. It should be simple: fossil fuels - including coal - get more pricey, we use less of them and more clean energy. The error is focusing on what politicians say instead of the real world.🧵 bsky.app/profile/laur...

Clean energy growth and slower fossil fuel consumption growth reduced India’s vulnerability to the impacts of the current fossil fuel shock: Consumption of imported coal at power plants fell by 20% in 2025, while gas imports fell by 6% and net oil imports were flat year-on-year.

NEW from us: India's CO2 emission growth slowed to less than 1% in 2025, the slowest rate in two decades, outside of the Covid drop. This was in part due to record clean energy growth which helped push down power sector emissions and is projected to accelerate this year.

🇨🇳 🎥 WEBINAR | Recording | Implications of China’s 15th five-year plan for climate & energy transition 🔍️ In case you missed it: Join experts here⤵️ energyandcleanair.org/aspi-crea-we... @belindaschaepe.bsky.social; @laurimyllyvirta.bsky.social; @katelogan.bsky.social & @asiapolicy.asiasociety.org

India's new 2035 climate targets undersell the country's potential for transformative clean energy growth. Under current plans&trends, the target of 60% clean power capacity will be achieved before 2030, rather than by 2035. That also allows much faster cuts in CO2 intensity. tinyurl.com/25p9jvuk

China kept adding clean energy at a brisk pace in Jan-Feb 2026, with 32GW of solar, 11GW wind and 1.2GW nuclear added. Solar slowed down compared to the frantic pace of the past two years but wind made a new record. The real eye-popper however is coal&gas (thermal) capacity additions..!

Here's how high fuel prices drove clean energy investments during the 2021-22 price shock - both solar and battery exports boomed just as fuel prices shot up. Battery demand is a proxy for EV manufacturing.

NEW SHIFT KEY I’m joined by the great @laurimyllyvirta.bsky.social to discuss what China’s new five-year plan tells us about its energy and economic ambitions, what *really* shapes its climate & energy strategy, and how it’s responding to the Iran war. heatmap.news/podcast/shif...

China's January-February industrial data is muddled by the Chinese New Year holiday as always, but there are still some key signals.

New from us: how Pakistan's solar boom is dampening the impact of the Hormuz crisis on the country. Solar power allowed LNG&diesel imports to fall after the previous gas crisis in 2021-22, with the solar boom set to avoid $7bn in fossil fuel import costs this year.

Lots of questions and muddled thinking about whether the impending fossil fuel crisis will benefit coal. Key thing to understand: Fossil fuel demand will fall; fuel-switching between coal and gas is temporary, while clean energy acceleration is structural. Just look at the 2021-2022 gas crisis.

"Achieving the UK’s net zero target by 2050 will cost less than a single oil shock and bring health and economic benefits while insulating the country against future costs, the government’s climate advisers have forecast." www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Very few consumers in the world, maybe 1 in 8, are shielded from the rise in gasoline&diesel prices (in that their government subsidizes fuel prices). A common mistake is thinking that being an oil exporter will shield consumers. Only switching to clean transport&energy does.

NEW – Q&A: What does China’s 15th ‘five-year plan’ mean for climate change? ✍️ By @anikanpatel.carbonbrief.org 💬 With comment from @laurimyllyvirta.bsky.social, Li Shuo, Li Zheng, Yao Zhe, Ma Jun, Pan Jiahua, Joseph Dellatte, Rebecca Nadin Read here ➡️ bit.ly/474QNPx

🇨🇳 NEW | INSIGHTS: China releases 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) 🏛️ Plan is highly supportive of clean energy; refrains from strong, measurable targets to reduce emissions or fossil fuel consumption w/ @laurimyllyvirta.bsky.social & @belindaschaepe.bsky.social energyandcleanair.org/chinas-15th-...

NEW ANALYSIS: UK emissions fell 2.4% in 2025 as coal fell to a 400-year low. Incredibly, we used less coal last year than than in 1600, when Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne and Shakespeare was writing Hamlet. All the details in our article: www.carbonbrief.org/...

How does the U.S.-Israel-Iran war and disruption of oil&gas shipments affect China’s energy strategy? It validates the emphasis on energy security and reducing reliance on oil&gas imports, with clean energy, electrification and green fuels playing a growing role in that strategy.

China's five year plan for 2026-2030 is out - what are the implications for energy and emissions? Here are my observations. www.linkedin.com/pulse/chinas...

As China prepares to release its key plans and targets for the next five years, possibly the biggest question for energy and emissions is a backward-looking one: how much did the country reduce carbon intensity in the past five years - and how much is left to do by 2030?

It's crazy how reliant the world's entire energy system is on one body of water, the Strait of Hormuz, just 20 nautical miles across at its narrowest, and situated in one of the most volatile regions on Earth. Here are the countries most dependent on oil&gas through the strait.

High power prices are a major drag not just on Europe's industry but electrification and therefore the energy transition. Removing the incentive for clean energy created by carbon prices would be counterproductive; making electricity cheaper while boosting clean could be welcome.

Breaking: China's official statistics report a 0.3% drop in CO2 emissions from energy&industry in 2025, the third time that annual emissions have fallen this century and the first fall predominantly driven by clean energy growth. 🧵

This a very significant step - the average PM2.5 pollution level in the key region around Beijing was 37 ug/m3 in 2025, still a bit above old national standard or 35, and now the standard becomes 30 this year and 25 in 2031. Clear mandate for environment ministry to push forward.

The value of Russia's fossil fuel exports fell 19% year on year during the fourth year of the full-scale invasion. Sanctions work. Clean energy works. But plenty more to do on both fronts.

Breaking: China’s CO2 emissions fell by 1% in the final quarter of 2025, likely securing a decline of 0.3% for the full year as a whole. This extends a “flat or falling” trend in China’s CO2 emissions that began in March 2024 and has now lasted for nearly two years.

Has China peaked emissions? We may not know for years to come, but new analysis from @laurimyllyvirta.bsky.social shows CO2 emissions fell by 0.3% last year — the first time China has recorded a decline while energy demand growth remained strong. Free link here: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

The Communist Party continues to set the bar low for China's emission peaking - coal consumption should "reach its peak and enter a plateau" from 2027, with continued increases from power and chemicals offset by reductions elsewhere, despite having fallen for close to two years.

NEW from us: Rapid expansion of the EV, wind, solar and other clean energy industries drove more than a third of China's GDP growth in 2025, and almost all of the growth in investment, making clean energy essential to meeting economic targets.

The first rule of holes is that when you find yourself in a hole, stop buying LNG from the bastard who dug the hole. The second rule is get out of the hole - electrify everything and clean up electricity.

Coal power in China: most new coal plants in a decade went online in 2025; plans for new projects reached a record high, with the equivalent of >150 large coal plants proposed. Thankfully permitting slowed so the government is limiting the expansion to a degree. What's going on?

News from Helsinki, Finland which recently became coal-free when the last two coal plants closed. The local government just released a statement that the coal exit led to very clear air quality improvements. Can you spot the coal exit in the graph of SO2 concentrations?

Good news from Australia: power generation from coal down 4.6% and from gas down 27% in Oct-Dec, with more than half of power generated from carbon-free sources. Power prices were fell by nearly 50%, as they do when you have a lot of zero marginal cost generation.

A 60% jump in EU LNG imports from the U.S. in 2025 managed to drive up greenhouse gas emissions on both sides of the Atlantic - in the EU from the burning of the gas, and in the U.S. by prompting a shift to coal-fired generation as prices rose.

Deploying wind power and cleaning up transportation in line with the EU’s 2030 targets would have reduced both oil and gas consumption by more than the total imports from Russia in 2025. That is, all oil and gas imported from Russia went to cover the shortfall to these targets.

New from us: The average EU citizen spent EUR880 on fossil fuel imports in 2025, as gas imports increased and the U.S. became the largest supplier. Slow progress on electrifying transport and buildings as well as building wind power are harming the bloc's economy and energy security.

🇪🇺 NEW | REPORT: EU CO2 emissions & fossil fuel imports review reveals emissions off track; clean energy investments lag behind fossil fuel imports that hit EUR 880 per citizen in 2025 ⚠️ Emissions from fossil fuels 4% above pathway to targets due to transport oil consumption

New from us: EU CO2 emissions fell only 0.8% in 2025, the second year in a row that the bloc has fallen short of its targets. Adverse weather played a big role but underlying issues are slow progress on transport and buildings electrification and wind power buildout.

This is not small.

China added 315GW of solar and 119GW of wind power capacity to the grid in 2025. And a staggering ~93GW of coal&gas-fired power capacity. Wind capacity additions grew 50%, solar 14%, making new records, and coal&gas 75% year-on-year.

New from us - captive coal power plant projects linked to energy intensive industrial plants keep proliferating in Indonesia, jeopardizing the country's targets for coal phase out and net zero emissions, while also messing up energy planning.

An emphasis on service sector growth in the new five year period would be highly significant as China's economic structure remains very energy-intensive.

China's battery energy storage additions saw a major acceleration in the second half of 2025, with 43GW of capacity added, compared with 23GW in the first half and 44GW during all of 2024.

Wind and solar power generation growth in China last year was roughly equal to the total power generation of France or Texas, and covered all of the growth in China's electricity use, even as demand grew at over 5%.

A big drop in China's highest-emitting industries in December with coal and gas-fired power down 3%, steel output 10% and cement output 7%, closing down 1%, 4% and 7% for the year. Clean power generation grew fast enough to cover all demand growth and push fossil generation down.

This morning, lots of people in Johannesburg complained about waking up to a terrible smell of rotten eggs. The culprit, as usual, was one of the worst sources of air pollution and greenhouse gases in Africa and the world, a huge plant producing liquid fuels from coal.

Even by Trump's standards, his comments on the global wind turbine market were incredibly misguided, so was really happy to contribute to this fact-checking piece. To be fair, many smarter people have also gotten the wrong idea due to all the hype about China's dominance of clean tech.

UK contracts for record 8.4 GW of offshore wind! 12 projects, including world's largest offshore project, at ~$91/MWh or 40% less than new gas! New gas plant costs $147/MWh, with CO2 emission cost. UK has 29 GW of operating wind & 10 GW under construction. www.edie.net/record-8-4-g... #energysky

NEW: Coal-fired power generation fell in both China and India in 2025, for the first time since 1973. The drop came after record clean energy additions in both countries, and was the first time that clean energy was a major driver of falling coal power use.

New from us: India’s coal-fired power generation fell in 2025 by 3%, only the second drop for a full calendar year since the 1970s, and the first one driven to a significant degree by clean power growth - the only other time coal power fell was due to Covid-19.