Earth Watching and Landing

Coal still supplies roughly two-thirds of electricity; wind and solar are only a few percent of generation against a 15%-renewables-by-2030 goal. Auction pipeline exists; grid flexibility and inland gas shortage are the real bottlenecks.

One of the highest emissions intensities per unit of GDP in the world, with large methane leakage from oil, gas and coal mining. Neutrality by 2060 requires the power fleet decision to be taken in this decade, not the next.

Around half of surface water arrives from upstream neighbours (Ili, Syr Darya, Ural). Irrigation losses are heavy, the Aral basin is the world's teaching case, and glacier-fed inflow declines after 2040 in most scenarios.

Municipal recycling is climbing from a very low base; the bigger mass is legacy industrial and mining tailings distributed across the steppe.

The world's largest uranium producer, plus chromium, copper and a serious critical-minerals inventory. The open question is whether processing and refining stay in-country.

Young and still growing while most benchmark peers age — a demographic window that closes only around mid-century.

Steppe protection has produced one of the largest wildlife recoveries anywhere on earth (see below). Rangeland carbon and degraded-pasture restoration remain under-measured.

A genuinely strong digital-government base to build on. Almost none of it yet points at grid dispatch, irrigation scheduling or methane detection.

A top-ten global wheat exporter on mostly rainfed steppe — which makes it a food-security node for Central Asia and a drought-exposed one.

Revenue concentrated in oil (Tengiz, Kashagan) and metals. Flaring, gas processing capacity and refinery upgrades decide the near-term emissions curve.

Renewables now supply around 60% of public electricity generation — a share almost nobody projected a decade ago. Nuclear exit completed 2023; coal exit legally 2038, politically earlier.

Roughly 45–50% below 1990 already, but the 2030 target of −65% depends on the two sectors that keep missing: buildings and transport. Power did the work; heat and mobility have not.

A country that assumed water abundance is writing a National Water Strategy: repeated Rhine low-water episodes, falling groundwater in the east, forest drought damage.

Among the highest municipal recycling rates in the world — while also generating one of the higher volumes of waste per person. Both facts are true at once.

A circular-economy strategy exists on paper; import dependence for critical raw materials is the exposed nerve of an export-manufacturing economy.

Ageing fast; population grows only through migration. Skilled-labour shortage is now a decarbonisation constraint — heat pumps and grids need installers, not just subsidies.

Most protected habitats are still assessed in unfavourable condition, and drained peatlands quietly emit a large share of national greenhouse gases from a small share of land.

World-class industrial and research AI; slow rollout of the boring digital plumbing (smart meters, grid data, permitting workflows) that AI would actually act on.

Nitrogen surplus and groundwater nitrate remain unresolved; organic farming sits near 11–12% of farmland against a 30%-by-2030 ambition.

The most watchable industrial experiment on the planet: hydrogen-ready direct-reduced-iron steel, electrified chemistry, against high energy prices and relocation risk.

Solar plus batteries now dominate new capacity additions, and storage has gone from pilot to backbone in the space of four years. Renewables are roughly a quarter of generation; gas is still the largest single source.

Emissions are down meaningfully from 2005 but not on the pace the 2030 pledge requires, and federal policy direction changes faster than infrastructure can. States and utilities are the more reliable signal.

The Colorado River is allocated beyond what it delivers, and the Ogallala aquifer is being spent, not managed. Water is the West's binding constraint on everything else — including data centres.

Around a third of municipal solid waste is recycled or composted, on one of the world's highest per-person generation rates.

Heavy import reliance for many critical minerals alongside a fast build-out of battery, magnet and refining capacity. Whether recycling scales with it is the 2030s question.

Still growing, almost entirely through migration; fertility below replacement. Growth is also moving toward the hottest and most water-stressed states.

A shifted wildfire regime is now a carbon and air-quality actor in its own right; conservation targets exist, land-use pressure is the counterweight.

Global leader in compute — and therefore the first country where AI is a visible load on the power system. Data centres were about 4% of US electricity in 2023, with credible projections toward roughly 7–12% by 2028.

The most instrumented farmland on earth, still irrigating from declining aquifers. Precision agriculture and livestock methane are where the leverage sits.

An unusual manufacturing investment wave — batteries, chips, clean hydrogen hubs — with industrial process heat still barely started.

Close to 90% of electricity is already renewable — hydro, wind, solar, biomass — plus the world's most established ethanol system. The new problems are rich-country problems: curtailment in the windy northeast, transmission, storage.

Unusually, most emissions come from land use rather than fuel — so falling deforestation moves the national total fast. Amazon clearing dropped sharply across 2023 and 2024 to its lowest level in years.

Holds roughly a tenth of the planet's renewable freshwater, and runs a power system that depends on rainfall. Droughts in the Amazon and Paraná basins are now an energy risk, not only an ecological one.

Sanitation and disposal are the honest gap: tens of millions of people without sewage collection, and a large share of municipal waste still landfilled or dumped.

Iron ore at scale, and the overwhelming majority of world niobium supply. Clean electricity plus ore is the raw recipe for low-carbon steel and aluminium.

Fertility has fallen below replacement faster than most projections expected — Brazil will age before it finishes urban infrastructure.

The Amazon tipping point is the single most consequential number on this page. Indigenous and protected territories remain the strongest carbon anchor; meanwhile Cerrado clearing has risen while the Amazon's fell.

A national AI plan and world-class biodiversity and land-use monitoring data. Sovereign compute — powered by an already-clean grid — is the underused advantage.

A global soy, beef, coffee and sugar supplier. The decisive lever is restoring degraded pasture instead of clearing new land — tens of millions of hectares of it.

Green hydrogen and low-carbon metals hubs are forming around ports with clean power. Execution, grid connection and offtake are the unresolved parts.