At the heart of attempts to halt damaging climate change is a pair of ideas: decarbonise electricity and electrify the economy. So, how is it going? Badly, is the answer.

Will things change soon enough? Not on today’s trajectory. Worse, the politics, always difficult, have become even more so: people just do not want to pay the price of decarbonising the economy.

Here is a sobering fact: in 2023, the production of electricity generated by fossil fuels reached an all-time peak. The share of electricity produced this way did fall, from 67 per cent in 2015 (the date of the celebrated Paris Agreement) to 61 per cent in 2023. But global output of electricity jumped 23 per cent in those eight years. As a result, even though generation from non-fossil-fuel sources (including nuclear) rose by an impressive 44 per cent, that from fossil fuels rose by 12 per cent. Alas, the atmosphere responds to emissions, not good intentions: we have been running forward, but going backwards. (See charts.)