By the Numbers
Using data and research to understand what really makes a difference. Click to read By the Numbers, by Hannah Ritchie, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.
- Posts
- 172 from 20 Nov 2022 to 22 Oct 2026
- Posting
- weekly (40 in the last year)
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- personal blog
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- https://hannahritchie.substack.com/feed
2026 34
- Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon falls to its lowest year on record
- How much could the UK actually raise from higher taxes?
- One in ten people are older than 65. Three in four live under a leader who is.
- The UK’s Triple Lock pensions: an explainer in charts
- US Energy Data: a new platform to explore American energy, state-by-state
- Young people tend to be happier than older generations, but not in the Anglosphere
- Forget more reservoirs; should the UK just build desalination plants instead?
- The UK needs to build more reservoirs
- Tracking global food production through a record El Niño
- Is Europe having a bad wildfire year?
- Thailand’s population has already peaked
- My book — Clearing the Air — is coming out in paperback in September
- How much deforestation is your country importing through trade?
- How quickly do electric car sales translate into cars on the road?
- Do more Europeans die of summer heat than Americans die of guns?
- What will future population change look like?
- How much electricity does AI consume? [2025 summary]
- Receiving the Unwin Award
- Are only one-third of Britain’s railways electric?
- An end to cervical cancer is possible
- The UK is cutting its aid budget to the lowest level in decades
- Technology can cut plane contrails by two-thirds. Getting airlines to use it isn't so easy
- Will Africa still be energy-poor in 2050?
- Does China have a huge electricity advantage over the United States?
- Does that use a lot of energy? [Update]
- My book is published in the US today, and I'm shortlisted for the Unwin Award
- Does that use a lot of energy?
- Do subsidies make meat much cheaper?
- The changing (and perhaps surprising) geography of diabetes
- We could produce a lot of electricity on the land used for biofuels
- Are bees booming or dying off?
- Many people are individually optimistic but think the world is falling apart
- The low life expectancy of Americans is not just about deaths among young people
- Five(ish) charts that give some context to Venezuelan oil
2025 34
- Some changes to Sustainability by Numbers in the new year
- Can we break the human development-environment trade-off?
- What happened on energy and climate in China this year?
- Will oil and gas consumption keep rising through 2050?
- What happened to global carbon emissions this year?
- Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has fallen again in 2025
- Artificial intelligence could dramatically improve weather forecasting
- How unprecedented is power demand growth in the United States?
- Eliminating contrails from flying could be incredibly cheap
- The world is on track for record harvests this year
- My new book — Clearing the Air — is published in the UK today
- The Electrotech Revolution: Some insights into a new way of thinking about the transition
- Which countries are scaling solar and wind the fastest?
- What's the carbon footprint of using ChatGPT or Gemini? [August 2025 update]
- How much do electric car batteries degrade?
- No, growing more food does not mean we always need more and more inputs
- Population growth or decline will have little impact on climate change
- My new book — Clearing the Air — is coming out in September!
- How does geothermal energy work, and why don’t we use it more?
- How big is the generational divide on climate change?
- Under-the-hood of writing on Substack
- Eating wild animals might be sustainable for the few, but not for the many
- Why are solar panels and batteries from China so cheap?
- What's the carbon footprint of using ChatGPT?
- Do imports of cheap solar panel and other technologies help or hurt domestic jobs in clean energy?
- Many second-hand electric cars are cheaper up-front than their petrol equivalents
- Could whales be a solution to climate change? Probably only a very small one.
- Some key insights from the UK Climate Change Committee’s Seventh Carbon Budget
- How big were wildfires in 2024?
- Solving for Climate: the podcast is back
- Do US states with more renewable energy have more expensive electricity?
- State-by-state electricity mixes and prices in the United States
- How many people died in disasters in 2024?
- How much food did the world produce in 2024?
2024 40
- Deforestation in the Amazon has halved in the last few years
- Vertical farming: a local solution for greens, but not feeding the world any time soon
- What’s the impact of artificial intelligence on energy demand?
- Low-carbon tech needs much fewer materials than it used to; this matters for resource extraction in the future
- Launching a new podcast on climate solutions
- Do more people die from heat or cold? How will this change in the future?
- Coal has now died in its birthplace: the UK closes its last coal power station
- How much energy does desalinisation use? Is it “absurdly cheap”?
- The false dichotomy of systemic and individual behaviour change
- Is it cheaper to drive, fly, or take the train?
- My book — Not the End of the World — is out in paperback in the UK today
- How big are global wildfires this year?
- Are plug-in hybrids booming or fading, and are they better for the climate?
- What’s the outlook for global food production this year?
- The cost of driving a gasoline vs. an electric car across US states
- How does electric car adoption vary across US states?
- How to decarbonise the world’s cement
- What share of lithium-ion batteries are recycled?
- Some interesting charts on the "Cleantech Revolution”
- Could low-carbon cement and steel be cheaper than we think?
- Burning book festivals is not a climate solution
- Do electric cars use more water than petrol cars?
- Can solar and wind ever match the rollout rates of nuclear power in the 1970s and 1980s?
- The world has (probably) passed peak pollution
- The Moloch Trap of Environmental Problems
- How many people died from disasters in 2023?
- What do Americans think about electric cars?
- Was that a big wildfire?
- The chocolate price spike: what’s happening to global cocoa production?
- How much electricity would we need for green steel? Some numbers from Chris Goodall's new book
- What do American households use electricity for?
- Low-carbon energy does not have the same energy security risks as fossil fuels
- Many people don't know that nuclear power is low-carbon
- Do heat pumps work in the cold?
- China is building more coal plants but might burn less coal
- Global energy demand could be lower in 2050, despite the world getting richer
- How many birds do wind farms kill?
- Why we need to highlight stories of progress to build a better future
- My book is out in the US today!
- Republican states are going strong on solar and wind, but not for the climate
2023 58
- Are global harvests keeping pace in a warming world?
- We have enough minerals for the energy transition, but medium-term supply is a challenge [Part 2]
- We have enough minerals for the energy transition, but medium-term supply is a challenge [Part 1]
- How much waste do solar panels and wind turbines produce?
- The world has enough minerals for low-carbon electricity
- The low-carbon energy transition will need less mining than fossil fuels, even when adjusted for waste rock
- Can solar and wind power Britain? An update of David MacKay’s numbers
- Electrification is efficiency: The world will need less energy after the transition
- Meat substitutes need to get a lot cheaper
- Net-zero: it’s not just where you end up, but how you get there that matters
- How much biofuel would we need to decarbonise aviation?
- How much does aviation contribute to climate change? How will this change in the future?
- My TED Talk is now live
- How much more electricity will the UK need to switch to electric vehicles?
- Biofuels: the US could switch to electric cars and solar power on just a fraction of the land
- Anger, sadness, guilt, hope: on the complex emotions of climate change
- Do electric vehicles reduce air pollution?
- If the UK has lots of renewables, why do electricity prices follow gas prices?
- Is deforestation falling in the Amazon?
- The future of low-carbon heating is heat pumps
- How bad are the wildfires in Greece this year?
- Is cobalt the 'blood diamond of electric cars'? What can be done about it?
- The weighty issue of electric cars [Part 2]
- The weighty issue of electric cars [Part 1]
- Which US states have the cleanest electricity? [Interactive slide deck]
- Canadian wildfire update: it’s already a record year
- Most of the energy you put into a gasoline car is wasted; this is not the case for electric cars
- Interactive slide deck: explore global data on EV sales, stocks and charging points
- Electric cars: are countries going fully electric, or do people prefer plug-in hybrids?
- Will it be a record year for Canadian wildfires? How are they changing over time?
- Are plant-based milks healthier or less nutritious than cow’s milk?
- Do people think ‘plant-based yoghurt’ comes from a cow, or are lobby groups crying over spilt milk?
- The world is not going to pass its 1.5°C warming target in the next few years, but it's a signal of what's to come
- Electric cars don't work as well in the cold, but they still work very well
- Not the End of the World: My book is now available to pre-order in the UK
- Electric cars are the new solar: people will underestimate how quickly they will take off
- Europe and China are moving quickly on electric cars; the rest of the world is lagging behind
- The world likes big cars, the data don’t lie 🎶
- Bigger, heavier, more efficient: A deep-dive on cars in the United States
- Climate deniers and climate doomers are more alike than they’d like to think
- Which countries have ‘enough’ public chargers for electric cars?
- How long does it take to build a nuclear reactor?
- Who has contributed most to global warming?
- Life Update: Climate Optimism, TED Talk and Book Edits
- Is the world approaching 'peak fertilizer'?
- Why “my country only emits 1% of emissions” is no excuse for rich countries to not tackle climate change
- China uses as much cement in two years as the US did over the entire 20th century
- The end of range anxiety: how has the range of electric cars changed over time?
- China is adding solar and wind faster than many of us realise: three charts that put it in perspective
- How much space would we need to store the world’s plastic in landfills?
- BP thinks global oil demand peaked in 2019: this is an important signal for the energy transition
- Electric cars are better for the climate than petrol or diesel
- There are many reasons to invest in women's education. Reducing CO₂ emissions isn't one of them.
- Mining quantities for low-carbon energy is hundreds to thousands of times lower than mining for fossil fuels
- Perfect solutions: the enemy to solving our environmental problems
- The mineral monopoly: will low-carbon technology be controlled by a few countries?
- Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
- Deforestation in the Amazon peaked decades ago. Can we get it to zero?
2022 6
- Electric vehicle batteries would have cost as much as a million dollars in the 1990s
- Young people feel like they have no future due to climate change; we need to change the narrative
- Eating local is still not a good way to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet
- Are meat substitutes really better for the environment than meat?
- Global per capita CO₂ emissions have (still) peaked
- Welcome to 'Sustainability by numbers'