Across the grid, the operators of coal power stations stepped up their maintenance schedules, decreasing supply and increasing cost. With coal-generated electricity scarce, gas was tapped as a replacement at prices driven up by a global shortage caused by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, in turn inflating household electricity bills. Australia is in the process of replacing these coal plants with renewables – backed by gas, hydro and batteries – not just to reach net zero, but because wind and solar power are now far cheaper than coal power.
Second, Joyce says most of the world has abandoned the effort to reach net zero under the Paris Agreement, citing as examples countries including China, Brazil, Indonesia and the United States. Nonsense, says Tim Buckley, director of Climate Energy Finance.
China’s staggering deployment of renewable energy continues to shock analysts around the world, Buckley says
Renewables in China are not only meeting the soaring demand for new power, but displacing fossil fuels and cutting China’s emissions. According to an analysis by Lauri Myllyvirta from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and senior fellow at Asia Society Policy Institute, published in May in Carbon Brief, emissions in China were down 1.6 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025, due to a 5.8 per cent drop in the power sector
“While power demand grew by 2.5 per cent overall, there was a 4.7 per cent drop in thermal power generation – mainly coal and gas.”
In fact, China’s renewables surge is so rapid and vast that it is not only cutting its own emissions, it is exporting emission cuts. In 2024, Chinese factories emitted 110 million tonnes of greenhouse gases in the manufacture of solar panels, batteries, EVs and wind turbines for export.
But once installed around the world, that technology will see 220 million tonnes of emissions avoided per year over their lifetimes, another Carbon Brief analysis shows. “Such exports in 2024 alone are already shaving 1 per cent off global emissions outside of China and, in total, will avoid some 4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (GtCO2) over the lifetimes of the products.”
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