Carbon Brief

5 days ago | carbonbrief.org | Wanyuan Song

DeBriefedDeBriefed 9 May 2025: Australia elects climate action; Spain ‘committed’ to renewables; Taiwan’s nuclear phaseout Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed. An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change. CLIMATE PROMISE: Australia’s Labor party has secured a second term in power following a landslide election victory, reported CNN.

1 week ago | carbonbrief.org | Ayesha Tandon

Children born in 2020 will face “unprecedented exposure” to extreme weather events, including heatwaves, droughts and wildfires, even if warming is limited to 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures. That is according to a new study, published in Nature, which calculates the number of unprecedented extreme events that people born in different decades and countries might  live through.

1 week ago | carbonbrief.org | Ayesha Tandon

The “wealthiest 10%” of people on the planet are “responsible” for 65% of the 0.61C increase in global average temperatures over 1990-2020, according to new research. The study, published in Nature Climate Change, uses a field of climate science called “attribution” to determine the contribution of the world’s “wealthiest population groups” to climate change through the greenhouse gases they emit.

1 week ago | carbonbrief.org | Yuan Ye

人工智能（AI）等技术的蓬勃发展带动了中国数据中心的“爆发式增长”，同时也推高了能源消耗和碳排放。 截至2023年底，中国以449个数据中心的数量位居亚太地区之首。 国际能源署（IEA）最新报告显示，2024年中国数据中心用电量已占全球数据中心用电总量的25%，成为仅次于美国的全球第二大电力消耗国。 与各国情况类似，中国数据中心用电量预计将在未来几年持续快速增长，人工智能的兴起是重要推动因素之一。 不过，当前实际需求规模及未来增速仍存在不确定性。 现阶段，其他驱动因素对电力需求增长的影响仍远大于数据中心。 虽然各方对数据中心的预测数据存在差异，但有报告指出，其电力需求可能从2025年的100-200TWh（太瓦时）激增至2030年的600TWh，相应的CO2排放量或将达到200MtCO2e（百万吨二氧化碳当量）。 尽管中央和地方政府已出台多项政策以应对数据中心的环境影响，但挑战依然存在。...

1 week ago | carbonbrief.org | Josh Gabbatiss

UK newspapers have already launched more editorials attacking Ed Miliband in the first four months of 2025 than they did during the whole of 2024, Carbon Brief analysis reveals. In the year to date, predominantly right-leaning publications have published 65 editorials – articles seen as the newspaper’s formal “voice” – criticising the UK energy secretary, compared with only 61 across the full year of 2024.