Really enjoyed Nat Bullard’s State of decarbonization presentation this year, as always. Reminds me of Mary Meeker’s classic yearly Internet Trends decks, but for climate tech. It’s that valuable, and useful.

Some takeaways, in no particular order:

• Land use emissions are at their lowest in 60y
• Almost 25% of emissions fall under some price on carbon regime
• Electricity passed oil as the single largest form of energy in ~2005. It provided ~70EJ of energy in 2025, vs < 50EJ from oil, the next largest form
• China now generates 40% more electricity (10k TWh) than US + EU combined (7TWh)!
• China’s CO2 emissions have been flat for the last 2+y. India’s is effectively flat now too. (US and EU are 10-20% down from their peaks in ~2010.)
• Price of oil has trended steadily down 4y, from $120/barrel peaks in 2022 to $60 now. Plus, we’re currently at 5M barrels/day of oversupply, and rising sharply
• US public opinion on nuclear has risen sharply, 61% favorable now, vs 44% 10y ago
• Related: global annual nuclear investment has more than doubled in the last 10y, from ~$32B to ~$74B. (Almost past coal!)
• Global power generation asset investment finally surpassed fossil fuels in 2025, at just over $1T
• Climate capital inflows of all kinds are down, as are sustainability fund returns and launches. Climate tech investment specifically is up, barely.
• China is the exception: it’s half of global renewables investment, $70B/y green manufacturing investment, leading (by far!) on nuclear project development and cost per MW
• Voluntary carbon credits are back to historic $.5B/y level. 2021-22 spike of $2B/y was an anomaly.
• Coal demand has been flat for the last few years, including China. Coal generation in India is flat (~1300 TWh), everywhere else flat to down
• Renewables generation passed coal, 5100 TWh vs 4900
• Solar generation surpassed wind for the first time
• …but solar installation rate in EU has flattened at ~65 GW/y
• Solar duck curve peak-to-trough is now 50-75% of generation in Texas, 80-90% in California!
• US grid activity is booming, and chaotic. Record interconnection requests (PJM, ERCOT), transformer prices, etc. Demand and generation forecasts all over the map
  “I think our forecast of datacenter load for, say, 2032 is probably off by a factor of two. I just don’t know which way, two times too high or two times too low.”
• Datacenter power consumption is up 80% since 2020…
• …but still just ~1.5% of global demand and .5% of emissions, total. Even if AI doubles that again, it’s still just 1% of emissions. Worth remembering the next time you see another breathless “ChatGPT is destroying the planet!” post
• Lithium ion dominates battery chemistry, 95% of installed volume. Storage is second largest use case (22%) after EVs (70%). >100 GW scale storage projects planned for 2026
• Despite press, EV growth has continued, roughly linearly. They’re over 25% of global auto sales now. China is leading; they’ll sell more EVs this year than all US passenger cars
• SAF production has doubled every year for the past 7+y, but it’s still negligible, < 1% of total jet fuel
• Hydrogen outlook (demand, generation, projects) is mixed at best