There is a lot of bad news these days. Here is some good news.

Oil drilling is down

No one bid at the auction for companies to buy rights to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) on Jan. 6.

In the auction, no one bid. There was a chance to drill for oil and gas in a wildlife refuge, and oil companies and fossil fuel financiers said, “No, thank you.”

In February 2025, the number of oil drilling rigs in the United States was down 4% compared to February 2024. The number of natural gas rigs was down 14%.

Oil refineries in Houston and Los Angeles will shut down in 2025.  

Renewable electricity is up 

In 2024, the U.S. added 49 gigawatts of electricity-generating capacity. Thirty of those added 49 gigawatts are solar, 10 are utility-scale batteries and five are wind. Three gigawatts of added capacity are natural gas. 

No nuclear or gasoline-generating capacity was added. Generating capacity from coal dropped by 4 gigawatts.

In 2024,Britain burned its last pound of coal. The U.S. coal burning has dropped 64% from 1,120 million tons burned in 2008 to 400 million tons in 2024. At this rate, the U.S. will burn the last pound of coal in 2033.

In 2024, renewable electricity generation overtook coal-fired generation in China. China now has 1.4 terawatts of generating capacity from wind and solar. China has 1.2 terawatts of electricity generation capacity from coal.  In China, solar is growing three times faster than coal. 

Meanwhile, China added 300 gigawatts of renewable electricity generating capacity and 98 gigawatts of coal in 2024.

In the U.S., renewable electricity generation first exceeded coal-fired plants and nuclear generation in 2022. In 2024, renewables generated 945 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity, nuclear power generated 781 TWh, and coal generated 647 billion TWh.

In the European Union, solar and wind generated 28% of electricity in 2024. Hydroelectric power generated 13%, nuclear power generated 24% and natural gas generated 16%. Coal generated 10% of the electricity.  Altogether, 76% of EU electricity was generated without releasing global warming gases.

In 2023, seven countries generated all of their electricity with renewable resources: Albania, Bhutan, Ethiopia, Iceland, Nepal, Paraguay and the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

In the first half of 2024, Pakistani households added 13 gigawatts of electricity-generating capacity without government or utility support—just people heading over to a marketplace and buying solar panels.  

Those private installations increased the electricity-generating capacity of Pakistan by 30% before July, and probably lifted it more than 50% before 2025.

Electric vehicles are up

51% of January new car sales in Sweden were plug-in electric vehicles (EVs). In Denmark and Norway, 66% and 97% were EV’s, respectively.

EV sales are accelerating worldwide, growing by 3.2 million in 2023 and by 3.5 million in 2024.

Heat pumps are up

In 2022, French families bought one and a half times as many heat pumps as natural gas or oil heating systems. That year, heat pump sales in Poland doubled compared to 2021.  

In 2024, American families bought 4.1 million heat pumps, compared to 3.1 million natural gas furnaces.

No one is going to stop global warming by working alone, and we are still a country that follows Benjamin Franklin’s advice: “We must all hang together.”