COP31 Pushes to Electrify the World, Targeting 35% by 2035

World leaders met in Turkey this week for COP31, the annual United Nations climate conference, and the headline proposal is about how the planet gets its power. Organizers want electricity to cover 35% of global final energy demand by 2035. Today, that share sits at just over 20%.

Hitting that mark would take a broad shift. Drivers and shippers would need to swap gasoline- and diesel-burning cars and trucks for plug-in versions. Factories would need industrial heat pumps and electric boilers. Steel and iron producers would have to adopt electric arc furnaces and other cleaner tech.

The obvious objection: if the power charging those vehicles and running those furnaces still comes from fossil fuels, does electrification even help? Canary Media reports the answer is yes. Switching a home furnace or a factory steam system is slow work, so starting now means more of the world's energy demand gets cleaned up the moment renewables land on the grid. Electric machines also waste far less energy than burning fuel, energy policy expert Jan Rosenow has explained — burning natural gas at a large power plant and using that electricity for a heat pump delivers the same result with less fuel and fewer emissions.

There's a security payoff too. With the war in the Middle East driving global oil and gas prices up, electrification lets countries lean less on imported fossil fuels. Consumers in Europe and Asia are already buying electric stoves and cars for that reason, and the EU said in July it wants electricity to reach 46% of its energy use by 2040 — a lesson pulled from both the Iran war and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

In Washington, the Senate's bipartisan permitting bill cleared its first hurdle, with lawmakers voting 73-25 to formally take up the proposal. As written, it would speed permitting timelines for transmission, clean energy and fossil fuel projects, but heavy edits are expected before it becomes law. It was the Senate's first vote since Election Day made clear Democrats will hold resounding majorities in both chambers next year, and many Democratic senators opposed advancing it — some arguing they can now demand stronger clean energy benefits and push back on terms they say favor fossil fuel interests. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said amendments will likely get votes next week before the bill heads to the House, where Democrats who say they were shut out of its drafting will fight it; House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) says his party will guarantee passage.

Small modular nuclear reactors had a split week. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved X-energy and Dow Chemical's plan to build four Xe-100 advanced reactors in Texas, clearing the application in a record 18 months, after earlier approvals for Kairos Power and TerraPower projects. In Canada, Ontario Power Generation said Tuesday its SMR — slated to be North America's first — won't be online by its 2030 target and won't stay inside its budget. That stings because the project uses the technology behind most of the world's existing nuclear fleet, the same design U.S. developers are watching.