Three charts that prove clean energy progress is really happening

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Renewable sources of energy are on the rise around the world, from solar panels paired with battery storage to rapid electric vehicle adoption. Countries are expanding the share of energy coming from these cleaner sources when compared to fossil fuels, particularly outside of the US.

But there is a split screen between the speed and progress of the clean energy transition and the slow pace of climate diplomacy. When countries around the world gather in Antalya, Turkey, on Nov. 9 for this year’s UN climate summit, known as COP31, they’re likely to find themselves in talks driven by longstanding tensions between industrialized nations (which are responsible for most global warming to date) and the developing world.

Experts say that balance between talks and action is less out-of-whack than it may initially appear, however. There’s progress being made, both at the negotiating table and in the real world. The talks lay some of the foundation for the growing reliance on renewables and provide a much-needed push to reduce carbon and methane emissions, they said.

The focus this year at COP is on implementing existing agreements, such as the Paris Climate Agreement, which is likely to put pressure on negotiators to make commitments on helping developing nations to finance their energy transition and compensate them for climate damages. These are two especially thorny issues at these meetings, with relatively scant progress made on them in previous years.

This doesn’t mean that COP meetings are unimportant. Experts say such summits are especially valuable for pushing countries to carve out their plans for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

“The Paris Agreement operates on two tracks — negotiations and action — and it has delivered important progress on both,” said Rick Duke, who served as the deputy US special envoy for climate change during the Biden administration. “On the action front, for example, in 2021 over 100 countries joined the Global Methane Pledge and a declaration to end deforestation,” he said.

China and Brazil, in particular, have made progress, Duke said. China now includes methane in its national targets and newly-reelected Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is pushing forward on plans to end Amazon deforestation. “That said, the process needs to do a better job holding countries accountable for their national targets and focusing attention on the “emergency brake” solutions like methane and forests that can cut warming fastest,” he said.

Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth and climate research lead at Stripe, said the steep decline in the costs of clean energy sources has helped to lower the severity of expected warming during the coming decades compared to projections made just a few years ago.

But how much of this was an achievement of decades of COP meetings, as opposed to favorable economic factors and actions countries would have taken anyway, is not entirely clear, he said.

⛅ Get CNN Weather in your inbox

The forecast is just the beginning. We’ll send you expert coverage and the stories behind the weather — so you always know more than just the number. Sign up for the newsletter

“It is difficult to separate out this progress from action countries may have taken in relation to the climate talks themselves, and simply the economics of renewables becoming far cheaper over time,” Hausfather said. “The COP process is sort of like the figurehead on top of all of the hard work that’s actually happening.”

The bottom line is that neither the policy discussions in Turkey nor global renewables deployment are happening fast enough to avert perilous amounts of further warming.

A UN report released last month, for example, warned that the world will soon overshoot the 1.5-degree Celsius warming target contained in the Paris Agreement, and that our best hope is to limit further warming, slash emissions and cool temperatures back down as quickly as possible.

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

从太阳能电池板搭配储能电池到电动汽车的快速普及，可再生能源在全球范围内蓬勃发展。各国都在提高这些清洁能源相对于化石燃料的占比，尤其是在美国以外的国家。

但清洁能源转型的速度和进展与气候外交的缓慢步伐之间存在着鲜明的对比。今年11月9日，世界各国齐聚土耳其安塔利亚，参加联合国气候峰会（COP31）。届时，他们很可能会发现自己卷入了由工业化国家（迄今为止造成全球变暖的主要责任方）与发展中国家之间长期存在的紧张关系所驱动的谈判之中。

专家表示，谈判与行动之间的平衡并没有最初看起来那么失衡。无论是在谈判桌上还是在现实世界中，都取得了进展。他们说，谈判为日益依赖可再生能源奠定了基础，并为减少碳排放和甲烷排放提供了亟需的动力。

今年的联合国气候变化大会重点在于落实现有协议，例如《巴黎气候协定》。这可能会给谈判代表带来压力，促使他们承诺帮助发展中国家为其能源转型提供资金，并补偿其因气候造成的损失。这两个问题在以往的会议上尤为棘手，进展甚微。

但这并不意味着缔约方大会不重要。专家表示，此类峰会对于推动各国制定温室气体减排计划尤为重要。

“《巴黎协定》的运作分为两个阶段——谈判和行动——而且在这两个阶段都取得了重要进展，”曾在拜登政府担任美国气候变化副特使的里克·杜克表示。“例如，在行动方面，2021年有超过100个国家加入了《全球甲烷承诺》和一项终止森林砍伐的宣言，”他说道。

杜克表示，中国和巴西尤其取得了进展。中国已将甲烷纳入国家目标，而新当选的巴西总统路易斯·伊纳西奥·卢拉·达席尔瓦正在推进终止亚马逊森林砍伐的计划。“尽管如此，这一进程仍需更好地督促各国履行其国家目标，并将注意力集中在甲烷和森林等能够最快减缓全球变暖的‘紧急制动’措施上，”他说道。

伯克利地球研究所气候科学家、Stripe公司气候研究负责人泽克·豪斯法瑟表示，清洁能源成本的急剧下降有助于降低未来几十年预期变暖的严重程度，与几年前的预测相比，情况有所改善。

但他表示，这其中有多少是数十年来缔约方大会会议的成果，又有多少是有利的经济因素以及各国无论如何都会采取的行动所致，目前尚不完全清楚。

⛅ 在您的收件箱中获取 CNN 天气预报

天气预报只是个开始。我们会为您推送专家报道和天气背后的故事——让您了解的不仅仅是数字。订阅我们的新闻简报。

豪斯法瑟表示：“很难将这一进展与各国在气候谈判中采取的行动，以及可再生能源随着时间推移成本大幅降低这一事实区分开来。《联合国气候变化框架公约》进程就像是所有实际开展的艰苦工作的象征。”

归根结底，无论是土耳其的政策讨论还是全球可再生能源的部署，速度都不够快，无法避免气候进一步变暖带来危险的后果。

例如，联合国上个月发布的一份报告警告说，世界很快就会超过《巴黎协定》中规定的 1.5 摄氏度的升温目标，我们最大的希望是限制进一步升温，大幅削减排放，并尽快将气温降下来。