There’s a surprising amount of good news when it comes to the transition to cleaner forms of energy. Renewables such as wind and solar are now the world’s largest source of power. Carbon emissions from China, by far the world’s largest emitter, could soon peak. And investments in non-fossil forms of energy are surging.
But change is not happening fast enough to avoid dangerous climate change. Rather than the warming limit of 1.5–2 ºC above pre-industrial levels that world leaders committed to in 2015, scientists now project that the planet is on a path to nearly 3 ºC of warming by 2100, posing innumerable dangers to future generations.
Here, seven charts explore progress towards limiting climate change, and the challenges ahead, as the world works to ramp up clean-energy systems and rein in greenhouse-gas emissions.
Hopeful trends
The amount of electricity generated by wind, solar and other renewable forms of energy has doubled over the past decade, overtaking coal as the largest source of power in 2025, according to projections made by the International Energy Agency (IEA), which has not yet released actual figures for last year.