The Climate Scorecard Is Looking Bleak in 2025
With political goodwill on clean energy evaporating, a lot is riding on what China — a voracious electricity consumer — does next.
Political goodwill on clean energy is evaporating.
Photographer: Brook Mitchell/Getty Images
We’re now almost halfway through a decade where the world needs to drastically cut carbon emissions if we’re to avoid damaging global warming. The outlook isn’t good. Far from declining, greenhouse pollution is barely slowing from the pace it’s been growing at for the past two decades. Despite a blistering build-out of solar power and electric vehicles, coal consumption has blown past previous records and looks set to increase for several years to come.
Political goodwill toward clean energy is probably weaker now in global terms than at any time since the 2015 Paris Agreement finally brought all United Nations members to the table. There’s still a slim hope that this is just a cyclical low rather than the moment when the world gave up on the energy transition it needs. Here’s five waypoints to judge whether the picture will look better by the end of 2025 than it does now.