Perhaps inspired by clear messages from the world's scientific community, 2014 brought the sight of politicians across the globe speaking of the need to transition away from fossil fuels, and acknowledging the scale of that challenge. These are the trends that defined the global climate and energy debate over the past 12 months. Renewables records keep breaking, and need to continue to do so - renewable power records were shattered all over the world last year. But the vast majority of human society remains fossil-fuelled, and nothing seems to be changing that rapidly.

In December, the equivalent of 43 per cent of the UK's homes were powered by wind turbines, a new record. Germany's renewables produced 31 per cent of the country's power in the first sixth months of 2014, a new record. At the same time, Denmark's wind turbines provided for 41 per cent of the country's electricity consumption, a new record. In Asia-Pacific, solar panels are projected to account for 19 per cent more demand in 2014 than last year, a new record.

The International Energy Agency says the twin drivers of growing electricity demand and an ever-growing renewables industry means low carbon power generation records are likely to continue to tumble for some time.

The question isn't whether renewables will keep growing. Rather, policymakers need to ask whether they'll grow quickly enough to limit global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says the world's energy system need to be zero emissions by 2100 if policymakers are going to prevent warming of more than two degrees above pre-industrial levels.

Given renewables' relatively minor contribution to the world's energy mix - about five per cent at the end of last year - generation records will need to keep being obliterated, and fast.

Carbon bubble message goes mainstream, but coal power persists - 2014 was the year the carbon bubble concept - that companies could be sitting on fossil fuel assets they can't burn if the world tackles climate change - went mainstream.

At the start of December, the Bank of England announced it would launch an enquiry into the financial risks companies were taking as the world tries to agree ways to cut emissions. Six months earlier, the IEA warned that companies' assets could become 'stranded' if politicians chose to tackle climate change.

The Carbon Tracker Initiative thinktank first floated the idea of a carbon bubble back in 2012. Since then, climate campaigners have been pressuring investors to pull their backing for energy companies on the basis that most of the world's fossil fuels will need to stay in the ground.

But 2014 was the first time such weighty institutions backed the concept. Perhaps the IPCC's decision to include a carbon budget in its landmark report at the end of 2013, which showed the world could emit enough carbon dioxide to push global warming above two degrees within the next two decades, jolted their imaginations.