Reading recent media coverage about climate action means lurching between apparent victory and defeat. It’s triumph one day as another decarbonisation milestone is heralded. Then disaster the next as countries and companies alike walk back on climate commitments or veer perilously close to denying climate change altogether.
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We can expect more such whiplash: Hong Kong Green Week takes place next month, the UN General Assembly and Climate Week NYC are also due to begin in September, followed by the Cop30 climate change summit in Brazil in November.
If the year so far is any guide, discourse at these events will be laced with three common misunderstandings (promoted deliberately or otherwise). They are simple and beguiling misconceptions that impede our understanding as an increasingly noisy debate rages.
The first is the tendency to conflate electricity with energy. The second: confusing energy input with energy output. And the third? Mistaking net-zero emissions for zero emissions.
This isn’t just splitting semantic hairs. In the race to decarbonise, headlines like “Renewables now supply 50 per cent of China’s power” frequently trumpet dramatic progress. They sound transformative – until you realise “power” usually means electricity, not total energy.
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And therein lies a problem.