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Zeke Hausfather

@zekehausfather.com
43K followers 339 following 2.9K posts

"A tireless chronicler and commentator on all things climate" -NYTimes. Climate research lead @stripe, writer @CarbonBrief, scientist @BerkeleyEarth, IPCC AR7 lead author. Website: zekehausfather.com Substack: www.theclimatebrink.com

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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 5h
For more details and daily updated, head over to the Climate Dashboard:
dashboard.theclimatebrink.com
Climate Dashboard
Daily-updated global temperature tracker: ERA5 daily data, multi-model ENSO forecasts, annual projections, and climate models vs. observations.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 5h
And Niño 1+2 region anomalies are at a stunning 5.3C, far above any prior year.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 5h
Niño3 region anomalies are well into record territory at 4.1C.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 5h
The relative Oceanic Niño Index (RONI) is up to 3C; not quite in record territory yet, but rapidly closing in. With another two months or so of growth to go its almost certain to set a record as well.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 5h
This year's El Niño continues its climb into uncharted waters; Niño3.4 region anomalies are now at a 3.4C above normal (how fitting!), higher than any prior El Niño event on record. September monthly Niño3.4 anomalies also set a record at 2.9C (beating 2015 and 1877's 2.75C).
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 13h
At least in the US context we are increasingly seeing data centers being built with offgrid gas, so its not clear to me that the presence of clean energy on the grid is enabling datacenters. Whether policymakers accept datacenter developer arguments about being good or bad is somewhat separate...
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 13h
Arguments need not be in service to a particular goal, other than the truth.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 05/10/2026
The price elasticity of electricity demand is (at least historically) not that high. But some of the biggest drivers of new demand (vehicle and building electrification) are also direct drivers of emissions reductions. So if there is a meaningful Jevon's effect it cuts both ways here!
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 05/10/2026
This analysis is only looking at electricity generation – so EV adoption (>30% of new cars this year!) show up on the demand side, but the avoided oil emissions are not included.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 05/10/2026
*Sorry, 57%, not 75%. A bit of latent dyslexia there 😉
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 05/10/2026
Plus there is no lack of examples of absolute reductions in fossil power generation:
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 05/10/2026
No, it clearly replaced fossil fuels that would have otherwise been built to meet that new demand! Thats the whole analysis in the piece:
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 05/10/2026
Tons of CO2 ;-)
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 05/10/2026
Also see the accompanying video explainer for the new piece!
youtube.com
The world without wind solar
An analysis of what would have happened if the clean energy transition that the world has undertaken since 2005 had never occurred.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 05/10/2026
Check out the full piece over at The Climate Brink:
theclimatebrink.com
What if the world hadn't built wind and solar?
Clean energy does not simply “add to” global energy use; it displaces fossil sources that would otherwise get built.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 05/10/2026
So the next time someone tells you that clean energy is not reducing emissions, just meeting new demand, ask them what would have happened if we hadn't built it. Solar panels do not create demand, and without them we'd have been burning a lot more fossil fuels.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 05/10/2026
Globally around 75% of new demand has been met by clean energy since 2005, with 99% being met by solar and wind in 2025. The globe may be on the brink of absolute emissions reductions in the power sector, with clean energy growing faster than demand.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 05/10/2026
We also see countries where rapid growth of solar and wind has played a key role in absolutely reducing power sector emissions, not just meeting new demand. The US has seen power sector emissions fall 37%, the EU by 55%, and the UK by 75% since 2005:
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 05/10/2026
Indeed, in many cases increased electricity use is a good thing – to effectively meet net zero goals we need to largely electrify transportation, industrial processes, building heating and cooling, and the ~70% of energy coming from non-electricity fossil fuel combustion today.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 05/10/2026
Clean energy does not create demand, and appeals to Jevon's paradox are mostly off the mark given that electricity prices have not meaningfully declined in most countries and the elasticity of electricity demand is relatively low in most cases.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 05/10/2026
If we hold solar and wind at 2005 levels and fill in the gaps with fossil fuels (with the mix determined by country – coal in China and India, mostly gas in the US and EU), global power sector emissions would have been 28% higher.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 05/10/2026
But this line of argument ignores the counterfactual. In a world without solar and wind, electricity demand would still have increased rapidly – driven by increased industrial output, air conditioning/heating, vehicle electrification, and data centers.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 05/10/2026
But despite this rapid growth fossil fuel generation continues to set new records, though it has slowed down substantially compared to the rate of fossil fuel growth in the 1990s and 2000s. This leads some to argue that clean energy isn't actually reducing emissions.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 05/10/2026
Clean energy has been wildly successful. Non-hydro renewables (primarily solar and wind) have increased from near-zero in 2005 to producing 22% of global electricity, and are on track to produce more than natural gas this year:
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 05/10/2026
I often see people argue that clean energy is not reducing emissions, because it just adds to rather than replaces fossil fuels. This argument is deeply misguided – clean energy built since 2005 has displaced 23 billion tons. I dive in over at The Climate Brink:
theclimatebrink.com
What if the world hadn't built wind and solar?
Clean energy does not simply “add to” global energy use; it displaces fossil sources that would otherwise get built.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 04/10/2026
Yes, given that electric heat pumps are usually ~300% efficient at turning electricity into heat, even powering them with gas is considerably lower emissions than burning gas directly for heat (which is max ~97% efficient).
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 04/10/2026
Yep, relative to its lifetime output the amount of uranium needed is small (as it the amount of cement/steel for the reactor). You are dividing by a really big denominator with nuclear!
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 04/10/2026
Its not because the results for bioenergy are all over the map depending how the biomass is sourced!
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 04/10/2026
I'd rather see it on farmland, but compared to other things we do to the land that looks pretty minimal to me.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 03/10/2026
Well, and because it relies on 10% gas rather than massively overbuilding. If you wanted 100% uptime with solar and batteries it would be ~116 (95–275) gCO2/kWh.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 03/10/2026
A tiny fraction of what we use for corn ethanol today? Also wind uses almost no land; the tower footprints are tiny and are generally located in agricultural fields with productive farmland underneath.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 03/10/2026
Here is a more technical version for folks who are interested, though the hydro and geothermal points have fewer studies underlying them:
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 03/10/2026
I often see people claim that because clean energy sources like solar, wind, or nuclear are manufactured using fossil fuels their emissions are high. But thats absolutely not the case: even accounting for full lifecycle emissions they are vastly better than burning coal or gas:
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 02/10/2026
The context (which you omit here) is that it was responding to a claim that support for permitting reform was a result of "dismiss[ing] the science of climate change". My personal view is that many of the main barriers to building clean energy in the US are addressed by this bill.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 02/10/2026
For more details and daily updates, check out the Climate Dashboard:
dashboard.theclimatebrink.com
Climate Dashboard
Daily-updated global temperature tracker: ERA5 daily data, multi-model ENSO forecasts, annual projections, and climate models vs. observations.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 02/10/2026
2026 as a whole is now on track to end up roughly tied with 2024 as the warmest year on record in ERA5, at 1.6C above preindustrial. And 2027 waiting in the wings to be quite a bit warmer on the back of a record-setting El Nino event.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 02/10/2026
September 2026 was the second warmest September on record (after 2023's "gobsmackingly bananas" month), coming in at 1.63C above preindustrial levels in the ERA5 dataset.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 02/10/2026
Yep, its going to be pretty disastrous for many countries in the tropics: dashboard.theclimatebrink.com#impacts
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 01/10/2026
Fair, but that would make reform more impactful for clean energy.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 01/10/2026
Because thats the time period that the Bennon & Wilson 2023 study covers: www.elr.info/sites/defaul... Do you have any more recent sources to draw on?
elr.info
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 30/09/2026
Details on the effects of the bill's major provisions:
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 30/09/2026
Confused by all the debate about the new permitting reform bill? Here is a quick cheat-sheet of the most important provisions, and their likely impact on emissions:
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 30/09/2026
That its deeply misguided, and that the only way we can stop burning fossil fuels is to use clean energy instead.
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Reposted by Zeke Hausfather
Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Wading into the "relative versus absolute" El Niño intensity debate: I genuinely think both are important--and I think we lose important information if we focus solely on one vs another. And both, as of late Sep, have now reached or exceeded record levels! [Thread]
Plot by Daniel Swain showing temporal evolution of ONI vs RONI index during 2026, representing two different ways to visualize El Nino intensity. The ONI has been at record levels since May, and the RONI has been at near-record levels since June. Data directly from NOAA.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 30/09/2026
Sure, but the interconnection queue is in large part driven by transmission constraints (at least for solar and wind)!
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 30/09/2026
Yep. One of the benefits of the draft bill would be to limit the ability of the government to actively sabotage clean energy – as the Trump administration has with denying permits for wind and solar on both federal and private lands.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 30/09/2026
I'm excited to see congress finally starting to take action to address this with the new bipartisan permitting reform bill: www.energy.senate.go...
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 30/09/2026
The biggest barrier to emissions reductions is increasingly our inability to quickly build clean energy: solar, geothermal, wind, nuclear, transmission, battery storage, etc. Projects are held back by a thicket of regulations and reviews.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 30/09/2026
I had a long (and fun) conversation with Nate Hagens about this year’s El Niño, future emissions scenarios, climate uncertainty, mitigation, and a whole slew of other topics. Check it out!
youtu.be
The Coolest Year for the Rest of Our Lives? with Zeke Hausfather | TGS 236
(Conversation recorded on September 16th, 2026) The El Niño now building in the tropical Pacific is unlike anything in the historical record, and it's arriving on top of decades of warming. Together, they could push global temperatures to roughly 1.8°C (3.2ºF) above pre-industrial levels next year,
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 29/09/2026
Awesome to see @hollyjeanbuck.bsky.social get recognized with a MacArthur Foundation ‘Genius Grant’ today! www.macfound.org/fellows/clas...
macfound.org
Holly Jean Buck
Investigating the social, ethical, and political dimensions of climate and energy policies and emerging technologies.
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