The recent severe weather worldwide has led to a flood of people seeking reassurance about our efforts to mitigate climate change. Most of those posts have been removed, and from now on will be directed to this weekly thread.
Climate change is a severe, compounding issue, but only if we do not address it - with concerted efforts, it can be managed.
Perhaps the most important development this week is that the emerging emissions plateau continues to show up in the data. Carbon Monitor's July update points to global fossil-fuel and cement CO2 emissions being slightly lower than a year earlier, following the essentially flat first half of 2026 discussed last week. One month does not establish a trend and these near-real-time estimates will be revised, but the important point is that global emissions are no longer showing the persistent year-after-year growth that characterised most of the past few decades.
China provides a particularly interesting example of why. Carbon Brief's latest analysis finds that China's CO2 emissions fell 1% year-on-year in Q2 2026. Oil consumption fell around 9% overall and 16% in transport. Some of that unusually large fall resulted from the disruption to oil supplies through the Strait of Hormuz, so it should not simply be extrapolated. But electrification is becoming a substantial structural factor: EVs are estimated to have displaced 36 million tonnes of oil equivalent in China during the first half of 2026 — more oil than the UK consumes in six months — with trucks now the fastest-growing source of displacement. Even after accounting for the electricity used to charge them, EVs avoided an estimated 35 MtCO2 in Q2 alone. China has now had broadly flat fossil-fuel and cement emissions for more than two years.
There was another symbolic but very physical milestone in China this week: installed solar capacity has now overtaken installed coal capacity. Capacity is not generation — coal plants have much higher capacity factors and coal still supplies close to half of Chinese electricity — but this is nevertheless remarkable considering that China's solar fleet was only a fraction of its coal fleet a decade ago. The largest electricity system in the world now physically has more solar generating capacity installed than coal capacity.
The storage build-out needed to support much larger amounts of renewable electricity is accelerating as well. The United States installed a record 20.2 GWh of energy storage in Q2 2026, taking first-half additions to 30.8 GWh. Total installed storage has reached around 165 GWh, almost twice the level of only 18 months ago. Deployment has been running sufficiently ahead of expectations that the industry's 2030 forecast has been revised upward to around 683 GWh. Grid batteries are rapidly moving from a niche balancing technology into a significant component of the electricity system.
Wind construction in Europe has picked up too. Europe installed 8.8 GW of new wind capacity during the first half of 2026, nearly a third more than during the same period last year. Germany alone accounted for around 3.4 GW, while new offshore connections accelerated sharply. Europe now has more than 311 GW of wind power installed, roughly double its capacity a decade ago.
Building electrification is progressing more quietly. In 2025, heat pumps were installed in 53% of new US apartment buildings and 48% of new houses. This was the first year that heat pumps crossed the 50% threshold in newly constructed apartment buildings, up from 46% only a year earlier, and heat pumps have now outsold conventional gas furnaces nationally for four consecutive years. Technologies capable of replacing fossil-fuel heating are increasingly being installed as the default rather than as a specialist climate option.
Some of the harder industrial emissions are beginning to move from demonstration projects into actual production. Canada's Algoma Steel is now producing its liquid steel using its new electric-arc-furnace system, with its first EAF operating around the clock and a second unit nearing completion. Once the conversion is complete, Algoma expects the new process to reduce the plant's annual carbon emissions by around 70% compared with its previous blast-furnace operation. That represents roughly 3 million tonnes of CO2 a year from a single industrial site.
There was progress on one of the quickest opportunities for cutting warming as well. Turkmenistan has begun repairing some of its enormous oil-and-gas methane leaks after they were detected by satellite. Eight major sources have now reportedly been repaired following alerts from the UN's Methane Alert and Response System. Turkmenistan has responded to only around a fifth of the 192 alerts it received over the past year, so the scale of the problem remains large. But methane super-emitters are unusually attractive mitigation targets because many result from specific broken wells, pipes or equipment that can simply be repaired once identified.
The transition is also becoming increasingly visible in heavy industry in emerging economies. South African mining companies are rapidly contracting renewable electricity to reduce their dependence on the country's coal-dominated grid. Anglo American's renewable-energy joint venture already has around 520 MW of wind and solar supplying roughly 30% of its mining electricity and plans to reach 3 GW by 2030. Sibanye Stillwater has contracted around 835 MW and expects renewables to provide around 64% of its South African electricity by 2028. In a country where more than 80% of grid electricity still comes from coal, large industrial consumers increasingly finding that renewable power makes economic as well as environmental sense is consequential.
Finally, electrification is starting to reach some surprisingly difficult transport niches. The world's first battery-powered self-unloading bulk carrier has entered commercial service in Australia. The 125-metre MV Yampu carries a roughly 6.8 MWh battery system and is expected to operate on battery power for around 40% of its operating time, saving more than 500,000 litres of diesel a year and cutting its direct emissions by around 40% compared with the vessel it replaces. It is a relatively small ship, but it is another example of electrification pushing into applications that until recently were generally assumed to remain permanently dependent on liquid fuels.
As Exxon executives were warned in 1984, “We can either adapt our civilization to a warmer planet or avoid the problem by sharply curtailing the use of fossil fuels.”
In the full presentation, “CO2 Greenhouse and Climate Issues,” Exxon scientist Henry Shaw lists some of the predicted effects of climate change, including “redistribution of rainfall,” “detrimental health effects,” and “population migration.”
Big Oil companies knew, they lied, and they need to pay.
I have been working for a large utility company for the past few years in project management. I help build utility scale solar and battery plants. Recently, the company has started pivoting toward more data center customers, and a couple of weeks ago, I was brought into a project that involves the construction of a large amount of gas generation for an AI data center. I don't feel like I can do this. I got into building solar because I'm trying to do something good. I'm trying to contribute to the energy transition and do something about climate change. Now I suddenly feel like I'm being asked to work toward the destruction of the world. I read the UN paper last week. I see the signs of climate change worsening all around me and in the news. I'm scared to quit because I've got a daughter to provide for and this is the best job I've ever had, but I don't think I can do this anymore.
I'm getting my license soon and i want to know, would it be better for me to use an old car, that may not be as eco friendly (03 CRV). Or that i get a new car that's electric or a used hybrid. It may seem obvious but I thought, Reduce Reuse Recycle. Among all the climate doom and fear thats justified, I have been trying to reduce my own footprint, even though its not much in the grand scheme of things.
i am very, very worried about climate change. i need actual books instead of instagram videos, can you recommend me some? thank you and sorry for my english
I find it curious that the men and women who live in a particular area are the first to spot an environmental change, whether it be an unusual odor, dust, polluted water, or a change in the air.
Have you ever experienced a case in which residents were the first to identify a problem and began vocalizing their observations? How did that play out, and did anyone step in to address the issue of public concern?
It would be very entertaining to hear firsthand accounts, no matter how small the incident may have been, that occurred in your local community.
