"For a hot minute, it looked like the Doomers might be proved wrong.

In recent years, the rapid deployment of renewable energy and a shift away from the dirtiest fossil fuels have given even grizzled climate activists cause for some measure of hope.

The most extreme projections about temperature rise on planet Earth were replaced by less apocalyptic forecasts, and while the world wasn’t shifting away from fossil fuels nearly fast enough, there appeared to be a realistic pathway to significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the decades ahead.

Yet now, at the very moment the world seems to be making real progress in the fight against global warming, the scale of the problem seems to be getting even bigger.

Electricity demand is spiking, thanks to artificial intelligence and a new generation of energy-hungry data centers. Overall energy consumption keeps climbing as a new middle class rises in the developing world. And a large-scale phaseout of planet-warming emissions is being hampered by short-term politics, global conflict and ossified financial markets.

These are just some of the themes being discussed Wednesday at the Climate Forward conference hosted by The New York Times. Interviewees will include primatologist Jane Goodall, Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Michael Regan and more.

By 2050, global demand for electricity is expected to rise by as much as 75%, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Much of that demand will come from rapidly developing nations in Africa and Southeast Asia. But even in the United States, energy consumption is soaring after remaining relatively flat for 15 years.

“Everyone is assuming that wealthy countries will taper their energy demand on a certain timeline,” said Raj Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, a nonprofit group that is working on expanding clean energy access in poor countries. “But that assumption will be blown out of the water by whatever the next new waves of technology are.”

It’s true that a growing share of the world’s power will come from clean sources, including solar panels and wind turbines. Last year alone, nearly 86% of the new power generation built worldwide came from clean sources, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.

But with the global population expected to rise by as much as 1.7 billion in the next 25 years and overall energy demand rising in tandem, the gains in solar and wind may not be enough to rapidly displace dirty forms of power such as oil, gas and coal. Rather than taking the place of fossil fuels, renewable energy sources are simply helping meet the additional demand.

Indeed, both the production and the use of oil and gas are still booming worldwide, and planet-warming emissions are still on the rise.

Major economies such as India and China continue to build new coal plants. The United States is currently the world’s biggest supplier of natural gas and is constructing new gas power plants; the U.S. is also producing record amounts of oil. And countries in the Middle East are proceeding with plans to pump oil for many decades to come.

What’s more, while there are promising emissions-free alternatives to electricity generation, progress is slower in identifying viable replacements for things like aviation fuel, shipping fuel, concrete, plastics and more.

The perils of these choices and a warming planet are already clear. Global average temperatures have been 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than preindustrial levels for most of the past year, exceeding a threshold that scientists had long warned of crossing. The result: Last year was the hottest on record, with withering heat waves, deadly droughts and extreme weather around the globe.

As long as fossil fuel emissions persist at scale, temperatures will keep rising, and the heat and violent weather will keep getting worse. On the flip side, the faster the world builds more clean power to replace fossil fuels, the sooner the planet will stop heating up.

Those simple truths make plain the global stakes of the energy transition. And with most of the new energy demand expected to come from the developing world, it is in some of the poorest countries on Earth that the battle to keep global warming at bay will be won or lost.

If the next billion people to gain access to reliable electricity in Africa and Asia get it from diesel generators and natural gas plants, emissions from those regions will likely keep rising for many decades to come — and that will warm the planet as a whole.

Economics remain an impediment to large-scale change worldwide.

Surging global demand for energy has made the U.S. the world’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas, and pressures to keep domestic energy prices low have led to record oil production. Investors discourage large energy companies from investing in renewable projects. And with interest rates high over the past two years, it has become exceedingly difficult to build some well-established clean power projects, especially offshore wind.

Given all that, some utilities across the U.S. are backtracking on their plans to go green.

Government incentives, including the Inflation Reduction Act, have spurred a new round of investments in renewable energy and battery projects. The tax credits included in that law, the biggest ever federal investment to combat climate change, have helped create hundreds of thousands of new jobs and spark a domestic manufacturing boom.

But even with those gains, it remains difficult to get big new clean power plants online, in large measure because the U.S. grid is antiquated and underdeveloped.

While there is no doubt that the global population is soaring, energy use is spiking, and fossil fuels are sticking around, some energy analysts still predict a potentially bright future.

“Forecasts show continued emissions that are not necessarily consistent with climate goals,” said Mark Dyson, managing director at RMI, a nonprofit group that works with companies to reduce their emissions. “But forecasts change.”

Dyson, who studies long-term energy demand, said that for decades, officials have overestimated energy demand and underestimated the growth of renewables and gains in efficiency.

Indeed, in the projections for soaring electricity demand, Dyson sees signs of progress. That’s exactly what’s to be expected as electric vehicles replace gasoline-powered cars and electric heating replaces oil and gas heating. And with the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates, the cost of capital should fall, making some clean energy projects more affordable.

Data centers, while energy hogs, are getting more efficient, as are electric vehicles, new buildings and many other electrified staples of modern life. A flurry of innovation is underway that could soon provide new, affordable ways to reduce emissions, produce energy and power society.

Moving forward may well mean advances in the deployment of clean power. It may even mean breakthroughs in new forms of power.

But as the catastrophic effects of climate change continue to mount, human ingenuity will have to do much more than get better at delivering energy. It will also have to help humans adapt to life on a hotter planet.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times."