EU Renewables growth fails to oust fossil fuels as France alone hits transition target - Energy Institute

Renewable energy use grew by more than 60% between 2017 and 2025, but still met only 8.6% of global demand as fossil fuel consumption kept rising. / bne IntelliNews

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By Ben Aris in Berlin November 13, 2026

Most big energy users now burn less energy per dollar of output, but global fossil fuel use is still up 8% since 2017, the Energy Institute said on November 10.

Since 2017, 83% of the countries covered by the Institute's Country Transition Tracker have cut the energy intensity of their economies and 86% have lowered the carbon intensity of the energy they consume. Over the same period fossil fuel use rose by 40 exajoules (EJ), with natural gas demand up by nearly 15%, coal by 7% and oil by 5%, while energy-related greenhouse gas emissions grew by nearly 1% a year on average between 2017 and 2025.

The tracker, published on Energy Day at the COP31 climate summit, shows clean energy being added on top of fossil fuels, which are still growing. Renewables have grown faster than fossil fuels for years, yet the world burns more coal, oil and gas than it did in 2017, and fossil fuels supplied more than 85% of the energy consumed worldwide in 2025, according to the Institute's Statistical Review of World Energy published in June.

"The message from this year's Country Transition Tracker is that there is no single global energy transition moving at one speed. Progress is real, particularly on energy efficiency, carbon intensity and the growth of renewable energy, but it is uneven between countries and between different parts of the energy system," said Gemma Regniez, the Energy Institute's director of external affairs.

The tracker draws on the Statistical Review to assess around 80 of the world's largest energy-consuming countries, which account for more than 96% of global energy consumption and 95% of emissions. It scores them on eight measures: energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, fossil fuel consumption, renewable energy consumption, power sector decarbonisation, the carbon intensity of the energy system, energy consumption per capita, economy-wide energy intensity and economy-wide carbon intensity.

Efficiency is the one broad win

Energy intensity, the amount of energy needed to produce a dollar of GDP, is where the progress is most widespread. Hydrocarbon producers dominate the bottom of the table. Trinidad and Tobago, whose economy is built around gas-based petrochemicals and LNG, used about 15 megajoules per dollar of GDP in 2025, followed by Iceland at about 13, Turkmenistan at about 12.5 and Venezuela at about 11.5. Oman, Kuwait, Iran, Qatar, Russia and the UAE make up the rest of the ten most energy-intensive economies, with Russia at about 7.2 megajoules per dollar and the UAE at about 6.9.

The ten most energy-intensive economies in 2025, in megajoules per dollar of GDP. Source: Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy Country Transition Tracker

Iceland is the outlier on that list: its energy is almost entirely renewable, but it runs energy-hungry aluminium smelters on cheap geothermal and hydro power, which pushes up its use of energy per unit of output.

At the other end, Ireland is the least energy-intensive economy at under 1 megajoule per dollar, ahead of Sri Lanka, Switzerland and Denmark, all at under 1.5. Bangladesh, Luxembourg, Romania, Lithuania, the UK and Portugal complete the ten, all at about 2 megajoules per dollar or less. Ireland's figure is flattered by the profits that multinational companies book there, which inflate its GDP, and several of the European names on the list have long since moved heavy industry offshore.

The ten least energy-intensive economies in 2025, in megajoules per dollar of GDP. Source: Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy Country Transition Tracker

Renewables are still a sliver

Renewable energy consumption, including hydroelectricity, increased in 74 of the 79 leading countries between 2017 and 2025. Globally it grew by more than 60% over the period, but it still met only around 8.6% of energy demand in 2025, the tracker found.

Global energy demand passed 600EJ for the first time in 2025, according to the Statistical Review, and renewables were the largest source of additional demand outside a recession. That growth has not been big enough to push fossil fuels out of the mix: the extra demand has been met by both.

Europe leads the rankings

Europe performs strongly across several of the tracker's measures. The UK, Spain, France and Germany rank among the top five performers on five or six of the eight metrics, while Italy and Brazil are top-five performers on four. Germany achieved the largest absolute cut in emissions, at 222mn tonnes of CO2-equivalent between 2017 and 2025.

The tracker's comparison of the 21 countries that consume the most energy shows the split clearly. The European countries are pale across most of the eight measures, while Indonesia and India are among the darkest on emissions and fossil fuel consumption, and Iran, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the UAE score badly on renewables, power sector decarbonisation and carbon intensity. The UAE has the heaviest energy consumption per capita in the group.

Comparative energy transition performance across the 21 highest energy-consuming countries on the tracker's eight measures; darker shading marks weaker performance. Source: Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy Country Transition Tracker

Power is far ahead of the rest

The power sector is much further along than the energy system as a whole. France has the most decarbonised power sector among the countries itemised, with 95% of generation coming from low- and zero-carbon sources, including 68% from nuclear. Brazil, which relies heavily on hydropower, comes second at 89%.

The big emitters keep growing

Some of the largest energy consumers continue to drive emissions growth. Between 2017 and 2025, China's energy-related emissions rose by 2,096mn tonnes and India's by 783mn tonnes. China's rise comes even though it is the world's green energy champion, building most of the world's new wind and solar capacity as it turns itself into an electrostate, because its overall demand has grown even faster.

The US alone was responsible for 36% of the increase in global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions in 2025 compared with 2024, the tracker found. Its coal consumption rose for the first time since the rebound in energy demand after the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021.

France alone in the target zone

The tracker plots the 21 biggest energy consumers, which account for around 80% of global energy demand, on two axes: economy-wide energy intensity and the share of low-carbon sources in total energy consumption, with the size of each bubble showing the change in its emissions since 2017. The target is the bottom right-hand quadrant, combining low energy intensity with a low-carbon share of more than half.

When all three measures are considered together, France is the only country in the target quadrant, with low-carbon sources, mostly nuclear, supplying just over half of its energy and an energy intensity of under 3 megajoules per dollar. Every other big consumer gets less than a quarter of its energy from low-carbon sources. China sits on the boundary of the high-intensity half at about 5 megajoules per dollar with a low-carbon share of around 10%, and its emissions bubble dwarfs every other country's. Iran is the most energy-intensive of the group at about 9 megajoules per dollar, with Russia and the UAE close behind, and all three increased their emissions over the period, as did India, Indonesia and Turkey.

Energy intensity against low-carbon share of total energy consumption for the 21 highest energy-consuming countries; bubble size shows the change in energy-related CO2-equivalent emissions from 2017 to 2025, green for a fall and grey for a rise. Source: Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy Country Transition Tracker

"As governments gather at COP31, the data also underline the scale of the challenge still ahead. Global fossil fuel consumption and energy-related emissions have continued to rise since 2017. The transition will ultimately be judged not simply by how much clean energy we add, but by whether countries can meet growing demand for energy while driving emissions decisively down," Regniez said.

How New York Plans to Turn Waste Heat Into Clean Energy

By Felicity Bradstock - Nov 08, 2026

New York has approved two thermal energy network projects worth $111.5 million to provide cleaner heating and cooling in Haverstraw and Buffalo.

Modern district heating systems can use geothermal energy and recovered waste heat to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

New York City is investigating whether excess heat from subway stations could be captured to cool platforms and heat nearby buildings.

District heating has been around for almost 150 years, with the first commercial system established in New York in 1877, yet it is still not widely used. The original systems used steam produced by a central fossil-fuel boiler. However, systems have evolved over time, and modern heating networks have more flexible infrastructure that can connect multiple energy and storage solutions to supply both heating and cooling.

At present, district heating supplies approximately 10 per cent of global building heat demand, with most networks concentrated in Northern and Eastern Europe and China. Other parts of the world have also recently begun to adopt district heating, including Canada and Ireland. District heating is particularly useful in dense urban areas as it can be developed efficiently in terms of space and can recover waste heat and reduce local air pollution, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA)

Roughly 90 per cent of the global district heating supply is produced using fossil fuels at present. However, there is significant potential to shift reliance from fossil fuels to renewable alternatives to power district heating systems, such as bioenergy, solar thermal, geothermal energy, and nuclear energy.

In the U.S. state of New York, the UpgradeNY coalition of clean energy, environmental, and labour groups has been calling for regulators to adopt clean electric heating by replacing gas pipelines with thermal networks. UpgradeNY says that by using heat pumps and tapping into sources of waste heat, such as underground and industrial or municipal systems, the region could reduce its dependence on fossil fuels.

In October, the New York Public Service Commission approved two utility thermal energy network (UTEN) plans, which are expected to cost a combined $111.5 million to develop. However, it rejected nine other UTEN projects, including several in New York City. The projects will be developed in the Hudson Valley town of Haverstraw and in the city of Buffalo and, if successful, could provide blueprints for projects in other parts of the United States. The financing comes from a $150 million commitment to thermal energy networks, helping ensure costs are not shifted to consumers.

Thermal energy networks rely on wells and pipes to circulate water or other fluids that capture the ambient temperatures hundreds of feet under the Earth’s surface, as well as waste heat from sewer systems, industrial facilities, and data centres. The steady heat exchange helps to improve the efficiency of electric-powered heat pumps, which are used instead of gas-powered boilers and furnaces. The development of the new systems is expected to create several jobs in the region during construction.

Massachusetts has already developed a UTEN project that provides heating and cooling to about 140 customers. Meanwhile, California, Colorado, Minnesota, and Washington are all exploring the potential for UTEN development. However, there are still uncertainties about the costs of installing and operating these systems, as most existing projects are small-scale and do not provide a clear picture of what commercial deployment might look like.

The New York Public Service Commission plans to invest $50 million in developing the Haverstraw thermal energy network to connect up to 30 structures, including single- and multifamily residences, commercial and government buildings, and an elementary school. The network is designed to tap into ambient heat from bore fields drilled on municipal land, as well as wastewater in the city’s sewer network.

Meanwhile, the Buffalo project will use an existing steam heat system. The utility National Fuel Gas will shift away from using natural gas for heating in the area by combining water from boreholes and a wastewater heat recovery system, with plans to provide clean heat and cooling to low-income multifamily housing.

In August, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) announced plans to assess whether a UTEN could help reduce temperatures on subway platforms in Lower Manhattan while transferring excess heat to nearby municipal buildings. The $800,000 feasibility study focuses specifically on the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall 4, 5, 6 and Chambers Street J Z station complex. If implemented, it would be the first UTEN project to be installed in a U.S. public transport system.

Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall recorded average platform temperatures of 35.6°C in the summer of 2025, making it one of the hottest stations in the city’s subway system. The proposed network would use radiant cooling to absorb heat from the platform and transfer it through pipes to geothermal boreholes beneath an abandoned centre platform at Chambers Street, where it would be stored underground and retrieved during colder weather to supply heat to nearby municipal buildings.

District heating has been around for over a century, but most systems continue to rely heavily on natural gas for heating and cooling. Several areas of the world are now assessing the potential to adapt systems to tap into waste heat, which is particularly common in densely populated areas and industrial operations, and transfer it to nearby buildings. This could reduce dependence on fossil fuels and provide cleaner heating and cooling systems.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

 

How to keep electricity costs down amid uncertain U.S. federal policy

Stanford University

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In brief:

• Across a range of policy and technology scenarios, certain investments in the U.S. power grid are likely winners, according to a new Stanford-led analysis.

• Building more transmission and wind power infrastructure could reduce the costs of producing and providing electricity by several billion dollars per year, which could potentially lower electricity rates for consumers.

• The cost benefit of expanding transmission is largest for the Texas grid because it allows the state to sell its plentiful wind power to other grids.

Keeping the lights on nationwide is a feat of engineering that depends on millions of miles of power lines and thousands of power-generation plants. A new Stanford-led study aims to support informed decision-making and durable solutions for the grid amid federal policy uncertainty and growing power demand from AI data centers, electric vehicles, and other uses. The analysis, published Oct. 13 in Environmental Research Letters, reveals what investments are most likely to keep costs down, clean energy flowing, and lights on regardless of the policy landscape.

“Our team is driven by enabling the country, and in particular policymakers, to make better decisions that can help with affordability while reducing environmental impacts and continuing to leverage the best part of our R&D and innovation for new energy technologies,” said study senior author Inês Azevedo, the Perry L. McCarty Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

Important grid investment decisions must be made in an environment of shifting priorities in federal policies, such as the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act and the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. A range of regional market and policy environments, some with ambitious emissions-reduction goals, adds to the complexity. On top of this, power plants and transmission lines are particularly difficult to site and permit, and they often face backlash from local communities.

The study’s modeling found that across a wide range of scenarios, including different policies supportive of different energy sources, some investments consistently bring benefits, such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and lower operating costs. Specifically, building more transmission and wind power infrastructure could reduce the costs of producing and providing electricity by several billion dollars per year, which could potentially lower electricity rates for consumers.

“Regardless of federal policy, we can move towards decarbonization by focusing on long-lived investments like transmission,” said study lead author Kamran Tehranchi, a PhD student in civil and environmental engineering at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and the Stanford School of Engineering. “Expanding interregional transmission lowers costs and improves access to renewables even without federal tax policy support for renewables,”

Across the policy scenarios modeled, building more transmission infrastructure lowers total costs, according to the study. Doubling today’s transmission capacity would reduce total annual system costs by 0.2 to 3.4% in 2035 and 1.3 to 7.3% in 2050, depending on the scenario.

“Transmission is a relatively small line item on your electricity bills compared to generation and distribution costs, but it can play a powerful role in making the generation portion of your bill cheaper,” Azevedo said.

In the study’s results, transmission is roughly 10% of annual costs to build and operate power plants and transmission lines, but each dollar spent on it saves more than a dollar in generation and storage because it lets the system reach the cheapest wind and share capacity across regions. In the zero-emissions scenarios for 2050, roughly $20 billion a year of additional transmission spending avoids about $34 billion a year in other costs.

The cost benefit of expanding transmission is largest for the standalone grid run by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which serves about 90 percent of the state’s electricity demand. When the model allows the national grid to expand by 20 percent, ERCOT costs fall 4 to 9 percent in scenarios with tax credits or zero-emissions goals, not counting the cost of the credits. Those scenarios allow ERCOT to sell more of its power to other grids.

“Texas has a very small, almost negligible, amount of power transfer capacity to the rest of the country,” said Tehranchi. When Texas could benefit from the cheap wind in the mid-west, or when Texas could export its cheap electricity there isn’t sufficient transmission to bring those resources to the demand. Sharing resources reduces costs for everyone.”

Building additional transmission leads to building more renewable energy generation capacity, according to the model, because it allows more access to regions with high-quality resources, such as Texas’s plentiful wind. In turn, wind capacity lowers generation costs in all four policy scenarios.

“Certain investments de-risk the next 25 years no matter what the policy landscape is, and should provide ground for strong bipartisan support,” said Tehranchi. “We should be paying close attention to them.”

The researchers are using the same modeling approach to explore other grid questions, such as where to site data centers, how to sustainably power these centers, and how new technologies such as enhanced geothermal, small modular nuclear reactors, or offshore wind, may play a role in providing low-emissions electricity.

Azevedo is also a professor of energy science and engineering; a professor (by courtesy) of Earth system science; and a senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy, all in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. She is also a professor (by courtesy) of civil and environmental engineering in the Doerr School and the Stanford School of Engineering.

Study coauthors also include Trevor Barnes of Simon Fraser University and Martha Frysztacki of Open Energy Transition.

The study was funded by the Doerr School of Sustainability’s Department of Energy Science & Engineering and the U.S. Department of Energy. Additional support was provided by the Bits & Watts Initiative, an industrial affiliates program of the Precourt Institute. Stanford industrial affiliates programs are funded by membership fees from companies. View current Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability affiliates members. 

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Journal

Environmental Research Letters

Article Title

Costs and benefits of transmission investments in the United States under different policy scenarios

Article Publication Date

13-Oct-2026

Canada Considers a Subsea Power Cable to Europe

Jan de Nul recently completed a study on the proposed NATO-L transatlantic power cable, which would be laid by a vessel like Fleeming Jenkin, above (Jan de Nul file image)

By Harry Valentine 2026-10-25 

Canada’s prime minister has expressed interest in exporting Canadian energy such as LNG to Europe, along with renewable energy. Other recent discussions have focused on a unique possibility: an undersea electric power cable extending across the North Atlantic to Northern Europe.

Introduction

The concept of transporting energy under the ocean dates back decades. Earlier examples of the concept involved undersea pipelines carrying natural gas and oil. While the first undersea electrical power cables carried telecommunications signals (telegraphs), modern undersea electrical power cables carry grid-scale electrical energy. Such cables are widely used to transmit electric energy from offshore wind turbines to shore-based power grids.

Discussions dating back some 15 years focused on the possibility of transmitting electric power from geothermal sources in Iceland to power grids located in Scotland and England.

During that period, Canada had commissioned a study on domestic coastal kinetic ocean energy potential. Every 24 hours, lunar gravity pulls several hundred cubic miles of ocean water from the North Atlantic into Hudson Bay and into the Bay of Fundy which has the highest tides in the world. Present technology can only convert a small portion of the hydrokinetic energy to electrical power. Several hundred uninhabited small islands located along the eastern side of Hudson Bay and the eastern side of Ungava Bay have potential to support wind turbines, with additional potential for offshore wind energy.

Northern Summers

Western Europe has endured several hot summers where demand for electric power exceeded electrical generating capacity. The combination of European wind and solar energy conversion has routinely been unable to meet peak summer demand for electric power. A transatlantic undersea electric power cable capable of transmitting 20 to 50-megawatts of electrical power offers potential for relief to overstressed European grids, providing additional power to run air conditioning and building cooling systems.

Transatlantic Power Cable

The development of geothermal electrical energy at Iceland, with undersea electric power cables extending to the UK and Europe, could provide a basis to extend an undersea power cable from Eastern Canada to southern Greenland, then to Iceland.

An undersea power cable connecting Iceland to the UK and Europe would need to carry the combined electrical energy coming from both Eastern Canada and Iceland. There is future potential to transmit a mix of hydroelectric power, ocean tidal power conversion, wind energy conversion and nuclear power between Canada and Western Europe.

During overnight hours after midnight with minimal market requirement for electric power across eastern Canada, the AM peak requirement for electric power would begin across the UK and Western Europe. Electric power from Canada and Iceland would assist UK and European electric power utilities in providing peak period electric power their customers.

When the midnight and overnight requirement for electric power is minimal across Europe, Eastern Canada and Northeastern United States would gain access to European power generation capacity during the Northeastern American and Eastern Canadian peak evening requirement for electric power.

Power Cable Economics

A transatlantic electric power cable would enhance the economics of electric power generation in both Eastern Canada/Northeastern United States and Western Europe. Excess wind power generation for which there is minimal demand in one region could be transmitted to another distant region. Nuclear power stations operate best when run at constant power output. An east-west undersea power cable allows for transmission of off-peak nuclear power in order to satisfy electric power demand in a distant region. Peak tidal power generation can occur when local demand for power is minimal, with peak demand for electric power across the Atlantic.

The usable service life of the undersea cable system would greatly exceed the usable service lives of electrical battery-based energy storage by several orders of magnitude. Electrical storage batteries incur a ‘round-trip’ loss of efficiency, with up to 30% of electrical energy being dissipated as heat. A cable operating on ultra-high voltage with low current would reduce loss of energy as heat, delivering more electrical energy to the market compared to a system that is heavily dependant on grid-scale chemical-battery energy storage or other methods – like compressed air energy storage, which also incurs a massive loss of energy as heat.

Ocean Tidal Energy

The conclusion of high tide across Hudson Bay causes a massive river of seawater to flow east through Hudson Strait, reaching peak velocity in the vicinity of the Button Islands where kinetic energy potential is estimated to exceed 2,000 megawatts. Turbulent seawater in the channels between the Button Islands generate extreme mechanical forces that require specially reinforced kinetic turbines of extreme strength, capable of cost-competitive operation in severe water current conditions. Turbine housing and support structure would need to deflect the occasional iceberg while ensuring that the turbines remain operational.

Further south, there is potential to build tunnels deep under the isthmus between the eastern end of the Bay of Fundy and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Turbines installed in the tunnels would generate repeated daily cycles electric power, courtesy of the difference in water height across the isthmus.

There is also potential for Quebec to generate additional hydroelectric power, for export to Europe. The installation of wind turbines along the eastern side of Hudson Bay will slightly cool the humid air that winds blow toward Quebec, potentially increasing rainfall over hydroelectric dam watershed areas.

Conclusions

A future transatlantic undersea electric power cable connecting between Canada and Europe via Iceland and Greenland incurs both merit and drawbacks. It would make for more productive use of off-peak electric power while reducing the expense and energy loss of energy storage technologies. The cable would enhance the economics of ocean power conversion, nuclear power, hydroelectric power from Quebec and Labrador, and wind energy conversion. However, Canada and the USA would need to invest in developing new electrical power generation capacity for domestic demand, with potential to export future off-peak power over to Europe.

The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.

 

The dark side of the energy transition: Renewable megaprojects sacrifice local communities’ rights

Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona

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The rapid expansion of renewable energy to tackle the climate crisis is systemically violating the claims and livelihoods of local communities across the planet. An exhaustive international study with the involvement of the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), Spain, reveals that large energy corporations use corporate sustainability discourses to legitimise wind, solar, and hydropower projects that, in practice, exclude communities from just economic and financial returns and ignore their social and environmental impacts.

Focusing on the major Italian group Enel, one of the largest electricity utilities globally and majority owner of the Spanish energy company ENDESA, the research analyses 15 cases of social conflicts around renewable energy projects, including solar, hydro, wind and geothermal power, in the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Chile, Brazil, India, and Western Sahara. The study, recently published in the scientific journal Ecological Economics, also involves researchers from the Università Ca Foscari of Venice, the Universitat Ramon Llull and Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in Barcelona, and The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of London.

Despite following the supposedly novel corporate concept of “Creating Shared Value” and presenting it as a way to benefit both companies and local populations, the company is still being confronted by local communities for infringing their rights. The authors argue that the corporate narrative works as a moral upgrade of corporate social responsibility, as corporations unilaterally define what counts as “value” in the energy transition, leaving out the fundamental values of affected communities, such as cultural ties to land, food sovereignty, health, and autonomy over their natural resources.

The authors also warn that ENEL’s green and social washing is not an isolated case, but a global pattern transferable to the renewable megaproject model worldwide, where climate urgency is used to accelerate energy infrastructure building that reproduces profit-making logics over territorial well-being. Consequently, the results cast doubt on the willingness of large corporations to really meet due diligence and human rights benchmarks.

“The energy transition is urgent, but it cannot be built on the suffering of communities whose values are left out of the equation. Understanding what 'values' are meaningful locally is a precondition for a transition that is truly just and sustainable over time. For example, it is contradictory to provide hydropower to the mining industry and claim you are using green energy, when the affected communities have been cheated, forced to move, and have lost their means of livelihood and community bonds, as happened in Chile,” says Daniela Del Bene, researcher at ICTA-UAB and Ca' Foscari University of Venice.

Social movements, organised communities, journalists, and international NGOs have long exposed violations of agreements and of basic human rights principles. Through a counter-reporting exercise and interviews, the research discusses five dimensions of impacts: environmental, socio-economic, health-related, ontological, and political. Among them, grievances highlight the flooding of protected reserves, loss of biodiversity, and incomplete environmental impact assessments. Added to these are the forced displacement of populations, disruption of traditional economies, and noise-related health issues in wind energy areas. Likewise, communities face growing stress, inadequate economic compensation, lack of transparent information, and the systematic dismissal of spiritual or relational values in non-self-governing territories and conflict areas.

Impacts on flora and fauna appear in every case, often alongside grievances over incomplete or fragmented environmental impact assessments. For instance, at the El Quimbo hydropower dam in Colombia, sources report that more than 8,000 hectares flooded, largely within a protected area, and that over 30,000 people were affected. In Brazil’s Cumaru region, where company wind energy parks are located, residents have denounced noise-related illnesses and even cases of depression, alcoholism, migration, and suicide, effects linked by community members to the loss of land and community ties. A similar situation can be found in the Thar Desert in the Indian state of Rajasthan, where large solar farms are being built; while in Western Sahara, serious issues linked to that territory’s non-self-governing status have also emerged.

“Our cases show that the form of harm changes between dams, wind farms and geothermal or solar parks, but the underlying logic does not: community relationships to the territory are subordinated to the logics of profit-making,” notes Roberto Cantoni from Ramon Llull University.

“The discourse of corporate responsibility changes over time to accommodate pressing concerns around the social sustainability of large-scale development projects. The problematic modus operandi of transnational corporations does not. And the idea of ‘creating shared value’ is an example of this contradiction,” indicates Antonio Bontempi, researcher at ICTA-UAB.

The publication calls on governments and institutions to build energy governance on plural values. To achieve this, the authors propose shifting from consultation only to real co-decision power for affected communities. Likewise, they call for impact assessments that recognise relational and spiritual values, also in relation to non-human species; collectively decided benefit-sharing; and strong support for community-run energy systems.

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Journal

Ecological Economics

DOI

10.1016/j.ecolecon.2026.109268

Method of Research

Case study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Shared value vs plural values. Contesting renewable energy projects of the Enel Group

Article Publication Date

13-Oct-2026

 

Strong El Niño threatens Latin America's hydro-dependent grids, IEA warns

The 2026-2027 El Niño is expected to be among the strongest since 1950, and hydropower supplies more than half the electricity in seven Latin American countries. Kenya and Southeast Asia face their own weather and import risks. / bne IntelliNewsFacebook

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By Ben Aris in Berlin October 22, 2026

The 2026-2027 El Niño is expected to be among the strongest since 1950, putting power supplies at risk across Latin America, where hydropower provides more than half of average annual electricity generation in seven countries, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a commentary.

Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay and Peru all depend on dams for most of their power, and hydropower output is "highly sensitive to variations in precipitation and temperature", IEA analysts Alejandra Bernal-Guzman and Lissete Davila wrote. El Niño conditions began in June and are likely to last until spring 2027, and northern Brazil is again expected to see below-average rainfall.

Hydropower's share of electricity generation in seven Latin American countries in 2025, with the range of shares since 2015 and total generation. Source: IEA. Licence: CC BY 4.0.

The last strong event showed what is at stake. When the 2023-2024 El Niño struck, Colombia's reservoirs fell to less than 30% of their average levels by April 2024 and gas demand in its power sector almost doubled, while Brazil's 3.6 GW Santo Antonio hydropower plant shut for two weeks for lack of water. Over 2015-2025 the share of hydropower in generation swung by up to 20 percentage points in Ecuador, 17 points in Panama and 10 points in Colombia.

The IEA set out four priorities: clear risk governance, as in Costa Rica's national El Niño strategy; ready-to-use emergency measures, such as Brazil bringing forward the start of five contracted power plants; long-term resilience through regional interconnections like those in Central America, through which Costa Rica and Nicaragua bought electricity in 2023-2024; and regular drills, such as those run through the Central American Integration System (SICA).

The warning comes in another disaster season of droughts and floods that is testing power systems well beyond Latin America.

Kenya's geothermal cushion

Kenya shows how diversification can absorb a shock, the IEA said in its National Climate Resilience Assessment for the country, published on September 25. In February 2023 a prolonged drought cut hydropower generation by 64% from the month before, a record low, but geothermal plants raised their output by 46% to compensate and imports from Ethiopia helped Kenya avoid rationing, although power prices rose.

Geothermal supplied 43% of Kenya's electricity in 2024 and hydropower 28%, from 16 plants with 826 MW of capacity, within a 91% renewable share. Kenya is the world's sixth-largest geothermal producer, with an estimated potential of 10 GW. All the climate scenarios the IEA assessed show the potential of Kenya's existing hydropower plants falling by about 10% to mid-century, compared with 1971-2010, before recovering towards the end of the century.

Projected change in the hydrological potential of Kenya's operating hydropower plants against the 1971-2010 baseline, under below 2C and above 3C warming scenarios. Source: IEA. Licence: CC BY 4.0.

Southeast Asia's import exposure

Southeast Asia is projected to account for nearly 20% of the increase in global energy demand to 2035 under current policies, and the war in the Middle East has exposed its dependence on imported oil and LNG and its vulnerability to price swings, the IEA said in its ASEAN Energy Security Review, prepared with the ASEAN Centre for Energy and published on October 6.

Past efficiency gains already keep the region's fuel imports about 10% lower than they would otherwise be, but energy intensity has improved by less than 0.5% a year so far this decade, below the global average and far short of the more than 4% a year needed to meet ASEAN's 2030 target of a 40% cut from 2005 levels. The review calls for faster grid investment, smart meters and time-of-use pricing to unlock demand-side flexibility, regional critical minerals strategies, emergency stockpiles and wider use of the ASEAN Power Grid so countries can share supply in a crisis.

Average annual energy efficiency progress in ASEAN and the world, 2010-2019 and 2019-2025 (estimate). Source: IEA Energy Efficiency Progress Tracker. Licence: CC BY 4.0.