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Stamford, Lincolnshire Rock you grasp, fighting its cold indifference. Trees you take hold of, hoist yourself into, embrace, balance on

At the end of last winter I noticed this tree: a slim, high horse chestnut on the edge of my town. In summer its leaves gave it an hourglass shape. September ignited it. October, I showed my daughter its spiky conker capsules and the flawless autumn-shine of what was inside. In November’s first weeks I saw more of the sky through its branches each visit, its presence emaciating, the clarity of its skeleton crisping with every wintering day.

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Miniature monkeys at Symbio wildlife park in Helensburgh, south of Sydney. Three pygmy marmosets, including one that was only four weeks old, were stolen late last week. Two Sydney brothers have pleaded guilty to transporting and intending to sell them. Two of the three monkeys have been recovered but a third, 10-year-old Gomez, is still missing

• Sydney brothers plead guilty over theft of rare miniature monkeys

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Ta’u island in American Samoa will rely on solar panels and Tesla batteries as it does away with diesel generators

A remote tropical island has catapulted itself headlong into the future by ditching diesel and powering all homes and businesses with the scorching South Pacific sun.

Using more than 5,000 solar panels and 60 Tesla power packs the tiny island of Ta’u in American Samoa is now entirely self-sufficient for its electricity supply – though the process of converting has been tough and pitted with delays.

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Virginia coalminers in the industry's 1970s heyday. Jack Corn/EPA/US Natl Archives & Records Administration/Wikimedia Commons

On the night Donald Trump won the US election, one of the many jubilant supporters featured in the media coverage was 67-year-old Doug Ratliff of Richlands, Virginia. An owner of struggling shopping malls in a region hit hard by coal closures, he said Trump “gives people hope” that these ailing industries can be brought back to health.

But the reality is that Trump won’t be able to do it – any more than he can stop the rising seas flowing over vulnerable coastal areas of Florida, one of the states that helped to elect him president.

King Canute Trump and his aides can deny the veracity of climate change or threaten to shut down NASA’s climate programs all they want, but they are largely powerless to stop the global processes now under way to remove fossil fuels from global and local economies.

As the graph below shows, global economic growth has decoupled from growth in greenhouse gas emissions.

European nations such as Denmark, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK are now showing “absolute decoupling” – that is, their fossil fuel use is declining while their economies continue to expand. The UK – the birthplace of coal-fired power two centuries ago – will switch off its last coal power station in 2040.

America and Australia have been slower to decouple, but both have shown absolute declines in coal use since 2005 and 2009 respectively, while still growing economically. China is rapidly decoupling (in absolute terms with coal) while India is relatively decoupling.

The reality is that the world has learned to grow economically in the 21st century without needing fossil fuels to do it. Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) has assessed the trends in prices for different fuels and predicts that coal and gas-based power will go from 57% in 2015 to 31% in 2040, while renewables will go from 11% to 56% of power. This is without subsidies.

Already the world’s financiers have decided that renewables are a better deal than fossil fuels, which are riven with political uncertainties, volatility and declining competitiveness. BNEF’s analysis shows that new investment in renewables passed fossil-fuel-based power in 2005 and is now running at twice the rate.

Is this being driven by politicians, perhaps as a result of the Paris Agreement signed by nearly every government in the world, which took effect earlier this month?

Probably not. Apart from a few long-term goals, you could not say that governments have controlled this market in the past decade. What is actually happening is that they are now recognising the growing market for clean energy and in most cases simply trying to help it along where they can.

Rooftop solar, in particular, has become a dramatic market success story, with Australia leading the world in its recent growth. In Perth, for example, the resources boom led huge numbers of households to invest in solar photovoltaics, which are now available at roughly half the cost compared with the United States. As a result, 25% of houses in Perth have solar panels – a combined total of 550 megawatts, which effectively makes them the biggest power station in Western Australia.

This was not a government plan; it was ordinary householders seeing a good deal provided by smart new Australian businesses. WA Energy Minister Mike Nahan was initially somewhat sceptical, but as a good market economist he now says that the government just needs to get out of the way. Solar panels are well on the way to hitting 70% of households. Along with batteries going through the same dramatic price spiral, no extra fossil fuel power stations are now being envisaged.

It’s a similar story in Australia’s eastern states, where coal plants like Hazelwood are being phased out and the National Electricity Grid is absorbing solar at similarly high growth rates. The same story is being played out across the globe.

Businesses are also becoming their own utilities, as shown by high-tech companies like Apple, which are becoming energy “prosumers” that generate their own solar power and then sell excess back to the grid. The 24 largest current buyers of renewable power – a group that includes Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Ikea, Equinix, Mars, Dow, WalMart and Facebook – have bought 3.6 gigawatts of renewable energy since the beginning of 2015. That’s enough to power about half the state of Connecticut.

How or why would Donald Trump want to stop this?

Turning back the tide

Governments, including Trump’s, can try to stand in the way in a bid to force the economy back to a nostalgic past based on coal. But if they do, the lower levels of government, especially the cities of the world, will drive the agenda forward in tandem with businesses that are already riding high in the green economy.

California has driven much of the climate change agenda in the United States, since its Climate Act of 2006 required all cities to develop a climate action plan. San Francisco is moving to 100% renewable energy by 2030 and has mandated all buildings to install solar panels. The city expects paybacks within five years for everyone making the investment.

For all Trump’s pledges to bend trade to his will, he cannot stand in the way of market forces as strong as this. His place in history will be likened to the last Roman emperor standing on top of the wall in Constantinople as the invading horde bears down on the decaying city.

People in climate science and innovation, solar entrepreneurs and businesses will simply shift to those cities that want to be competitive in the 21st century. Many of them will still be in the United States – maybe even in Richlands, Virginia, assuming they don’t want to be left in the past.

Peter Newman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

myWatt is nifty, thrifty and a little bit geeky!

L03, one of the world leaders in developing blockchain technology for the energy industry, says utilities are facing rapid change.

AEMO says Hazelwood closure no threat to reliability – unless market sits on its hands. Meanwhile, Senate Committee recommends planned exit of coal generation by 2020.

SA government vows to "fight tooth and nail" against network operator as SAPN takes revenue challenge to federal court.

Tony Abbott uses Sky News interview to attack renewable energy in what could be seen as an affront to Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership position.

Group says England spends much more cleaning up floods than preventing them

Wind energy in Denmark generating enough electricity to meet the country's demand over the course of Saturday.

This is a guide for calculating some of the common Scope 3 emission sources. It is aimed to assist participants of the Carbon Neutral Program in developing their carbon inventory.

This is a guide for calculating some of the common Scope 3 emission sources. It is aimed to assist participants of the Carbon Neutral Program in developing their carbon inventory.

Melbourne-based Impact Investment Group’s (IIG) Giant Leap Fund has made its first two investments.

The Australian and Queensland Governments will next month update the World Heritage Centre on the significant progress being made through joint measures to protect and improve the Great Barrier Reef.

NSW renewables minister says solar households should be allowed to share and trade solar and be pinged only a minimal network "freight" fee.

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 2 December 1916

Surrey, November 30
A night frost made everything appear in the early morning as though it had been covered with a light fall of very fine snow. But when this melted with a slight shift of wind a touch of green came across one of the lower plough-fields. It is not a large stretch of land ­– the farmer calls it “a patch of corn,” – harrowed and sown, broadcast by hand while the surface was rather soft for a drill. There is always pleasure in the sight of these first shoots: you note their coming from one side just where the faint light of the sun strikes about noon, then cross to the other side and wait to see birds fly over from the meadow, where the tops of the grass here and there have withered to a dull brown. A farm hand is lifting swedes in the turnip field and trimming off the green tops with a bill, packing them in sacks for market. When this old labourer pauses for a rest he chops a root asunder, tosses half to a heifer that has come inquisitively across from the barnyard, cuts off a slice for himself, nibbles, pulls up his sheepskin gloves, and sets to work again. The afternoon turns grey and raw, and the wind is mournful in the bare elms. While a few small flakes are tossed in various directions a missel thrush starts his first song from the extreme branch of a pear tree by the orchard. It is but a few notes at a time with long pauses between, but it enlivens us all just here about the farm.

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We keep seeing more evidence that Direct Action is not working, and that our greenhouse pollution is going up.

New player in retail energy market aims to supply affordable 100 percent renewable- sourced electricity and generous feed in tariffs to Australians rooftop solar homeowners.

China's latest energy plan would see coal power increase by 200 gigawatts. Coal image from www.shutterstock.com

China recently announced a 20% increase in coal power capacity by 2020. Does the new target contradict its pledge to peak carbon emissions well before 2030 under the Paris Agreement?

China ratified the Paris Agreement in September 2016 and has put in place policies to achieve its climate target, or Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). China’s goal is to peak its carbon emissions by 2030 and reduce its carbon intensity (the amount of carbon produced per unit of GDP) by 60-65% below 2005 levels. To do so, it must therefore decouple emissions from economic growth.

These policies include new renewable energy targets and a nationwide emissions trading scheme, coupled with a domestic carbon offsetting scheme.

China’s NDC is expected to scale up clean energy development in China and displace coal-fired power generation.

One goal is to reduce the proportion of coal-fired power to 300 grams of coal equivalent per kilowatt-hour. The 20% increase in coal power seems to be offsetting these efforts, given that more than half of the country’s electricity is generated by burning coal.

But this may not contradict the country’s climate pledge if we look into the details.

A climate U-turn?

The National Energy Administration and the National Development Reform Commission announced China’s coal plan on November 7. It is specified in the country’s 13th Five-Year Plan of Electricity Development, which covers the period 2016-20.

The plan has raised a few eyebrows, in both its timing — the last five-year plan for the electricity sector was released more than 15 years ago — and its content.

The most controversial issue in the plan is the target for coal-fired power generation, which is to limit the total installed capacity to 1,100 gigawatts by 2020. Given that the current installed capacity is about 900GW, this allows for a massive 200GW increase in the next four years.

To put this number in context, Australia’s installed capacity for coal-fired electricity generation was 29GW in 2013-14. The worldwide installed capacity of solar photovoltaics at the end of 2015 was 227GW.

China’s proposed massive increase in coal power has raised questions about the environmental and economic rationales of the plan as well as the consistency between China’s energy and climate policies.

A mini coal boom

To understand the coal target, it is necessary to understand the way energy is governed in China.

Despite being an authoritarian state, China has always had a highly fragmented and complicated system when it comes to governing the country’s electricity systems.

Big power companies are owned by the state but remain relatively autonomous, and they are powerful and profit-driven. Large-scale energy projects such as coal-fired power plants are largely driven by these state-owned enterprises.

The recent decline in coal prices means that the business of owning and operating coal-fired power plants has become highly lucrative. These state-owned enterprises therefore have a strong motivation to build more coal-fired stations.

Moreover, the authority to approve coal plant construction has been delegated to the provincial level since 2014. This has further reduced the ability of national bodies to co-ordinate investment in coal power.

With the exception of a small number of highly developed regions that have enacted coal control policies, most provincial governments remain very receptive towards new investments in coal-fired power plants, because these investments attract jobs and tax incomes. These political and economic factors have resulted in a rapid rise in investment in coal power, a trend that will likely continue into the near future.

Still displacing coal power

The central government of China is trying to control this investment. According to Huang Xuenong, the head of the National Energy Administration’s electricity department, without any policy intervention, China’s coal-fired capacity would be about 1,250GW by the year 2020.

The 1,100GW target in the plan therefore means that the administration intends to restrict the rapid rise of coal power by at least 150GW. While representing a substantial increase from the current level, the main outcome would still be below business-as-usual.

This objective will be achieved primarily through four administrative interventions:

• retire a number of old and inefficient coal units

• halt projects that are under construction but have not received official approval

• suspend projects in provinces that do not have electricity shortages

• suspend the construction of coal stations that have already been approved in provinces that do not have shortage problems.

China remains committed to displacing coal-fired power generation. Perhaps the coal plan is not “green” enough, but behind the scenes are various efforts to shut down coal-fired power plants and suspend new coal projects.

The 20% increase in coal power alone hardly represents a U-turn in climate policy direction. The big picture is largely consistent with China’s policy objective of peaking its carbon emissions by 2030. The question is whether it can finish much earlier or not.

Alex Lo receives funding from the National Science Foundation of China, the Regional Studies Association (UK), and the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.

Kevin Lo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.