From the Editor
Ten years after the Paris Agreement, the question has shifted from what the world promises to what it delivers. This fall brought that shift into sharp relief: a COP in the Amazon that strengthened the finance machinery but could not say the words “fossil fuels,” and a new force reshaping electricity demand that no national plan saw coming: artificial intelligence. The two stories will compete for the same grids, the same supply chains, and the same political attention for the rest of the decade.
Chaofeng Wang, Editor
Finance Moves, Fossil Words Don't
Belém, Brazil. The first COP held in the Amazon closed in November with real movement on money and a conspicuous silence on fuel. Brazil branded the summit a mutirão, a collective effort, and on finance the label fit. Countries reaffirmed the pathway set in Baku and launched new delivery vehicles, including a Global Implementation Accelerator and the Belém Mission to 1.5°C.
| $300 B / yr | for developing nations by 2035: the Baku core goal, reaffirmed |
| $1.3 T / yr | the broader mobilization goal from public and private sources |
| $120 B / yr | adaptation finance by 2035, a commitment to triple it |
| 80+ nations | backed a fossil fuel transition roadmap, cut from the final text |
The defining controversy was that last line. More than eighty nations championed a roadmap for transitioning away from fossil fuels (the phrase the world adopted in Dubai two years ago), and every mention of it was stripped from the final text under pressure from major producers. But the coalition did not disband: Colombia and the Netherlands announced they would convene the first international conference on fossil fuel phase-out themselves, outside the UN process, in spring 2026. The multilateral text lost a sentence; the issue gained a venue.
Both halves of the outcome matter for research. A $1.3 trillion flow does not exist in public budgets; it will have to be engineered, which is where innovative financing work (community energy finance, blended public–private models) must prove itself. And the roadmap's failure is a reminder that decarbonizing steel, cement, and chemicals will be decided in plants, procurement rules, and regional coalitions rather than plenary halls.
The Grid Meets AI: A New Demand Curve
The energy story of 2025 was written in data centers. The International Energy Agency's first Energy and AI report projects that global data-center electricity demand will more than double by 2030 to around 945 TWh (more than Japan's entire consumption today), with demand from AI-optimized data centers more than quadrupling. In the United States, data centers are on course to account for almost half of all electricity demand growth to 2030; a single large AI campus can draw as much power as a mid-sized city. After two decades in which rich-world electricity demand barely moved, grid planners are suddenly working a growth problem again.
For energy researchers, AI cuts both ways. It is a tool, accelerating materials discovery, renewable systems design, and grid operations, and it is now also a grid-scale load that will shape which generation gets built, where transmission goes, and which communities host the infrastructure. Whether the buildout strengthens the transition by financing new clean capacity, or strains it by extending the life of fossil plants and crowding out other demand, is not settled anywhere yet. The answer will be written in interconnection queues, rate cases, and siting hearings over the next few years, and this digest will keep returning to it.
September 30 marked one year since Ratcliffe-on-Soar ran its final shift and the UK became the first G7 economy to end coal-fired power, the milestone that opened our inaugural issue. The grid has run coal-free through a full cycle of seasons, including a winter, while decommissioning proceeds at the plant. The harder questions we flagged a year ago (the workforce, the tax base, the site) remain open, and remain the real test of whether a phase-out counts as a transition.
In Brief
- The US reverses its clean energy tax credits. The budget law signed July 4 phases out federal credits for new wind and solar: projects must generally start construction within a year or be operating by end-2027 to qualify. The sharpest federal reversal of the buildout era, and a stress test of how much momentum is now market-driven.
- Iberia goes dark for a day. On April 28, a cascading failure knocked out power across Spain and Portugal in one of Europe's most severe blackouts. Investigations pointed to voltage-control and planning failures rather than renewables as such, but grid stability in high-renewables systems became a mainstream political question overnight.
- Solar tops the EU mix. In June, solar was the European Union's single largest source of electricity for the first month ever, a crossover for a technology that was a rounding error in the mix fifteen years ago.
- China's half-year like no other. Roughly 212 GW of solar went up in China in the first half of 2025 alone (more than any other country has installed in total), partly a race to beat domestic pricing reforms.
Three Dates for the Diary
January 27: the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement takes legal effect. Spring: Colombia and the Netherlands convene the first international fossil fuel phase-out conference, picking up the thread Belém dropped. March: IRENA's annual statistics show whether 2025 extended the record buildout streak to a fourth year. All three in our next issue.
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