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Data centers have become convenient villains in the public debate. They are blamed for overloading the grid, worsening congestion, consuming “too much” electricity, and wasting heat that evaporates uselessly into the air. And yes, these concerns come from real pressures: Europe’s electricity grids are strained, clean generation is lagging behind demand, and many data centers st ...

Two weeks ago, our brief outlined what COP30 needed to deliver: clearer national climate plans, stronger protection for tropical forests, and credible finance for emerging economies. Now that the summit has concluded, the results show meaningful steps forward but stop short of the structural change that science indicates is necessary. Belém did not shift global climate politics ...

From 10 to 21 November 2025, world leaders will gather in Belém, Brazil, for the 30th UN Climate Conference (COP30). The choice of venue, at the mouth of the Amazon, gives both symbolic and practical weight to a crucial moment for global climate diplomacy. Ten years after the Paris Agreement, countries are expected to show whether ambition can still match reality. The setting h ...

Nuclear fusion is the holy grail for producing energy: virtually limitless clean energy without the waste or meltdown risk of fission. Besides from making reaching climate goals a lot easier, it also provides a solution to the recently more prominent question of energy security and independency. The latest headliness have made updated promises for this exiting new technology, y ...

Three years ago, together with Geert Noels and Yanaika Denoyelle, I co-authored “Climate Shock”, a book in which we outlined twenty climate solutions for Belgium and quantified their CO₂ impact. Since then, the world has changed profoundly, and so has the way we approach climate policy. Public interest in climate issues has declined, and political support across Europe is far m ...

This Friday, the global shipping sector may have reached an inflection point. In London, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) gathers its member states to vote on what could become the world’s first binding climate deal for commercial maritime transport. At stake is a carbon pricing framework designed to steer a sector responsible for roughly three percent of global gr ...

Last week, we took a dive into solar PV additions in 2024, placing them against the 2030 NZE benchmark to see how far we’ve come. This week, we turn our eyes to wind power. It’s important to start from the same reference point: under the IEA’s Net Zero Emissions scenario, 2,742 GW of installed wind capacity (onshore and offshore combined) is needed by 2030. With solar surging, ...

More than a year ago, our weekly Climate Shocker studied the global solar PV capacity additions for 2023 and how they stacked up against the Net Zero Emissions (NZE) targets for 2030. With 2024 well behind us and new data available, it felt like the right moment to revisit those numbers and assess where we stand. In this update, the focus will lie on grid-connected solar photov ...

As the world accelerates toward a more sustainable energy future, the transition is proving to be more complex and nuanced than a straightforward shift to renewables. While the growth of solar and wind capacity continues at a record pace, the need for reliable, flexible, and complementary energy sources remains critical. In this context, gas-fired power plants and turbines are ...

With the progression of the digital age, the need for data centers to store and process vast amounts of information is surging, largely fueled by tech giants.These data centers, which power everything from cloud computing to AI, require significant amounts of electricity to function, and their energy consumption is projected to grow substantially. Currently, data centers consum ...