Clean technology avoids around 3 gigatonnes of CO2 a year, and emissions still hit a record

Clean technology is already avoiding around 3 Gt of CO2 a year, with solar, wind, nuclear, EVs and heat pumps materially reducing fossil fuel demand. But global energy-related emissions still reached a record in 2025. The avoided-emissions wedge is real, but the absolute peak has not arrived.

The two facts are not in contradiction. Avoided emissions measure what would have happened without clean technology, and that wedge is now large. Absolute emissions measure what did happen, and demand growth has so far outrun the wedge. The peak arrives when the second curve bends, and that depends on how fast the remaining fossil demand is displaced.

Most of that remaining demand sits in industrial supply chains rather than in power generation. Steel, cement, chemicals, shipping and aviation are where the next wedge has to come from, and they are also where capital is hardest to raise. Connecting downstream buyers to those reductions is how the avoided-emissions story becomes an absolute one.