How electricity is changing around the world
Carbon-free electricity has never been more plentiful. Wind and solar power have taken off over the past two decades, faster than experts ever expected.
But it hasn't yet been enough to halt the rise of coal- and gas-burning generation.
That's because global demand for electricity has grown even faster than clean energy, leaving fossil fuels to fill the gap.
The dynamic has pushed up carbon emissions from the power sector at a time when scientists say they need to be falling — and fast — to avoid dangerous levels of global warming.
Much of the rising power demand has come from rapidly-developing countries such as China and India, where new coal plants are still coming online alongside wind and solar farms to power meteoric economic growth. But many industrialized nations are also not moving away from fossil fuels fast enough to meet their stated climate change goals.
Even on today's trajectory, many experts expect that fossil-fueled power will peak globally in the next few years.
It's already falling in major economies such as the United States and Europe, and analysts expect China, by far the world's largest power producer, to begin reducing coal-fired generation soon.
The world's climate future will depend, in large part, on what happens next.
Experts broadly agree that keeping global temperature rise to «well below» 2 degrees Celsius, the world's self-imposed climate goal — and ideally as low as 1.5 degrees — will require peaking and then rapidly reducing fossil-fueled power, in favor of carbon-free sources, such as wind and solar. (The world has already warmed about 1.2 degrees since preindustrial times.)
«The big question,» said Dave Jones, an electricity analyst at Ember, a London-based think tank, is
