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Factcheck: Reform UK’s 45 false or misleading claims about climate and energy
Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, has emerged as a major force in UK politics in recent years – pushing anti-net-zero policies, alongside vehement opposition to immigration.
The hard-right populist party is currently mired in a funding controversy and only has a handful of MPs, yet, until recently, it had been leading in national polls for more than a year.
As seen with many similar parties across Europe and beyond, a rejection of climate science is central to Reform’s ideological outlook.
Richard Tice, the party’s deputy leader, is a vocal critic of what he calls “net stupid zero” and has incorrectly blamed “the sun or volcanoes” for human-caused global warming.
As Reform’s energy spokesperson, Tice has also been clear that, if the party were ever to form a national government, it would scrap the UK’s net-zero target, support fossil-fuel expansion and tear up existing contracts for renewable energy.
While less vocal on the subject, Farage has, nevertheless, expressed climate-sceptic views and falsely blamed net-zero policies for the “deindustrialisation of Britain”.
These views draw on long-standing, inaccurate climate-sceptic narratives and are reflected in Reform’s election manifestos, its actions in local government and the opinions of many of its supporters.
Here, Carbon Brief gathers together by topic and factchecks 45 false or misleading claims made by the party’s leadership relating to climate change, renewables and net-zero.
Climate scienceFALSE
Tice: “There’s no evidence that man-made CO2 is going to change climate change…The Norwegian government’s own equivalent of our ONS [Office of National Statistics] has recently produced a report along the lines of what I’m saying.”
Sky News, February 2025
The world’s authority on climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says it is “unequivocal” that humans have warmed the planet, primarily through releasing greenhouse gases.
The IPCC says that, due to human activities, concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) “have increased at rates that have no precedent on centennial timescales in at least the past 800,000 years”.
It adds that concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are now higher than they have been for at least the past two million years.
The report that Tice is referring to is by two independent authors, with Statistics Norway clarifying in 2024 that their views are “not the official stance” of the statistics bureau. (It has also not been formally peer reviewed.)
A factcheck of the Norwegian report by a climate scientist for RealClimate describes it as “misguided” and a “distraction due to errors”.
Another factcheck published by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found it “contains standard talking-points of climate denial”.
MISLEADING
Tice: “Look, the climate’s always changed for millions of years. And it goes through cycles, long, medium and short.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Global temperatures are currently around 1.4C hotter than when the industrial era first began in 1850-1900, as shown in the figure below.
The IPCC says that this amount of warming is likely to have made Earth hotter than at any time in about 125,000 years.
Data from NASA GISTEMP, NOAA GlobalTemp, Hadley/UEA HadCRUT5, Berkeley Earth, Copernicus ERA5, JRA-3Q, DCENT, and China-MST. Temperature records are aligned over the 1981-2010 period and use the WMO approach to calculate warming relative to pre-industrial levels (1850-1900).Scientists overwhelmingly agree that approximately 100% of this warming has been caused by humans.
There are also natural influences that can affect Earth’s climate on shorter timescales, such as El Niño events, volcanic eruptions and small variations in the output of the sun. However, scientists have found that these have only a limited effect on the underlying trend of long-term global warming.
When looking at longer timescales of millions of years or more, Earth has experienced multiple ice ages interspersed with warmer periods.
These changes in climate were triggered by variations in Earth’s orbit around the sun, in combination with subtle fluctuations in the tilt and rotation of the planet, over tens of thousands of years. However, the resulting changes to CO2 levels in the atmosphere also played a role.
This should serve as a “cautionary example”, according to Dr Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist and Carbon Brief contributor, “because human emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases push the Earth further out of the range of climate conditions that have characterised the past few million years”.
FALSE
Tice: “The idea that you can stop the power of the sun or volcanoes is simply ludicrous.”
BBC Breakfast, June 2024
Scientists overwhelmingly agree that humans have caused 100% of recent climate change.
Tice’s suggestion that the sun or volcanic eruptions are behind current warming is false.
As the video below explains, the sun and volcanic eruptions have little bearing on the long-term trend of global temperature rise since the Industrial Revolution.
MISLEADING
Farage: “All I do know is that man produces about 3% of the CO2 produced in the world every year and that it is nuts to call CO2 a poison.”
BBC Radio 5 Live, June 2024
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is now higher than it has been for at least two million years, having spiked dramatically since the Industrial Revolution.
This surge in CO2 levels is entirely due to human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels. While Farage is correct that, on an annual basis, humans only account for a few percent of all the CO2 that is released into the atmosphere, this is irrelevant.
The world’s land and ocean naturally release hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 each year. However, the land and ocean also absorb hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 each year, meaning that – before the start of the fossil-fuel era – these flows were broadly in balance.
The recycling of CO2 through Earth’s natural systems is known as the “global carbon cycle”.
Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, humans have disrupted Earth’s natural balance by releasing vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
The IPCC says that, because of humans, concentrations of CO2 “have increased at rates that have no precedent…in at least the past 800,000 years”.
It adds that concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are now higher than they have been for at least the past two million years.
FALSE
Tice: “Many thousands of scientists fundamentally disagree about the need to [reach net-zero], or the pace to [achieve net-zero]…But they have been smeared and labelled. They can’t get any research grant funding.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Contrary to Tice’s claim, there are not “thousands” of scientists that disagree on the need for net-zero.
Tice is likely referring to a “world climate declaration” that was circulated on social media by climate sceptics in 2022, supposedly signed by “1,200 climate experts”. A closer look at the list of signatories revealed that less than 1% described themselves as climate scientists – and six of the people on the list were dead.
Reaching net-zero emissions globally is the “only way” to stop climate change, according to the IPCC. The IPCC’s most recent set of reports involved 721 scientists in 90 countries.
All modelled pathways for limiting global warming to 1.5C by 2100, the ambition of the Paris Agreement, involve reaching net-zero emissions around the middle of the century.
This is reflected in the text of the Paris Agreement, which aims to “achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century”.
FALSE
Tice: “The proof of my argument is one of the IPCC reports a few years ago that said even if you get to net-zero effectively tomorrow, it’ll make no difference to one of the key things people are most worried about, which is sea level rise, for somewhere between 200 years on the one hand and 1,000 years on the other hand.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Although it is true that sea level rise is set to worsen, even if countries reach net-zero, it is certainly not the case that making efforts to cut emissions will make “no difference”.
Tice is likely referring to the IPCC’s special report on 1.5C released in 2018.
It said with “high confidence” that human-caused global warming to date will “persist for centuries to millennia and will continue to cause further long-term changes in the climate system, such as sea level rise”.
A more recent study, published in Nature Climate Change in 2025, found that following current climate policies would cause an extra 79cm of sea level rise by the year 2300.
However, reducing emissions in line with 1.5C would cut this additional sea level rise to 15cm.
Moreover, the best-available evidence shows that warming will more or less stop when the world reaches net-zero emissions. Even if some sea level rise continues, net-zero would still prevent a long list of other increasingly severe climate impacts from taking place.
FALSE
Tice: “The IPCC has just resiled from one of its core assumptions, which was the [RCP]8.5 scenario…One of the foundations of the IPCC’s very ethos in the last 20-30 years, they’ve just abandoned.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
The “foundations” of the evidence on climate change, as well as the risk of “catastrophic” warming without stronger action, are unchanged by the recent shift on “RCP8.5”.
“RCP8.5” is one of a range of emissions scenarios that climate scientists have used when making projections about future climate change. It is a scenario of very high global emissions, imagining a future with large increases in coal use and no climate policies.
In May 2026, a new set of emissions scenarios were published, no longer including a scenario with emissions as high as those in RCP8.5 (or its successor, SSP5-8.5).
This moment was seized upon by a range of climate-sceptic and rightwing figures – including US president Donald Trump – who falsely claimed it as evidence that the IPCC had to “admit” that it was “wrong” about future climate change.
This is incorrect because it both misrepresents the meaning of the shift on RCP8.5 and because the set of emissions scenarios in question were not developed by the IPCC in the first place. Instead, they were put together by a group of climate modelling experts. (See Carbon Brief’s factcheck for more information.)
While the new scenarios no longer include such high emissions as in RCP8.5 – partly as a result of limited climate policy success – they also show it is now “not possible” to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels without significant “overshoot”.
Moreover, projections suggest that the world is still on course for between 2.5C and 3C of warming. This level of warming was previously described as “catastrophic” by the UN.
MISLEADING
Tice: “Cleaner air equals higher temperatures, not CO2.”
According to the IPCC, 100% of warming since the Industrial Revolution is due to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, particularly CO2.
Tice cites a Daily Telegraph article with the incorrect headline: “Heatwaves caused by fall in pollution.” He erroneously claims this as evidence that “we have been gaslit and lied to” about the causes of climate change.
In fact, as a Carbon Brief factcheck of that article notes, scientists say that the framing of heatwaves being “caused” by declining air pollution is simply “wrong”.
The claim is based on a paper in Geophysical Research Letters, which looks at how air pollution affects circulation patterns in the atmosphere and influences summer temperatures in Europe.
Scientists have long known that human-caused emissions of aerosols “mask” global warming, partly because they reflect or absorb sunlight. Curbing air pollution, therefore, removes some of this cooling effect.
Nevertheless, the lead author of the study in question is clear that greenhouse gas emissions remain the “most important factor” driving Europe’s extreme heat events, due to their role in global warming.
A recent attribution study by the World Weather Attribution service concluded that the June heatwave in Europe would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change.
Net-zero targetFALSE
Tice: “Net-zero will make zero difference to climate change.”
BBC Breakfast, June 2024
In fact, reaching net-zero emissions globally is the “only way” to stop climate change, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
At that point, when carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have been cut substantially and any remaining emissions are balanced out by CO2-removal technology or tree-planting, then warming is expected to essentially stop.
FALSE
Tice: “It’s incredibly stupid for the UK to almost unilaterally say, we’re going to lead the way in the world.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
It is completely false to argue that the UK is acting “unilaterally” to tackle climate change.
The UK has indeed been a leader in climate legislation. When the then-Conservative government set the UK a legally binding “net-zero by 2050” target in 2019, it was the first major economy to do so.
However, 140 of the world’s 198 countries now have net-zero targets, covering 74% of the world’s emissions. Some have set more ambitious goals, such as Germany’s target of reaching net-zero by 2045, while others are even aiming for “net-negative” emissions.
The UK is, therefore, not pursuing net-zero “unilaterally”. Indeed, if the UK abandoned its net-zero target, it would join the US and Iran as the only major emitters without one.
MISLEADING
Tice: “We’re responsible for 0.7, 0.8% of CO2 emissions.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
The UK’s annual emissions, including emissions from fossil fuels and land-use changes, were roughly 0.7% of the global total in 2024, the most recent year for which data is available. When only considering fossil-fuel combustion, the figure is 0.8%.
Yet, while the numbers Tice quotes are accurate, it is misleading to use them as a justification for abandoning climate policies.
Only six nations each produce more than 2% of the world’s annual emissions. In 1990, the UK was one of those rare countries, but it has roughly halved its share since then, largely due to renewable-energy expansion. Even today, it remains the world’s 22nd largest emitter.
As the chart below shows, more than a third of all greenhouse gases come from the roughly 180 nations that produce 1% or less of the world’s emissions. If none of them acted, the world would never stop climate change.
Finally, some analysts point out the UK’s “moral responsibility” to act on climate change, given its large historical contribution to current levels of global warming.
The UK, through its historical CO2 emissions, is responsible for around 3% of current warming. When emissions in other countries under the UK’s colonial rule are counted as well, its share grows to more than 5% of the global total.
FALSE
Tice: “[Net-zero is] killing our economy.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Efforts to cut the UK’s emissions are not “killing the economy”. In fact, there is plenty of evidence that they are boosting the economy.
UK emissions in 2025 were 54% below 1990 levels, the baseline year for the nation’s climate goals. The UK economy has nearly doubled in size over the same period, as the chart below shows.
GDP has also continued to grow since the net-zero target was introduced in 2019.
A 2026 report from the CBI Economics – the consultancy arm of the Confederation for British Industry (CBI) – concluded:
“Net-zero is already one of the UK’s most productive and geographically distributed industrial sectors, generating high-value employment, driving supply chain activity, and anchoring the UK within one of the defining economic transformations of our era.”
The report concludes that the net-zero economy generated around £105bn in gross value added in 2025. It also supported 1.1m jobs across the country, with considerably higher wages than the UK average.
FALSE
Tice: “The cost of net-zero, which the Climate Change Committee admits is in the trillions of pounds, we don’t know how many trillions, who’s paying that? The British people.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) estimates that it would cost the UK a total of £108bn to reach net-zero by 2050, equivalent to 0.2% of GDP, while the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) says this would be far cheaper than failing to act.
The idea that net-zero will cost the UK trillions of pounds is false. Such claims invariably rely on analysis that exaggerates the capital cost of net-zero, while excluding both the benefits of cutting emissions and the costs of a system without net-zero policies.
One prominent recent example, promoted by Reform UK, relied on the assumption that gas boilers and petrol cars, for example, would cost nothing to buy and would have free fuel.
The idea that the CCC has “admitted” that net-zero will cost “trillions” may stem from a misinterpretation of CCC analysis from 2019, which estimated a net cost of £321bn.
Alternatively, Tice may be conflating this with another misinterpretation in the 2024 Reform UK manifesto, which falsely claimed that the cost of net-zero would be “£2tn or more”, according to the National Energy System Operator (Neso).
In fact, Neso had estimated that the cost of a net-zero energy system would be “broadly the same” as a high-carbon alternative.
Since then, the CCC has calculated that the net cost of investments needed to reach economy-wide net-zero will be around £108bn out to 2050, or less than 0.2% of GDP. Not only are the up-front investment costs lower than originally thought, but, by the 2040s, there will likely be large operational savings, due to clean technologies being cheaper to run.
There are also benefits from reaching net-zero, such as avoiding climate damages from cutting emissions and shielding the UK from fossil fuel-driven energy price spikes.
The government, therefore, expects net-zero to deliver substantial economic value to the UK, when weighing both the costs and benefits of meeting the target. The government says meeting its climate target for 2040 would yield net benefits worth £865bn.
Similarly, other bodies, such as Neso and the OBR, find that net-zero is the “cheapest” option for the UK, when compared with failing to cut emissions.
Finally, contrary to Tice’s comments, the vast majority of the capital costs of reaching net-zero will not be borne by public funding from the “British people”. The CCC estimates that 65-90% of the capital required will come from the private sector.
FALSE
Tice: “Labour’s reckless net-zero fantasies are destroying hundreds of thousands of industrial jobs.”
Press Association, July 2025
The transition to a net-zero economy is expected to boost the UK economy and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.
In a “landmark moment”, as of 2024, there were more people employed in the UK clean-energy sector than the oil and gas industry for the first time, according to the Renewable Energy Association.
While jobs in some sectors are expected to decline in the coming years, there is currently no evidence that “hundreds of thousands” of jobs have been “destroyed” by the net-zero target.
The CCC says that there is a lack of “robust data” on whether UK climate policies have already driven job losses, but notes that “this is unlikely to be the case, as most decarbonisation has occurred in sectors where employment declined for other reasons”.
This can be seen in the employment figures for coal mining, steelmaking and oil and gas production, three industries that were mainstays of the UK economy.
As the chart below shows, all of these sectors employ fewer people today than they did in the past. But their major declines happened long before the net-zero target was set, resulting from a wide range of factors including coal being replaced by cheaper fuels, cyclical downturns in oil prices and competition with steel production overseas.
The grey shaded area indicates the period in which the UK has a net-zero target in place. Definitions from ONS Nomis have changed over the years, but the broad categories covered in this chart are “mining of coal and lignite”, “manufacture of basic iron and steel and of ferro-alloys”, “manufacture of other products of first processing of steel”, “extraction of crude petroleum and natural gas” and “support activities for petroleum and natural gas extraction”.(The chart above only includes jobs in oil and gas extraction, but figures for UK fossil-fuel jobs vary considerably between sources, depending on the sectors classed as relevant. Industry body Offshore Energies UK cites a much broader figure of 180,000 jobs in 2024, which includes “supply chains and regional economies”.)
This does not mean that there will be no impact on the UK workforce in the future.
A literature review by the CCC concluded that the “phase-down of high-emitting sectors and redirection of sectors” could threaten 8,000-75,000 jobs. This could include roughly 15,000 oil-and-gas workers and around 1,000 people working in coal mines.
One of the sectors that could see big changes is livestock farming, as UK diets shift away from emissions-intensive animal products. Notably, this shift is already taking place without any intervention from the government, let alone net-zero policies.
The CCC also expects there to be “extensive job creation” as the country transitions to a net-zero economy. Job gains in low-carbon sectors, such as renewable energy and clean heating, are set to far surpass losses in other sectors, as the chart below shows.
Overall, the committee says 135,000 to 725,000 “net” new jobs are set to be “created by net-zero”.
Rather than opposing net-zero targets, some trade unions have stressed the need to support a “just transition” for workers in fossil fuel-intensive sectors.
Industry groups have also pointed to the significant employment opportunities that a “net-zero economy” will bring.
FALSE
Farage: “We view the net-zero targets as being the prime reason for the deindustrialisation of Britain.”
Reform UK press conference, February 2025
Net-zero is at the heart of the UK’s industrial strategy and it has frequently been described as the “economic opportunity of the century”.
CBI chief economist Louise Hellem has described the net-zero economy as “a major part of the national industrial base”, while the Aldersgate Group says net-zero has the potential to be “the UK’s growth engine”.
Moreover, net-zero targets – set in 2019 – are clearly not the “prime reason” for the UK’s “deindustrialisation”, which has been underway for decades.
Since around the 1960s, major industries such as steel and mining have declined in the UK. There are various reasons for this, including globalisation, but the timeline does not match up with the creation of climate legislation.
Around 30% of the nation’s workers were employed in manufacturing after the second world war. By 2000-2016, the period in which the UK introduced its first major climate policies, this had already dropped to 10%, according to the ONS.
In recent years, businesses have warned that the UK’s relatively high industrial electricity prices are driving further “deindustrialisation”. This has been a talking point for those seeking to blame the nation’s net-zero strategy for driving high prices.
However, these arguments tend to omit the UK’s high exposure to expensive gas, which sets the nation’s wholesale electricity prices most of the time.
The UK steel industry itself says that this exposure to gas is the key reason why it faces much higher electricity prices than counterparts in countries such as France and Germany.
Energy costsFALSE
Farage: “If we had carbon-free electricity it would cost over a trillion – and maybe nearer two – to upgrade the entirety of our grid.”
Press conference, August 2025
Cutting the UK’s emissions by using clean power to run an electrified economy is expected to significantly reduce consumer bills.
This is because electrified technologies, such as EVs and heat pumps, are significantly more efficient than fossil-fuel alternatives.
Moreover, the UK would be consolidating three separate energy systems – electricity, gas and transport fuel – into a unified, more efficient and electrified whole.
It would cost £108bn to reach the UK’s net-zero target – including a “carbon-free” electricity grid – according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC).
This includes the investment needed to build a low-carbon energy system, instead of maintaining one built on fossil fuels.
Crucially, it also takes into account the running costs of the two systems, such as the much higher cost of fuel needed for petrol cars, as shown below.
Investing in a net-zero economy would bring benefits worth around £865bn, according to the government. Unlike the CCC figures, this includes avoided climate damages.
It is not clear where Farage’s false claim comes from.
The 2024 Reform UK manifesto included a similar false claim that the “cost of net-zero has been estimated by the National Grid and others at some £2tn or more”.
In reality, the then-National Grid Electricity System Operator – now Neso – had said in 2020 that the cost of building and operating the UK energy system would be “broadly the same”, with or without net-zero.
It is true that the UK will need to invest heavily in upgrading its electricity grid. This will cost some £64bn out to 2030 and another £89bn in the following decade, according to Neso.
This is around 10 times lower than Farage’s claim. But, crucially, it does not include the savings this investment will unlock, such as cheaper travel with electric vehicles.
FALSE
Tice: “There was a direct link between the growth in renewable generating capacity and the growth in electricity prices in the UK.”
Bloomberg interview, May 2026
It is expensive gas that has largely driven up electricity prices in the UK.
High gas prices caused two-thirds of the rise in electricity bills over recent years, according to the UK Energy Research Centre – and this was before the Iran crisis.
The UK has high electricity prices principally because its electricity system remains heavily reliant on gas-fired power plants. This means gas usually sets the price of UK power.
Moreover, the growth in renewable capacity has helped to protect UK billpayers during the latest fossil-fuel price shock, after the US and Israel attacked Iran.
This is an “early sign” that the government’s clean-power plan “may be working”, according to thinktank NESTA. It says “electricity [prices are] beginning to decouple from gas“.
Electricity systems that have high shares of renewable energy tend to have lower wholesale power prices, according to evidence from US states and from European countries.
As the University of Oxford’s Prof Jan Rosenow explains in a recent post on his Bright Spots substack, the “‘renewables make electricity expensive’ claim doesn’t survive contact with the wholesale data”. He adds:
“The countries with the most expensive wholesale electricity are the ones still dependent on gas to set their prices.”
Rosenow notes that the relationship between renewables and consumer bills is less clear, because these also include network charges, policy costs and taxes. He argues for reforms to ensure that “lower wholesale prices [from clean power] feed through into lower bills”.
The CCC also argues for reforms to make electricity cheaper. Still, it concludes that clean power coupled to faster electrification is the clearest route to lower energy bills for the UK.
FALSE
Farage: “Perhaps the real unfairness of net-zero policies…has been the impact on domestic bills, something about which there has been an absolute wall of silence.”
Press conference, February 2025
By far the biggest driver of increases in domestic energy bills in recent years has been the rising cost of gas, not “net-zero policies”.
Gas prices have been trending upwards since the mid-2000s, long before the UK even had a net-zero target. Initially, this was due to dwindling supplies in Europe – including the North Sea – as well as more global competition for gas.
Gas prices then surged in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine and cut off supplies to Europe. This year, war in the Middle East has once again sent gas prices soaring.
Most of the energy bill increases in recent years have been the result of wholesale gas costs rising due to these successive global crises.
There are some parts of domestic energy bills that could be described as “net-zero policies” – notably, the subsidies or “green levies” to support both old and new renewable energy.
However, these are not the drivers of recent price rises and are a much smaller component of a domestic energy bill than wholesale gas costs. (In addition, a chunk of policy costs have recently been moved off bills into general taxation.)
Moreover, the renewables they support have helped to curb the UK’s reliance on imported gas, saving the nation money.
Finally, the idea that this issue has faced a “wall of silence” is simply not true.
Energy bills and net-zero have been endlessly debated by politicians, commentators and the media. A pledge to cut energy bills was one of the central pillars of the Labour government’s election manifesto in 2024.
FALSE
Tice: “The cost of renewables plus backup, literally by definition, must cost more than backup because there is a cost of capital and a cost of retention of all of the backup…Don’t build it in the first place. We don’t need batteries.”
Bloomberg interview, May 2026
The UK is building a clean-energy system that will cost more to build – and much less to operate – than the current fossil-fuel economy.
Tice is ignoring half of this equation and – by definition – this means he is not giving a full picture.
For example, wind and solar do not need fuel to operate, whereas “backup” plants cannot generate power without gas or fuel oil.
It is highly misleading to look only at the capital investments needed to build wind, solar or gas plants, while ignoring the cost of operating them.
Electricity generation from wind and solar helped the UK avoid gas imports worth £1.7bn in the first two months of the Hormuz crisis alone, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
The CCC says that households could cut their bills by an average of £1,200 per year – even after higher upfront costs – by adopting solar, heat pumps and electric vehicles, as shown below.
.cb-tweet img{ border: solid 1.25px #333333; border-radius: 5px; } @media (max-width:650px){ .cb-tweet{ width:100%; } } Household energy costs for heat, power and transport, £ per year. The upfront costs of purchasing cars, heating systems, chargers and solar panels are annualised. Source: CCC progress report 2026.Ultimately, an electrified economy built on renewables and other sources of clean power will reduce energy waste and cut bills, according to the CCC and others.
FALSE
Tice: “It is as cost-effective or indeed cheaper to put the cables underground.”
Press conference, February 2025
Contrary to repeated claims by Tice, there is clear evidence that it is significantly cheaper to build overhead electricity pylons than it is to “put cables underground”.
It is 3.5-5 times more expensive to bury cables than to run overhead wires, according to research published in May 2026 and shown in the figure below, with other similar studies.
The latest study, by consultancy Ramboll, shows that underground cables remain far more expensive, even where techniques such as “cable ploughing” are used to bury them.
The findings are in line with previous research published by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) in April 2025.
This found that “underground cables are, on average, 4.5 times more expensive than overhead lines”. It said that undersea cables “can be up to 11 times more costly”.
Another consultancy, DNV, reached very similar conclusions in 2024. The IET said the same back in 2012, when it estimated underground cables to be five times more costly.
All of these reports directly contradict claims made by Tice in a 2025 press conference:
“We are serving notice on National Grid…put the cables underground…It is as cost-effective, or indeed cheaper, to put the cables underground.”
Tice’s claim is based on a highly misleading interpretation of the East Anglia network study, published by Neso in 2024.
This study put a price on various options to reinforce the electricity network in the east of England, including a planned overhead route from Norwich to Tilbury.
Contrary to Tice’s claims, figures from project developer National Grid suggest that using underground cables for this route would be 6.5 times more expensive than overhead wires.
If all of the country’s planned new electricity cables were put underground, it could cost up to an extra £22bn, according to Sam Dumitriu, head of policy at thinktank Britain Remade.
FALSE
Tice: “[A ‘windfall tax’ on renewables] is the best way that we can help get the bills down and lower the cost of living.”
Press conference, February 2025
Expensive gas has been the main driver of UK energy bill increases in recent years, particularly as successive global crises have sent global gas prices spiralling.
As such, reducing the UK’s exposure to international gas prices – as well as cutting its reliance on imported fuels for cars and boilers – is key to reducing bills.
Yet, Tice has claimed that the “best way” to cut bills would be through a so-called “windfall tax” on wind and solar power generators.
It is unclear how it would be possible to cut bills – by even a small amount – through an additional tax on renewables, which generate around half of the nation’s electricity.
With “windfall”, Tice borrowed a term that is often used for new taxes on the fossil-fuel companies making billions in additional profits due to war in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Renewables have helped to shield the UK from the impact of these conflicts, by curbing its reliance on gas and saving billions that would otherwise have been spent on costly imports.
Tice suggested that a new tax on renewable energy firms could help “recover” the money previously paid to them in subsidies. However, he has not offered any detail on how the proposed tax would work, how much money it would raise or what impact it might have.
A retrospective change to the tax treatment of existing energy infrastructure would hamper future investment in the system, whether that is for clean power or Tice’s own preferred energy sources.
Blocking renewables through a windfall tax and other changes could stop investments worth tens of billions of pounds, according to the New Economics Foundation thinktank.
MISLEADING
Farage: “Our electricity prices for industry are between five and six times higher than those in America.”
Press conference, February 2025
The UK primarily has high industrial electricity prices due to its exposure to high gas prices.
In turn, the UK and other European countries face much higher gas prices than the US.
This is particularly true since Russia cut off pipeline gas supplies to the continent amid its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – a shift that has been reinforced by EU sanctions.
This means Europe is reliant on internationally traded liquified natural gas (LNG), for which it competes with Japan and other countries.
In contrast, gas prices are low in the US because supplies are often a by-product of more valuable oil extraction, which comes out of the ground with “associated” gas. The demand for US gas is also limited by the amount that can be exported overseas as LNG.
As such, while it is true that UK industrial electricity prices are high compared to other countries, the reasons are different to what Farage implies.
In addition, his claim that costs are “five to six times higher” than the US is overstated.
The most widely cited figures, based on International Energy Agency (IEA) data, suggest industrial prices are four times higher in the UK than those in the US.
Despite claims made by right-leaning commentators, it would not be possible for the UK to recreate the US gas market dynamics by fracking for shale gas, or by ramping up North Sea gas extraction.
Oil and gasMISLEADING
Tice: “Let me remind you, in the 80s and 90s…we were growing at between 2.5% and 4% a year. We had deep, plentiful energy driven by oil and gas from the North Sea, right? No one was worried about the price of electricity. No one was worried about the quantity of supply. No one was worried about the reliability of supply.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
The UK extracted a significant proportion of its oil and gas resources from the 1980s onwards, after privatising the industry and using the revenue to cut income taxes.
Now, as anticipated at the time, there is very little fuel left to drill.
The UK went through a “dash for gas” in the 1990s, with North Sea gas production levels steadily increasing from the 1980s until the 2000s.
However, gas production in the North Sea fell by 74% between 2000 and 2025, while oil output fell by 75%.
This is not because policies favouring new oil and gas production ended, but rather because of competition from cheaper sources of the fuels and because the amount of fossil fuels left in the North Sea basin started to run out.
According to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) thinktank, around 90% of the oil and gas that is likely to be produced from the North Sea has already been burned.
It is also true that electricity prices were much lower in the 1990s than they are today. This is largely explained by rising gas prices – and increasing exposure to imports.
The UK dash for gas power was driven by cheap gas prices, which favoured a shift away from coal and nuclear. This included cancelling a planned fleet of new nuclear reactors.
When gas subsequently became expensive, electricity prices went up, because the UK was heavily exposed to the fuel. This dynamic continues today, although the rise of renewables is starting to break the link between gas and power prices..
FALSE
Tice: “We [would] allow licences to drill…If you increase the supply of anything, it’s basic economics, the price of that good will come down, as it does in America, where their gas price, their wholesale gas price, is give or take 30% of ours.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Gas is cheap in the US because it is widely extracted as a byproduct of more valuable oil and because demand is limited by export capacity.
These dynamics – and the abundant, easily accessible shale resources in the US – are a function of geography and cannot be replicated in the UK.
North Sea production is in long-term decline and this cannot be reversed by new licenses, because most of the oil and gas that was under the ground has already been burned.
In addition, the production of oil and gas in the North Sea has very limited effects on global energy prices, which determine the cost of UK energy bills.
This is because the country is a relatively small producer, accounting for around 1% of global output. By contrast, the US is the world’s largest oil-and-gas producer.
FALSE
Tice: “If we’d had this common sense not to abandon our North Sea, we wouldn’t have been in that pickle [referring to importing LNG from the US].”
Bloomberg, May 2026
The UK is increasingly reliant on imported fossil fuels, because it has already used up most of the oil and gas that was once under the North Sea.
The country was a net energy exporter in 2000, but, by 2010, was dependent on imports for 30% of its energy supplies. On the same metric, the UK’s net import dependency reached 44% in 2024.
This is not because policies favouring new oil and gas production ended, but rather because the amount of fossil fuels left in the North Sea basin started to run out.
Gas production in the North Sea fell by 74% between 2000 and 2025, while oil output fell by 75%.
This decline has occurred despite the previous Conservative government, which was in power from 2010-24, holding six new licensing rounds and issuing hundreds of new oil and gas licences.
FALSE
Tice: “Why are the Norwegians drilling 49 new wells last year? Because they think there’s plenty more to go that’s worth going for. So, why are we so stupid that, on our side of the line, we think it’s a good idea to drill zero new wells?”
Bloomberg, May 2026
The UK has already used up most of the oil and gas that was under its part of the North Sea, whereas the state-run Norwegian system has taken a different approach.
Nevertheless, even the most optimistic of Norway’s official forecasts sees a steady decline in production over the coming decades, as their oil and gas also starts to run out.
UK fossil-fuel production is lower than Norway’s because of geology and the decisions that were taken in the past, neither of which can be changed by the current or any future UK government.
Specifically, the UK has already used up the large majority of its North Sea resources, having extracted around 90% of the oil and gas that is available.
In contrast, Norway has only used up 57% of the “expected recoverable resource” from its part of the North Sea, according to official estimates published by Norwegian Petroleum.
FALSE
Tice: “We’ve got lots of [oil and gas] reserves, but if you just say it’s not viable because you make the regulations and everything too expensive, then don’t be surprised if people say, well, there’s not much to go for.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Projections of the amount of oil and gas that will be recovered from the North Sea have barely changed since the Labour government took office in 2024.
Tice’s suggestion that official estimates of North Sea reserves have been revised down as a result of the Labour government’s policies is, therefore, provably untrue.
For gas, there is little difference between official projections published before and after the government’s 2024 election win and its decision to ban new licensing, as shown below.
North Sea oil (right) and gas production (right), million tonnes of oil equivalent, under the baseline NSTA projection or with further drilling. Source: NSTA.While the NSTA projections for oil have shifted more noticeably between 2023 and 2026, this largely relates to output from existing fields, rather than the potential from new drilling.
FALSE
Tice: “I go to Aberdeen and they’re literally losing a thousand jobs a month in and around Aberdeen and the oil and gas industry because of this mad policy.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Jobs in North Sea oil and gas have been declining rapidly for decades, having fallen by a third between 2014 and 2023 – well before the current government took office.
However, the major driver of job losses has been the irreversible decline of the North Sea basin. Gas production in the North Sea fell by 74% between 2000 and 2025, while oil output fell by 75%.
This decline has occurred despite the previous Conservative government, which was in power from 2010-24, holding six new licensing rounds and issuing hundreds of new licences.
MISLEADING
Tice: “All of the nations who’ve got energy treasure, who are extracting it, they are growing, whether it’s America, whether it’s the Middle East, whether it’s in Asia.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Fossil-fuel producers have received windfall profits as a result of price spikes in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the effective closure of the strait of Hormuz.
On the flip side of this, countries that rely on fossil-fuel imports – particularly in Europe and China – have been hit with an extra $330bn in costs since the Iran crisis began.
For the UK, the most effective way to cut the need for costly fossil-fuel imports is to continue expanding clean-energy supplies and the electrified technologies that use them.
It is true that the US economy is growing at a faster rate than Europe’s. This is down to a range of reasons, experts say, including the nation’s rapid uptake of AI.
Another factor is that import dependency has left the UK and others particularly exposed to the economic impacts of the recent fossil-fuel price spikes.
Meanwhile, there is also plenty of evidence to show that investing in clean energy is driving economic growth in countries around the world.
The International Energy Agency (IEA), the world’s energy watchdog, estimated that clean energy accounted for 10% of global GDP growth in 2023. The figure was 30% for the EU, according to the IEA.
Analysis published by Carbon Brief shows that clean energy drove more than a third of China’s GDP growth in 2025. And the International Monetary Fund (IMF) says that climate action will provide a long-term boost to China’s economy and energy security.
In the UK, emissions have “decoupled” from economic growth, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
The analysis found that UK emissions fell to 54% below 1990 levels in 2024, while GDP was up 84%.
FALSE
Farage: “Countries that frack get rich. Countries that don’t frack get poor.”
Edinburgh press conference, August 2025
The availability and accessibility of shale resources – and, therefore, the potential economic return from extracting oil and gas via fracking – is a function of geography and geology.
The UK’s shale gas resources are hard to extract and roughly 10-times smaller than initially thought. As a result, their potential to boost the UK economy is extremely limited.
While fracking has boosted economic growth in the US, there is little evidence to suggest this could be replicated by countries in Europe.
Only four countries frack for oil and gas at a large-scale commercial level: the US, Canada, China and Argentina.
Across much of Europe, fracking faces legal bans over concerns that the practice can contaminate water supplies and impact public health.
There are also practical and economic hurdles to fracking in Europe.
US oil majors abandoned efforts to establish a shale gas industry in Poland more than a decade ago. As the Economist noted in 2014: “There is no getting around geology.”
In the UK, fracking is unpopular with the public, with just 17% of people supporting it and 45% opposing it.
Any attempt to produce oil and gas via fracking would likely face protests and lengthy legal battles. Even if projects were able to go ahead, it would likely take years to produce a meaningful amount of gas .(See Carbon Brief’s fracking factcheck.)
Impacts and adaptationMISLEADING
Tice: “Actually, what we need to do with climate change…we need to adapt to it.”
BBC Breakfast, June 2024
Climate change will keep getting worse until the world cuts emissions to net-zero.
Moreover, there are hard limits to adaptation, which can be overwhelmed by higher warming.
The longer emissions continue, the higher global temperatures will rise and the more nations such as the UK will have to adapt. It is, therefore, misleading to present adaptation as an alternative to cutting emissions.
The IPCC says that risks “will become increasingly complex and more difficult to manage” as climate change worsens. It also stresses that there are limits to adaptation, some of which have already been reached.
In response to the latest IPCC assessment report, Dr Aditi Mukherji told Carbon Brief:
“Effectiveness of most adaptation responses decreases drastically at global warming levels of 1.5C to 2C, showing that mitigation and adaptation efforts have to go hand in hand.”
In its latest advice to the UK government, the CCC set out the need to prepare for extreme heat, drought and flooding and states: “Without global emissions reductions, these risks may go past the point where the UK can protect itself with adaptation measures.”
FALSE
Tice: “It’s much cheaper to adapt to climate change than to think you can stop it.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Cutting emissions to net-zero will be much cheaper for the UK than dealing with the economic damages of unmitigated climate change, according to the OBR.
In addition, adapting to unavoidable warming will be far cheaper than “facing the damages”, according to the CCC.
While Tice frequently presents a false dichotomy between cutting emissions and adapting to climate impacts, they are not either/or alternatives. In fact, both are required to reduce the dangers of climate change – and both will require substantial investment.
Climate-related damages are already costing the UK, with one recent estimate concluding that the June 2026 heatwave alone led to a £1.15bn hit to the economy.
These costs will spiral if global emissions are not reduced. It is well established that the cost of inaction on climate change is considerably higher than the cost of cutting emissions.
The CCC estimates that climate change is already costing the UK economy £60bn a year in damages and this could rise to around £260bn by 2050, under around 2C of global warming.
The committee says a comprehensive climate-adaptation programme in the coming decades will reduce these costs.
As the chart below shows, CCC analysis has concluded that an adaptation package covering heat and health, urban heat and water scarcity could avoid up to £12bn a year in climate-damage costs across the UK by the 2050s.
In total, climate-adaptation actions are expected to cost at least £11bn per year out to the 2050s – a considerable sum, but one that the CCC says is “manageable” and will largely come from private-sector investment.
At the same time, the CCC says there is a risk of “catastrophic damages”, especially if warming continues to rise above 2C. Given this, it stresses that “reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions remain essential” to minimise such risks.
FALSE
Tice: “The issue [with drought] is not the quantity of water in the UK. The issue is how the water companies do or don’t capture it.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Climate change is making drought more frequent and severe in the UK, even as it makes winters wetter than they were in the past.
This is increasing the need for new reservoirs and other measures to manage the quantity of water available in the UK throughout the year.
The summer of 2026 saw record-low levels of rainfall across much of the south of England and Wales, as shown in the map below.
July 2026 was the driest month on record in England and Wales, according to the Met Office. This coincided with the two nations recording their sunniest July on record as well.
These “remarkable conditions” in 2026 come as part of a summer “marked by multiple heat records, which have contributed to drought conditions”, the Met Office notes.
The Environment Agency says that, due to climate change, “we are experiencing longer, hotter summers…leading to an increased likelihood of drought”.
FALSE
Tice: “I’m old enough to remember 1976. This feels a bit the same. That was 50 years ago.”
Press conference, August 2026
Since 1976, global warming has made heatwaves “more frequent, long-lasting and intense”.
As a result, summer 2026 was the UK’s hottest on record, with the Met Office finding that this was made around 130-times more likely by human-induced climate change.
Moreover, this year’s record means that summer 1976 is now only the seventh-warmest for the UK, with the top five all having occurred since 2003.
In the summer of 1976, there were 15 consecutive days when somewhere in the UK was above 32C. This led to water shortages and frequent wildfires, followed by flash floods.
There has been a lot of comparison to this “historic event” amid the record-breaking temperatures seen in 2026.
However, climate change means that a 1976-style weather pattern would be 3-4C hotter today than it was at the time.
There were just three days in which UK temperatures breached 36C in the entire 20th century, including 1976. Yet there were three days above 36C in 2026 alone.
Summer 2026 also saw 10 separate days with temperatures above 35C, breaking the previous record of five days, which had been set in 1976.
Additionally, the humidity was much higher in 2026 than in 1976. According to the Met Office, this meant that “even where peak air temperatures were comparable, the perceived heat and associated health risks were often greater in 2026”.
Clean energyMISLEADING
Tice: “80% of the offshore renewables is overseas owned. So the British consumer is being shafted to help overseas investors.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Around the world, more than 90% of new renewable power projects are cheaper than new fossil-fueled generation.
An energy system built around renewable power and electrified technologies such as EVs is also the lowest-cost option in the UK.
While it is true that more than 80% of UK offshore windfarms are owned by foreign companies, this is just a feature of the country’s privatised energy sector.
For example, 40% of North Sea oil and gas licences are also owned by foreign investors.
Additionally, regardless of the windfarms’ owners, their presence on the electricity grid is helping to protect consumers from high fossil-fuel prices.
In 2025, windfarms cut wholesale power prices by a third, according to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank.
MISLEADING
Tice: “Why are we so stupid that we spent £700m on Hinkley Point C, £700m of taxpayers’ cash, to protect a bunch of salmon? About 70 salmon, for God’s sake.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant will include a system designed to protect millions of fish.
However, the cost of this system amounts to just 1.5% of the overall £46bn cost of building the new reactors in Somerset.
The £700m system is expected to stop more than 2.6m fish a year from being sucked into the cooling pipes at the site on the Severn estuary.
Additionally, the use of the system is replacing plans to flood 900 acres (364 hectares) of farmland in neighbouring Gloucestershire, originally proposed by the site’s main developer, EDF.
The construction of Hinkley Point C is being financed by EDF and the China General Nuclear Power Group, not the taxpayer. When it begins generation, it will benefit from a “contracts for difference”, which is funded via electricity bills.
MISLEADING
Tice: “A hell of a lot more people have died building wind turbines than have died in the nuclear power industry. Little stated fact by the renewable industry.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Both wind and nuclear power are considered to be among the safest forms of energy generation in the world.
There are occasional fatalities among workers at windfarm construction sites, but these are very rare, particularly when compared with accidents in the fossil-fuel industry.
This is before taking into account that fossil-fuel pollution is responsible for one in five deaths globally, according to research by University College London.
Death rate from accidents and air pollution. Nuclear energy deaths include those from the Fukushima and Chornobyl disasters. Deaths from hydropower include those from the Banqian Dam failure in China.Analysis from 2020 suggests that solar power was the safest source of energy, followed by nuclear and then wind. All three clean-energy sources are orders of magnitude safer than fossil fuels, as shown in the figure below.
For example, each unit of electricity generation from coal is associated with more than 600 times as many deaths as the same amount of power from wind.
Our World in Data, a non-profit collaboration between the University of Oxford and the Global Change Data Lab, which did the analysis, explains:
“People often focus on the marginal differences at the bottom of the chart – between nuclear, solar and wind. This comparison is misguided: the uncertainties around these values mean they are likely to overlap.
“The key insight is that they are all much, much safer than fossil fuels.”
MISLEADING
Tice: “[Solar is a] good use of rooftops, there’s no subsidy on those.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Solar power is the cheapest electricity in history and keeps getting cheaper.
It is expected to play a key role in the energy transition, including in the UK.
While the government’s subsidy scheme for domestic solar – the “feed-in tariff” (FiT) – closed to new applicants in 2019, several other incentives have subsequently been introduced.
It was directly replaced by the “smart export guarantee”, wherein utilities pay households for any excess power they generate from their solar installations. This – together with the savings from using self-generated power – helps to offset the cost of the installation of solar panels.
Additionally, the government’s warm homes plan offers grants and loans designed to triple the number of homes with rooftop solar by 2030.
Ultimately, Tice’s focus on rooftop solar (which his firm uses) positions it in opposition to ground-mounted solar farms – creating a false dichotomy between a “good use” and a “bad use”.
Ground-mount solar is set to play a significant role in decarbonising the UK. It is much cheaper than rooftop solar and is not limited by the availability of rooftops.
FALSE
Tice: “All the renewables, all the wind turbines and the solar farms, they want a fat subsidy for very long-term contracts.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Renewables are the cheapest source of new electricity in the UK, where recent surges in energy bills have been predominantly due to the role of gas in setting electricity prices.
The first subsidy-free solar farm in the UK was opened in 2017 near Flitwick in Bedfordshire.
Across the UK, there are now a number of subsidy-free solar and windfarms, which either rely on selling power into the market or private power purchase agreements.
The majority of solar and windfarms hold government contracts, but these are fixed-price deals rather than subsidies.
The new wind and solar projects secured at the latest government auction of “contracts for difference” will be significantly cheaper than new gas, according to the government.
No new gas plants have been built in the UK without long-term subsidy contracts through the government’s capacity market. In addition, the price of fuel for gas-fired generation continues to spike in response to the latest global energy crisis in the Middle East.
The most recent large new gas plant was Keadby 2, which opened in 2023 and would now cost 3.5-times as much to build, according to its owner.
FALSE
Tice: “There is nothing environmentally friendly about covering 100 square miles of Lincolnshire, agricultural, productive farmland, with solar panels, surrounding whole villages, decimating property prices in those villages or making them unsaleable, and thinking that’s going to end well.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Even if solar farms expand in line with net-zero targets, they would cover just 0.7% of land in the UK – less than golf courses do currently.
Solar farms are very rarely built on productive agricultural land in the UK – with the majority built on low-grade land – and pose “no threat to national food security”, according to the National Farmers Union.
There is limited evidence that property prices are impacted by solar farms, with some studies suggesting that well-screened solar farms have no impact.
A London School of Economics study from 2021 did “not find any statistically significant effects [of solar on house prices], even at relatively small distances of 1km”.
Other studies have found very small negative impacts – on the order of 1-3% – while one study of 70 solar farms in the US identified a small boost to house prices.
As such, there is nothing to suggest that solar farms either “decimate” property prices or make homes “unsaleable”.
FALSE
Tice: “I drive a Tesla. Do I think it’s going to change the climate? No.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
As an electric vehicle (EV), driving a Tesla is far better for the environment than a petrol or diesel car, as it produces fewer greenhouse gases, air pollutants and noise.
Typically, an EV driven in Europe emits around two-thirds fewer greenhouse gas emissions than an equivalent petrol car, even accounting for battery production and disposal.
Carbon Brief analysis found that a Tesla Model Y, for example, will emit about 68% less CO2 over its lifetime than the average petrol car.
In addition to cutting costs for drivers, EVs are a key part of decarbonising road transport.
In the UK, transitioning away from petrol and diesel vehicles to EVs is expected to account for 23% of the total reduction in emissions being targeted by 2050. Net-zero is the “only way” to halt global warming.
MISLEADING
Tice: “The government says that the cost of renewable subsidies in the last 15 years is £100bn.”
Press conference, February 2025
Upfront renewable subsidies – in the UK and elsewhere – have helped deliver dramatic reductions in the cost of wind and solar power.
Since 2010, the cost of solar power has fallen by 89%, onshore wind by 71% and offshore wind by 63% – and these declines are set to continue.
As a result, 90% of new wind and solar installed in 2025 was cheaper than new fossil-fuel power, according to the International Renewable Energy Association (IRENA).
In the UK, wind power saved consumers more than £100bn between 2010-2023, after accounting for renewable subsidies, according to researchers at University College London.
In contrast, high fossil-fuel prices since the global energy crisis in 2022 had already cost the UK more than £180bn by the end of 2025, according to ECIU, with the first six months of the Iran crisis adding another £10bn in extra costs.
FALSE
Tice: “Those farmers who want to sell out to the renewable industry for solar farms – you can’t have it both ways, folks. Either you’re part of food production, part of food security for our nation, or you’re part of the renewables industry.”
Press conference, February 2025
Contrary to Tice’s claims, farmers can – and indeed often already do – “have it both ways”. Government statistics for 2023/24 suggest that 32% of farm businesses make use of renewable energy, mostly solar power.
Furthermore, some 37% of farmers, landowners and tenant farmers say the revenue from solar power helps secure their farms for future generations, according to interviews carried out by trade association Solar Energy UK.
Finally, solar can also be combined directly with food production through the use of “agrivoltaic” systems. This concept combines farming – including livestock grazing and shade-tolerant crops – with solar panels and has been gaining momentum as a solution to land-use conflicts.
FALSE
Tice: “The British people are not being told that these battery energy systems are dangerous – and until they can be proven to be absolutely safe, they should be banned.”
Press conference, February 2025
Battery energy storage systems are safe and getting safer all the time.
In the UK, there are over 1,659 large-scale battery storage projects and there have been only two reported fires in the past five years – neither of which had any injuries or fatalities.
Home battery storage systems are also safe. A recent study that looked at installations in Germany found the probability of a fire is 0.005% – this is around the same level as a tumble-dryer fire, 50 times lower than a general house fire and 18 times lower than a petrol or diesel engine fire.
(In contrast, there has been a spate of fires at UK waste facilities caused by the inappropriate disposal of lithium batteries in consumer devices, usually vapes.)
FALSE
Farage: “The argument that wind power makes us less reliant on other sources of energy from around the world just is not true. The national grid is not fit to deal with intermittent renewable energy.”
Press conference, August 2025
Wind power is already making the UK less reliant on imported fuels.
Moreover, expanding clean-energy supplies will be a much more effective route to reducing the UK’s reliance on energy imports than efforts to increase North Sea drilling.
ECIU found that the growth of offshore wind had reduced the nation’s spending on imported fuels by at least £30bn by the end of 2025.
Separately, Carbon Brief analysis found that wind and solar saved the UK from gas imports worth £1.7bn in March and April 2026 alone, amid the pressures of the Iran war.
The UK’s electricity grid does require upgrades as part of the transition to an energy system dominated by renewables, EVs and heat pumps. This transition will enable the UK to cut its imports of not only gas for heat and power, but also oil for transport.
Regardless of net-zero targets, higher spending on the electricity network is partly making up for decades of “under-investment”.The grid needs upgrades to connect new nuclear plants and data centres, as well as to meet growing electricity demand from homes and businesses.
Despite the need for investment, there is nothing to suggest that the grid is “not fit to deal” with renewables.
Power cuts for the average UK household are now happening 43% less often than they did in 2011. During that time, renewables have grown from 9.5% to 47% of electricity supplies.
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Grants, Not Loans: ANPFA, Nepal’s Peasants’ Union, Demands Climate Justice After Deadly Floods
The financing on offer for recovery, largely structured as loans, simply turns a climate disaster into new sovereign debt for a country that had no hand in causing it.
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Revealed: More than 1,000 NHS operations cancelled due to record UK heatwaves
More than 1,000 operations at NHS hospitals were cancelled due to heat during the UK’s record May and June heatwaves, Carbon Brief can reveal.
This includes 167 orthopaedic surgeries, such as knee and hip replacements, as well as heart, eye and skin cancer operations.
At least 10 emergency surgeries – those for “life-threatening” conditions – had to be cancelled because of the record-breaking heat, according to the investigation.
Carbon Brief sent freedom-of-information (FOI) requests to 140 NHS trusts to investigate the impact of heatwaves on operations being cancelled in England and Wales.
Areas with the most operations cancelled due to heat include Surrey and Sussex, south Essex and parts of London – all regions experiencing among the highest temperatures.
High temperatures can threaten patient safety by stopping the ventilation systems used in theatres from working, increasing the risk of infection, experts tell Carbon Brief.
Less than half of the NHS trusts provided details of heat-related surgery cancellations – and Carbon Brief understands that many hospitals do not routinely record this information.
Carbon Brief’s figure is therefore likely to be a significant underestimate, but still provides an unprecedented insight into a surgical system “poorly prepared” for heatwaves and the impact on patients.
Overheating operationsThe record-breaking heatwaves that have repeatedly struck the UK in 2026 – amplified by climate change – have already been linked to thousands of deaths.
High temperatures can lead to all sorts of health complications and worsen respiratory, cardiovascular and kidney diseases.
Extreme heat also threatens healthcare systems. News outlets have reported on the NHS “struggling”, as it faces record A&E demand, hospital wards reaching “unsafe” temperatures and equipment failing due to heat.
Among these reports was coverage of hospitals being forced to cancel operations, or even abandon them midway through, as surgical theatres became intolerably hot.
To investigate this problem, Carbon Brief sent FOI requests to the 140 NHS trusts and health boards in England and Wales responsible for hospitals with surgical theatres.
They were asked about all the operations that were cancelled due to extreme heat during the May and June heatwaves, when “amber” and “red” heat warnings were in place.
In total, 59 trusts and health boards responded with details of 1,110 heat-related cancellations across the 17-day period covering 22-28 May and 18-27 June.
(Of the 63 trusts that responded but did not provide details of heat-related disruption, many said that they simply did not record this data, rather than stating that heat was not a problem. See Methodology for more details.)
The map below shows the location of these cancelled surgeries, which cover everything from routine hernia operations to heart surgeries.
Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust reported the most cancellations – 140 in total – all in the surgery unit at Crawley Hospital. This hospital was in one of the hottest parts of the country in June, with temperatures approaching 36C.
Other hotspots for cancellations include south Essex, Dudley in the West Midlands, south Wales and parts of London. Many of the hardest-hit hospitals were in southern England, where temperatures were highest.
Of the trusts that provided full datasets of all surgery cancellations in the period, around 7% were heat-related. This data illustrates how heat is placing more strain on an already stretched NHS, adding to existing issues such as staff shortages and lack of beds.
Nearly all of the cancelled surgeries were “elective”, meaning they were scheduled in advance and not immediately life-saving. Nevertheless, the list of cancellations includes at least eight heart operations and seven skin-cancer removals.
There were also 10 “emergency” operations cancelled due to heat in surgical theatres. Another 18 surgeries had to be abandoned mid-way through.
Dr Dmitri Nepogodiev, a public health researcher focusing on surgery at the University of Birmingham, says hospitals will always prioritise “time-sensitive, life-threatening” surgeries.
Nevertheless, he tells Carbon Brief that every cancellation can cause significant “distress” and harm to patients’ quality of life, adding:
“Behind all of these statistics…are real people who have probably already been waiting a long time.”
Each dot in the graphic below indicates a cancelled surgery. Of the 596 for which trusts provided details, 167 are orthopaedic surgeries, such as knee and hip replacements.
Eye surgeries, gynaecological and urological surgeries are also among the most frequently cancelled, broadly reflecting how common such procedures are.
Richard Egan, an endocrine surgeon and a national clinical director within NHS Wales, notes the knock-on effects of cancelling surgeries for several days during heatwaves. He tells Carbon Brief:
“That’s a significant impact on waiting lists…For every week that patients are waiting on a waiting list, their condition could get worse and deteriorate.”
‘Increased risks’When providing specific reasons for cancellations, most NHS trusts simply indicated that surgical theatres were “too hot and humid”.
Sometimes, this was accompanied by comments about “risk of infection” or “overheating for both patients and staff”.
There are several reasons why it can get “too hot” for operations to take place, but the main one is that the complex ventilation systems installed in theatres can stop working above a certain temperature, explains Dr Ed Robinson, an NHS anaesthetist. He tells Carbon Brief:
“An operating theatre is a very tightly engineered clinical environment. There are quite complicated ventilation systems, which dilute airborne contaminants, remove fumes from different [medications] and anaesthetic gases.
“We have generalised airflow systems that make the air in theatre flow outwards to adjacent areas, so pathogens and fumes get carried away from the patient into non-clinical areas. When it gets to a certain heat, those systems can fail.”
These systems are also responsible for controlling heat and humidity levels inside theatres, says Robinson.
When the systems fail, it is not possible to guarantee patient safety, he continues, meaning surgeries may need to be cancelled.
Although most hospitals simply stated that it was “too hot” for operations to take place during the heatwaves, there were 48 cases where staff specified that this was due to air conditioning or ventilation units that were either broken or unable to sustain appropriate temperatures.
Tim Lane, a urological surgeon and president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (RCS England), tells Carbon Brief that heat places “extra physical strain” on patients:
“Extreme heat can increase risks and make it harder to deliver care under the conditions clinicians would consider ideal.”
If air in operating theatres is too humid, excess moisture can condense on surgical implements and transmit infections, he says.
Extreme heat and humidity inside theatres can also pose a risk to staff having to wear heavy protective clothing. Robinson explains:
“Staff are usually wearing PPE [personal protective equipment]. If it’s orthopaedics, they will be wearing ‘leads’ a lot of the time. This is because they will be doing lots of X-rays, and there’s no time to descrub and rescrub every time.
“So if the ventilation system is not working, you’re going to overheat [and] that’s going to affect your ability to concentrate and perform a safe operation. You just wouldn’t start under those conditions.”
There are also “certain pieces of equipment and medications” that are not “validated to be used outside of certain ranges of temperature”, he says.
This includes specialised “cement” used to secure hip and knee replacements, which can set too quickly at higher temperatures, according to Lane.
‘Poorly prepared’Following the record-breaking heat of 2022, one study found that surgical services in the UK were “poorly prepared for heatwaves”.
Based on staff surveys, the study concluded that ambient temperatures “could not be controlled” in two-fifths of NHS operating theatres.
With hospitals once again under significant pressure this summer, health secretary Yvette Cooper told the Guardian that the NHS “has to make sure we are preparing for summer pressures now in the same way we prepare for winter”.
Nepogodiev notes that the problem of extreme heat extends from increased patient numbers to staff shortages, which can be the result of a range of wider factors such as heat-related train cancellations. He tells Carbon Brief.
“There isn’t a single magic solution because it’s a kind of complex, multifactorial challenge – so it also underlines the importance of broader preparedness.”
Egan, who is investigating ways to prepare surgical theatres for extreme heat, says the response so far has been “ad hoc”. He suggests it may be possible to continue with less risky operations, even at higher humidity levels.
As it stands, many NHS hospitals are old and not designed for increasingly extreme temperatures.
Government advisers at the Climate Change Committee (CCC) have recommended that all healthcare buildings should work to “maintain safe and appropriate temperatures” by 2035.
The UK’s national adaptation programme already says NHS England will work to “adapt NHS infrastructure to extreme weather events and overheating risks”, by incorporating adaptation measures into plans for new buildings.
However, years of underinvestment have left many sites with what the King’s Fund thinktank calls “deteriorating buildings” and “outdated technology”.
Following the extreme heat this summer, the government has announced £32m from a £1.5bn spending programme for projects that strengthen hospitals’ “resilience to extreme heat, including improved “cooling and ventilation systems”.
RCS England president Lane tells Carbon Brief that heat-related surgical cancellations underline the need for investment in hospitals, ventilation systems and modern equipment:
“NHS staff work incredibly hard to adapt, often reorganising services and finding practical solutions to keep care running, but resilience alone cannot compensate indefinitely for outdated infrastructure or sustainability.”
MethodologyCarbon Brief contacted 140 NHS trusts and health boards in England and Wales, only including those that perform surgical procedures. Mental health trusts, community trusts and other specialist trusts were therefore excluded.
These requests covered the periods 22-28 May 2026 and 18-27 June 2026, when heatwaves affected much of England and Wales.
At the time of filing the FOIs, these were the two periods when the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) had issued “amber” or “red” heat-health alerts across much or all of England. There were also comparable weather warnings in place across Wales for some of this time.
(Scotland and Northern Ireland were excluded from the analysis, on the basis that they did not experience such extreme heat.)
The FOI requests asked for details of all surgical procedures – both elective and emergency – that were cancelled during this period. Specifically, the requests also asked trusts to state which cancellations were related to extreme heat. Of these, 59 provided details of surgeries that were cancelled due to heat.
Of the remaining 63 that responded to the FOI requests, only a few stated explicitly that there were no surgeries cancelled due to heat. Most either said that they did not record this information, or provided lists with standard cancellation reasons that may – or may not – indicate heat as a factor, such as “failure of equipment”. The remaining 19 did not respond to the request by the time of publication.
NHS trusts and health boards responded to Carbon Brief’s FOI requests in a large variety of ways, reflecting the inconsistent way in which heat-related cancellations are recorded.
Among those that disclosed data, some provided all the information requested while others only provided parts. Some would not provide exact numbers when the number of cancellations was five or less. In those cases, Carbon Brief assumed that two surgeries had been cancelled. (This assumption accounts for fewer than 50 of the 1,110 cancellations.)
The full dataset is available here, with details of all the surgeries cancelled and the reasons given for their cancellations.
related Factcheck: Reform UK’s 45 false or misleading claims about climate and energy 11.09.2026 UK policy UK aviation emissions to be 50% higher than thought by 2050, government admits 10.09.2026 Aviation and shipping Analysis: UK solar power hits record high over summer 2026 04.09.2026 Renewables How this summer’s heat and drought impacted crops in Europe – in six charts 04.09.2026 Food and farmingThe post Revealed: More than 1,000 NHS operations cancelled due to record UK heatwaves appeared first on Carbon Brief.
The battle for community-led Pride in Place
The high-profile local regeneration initiatives will test Burnhamism’s commitment to genuinely devolving power and empowering communities, argue Nick Mahony and Frances Northrop
The post The battle for community-led Pride in Place appeared first on Red Pepper.
Industry and off-roading groups call for elimination of WSAs and weakened Wilderness protections
DENVER—A review of public comments finds that drilling and mining associations, ranching groups, and off-road vehicle advocates are asking the Trump administration to weaken protections for congressionally-designated Wilderness, eliminate Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs), and cut off the wilderness designation pipeline on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
BLM solicited input earlier this summer on revisions to three manuals that together govern nearly every acre of land in the agency’s wilderness system and pipeline—those classified as Wilderness, WSAs, and Lands with Wilderness Characteristics (LWCs)—effectively inviting industry and motorized-recreation groups to rewrite the agency’s instructions for managing these areas. The comment period for all three closed August 14.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum deceptively framed the review as an effort to “expand access to outdoor recreation while ensuring public lands remain well managed, accessible and preserved for future generations.” According to this review by the Center for Western Priorities, industry and motorized-recreation groups used the comment period to ask for far more than expanded recreational access—many asked BLM to eliminate protections outright, in some cases permanently. If followed, these recommendations would lead to weakened protections for over 10.5 million acres of congressionally-designated Wilderness, the outright elimination of protections for over 11.2 million acres currently designated as WSAs, and the elimination of the LWC category entirely, according to numbers from the Wilderness Society. In total, this could affect over 90 million acres of public land.
The groups:
Western Energy Alliance submitted the most sweeping demands of any commenter. The oil and gas trade group asked BLM to “rescind and replace Manual 6320 [Considering Lands with Wilderness Characteristics in the BLM Land Use Planning Process] in its entirety” and make clear “that BLM cannot and will not move forward with designating LWCs in the future.” On the WSA front, the group argued BLM “should make clear that it has no authority to designate new WSAs,” citing a 2003 out of court settlement with the state of Utah, and said BLM should remove protections from all WSAs “that Congress has chosen not to designate as Wilderness.”
The American Exploration and Mining Association asked BLM to treat LWCs and WSAs as “temporary administrative classifications, not permanent designations” and to eliminate any land with mining potential from future WSA or LWC designations. The Public Lands Council, representing ranchers who graze livestock on public land, recommended “all existing WSAs be immediately evaluated for release.” Colorado Offroad Trail Defenders and a joint filing from the American Motorcyclist Association and One Voice argued BLM’s legal authority to inventory and protect wilderness-quality land lapsed when a one-time, congressionally mandated inventory period ended in 1991, and that the agency has no statutory basis to keep designating new protected areas.
The Utah Public Lands Alliance, an off-highway vehicle industry group, called for “resolving and releasing the remaining WSA estate” and a mandatory, recurring process to review and release LWCs. On the designated Wilderness front, the group submitted a comment letter asking BLM to loosen restrictions on fire management and motorized access in Wilderness areas, while separately accusing the agency of “administrative expansion” of Wilderness areas beyond what Congress authorized, warning against what it called “Wilderness by Adjacency.”
The Arizona Farm Bureau Federation and The American Farm Bureau Federation, asked BLM to release any WSA that has remained in that status for five years or more and to loosen motorized-access restrictions for grazing infrastructure inside areas designated as Wilderness. The Nevada Farm Bureau Federation submitted a proposed rewrite of the Wilderness manual’s grazing section that would authorize expanded motorized equipment use inside Wilderness boundaries.
Statements:
“This isn’t a bunch of one-off comments. It’s a coordinated push by oil and gas, mining, grazing, and off-road groups to strip protections from the small share of public land where drilling, mining, and motorized recreation aren’t already allowed and to ensure no land gets protected as Wilderness in the future,” said Center for Western Priorities Communications Director Kate Groetzinger. “These comments are asking the BLM to actively ignore the law, which says that only Congress can release Wilderness Study Areas or designated them as Wilderness. They also seek to write their own laws into existence, creating arbitrary time limits and other litmus tests for the release of WSAs. If the administration follows this advice, it will end up in court for years to come.”
“Americans cherish wild public lands for wildlife habitat, clean air and water and the freedom these places provide us to explore,” the Wilderness Society’s Director of BLM Campaigns, Michael Carroll. “But, as expected, the oil, gas and mining industry has treated the administration’s review of these special places as a policy blank check to ask that the BLM open more wilderness-quality lands for development. They are insisting on backdoor changes to agency guidance that would subvert the law and effectively rob future generations of some of the last remaining wild places.”
“Some of the nation’s wildest places are at risk from the Interior Department’s latest ploy,” said Legal Director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Steve Bloch. “Southern Utah’s redrock country—a wild landscape beloved by Americans for generations—is especially at risk and in the crosshairs of this effort. This analysis confirms that the Trump administration has not only invited the fox into the henhouse but it’s helping to line up the chickens for slaughter.”
Background:
The three manuals under review, Manual 6320, covering Lands with Wilderness Characteristics (LWCs); Manual 6330, covering Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs); and Manual 6340, covering land Congress has formally designated as Wilderness, correspond with different levels of legal protection and status for public lands managed by BLM. LWCs are the least protective: BLM can designate or release them entirely through its own land-use planning process, with no say from Congress. According to the Wilderness Society, BLM has identified roughly 69.6 million acres of LWCs that don’t overlap with existing WSAs.
The overwhelming majority of WSAs were created pursuant to a one-time, congressionally mandated wilderness review. Congress ordered the Interior Department, via the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), to inventory roadless BLM areas over 5,000 acres for wilderness character, with recommendations due by 1993. Only Congress can “release” them, either by designating them as Wilderness or explicitly withdrawing that status through legislation. According to the Wilderness Society, there are 11.2 million acres of WSAs currently administered by BLM.
Under Section 603 of FLPMA, BLM cannot unilaterally eliminate Wilderness Study Area status. FLPMA requires the agency to manage WSAs “in a manner so as not to impair the suitability of such areas for preservation as wilderness” until Congress decides otherwise. That non-impairment mandate stays in force until and unless Congress directs otherwise. The only way a WSA has ever formally lost its protected status is through legislation. BLM has no independent authority to do this through the rulemaking process, a manual revision, or a policy memo.
Designated Wilderness carries the highest protection of these categories and can only be revised or undone by an act of Congress. No group asked BLM to undo a Wilderness designation outright. Instead, industry and recreation groups focused on loosening the management of Wilderness areas, arguing BLM has managed those areas, and in some cases the land around them, more restrictively than federal law requires. According to the Wilderness Society, BLM currently manages 10.5 million acres of Wilderness.
For a map of potentially affected areas, please visit the Wilderness Society’s website.
Context:
Top Interior officials have publicly encouraged ideologically-aligned industries to submit comments on agency proposals, while admitting they largely ignore comments, feedback and petitions from supporters of conservation groups. Last month, Associate Deputy Secretary Karen Budd-Falen told oil and gas, mining, and logging industry leaders that “Public comment matters. Not the postcards that whatever environmental group sends. We always get a million postcards. That counts as one comment.”
Please note the Interior Department also opened comment periods on manuals used by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS-HQ-NWRS-2026-2575) and the National Park Service (NPS-2026-0100) to propose, designate, and manage Wilderness and WSAs. Comments submitted on these dockets were not included in this analysis.
The post Industry and off-roading groups call for elimination of WSAs and weakened Wilderness protections appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.
Mad River Union: Humboldt marks california transit month with advocacy, ride contests and a talk on transit and democracy
September 10, 2026—The Mad River Union has a rundown of North Coast activities for California Transit Month, including tonight’s talk by Public Advocates’ Senior Transportation Policy Advocate Laurel Paget-Seekins. Paget-Seekins will present “Protecting Transit’s Role in Multi-Racial Inclusive Democracy” at the McKinleyville Family Resource Center, examining public transit’s historic role in civil rights struggles and the creation of integrated public spaces—AND how the Trump administration’s policies are threatening transit access today. The piece also covers a coalition open letter to Gov. Newsom and gubernatorial candidates on state transit funding, a rider ride-logging contest, and rider ride-alongs with local decision-makers throughout the month.
The post Mad River Union: Humboldt marks california transit month with advocacy, ride contests and a talk on transit and democracy appeared first on Public Advocates.
State Policy, National Impact
Greenbelt-Sponsored Bill to Strengthen State Housing Law Heads To Governor’s Desk
Of the many housing laws on the books in California, few are more effective at producing new affordable homes than the state Density Bonus Law. Originally adopted in 1979, the law has a simple premise: the more affordable housing a project provides, the more flexibility the state gives it in return regarding zoning standards.
Earlier in 2026, Greenbelt Alliance was proud to join as a co-sponsor on Assembly Bill 2433, a measure by Assemblymember David Alvarez of San Diego that would make it easier to build more infill housing in California by strengthening the Bonus Law in several different ways.
We’re joining Assemblymember Alvarez alongside co-sponsors Circulate Planning & Policy, Inner City Law Center, SPUR, and the San Diego Chamber of Commerce. AB 2433 has now passed the state legislature and is headed to Governor Newsom’s desk for signature. Join us in supporting this important piece of legislation by sending a support letter to the Governor’s office, urging him to sign the bill. Take action here!
What Does the Bill Do?AB 2433 provides important clarifications and revisions to bonus law, with a focus on two key areas:
- Making it more predictable for builders to use, and
- Ensuring its application is consistent across jurisdictions.
These new provisions do the following (click the titles to expand):
1. Make waivers and concessions ministerial for purposes of CEQAThis is a big deal for many areas across the state, particularly Los Angeles. Under AB 2433, all Bonus Law waivers must be processed ministerially. That’s already supposed to be the law today, but LA and many other cities have long treated them as discretionary requests that trigger CEQA review. Now, the law is clear, and projects will have to be processed much more quickly, without triggering review, appeals, etc.
2. Requires jurisdictions to proactively notify project sponsors of density bonus eligibilityOftentimes, communities that do not want to see more multifamily housing built will imply to project applicants that bonus law does not apply, that its provisions are more limited than they are, or that attempts to utilize the law will result in negative consequences for the applicant. To solve for this, AB 2433 requires local governments to proactively and forthrightly notify project applicants of their eligibility for bonus law usage up front.
3. Allows 100% affordable housing developers to qualify for the full Double Density Bonus allowed under AB 1287That law grants a 100% density bonus if a project includes 15% moderate income units on top of the deeply affordable units it’s already providing. AB 2433 ensures that 100% affordable developers providing deeper levels of affordability can access that full benefit as well, leading directly to more deeply affordable homes.
4. Grants additional waivers and concessions to projects that provide a portion of the project as homeownership unitsRecognizing that it’s particularly difficult to produce ownership units in California, the law gives projects that provide them some additional flexibility to ensure that more for-sale homes are financially viable to build.
Why It MattersEven though Bonus Law is one of the most widely used and effective housing production tools in the state, gaps and inconsistent local implementation have made it harder to use than it should be, including for ownership housing and 100% affordable projects. By closing those gaps, clarifying that waivers are ministerial, and requiring local governments to be upfront about eligibility, AB 2433 helps unlock more affordable and mixed-income housing in the communities that need it most.
As California continues to face a persistent housing affordability crisis, strengthening the tools that are already working is one of the most effective paths we have of producing the new housing we need at scale. AB 2433 builds on more than a decade of Density Bonus Law reforms, including AB 2345 in 2020 and AB 1287 in 2023, to help approve even more affordable homes throughout the state while keeping growth focused where it belongs: in our existing communities, not on our natural and working lands.
The post Greenbelt-Sponsored Bill to Strengthen State Housing Law Heads To Governor’s Desk appeared first on Greenbelt Alliance.
Behind the Bill: How Virginia Turned a Constituent Idea Into a Plug-In Solar Law
Blog by Plugin Solar US, published as part of their Behind the Bill series exploring how U.S. states are shaping plug-in solar policy.
Del. Paul Krizek and Virginia climate advocate Jamie Bacon show how one constituent email about Utah’s balcony-solar law helped spark a coalition, companion bills, and a new pathway for renters and homeowners.
It started with an article about UtahVirginia’s plug-in solar story did not begin with a utility filing, an industry lobbying campaign, or even a bill draft.
It began with a constituent reading an article.
On August 17, 2025, Alexandria resident Jamie Bacon saw a Boston Globe story in the Climate Action Now app about Utah’s new plug-in solar law. Utah had created a legal pathway for small solar systems designed to connect through an electrical outlet, reducing some of the interconnection and installation barriers associated with traditional rooftop solar.
Bacon immediately saw the appeal.
A retired biologist who had spent 33 years working in Bermuda, including years studying the effects of pollution on wildlife, Bacon had become increasingly involved in climate advocacy after moving to Virginia. She serves as a volunteer climate lobby captain in her Northern Virginia district, teaches about climate change, and lives in a large condominium community where traditional rooftop solar is not an easy individual option.
She also had a personal reference point: her daughter lives in Germany, where balcony solar had already become commonplace.
The next day, Bacon emailed her delegate, Paul Krizek. She sent information about the Utah legislation and plug-in solar products and asked him to help Virginia pass something similar.
That email would ultimately become the first step in Virginia’s plug-in solar law.
From one email to a statewide conversationThe idea did not become legislation overnight.
About a month later, Bacon saw Krizek at a community ice cream social and asked him about balcony solar again. He asked her to resend the information. She did.
Then Bacon widened the circle.
After reading an article by Virginia clean-energy advocate Ivy Main about solar policy, Bacon contacted Main and shared the same material. Main circulated the idea among Sierra Club advocates. Bacon brought representatives from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, or CCAN, into the conversation. Other clean-energy advocates began discussing the concept.
By early October, the idea had reached Virginia’s Commission on Electric Utility Regulation and several legislators. Main told the group that Del. Rip Sullivan was interested. Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell was interested as well.
Bacon then emailed Krizek’s office to let him know that other lawmakers were considering legislation. The response surprised her: Krizek’s chief of staff told Bacon that his office had already submitted a bill-drafting request based on the idea she had sent them and would coordinate with the other legislators.
For Bacon, October 9 became the moment when a constituent suggestion suddenly looked like a real legislative campaign. CCAN agreed to help lead advocacy. Sierra Club representatives offered to work alongside them. The idea had moved from Bacon’s inbox into Virginia’s clean-energy coalition.
One fellow advocate texted Bacon afterward asking, in effect, whether she had just helped move the entire state forward on balcony solar.
“I think I did.” — Jamie Bacon
The more complete answer is that Virginia’s law emerged from a network: Bacon brought the idea forward; Krizek’s office acted on it; Surovell and other lawmakers became legislative champions; Sierra Club and CCAN advocates helped build support; and stakeholders worked through the technical and political details.
But Bacon had unquestionably gotten the ball rolling.
A rare first-year legislative winThat grassroots origin is especially notable because the proposal moved unusually quickly.
Virginia ultimately advanced two companion measures: H.B. 395, with Del. Paul Krizek as chief patron, and S.B. 250, with Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell as chief patron. Both addressed what Virginia law calls a “small portable solar generation device.”
The legislation moved through committees, underwent revisions and stakeholder negotiations, passed the General Assembly, received recommendations from the Governor, and was ultimately approved on April 22, 2026.
For Bacon, the speed was surprising. She later learned that many new proposals spend their first legislative session simply being “socialized”—introduced so lawmakers and stakeholders can understand the concept before another attempt in a later year.
Virginia’s plug-in solar proposal did not need that second attempt.
“The fact that it did pass in its first year was pretty amazing.” — Jamie Bacon
Part of the reason may be the intuitive nature of the idea. Plug-in solar is easier to visualize than many energy policies. Instead of asking a resident to understand utility rate structures, transmission planning, interconnection queues, or wholesale electricity markets, the proposition is straightforward: put a small solar panel somewhere sunny, connect a properly certified system to your home, and use some of the electricity yourself.
That simplicity helped turn a relatively unfamiliar technology into a policy lawmakers and residents could quickly understand.
Krizek: solar that belongs to the person, not the propertyKrizek did not sit for a full interview for this article, but he provided a written explanation of why he believes Virginia’s law matters.
His framing gets to the heart of the policy.
“The plug-in solar isn’t tied to the house but to the people.” — Del. Paul Krizek
Traditional rooftop solar is fundamentally tied to real estate. A homeowner invests in a system attached to a particular roof. If the homeowner moves, the solar typically stays behind.
Plug-in solar changes that relationship.
“You move to a new unit and you bring your energy maker with you.” — Del. Paul Krizek
For him, that portability is particularly important for renters. People who do not own their homes typically cannot decide to put a conventional solar array on the roof. They may support clean energy and want lower electricity bills, but the property decision belongs to someone else.
A portable solar device starts to separate access to distributed energy from ownership of real estate. Krizek described that as part of a broader evolution in consumer technology—from desktop computers to smartphones, and now, potentially, from fixed power generation toward personal energy equipment.
“Isn’t the best kilowatt of energy the one you actually make?” — Del. Paul Krizek
That philosophy gives Virginia’s law a distinctive consumer-access framing. Plug-in solar is not supposed to replace utility-scale renewable energy or rooftop solar. It creates another option for people who previously had few options at all.
What Virginia’s law actually doesVirginia’s enacted framework defines a small portable solar generation device as a movable photovoltaic system with a maximum output of 1,200 watts per customer, or per residential building unit in multifamily housing.
The device must:
- Connect to a building’s electrical system through an electrical outlet.
- Be located on the customer’s side of the electric meter.
- Primarily offset the customer’s own electricity consumption.
- Meet applicable National Electrical Code requirements.
- Be certified by a nationally recognized testing laboratory.
- Include a feature preventing the device from exporting power to the grid or affecting the building’s electrical system during a power outage.
Virginia also created an important distinction at 391 watts. A qualifying device with no more than 391 watts of maximum output to the receptacle is exempt from product-listing provisions that would otherwise require alterations to the building’s premises, wiring, or electrical panels.
In practical terms, Virginia has a broader pathway reaching up to 1,200 watts, while creating a simpler path for smaller systems that can operate without triggering certain building electrical alterations. The statutory framework becomes effective January 1, 2027.
Notification—but not utility permissionOne of the most important parts of Virginia’s law is what utilities cannot require.
A qualifying customer does not have to go through traditional interconnection requirements or participate in net metering simply to operate a small portable solar device. Utilities may not require prior utility approval, an interconnection fee or other device-related charge, or additional controls or equipment beyond what is integrated into the qualifying device, subject to limited statutory circumstances.
Virginia did, however, preserve a notification process. Before installation, a customer must submit a simple form developed by the State Corporation Commission. The utility then has 15 days to review that form for accuracy and completeness. If the utility does not respond within that period, the customer is deemed to have satisfied the notification requirement and may proceed.
That distinction matters.
Notification is not permission.
A traditional rooftop solar project can involve an interconnection application, engineering review, utility approval, inspections, permitting, and significant soft costs. Virginia is trying to keep a small consumer device from automatically becoming that kind of project, while still giving utilities basic information needed for system awareness and safety.
Chapter 1052 directed the SCC to develop and publish a standardized online and printable notification form on or before September 1, 2026. Consumers should confirm the current form and utility process before installation.
Renters were not an afterthoughtVirginia went further than simply changing utility rules. The legislation also amended landlord-tenant law.
For landlords above a specified ownership threshold, the law generally prevents them from simply prohibiting a tenant from installing a qualifying plug-in solar device on the exterior of the tenant’s premises. A landlord may still impose reasonable restrictions regarding the size, location, and manner of placement.
Tenants must also provide at least seven days’ notice and documentation showing that the proposed device meets the statutory requirements.
That renter language goes directly to the problem Bacon saw from the beginning. Renters may pay electricity bills every month, but they generally cannot order their building owner to install rooftop solar. Plug-in solar provides a potential piece of energy agency that moves with the resident.
“I think this is one way that renters…have some agency.” — Jamie Bacon
That word—agency—comes up repeatedly in Virginia’s story. It is not simply a question of how many kilowatt-hours one panel produces. It is about whether a consumer can make an individual energy decision at all.
The irony of the multifamily gapYet the law’s strongest access feature also contains one of its most important unresolved limitations.
Virginia excludes rental dwelling units operating under a ratio utility billing system, commonly known as RUBS. In those arrangements, the landlord or property may receive a master electricity bill and then allocate costs among tenants rather than each tenant having a direct utility account. Those tenants may not install a qualifying plug-in solar device under the new framework.
For Bacon, this issue is personal. She lives at River Towers, a large condominium community in Alexandria with pooled electricity. She is a condo owner rather than a renter, which creates a different legal question, but the building’s metering structure has left her seeking clarification about exactly how the law will apply to residents like her.
There is a certain irony in that. The person who helped introduce Virginia lawmakers to balcony solar may live in one of the housing configurations where implementation is most complicated.
Bacon said several residents in her community would like to install balcony solar even if the savings do not accrue directly to their individual bills.
“We don’t care that we’re not going to get the benefit. We want the whole building to benefit.” — Jamie Bacon
She is now pushing for greater clarity—and potentially future changes—to make sure multifamily residents are not unnecessarily excluded.
“Make sure you address multifamily units.” — Jamie Bacon
That may be one of Virginia’s most valuable lessons nationally. It is easy to say plug-in solar expands access for renters and apartment residents. It is harder to write legislation that accounts for every combination of renter, condo owner, landlord, HOA, common element, master meter, submeter, and ratio billing system.
Virginia made significant progress on renter access. Its implementation will now help reveal where the next round of policy refinement is needed.
Safety became part of the compromiseThe bill was popular, but it was not frictionless.
Bacon said she learned from Krizek that utilities raised concerns during the legislative process and that fire-safety questions also entered the discussion. She was not directly involved in those negotiations and does not claim to know every detail of how they were resolved.
What the final law shows, however, is a substantial safety framework. Devices must comply with the applicable National Electrical Code and receive certification from a nationally recognized testing laboratory. They must include anti-islanding functionality so they do not energize the building or grid during an outage.
Virginia also created a formal stakeholder workgroup to examine the remaining safety questions. The Secretary of Commerce and Trade was directed to convene representatives from state agencies, utilities, electric cooperatives, clean-energy businesses, environmental advocates, the Department of Fire Programs, real-estate interests, and other stakeholders.
Among the issues the group must evaluate are national electrical standards, nationally recognized testing-laboratory certifications, the National Electrical Safety Code, and whether additional disconnect equipment provides safety benefits beyond existing standards.
The group’s recommendations are due November 15, 2026. That timing helps explain the implementation runway before the statutory framework takes effect January 1, 2027.
For deeper technical context, read our guides to anti-islanding and the UL 3700 testing framework.
The 391-watt pathway could matter most at firstVirginia’s 1,200-watt ceiling gets attention because it establishes the outer boundary of the new category. But the 391-watt provision may be equally important for early consumer adoption.
The distinction recognizes that a smaller device capable of operating without changes to the building’s premises, wiring, or electrical panel is fundamentally different from a larger system that may require additional electrical work.
Bacon sees that lower threshold as a potential way to get relatively simple systems into consumers’ hands. But she also emphasized that product availability remains a major unknown.
Consumers will need systems that clearly meet Virginia’s requirements. Retailers will need to know which products qualify. Manufacturers will need clarity on certification. Electricians, utilities, building managers, landlords, and consumers all need understandable guidance.
“The ones that are meeting the requirements for Virginia need to be available.” — Jamie Bacon
For plug-in solar to become an appliance-like category, consumers eventually need to be able to recognize a compliant product without becoming experts in electrical code. That market does not fully exist yet.
A small amount of electricity—and a larger sense of agencyBacon is realistic about what balcony solar can accomplish. A few hundred watts on one apartment balcony will not solve Virginia’s electricity-supply challenges. It will not replace utility-scale solar, grid storage, transmission, energy efficiency, or conventional rooftop solar. And it will not, by itself, offset the growth in power demand associated with Virginia’s rapidly expanding data-center sector.
But Bacon argues that this misses part of the point.
“At least it may give people a sense of agency over their electrical bill.” — Jamie Bacon
That can matter politically as well as economically. Distributed solar is visible. A resident can see the panel, understand when the sun is producing power, and know that at least a portion of the electricity being consumed is being generated locally.
Bacon believes that visibility can be contagious. One rooftop solar installation can lead neighbors to consider solar. Balcony solar could have a similar effect in apartments and condominiums, particularly if future systems increasingly combine solar with small batteries.
“Is it going to solve everything? No. Can it help? Yes.” — Jamie Bacon
That may be the most realistic way to understand Virginia’s law. The kilowatt-hours matter. But so does participation.
A changing electricity landscape gives the idea urgencyVirginia’s plug-in solar law is arriving while the state faces a much larger debate about electricity demand. Data-center growth, new generation, transmission construction, utility costs, renewable-energy siting, and energy affordability have all become major political issues.
Bacon is deeply concerned about that trajectory. She does not present balcony solar as the solution to those structural problems. Instead, she sees it as one piece of a broader strategy that should include large-scale solar, storage, energy efficiency, agrivoltaics, and other clean-energy resources.
Plug-in solar does something those larger policies cannot do as directly: it lets an ordinary resident participate.
For a renter who cannot control a roof, that distinction is significant. For a condo resident who wants to contribute to clean-energy generation, it can be psychologically important even when the financial impact is modest. And for policymakers trying to build public support for a changing electricity system, millions of small consumer decisions may matter alongside gigawatts of utility-scale infrastructure.
What still needs to happen before January 1Passing the law was one phase. Implementation is the next.
Several pieces still need to come together.
- Clear safety guidance. The stakeholder workgroup is evaluating relevant standards and must report by November 15, 2026.
- A simple notification process. The SCC was directed to publish a standardized form, and utilities need processes that preserve the law’s basic principle: notification, not discretionary approval.
- Compliant products. Consumers need an easy way to determine whether a system satisfies Virginia’s certification, anti-islanding, output, and code requirements.
- Consumer education. Residents need to understand placement, outlets and circuits, property rules, realistic savings, and when electrical work is required.
- Multifamily clarity. The RUBS exclusion is explicit for tenants, while condo and common-meter situations may require additional interpretation depending on who the utility customer is and what private condominium documents allow.
For Bacon, these are not arguments against the law. They are what comes after success.
Lessons for other states 1. A constituent can start the processBacon was not a solar manufacturer or professional lobbyist. She encountered an idea, thought it made sense for her state, contacted a legislator, followed up, contacted advocates, and kept connecting people.
Virginia’s law is a reminder that policy diffusion does not always happen institution to institution. Sometimes it happens person to person.
2. Use another state as a starting point, not necessarily an endpointUtah gave Virginia a model. But Virginia added substantial provisions around renters, notification, multifamily housing, utilities, safety, and implementation. The states are building on one another.
3. Solve the utility question without recreating rooftop-solar interconnectionVirginia preserved utility notification while explicitly removing utility approval, interconnection fees, and conventional interconnection requirements for qualifying systems. That is an important distinction if the product category is supposed to remain consumer-accessible.
4. Address renters explicitlyVirginia recognized that simply legalizing a device does not guarantee renters can use it. Its landlord provisions create meaningful protections. At the same time, the pooled-billing exclusion shows why multifamily policy requires even more careful attention.
5. Make safety rules understandable at the point of purchaseIf ordinary consumers need to interpret competing electrical standards themselves, plug-in solar will struggle to become mainstream. The long-term goal should be straightforward: compliant products should be clearly identifiable, properly certified, and installed according to clear rules.
6. Do not measure the category only by megawattsA small system will not transform a state grid by itself. But it can broaden clean-energy ownership, create consumer familiarity with distributed resources, and bring renters and multifamily residents into a market that has historically centered homeowners.
That participation has value of its own.
A message to Virginia residentsWhen asked what she would tell a Virginia resident who becomes interested in plug-in solar once the law takes effect, Bacon did not hesitate.
“Get it!” — Jamie Bacon
Her enthusiasm comes with an important qualifier: wait for Virginia’s implementation process to be completed and use products that actually meet the state’s safety and certification requirements.
But the underlying message is clear. Bacon believes residents should be able to produce some of their own clean electricity—even if they do not own a detached house, even if they cannot afford a rooftop installation, and even if the amount of electricity produced is relatively small.
Krizek reaches the same conclusion from a policymaker’s perspective. For him, the significance is that the energy resource can belong to the resident rather than the building.
A renter can move. The solar can move too.
That is a subtle but important shift in how Americans have traditionally thought about distributed energy.
Why Virginia matters nationallyVirginia became one of the first states in the country to enact an explicit plug-in solar framework. But its larger contribution may be the way it combined several ideas in one law:
- A 1,200-watt portable-solar category.
- A simpler pathway at 391 watts.
- Exemption from traditional interconnection and net-metering requirements.
- Notification instead of utility permission.
- Explicit renter protections.
- Limits on local prohibitions.
- Nationally recognized product certification and anti-islanding protections.
- A formal state process to continue resolving safety and implementation questions.
Just as importantly, Virginia shows how quickly plug-in solar has moved from a European curiosity into American statehouses.
In August 2025, Jamie Bacon read about what Utah had done. The next day, she emailed her delegate. Eight months later, Virginia had a law.
That timeline captures what is happening with plug-in solar nationally. States are watching one another. Constituents are asking questions. Advocates are sharing language. Legislators are adapting earlier bills. Manufacturers and standards organizations are responding.
And a category that barely existed in U.S. energy policy a few years ago is beginning to develop its own legal architecture.
Virginia’s story suggests that the most consequential part of that architecture may not be the wattage limit. It may be the idea behind it:
You should not necessarily have to own a roof to make some of your own electricity.
Blog by Plugin Solar US, published as part of their Behind the Bill series exploring how U.S. states are shaping plug-in solar policy.
The post Behind the Bill: How Virginia Turned a Constituent Idea Into a Plug-In Solar Law appeared first on Chesapeake Climate Action Network.
20 states sue over Trump’s cuts to protections for endangered species
Twenty states and the District of Columbia filed two lawsuits in federal court on Wednesday to challenge the Trump administration’s rollback of protections for endangered species and wildlife. The Trump administration has initiated a series of regulatory changes that opened the habitats of imperiled animals to drilling, farming, logging and other commercial activities. Both lawsuits argue that the changes violate the Administrative Procedure Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act.
The first suit asks the court to strike down a rule that redefined what it means to “harm” wildlife under the Endangered Species Act, a law Congress overwhelmingly passed in 1973 to prevent the extinction of imperiled plants and animals. The Trump administration tossed out the longstanding interpretation of “harm” and instead finalized a rule that said degrading the habitat of an endangered species would no longer be illegal.
The second lawsuit challenges two regulations issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. One rule eliminated automatic protections for all species that are newly classified as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, and the other allowed the government to consider economic factors, such as lost revenue for businesses, before designating areas as critical habitat for endangered species.
Rep. Zinke to introduce wilderness & recreation billRetiring Montana congressman and former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced his intent to introduce the ‘A River Runs Through It Act,’ named after the famous Montana novella by Norman McLean. The bill would designate about 130,000 acres of new wilderness and protect parts of the Blackfoot River watershed while opening other areas to logging and motorized use. Another 60,000 acres would be designated for recreation, including snowmobiling, mountain biking, and off-road vehicle use. Zinke said he plans to introduce the bill next week. With roughly 40 working days before the House of Representatives adjourns its 2026 session, the timing will be tight for committee hearings or review by the Senate, though Zinke sounded optimistic and teased the possibility of a larger package of public lands bills before the end of the year. “We want to climb the same mountain,” Zinke told local media during a post-event press conference. “Maybe our paths are a little different in how to get there. But this is a made-in-Montana solution, which is so exciting.”
Quick hits Trump signs order giving Burgum authority to respond to ‘national energy emergencies’ States sue over Trump’s cuts to Endangered Species ActNew York Times | Colorado Politics | Stateline | Spectrum News | Reuters | Courthouse News | Salem Statesman Journal | Spokesman-Review
The U.S. is losing its ability to store water when it needs it most New polling shows bipartisan support for conservation is climbing Colorado has killed 294 bears this year, more than 3 times the number killed last year Large solar project on Navajo Nation leaves residents skeptical Opinion: While Colorado and the West burn, Washington rearranges org charts A beloved tree fell in Washington and people covered it with thank you notes Quote of the dayHistory will not judge us by how many agencies we reorganized or how many political arguments we won. It will judge us by whether we had the courage to invest in the people, science, and institutions needed to protect our forests, our communities, and the firefighters who stand between them. The West is burning. It is time for Washington to stop rearranging org charts and start leading.”
—Scott Fitzwilliams, former supervisor of the White River National Forest, Colorado Sun
Picture ThisWe’re thankful for the stories, not just the ones found in books.
The stories of the people who shaped our nation. The battlefields, homes, trails, rivers, and landscapes that hold clues to the past. The wildlife and natural processes that show us how connected we are to the world around us. From those preserved at Independence Hall and Gettysburg to the cultural traditions of the Great Smoky Mountains, the landscapes of Zion, and the living history found in parks across the country, your national parks are full of stories waiting to be explored.
Most of all, we’re thankful that we get to share them with you. Because every national park has a story, and there’s always another one waiting to be discovered.
#NationalParkWeek #ThankfulThursday
NPS Photo
Featured image: Bald Eagle soaring in Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge. Photo: Tom Koerner/USFWS.
The post 20 states sue over Trump’s cuts to protections for endangered species appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.
Guest post: How extreme heat is ‘creeping’ from summer into autumn and spring
Extreme heat is one of the deadliest climate hazards, but no two heatwaves are the same.
Heat extremes that happen outside of the peak summer months are often more dangerous because they can catch people off guard.
Heatwaves that hit during the spring or the first heatwave of the summer are riskier because people’s bodies are not yet accustomed to the heat and cooling strategies, such as air conditioning or public cooling centres, might not be available.
On the other hand, heatwaves that happen in the autumn, after a long summer season of heat exposure, can place further strain on bodies and local infrastructure that are already under stress.
As the climate changes and global temperatures rise, research has shown that heatwaves are becoming more frequent, intense and lengthy.
Our study, published in AGU Advances, is the first to measure whether the timing of extreme heat during the calendar year is changing around the world.
We find that, in more than half of the world, extreme heat events are spreading into the “shoulder seasons”, but doing so unevenly – in other words, they tend to creep more into autumn or spring, depending on the location.
Defining heat seasonsMeteorological summer is often assumed to be the warmest three-month period of the year. It is simplistically defined as June to August in the northern hemisphere and December to February in the southern hemisphere.
However, extreme heat seasons vary from place to place and do not always neatly map on to these defined periods.
Our study, therefore, goes beyond traditional definitions of seasons and instead focuses on “local heat seasons”. We define these as the three consecutive months when extreme heat events happened most often in the 1980s.
From this starting point, our research looks at how extreme heat is creeping into the two-month periods before and after a local heat season. We call these periods “shoulder seasons”.
This flexible definition of heat and shoulder seasons allows us to measure how the timing of extreme heat has changed over time.
Specifically, we look at the percent of annual heat days that occurred in the heat season and shoulder seasons at each location on Earth and measure how those relative shares have shifted over the last 45 years.
For our analysis, we use climate data from 1980-2024 from the MERRA2 reanalysis dataset. To ensure our results were robust, we repeated the process using ERA5 reanalysis data.
We picked the 1980s as our baseline decade as it was the start of the common time period between the two reanalysis datasets. We compared this to climate data in the decade between 2015-24.
Comparing these two time periods – the opposite ends of our datasets – allowed us to register a larger magnitude change and account for cumulative effects of climate change.
We consider measures of both dry and humid heat, as each has distinct impacts. Dry heat tends to be more dangerous to plant and ecosystem health, while humid heat is more strenuous for humans.
We use the dry-bulb temperature and wet-bulb globe temperature as our measures of dry and humid heat, respectively.
Created in the 1950s by the US military, wet-bulb globe temperature has a long history as an international standard used for outdoor sports and occupational hazard monitoring. It combines measurements of temperature, humidity, wind speed and solar radiation.
Changing heat seasonsOur research finds that, in the 1980s, extreme heat around the world was closely confined to a single heat season. For example, some 93% of the world’s land area experienced more than 80% of extreme dry-heat days during its traditional dry-heat season.
Surprisingly, this was even true in the tropics, where there is much less of a seasonal swing in temperatures.
We also show that extreme dry- and humid-heat seasons are often different from one another, typically offset by one month. This is especially true in places influenced by monsoon systems, such as north-western Mexico and central India, where the extreme dry-heat season precedes the extreme humid-heat season.
But, the edges of these extreme heat seasons are starting to blur.
Extreme heat events are spreading out significantly in the calendar year in more than half of global land areas.
This extension of the extreme dry- and humid-heat seasons means that dangerous heat has started to creep into the shoulder seasons – but not equally so.
The maps below show how, in western Europe, southern Africa and north-western India, a larger fraction of each year’s extreme heat events are happening in the months before the historical dry- and humid-heat seasons. These regions are shaded in green.
On the other hand, in much of the US, eastern China, northern Africa and eastern Europe, extreme heat events are increasing in frequency in the months after the traditional heat seasons. These regions are shaded in purple.
Shift of the extreme dry- (top) and humid-heat (bottom) seasons, where green indicates a greater percentage of heat events in the two months before the traditional heat season (analogous to spring in the mid-latitudes) and purple a greater percentage of extreme heat events in the two months after (autumn in the mid-latitudes). Black shading indicates locations without a consecutive three-month heat season. Credit: Ivanovich et al. (2026) Boosting existing seasonsIt is possible that these observed changes have a straightforward – and somewhat simple – explanation.
In many regions, one shoulder season – spring or autumn – is warmer than the other. One hypothesis we explored was whether a simple step up in daily heat across the calendar year makes it more likely for extreme heat days to occur in one shoulder season over the other.
Our research shows that things are not so simple.
To investigate, we created a new, “synthetic” timeseries in order to identify the impact of annual average warming. To do this, we took the baseline 1980s timeseries and “shifted up” the data by the average change in local dry or humid heat between the first and last 10 years of our dataset (1980-89 compared to 2015-24).
We find that, in most locations, intensifying the baseline seasonality in a given location by warming evenly over the course of the year explains the changes in extreme heat timing within the traditional heat season.
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.preheader p{ margin-top: 0; font-family: 'PT Sans', sans-serif; font-weight: var(--type--3--font-weight--bold); color: var(--button--color); font-size: var(--button--font-size, inherit); } .newsletter-inline{ display: flex; border: solid 1px #333333; padding: 1em; background: #ffffff; } .inline-email{ display:inline-block; margin-right:1em; margin-top:0 !important; margin-bottom:0.5em; } #field_submit{ display:inline-block; margin-top:0 !important; } .gform_wrapper .gfield+.gfield{ margin-top:0 } Email gform.initializeOnLoaded( function() {gformInitSpinner( 5, 'http://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/plugins/gravityforms/images/spinner.svg', false );jQuery('#gform_ajax_frame_5').on('load',function(){var contents = jQuery(this).contents().find('*').html();var is_postback = contents.indexOf('GF_AJAX_POSTBACK') >= 0;if(!is_postback){return;}var form_content = jQuery(this).contents().find('#gform_wrapper_5');var is_confirmation = jQuery(this).contents().find('#gform_confirmation_wrapper_5').length > 0;var is_redirect = contents.indexOf('gformRedirect(){') >= 0;var is_form = form_content.length > 0 && ! is_redirect && ! is_confirmation;var mt = parseInt(jQuery('html').css('margin-top'), 10) + parseInt(jQuery('body').css('margin-top'), 10) + 100;if(is_form){jQuery('#gform_wrapper_5').html(form_content.html());if(form_content.hasClass('gform_validation_error')){jQuery('#gform_wrapper_5').addClass('gform_validation_error');} else {jQuery('#gform_wrapper_5').removeClass('gform_validation_error');}setTimeout( function() { /* delay the scroll by 50 milliseconds to fix a bug in chrome */ jQuery(document).scrollTop(jQuery('#gform_wrapper_5').offset().top - mt); }, 50 );if(window['gformInitDatepicker']) {gformInitDatepicker();}if(window['gformInitPriceFields']) {gformInitPriceFields();}var current_page = jQuery('#gform_source_page_number_5').val();gformInitSpinner( 5, 'http://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/plugins/gravityforms/images/spinner.svg', false );jQuery(document).trigger('gform_page_loaded', [5, current_page]);window['gf_submitting_5'] = false;}else if(!is_redirect){var confirmation_content = jQuery(this).contents().find('.GF_AJAX_POSTBACK').html();if(!confirmation_content){confirmation_content = contents;}jQuery('#gform_wrapper_5').replaceWith(confirmation_content);jQuery(document).scrollTop(jQuery('#gf_5').offset().top - mt);jQuery(document).trigger('gform_confirmation_loaded', [5]);window['gf_submitting_5'] = false;wp.a11y.speak(jQuery('#gform_confirmation_message_5').text());}else{jQuery('#gform_5').append(contents);if(window['gformRedirect']) {gformRedirect();}}jQuery(document).trigger("gform_pre_post_render", [{ formId: "5", currentPage: "current_page", abort: function() { this.preventDefault(); } }]); if (event && event.defaultPrevented) { return; } const gformWrapperDiv = document.getElementById( "gform_wrapper_5" ); if ( gformWrapperDiv ) { const visibilitySpan = document.createElement( "span" ); visibilitySpan.id = "gform_visibility_test_5"; gformWrapperDiv.insertAdjacentElement( "afterend", visibilitySpan ); } const visibilityTestDiv = document.getElementById( "gform_visibility_test_5" ); let postRenderFired = false; function triggerPostRender() { if ( postRenderFired ) { return; } postRenderFired = true; gform.core.triggerPostRenderEvents( 5, current_page ); if ( visibilityTestDiv ) { visibilityTestDiv.parentNode.removeChild( visibilityTestDiv ); } } function debounce( func, wait, immediate ) { var timeout; return function() { var context = this, args = arguments; var later = function() { timeout = null; if ( !immediate ) func.apply( context, args ); }; var callNow = immediate && !timeout; clearTimeout( timeout ); timeout = setTimeout( later, wait ); if ( callNow ) func.apply( context, args ); }; } const debouncedTriggerPostRender = debounce( function() { triggerPostRender(); }, 200 ); if ( visibilityTestDiv && visibilityTestDiv.offsetParent === null ) { const observer = new MutationObserver( ( mutations ) => { mutations.forEach( ( mutation ) => { if ( mutation.type === 'attributes' && visibilityTestDiv.offsetParent !== null ) { debouncedTriggerPostRender(); observer.disconnect(); } }); }); observer.observe( document.body, { attributes: true, childList: false, subtree: true, attributeFilter: [ 'style', 'class' ], }); } else { triggerPostRender(); } } );} );However, annual average warming alone cannot explain the uneven changes in how extreme heat is occurring in the shoulder seasons.
As such, we conclude there must be other factors at play.
Long-term changes in seasonal precipitation and soil moisture – whether drying or moistening – could be contributing.
There could also be potential links to land-use changes, such as agricultural intensification or increased irrigation. Natural fluctuations in regional climates, caused by phenomena such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, could also be playing an important role.
To tease out the contributions of each of these drivers, scientists will need to conduct more regionally-focused studies.
Managing hazardsThe expansion of extreme heat events into the shoulder seasons indicates that key protections, such as heat early warning systems and the establishment of cooling centres, may be needed outside the traditional summer months.
Further research is also required to look into whether the overlap of extreme heat with other seasonal hazards is increasing.
For example, we find that, throughout much of the US, there is a larger expansion of the heat season into the autumn than the spring. In the western US, extreme heat which stretches later into the year could increase the overlap between the extreme heat and wildfire seasons.
Meanwhile, a similar extension of the heat season into the autumn in the eastern US could increase the overlap between the extreme heat and Atlantic hurricane seasons.
Understanding how the intersection of these seasonal hazards is changing is essential for developing targeted climate adaptation strategies, given that multiple hazards happening at once or in quick succession are much more dangerous than when they happen in isolation.
Ivanovich, C. et al. (2026) Extreme dry- and humid-heat seasons are changing asymmetrically, AGU Advances, doi:10.1029/2026AV002516
related Guest post: Why tough methane cuts are crucial for keeping warming ‘well-below’ 2C 01.09.2026 Climate pollutants Guest post: France’s June heatwave caused more than 2,700 heat-related deaths 07.07.2026 Health and society Guest post: Climate change has caused one-fifth of Pine Island glacier retreat 29.06.2026 Antarctica Q&A: What change of power in Colombia could mean for world’s fossil-fuel transition 26.06.2026 International policyThe post Guest post: How extreme heat is ‘creeping’ from summer into autumn and spring appeared first on Carbon Brief.
UK aviation emissions to be 50% higher than thought by 2050, government admits
The UK government has slashed its hopes for electric planes and “sustainable aviation fuels” (SAFs), ahead of giving the green light to a third runway at Heathrow.
An “ambitious” rollout of new technologies and efficiency upgrades will only cut flight emissions by a quarter over the next two decades, according to forecasts quietly released in June.
This would leave aviation emissions in 2050 nearly 50% higher than expected under the “jet-zero” strategy, launched by the previous Conservative government in 2022.
The Labour government has signalled its support for a contentious third runway at Heathrow airport, with a final planning decision expected by 2029.
Ministers have justified this expansion by citing the rollout of clean-aviation technologies.
Yet, the updated forecasts suggest that rising flight numbers and a reduced role for “techno-fixes” will leave aviation emissions stubbornly high in 2050 – the UK’s legal target for net-zero.
If this is to be compatible with UK climate goals, then these higher emissions from flights in 2050 would need to be taken out of the atmosphere using costly and largely unproven “carbon dioxide removal” technologies – or by planting gigantic new forests.
Emissions upThe previous government’s “jet-zero” strategy committed the UK to a “high ambition” pathway that would have seen aviation emissions peak at 38.2m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) in 2019 and drop to 19.3MtCO2e in 2050.
At the time, the Conservative government said this “clear goal” was achievable, alongside airport expansion and rising flight numbers.
Its strategy relied heavily on the extensive use of early-stage technologies, such as SAFs and battery-powered planes, as well as wider fuel-efficiency improvements.
In public statements, Labour has broadly continued this approach, backing new airport runways while supporting SAFs as a way to curb aviation emissions.
However, the government’s latest forecast, quietly published ahead of the formal approval of a new runway at Heathrow, sets far lower expectations for these technologies.
Its “technology development” pathway, with “ambitious carbon abatement measures”, only sees emissions drop to 28.1MtCO2e in 2050. As the chart below shows, this is around 9MtCO2e higher than the jet-zero strategy’s stated goal – a roughly 50% increase.
The shift is down to much lower expectations for SAF uptake, fuel-efficiency improvements and the roll-out of battery-powered planes, as well as lower international carbon prices.
The government now expects SAFs to make up 30% of aviation fuel by 2050, rather than 50%. It also concedes that SAFs will save less carbon over their lifecycle than previously thought.
SAFs have faced considerable criticism, due to limited supplies and uncertainty around the extent to which they cut emissions. Even meeting the UK’s relatively modest goal of 22% SAF uptake by 2040 would require enormous – potentially unattainable – volumes of waste products, which are currently the main source of the fuel.
For its new forecasts, the government commissioned a separate analysis of likely aircraft fuel-efficiency improvements over the next few decades. This analysis, from the Aviation Impact Accelerator, yielded “less optimistic” projections than earlier work.
Fuel-efficiency improvements have therefore been revised downward from 2% per year in the “jet-zero” strategy to 1.3% in the new “technology development” scenario.
There is also a reduced role for battery-powered planes, with only some of the smallest zero-emissions aircraft expected to be in use by 2035.
Crucially, even making the more limited emissions cuts in the new “technology development” pathway would require greater efforts to decarbonise the aviation sector.
If the UK fails to implement new policies or innovations, while flight numbers continue to rise, then aviation emissions would be even higher in 2050 than they are today.
This is illustrated by the pink “current trends” pathway in the chart above, in which emissions increase to 41.1MtCO2e by 2050.
This is roughly double the amount targeted by the jet-zero strategy and recommended by government climate advisors, the Climate Change Committee (CCC).
Budget ‘busting’The new forecasts all account for the growth of several UK airports, including “planned Heathrow expansion”. Overall, passenger numbers would be at least 50% higher by 2050.
In contrast, the CCC and other experts have advised that the rise in passenger numbers may need to be limited, in order to keep emissions down.
In order to meet the UK’s net-zero target, any aviation emissions that remain in 2050 would need to be offset by planting many thousands of hectares of new forest, or by relying on costly and largely unproven CO2 removal technologies.
Tim Johnson, director at the Aviation Environment Federation (AEF), says the new forecasts present “a more honest and realistic vision of what’s possible in the next 24 years”. However, he tells Carbon Brief:
“Less reliance on cleaner technology and fuels reopens the debate about the role and scale of greenhouse gas removals and ways to tackle the projected 50% growth in demand for air travel.”
AEF calculations, based on government data and shared with Carbon Brief, suggest that emissions from the third runway at Heathrow would initially be relatively modest, reaching 3.5MtCO2e per year in 2050. Its emissions would then be expected to rise significantly beyond the legal 2050 net-zero deadline.
Previously, the Labour government has explicitly cited SAFs and other new technologies as part of its justification for expanding Heathrow airport.
Dr Lois Pennington, a research associate at the University of Manchester who has analysed Heathrow’s emissions impact, says the government’s new forecast shows “we are projected to be well over aviation’s share of the carbon budget even before a third runway is considered”.
She tells Carbon Brief:
“For Heathrow, it means expansion can no longer be waved through on the promise of technology, and any approvals will be in the full knowledge that it will bust our legally binding carbon budgets.”
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Sargassum Superbloom: Seaweed Scourge or Ecological Boon?
Stretching from West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico, a massive bloom of sargassum seaweed is swamping beaches and killing coastal wildlife. But scientists have discovered the floating algae also shelters a vast array of ocean creatures, and some are now calling for its protection.
September 10 Green Energy News
Headline News:
- “Drones Hold Secret To Producing More Rain, Engineers Say” • Amid perpetual drought, population growth, and trillions of gallons of water used in desert agriculture, much of the West is in desperate need of more rain and snow. A team of engineers at California tech company Rainmaker say they believe drones could be part of a solution. [ABC News]
Preparing a drone for rain making (Rainmaker image)
- “August 2026 Tied For The World’s Hottest Month On Record, According To Copernicus” • August was the hottest month on record, tied with July 2023, according to data published by the European climate observatory Copernicus. The global average air temperature was 1.65°C higher than it was in 1850–1900, the pre-industrial reference period. [Euronews]
- “European Gas Prices Keep Climbing The As IEA Calls For Emergency Reserves” • Europe’s benchmark wholesale gas price, the front-month Dutch TTF contract, traded above €79/MWh, its highest level since early 2023. PFighting between the US and Iran has intensified concerns about LNG shipments through the Strait of Hormuz. [Euronews]
- “Denmark Can Produce 140% Of Its Electricity Demand From Wind Power” • US President Trump may have a peevish vendetta against wind turbines, but the rest of the world’s nations enjoy bumper crops of clean kilowatts from the sky and turn them into export revenues. When windpower provided Denmark with 140% of its needs, the excess was exported. [CleanTechnica]
- “Irish Summer Solar Generation Jumps 58%” • Solar electricity generation in Ireland increased 58% in June, July, and August of 2026 compared with the same three months in 2025. Production reached 692 GWh. EirGrid said solar contributed 7.7% of the country’s electricity fuel mix in August, after achieving 9.4% in July and 8.2% in June. [reNews]
For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.
Beyond Free Trade: An Alternative Trade Framework Based on Food Sovereignty | ESAFF Podcast
This podcast by ESAFF explores why farmers continue to challenge the WTO and call for a just trade framework that works for people, not just markets.
The post Beyond Free Trade: An Alternative Trade Framework Based on Food Sovereignty | ESAFF Podcast appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.
Why community matters when preparing for the Great Unraveling
Climatological limits to livestock: A plea for plant-based diets
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