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DeBriefed 5 June 2026: UK eyes 2040 emissions cut | US ‘dismantling’ oceans research | China’s solar slump
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
‘ON COURSE’: The UK government has proposed reducing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions to 87% below 1990 levels by 2040, reported the Associated Press. The newswire cited scientists saying that the goal “puts the UK on course to meet its 2050 net-zero target”. To meet this target, the UK would “need to invest around £880bn over 25 years…but doing so would yield benefits worth £1,620bn”, according to an in-depth analysis of the plans by Carbon Brief.
UPCOMING ‘FLASHPOINT’: The Financial Times noted that, for the target to become “legally binding”, it must be approved by parliament. While the UK’s previous carbon budget “received cross-party support”, this time the proposal is “expected to become a flashpoint among lawmakers”, it added, with both the Conservatives and Reform pledging to “scrap” net-zero policies.
DRIVING FORCE: Separately, a new report by consultancy Confederation of British Industry (CBI) Economics has valued the UK’s “net-zero economy” at more than £100bn a year, reported the Guardian. It added that, by a broad measure, the UK energy transition supports 1.1m jobs and provides “nearly 4% of the UK’s economic output”.
US ‘dismantling’ oceans dataSYSTEMS OFFLINE: The Trump administration is “dismantling” a “$368m deep-ocean observation system” that, among other things, allows scientists to monitor the ocean currents that affect the global climate and understand how the “ocean is absorbing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere”, said the New York Times. Bloomberg reported that Trump’s efforts to close the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a key climate science research institution, has been “temporarily blocked” by a judge.
RULE ROLLBACK: The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), an independent body that regulates US securities markets, has proposed repealing the climate-disclosure rule, which “requires some public companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions and the risks they face from global warming”, said the Associated Press. The Trump administration also announced plans to allocate $700m to support “clean, beautiful coal” power and export infrastructure, said BBC News.
Around the world- EU EXEMPTIONS: The EU will allow member states to breach the bloc’s fiscal rules to “cope with high energy prices stoked by the Iran war”, as long as the measures they use help “accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels”, reported Bloomberg.
- SLOW SPENDING: The German government has only paid out €24bn of the €37bn it was “supposed to disburse” in 2025 from a special fund for infrastructure and “climate neutrality”, reported Clean Energy Wire.
- URGENT WARNING: UN secretary-general António Guterres said a likely upcoming El Niño weather event must be treated as the “urgent climate warning it is”, said Al Jazeera.
- HOEKSTRA ON COP: The outcomes of many of the most recent COPs have been “underwhelming”, EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra has said, according to Reuters. COPs should be supplemented by “smaller groups…who are willing to move faster”, he added.
The number of excess deaths across India caused by a single day of extreme heat, according to coverage in the Hindustan Times of a new study.
30,000Excess deaths caused if the extreme heat lasts five days.
Latest climate research- In a 1.5C warmer world, the timing of floods will shift by more than seven days across half of the world’s landmass | Nature Communications
- Temperature and rainfall together account for more than 13% of methane generated from landfills in Incheon, South Korea | Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
- The postponed International Maritime Organisation “net-zero framework” could increase biofuel use in shipping to 40% by 2050 | Nature Energy
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
CapturedChina’s carbon dioxide emissions grew by 2% in the first quarter of 2026 due to a rise in “wasted” wind and solar generation, according to new analysis for Carbon Brief. However, emissions remain below their March 2024 peak, it added.
Spotlight Why China’s solar boom is slowing downChina made headlines in 2025 for installing record levels of solar. But in 2026, new capacity is expected to be lower than last year’s figures.
This week, Carbon Brief examines what is behind China’s lower 2026 solar additions.
Solar power has been a major element of China’s renewables buildout since the mid-2010s.
The country installed 315 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity in 2025, adding more than half of all new solar globally. The year before, it added 277GW.
But the picture in 2026 to date is very different. Installations in March fell 56% year-on-year to 9GW, while new capacity in April totalled 10GW, a 79% drop compared to a year earlier, according to Carbon Brief’s analysis of official data.
Domestic uncertaintyThe lower pace in 2026 had been anticipated by analysts.
In previous years, massive solar installations were driven by strong policy support for renewables, including a fixed-price tariff for generators.
In February 2025, the government announced that new solar and wind projects would instead be financed through a new “contract for difference” (CfD)-style system.
Under the new system, power from a certain amount of renewable capacity will be purchased for a fixed “strike price”, which to date has been far lower than previous guaranteed tariffs. Further projects will need to secure their own contracts on the open market.
While the new system is posing challenges for developers in the short term, it is part of a longer-term shift towards market-driven pricing for renewables, which has already made them cheaper than coal.
The change led to a rush of new project installations ahead of the June 2025 cut-off date, so that they could fall under the old fixed-price regime.
New solar additions totalled 45GW in April 2025 and 93GW in May 2025, before falling to 14GW in June 2025, according to Carbon Brief analysis of government data.
Additions also spiked in December, in both 2024 and 2025, as developers raced to meet completion deadlines including those under the 14th five-year plan.
Some reports have attributed the precipitous drop this year to falling demand for solar in China.
But this is a “major oversimplification”, David Fishman, principal at energy consultancy the Lantau Group, wrote on LinkedIn.
The real challenge, he said, is that “developers and banks [are] still figuring out how to finance and build projects without policy-backed revenue guarantees”.
Yang Biqing, energy analyst for Asia at thinktank Ember, agrees, telling Carbon Brief that the new CfD-style system has created “greater uncertainty” for developers, compounded by fierce competition and a growing push for “consolidation” in the industry.
The government set a target for 200GW of new solar and wind capacity in 2026.
Fishman told Carbon Brief that this will be “difficult” for the government to achieve, though not impossible. Current levels of solar additions – reaching perhaps 120GW for the year – plus an “ambitious” 80GW of new wind power, could help China to hit the target, he said.
Others are more bullish. The China Photovoltaic Industry Association forecasts 180-240GW of new solar in 2026.
But few believe additions will match the breakneck pace of 2025.
“China’s solar industry is no longer a story of capacity expansion”, said Yang, with officials now “increasingly” focused on integrating current generation into the grid.
Soaring exportsMeanwhile, China’s solar exports are still going strong.
China exported almost 1.2m tonnes of solar cells in April 2026, according to Reuters. Although down from a record high in March, it represented a 60% rise year-on-year, added the newswire.
This signals solar’s attractiveness globally in the face of rising energy prices caused by the Iran-US conflict, analysts have said.
High demand for panels has been reported across several continents, including Europe, Asia and Africa.
For example, in the Philippines, the conflict is “driving” solar uptake, one analyst told the Associated Press, adding:
“People want solar and people want solar now.”
A version of this article is also available on the Carbon Brief website.
Watch, read, listenEL NIÑO IMPACTS: An interactive piece from BBC News described how the forecasted “super” El Niño could impact global climate and weather in the coming months.
‘CAUTIONARY TALE’: Two researchers wrote in Climate Home News that “Indonesia’s failing Just Energy Transition Partnership is a cautionary tale”.
‘CULTURE WAR’: Time magazine spoke to London mayor Sadiq Khan about how he “survived the climate culture war”.
Coming up- 8 June: World Ocean Day
- 8-18 June: Bonn climate talks, Bonn, Germany
- 11 June: Climate Adaptation Innovation in Latin America and the Caribbean webinar, online
- The New York Times, climate policy correspondent | Salary: $124,980-$160,000. Location: Washington DC
- Regulatory Assistance Project, associate, electricity systems and electrification | Salary: €50,000-€60,000. Location: Madrid and remote
- Future Energy Networks, head of policy | Salary: £75,000-£100,000. Location: London and remote
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 5 June 2026: UK eyes 2040 emissions cut | US ‘dismantling’ oceans research | China’s solar slump appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Chart: Why China’s solar boom is slowing down
Solar power has been a major element of China’s renewables buildout since the mid-2010s.
The country installed 315 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity in 2025, adding more than half of all new solar globally. The year before, it added 277GW.
But the picture in 2026 to date is very different. Installations in March fell 56% year-on-year to 9GW, while new capacity in April totalled 10GW, a 79% drop compared to a year earlier, according to Carbon Brief’s analysis of official data.
Domestic uncertaintyThe lower pace in 2026 had been anticipated by analysts.
In previous years, massive solar installations were driven by strong policy support for renewables, including a fixed-price tariff for generators.
In February 2025, the government announced that new solar and wind projects would instead be financed through a new “contract for difference” (CfD)-style system.
Under the new system, power from a certain amount of renewable capacity will be purchased for a fixed “strike price”, which to date has been far lower than previous guaranteed tariffs. Further projects will need to secure their own contracts on the open market.
While the new system is posing challenges for developers in the short term, it is part of a longer-term shift towards market-driven pricing for renewables, which has already made them cheaper than coal.
The change led to a rush of new project installations ahead of the June 2025 cut-off date, so that they could fall under the old fixed-price regime.
New solar additions totalled 45GW in April 2025 and 93GW in May 2025, before falling to 14GW in June 2025, according to Carbon Brief analysis of government data.
Additions also spiked in December, in both 2024 and 2025, as developers raced to meet completion deadlines including those under the 14th five-year plan.
Some reports have attributed the precipitous drop this year to falling demand for solar in China.
But this is a “major oversimplification”, David Fishman, principal at energy consultancy the Lantau Group, wrote on LinkedIn.
The real challenge, he said, is that “developers and banks [are] still figuring out how to finance and build projects without policy-backed revenue guarantees”.
Yang Biqing, energy analyst for Asia at thinktank Ember, agrees, telling Carbon Brief that the new CfD-style system has created “greater uncertainty” for developers, compounded by fierce competition and a growing push for “consolidation” in the industry.
The government set a target for 200GW of new solar and wind capacity in 2026.
Fishman tells Carbon Brief that this will be “difficult” for the government to achieve, though not impossible. Current levels of solar additions – reaching perhaps 120GW for the year – plus an “ambitious” 80GW of new wind power, could help China to hit the target, he says.
Others are more bullish. The China Photovoltaic Industry Association forecasts 180-240GW of new solar in 2026.
But few believe additions will match the breakneck pace of 2025.
“China’s solar industry is no longer a story of capacity expansion”, says Yang, with officials now “increasingly” focused on integrating current generation into the grid.
Soaring exportsMeanwhile, China’s solar exports are still going strong.
China exported almost 1.2m tonnes of solar cells in April 2026, according to Reuters. Although down from a record high in March, it represented a 60% rise year-on-year, added the newswire.
This signals solar’s attractiveness globally in the face of rising energy prices caused by the Iran-US conflict, analysts have said.
High demand for panels has been reported across several continents, including Europe, Asia and Africa.
For example, in the Philippines, the conflict is “driving” solar uptake, one analyst told the Associated Press, adding:
“People want solar and people want solar now.”
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| jQuery(document).ready(function() { jQuery('.block-related-articles-slider-block_b8d52deece9983cba51d8b5234c94860 .mh').matchHeight({ byRow: false }); });The post Chart: Why China’s solar boom is slowing down appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: China’s CO2 climbs 2% in early 2026 due to ‘wasted’ wind and solar
China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions grew by 2% in the first quarter of 2026, after a rise in the amount of “wasted” wind and solar power.
The country used more coal and gas to generate electricity than in the same quarter a year earlier, despite a record amount of new wind and solar capacity being built.
While the strait of Hormuz crisis has boosted China’s focus on energy security – including through clean energy and electrification – its electricity system is failing to keep up.
The new analysis for Carbon Brief shows that, while China’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry increased in the first part of 2026, they remain below the peak in early 2024.
Other key findings for the first quarter of 2026 include:
- There was a 23% year-on-year rise in wind-power capacity and 33% for solar.
- There was also a sharp rise in the amount of wind and solar output being “wasted”, as it was not accommodated by the current electricity system.
- As a result, emissions in the power sector increased by 4% year-on-year.
- Power-sector CO2 would have been flat without the rise in “wasted” wind and solar.
- Emissions in other sectors of the economy grew by 1%.
The key reason for “wasted” wind and solar generation was the inflexible management of coal power plants and power grids, not a lack of grid infrastructure.
In the first quarter of 2026, China’s energy system also began to adjust to the surge in oil and gas prices due to the blockade of the strait of Hormuz.
This continued through April and May, with sharp reductions in oil imports and oil-based chemicals production, as well as the share of gas in electricity generation.
However, the inability to make full use of new wind and solar power plants left China more exposed to the closure of the strait of Hormuz, by increasing the need for other fuels.
This exposure could become more acute if the “super El Niño” that is forecast for later this year limits the electricity output of hydropower, while fossil-fuel supplies remain tight.
Nevertheless, the Hormuz crisis could result in China following a lower-CO2 trajectory than previously expected, if key policies in its 15th five-year plan are fully implemented.
Emissions plateau continuesRecent analysis for Carbon Brief showed that China’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry had been “flat or falling” for nearly two years.
The latest analysis points to a rise of 2% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2026, as shown in the figure below. For now, however, emissions remain below the peak in March 2024.
China’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industrial processes, million tonnes of CO2, rolling 12-month totals until March 2026. Source: Emissions are estimated from National Bureau of Statistics data on production of different fuels and industrial products, China Customs data on imports and exports and WIND Information data on changes in inventories, applying emissions factors from China’s latest national greenhouse gas emissions inventory, IPCC default emission factors for metals process emissions and annual emissions factors per tonne of cement production until 2025. Chemical industry process emissions are estimated from fossil fuel use, subtracting carbon embedded in products. Sector breakdown of coal consumption is estimated using coal consumption data from WIND Information and electricity data from the National Energy Administration. The consumption of petrol, diesel and jet fuel is adjusted to match quarterly total sales reported by Sinopec.In previous quarters, emissions had fallen in almost every sector of the economy, with the exception of the coal-based chemicals industry.
The latest quarter saw more widespread increases, with the power sector by far the largest source of emissions growth, as shown in the figure below.
Year-on-year change in China’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industrial processes, for the period January-March 2026, million tonnes of CO2. Source: Emissions are estimated from National Bureau of Statistics data on production of different fuels and industrial products, China Customs data on imports and exports and WIND Information data on changes in inventories, applying emissions factors from China’s latest national greenhouse gas emissions inventory, IPCC default emission factors for metals process emissions and annual emissions factors per tonne of cement production until 2025. Chemical industry process emissions are estimated from fossil fuel use, subtracting carbon embedded in products. Sector breakdown of coal consumption is estimated using coal consumption data from WIND Information and electricity data from the National Energy Administration. The consumption of petrol, diesel and jet fuel is adjusted to match quarterly total sales reported by Sinopec.Emissions from other sectors were relatively stable in aggregate, with some rising and others continuing to decline.
Coal consumption in the chemical industry continued strong growth, increasing by 20%, but showed no change in trend after the closure of the strait of Hormuz and surge in oil prices.
(This is contrary to some commentary arguing that the closure of the strait of Hormuz has resulted in a marked increase in the output of China’s coal-chemicals industry.)
The apparent consumption of oil products rebounded in January-February, driven by transportation, but declined slightly in March as oil prices surged.
Emissions from the cement and steel industries continued to fall, as real estate investment contracted another 11% in the first quarter of 2026, following a 17% reduction in 2025. Cement production fell 7% and crude steel output by 5%.
‘Wasted’ wind and solar powerAfter falling in 2025, power generation from coal and gas increased by 4% in the first quarter of the year.
Power demand grew at 5.2% and hydropower generation increased 9%. Under these circumstances, the record growth in solar and wind power capacity in 2025 should have covered demand growth and pushed fossil-power generation down.
The trend was accentuated in March, as power demand grew just 3.5%, hydropower output increased 9% and yet fossil-power generation increased 4.2%.
The reason for fossil-power generation growth was a sharp drop in the electricity output per unit of installed capacity for both solar and wind power, known as the “capacity factor”.
If capacity factors were stable, the increased solar and wind capacity would have been expected to result in 160 terawatt hours (TWh) of additional clean-power generation during the first quarter, compared with the same time last year, with nuclear and hydro bringing the total to 170TWh. This would have comfortably exceeded the 120TWh increase in power demand.
However, the actual increase in clean-power generation was just 60TWh, with wind showing almost no growth.
While wind power capacity grew by 23% from the first quarter of 2025 to the same period in 2026, an increase of 120GW, the average capacity factor fell from 27% to 22%, a reduction of 18%. This implies that power generation from wind only grew 1% year-on-year. In the case of solar, capacity grew by 33%, but the average capacity factor fell by 11%, resulting in 18% growth in solar-power generation.
It is normal for solar and especially wind capacity factors to vary year-to-year due to weather conditions, but the fall this year was an extension of a longer trend. The average capacity factors of solar and wind have fallen by 19% and 10%, respectively, from 2022 to 2025.
A quarter of the fall in capacity factors over the three-year period is explained by the increase in reported curtailment. This refers to the amount of electricity that is effectively “wasted”, or curtailed, because it cannot be accommodated by the power network.
Nor can the remainder of the fall in capacity factors be explained by the change in weather conditions, as both wind and solar conditions improved on a national-average basis from 2022 to 2025.
In the first quarter of 2026, approximately half of the drop in wind capacity factor and a quarter of the drop in solar capacity factor was explained by weather conditions, implying that the rest is due to increased curtailment resulting from inadequate grid management and integration.
One clear symptom of increased curtailment is that in January-February, both solar and wind conditions were actually better than last year, but capacity factors still fell.
The fact that capacity factors have fallen significantly more than would be expected based on reported curtailment and weather conditions indicates that a lot of curtailment goes unreported, either because it is excluded from the statistical definition, or because there are gaps in reporting.
Market participants have long noted that actual curtailment is much higher than reported in official statistics.
Official data on curtailment only includes “system reasons”, while excluding some lost generation linked to market trading, grid-connection conditions and other “special” causes.
The figure below shows actual electricity generation from wind and solar plants (dark blue), the amount that would have been generated if reported curtailment had not taken place (light blue) and the level expected if the rate of curtailment had stayed the same (mid-blue).
In total, wind and solar could have generated an extra 170TWh of electricity in the first quarter of 2026, if the rate of curtailment had not gone up in the preceding years. This is more than the total power generation of France over the same period.
Electricity generation from solar (left) and wind power (right) in China, terawatt hours per 12-month period. Red: Electricity actually fed into the grid. Yellow: Generation before reported levels of “curtailment”, where some electricity is discarded due to grid congestion. Blue: Generation if the rate of curtailment had stayed constant. Source: China Electricity Council monthly data on installed capacity and utilisation; National New Energy Consumption Monitoring and Early Warning Center data on curtailment; utilisation at constant curtailment projected by fitting a regression model between historical utilisation data and weather data from NASA Power and CFSv2 for power plant locations taken from Global Energy Monitor data.The largest reductions in capacity factors, after controlling for variations in weather conditions, came from Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Liaoning. In these northern provinces, the heating season is a challenging time for grid managers due to inflexible operation of plants that provide both heat and power.
More broadly, the key reason for curtailment is inflexible grid management. Flexible operation of coal and gas-fired power plants could very substantially increase the amount of solar and wind power the grid can accommodate.
Yet currently, coal-fired power generation is largely operated via medium- and long-term contracts to supply fixed amounts of electricity at fixed prices, meaning there is no incentive for adjustments in output to make space for solar and wind.
Similarly, electricity trading between provinces is predominantly contracted annually, preventing the variable output of solar and wind from being transmitted between jurisdictions in real time.
These issues have a clear impact on the amount of wind and solar that is curtailed. For example, power-system modeling carried out for the year 2023 indicates that flexible power-grid operation would have essentially eliminated the need for curtailment.
The government has also recognised solar and wind curtailment as one of the central challenges of the energy transition.
Recent policies have called for increased inter-province trading and improved flexibility of coal-power plants as the solutions, implicitly recognising these as key issues to address.
Recent large increases in storage capacity, including pumped hydro and batteries, should have improved the integration of wind and solar into the grid. But there is a lack of incentives for storage operators that limits the benefits the system can derive from the technology.
The government has implicitly recognised this and called for establishing electricity pricing that enables energy storage to “participate fairly”.
Meanwhile, China’s new renewable-pricing rules, which shifted existing solar and wind plants to selling electricity on the market, rather than being compensated directly by the grid operator, does not seem to have reduced curtailment so far.
Most provinces only finalised their plans for implementing the policy in late 2025, which left little time for the market and operators to adapt.
China is aiming to build a “new type power system”, capable of integrating large amounts of wind and solar into the grid by 2027. In the meantime, the government has also called for “reasonably pacing” utility-scale “new energy” capacity additions to match the pace at which provinces think they are able to improve the “regulation capacity” of their grids.
How the Hormuz crisis is affecting China’s energy sectorChina’s energy system has started, since March, to adjust to the surge in oil and gas prices triggered by the closure of the strait of Hormuz. There have been sharp reductions in oil imports, the share of gas in thermal power generation and in oil-based chemical production.
The consumption of gas fell overall in March, even as consumption in the power sector increased. The power sector fuel mix shifted from gas to coal, but the increase in overall thermal power generation still pushed gas use up in the sector.
High gas prices had already been straining household finances before the current crisis. Millions of households were shifted from coal stoves to gas-based heating as a part of efforts to tackle air pollution during the past decade. However, the gas-price subsidies created to enable this shift have expired in recent years, leading to a rise in heating bills.
China’s oil imports started falling sharply immediately after oil prices surged, with net imports falling even further as exports were restricted. The fall has continued into May, with shipments falling by over 40% year-on-year in the first three weeks of the month.
In the first quarter of the year, state-owned oil major Sinopec reported oil product sales up 4.8%. Apparent consumption of oil products had increased 5.5% in January-February, but fell -0.3% in March, indicating an early impact of the price surge, although the late timing of the Chinese New Year also had an effect.
Electric vehicles have continued to gain market share in 2026, reaching 53% of vehicle sales in April, up from 47% a year ago.
Electricity demand for EV charging grew over 50% year-on-year in March. The large number of plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road means that drivers can switch from petrol to power quickly when there is more of an incentive to do so.
Moreover, 24% of highway trips during the 1 May holiday were made by EVs, even though they only make up 15% of all registered cars. This shows that EVs tend to be driven more than average, making a bigger dent in oil use than their share in the fleet would suggest.
Crude oil processing volumes fell by 2% in March and 6% in April, after growth in January-February. Plastics output growth moderated in March and turned into a decline in April.
The increase in oil prices has boosted the profitability of the highly carbon-intensive coal-to-chemicals industry. There has also been speculation that the industry would have forcefully increased output in response to the Hormuz crisis, enabling China to cut back on oil use. The industry was, however, already operating at high capacity utilisation before the current crisis, reported at an average of 87% in the first half of 2025. This means there was little headroom in the sector to raise output in the short term.
Coal use in the chemical industry increased 19% in January-February and 22% in March, showing a rapidly rising trend, but no step change after the start of the crisis.
The global fossil-fuel crisis is also affecting China’s clean-energy industry through overseas demand. Exports of solar, batteries and EVs recorded 56% growth year-on-year in the first quarter, reaching $55bn. This increase was partially driven by front-loading of shipments ahead of changes to tax rebates to solar and battery exports at the end of March, but the value of exports also grew 38% in April, an indication of strong underlying demand.
Implications of the crisis for China’s transitionThe oil-and-gas crisis represents an opportunity for both clean energy and coal. The economics of electrification and clean-energy production, as well as of domestic coal production, have improved dramatically as imported fossil fuels have become more expensive.
At least as importantly, the closure of the strait of Hormuz and the resulting global fossil-fuel crisis closely mirror Chinese policymakers’ long-standing concern about reliance on seaborne fossil fuels. This is likely to reinforce their focus on energy security.
The previous fossil-fuel crisis, in 2021-2022, led to a new wave of coal-power plants, coal mines and coal-to-chemicals plants being built in China.
This time around, any expansion in coal mining is expected to be limited, both by the government’s “anti-involution” drive, which aims to stem harmful price competition, as well as by the carbon constraints in China’s climate goals.
Domestic coal production fell in the first four months of the year, despite a rise in oil and gas as well as coal prices. Rising coal prices will reduce the profitability of coal-fired power generation, at least for the next few months.
The perceived need for further new coal-power projects is also limited by the fact that, after record additions in 2025, there was still another 206GW of coal-fired capacity under construction in January, due to large volumes of permitting during the previous five years.
The energy regulator recently called on provinces to “strictly limit” the addition of new coal-power plants and other “regulating” power capacity in areas with sufficient firm capacity.
There is also a ceiling on the upside for coal in the current crisis, because gas plays a limited role in China’s energy system. This leaves little space for replacing gas with coal.
The exception is the coal-to-chemicals industry, which can replace oil and gas, albeit at the cost of very high carbon emissions. As a result, investment in the industry will likely get a further boost, even though the economic incentive is lower than it may seem.
While crude oil prices for delivery this summer have increased by more than $40 per barrel since the start of the year, 2030 prices are only up $5. This is a more relevant benchmark, given that a new coal-to-chemicals plant will take several years to build and commission.
The coal-to-chemicals expansion will also be limited by the new system to control carbon emissions. In particular, the requirement for local governments to compensate for carbon emissions from new industrial projects by closing down existing capacity, if these controls are implemented effectively.
Since the previous fossil-fuel crisis, the concept of energy security has become broader, encompassing clean energy and electrification, rather than being limited to coal and fossil fuels. This shift is also clear from how state media has been covering energy security in the wake of the war on Iran.
As such, the oil-and-gas crunch is likely to speed up the electrification of transportation and buildings. It also strengthens the case for “green fuels”, referring to green hydrogen and synthetic gaseous and liquid fuels produced from it, which are an important priority in the new five-year plan.
Solar and wind also become more attractive, economically and politically, as a result of the crisis. The upside may be limited by the dominant narrative that they have grown faster than the grid can manage, rather than being limited by institutional constraints. Nevertheless, they will benefit from fossil fuels – including coal – becoming more expensive and volatile.
Still, curtailment has become a key issue affecting the pace of China’s energy transition. It both reduces the immediate benefits of clean energy and undermines further investment in clean capacity, by increasing investment risks and cutting into returns.
The flipside of the current rise in curtailment is that when the installed wind, solar and energy storage capacity is put to full use, the supply of clean energy will increase substantially.
As noted, a key priority for the government in the next few years is to build a “new type of power system”, capable of integrating large amounts of variable renewable capacity.
The balance between how much the current crisis benefits coal or clean energy will depend on implementation of key climate and energy provisions in the 15th five-year plan.
If power-system reforms that benefit solar, wind and storage are implemented, while carbon-emission controls limit the expansion of coal-to-chemicals, then China is likely to follow a lower-CO2 emission trajectory than expected before the crisis.
About the dataData for the analysis was compiled from the National Bureau of Statistics of China, National Energy Administration of China, China Electricity Council and China Customs official data releases, as well as from industry data provider WIND Information and from Sinopec, China’s largest oil refiner.
Electricity generation from wind and solar, along with thermal power breakdown by fuel, was calculated by multiplying power generating capacity at the end of each month by monthly utilisation, using data reported by China Electricity Council through Wind Financial Terminal.
Total generation from thermal power and generation from hydropower and nuclear power were taken from National Bureau of Statistics monthly releases.
Monthly utilisation data was not available for biomass, so the annual average of 52% for 2023 was applied. Power-sector coal consumption was estimated based on power generation from coal and the average heat rate of coal-fired power plants during each month, to avoid the issue with official coal consumption numbers affecting recent data.
CO2 emissions estimates are based on National Bureau of Statistics default calorific values of fuels and emissions factors from China’s latest national greenhouse gas emissions inventory, for the year 2021. The CO2 emissions factor for cement is based on annual estimates up to 2024.
For oil, apparent consumption of transport fuels – diesel, petrol and jet fuel – is taken from Sinopec quarterly results, with monthly disaggregation based on production minus net exports. The consumption of these three fuels is labeled as oil product consumption in transportation, as it is the dominant sector for their use.
Apparent consumption of other oil products is calculated from refinery throughput, with the production of the transport fuels and the net exports of other oil products subtracted.
Estimated non-energy use of fossil fuels is subtracted from total chemical industry fossil fuel consumption, and process emissions are calculated based on fossil fuel consumption with carbon retained in products subtracted. Emissions from the incineration of plastics are based on a peer-reviewed estimate of plastics incineration in 2022, combined with growth rates in the overall power generation from waste-to-energy plants. Metals industry process emissions are calculated using industrial output data and IPCC default emission factors.
Reported curtailment, and capacity utilisation in the absence of reported curtailment, is calculated as the complement of the “offtake rates” (利用率) reported by National New Energy Consumption Monitoring and Early Warning Center monthly by province for solar and wind.
Total curtailment is estimated by comparing solar and wind capacity utilisation predicted based on weather conditions, and in the absence of curtailment, to reported utilisation. Utilisation is predicted by fitting regression models to reported monthly utilisation and weather conditions in 2020-2023.
Weather data used for predicting utilisation are hourly wind speed, temperature, solar irradiation and humidity at solar and wind power plant locations in each province from NASA Power and CFSv2. Locations are taken from Global Energy Monitor data.
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Cropped 3 June 2026: Highway through the Amazon | El Niño impact | State of CO2 removal
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter.
Subscribe for free here.
RECORD-LOW LOSS: Amazon deforestation rates have fallen to their lowest level since 2019, according to a report covered by Agence France-Presse. The newswire called the figures “good news” for president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, but said the rate of deforestation is still “breathtaking”, with five trees felled every second, on average. Separately, a report from Rainforest Foundation Norway found that the “currently anticipated growth in Brazilian beef production may lead to deforestation of ~57,000km2 in the Amazon by 2034”.
ROAD AND RAIL: The Brazilian government will invest $75m into a new highway “cutting through the Amazon rainforest”, reported Deutsche-Welle. The Associated Press said the administration also announced an environmental protection plan to “safeguard the forest from potential impacts from the highway”, but added that environmentalists still fear the move “could speed up Amazon deforestation”. Separately, Inside Climate News reported on a Brazilian supreme court ruling that has brought a 965km railway through the Amazon “one step closer to reality”.
BANNED IMAGES: Mongabay reported that “Brazil’s Congress has passed a bill prohibiting environmental agencies from using satellite images to restrict the commercial use of illegally deforested lands”. According to the outlet, supporters say that “satellite-only enforcement infringes upon farmers’ right to a fair defense”, while critics argue that the bill will “weaken environmental protection” and “create unsafe conditions” for Brazil’s federal environmental police. Separately, the Brazilian government has committed more than $600m (£446m) to “foster ecological investment in the Amazon region”, according to the Associated Press.
El Niño forecast and extreme heat‘SUPER’ STRESSED: The predicted “super” El Niño event would add stress to an “already dysfunctional and fragile global food system”, wrote the University of Sussex’s Prof Benjamin Selwyn in a commentary in the Conversation. He added that “El Niño alters rainfall, shifts jet streams and raises global temperatures”, all of which could damage harvests this summer. Reuters noted that the forecast for the phenomenon is “particularly worrying”, due to the predicted strength of the event and the contribution of climate change.
HEAT BURDEN: “Scorching temperatures” in India have “disrupted daily life across several northern states”, said the Washington Post. The outlet added: “Some farmers have switched to nighttime work to avoid scorching temperatures as a heatwave grips large parts of India.” The heatwave is also affecting Nepal, as high temperatures have “added burdens to public health, education, agriculture, livestock, environment, employment and public infrastructure”, reported Nepal News.
‘MIND-BOGGLING’ HEAT: Meanwhile, a “heat dome” over western Europe broke UK temperature records for the month of May. Carbon Brief summarised how the “mind-boggling” heatwave was covered in both national and international press. Agence France-Presse wrote that parts of Italy approved rules limiting work in conditions “with prolonged exposure in the sun” during the hottest part of the day. The newswire added: “Farmers reported accelerated harvests as temperatures went beyond 30C across the region.”
News and views- SNAKEBITE DANGER: “The risk of snakebites is increasing across the world as reptiles shift their habitats to cope with rising temperatures and growing human pressures,” according to new research covered in the Guardian. It added that human-snake interactions are “forecast to become more pronounced”.
- RICE RISK: “Several parts” of China are experiencing heavy rains early this year, “raising risks for agriculture and disaster management”, wrote Bloomberg. This includes “key grain-producing provinces”, as well as areas that grow rice, vegetables and fruit, added the outlet.
- DATA DROUGHT: Chile’s Quilicura wetland, just north of Santiago, is drying up as “datacentres have drained water from drought-stricken wetlands, consuming billions of litres annually”, said the Guardian. It noted that the area is home to Latin America’s “largest concentration of datacentres”.
- ACCOUNTING TRICK: A group of scientists have called on the Irish government to reject a proposal that would allow the livestock to use a metric called GWP* to measure methane emissions, reported Inside Climate News. According to the outlet, they warned that this “accounting trick” would “downplay” the industry’s emissions. (See Carbon Brief’s explainer on GWP* for more information.)
This week, Carbon Brief unpacks three key findings from the third edition of the “state of carbon dioxide removal” report.
Global carbon dioxide removal (CDR) will need to increase fourfold by 2050 if the world is to have a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C by 2100, said a new report.
Nearly all pathways to meeting the Paris Agreement’s highest ambition of keeping global temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels in 2100 involve CDR techniques – ranging from tree-planting to sucking CO2 from air with machines.
This is in addition to steep and immediate emissions cuts.
Scientists expect carbon emissions to push warming beyond 1.5C in the decade ahead, meaning that the target can only be achieved via large-scale CDR.
Here, Carbon Brief pulled out three key findings from the third state of CDR report.
‘Novel’ CDR is small, but growingThe report said that, at present, “99.9%” of existing CDR is conventional, land-based techniques, such as tree-planting and ecosystem restoration.
The world currently removes 2.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2) per year, equivalent to around 5% of gross global CO2 emissions.
The largest contributors to removing CO2 from the atmosphere are China, the US, the EU, Brazil and Russia, largely through tree-planting (afforestation) and forest restoration (reforestation).
“Novel” CDR, such as biochar and direct air capture, currently removes just 2m tonnes of CO2 annually at present, according to the report.
These methods have been growing at a rate of 40% per year – which is “insufficient for the scale-up required to meet the Paris temperature goal”, said the report.
Current ambition will not lead to net-zeroThe report examined several scenarios where global temperature rise is limited to “well below” 2C by 2100, including a current ambition scenario and a highest-possible ambition scenario.
The current ambition scenario was based on “nationally determined contributions”, or NDCs, which countries submit periodically to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Under this scenario, the report projected a total of 5.9GtCO2 of CDR by 2050 and 12GtCO2 by 2100. This scenario would result in end-of-century warming of 1.7-2.7C.
Importantly, the report said, current ambition does not result in the world reaching net-zero CO2 levels, “meaning that global temperatures would continue to rise” – albeit more slowly – beyond 2100.
Under the highest-possible ambition scenario, CDR scales up to 8.8GtCO2 by mid-century and 15.3GtCO2 by the end of the century. This results in global temperatures peaking at 1.7-1.8C around 2050 and the world achieving net-zero emissions around that time.
Reducing emissions now lowers the need for future CDRWhile many countries include some amount of CDR in their NDCs, there is currently a large gap between the amount of CDR pledged and the amount that will be needed to limit global temperature rise to 1.5C by the end of the century, said the report.
This quantity is referred to as the “CDR gap” – the difference between what is pledged and what is needed.
The size of the CDR gap is dependent on both the pledges made by countries and the choice of the “benchmark” scenario against which they are measured.
Current NDCs and other country submissions to the UNFCCC total 2.5GtCO2 per year of removals in 2030 and 3.6GtCO2 per year in 2050. Using the highest-ambition scenario as a benchmark, this gives a CDR gap of 0.3GtCO2 in 2030 and 5.2GtCO2 in 2050, according to the report.
By comparison, a 10-year delay in implementing ambitious emissions reductions will result in the need to remove at least an additional 150GtCO2 from the atmosphere, compared to the most ambitious scenario.
This Spotlight is adapted from Carbon Brief’s Q&A on the state of CDR report. You can read the article in full here.
Watch, read, listen‘DEVASTATING’ DATA: Grist reported on a proposed Utah datacentre that could be “devastating” to the ecology of the Great Salt Lake – the largest saline lake in the world.
ECO-OIL: The Times explained how a new synthetic oil, grown in a lab in north-west England, could be used as a substitute for palm oil.
EL NIÑO IMPACTS: An interactive piece from BBC News described how the forecasted “super” El Niño could impact global climate and weather in the coming months.
‘BATTERY COWS’: The Guardian covered work from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism that found a “huge rise” in factory-style dairy farming of “battery cows” in the UK.
New science- Greenhouse gas emissions from rice paddies have doubled globally over the past six decades | Nature Food
- Climate change will shift the timing and location of hailstorms – increasing the risk of damage to winter crops, such as wheat, but decreasing the risk to summer crops, such as maize | Nature Climate Change
- Wind turbines in western Europe put more than 100m migratory birds “at risk” of collision annually, but this number can be lowered through limiting energy production at strategic times | Nature Sustainability
- 2-5 June: UN expert meeting on food and agriculture | Rome
- 5 June: World environment day
- 8-18 June: Subsidiary body meetings of the UNFCCC | Bonn, Germany
- 15-19 June: Meeting of the parties to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea | New York City
- 16-18 June: Our Ocean Conference | Mombasa, Kenya
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne and Orla Dwyer. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org
The post Cropped 3 June 2026: Highway through the Amazon | El Niño impact | State of CO2 removal appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: How UK’s seventh carbon budget will deliver ‘£865bn’ in economic benefits
The Labour government wants to cut UK greenhouse gas emissions to 87% below 1990 levels by 2040, which it says will deliver £865bn in economic benefits.
The target has been set out in draft legislation for the seventh “carbon budget”, a legally binding limit on emissions during the five-year period from 2038-2042.
The government says this would protect billpayers from “fossil-fuel shocks”, boost energy security, improve quality of life and help tackle climate change, by getting the country on track for net-zero by 2050.
The UK would need to invest around £880bn over 25 years to meet the budget, but doing so would yield benefits worth £1,620bn, according to a government impact assessment.
Pointedly, the government presents these benefits and costs relative to a policy of “no net-zero”, as the opposition Conservatives and hard-right Reform UK have both pledged to abandon the 2050 goal.
The 137-page impact assessment mentions energy security more than 30 times and says the seventh carbon budget would help save £445bn up to 2050 from ever decreasing fossil-fuel imports.
Moreover, the assessment is based on fossil-fuel price projections published in 2024, before the cost of oil and gas surged earlier this year after the effective closure of the strait of Hormuz.
The document says that the UK’s climate goals would be even more beneficial – worth £1,035bn, relative to “no net-zero” – if the country is exposed to “persistently high fossil-fuel prices”.
The seventh carbon budget must be approved by parliament before the end of June and the government must then publish a plan to meet it “as soon as reasonably practicable”.
- What is the UK’s seventh ‘carbon budget’?
- What target is the government aiming for?
- How could the UK meet the seventh carbon budget?
- What are the benefits and costs of reaching this target?
- What happens next?
The UK’s efforts to tackle and respond to global warming are governed by the Climate Change Act, which was passed with near-unanimous cross-party support in 2008, by 463 votes to five.
In 2019, the then-Conservative government amended the Act to set a long-term goal for cutting emissions to 100% below 1990 levels by 2050, known as the net-zero target.
(The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has affirmed that reaching net-zero is the only way to stop global warming from getting worse – and that emissions would need to reach net-zero by 2050 globally to have a chance of limiting the rise in temperatures to 1.5C.)
To stay on track for the 2050 target, the act requires the government to set a series of “carbon budgets”. These are binding limits on the UK’s emissions covering successive five-year periods.
The UK met its first three carbon budgets, covering 2008-2022. It is currently just over half way through the fourth “carbon budget”, covering 2023-2027.
Under the act, the government is required to set the level of the seventh carbon budget, covering 2038-2042, by the end of June this year.
Before setting the budget, the government must take advice from the Climate Change Committee (CCC). In turn, this advice must take into account a range of factors, including the latest scientific evidence, technological trends, the state of the economy and public finances.
No government has ever gone against the advice of the CCC when setting carbon budgets. However, the government could have chosen not to do so, if it had explained why.
What target is the government aiming for?The CCC recommended last year that the UK should aim to cut its emissions to 87% below 1990 levels under the seventh carbon budget for 2038-2042 – equivalent to a three-quarters reduction on current levels.
The government has followed this advice, setting a draft seventh carbon budget of 535m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e), some 107MtCO2e per year.
The proposed 2040 target is shown in the figure below, alongside previously legislated budgets and the UK’s international climate pledges for 2030 and 2035 under the Paris Agreement.
UK greenhouse gas emissions including international aviation and shipping (IAS), MtCO2e. Lines show historical emissions (black) and the pathway to reaching net-zero. Legislated carbon budgets levels are shown as grey steps. The first five budgets did not include IAS, but left “headroom” to allow for these emissions (darker wedges). Source: CCC progress reports, Carbon Brief analysis.In a written statement to parliament, energy secretary Ed Miliband said the target would reduce the UK’s exposure to “volatile international fossil-fuel markets and protect bill-payers”, as well as delivering benefits for jobs, growth, health and the natural environment. Miliband wrote:
“Against the backdrop of heightened geopolitical instability, including the ongoing crisis in the Middle East and its implications for global energy markets, the case for setting a clear and credible long-term pathway for the UK on clean energy and climate action is stronger than ever.”
Echoing a 2023 review commissioned by the then-Conservative government, Miliband also wrote that “clean energy and climate action is the economic opportunity of the 21st century”.
(On the day of the draft budget, the Guardian reported findings that the UK’s “net-zero economy” was worth “more than £100bn a year”, according to consultancy CBI Economics.)
The impact assessment sets out the climate-change “case for action”. It says the “science is clear” that the UK is becoming wetter and warmer, with increasing floods, droughts, heatwaves and wildfires. This is “unequivocally” due to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. It continues:
“Without action, climate change will continue to endanger the UK’s food and water security, exacerbate global population displacement and pose national security risks.”
The document adds that the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) found the “costs of climate damage are getting higher, while the cost of the net-zero transition is getting lower”.
In its impact assessment, the government also outlines a less ambitious goal to cut emissions to 83% below 1990 levels by 2040 and a tighter target for 89%.
In what may be an attempt to pre-empt future legal challenges (see: What happens next?), the government outlines why it is not choosing to pursue either greater or lesser ambition for 2040.
It says the low end of ambition “increases the risk of underinvestment”, while the highest target could face “deliverability risks [that] may undermine [the UK’s] credibility”.
Note that the sixth and seventh budgets were set in line with the net-zero target, whereas previous budgets were set on a pathway to 80% by 2050 – hence, the step change in the figure above.
The sixth and later carbon budgets include the UK’s share of emissions from international aviation and shipping. These emissions relate to journeys that start or finish at UK ports and airports. Draft legislation to make this change was laid in parliament earlier this year.
The UK’s legally binding climate goals do not include the “imported” emissions associated with the production of goods and services in other countries. Among other reasons, this is because the UK does not have legal jurisdiction over activities taking place outside its borders.
The UK’s imported emissions were growing until around 2008, but have remained relatively flat since then. This means that the UK’s overall “carbon footprint”, including imported emissions, has been falling by a similar amount as the territorial emissions within its own borders.
How could the UK meet the seventh carbon budget?To date, UK emissions cuts have largely come from the power sector, as the country has stopped burning coal to generate electricity and shifted from gas towards clean power.
In order to meet the seventh carbon budget, the UK will need to cut emissions across the economy. According to the CCC’s advice, the biggest contributions would come from electrifying transport, heat and industry, driven by a massively expanded supply of clean electricity.
It said at the time of its advice:
“In many key areas, the best way forward is now clear. Electrification and low-carbon electricity supply make up the largest share of emissions reductions in our pathway.”
This would mean shifting to electric vehicles (EVs), electric heat pumps and electrified industrial processes on a massive scale, reducing the need for fossil fuels.
Since electrified technologies are far more efficient than those based on fossil-fuel combustion, this shift would also dramatically cut the need for oil and gas imports, the CCC said.
In broad terms, the government backs a similar path to cutting UK emissions through mass electrification. In its release on the seventh carbon budget, it says:
“Half of the UK’s recessions since 1970 have been caused by fossil-fuel shocks. The government is investing in renewable and nuclear energy to get the UK off the rollercoaster of fossil-fuel prices…By 2050, the UK could cut its reliance on fossil fuels from around three quarters of our energy today to around 15%, while avoiding around £445bn in fossil-fuel spending over the next 25 years.”
In its “delivery plan” for the sixth carbon budget, covering 2033-2037, it said roughly a third of UK homes should have heat pumps by 2035 and around half of cars on the road should be EVs.
There is one key difference between the CCC’s suggested approach to meeting the UK’s carbon budgets and that of the government. Specifically, the CCC suggested there would be an important role for behaviour change in relation to diets and efforts to limit the rise in the number of flights.
In contrast, the government has placed much less emphasis on these areas. This means that it relies to a greater extent on expensive technologies that can remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
Despite this context, some right-leaning newspapers have misleadingly focused their coverage on the perceived need to alter diets to meet the seventh carbon budget.
What are the benefits and costs of reaching this target?The government says that the proposed seventh carbon budget would “deliver the benefits of clean energy and climate action for jobs and growth, health and our natural environment”, as well as aligning with the 1.5C target of the Paris Agreement to “avoid climate disaster”.
Overall, it says that the net-zero target for 2050 “continues to represent value for money, with strong net benefits relative to alternative pathways”.
The detailed impact assessment sets out the benefits and costs of meeting the proposed seventh carbon budget in monetary terms, in line with Treasury guidance under the “green book”.
The results are presented in terms of “net present value” (NPV). This takes into account the human preference for enjoying benefits today, rather than in the future. When measuring NPV, future costs and benefits are “discounted”, to reflect their lower value in the present moment.
Specifically, meeting the proposed seventh carbon budget would have net benefits worth £865bn to the UK, relative to a world where the net-zero target is abandoned and existing technology continues to be used. For example, in this “no net-zero” alternative, gas boilers and petrol cars would be replaced like-for-like when they reach the end of their life.
It says that a lower bill for fossil fuels is a “major component” of the net benefits, with savings reaching £445bn over 25 years if the seventh carbon budget is met, relative to “no net-zero”.
The “vast majority” of these savings result from electrification – in other words, swapping those boilers and petrol cars for heat pumps and EVs.
However, the largest benefit of the proposed budget comes from avoided climate-change damages, which amount to £1,495bn over 25 years, according to the document. This benefit relates to lower UK emissions limiting climate impacts, such as extreme heat and flooding.
The government also acknowledges that significant investments would be required to meet the seventh carbon budget. It puts the cost of these investments at £880bn over 25 years, including financing, relative to the alternative of “no net-zero”.
These benefits and costs of the proposed budget are shown in the figure below. In aggregate, these add up to the headline net benefits of £865bn over 25 years.
Net benefits and costs of meeting the UK’s seventh carbon budget, measured over the period 2025-2050 in present-value terms, £bn. Source: Department of Energy Security and Net Zero.In addition to the “no net-zero” baseline, the impact assessment compares the proposed budget with a continuation of current policies. The results are directionally similar to, but slightly lower than, the net benefits relative to “no net-zero”.
The document also considers a range of “sensitivities” to explore the impact of higher or lower technology costs and fossil-fuel prices, as well as to consider alternative pathways that use less carbon capture and storage (CCS), fewer EVs or a reduced number of heat pumps.
Finally, the impact assessment also considers the ongoing benefits and costs of meeting the seventh carbon budget when looking out to 2060.
This roughly doubles the net benefits of meeting the target from £865bn by 2050 to £1,520bn by 2060, because the upfront investments yield ongoing savings, such as lower fossil-fuel bills.
Notably, the impact assessment is based on fossil-fuel price projections published in 2024, when the average cost of wholesale gas was around 80p per therm.
These projections envisaged gas prices of 75p/therm in 2025, falling to 70p by 2030. A “high” case, explored in the impact assessment, had prices of up to around 110p/therm.
In reality, prices climbed to around 85p/therm in 2025 and gas is currently trading at 115p, having reached as high as 150p/therm in the immediate aftermath of the US-Israel attack on Iran in February. This was still well below the 640p peak seen during the global energy crisis in 2022.
In the “high” case for fossil-fuel prices – in which prices are below current levels – the net benefit of the seventh carbon budget climbs to £1,035bn over 25 years.
The impact assessment does not consider the potential for “feedback and system loops, which have potential to decrease costs faster than estimated”.
Setting aside the benefits of meeting the UK’s climate goals, the government analysis says that the net investment costs of the transition would be equivalent to around 1.2% of GDP per year, with a range of 0.8-1.6% reflecting uncertainty in fossil-fuel prices and technology costs.
It says that investing 1.2% of GDP in meeting the seventh carbon budget would not mean the UK’s GDP being 1.2% lower. On the contrary, it says the impact on GDP could be positive. It says:
“The investment in home-grown clean energy and electrification and the reduced reliance on fossil fuels has the potential to generate positive impacts on GDP over time.”
It goes on to compare this figure with the cost of the 2022 global energy crisis, which it says hit the economy by around 2-3% of GDP, including taxpayer-funded bill support of £42bn.
Citing recent analysis by the CCC and its own modelling, it says the seventh carbon budget would leave the economy around £90bn better off, if a fossil-fuel price shock were to hit again in 2040.
In addition, the assessment notes figures from the OBR, suggesting that climate damages resulting from global warming of 3C could wipe around 8% off UK GDP.
Notably, the government assessment of net abatement costs is significantly higher than the equivalent figure published by the CCC, of just 0.2% of GDP. It says this reflects two main factors.
First, the government’s reduced emphasis on behaviour change, which as noted above results in a greater need for expensive CO2 removal technologies. Second, it says the CCC “expects a more rapid decline in the costs of technology” than the government assumes.
For example, whereas recent government analysis has assumed that EVs will never be cheaper to buy than petrol cars, the CCC assumes that “price parity” will be reached within a few years. In fact, the latest data indicates that EVs are already cheaper to buy than petrol cars, on average.
.cb-tweet{ width: 65%; box-shadow: 3px 3px 6px #d3d3d3; margin: auto; } .cb-tweet img{ border: solid 1.25px #333333; border-radius: 5px; } @media (max-width:650px){ .cb-tweet{ width:100%; } } What happens next?Under the Climate Change Act, there is a deadline of 30 June 2026 to legislate for the seventh carbon budget, subject to parliamentary approval.
In setting out the draft target, the UK government has already taken into account the views of the devolved administrations for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The impact assessment notes that none of them had made “representations” on the level of the seventh carbon budget.
The draft carbon budget legislation is subject to the “affirmative procedure”, which means it must be debated and voted through by both houses of parliament.
For the sixth carbon budget, which was legislated under the then-Conservative government in 2021, this vote took place during the “committee stage”.
The government statement says that its delivery plan for the sixth carbon budget, published in October 2025, will “drive substantial abatement into the carbon budget seven period”. It adds:
“These policies will continue to deliver the bulk of emissions savings needed for carbon budget seven. This provides a strong and credible starting point…reducing delivery risk and giving confidence that the transition can be delivered in an affordable and manageable way.”
Specifically, the impact assessment says that the existing CB6 delivery plan “would get the UK to 84% emissions reduction” by 2040, only just shy of the proposed 87% target.
The government commits to publishing a new delivery plan for the seventh carbon budget “as soon as reasonably practical”, in line with the wording with the Climate Change Act. It says:
“This statutory sequencing recognises the time needed to develop and agree an ambitious and robust package of policies to deliver the target.”
The impact assessment notes that the delivery plan will determine how the UK meets the seventh carbon budget, as well as the implications for different regions and sectors of the UK economy.
Two earlier delivery plans, published by previous Conservative governments, were subject to successful legal challenge in the High Court. These cases, brought by groups including Friends of the Earth and ClientEarth, resulted in the latest delivery plan, published last October.
A separate group, calling itself “Carbon Reckoning”, is attempting to crowdfund a fresh legal challenge to the government’s plans for the seventh carbon budget. In late May 2026, it wrote to Miliband arguing that the 87% by 2040 target “fails to comply with international obligations”.
Q&A: The current state of ‘carbon dioxide removal’ around the world
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Q&A: The current state of ‘carbon dioxide removal’ around the world
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies will need to be deployed at rates even faster than those seen for solar power, if the world is to have a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C by 2100, says a new report.
Nearly all pathways to meeting the Paris Agreement’s highest ambition of keeping global temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels in 2100 involve CDR techniques – ranging from tree-planting to sucking CO2 from air with machines.
This is in addition to steep and immediate emissions cuts.
Scientists expect carbon emissions to push warming beyond 1.5C in the decade ahead, meaning that the target can only be achieved “from above” via large-scale CDR that brings down global temperatures.
These temperature trajectories are known as “overshoot” pathways.
The third “state of CDR” report, written by more than 50 scientists, says that countries’ current CDR plans would fall short of what is needed to limit warming to 1.5C by more than 5bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2) per year by 2050.
Global CDR would have to increase fourfold – from 2.2GtCO2 in 2026 to 8.75GtCO2 by 2050 – to have a chance of meeting the 1.5C target by 2100, according to the report.
It adds that deploying CDR can be a “gradual process”, making the period 2026-30 “crucial” for “establishing CDR’s role in limiting climate damages” in the future.
Below, Carbon Brief covers the key findings of the third state of CDR report. (This follows from Carbon Brief’s coverage of the first report in 2023 and second report in 2024.)
- What is CDR?
- What are current levels of CDR?
- How much CDR is needed to reach net-zero goals?
- What does the science say about the potential and costs of CDR?
- What have governments pledged on CDR?
- What is the current funding and research landscape for CDR?
- How is policy impacting CDR demand?
According to the report, the definition of CDR is:
“Human activities capturing CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it durably in geological, terrestrial or ocean reservoirs, or in products. This includes human enhancement of natural removal processes but excludes natural uptake not directly caused by anthropogenic [human-caused] activities.”
.innerArt>ol { font-family: 'PT Serif'; font-size: 18px !important; }In addition to this, the report includes “three key principles” for CDR, which are:
- The captured CO2 must come from the atmosphere, not from “fossil sources”.
- The subsequent storage “must be durable”, so that the CO2 is not soon reintroduced to the atmosphere.
- The removal must result from human intervention that is in addition to Earth’s natural processes.
In this report, a CDR method is considered durable if it is able to lock up carbon for “decades or more”.
The report classifies CDR techniques as either “conventional” or “novel”.
“Convential” CDR techniques are “well established, already deployed at scale and widely reported by countries as part of [land-use] activities”.
The methods included in this group are tree-planting, ecosystem restoration, agroforestry (trees in agriculture), improving soil carbon in croplands and natural lands, and durable wood production.
“Novel” CDR techniques have “lower level of readiness for deployment and, as a consequence, are currently deployed at smaller scales”, says the report.
Some examples of different CDR methods are listed on the graphic below.
The graphic also shows whether carbon is captured through biological or chemical processes, as well as how “ready” the method is and for how long it can store carbon, among other features.
CDR techniques and their characteristics. Credit: Edwards et al. (2026)The report says that CDR is “needed alongside deep and rapid emissions reductions” to give Earth a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C. It continues:
“It should play a smaller role than emissions reductions given uncertainty around the feasible levels of scaling, sustainability limits, storage availability and the risk of reversal, among other constraints.
“In general, CDR should be seen as a limited resource that will need to be used prudently.”
It adds that CDR can “fulfil three major functions”.
In the near term, CDR can help reduce “net emissions”, it says.
In the medium term, CDR can “counterbalance residual emissions” to achieve net-zero CO2 or net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, the report continues.
(“Residual emissions” are those that cannot be eradicated through technologies or societal changes, such as methane emissions from rice production.)
Research suggests that global warming is likely to stop, more or less, once net-zero is achieved globally.
In the long term, CDR can “help achieve net-negative emissions”, a state where CO2 removal exceeds emissions, says the report.
In this state, humans could lower global temperatures. This may allow the world to limit global warming to 1.5C by 2100, even if the temperature target is surpassed earlier on in the century.
Future trajectories where temperatures exceed the 1.5C limit before being brought back down again through CDR techniques are known as “overshoot” pathways.
What are current levels of CDR?The report says that, at present, “99.9%” of existing CDR is conventional, land-based techniques such as tree-planting and ecosystem restoration.
The world currently removes 2.2GtCO2 per year, equivalent to around 5% of gross global CO2 emissions, it continues.
The largest contributors to removing CO2 from the atmosphere are China, the US, the EU, Brazil and Russia.
The chart below shows the amount of CO2 removed each year over 2014-23 by the largest contributors, through tree-planting (afforestation) and forest restoration (reforestation).
CO2 removed via afforestation and reforestation each year by the world’s largest contributors to current CDR. Credit: Edwards et al. (2026)“Novel” CDR, such as biochar and direct air capture, currently removes just 2m tonnes of CO2 annually at present, according to the report.
However, these methods have been growing at a rate of 40% per year – “similar to successful technologies like solar energy, but insufficient for the scale-up required to meet the Paris temperature goal”, says the report.
The graphic below illustrates how the contribution of conventional CDR currently dwarfs novel CDR, but how the latter techniques are quickly growing.
A graphic illustrating the contribution of “conventional” and “novel” to current CDR methods. Credit: Edwards et al. (2026)The report says that investment in CDR companies recovered in 2025 following a dip – and its “share of all climate-tech funding” grew to 2.6%.
The report also notes that, at present, most CDR efforts are unevenly distributed across the world.
For example, two-thirds of conventional CDR in voluntary carbon markets is in Latin America, according to the report. (Voluntary carbon markets are where companies can buy credits for carbon-reducing or removing projects, such as tree-planting, to claim that they have “offset” some of their own emissions.)
In addition, most pilot projects that aim to demonstrate novel CDR methods are located in only a few countries, such as Sweden, Denmark and the US, says the report.
The chart below shows the location and timeline of demonstration projects that have been announced, are under construction or in operation globally.
Location and timeline of demonstration projects that have been announced, are under construction or in operation globally. Credit: Edwards et al. (2026)The report continues:
“While first-movers play important roles, if their actions do not diffuse more widely, vulnerability emerges, as evidenced by the impact of US climate policy dismantling.”
(For more, see: How is policy impacting CDR demand?)
How much CDR is needed to reach net-zero goals?The report examines three scenarios where global temperature rise is limited to “well below” 2C by 2100:
- A current ambition scenario, based on national climate pledges (but omitting the US);
- A highest-possible ambition scenario;
- A delayed ambition scenario, which is consistent with current targets until 2035 and then switches to the highest ambition scenario.
The pledges considered in the report are “nationally determined contributions”, or NDCs, which countries submit periodically to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). NDCs lay out a country’s climate ambition.
Under the current ambition scenario, the report projects a total of 5.9GtCO2 of CDR by 2050 and 12GtCO2 by 2100.
This scenario would result in end-of-century warming of 1.7-2.7C. Importantly, the report says, this scenario does not result in the world reaching net-zero CO2 levels, “meaning that global temperatures would continue to rise, albeit at a much more gradual pace, beyond 2100”.
Under the highest-possible ambition scenario, CDR scales up to 8.8GtCO2 by mid-century and 15.3GtCO2 by the end of the century.
This scenario assumes “full buy-in by all nations”, with economics, scale-up and sustainability providing the main constraints on CDR deployment, the report says.
The highest ambition scenario results in global temperatures peaking at 1.7-1.8C around 2050 and the world achieving net-zero emissions around that time.
Under the delayed ambition scenario, CDR would scale up to 7GtCO2 by 2050 and 23.6GtCO2 by 2100. This scenario shows global temperatures peaking between 1.7C and 2.0C.
This scenario requires larger CDR deployment in the long term than the highest-ambition scenario does, due to the larger cumulative emissions caused by delaying deep emissions reductions.
In both the high ambition and delayed ambition scenarios, the world reaches “deeply net-negative CO2 emissions” by 2100, the report says. This continued deployment of CDR will further draw CO2 from the atmosphere, lowering global temperatures back down to 1.5C.
The chart below shows annual global greenhouse gas emissions through the end of the century under current ambition (red), highest ambition (green) and delayed ambition (blue) scenarios.
Annual emissions, in GtCO2e per year, for the three scenarios: current ambition (red), highest ambition (green) and delayed ambition (blue). Source: Edwards et al. (2026)While global CDR capacity scales up more slowly in the first and third scenarios, the report notes that, in all three cases, “novel CDR reaches gigatonne-scale deployment by 2050”.
What does the science say about the potential and costs of CDR?There is a wide range of both carbon-removal potential and associated costs between different methods of CDR, according to the report.
However, it also notes that these numbers “range widely” in the scientific literature.
The discrepancies in estimates of carbon-removal potential are due to a number of factors, the report says, including a lack of available scientific data, inconsistencies in the assumptions made in assessing technical feasibility and a lack of agreement on what, exactly, “potential” means.
These elements also influence the cost of different CDR methods, but additional factors – such as deployment costs in different areas, technological approaches and scope – also play a role in establishing price differences. Because of this, the report says, “cost estimates are often difficult to compare across methods, complicating design and policy decisions”.
The chart below shows the reported range of mitigation potential (left) and reported range of costs (right) for different CDR methods. The top four rows indicate conventional CDR methods, while bottom 11 rows show novel CDR methods. The chart refers to “mitigation potential”, rather than removal potential, because some estimates do not distinguish between removals and avoided emissions.
(Avoided emissions refers to the difference in emissions from carrying out a project, compared to a hypothetical alternative – such as the reduced emissions from halting deforestation.)
The darker colours indicate estimates that are more constrained, meaning that they are either based on stricter assumptions or there is more agreement between different estimates.
Annual mitigation potential (left) and cost range per tonne of CO2 (right) for conventional and novel CDR methods. Orange bars indicate the range of values reported, with darker colours indicating less uncertainty about the estimates. Source: Edwards et al. (2026)The report notes that for most removal methods, the low end of the potential is around 1GtCO2 per year, while the upper limit of costs is more than $200/tCO2.
The least expensive CDR approaches are forestry-based methods, soil-carbon sequestration and biomass burial. For forestry-based methods, the report puts the cost of CDR at $5-$53 per tonne of CO2 removed. Soil-carbon sequestration costs reach as high as $150 per tonne of CO2 removed, but could have negative overall costs “when accounting for crop yield increases potentially resulting” from changed farm-management practices, the report says.
However, it adds that “these CDR methods are typically associated with lower levels of permanence” than other methods.
Other relatively low-cost methods include coastal wetland restoration, biochar, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and enhanced rock weathering, while ocean alkalinity enhancement is a medium-cost option.
The most expensive methods include direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS) and direct ocean carbon capture and storage (DOCCS).
The report also notes that a total estimate of CDR removals cannot be obtained by adding up the removal potential of all of the separate methods, since different methods can compete for scarce resources. For example, BECCS, biochar, biomass burial and biomass sinking all rely on the same base input – biomass – and therefore cannot all be maximised at the same time.
What have governments pledged on CDR?While many countries include some amount of CDR in their national climate plans, there is currently a large gap between the amount of CDR pledged in these plans and the amount that will be needed to limit global temperature rise to 1.5C by the end of the century, says the report.
This quantity is referred to as the “CDR gap” – the difference between what is pledged and what is needed.
The size of the CDR gap is dependent not just on the pledges made by countries, but also the choice of the “benchmark” scenario against which the pledges are measured. Lower – or delayed – emissions reductions lead to larger shortfalls in the long term, meaning “CDR must subsequently be scaled to very high levels”, says the report.
Current NDCs and other country submissions to the UNFCCC total 2.5GtCO2 per year of removals in 2030, 2.7GtCO2 per year in 2035 and 3.6GtCO2 per year in 2050.
This gives a CDR gap of 0.3GtCO2 in 2030, 1.2GtCO2 in 2035 and 5.2GtCO2 in 2050, according to the report. These figures are obtained using assumed “immediate, ambitious action at all levels to reduce emissions” and the most-ambitious estimates of CDR set out in national pledges. Together, this provides a “lower bound” for the CDR gap, says the report.
By comparison, a 10-year delay in implementing ambitious emissions reductions will result in the need to remove at least an additional 150GtCO2 from the atmosphere, compared to the most ambitious scenario. (See: How much CDR is needed to reach net-zero goals?)
The report says that the CDR gap has widened since the second state of CDR report was released in 2024, due to the US leaving the Paris Agreement. It adds that other countries have “not delivered a step change in ambition” in their latest round of climate pledges.
It also cautions that “credibility issues with national pledges may mean that the CDR gap is actually larger than what we assess here”.
The report notes that current CDR pledges by companies are “substantially higher than country pledges”, at 5GtCO2 per year in 2050. However, it adds, “credibility in these announcements is low”.
What is the current funding and research landscape for CDR?Funding of CDR research and development – as well as investment in CDR companies – has continued to increase in recent years.
In total, there has been around $5.6bn in grant funding distributed to CDR research since 2005, according to the report’s analysis. Roughly one-third of this has come in the past three years.
Funding for CDR research grants grew 13% each year between 2022 and 2025, the report says, and the corresponding number of research publications grew at a similar rate.
Funding was largely targeted at a handful of key areas, notably soil carbon sequestration, biochar and forest-based CDR.
DACCS and BECCS only make up a small number of active grants, but together account for around two-fifths of all funding due to “substantially larger” project sizes.
Despite the growth of research grants and scientific publications, the report concludes that early-stage innovation in CDR is “uneven” and says there is “no strong evidence of a step-change”.
It notes that much of the support for CDR has come from projects with a broader focus, rather than those that focus specifically on CDR.
The authors also point to a decline in “inventive activity”, as measured by patenting of CDR-related innovations. While patenting for emissions-cutting technologies in general has been on an upward trajectory, CDR patenting peaked in 2011.
Meanwhile, the report highlights the “remarkable” sustained investment in CDR companies, against a backdrop of falling investment in climate-related technologies. It notes that CDR now accounts for around 3% of overall “climate-tech funding”.
Yet, again, it says future developments remain “uncertain”. Since the previous 2024 “state of CDR” report, companies have scaled back their ambitions and policy reversals – notably in the US – “underscore that funding uncertainty remains a key barrier”. (See: How is policy impacting CDR demand?)
An upward tick in funding in 2025 was driven primarily by a “surge” in grants from predominantly public institutions, as well as $0.5bn in debt financing for a single BECCS project in Sweden.
Reliance on such funding sources “highlight[s] the volatility of the CDR innovation ecosystem”, according to the report.
The report also has a chapter focusing on the voluntary carbon market, which it describes as “propelling most of the current demand for novel CDR”.
The scale of this market remains fairly small, with contracts for 0.04GtCO2 of removals signed last year.
Moreover, the concentration of sales within a small number of buyers – particularly Microsoft – remains a “critical vulnerability”, the authors note.
How is policy impacting CDR demand?The report analyses CDR policies in G20 nations – which together account for three-quarters of global emissions – to assess how they are acting to support CDR across their economies.
In total, 140 countries have announced net-zero targets, including virtually all of the world’s major emitters. In doing so, the report points out that the governments of these nations have “implicitly included a role for CDR in their climate plans”.
However, this does not always translate into measures specifically designed to scale up CDR.
Only the EU has adopted a binding, quantified removals target into law – namely, the goal to reach 310m tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) of annual net removals in the land sector by 2030.
Overall, conventional CDR is the main focus of policy, with various governments focusing on tree planting to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere.
Among G20 nations, only the UK and Australia have set specific goals to scale up novel CDR, such as BECCS and DACCS, over the coming decade.
The report highlights some nations, including Canada, Germany, Switzerland and the UK, as taking proactive steps to incentivise CDR.
The authors point to national strategies, financial support for CDR and efforts to integrate it into emissions trading systems (ETS) as examples of effective policy making.
(The report also stresses that the US, which was previously a “leader” on CDR, has now “frozen or dismantled funding and support” for CDR under the Trump administration.)
Most of the successful policies highlighted in the report focus on supporting the supply of CDR, with “less attention so far on creating demand”.
This is significant because CDR “generally lacks a natural market”, meaning there are not automatically buyers willing to spend money on emissions removals. Therefore, the authors say, policy interventions are important to create markets and boost demand.
“Compliance” carbon credits – referring to credits that can be used to meet legally mandated emissions targets – provide a way to support demand, according to the report authors.
Only some ETSs, such as those used in New Zealand and Australia, allow the use of credits based on forest-related removals for compliance. (It is worth noting that such credits are controversial, as removals by forests are not always permanent.)
The report also highlights the need for “foundational policies to create a governance framework for CDR, including rules for quantification of removal, guidelines for community engagement and the minimisation of negative environmental impacts”.
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DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
‘MIND-BOGGLING’ MAY: The UK and continental Europe have set “mind-boggingly crazy” temperature records for May amid a deadly heatwave, reported the Financial Times. According to the Associated Press, the UK “smashed a century-old temperature record for the second time in 24 hours on Tuesday”. The newswire added that records “also fell in France, where temperatures reached 36C on Monday in the country’s south-west”. On Wednesday, Portugal hit a record May temperature of 40.3C, said BBC News.
‘BRUTAL REMINDER’: In parts of Italy, the heatwave triggered blackouts, reported Reuters. The heatwave has also been linked to more than a dozen deaths in the UK and France, including from people drowning and suffering heat-related deaths while competing in sporting events, said ABC News. Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of UN Climate Change, said the intense heatwaves were a “brutal reminder” of the cost of global warming, reported Politico. Carbon Brief has in-depth coverage of the record-shattering heatwave.
INDIA’S DEADLY HEAT: In the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, more than 100 people died within three days following an intense heatwave, reported the Khaleej Times. The publication noted that authorities urged people to stay indoors and avoid direct exposure to the heat. Meanwhile, some parts of India are “grappling with power cuts as record-breaking heat has pushed electricity demand to an all-time high”, reported Reuters.
- CRUDE DIPS: The International Energy Agency (IEA) said global investments in oil projects will fall below $500bn in 2026, continuing a three-year decline, reported Bloomberg. Carbon Brief’s analysis of the data shows the US’s “data-centre boom” means it is now investing more in fossil-fuel power than China.
- DODGING NET-ZERO: The world’s biggest miner, Australian giant BHP, has backtracked on climate action by halting or delaying projects to cut “vast” amounts of emissions, according to a Guardian investigation.
- SOLAR SLIP: China’s new solar installations dropped for a fourth straight month, reflecting weakening domestic demand, said Bloomberg.
- NO LOGGING: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell last year to its lowest level since 2019, according to a new report, said Agence France-Presse.
- EXECUTIVE ACTION: Puerto Rico’s governor announced a state of emergency to fight a surge in coastal erosion, citing the need to protect natural resources and vulnerable communities, reported the Associated Press.
The number of homes in the UK with air conditioning, double the figure from three years ago, reported the Guardian. There are 29m households in the UK.
Latest climate research- Carbon Brief will soon be launching a new fortnightly newsletter focused on climate research. Sign up for free today.
- LGBTQ+ households in the US are “significantly more likely” to face energy poverty and insecurity than the general population | Energy Research & Social Science
- Global rice-paddy greenhouse gas emissions have doubled over the past six decades | Nature Food
- Vegetation greening and human-caused warming are the “main drivers” of a surge in flash floods over the last decade | Science Advances
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
CapturedA Carbon Brief investigation has shed light on the impact of weather-related flooding on National Health Service (NHS) facilities across the UK. At least 67 NHS hospital wards, departments and other sites have been forced to temporarily close or relocate due to weather-related flooding. The chart above shows sites of weather-related flooding incidents at NHS facilities. The size of the circles indicates the number of incidents reported at each site.
Spotlight How solar mini-grids can ‘help boost’ Nigeria’s economyThis week, Carbon Brief covers a new report on Nigeria’s solar mini-grid industry.
Amid the impact of the US-Iran war on the Nigerian economy, a new report has argued that solar-mini grids can help to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and create more than 200,000 jobs.
In Nigeria, Africa’s third-largest economy, the war has led to an increase in energy prices and a decrease in petrol consumption. Petrol is one of the country’s main sources of transport and household fuel. According to one estimate, prices have surged by up to 40% since the conflict commenced in February.
Although the Nigerian treasury has benefited from rising crude oil prices – the country is a major exporter of oil and gas – the impact has been most visible on the wider population.
Rising energy prices “have affected the purchasing power of workers”, Agnes Funmi Sessi, a labour union leader in Lagos, told Carbon Brief.
However, scaling the deployment of solar “mini-grids” could help the country move away from fossil fuels, stimulate rural economies and improve livelihoods, according to the new report authored by the thinktank, the Africa Policy Research Institute.
“We estimate that, by deploying over 10,000 mini-grids, the sector could create 212,688 direct full-time informal and productive-use jobs across the off-grid and under-grid market segments,” the report said.
A nascent industrySolar “mini-grids” are small-scale, localised electricity generation and distribution systems powered by solar panels.
The report positioned Nigeria’s mini-grid sector as one of the fastest-growing in Africa, with the country having just 11 mini-grids in 2015 and 155 by 2024, along with at least 42 active developers.
Many of the companies within the sector are young and apply novel local techniques in their deployment of solar technology, the report said.
However, access to finance remains a huge barrier. According to the report, the sector may require up to $8bn to connect 35.4 million people to mini-grids.
“Most Nigerians want solar power in their homes, but it is a capital intensive business for vendors and customers,” Dr Ben Iheagwara, a renewable energy entrepreneur and policy analyst, told Carbon Brief.
The report urged the Nigerian government and its international partners to “attract private capital by de-risking investments and ensuring regulatory clarity and long-term planning”.
Other key recommendations for policymakers and stakeholders include investment in skills development and paying attention to the gender gap.
Powering rural communitiesMany rural communities, which make up about 37% of the country, are disconnected from the national grid system, so often have to generate their own electricity through mini-grid systems.
According to Nigeria’s electricity regulator, NERC, a mini-grid is defined as a power generating system with an installed capacity of up to 10 megawatts.
A mini-grid can be powered by fossil fuels such as diesel or petrol, but solar power is now considered a cheaper and cleaner source.
With more than 80 million people lacking access to electricity in Nigeria, solar mini-grids are increasingly viewed as the lowest-cost electrification solution, the report said.
Watch, read, listenMOVING FORWARD: The Energy Transition Show dug into electricity reform in South Africa, discussing the country’s coal legacy and the role of renewables.
ENERGY POVERTY: In an opinion article for Project Syndicate, executive director of the African Climate Foundation, Saliem Fakir, argued that the energy transition in emerging and developing economies is driven by economics and security rather than emissions targets.
VANISHING CITY: BBC News reported on a coastal community in Nigeria where the ocean has “already swallowed more than half of the town”.
- 31 May: Colombia presidential elections
- 31 May-5 June: Global Environment Facility council meeting, Samarkand, Uzbekistan
- 2-5 June: The Venice Agreement for Peatlands workshop, Kisumu, Kenya
- National Oceanography Centre, engagement assistant (external communications) | Salary: £28,254. Location: Southampton, UK
- Dangote Industries, decarbonisation specialist | Salary: Unknown. Location: Lagos, Nigeria
- City of New York, chief decarbonization officer | Salary: $261,469. Location: New York City
- Climate Central, writer and associate editor | Salary: $72,000-$75,000. Location: US (Remote)
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
DeBriefed 22 May 2026: UN adopts landmark resolution | Trump takes on ‘RCP8.5’ | Climate migration
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|DeBriefed 15 May 2026: Trump-Xi talk energy | ‘Supercharged’ El Niño | India’s first ‘heat lounges’
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AI boom means US is now ‘investing more’ in fossil-fuel power than China
The “data-centre boom” is driving a surge in gas investment in the US, pushing its fossil-power spending ahead of China, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
A rapid expansion of data centres across the nation is at the heart of the US tech sector’s plans to continue “dominat[ing]” the global artificial intelligence (AI) industry.
High demand for electricity to power these data centres has led to companies rushing to build new gas-fired power plants across the country.
This trend, combined with “soaring” gas-turbine prices, drove a threefold increase in US gas‑power investment in 2025 – and the IEA expects this to continue throughout 2026.
As the chart below shows, Chinese investment in coal- and gas-fired power is expected to drop this year, amid domestic policy changes and the Iran war sending gas prices spiralling.
Together, these trends mean the IEA expects US investment in fossil-fuelled power plants to overtake China’s in 2026.
Annual investment in fossil-fuel power in China and the US, $bn. The figure for 2026 is an IEA estimate, based on current trends. Source: IEA.The IEA’s latest world energy investment report shows that spending on renewables and electricity grids continues to dominate at the global scale.
In the US, Trump administration policies such as the phase-out of tax credits for renewables has led to the IEA revising its forecast for new wind and solar power downwards.
At the same time, US electricity demand is expected to rise by an average of 2% per year from 2026 to 2030, with data centres contributing half of the overall increase.
This is leading to what the IEA calls an “AI-driven push” to build new gas-power plants in the US, the world’s largest data-centre market and largest gas producer.
Globally, orders for new gas-power plants increased to 130 gigawatts (GW) in 2025 – a 25-year high – and US demand was a “major factor” in this, according to the IEA.
Much of the demand is coming from tech companies in the US seeking to bypass grid connection queues by building “captive” gas-power plants.
As the chart below shows, since the start of 2025 these US captive data centres alone have signed off on more investment in new gas turbines than any country in the world – aside from the US itself.
Total value of new gas generation final investment decisions by country, region or use-case, between 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, $bn. Source: IEA.Overall, investment in grid upgrades, power equipment and electricity generation to support the buildout of data-centre infrastructure around the world hit $105bn in 2025, according to the IEA.
This is more than the total invested in the energy sector across the whole of Africa – a continent where more than 600 million people do not have access to electricity.
The IEA notes that strong demand for gas-power plants for data centres in the US – and, to a lesser extent, the Middle East – is “limiting the availability of turbines for near-term deployment elsewhere in the world”.
The agency also points out that as the tech sector becomes a “major energy investor”, accounting for around 40% of all corporate power-purchase agreements, it is also “underpinning momentum” for emerging clean technologies, such as small modular nuclear reactors and advanced geothermal.
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EM-DAT: Trump aid cuts could close database storing ‘world’s memory of disasters’
The world’s most comprehensive disaster database – relied on by thousands of climate scientists and policymakers – is at risk of closing as a result of cuts to US foreign aid by the Trump administration.
The “emergency events” database (EM-DAT) has for 30 years provided free-to-use information on the size and impact of extreme weather events and other disasters around the world.
Its data underpins a vast range of scientific research, government policymaking, humanitarian response efforts and environmental investigations.
However, Trump’s dismantling of the federal Agency for International Development (USAid) – which provided 90% of the funding for EM-DAT – has left the future of the database in jeopardy, scientists tell Carbon Brief.
An open letter coordinated by climate scientists and signed by more than 4,000 academics and students is calling on governments, multilateral development banks and philanthropy to step in to stop the database from closing.
‘World’s memory of disasters’For the past three decades, a small team of researchers at the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at the University of Louvain in Belgium have maintained EM-DAT.
It is the world’s most comprehensive database of extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, floods and tropical storms, along with other disasters. It offers information such as the timing and length of an event, how many people were killed or displaced and the economic cost.
Since 1988, this continuous record has been free to use and independently verified by the researchers at CRED.
When considered in its entirety, the database provides more than just a list of disasters – it acts as a “memory” of how extreme weather events and their impacts on people are changing, says Prof Niko Speybroeck, an epidemiologist and director of EM-DAT. He tells Carbon Brief:
“EM-DAT can be considered the world’s memory of disasters. It contains more than 27,000 natural and technological disasters. It’s not just a database. It makes it possible to know who was affected, when, where and with what consequences.”
The database is frequently used by climate scientists. It is often cited in research papers and underpinned analysis in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on the impacts of climate change.
It is also used by government officials and environmental organisations.
The database is particularly important for global-south nations, which are less likely to have comprehensive national or regional records of disasters than those in the global north.
For example, the Indonesian government used EM-DAT to develop a national strategy against disasters, says Speybroeck.
The database has also been used to document the “disproportionate climate burden” borne by small-island nations, he adds, which “prompted the UN to release more funding” for these states.
EM-DAT is of critical importance to national and multinational initiatives tracking extreme weather in Africa, says Prof Dewald van Niekerk, head of the African Centre for Disaster Studies at North-West University in South Africa. Van Niekerk was one of the climate scientists who authored the open letter calling for EM-DAT to be protected from closure. He tells Carbon Brief:
“We use it on various levels, from sub-national straight up to continental level.”
Since 2018, van Niekerk has utilised EM-DAT to prepare reports on extreme weather events in Africa for the African Union. These efforts are to meet goals agreed under the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, a voluntary international agreement to prevent disasters from upending development.
Without EM-DAT, it would not be possible to conduct such analyses, he says:
“Not all [African] governments can compile these databases. Where they do, they are extremely fragmented. You can’t compare apples with apples.”
(Carbon Brief has also used EM-DAT data to investigate the impact of extreme weather on Africa, finding that such events killed at least 15,000 people on the continent in 2023.)
Uncertain futureDespite having a global impact, EM-DAT’s small team of researchers require just €300,000 ($350,000) a year to maintain operations.
For decades, EM-DAT obtained 90% of this funding from USAid, the US’s federal agency for foreign aid, says Speybroeck:
“[USAid] allowed us to work in an independent and neutral way, so we were not influenced by any politics. That was one of the strengths of the database. They only asked for us to leave it open access, meaning that anyone can use it.”
USAid was dismantled by Donald Trump after he became US president for the second time in January 2025. By July, the agency officially closed its doors.
Speybroeck received a letter in February 2025 informing him that his team were to lose their funding.
“I decided for a long time to keep silent,” he tells Carbon Brief. However, by the end of 2025, he chose to start speaking out about the impact of USAid cuts on EM-DAT.
Learning of the threats to the database, four leading climate scientists published an open letter in March calling for other governments, multilateral development banks and philanthropy to step in to stop the database from closing. It has attracted more than 4,000 signatures.
One of the letter authors, Prof Gabriele Messori, director of the Swedish Centre for Impacts of Climate Extremes at Uppsala University in Sweden, tells Carbon Brief:
“It’s very worrying that a long-term dataset that has become a reference for many different sectors, when looking at the impacts of a wide range of natural and technological events on society and the economy, could be suddenly interrupted.”
(The cuts to EM-DAT’s funding come as the Trump administration has laid off thousands of scientists and frozen research grants worth billions of dollars in the US. For more on how these actions are impacting climate science, see Carbon Brief’s explainer on how Trump is threatening polar research.)
Since going public about EM-DAT’s funding crisis, Speybroeck says he has had some “positive signals” from potential new funders, but “there is nothing on paper yet”.
Another letter author, Prof Dewald van Niekerk, says he hopes to see EM-DAT move towards a model of using multiple funding sources, to create a “more robust structure” where “no one can just pull the plug” on its work.
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China Briefing 28 May 2026: Deadly rains | China pushes back | Examining China’s carbon intensity metric
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing.
China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.
Key developments Several dead as record rainfall hit several provincesDEADLY DOWNPOUR: Multiple rounds of heavy rainfall have hit central and eastern China, with Agence France-Presse reporting that at least 25 people were killed in the first round, which affected provinces including Guangxi, Guizhou, Hunan and Hubei. Shortly afterwards, nine people died in south-western Chongqing province, reported finance news outlet Caixin, after receiving “nearly 300mm of rain in just two hours, a deluge local residents described as the worst in more than 60 years”. The government has dedicated 280m yuan ($41m) to support affected provinces, reported state news agency Xinhua. The Communist party-backed newspaper China Youth Daily reported that more than 20 provinces have been affected so far, with rains expected to continue throughout June.
CLIMATE CONTRIBUTION: National rainfall over 11-23 May was 46% higher than the seasonal norm, said Xinhua. Nearly 500 weather stations nationwide have logged record rainfall levels, according to state-sponsored newspaper Guangming Daily. The rains were described as “quite unusual”, according to Xinhua, with the National Climate Centre’s chief forecaster Gao Hui telling the agency that the heavy rains were caused by a combination of factors. These included a convergence of several climate systems carrying in strong flows of moisture from nearby marine regions, as well as “rapid global warming, compounded by a fast-developing El Niño” increasing the atmosphere’s moisture content.
The EU ‘overcapacity’ debate‘CONCERNS’ REGISTERED: The EU will debate proposals in June to “step up efforts” to reduce economic reliance on China and protect its industries, including “safeguard investigations” for at-risk sectors and an “overcapacity instrument”, reported Politico. Finance news outlet Yicai said China in turn has registered its “concerns” with the World Trade Organization over the EU’s Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA), which includes local content requirements for industries including clean-energy technologies.
上微信关注《碳简报》PATIENCE ‘WEARING THIN’: A report by the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post cited “some observers” as saying a trade war characterised by the EU “clos[ing] its market down to Chinese imports” may be the “only” way in which the EU can get China to fully engage with its concerns. A China Daily editorial states that China’s “patience” over the EU’s “politicisation and over-securitisation of trade and economic issues” is “wearing thin”. An editorial in the state-supporting Global Times says “erecting higher trade barriers” against Chinese cleantech is “clearly unwise”, given the Iran conflict, adding: “China will never sit idly by while the EU unreasonably suppresses Chinese companies.”
MISSING AGREEMENTS: Meanwhile, Bloomberg covered US president Donald Trump’s claims that his counterpart Xi Jinping “likes the idea of buying more US oil”, following Trump’s state visit to China. [None of the Chinese government readouts or press briefings covering trade outcomes have mentioned any energy agreements so far.] Similarly, the “Kremlin said…a general understanding” had been reached on the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline following Russian president Vladimir Putin’s visit to China, according to Reuters, but that there was “no mention of any oil and gas deals among documents signed” during his meeting with Xi. A joint statement published by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said China and Russia will “deepen” cooperation around oil and gas, coal, nuclear and renewable energy, adding that they will “strengthen cooperation in addressing climate change”.
Coal-power generation rose in April‘INFLEXIBLE’ COAL: Thermal power generation in China “grew for a fourth straight month in April”, rising 3.1% year-on-year in the face of reduced wind and nuclear generation, reported Bloomberg. “Unfavorable weather” was not the only reason for weaker clean-energy generation, wrote Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air lead analyst Lauri Myllyvirta on Bluesky, with “grid congestion due to inflexible operation of coal plants and transmission lines” also a factor. Separately, research by Global Energy Monitor found that Chinese coal-plant developers “requested approval for 51 gigawatts (GW)” of new capacity in January-March 2026, reported Bloomberg.
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SOLAR SLOWDOWN: Total power demand grew 6% year-on-year in April, according to Xinhua. Total capacity rose 14% by the end of April, reported energy news outlet International Energy Net, with China’s total solar-power capacity now exceeding 1,250 gigawatts (GW) and wind reaching 661GW, while thermal capacity rose 7% to 1,556GW. However, the growth rate of new solar installations continued to fall for a “fourth straight month”, said Bloomberg, with 9.5GW added in April 2026 compared to 45.2GW the year before.
POLICY EXPANDS: Meanwhile, the government has expanded its renewable power “direct connection” policy to allow clean-energy generators to supply multiple users directly “through dedicated [power] lines”, rather than just one consumer, reported finance news outlet Caixin. It cited a government official saying the policy is “intended to support cleaner energy use in industrial parks…and other large energy-consuming facilities”, which comprise more than two-thirds of total energy demand. Economic news outlet Jiemian quotes an expert saying the policy enables both “lower electricity prices” and “higher utilisation rates” for renewables, “reducing curtailment rates”.
More China news- ‘SOLIDARITY AND RESOLVE’: China voted in favour of a UN general assembly resolution to back the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) landmark 2025 opinion on states’ legal obligations to tackle climate change. The Chinese embassy to Vanuatu said on Facebook this displayed its “solidarity and collective resolve”.
- BOND DISCLOSURE: According to a disclosure report by China’s finance ministry, the country raised 6bn yuan in “green sovereign bonds” in 2025, said finance news outlet EastMoney ($884m), of which 700m ($103m) was spent on clean-energy retrofitting.
- WAR ON SAND: The central government has pledged to “improve” and expand its ecological compensation mechanism, including to now provide compensation for building solar farms in desertified areas, said power news outlet BJX News.
- SPACE-BASED SOLAR: Chinese scientists have begun “initial experiments” in a project to “collect [solar] energy in orbit and beam it wirelessly to Earth”, said PV Magazine.
- MINERAL STRATEGY: China has pledged to “accelerate the construction of strategic mineral-reserve sites”, reported Reuters. It will also work with the US on “reasonable” concerns around its rare-earth export controls, Reuters also reported.
Hydrogen in China continues to be mostly produced from coal, according to a National Energy Administration report. A new Carbon Brief article explored how a series of new policies in China could help scale hydrogen, particularly “green” hydrogen made with renewable power.
Spotlight China’s new carbon metric leaves Germany-sized gap in its emissionsA major change in the way that China measures its core climate goal has effectively halved the growth in the country’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions over the past five years.
The revised measure of “carbon intensity” implies that China’s emissions have only gone up by 7% from 2020-2025, just half of the 14% rise indicated by previous official statistics.
This spotlight is an excerpt of an analysis explaining how the metric appears to have shifted and its implications for China’s climate goals. The full article can be found on the Carbon Brief website.
Germany-sized gapReducing carbon intensity – CO2 emissions per unit of GDP – has been China’s key climate commitment since the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009.
Neither China’s international climate pledges nor other official documents have ever set out a definition of carbon intensity.
However, until this year, it was possible to closely reproduce the reported numbers, based on a straightforward interpretation of what carbon intensity means – combining official GDP data with estimates of emissions from the use of fossil fuels.
Now, the types of emissions that are included in the carbon-intensity metric have changed.
The previous carbon-intensity measure apparently included emissions from the use of fossil fuels to generate energy and as chemical feedstocks, so-called “non-energy uses”. It did not include non-fossil fuel CO2 emissions from industrial processes, such as the production of cement.
Based on reported progress against this old scope, China’s carbon intensity had fallen by 12.4% from 2020-2025, well short of its 18% target under the 14th five-year plan.
Yet the 15th five-year plan reported that China had cut its carbon intensity by 17.7% over the same period, indicating a major shift in which types of emissions are included.
A footnote in China’s latest statistical communique indicates that carbon intensity now includes industrial process emissions and excludes non-energy uses of fossil fuels.
The shift has implications for estimates of the country’s emissions.
China’s total emissions were 11.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2) in 2020. Based on the original methodology, its fossil-fuel CO2 emissions had grown 14% by 2024, an increase of 1,430m tonnes (MtCO2).
In contrast, the newly reported carbon-intensity figures imply that China’s CO2 emissions only grew by 7% between 2020 and 2025, up just 690MtCO2.
The gap between these figures amounts to 730MtCO2, equivalent to the annual emissions of Germany or South Korea.
Decoding the new methodologyThe methodology change could have significant implications, making it important to understand how it is being calculated.
The new scope includes industrial-process emissions. One of the largest sources of these emissions, the cement industry, has been contracting, helping explain the improvement to carbon intensity under the new scope.
In addition, the new scope excludes non-energy use of fossil fuels – largely relating to the chemicals industry – which have seen rapid growth in the past five years.
One way to make the numbers add up would be to assume that the amount of carbon embedded in chemical-industry products has increased by the equivalent of 500MtCO2.
However, the reported output of major chemical-industry products cannot account for this level of embedded carbon.
Neither the change in scope of the carbon-intensity calculation, nor the change in the amount of carbon retained in products, can explain the size of the revision in the newly reported numbers. There must be another explanation.
Either the new scope broadly aligns with the explanation outlined above, but also excludes a subset of the CO2 emissions. Or the scope does not exclude any of the CO2, but there are gaps in the monitoring of some energy or industrial-process emissions.
Either explanation would mean China is not accounting for some of its CO2 emissions.
Implications for China’s targetsThis change has the effect of weakening China’s climate targets and introducing more uncertainty into tracking progress.
The new numbers means it will require less effort to hit the 2030 carbon-intensity target in its Paris pledge. This target can now be met even if emissions rise, whereas the previous metric would have required a reduction.
It will also require less effort to hit the carbon-intensity target in China’s 15th five-year plan.
In addition, China would be able to officially meet its target to peak emissions by 2030, even if its overall CO2 emissions do not actually peak. The change could also affect delivery of China’s targets to cut emissions by 2035.
While China may use any definition it wants for carbon intensity under the UN climate framework, retrospective changes or inconsistent accounting could erode the value of its commitments.
Moreover, it will ultimately have to close any gaps in its emissions data and reporting, under the transparency rules of the Paris Agreement.
This spotlight is adapted from an article by Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air lead analyst Lauri Myllyvirta for Carbon Brief.
Watch, read, listenMINING ACCIDENT: A column in Bloomberg argued that “continuing to veer…toward cleaner [energy] development” could avoid coal-mine accidents such as the one that claimed 82 lives in Shanxi province.
INDONESIAN NICKEL: The European Guanxi Podcast recorded a discussion with Ember’s Dr Muyi Yang about the role China plays in Indonesia’s coal-reliant nickel industry.
INDUSTRIAL HURDLES: A new article in Yicai investigated the reasons why companies are holding back on relocating to zero-carbon industrial parks.
NEGATIVE PRICES: The Communist party-affiliated People’s Daily published a widely-read article on how the emergence of “negative electricity prices” signals a need for a more “coordinated” buildout of clean energy.
In billion tonnes, the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) that China could avoid between 2025-2060 by transitioning to clean energy, according to a new study published by several leading academic institutions in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment. Scientists estimate that the remaining global budget for keeping temperatures below 1.5C is 130bn tonnes of CO2.
New science- Population exposure to heatwave-drought events “increased markedly” across China during between 1961-90 and 1991-2020, driven by a combination of population growth and more frequent heatwave-drought events | Atmospheric Research
- Fossil-fired power generation accounts for three-quarters of China’s total water consumption for energy production | Mitigation and adaptation strategies for global change
China Briefing is written by Anika Patel, with contributions from Lekai Liu, and edited by Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org
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Media reaction: UK and Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May heat and climate change
Europe has been hit by a searing heatwave, which has shattered temperature records across France, Spain and the UK.
In London, for example, the mercury hit a record high for May of 35.1C at Kew Gardens on Tuesday 26 May, breaking the former record-high May temperature by more than 2C.
Multiple people have died as a result of the high temperatures, including 14 people across the UK and France who drowned.
The heatwave was driven by a “heat dome”, in which warm air moving up from northern Africa has become trapped under a high-pressure system over western Europe.
Experts have been quick to point out the link between extreme heat and global warming, with one saying it was “beyond a shadow of a doubt” that climate change was making such events “more likely and more severe”.
In this article, Carbon Brief examines the impacts of the heatwave and the role of climate change.
- What is happening with the May heatwave in Europe?
- What is driving the record-shattering heat?
- What are the impacts of the extreme heat?
- How has the media responded?
Europe has been hit by “mind-bogglingly crazy” temperature records in May, according to the Financial Times, quoting Peter Thorne, director of the ICARUS Climate Research Centre at Maynooth University in Ireland.
In London, on Tuesday 26 May, temperatures hit a record high for May of 35.1C at Kew Gardens – breaking the previous record of 34.8C, set just the day before.
This was more than 2C above the previous May temperature high of 32.8C recorded in 1922 and again in 1944, reported the Times.
The Associated Press added that the UK capital also recorded a rare “tropical night”, when temperatures did not fall below 20C overnight.
The Daily Telegraph reported that Wales and Northern Ireland also saw record-high temperatures, of 27.4C in Cardiff and 23.4C in Armagh, on Sunday.
As with the UK record, these were quickly surpassed. BBC News reported that temperatures hit 32.9C in Bute Park, Cardiff and 24.5C in Thomastown, County Fermanagh, on Tuesday.
BBC News quoted a spokesperson from the Met Office, who said:
“This heat would be exceptional in the UK even in mid-summer, let alone in May.”
The broadcaster added that the average temperature in the UK at the end of May is usually 14-20C.
The Associated Press reported that temperature records have also fallen across Europe.
This includes in France, where temperatures reached 36C on Monday in the country’s south-west and remained above 20C at night across much of the country. The newspaper Libération declared that “it has never been so hot, so early, in France”.
The Guardian reported that the weather agency Météo France said the heatwave could last through the week and bring temperatures as high as 39C in some areas in the country.
As well as the UK and France, other nations have been seeing temperatures soar. France24 reported that temperatures in Spain were expected to reach 38C, with Italy also facing high temperatures.
The Irish Times reported that the May high-temperature record was broken twice in Ireland on the same day, with 29.7C recorded in Carlow and then 30.5C at Shannon Airport on Tuesday.
Le Monde explained that a “heat dome” of warm air from northern Africa is behind the high temperatures across Europe. (See: What is driving the record-breaking heat?)
The Financial Times quoted ICARUS’s Thorne saying that the records being set in Europe, “particularly in the UK and France, are mind-bogglingly crazy”. He added:
“We have more than 100 years of observational records. To break the all-time May record by more than 2C…is hard to comprehend.”
What is driving the record-shattering heat?The immediate driver of the extreme heat seen over Europe this week is a “heat dome”, according to Politico.
The outlet explained that the phenomenon is driven by “warm air moving up from northern Africa [that] has become trapped under a high-pressure system over western Europe”. It added:
“The effect is similar to that of a lid on a pot, with warm air forced downward and baking affected regions with prolonged, blistering heat.”
Spain’s El Correo explained that the phenomenon is “not a simple heatwave”, adding that such “high-pressure systems trapped over Europe are not usually seen before summer”.
However, many publications have linked the severity of the extreme heat to climate change. The Associated Press quoted ICARUS’s Thorne, who said:
“We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that heatwave events such as this have been made more likely and more severe due to climate change arising from our emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.”
The Guardian quoted Dr Chloe Brimicombe, a researcher at the University of Oxford, who said:
“The record-breaking heat is a reminder of how climate change is impacting our lives in the UK. It highlights the urgency of recent calls for heat adaptation.”
France’s Le Figaro described the event as an “unequivocal sign of global warming”.
The Independent reported that the heatwave “has the fingerprints of climate change all over it”. Other outlets, including Inside Climate News and Scientific American, also covered the links between extreme heat and climate change.
BBC News noted that over the last 30 years, Europe has been warming by 0.56C per decade – more than twice the global average.
The outlet quoted Prof Erich Fischer, professor at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, who compared the record-breaking temperatures to setting a new record in sports.
He explained that “if someone beats a world record in high jump, you would expect them to beat it by one centimetre and not suddenly by 20, 30 centimetres”. Similarly, he said that in the case of temperature, you would expect new records to be broken by a fraction of a degree, rather than 2 or 3C.
However, the broadcaster explained that “when a relatively rare weather system, such as this week’s heat dome, comes around in a warming climate, the margin of record can be huge”.
Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of UN Climate Change, called the heatwave a “brutal reminder of the cost of global warming”, according to Politico.
The Guardian also quotes Stiell, who said:
“The science is clear that human-induced climate change is making these heatwaves more frequent and extreme”.
What are the impacts of the extreme heat?The heatwave has already been linked to multiple deaths.
This included seven people in France, five of whom died by drowning and two who suffered heat-related deaths while competing in sporting events, said the Guardian.
Separately, the Guardian reported that at least nine people have died in the UK from “water-related incidents” during the heatwave.
France24 reported that “restrictions on outdoor work were imposed in parts of Italy” and that “farmers reported accelerated harvests as temperatures went beyond 30C across [south-west France]”.
The Guardian reported that tennis players at the French Open were “forced to adjust their games while trying to find their best level through obvious discomfort”, amid 33C temperatures in Boulogne-Billancourt, Paris, on Monday.
CNN added that, in the UK, “a wildfire broke out near Arthur’s Seat, a hill in Edinburgh, Scotland, and hundreds of properties in south-east England were left without water as demand spiked”.
.cb-tweet{ width: 65%; box-shadow: 3px 3px 6px #d3d3d3; margin: auto; } .cb-tweet img{ border: solid 1.25px #333333; border-radius: 5px; } @media (max-width:650px){ .cb-tweet{ width:100%; } }BBC News reported on a warning from a chief nurse that hospitals in the south-west of England were busier than usual amid the heatwave.
BBC News reported that the UK saw a surge in emergency calls on Tuesday. The Daily Telegraph added that “Britain’s roads started melting and rail commuters were left stranded for hours”.
Meanwhile, the Guardian reported on a warning from climate campaigners that the government “urgently” needs to start installing air conditioning units in schools and care homes.
The extreme heat has also affected Europe’s renewable energy generation. Bloomberg said that “the heat dome has blocked clouds and fueled booming solar generation”, but added that “by clearing clouds and calming the atmosphere, the heat dome has had the opposite effect on wind speeds”.
The unseasonably high temperatures have caught the attention of news outlets in the UK, France and other affected nations.
Often, news stories were accompanied by photos of people relaxing at the beach, eating ice cream and swimming in the sea.
Such images of “fun in the sun” have often drawn criticism from climate researchers for “misrepresenting” the risks of heatwaves.
.cb-tweet{ width: 65%; box-shadow: 3px 3px 6px #d3d3d3; margin: auto; } .cb-tweet img{ border: solid 1.25px #333333; border-radius: 5px; } @media (max-width:650px){ .cb-tweet{ width:100%; } }This choice of imagery – and the way right-leaning newspapers in the UK tend to focus on the positive aspects of hot weather – was highlighted by journalist and media critic Mic Wright in a Substack post. He wrote:
“Most British newspapers write about extremely hot weather with the tone of a frog in a boiling pot pretending it’s a jacuzzi.”
Despite blanket news coverage of the record heat in media outlets across western Europe, there has been relatively little commentary from their opinion pages.
No major UK newspapers have published editorials about the heat and there has been no space dedicated to it in the comment sections of the largest French and Spanish newspapers.
One exception in UK media was the Daily Mail’s climate-sceptic columnist Richard Littlejohn writing an article mocking heat-safety measures and warnings issued by the Met Office and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).
In contrast, the Guardian published an article by Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London, warning of the dangers facing the UK as extreme heat becomes “the norm”. He wrote:
“We need, then, to face the fact that life in the 2050s is going to be very different from today, and act now. The sooner we recognise this and begin – as a nation – to prepare and adapt accordingly, the better we will be able to meet these enormous challenges to our everyday lives.”
Oliver Duff, editor-in-chief of the i newspaper, wrote that the UK is “emotionally underprepared”, as a nation, for the heat:
“Worries about climate change are forgotten in the giddy determination to enjoy our brief, unreliable summers, whichever month of the year they deign to visit.”
Writing in the Independent, journalist Kat Brown reflected on the Climate Change Committee’s recent advice to the UK government on adapting to climate change. She stressed the need to “take heatwaves seriously”.
James Wallace, chief executive of the charity River Action, was given a guest column in the Daily Express in which he wrote: “As the nation swelters in record-breaking temperatures, England is sleepwalking into a water crisis.”
In reference to water shortages and increasingly extreme weather, Wallace also emphasised that “this is climate breakdown in real time”.
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Q&A: Can China turn hydrogen into its next clean-energy industry?
China has said that hydrogen is a key “future industry”, important to both its energy transition and its industrial policy.
Hydrogen frequently goes through hype cycles, most recently driven by rising oil and gas prices due to the conflict in the Middle East.
Yet, even in China, the world’s largest producer and consumer of the fuel, hydrogen remains expensive and inefficient to produce.
This is especially the case for “green” hydrogen derived from renewables.
Moreover, there is limited supporting infrastructure and there is little incentive to use hydrogen over other energy sources.
As a result, uptake in China of hydrogen as an alternative fuel remains low.
Nevertheless, these challenges echo the early circumstances of another key clean-energy technology – electric vehicles (EVs).
In China, EVs benefited from a policy environment that included consistent signals of support, financial aid and the development of supporting infrastructure.
Many similar policies are now being deployed – and in some cases improved upon – to support the development of China’s hydrogen industry.
This article examines China’s approach to developing hydrogen and how its evolving industrial policy could make the fuel viable.
How is China using hydrogen and where does it come from?Electrification and rising installations of solar and wind power have been the biggest drivers of China’s decarbonisation story so far. However, how China will address the more energy-intensive, hard-to-electrify segments of its economy remains an open question.
Hydrogen is seen by some in China as a potential solution for reducing emissions in a range of “hard-to-abate” industries, from steel and chemicals to aviation and shipping.
The country is the world’s foremost producer and consumer of hydrogen. It produced 36.5m tonnes of the gas in 2024, with maximum production capacity standing at 50m tonnes that year.
It also consumed nearly a third of the world’s hydrogen in 2024, as shown below.
Share of global hydrogen consumption in select regions in 2024, %. Source: IEA.Most of China’s production capacity is in regions with potential for high demand, such as Shandong, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Ningxia, Shanxi and other provinces with significant heavy industry.
In 2024, the vast majority of China’s hydrogen – around 78% – was produced using fossil fuels, predominantly coal and gas, as shown in the figure below.
Another 21% was produced as an industrial by-product, while only 1% – just 320,000 tonnes – was derived from renewable-powered electrolysis of water.
Production of hydrogen in China by energy source in 2024, %. Source: National Energy Administration.One study found that, for every kilogram of hydrogen produced, 38.6kg of carbon dioxide (CO2) is emitted if the hydrogen is produced using coal-fired power. Hydrogen made through coal gasification results in 28.5kg of CO2 for every kilogram of hydrogen, while gas-based hydrogen creates 13kg of emissions.
By contrast, one kilogram of renewables-based hydrogen results in 0.5kg of CO2.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) calculates that hydrogen and hydrogen-based fuels could help China avoid close to 16bn tonnes of CO2 cumulatively by 2060 – but only if it comes from low-carbon sources.
The biggest reductions, it adds, would come from heavy industry, particularly chemicals and steel, with the maritime and shipping sectors also seeing some benefit.
Currently, around half of the hydrogen produced in China is used in synthetic ammonia and methanol production.
Ammonia is primarily used to manufacture fertiliser and is seen as a possible fuel technology for shipping. Methanol is used as a fuel for the transport industry, as well as for heating.
Another quarter of China’s current hydrogen usage is consumed by the oil refining and coal-to-chemical sectors. The remaining amount is used in other industries, including transport, heating and metallurgy.
What are the barriers to scaling up hydrogen?Although China is the largest producer and consumer of hydrogen globally, the industry faces several barriers to becoming a viable clean-energy technology.
Agora Energiewende, a thinktank focused on the energy sector, says that, in order to make hydrogen a practical clean-energy solution, China would need to expand the scale and range of its application, as well as improving the conversion efficiency of production and use.
Both BloombergNEF and the IEA highlight the importance of China creating demand for hydrogen, such as through quotas for industrial usage.
Hydrogen “suffers from a relatively large efficiency loss during various conversion processes”, adds Agora. For example, it notes that only around 22% of the energy put into hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) is converted into motion, compared to 73% for battery electric vehicles. Producing hydrogen with renewable energy is also less efficient than coal-to-hydrogen processes.
Cui Chuansheng, technical director at East China Engineering Science and Technology, tells state news agency Xinhua that the variability of wind and solar power often leads to low utilisation of electrolysers, resulting in “efficiency losses”.
Meanwhile, the cost of producing hydrogen – particularly green hydrogen – remains high.
One study placed the cost of hydrogen produced through alkaline water electrolysis (AWE), the most common method for producing green hydrogen in China, at $4-6 per kilogram, compared with $1.20-2.50/kg for steam methane reforming and $1.30-2 for coal gasification.
In some specific cases, such as blending hydrogen with gas, researchers find that hydrogen prices would need to fall to one-third of gas prices to incentivise uptake.
These constraints are all “interdependent”, Kevin Tu, managing director of Agora Energy China, tells Carbon Brief, with the need to ensure “bankable demand” while also reducing costs and developing infrastructure. He adds:
“Without credible offtake in the right sectors, costs will not fall; without lower costs and better logistics, downstream users will not commit.”
The IEA says that green hydrogen “could become cost-competitive by the end of this decade due to low technology costs and cost of capital”.
For now, however, the China Hydrogen Bulletin Substack reports that China’s four listed hydrogen equipment manufacturers all reported significant losses in 2025.
Meanwhile, a senior executive at a Chinese hydrogen company told economic news outlet Jiemian that he expected 40% of companies in the sector to have closed down by the end of 2026, with surviving companies only turning a profit in 2029 at the earliest.
The industry also lacks refueling and pipeline infrastructure. China’s development of a pipeline network for hydrogen remains in its early stages, with around 400km of pipelines currently in operation. By contrast, its long-distance gas network stands at 128,000km. Similarly, storage remains expensive and inefficient, creating a further obstacle to wider uptake.
How is China supporting hydrogen development?China began considering the use of hydrogen as an energy source in earnest in the early 2000s, to address concerns around pollution and dependence on imported oil for the transport sector.
A clearer signal of its importance came in 2015, when the State Council included the technology in a 10-year national industrial strategy known as the “Made in China” initiative. This pitched hydrogen as a way to contribute to electrification of China’s road-transport system through the development of FCEVs.
Yuki Yu, founder of research firm Energy Iceberg, tells Carbon Brief that, from 2018-2021, hydrogen was treated as a “FCEV and manufacturing technology challenge”.
This has since evolved, she says, given that battery electric vehicles have emerged as the more popular technology.
Shen Xinyi, senior advisor at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), agrees, telling Carbon Brief that recent policy documents suggest the aim is now for hydrogen to be targeted at areas where direct electrification is harder, such as hydrogen-based chemicals, hydrogen metallurgy and some heavy-duty transport applications.
This is in line with the “hydrogen ladder”, an analysis of how likely different possibilities for applying hydrogen as a clean alternative are to become significant. The ladder sees significant future use of hydrogen in these hard-to-electrify areas as much more likely than for light vehicles.
Notable policy moves are being made in “three layers”, says Agora’s Tu, which are combining to improve the technology’s chances of scaling up. These are: the “legal and institutional” layer; “application-oriented” policies; and targeted measures to address “practical bottlenecks” at the local level.
One of the documents underpinning this pivot was the “medium- and long-term plan for the development of the hydrogen energy industry (2021-2035)”, issued in March 2022.
According to a report by the National Energy Administration (NEA), the plan is an attempt to develop an “industrial ecosystem” for hydrogen that features “diverse stakeholders, coordinated innovation and clustered development”.
The plan was the first government document to “lay out a long-term vision for China’s hydrogen economy”, unifying a previously disparate policy push into one document, according to the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, a UK-based thinktank.
Following on from the 2022 plan, the importance of hydrogen as a broad clean-energy solution has been emphasised in a number of policies. These include its classification being changed from a hazardous chemical to an energy carrier in China’s Energy Law, a 2024 action plan to “accelerate” the use of low-carbon hydrogen in industry and a new pilot scheme offering subsidies for projects that achieve specific targets.
The table below sets out the timeline and content of China’s hydrogen-related policies over the past 25 years.
PolicyYear publishedKey features 10th five-year plan (2001–2005)2001Calls for “actively developing” low-emission vehicles, understood to include hydrogen vehicles Made in China 20252015Pledges to “continue to support” development of fuel cell vehicles and “master core technologies” for low-carbon vehicles Notice on implementation of demonstration projects for fuel cell vehicles2020Creates a dedicated subsidy programme for finding breakthroughs in FCEV core technologies and industrial applications 14th five-year plan (2021-2025)2021Hydrogen listed as a future industry Medium- and long-term plan for the development of the hydrogen energy industry (2021–2035)2022Aims to reach 100,000-200,000 tonnes of green hydrogen production [this target has been met]. Also aims to get 50,000 FCEVs on the road by 2025, leading to a “diversified” hydrogen industry by 2035 Opinions on accelerating the comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development2024Promotes further development of hydrogen production, transport, storage and applications Implementation plan for accelerating the application of clean and low-carbon hydrogen in the industrial sector2025Outlines tasks to promote use of low-carbon hydrogen to reduce emissions in heavy industries, such as steel and chemicals Energy law2025Sees hydrogen included in national legislation for the first time, re-classifies it from a hazardous chemical to an energy carrier 15th five-year plan (2026-2030)2026Again lists as a future industry, and calls for the development of green fuels derived from green hydrogen Notice on the implementation of pilot projects for the comprehensive application of hydrogen energy2026Provides subsidies to projects to reduce hydrogen costs to 15-25 yuan/kilogram ($2.20-3.67/kg) and help develop a fleet of 100,000 FCEVs Key policies in the development of China’s hydrogen sector.In addition, the NEA said in 2025 that local governments across China had issued more than 560 hydrogen-related energy policies by the end of 2024.
Tu notes that these local policies cover everything from permitting reforms and pipeline planning to exempting FCEVs from paying road toll.
Different provinces across China adopt distinct strategies for developing hydrogen industries, based on local conditions, says the US-based Center on Global Energy Policy, such as energy mix, availability of coal and industrial needs.
However, these local policies and targets are frequently more ambitious than the “conservative” national-level targets, it adds.
Could a new pilot programme boost hydrogen’s prospects?A new pilot programme, announced in March 2026, aims to commercialise the country’s hydrogen industry by funding projects to reduce the cost of the fuel to 15-25 yuan/kilogram ($2.20-3.67/kg) by 2030, as well as other targets.
Unlike the 2020 subsidies, which focused on FCEVs, the new programme reaffirms China’s interest in a broader series of sectoral applications for hydrogen, including in clean heating, production of low-carbon iron and steel, and production of “green fuels” and other chemicals.
This new pilot is the “strongest financial instrument ever released for China’s green hydrogen application” in terms of creating a comprehensive hydrogen policy that covers a broad swathe of the economy, supporting it with financial backing and targeting application scenarios, Yu says.
However, she argues that strict grant caps – 240m yuan ($35m) per project and 1.6bn yuan ($235m) per selected region across only five regions – limited the overall funding scale available to the industry.
Energy Iceberg has calculated that only around 60-70 projects nationally could receive funding under the current rules, out of more than 670 active green hydrogen proposals in China.
Shen agrees that the pilot programme is significant and that it will expand the use of hydrogen in China’s climate strategy, particularly green hydrogen.
She notes a provision that “explicitly states that coal-based ammonia and methanol projects cannot be labelled as ‘green’ ammonia or methanol”, suggesting that policymakers are increasingly paying attention to the “integrity” of definitions for hydrogen and hydrogen-derived fuel.
The “real value” of the pilot scheme, says Tu, is that it focuses on developing “integrated city-cluster ecosystems linking supply, transport, infrastructure and end-use demand”, rather than only supporting individual projects.
This “should help identify viable business models, accelerate cost discovery and concentrate support on applications with stronger scale potential”, as well as boost investor confidence, adds Tu.
However, he continues that the broader effect it will have on boosting production of hydrogen will “depend on how quickly the selected clusters can translate the programme into real offtake and lower delivered hydrogen prices”.
How does this compare to China’s EV policy push?The debate around the viability of hydrogen is reminiscent of critiques of EVs.
Until recently, EVs were seen as too expensive for consumers, inefficient and challenging to use without supporting infrastructure. As a result, many western automakers chose to temper their focus on EVs, while continuing to develop internal combustion engines.
However, China has managed to develop a competitive EV industry with products that top global sales.
Part of the playbook that spurred China’s success on EVs included consistent policy signalling in favour of the technology, including mentions in high-level documents and committing resources to building charging infrastructure.
“The defining features of China’s industrial-policy success are its persistence and adaptability,” says Kyle Chan, fellow at the Brookings Institution, adding that “long before the technology and economics of EVs and batteries were proven, China was making long-term investments and policy bets [in the sectors]”.
More tangible measures included direct and indirect subsidies and policy support in the shape of favourable loan rates and low-cost land. One estimate by US-based thinktank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) pegs the amount of support allocated to the EV industry between 2009-2023 at $230.9bn.
This coupled with the success of private Chinese manufacturers in creating innovative, nimble companies that “forc[ed] policymakers to adapt”, as well as growing links between the automotive and information technology industries, according to a separate CSIS report.
But this progress on EVs also reportedly came with significant fraud. In 2016, one investigation found that 33 companies were involved in subsidy fraud totalling 9.2bn yuan ($1.3bn).
(It should also be noted that profitability in the industry lags far behind the average for downstream industrial sectors, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, which says that “only a handful” of nearly 50 EV makers have reported profits.)
Being the subject of an industrial policy push alone does not guarantee success, states CSIS. It says the strength of the EV industry “was neither inevitable nor the result of a single master plan” and that China’s aims to develop globally-competitive industries in areas such as commercial aviation remain unaccomplished.
China’s approach to hydrogen has been markedly different.
Instead of offering blanket subsidies, the fuel cell demonstration programme it established in 2020 focused on performance-based rewards.
To avoid the subsidy issues seen in the solar and EV industries, the ministry of finance deliberately chose this indirect funding model, says Yu.
However, Yu argues, the programme did not work as well as hoped, due to the funding ceiling and the siloed attempts made by different regional governments to develop hydrogen ecosystems .
But Chinese policy thinking is becoming more selective and pragmatic for hydrogen compared with EVs, says Shen. She says:
“Electrification remains the primary decarbonisation pathway [for road transport], while hydrogen is increasingly positioned for applications where direct electrification is more difficult.”
Tu echoes this, adding that China is “clearly moving toward a more supportive policy environment for hydrogen”.
But its approach is “unlikely to replicate the EV story one-for-one”, he adds.
China’s concerted hydrogen push is also unlikely to echo the EV story at a global level, according to the IEA.
In terms of green hydrogen, around 60% of global electrolyser manufacturing capacity is currently in China, prompting concerns from the EU about a repeat of China’s global dominance in the solar and EV sectors.
However, the IEA says, electrolysers made in China “might not supply other markets at scale in the short term”, due to difficulties transporting the bulky technology globally, expectations that costs will only fall gradually, uncertainty around global demand and questions over how well Chinese electrolysers perform against global alternatives.
China’s industrial focus on hydrogen is centred more on domestic use, Shen argues. “It is less about near-term export competitiveness and more about building domestic industrial ecosystems,” she says.
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Analysis: China’s new carbon metric leaves Germany-sized gap in its emissions
A major change in the way that China measures its core climate goal has effectively halved the growth in the country’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions over the past five years.
The revised measure of “carbon intensity”, the amount of CO2 per unit of economic output, implies that China’s emissions have only gone up by 7% from 2020-2025.
This is just half of the 14% rise indicated by previous official statistics.
On paper, the revision creates a gap of 700m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) per year, equivalent to the total emissions of Germany or South Korea.
While China has never officially defined how it measures carbon intensity, it has now made what appears to be a retrospective change, with the effect of making targets easier to meet.
The shift means that China officially came close to meeting its carbon-intensity target for 2020-2025, whereas official statistics had previously pointed towards falling well short.
The new definition of carbon intensity has not been made public, but plausible approaches to calculating the metric do not seem to be sufficient to explain the Germany-sized gap.
The apparent gaps or inconsistencies in China’s new carbon accounting also mean that China could meet its international climate pledges for 2030, even if its emissions go up, whereas the previous measure would have required them to fall.
This article explains how the metric appears to have shifted, what changes might potentially explain the revision and what the revised measure implies for China’s climate goals.
Measuring carbon intensityReducing carbon intensity – CO2 emissions per unit of GDP – has been China’s key climate commitment since the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009.
At that time, the country pledged to cut its carbon intensity to 48% below 2005 levels by 2020. This was followed up by a 2030 target of a 60-65% reduction, announced in 2014, which was then upgraded to more than 65% in 2021.
Since carbon intensity was made a key progress indicator in China’s 14th five-year plan for 2021-25, the country has reported reductions in carbon intensity every year in its statistical communique, issued at the end of February.
Neither China’s international climate pledges (its nationally determined contributions, NDCs) nor other official documents have ever set out a definition of carbon intensity, despite it being a cornerstone of the country’s climate commitments.
However, until this year, it was possible to closely reproduce the reported numbers, based on a straightforward interpretation of what carbon intensity means.
But the types of emissions that are included in the carbon-intensity metric have now changed.
Previously, it was possible to reproduce the reported carbon-intensity data by combining official GDP data with estimates of emissions from the use of fossil fuels. The latter could be estimated based on the officially reported consumption of coal, oil and gas, multiplied by China’s official emissions factors for the CO2 per unit of energy from each fuel.
The previous carbon-intensity measure apparently included emissions from the use of fossil fuels to generate energy, as well as their use as chemical feedstocks, so-called “non-energy uses”. However, it did not include non-fossil fuel CO2 emissions from industrial processes, such as the production of cement, as shown by the “old scope” in the figure below left.
Old and new scopes of China’s CO2 emission reporting from fossil-fuel use and industrial processes. Source: Analysis for Carbon Brief by Lauri Myllyvirta. See “about the data” for further details.Based on the annually reported progress against this old scope, China’s carbon intensity had fallen by a total of 12.4% from 2020-2025.
This was well short of the 18% target set for these years under the 14th five-year plan.
In September 2025, Huang Runqiu, head of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, acknowledged this gap, saying that meeting China’s carbon-intensity targets had become “more challenging” due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and trade tensions.
Yet the 15th five-year plan, published in March 2026, reported that China had cut its carbon intensity by 17.7% over the same period – just shy of the 18% target.
As such, it is clear that there has been a major shift in the way that China measures its carbon intensity, specifically in terms of which types of emissions are included.
Moreover, the revised numbers imply that – rather than missing it by a large margin – China officially came close to meeting its carbon-intensity target for the 14th five-year plan.
A footnote in China’s latest statistical communique offers a brief description of carbon intensity as relating to the CO2 emissions from “energy activities and industrial production”.
This indicates that the carbon-intensity calculation now includes industrial process emissions and excludes non-energy uses of fossil fuels, shown by the “new scope” in the figure above.
In comments sought by Carbon Brief, Ryna Cui, associate research professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, who was not involved in the analysis, agrees that the changes to the carbon-intensity methodology are “unclear”. However, she notes that “limited data” makes it challenging to fully verify the nature and impact of the changes.
The revision mirrors a recent change made to the way that China measures its “energy intensity”, the energy use per unit of economic output. In 2024, energy intensity was changed to exclude non-energy use of fossil fuels and energy use from non-fossil fuels.
This exclusion also created a major incentive for expanding the chemical industry and the non-energy use of fossil fuels.
As for the change in carbon-intensity metric, this follows the highly energy-intensive pattern of economic growth during and after the Covid-19 pandemic and China’s “zero-Covid” policy.
Germany-sized gapThe shift in the way that China is measuring its carbon intensity has implications for estimates of the country’s emissions, which are only reported officially some years later.
Changes in carbon intensity and GDP are reported far more quickly – and can be used to estimate changes in China’s CO2 emissions.
China’s total emissions from energy and industrial processes were 11.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2) in 2020. Based on the originally reported changes in carbon intensity and GDP, its fossil-fuel CO2 emissions had grown 14% by 2024, an increase of 1,430m tonnes (MtCO2).
In contrast, the newly reported carbon-intensity figures imply that China’s CO2 emissions only grew by 7% between 2020 and 2025, up just 690MtCO2, as shown by the figure below.
The gap between these figures amounts to 730m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2), equivalent to the annual emissions of Germany or South Korea.
Estimated annual changes in China’s CO2 emissions, relative to 2020=100. Blue line: Estimate based on originally reported changes in carbon intensity. Red: Based on changes reported in 2026. Source: Analysis for Carbon Brief by Lauri Myllyvirta. See “about the data” for further details.On paper, therefore, the change in the carbon-intensity metric effectively halves the rate of growth in China’s CO2 emissions over the past five years.
Decoding the new carbon-intensity methodologyThe change in the carbon-intensity metric could have other significant implications, explored below, making it important to understand how it is being calculated.
Yet, while there are some indications of what the new approach entails, these changes do not seem to account for the magnitude of the revision.
The new scope includes industrial-process emissions. One of the largest sources of these emissions, the cement industry, has been contracting due to a slowdown in real estate and infrastructure construction.
This reduction in emissions is one reason why China’s carbon intensity has improved more quickly under the new scope than under the old one.
In addition, the new scope excludes non-energy use of fossil fuels – largely relating to the chemicals industry – where there has been rapid growth over the past five years.
This is another factor in carbon intensity improving faster under the new scope.
Indeed, China’s chemicals industry drove more than half of the growth in its total fossil-fuel use in the past five years, including 40% of coal use and all of oil use. As a result, non-energy use reached 13% of the total consumption of fossil fuels in 2025, up from 7% in 2020, after growing at an average annual rate of 13%.
The figure below illustrates the impact of these changes in scope. It shows the change in China’s emissions from 2020-2025 due to the use of fossil fuels for energy, its industrial-process emissions and non-energy use of fossil fuels.
The first few rows show changes based on the consumption of fossil fuels overall, amounting to a combined 1,430MtCO2 rise in emissions.
This compares with the 690MtCO2 rise implied by the new carbon-intensity metric, leaving that Germany-sized 730MtcO2 gap in emissions. The new scope explains some of this gap.
In terms of industrial processes, the 30% fall in cement production could account for a 300MtCO2 fall in China’s CO2 emissions. In addition, the amount of carbon stored in products, such as plastics, asphalt and rubber, could account for an estimated 100MtCO2 fall in emissions.
On the other hand, emissions from the incineration of plastics increased by an estimated 40% and from metals industry processes by 10%, with aluminium production having expanded by 21%. Together, these would have increased emissions by an estimated 60MtCO2.
In total, the changes in emissions from fossil-fuel use, industrial processes, carbon retained in products and waste incineration add up to a combined 1,070MtCO2 rise from 2020-2025, shown in the penultimate row of the figure below.
Again, this revised total – based on the change in scope of the carbon-intensity metric – goes some way to explaining the Germany-sized gap in China’s CO2 emissions.
However, the new carbon-intensity figures imply that China’s CO2 emissions only increased by 690MtCO2, as shown in the final row of the figure below. This leaves a residual gap of around 380MtCO2, which does not appear to be accounted for by the data available.
Changes in China’s emissions by source from 2020-2025, MtCO2. Source: Analysis for Carbon Brief by Lauri Myllyvirta. See “about the data” for further details.One way to make the numbers add up would be to assume that the amount of carbon embedded in chemical-industry products has increased by the equivalent of 500MtCO2.
However, the reported output of major chemical-industry products cannot account for this level of embedded carbon. The figure below shows that the increase in output of major chemical products only explains around a 110MtCO2 increase in retained carbon.
Much of the increase in the production of plastics was cancelled out by a contraction in the use of bitumen for asphalt, due to lower road-building activity.
The amount of carbon retained in products from 2005-2025, MtCO2. Source: Analysis for Carbon Brief by Lauri Myllyvirta. See “about the data” for further details.Furthermore, the 14th five-year plan for 2021-25 had a target of raising the share of waste incineration to 65% of urban residential waste treatment capacity, up from 45% in 2020.
So, while plastics production did go up, resulting in increased amounts of retained carbon, a larger share of this retained carbon was being incinerated, meaning its carbon would quickly be released back into the atmosphere.
One reason why carbon retained in products has grown more slowly than the amount of fossil fuels used in chemicals production is that the fastest growth has been in the coal-based chemicals industry.
Coal-based processes have a much lower conversion efficiency than oil- and gas-based production, with process emissions that are typically multiple times as high.
For example, these emissions are 10 times as high for the production of olefins – a key plastics feedstock – from coal as compared with oil or gas. The process is reported to require 3.75 tonnes of standard coal per tonne of product. This implies that only 30% of the carbon in the coal is retained in the product, with the other 70% being emitted in the process.
There are also chemical processes that use fossil fuels as a feedstock, but where the end product does not contain carbon. One example is ammonia, a key building block for fertiliser, where production grew by 52% from 2020 to 2025.
Neither the change in scope of the carbon-intensity calculation, nor the change in the amount of carbon retained in products, is sufficient to explain the size of the revision in the newly reported numbers. There must be another explanation.
There are two options. Either the new scope broadly aligns with what is outlined above, but also excludes a subset of the CO2 emissions. Or the scope does not exclude any of the CO2, but there are gaps in the monitoring of some energy or industrial-process emissions.
Either explanation would mean that China is not accounting for some of its CO2 emissions. It would also mean that the improvement in carbon intensity for 2020-2025 is over-reported.
China’s latest officially reported emissions inventories reinforce the second of the two options above, namely, that there are gaps in emissions reporting from the chemical industry.
From 2018 to 2021, the latest year for which China has reported on its emissions, the CO2 output of chemical-industry processes only increased by 13%. Over the same period, non-energy use of fossil fuels increased by 29%, according to data reported to the International Energy Agency by the Chinese government.
One factor in these apparent gaps could be that China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) is required to publish data on carbon intensity very quickly, since it is a key indicator in the country’s five-year plans.
On the other hand, detailed greenhouse gas emissions inventories and energy statistics are only published years later, by the environment ministry and NBS, respectively.
What the change means for China’s targetsThe change in the definition of carbon intensity has the effect of weakening China’s climate targets and introducing more uncertainty into tracking progress.
On the basis of China’s new numbers, it will require less effort to hit the 2030 target for a 65% reduction in carbon intensity on 2005 levels, as per China’s Paris pledge.
This target can now be met even if CO2 emissions go up between 2025 and 2030, whereas the previous metric would have required a reduction.
It will also require less effort to hit the 17% target in the 15th five-year plan.
The apparent gaps in the CO2 emissions numbers for 2025 could affect the delivery of China’s other key climate pledges, such as the commitment to peak CO2 emissions before 2030. They could also allow the chemical industry’s CO2 emissions to continue climbing rapidly, while still officially meeting the 2030 goals for CO2 intensity.
Moreover, the apparent gaps or inconsistencies in China’s new carbon accounting also mean that China would be able to officially meet its target to peak its CO2 emissions by 2030, even if its overall CO2 emissions do not actually reach a peak.
The apparent gaps could also affect the delivery of China’s newer target to cut its greenhouse gas emissions to 7-10% below peak levels by 2035 and beyond.
Nevertheless, researchers and analysts can still monitor progress by calculating China’s CO2 emissions independently.
China’s reporting on fossil-fuel consumption, the output of plastics and other carbon-containing products, as well as manufacturing of commodities with substantial process emissions, provides a basis for tracking emissions under the new scope.
While under the UN’s climate framework China is free to use any definition it wants to meet its own nationally determined climate pledges, retrospective changes to methodology or inconsistent accounting could erode the value of the country’s commitments.
Moreover, it will, ultimately, have to close any gaps in its emissions data and reporting, under the transparency rules of the Paris Agreement.
China’s next transparency report to the UN, due by the end of this year, should also provide more clarity on the methodology and data underlying the revised numbers.
This underscores the importance of monitoring, reporting and verification for industrial process emissions. “Mass balances” based on fossil-fuel consumption and product output could be used as a check on CO2 emissions reporting. Finally, China’s emissions data could also be made more granular and clearly defined.
Carbon Brief has approached the National Bureau of Statistics and Ministry of Ecology and Environment for comment.
The University of Maryland’s Cui tells Carbon Brief that in general, China’s climate goals are “improv[ing]” in terms of their coverage and scope. However, she adds:
“The issue is…the ambiguity and inconsistency in the coverage, definition and method between target setting and progress tracking, which can lead to large uncertainties and room for manipulation. It highlights the importance of transparency in national climate targets, following the UNFCCC’s international transparency framework, which should also be applied as best practices for domestic targets.”
About the dataThe calculations in this analysis are based on China’s total coal, oil and gas consumption from energy statistical yearbooks covering the years until 2023, with data for 2024 and 2025 taken from the latest statistical communiques.
“Originally reported” CO2 emissions were back-calculated from carbon-intensity reductions and GDP growth given in annual statistical communiques. The revised emissions for 2020, 2024 and 2025 are similarly back-calculated from the reductions in carbon intensity from 2020 to 2025 and from 2024 to 2025, as reported in the 15th five-year plan outline and the 2025 statistical communique, respectively, combined with annually reported GDP growth.
Cement process emissions up to 2024 are from Robbie Andrews’ estimates, scaled to 2025 based on year-on-year change in total cement output.
Process emissions from the metals industry are based on calculating emissions for aluminium, silicon, lead, zinc and crude steel from the bottom-up, using industrial output data and IPCC default emission factors scaled to the reported total in 2021. For steel, the calculations are based on typical quicklime use in basic-oxygen and electric-arc furnaces.
Emissions from the incineration of plastics are based on a peer-reviewed estimate of plastics incineration in 2022, combined with growth rates in the overall power generation from waste-to-energy plants. The analysis assumes that the share of plastics in the energy content of the incinerated waste stayed constant over this period, which is a conservative assumption given the rapid rise in plastics production.
Total non-energy use of fossil fuels in 2020, 2024 and 2025 is available from an NEA data release, with data for 2021-2023 found in the China energy statistical yearbook 2025.
The mix of coal, oil and gas within non-energy use is based on the energy statistical yearbook data up to 2023, with the increase in coal in 2024 and 2025 based on Wind Financial Terminal data on coal consumption in the chemical industry. Gas use, which is relatively minor, is assumed to have grown on trend and oil is calculated as the residual.
Primary plastics, rubber, and urea output data are from NBS industrial statistics. The production of solvents, lubricants and waxes, as well as the use of bitumen in construction, is from energy statistical yearbooks. The analysis assumes no change in output from 2023 to 2025, given the lack of clear trends.
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Revealed: Floods have forced at least 67 closures at NHS hospitals since 2021
At least 67 NHS hospital wards, departments and other sites across the UK have been forced to temporarily close or relocate due to weather-related flooding over the past five years, a Carbon Brief investigation reveals.
Maternity centres, surgical theatres, a neonatal intensive-care unit and even entire hospital buildings have been disrupted by heavy rainfall or encroaching floodwaters.
Carbon Brief submitted freedom-of-information (FOI) requests to 162 NHS trusts, which show that while many flood-related shutdowns were brief, some lasted for weeks or months.
In total, 148 trusts responded to these requests with reports of 67 flood-related shutdowns, giving detailed data for 30 incidents that resulted in a total of 3,000 days of closures.
Reports of flooding at NHS sites have been on the rise, according to NHS England data.
This comes as the UK experiences wetter winters, with periods of extreme rainfall that are increasingly linked to human-caused climate change.
These floods can exacerbate existing problems in a healthcare system that is already struggling with insufficient funding, old hospital buildings and a backlog of maintenance work.
Indeed, while there have been efforts to make UK hospitals more resilient to extreme weather, one expert tells Carbon Brief that such measures are difficult to implement when these institutions are struggling to keep their “heads above water”.
Rising floodsFloods pose a threat to people’s health, but they also threaten the UK’s healthcare infrastructure. Water can enter hospitals, paralyse ambulance services and damage equipment, placing strain on an already stretched NHS.
NHS records show that the number of flood incidents “caused by external weather events” in facilities across England has doubled since 2021, reaching nearly 400 in 2024-25.
Equivalent data is not available for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, although there have been reports of floods disrupting services across the whole UK.
As global temperatures rise and the atmosphere holds more moisture, UK winters are getting wetter. Attribution studies show climate change has increased the severity of recent rainfall and flooding events – including Storm Eunice in 2022 and Storm Babet in 2023.
There is also a risk of increased flooding when heavy rain hits after periods of intense drought, of the kind seen in recent years.
Environment Agency modelling suggests that a rising share of medical facilities in England will be at risk of flooding due to climate change. It says the share of sites at risk will increase from a quarter in 2024 to a third by the middle of the century.
Despite this apparent threat facing the UK’s healthcare system, there is limited information about the extent to which these floods are already disrupting NHS services.
Closed servicesTo build a fuller picture of NHS-wide flooding, Carbon Brief sent FOI requests to 162 trusts and health boards – the organisations in charge of health services – across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
They were asked for details of wards, departments or services that had been temporarily or permanently closed due to weather-related flooding, such as river floods or heavy rainfall, between 2021-22 and the start of 2026.
In total, 148 of these bodies responded with details of 67 incidents in which weather-related floods have triggered closures. The map below shows where these incidents were located, from hospital wards in Scotland to an eye unit on the south coast of England.
Sites of weather-related flooding incidents at NHS facilities. The size of the circles indicates the number of incidents reported at each site. Source: NHS trust FOI responses to Carbon Brief.The 67 flooding-related disruptions reported by NHS trusts and health boards is likely an underestimate. Many trusts told Carbon Brief they did not record such detailed information or that collating it would be too time-consuming.
Nevertheless, the results provide an insight into the kind of risks facing NHS services as weather gets more extreme.
Among the closures were 13 accident and emergency (A&E) departments, urgent treatment centres and minor injuries units. There were also 10 hospital wards, 10 surgical theatres, five maternity units and a neonatal intensive-care unit affected by flooding.
Many trusts did not provide information about how long each closure lasted. However, the 30 incidents where timespans were provided add up to the equivalent of more than 3,000 days – or eight years – of closures across NHS sites.
The infographic below provides a snapshot of some notable closures from the dataset.
Notable incidents of weather-related flooding at NHS facilities. Source: FOI responses to Carbon Brief. Notable incidents of weather-related flooding at NHS facilities. Source: FOI responses to Carbon Brief. .cb-mobile{ display:none; } @media (max-width:650px){ .cb-mobile{ display:inherit; } .cb-desktop{ display:none } }The entire Buckland Hospital site in Dover closed for two days in 2025 amid “exceptional rainfall” and flash floods. People seeking radiology, maternity and urgent-care services were told not to visit over the weekend and various clinical services were delayed or cancelled.
The NHS declared a “major incident” in 2021 when flood waters “caused power outages impacting multiple areas” at Whipps Cross Hospital in north-east London – including its maternity service – for four days. Neighbouring hospitals also flooded.
Some closures lasted far longer. In Stroud General Hospital, a surgical theatre was closed for two weeks and an X-ray facility for around two months after storm water overflowed into the building in 2023.
Several NHS trusts stressed that the flooding incidents they reported were localised – often resulting from roof leaks exacerbated by heavy rain – and resulted in minimal disruption. Sometimes, as with a cardiology suite in Cannock Chase Hospital, the service was moved and the trust says patient care was not disrupted.
However, the responses also showed the breadth of damage such events can cause, including rainwater “pouring onto expensive equipment” and floods triggering the long-term relocation of services.
For example, Orchard Cottage, a site that provided care for adults with learning disabilities in Derbyshire, experienced major flooding during Storm Babet in 2023 and was permanently shut down as a result.
Adaptation needsThe UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, a group of UK health organisations, concluded in a report in 2025 that, with flood risks projected to grow, there is an “urgent need for adaptation measures” across the nation’s healthcare facilities.
Government advisors at the Climate Change Committee have highlighted the need for flood resilience in UK hospitals, including flood barriers, waterproofed electricals and built-in redundancy for critical areas, such as theatres, labs and IT equipment.
There have been various measures at both government and NHS level intended to improve the resilience of medical facilities to climate-related hazards.
The UK’s national adaptation programme sets out expectations for NHS England to “adapt NHS infrastructure to extreme weather events”. All trusts must have “green plans” in place, which require climate change to be factored into infrastructure decisions, for example, through the creation of drainage systems or green spaces.
Yet, as it stands, three-quarters of UK doctors say their workplaces are not prepared for the impact of extreme weather and nearly half of healthcare workers report that extreme weather has disrupted NHS services in the past five years.
Many hospitals have outdated infrastructure – often predating the founding of the NHS – which was not designed to cope with climate change. Prof Hugh Montgomery, chair of intensive-care medicine at University College London, tells Carbon Brief:
“The hospitals themselves weren’t built for this weather any more than anything else is really – and of course it’s going to get worse, in an exponential function.”
Many of the FOI responses provided to Carbon Brief identified specific building defects, such as roof leaks, which led to the flooding incidents during periods of heavy rainfall. There is a huge – and growing – backlog of maintenance work at NHS hospitals that was estimated in 2024-25 to need repairs costing £15.9bn.
Chris Naylor, a senior fellow at the King’s Fund, a thinktank focusing on health policy, tells Carbon Brief:
“Dealing with some of the backlog maintenance would probably help with climate adaptation as well, because of leaky roofs and all the rest of it. But we do also need to be thinking specifically about climate adaptation within the NHS and making sure there is funding for that.”
Montgomery points out that with trusts “mostly bankrupt” and most hospitals running a deficit, the question remains how to fund such interventions. “They’re struggling to keep their heads above water and they’re losing money,” he says.
Dr Mark Harber, a consultant nephrologist and special adviser on climate change at the Royal College of Physicians, tells Carbon Brief that hospitals at least need to make plans for extreme weather. This is particularly important for patients in need of time-dependent and life-saving treatments, such as kidney dialysis and chemotherapy.
Harber notes that hospitals, supply chains and transport could all be disrupted by floods:
“You have to have plans in place to deal with that, even if the NHS can’t deal with the flooding risk per se.”
Carbon Brief asked NHS England – which is responsible for the majority of the trusts that reported flooding disruption – for comment, but had not received a response at the time of publication.
MethodologyThe list of incidents reported by trusts can be viewed here.
Carbon Brief sent FOI requests to 120 English NHS trusts that have reported any incidents of flooding since 2021 in NHS England’s Estates Returns Information Collection (ERIC) dataset. This covers around 60% of all English NHS trusts.
Carbon Brief also filed FOI requests with all 42 of the health boards and trusts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which are equivalent to English NHS trusts.
All trusts and health boards were asked for details of wards, departments or services that have been temporarily or permanently closed due to weather-related flooding, such as river flooding or heavy rainfall.
This matches the wording used to describe a flooding event in the ERIC system, which requires the reporting of all flood events “caused by external weather events” that trigger a risk assessment by staff. Such external events are distinct from floods caused by other issues that are not related to the weather, such as burst pipes.
In total, 14 trusts did not respond and many more said they did not hold the data requested. Some trusts provided data, but on further questioning stated that the data they provided covered all flooding events and it was not possible to say which were related to weather conditions. These cases have not been included in the final dataset.
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DeBriefed 22 May 2026: UN adopts landmark resolution | Trump takes on ‘RCP8.5’ | Climate migration
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
ICJ OPINION: The UN has adopted a resolution backing a landmark world court opinion stating that countries have a legal obligation to address climate change, reported the Guardian. Some 141 countries voted in favour of the resolution, while only eight voted against: the US; Israel; Iran; Russia; Belarus; Saudi Arabia; Yemen; and Liberia. There were also 28 absentations, including India and Turkey, the host of COP31.
‘DETERMINED’: The text adopted by the UN general assembly “stresses” that “climate change is an unprecedented challenge of civilizational proportions” and says the assembly is “determined” to “translate the court’s findings into enhanced multilateral cooperation and accelerated climate action at all levels, consistent with international law”. The text “urges” states to implement measures including “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems”. It also “requests” the next UN secretary general to report on progress in 2027 and adds a formal follow-up to the agenda of the UN general assembly in 2028.
AMENDMENTS REJECTED: A UN press summary detailed how countries rejected four proposed amendments to the text by a group of largely Arab nations. These amendments would have undercut the world court’s legal advice on countries’ climate obligations by saying its views should only be taken into account “as appropriate”. They also would have added a reference to 2C, instead of focusing on 1.5C alone, got rid of the formal follow-up process in 2028 and added a reference to the role of carbon capture and storage.
Scenario sceptic‘GOOD RIDDANCE’: US president Donald Trump declared “good riddance” to a very high emissions modelling scenario in a Truth Social post on Saturday, misleadingly stating that “the United Nations TOP Climate Committee just admitted that its own projections (RCP8.5) were WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!” The post was quickly picked up by right-leaning media, including Fox News, the New York Post and the Australian.
NEW SCENARIOS: Trump’s claim follows the publication of a new set of emissions scenarios that will underpin research cited in the next set of reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In a guest post for Carbon Brief, scientists explained that the very high emissions scenario has “become implausible, based on trends in the costs of renewables, the emergence of climate policy and recent emission trends”.
TRUMP FACTCHECKED:Carbon Brief published a factcheck of Trump’s claims. It noted that the IPCC does not develop, control or own climate scenarios and has not published anything stating that any climate scenario is “wrong”. It added: “Projections suggest that the world is still on course for between 2.5C and 3C of warming…previously described as ‘catastrophic’ by the UN.”
- ADAPTATION NEEDED: The UK’s Climate Change Committee outlined how investing in adaptation now could produce “long-term savings”, Carbon Brief reported. UK ministers are preparing to accept a CCC recommendation to “set a legally binding goal of cutting emissions 87% by 2040”, reported the Times.
- ELECTRIFY EVERYTHING: COP31 president-designate Murat Kurum told the Copenhagen climate ministerial that countries should be “decarbonising the way we generate electricity, but also expanding electrification into every sphere of life”, according to Climate Home News.
- STAFF CUT: Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, is preparing to fire one-third of the team working on the national climate model that provides future projections, reported the Guardian.
- TARGET MISSED: An independent body has warned that Germany is expected to miss its 2030 climate goals and emit more CO2 than previously forecast, reported Reuters. According to Deutsche Welle, the country could breach its goal by up to 100m tonnes of CO2.
- PEAK POWER: India’s peak power demand “smashed all records” on Tuesday, after the country’s ongoing heatwave drove a “sharp rise” in electricity consumption, according to the Economic Times. The record fell again on Thursday, said Reuters.
The number of countries in the world that have net-zero targets.
2Major emitters that do not have a net-zero target – a group comprising Iran and the US, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Latest climate research- Global warming above 4C is projected to cause large decreases in “climate connectivity” between habitats for land animals | Nature Climate Change
- Around 6% of respiratory deaths in Brazil from 2010-20 were attributable to “non-optimal temperatures”, accounting for more than 66,000 excess deaths | PLOS Climate
- Fungi that cause diseases in plants will approximately double in abundance around the Antarctic Peninsula by 2100 under a moderate emissions scenario | Global Change Biology
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
CapturedThe world added nearly 100 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-power capacity in 2025 – the equivalent of roughly 100 large coal plants – according to the latest annual report from Global Energy Monitor (GEM). This is a ten-year high, according to Carbon Brief’s coverage, which noted that the world’s coal plants nevertheless generated less electricity. The chart above shows that 95% of the new coal plants were built in India and China last year.
Spotlight Climate migrationThis week, Carbon Brief speaks to experts at a conference on migration and climate change in London about what their research could mean for how people move around the world in the future.
Prof Kerilyn Schewel, assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel HillWe have moved beyond a ‘push factor’ narrative – that climate change is coming and uprooting communities – to a more nuanced perspective that recognises that people are already moving for all kinds of reasons… [For example] the more that young people are accessing formal education, the more they want to leave – particularly rural communities. We have to be very careful not to assume that when people want to leave, it is always driven by climate change. There are other developmental factors that are also shaping desires to move. This is a research frontier – seeing how environmental factors intersect with these other social or developmental outcomes.
Dr Aromar Revi, founding director of the Indian Institute for Human SettlementsThe future of mobility is much more certain than [climate change is]. People have been mobile for a very long time. That’s been an important part of the transformation of societies and economies for centuries…mobility is part of the solution [to climate change]. It is not the full solution, but it’s part of the solution. People are voting with their feet and with their aspirations to make a change.
Prof Nitya Rao, a professor of gender and development at the University of East AngliaThere are many things that the system can do to welcome migrants and be more sensitive to different types of migrants and their needs… In the short term, [migrants] need piped water, a proper home, care for young children…In the longer term, we have to address structural inequality. There are still barriers to people accessing resources – especially productive assets such as land, capital and livestock…And these barriers are split by gender, class, ethnicity and so on. These need to be addressed, I think, to really make migration a case of [climate] adaptation and not just survival.
Prof Jon Barnett, professor in the school of geography, earth and atmospheric sciences at the University of MelbourneIn the Pacific islands, international migration isn’t driven by climate change. It’s enabled by the capacity of people to cross borders, so it’s all about migration agreements. As climate change amplifies pressures on people’s livelihoods, we may end up with a whole series of transnational populations that are kind of constantly in churn – where they’re not just living on the island, but also in Australia, New Zealand, the US.
Dr Maria Franco Gavonel, lecturer in global social policy and international development at the University of YorkThe migration response towards almost any climate event is short lived and short distance, so it will mostly affect internal movement rather than international…So all these narratives about climate refugees – like human rights related to international migration – are overstating the extent to which this is going to happen.
Dr Benoy Peter, the executive director of the Centre for Migration and Inclusive Development in IndiaEvery one of us, including you and me, have benefited from migration. Migration is the fastest way for intergenerational upward social mobility for people from socially and economically disadvantaged populations. So I see migration as a [climate] solution.
Cecilia Keating also contributed to this spotlight. Read more of Carbon Brief’s coverage of the conference.
Watch, read, listenTICE QUESTIONED: The Bloomberg Zero podcast interviewed Richard Tice, the deputy leader of the hard-right Reform UK party, who exposed his rejection of climate science and support for the oil and gas industry.
‘CLIMATE CROSSROADS’: The Guardian examined how Colombia’s upcoming election could leave the major oil-and-gas producer at a “climate crossroads”.
LAND GRAB: A Floodlight investigation for Inside Climate News examined “Trump officials, billionaires and the quiet reshaping of America’s public lands”.
Coming up- 24 May: Cyprus elections
- 28-29 May: Blue economy and finance forum, Monaco
- 28 May: International Energy Agency (IEA) World Energy Investment 2026 report launch
- Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, editor in chief | Salary: $140,000-$160,000. Location: Washington DC, Chicago or New York City
- Climate Outreach, researcher | Salary: £44,000. Location: Remote (UK)
- University of Manchester, research associate, energy and climate governance | Salary: £37,694-£46,049. Location: Manchester, UK
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 22 May 2026: UN adopts landmark resolution | Trump takes on ‘RCP8.5’ | Climate migration appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Experts: Why migration is ‘not a failure of adaptation’ in a warming world
Hundreds of scientists gathered in London this week to discuss the role of migration as a way for communities to adapt to climate change.
The impacts of a warming world, such as sea level rise and worsening extremes, are pushing many people around the world to leave their homes.
As a form of climate adaptation, a decision to migrate involves an array of different factors, such as politics, conflict and economic opportunity.
The conference unpacked these topics, as well as the impacts of climate change on livelihoods, relocation and gender norms across Africa and Asia.
The event had a strong focus on urban areas, with one co-convenor stating that “half of the world’s population now lives in the cities…A lot of the battles of climate adaptation will be won and lost in cities.”
Another co-convenor told Carbon Brief that the conference’s “focus really is on the climate change adaptation community, showing that migration is not a failure of adaptation – it is part of adaptation”.
Carbon Brief attended the conference to report on the sessions and speak to world-leading experts on climate-driven migration.
- Migration as adaptation
- Cities and livelihoods
- Immobility and relocation
- Legal pathways
- Changing narratives
The two-day conference on “mobility in adaptation to climate change” was held at Wellcome’s headquarters in London. It gathered more than 100 leading experts in migration, adaptation and climate change from countries across Europe, Africa and Asia.
On day one of the conference, co-convenor Prof Neil Adger, a professor from the University of Exeter, told Carbon Brief:
“Our focus really is on the climate change adaptation community, showing that migration is not a failure of adaptation – it is part of adaptation.”
In his opening address, Adger highlighted that there were still many unknowns on climate migration – such as how and when it is an appropriate way to adapt to climate change, and who benefits and loses in these situations.
Prof Neil Adger from the University of Exeter, opening the conference. Credit: Hemant Kumar from the IIHS Media Lab.Dr Manuela Di Mauro – the head of climate-adaptation research at the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office – took to the stage next. She told attendees that mobility has always been a part of human life, stating:
“We are all migrants. We are all part of the same history.”
She urged the scientific community to “learn the language and the political perspective” needed to support and engage with policymakers about climate-driven migration.
Conference co-convenor Dr Chandni Singh from the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) then delivered the first in-depth talk of the conference, outlining the current state of knowledge on climate change and migration.
She explained that cross-border migration is “emotionally and economically arduous” adding “under a changing climate, people choose to move within national borders first”. (Estimates suggest that around three-quarters of total global migration is internal.)
Singh emphasised that “mobility choices are extremely complex and nuanced, based on one’s aspirations and capabilities, social norms and asset bases”. She continued:
“Some [people] are forced to move or are displaced, others are relocated preemptively to move people out of harm’s way and others choose to stay despite escalating risk – or because resilience-building measures allow people to stay.”
She stressed that people need resources to migrate, so the poorest people are often unable to move – leaving them in a state of “immobility”. However, she also noted that most people do not want to leave their homes, stressing the “visceral reality of place attachment”.
Singh explained that many families “live dual lives”, in which family members work in the city to save money for a life back in their village. This dynamic of living across two locations is often referred to as “translocality”.
For example, Singh shared the story of residents from the Indian village of Kolar, who travel more than 100km to and from Bangalore for work every day, or else live there in informal settlements.
These workers send the money they earn back home, where it is often used to dig bore wells to access water. However, Singh warned that climate change and poor water management mean these wells often fail year after year, trapping people in this cycle of travelling to Bangalore to earn more money.
Singh also stressed the prevalence of rural-to-urban migration. She cited UN estimates (that do not explicitly include climate-driven migration), which find that around 2.5 billion people are expected to migrate from rural to urban areas by 2050. It adds that 90% of the change occurring in Africa and Asia.
Singh added:
“Half of the world’s population now lives in the cities…A lot of the battles of climate adaptation will be won and lost in cities.”
She noted that although migration “helps to manage risks”, it also has “significant financial, personal and social costs”.
Singh went on to discuss the global goal on adaptation – a set of 59 indicators to measure global progress on adaptation. Singh said that “migration and mobility are completely invisible…and therefore completely overlooked” in the goals.
She concluded by discussing the importance of new narratives on climate change and migration, saying:
“It’s the narratives and stories we tell of this moment that can help us first acknowledge what is happening, help subvert misinformation and untruths, and really demand accountability.”
Cities and livelihoodsMigration from villages to cities was a central theme of the conference.
On day two of the conference, Dr Aromar Revi, founding director of the IIHS, told delegates that the “root cause of the climate emergency is maldevelopment” and emphasised the importance of pursuing adaptation, mitigation and development goals together.
Dr Aromar Revi, founding director of the IIHS, addressing conference attendees. Credit: Hemant Kumar from the IIHS Media Lab.He noted that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is currently working on a special report on climate change and cities and argued that “cities will play a decisive role in shaping global climate futures”.
He continued:
“Cities concentrate opportunities, but they also concentrate poverty, inequality and risk. And that’s something that we really don’t know how to understand, especially in a changing climate.”
Throughout the conference, many of the delegates presented nuanced stories of rural-to-urban migration from individual communities. These case studies highlighted the complex, interlinking factors that drive a person’s decision to move and the wide range of outcomes.
Dr Aysha Jennath from the IIHS presented the results from her research, which unpacks the experiences of migrants who have moved from rural to urban areas, for a range of reasons including the changing climate and for better livelihoods.
Jennath and her colleagues interviewed thousands of migrants living in informal settlements, or working in informal jobs, in large cities in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal. The researchers’ questions aimed to understand the migrants’ “wellbeing, adaptive capacity and precarity”.
Overall, Jennath found that migrants in large cities are vulnerable to poor housing, unsafe working conditions and a lack of basic social services.
Dr Binaya Pasakhala and Dr Sabarnee Tuladhar from the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, presented initial results from the Climate Adaptation and Resilience (CLARE) project, in which researchers interviewed households across Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal about migration patterns.
They conducted hundreds of surveys to identify how households are adapting to the changing climate and grouped responses into a series of “pathways” describing the impacts of rural-to-urban migration on their livelihoods.
Dr Binaya Pasakhala and Dr Sabarnee Tuladhar from the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development and Halvard Buhaug Peace Research Institute Oslo answering questions in a panel discussion. Credit: Hemant Kumar from the IIHS Media Lab.For example, Tuladhar noted that in Bhutan, there is a huge emphasis on education, which has “changed the aspirations of the community – especially the youth”. This drives “huge depopulation” from rural areas as young, educated people migrate to urban areas or internationally, she said.
This mass movement into the cities provides opportunities for young people. It also provides money for the families back home – a type of finance known as remittances.
However, it also “weakened resilience” in the villages through “gungtong” – a phrase which translates literally to “empty houses”.
However, they also described the case of Nepal’s Baragon mountain community, where remittances from people who moved to urban centres has allowed communities in the villages to shift livelihoods away from subsidence farming towards commercialised farming and tourism. In this case, “migration has actually strengthened the resilience of the community”, Tuladhar said.
Prof Nitya Rao is a researcher in gender and development at the University of East Anglia (UEA), also presented research funded by CLARE.
She told the conference that when men are forced to leave for work, due to a lack of other options, a lot of their earnings go towards “survival” and less is saved. On the other hand, “mixed migration” – such as the movement of a father and son – is often “aspirational”. It typically yields higher remittances and improves adaptive capacity back home, according to Rao.
Speaking to Carbon Brief, Rao argued that in order to “make migration a case of adaptation and not just survival in the short term”, destination cities need to do more to welcome migrants.
Prof Nitya Rao addressing conference attendees. Credit: Hemant Kumar from the IIHS Media Lab.Dr Maria Franco Gavonel, a lecturer at the University of York and Prof Mumuni Abu, a senior lecturer from the University of Ghana, explored the concept of “social tipping points” in migration decision-making.
They suggested that as a drought intensifies, there may be a threshold at which households decide to leave. The authors compared drought indices to immigration patterns across communities in Ghana, Mali, Kenya and Ethiopia, but did not find evidence of a social tipping point.
This could be because households anticipate severe droughts and leave before they hit, the speakers suggested. They also noted that there are many government-led policy responses to drought that could affect a household’s decision to stay or leave.
For example, Kenya has a livestock-insurance policy to help families who lose animals during drought. Similarly the African Union uses satellite data to assess the severity of droughts and provide compensation to affected households.
In the final session of the conference, Dr Kasia Paprocki, an associate professor of environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science, provided a counterpoint to the idea that the vast majority of villagers want to abandon farming and move to the city.
She argued that people are often displaced from rural communities and unable to live farming lifestyles, even if they want to, adding:
“I have found that agrarian dispossession is being intensified through development interventions that are today being referred to as climate change adaptation.”
She argued for the need to “reorganise economies” to enable people to stay “if they would like to”, adding:
“Climate change adaptation and climate migration without meaningful agrarian reform will not produce climate justice.”
Immobility and relocationMovement from rural to urban areas was not the only migration pattern discussed in the conference. Experts also discussed movement patterns including planned relocation and immobility.
The graphic below – adapted from the 2021 Groundswell report and originally published in Carbon Brief’s 2024 explainer on climate-driven migration – shows different categories of mobility and immobility due to climate change.
Different categories of human mobility and immobility due to climate change. Source: Adapted from the Groundswell report (2021).Dr Roman Hoffmann from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis’s migration and sustainable development research group opened a session on “immobility” by presenting a way of defining and measuring the phenomenon.
He told Carbon Brief that immobility is “basically the absence of movement”, adding:
“The are different types of immobility. We have voluntary and involuntary immobility – and sometimes these different forms are not so clearly distinguishable, but there’s more sort of a continuum. Basically, the question is whether people are able to realise their aspirations to move or to stay.”
In his talk, Hoffman noted that media narratives around migration often focus on large movements of people, while the topic of immobility “falls between the cracks”.
Immobility is often seen as a problem experienced by the poorest and most vulnerable members of society – for example, because people cannot find or afford the resources they need, such as food or transportation, because they are not healthy enough to move or because they do not have the social network they require to make such a big change.
However, Dr Joyce Soo from the Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies, explained that there are also instances when “wealth enables immobility”.
Soo explained that in coastal regions of Sweden that are exposed to extreme events, many residents there choose to stay, as there is “strong trust in government protection”, such as coastal defences. She explained that in this instance “immobility is linked to identity and status”.
A separate session at the conference focused on planned relocation – the organised movement of a group of people away from a site that is highly vulnerable to climate extremes.
Dr Ricardo Safra de Campos, a senior lecturer in human geography at the University of Exeter, told the delegates that planned relocation is “arguably the most controversial aspect of mobility as a response to climate change” and is usually implemented when “all other forms of in-situ adaptation have failed”.
Safra de Campos and Nihal Ranjit, a senior research associate at IIHS, worked with a team of researchers to interview people who underwent planned relocation programmes in India and Bangladesh.
They told delegates that planned relocation is often implemented when people feel unsafe – for example due to climate extremes – resulting in an “erosion of habitability”.
However, Ranjit explained “safety alone doesn’t make relocation successful”. He argued that the most important aspect of planned relocation is to ensure that migrants do not lose their livelihoods.
He presented the example of Ramayapatnam – a fishing village in India where houses were slowly being lost to coastal erosion. Ranjit explained that a planned relocation programme was set up to move people away from the coast, but that many people refused to move, as doing so would mean losing their only means of earning money.
He also noted the many Indian citizens hold a deep mistrust of the government and question the authorities’ intentions.
Relocation must be “rights-based, participatory, livelihood-centred and attentive to culture, community and long-term wellbeing”, Ranjit said.
Meanwhile, Dr Annah Pigott-McKellar, a human geographer at the Queensland University of Technology, compared two case studies of relocation in Australia.
When devastating flash floods hit Queensland in January 2011, a relocation programme led by the local government was set up to move people. The first houses were built within a year, and people were moved in “extremely fast”, Pigott-McKellar said. She explained that the goal was to keep the town together and “keep some level of social continuity”.
Conference attendees asking questions to the panel. Credit: Hemant Kumar from the IIHS Media Lab.Conversely, when northern New South Wales faced severe flooding in 2022, the response was slow, according to Pigott-McKellar. She explained that different members of the community were offered varying levels of assistance by the state. For example, some households offered buybacks for their lost properties, while others were not.
The result was a “fragmented and dispersed mobility pathway” that saw the community split up and mistrust in the government grow.
Pigott-McKellar emphasised the importance of follow-through and continuity in relocation, stating:
“Relocation isn’t a moment in time. It is a process that unfolds over months or years”.
Legal pathwaysMost human migration happens within borders. However, conference delegates also discussed cases in which people move to other countries, with a focus on the possible legal pathways.
Prof Jon Barnett, professor in the school of geography, Earth and atmospheric sciences at the University of Melbourne, explained migration patterns in the south Pacific islands.
He told delegates that climate change is causing “significant social impacts” across the islands, adding:
“While we can’t say that climate change is a major factor in migration decisions…there is a “fingerprint of climate change in [all] migration decisions.”
Barnett outlined legal migration routes for Pacific islanders, such as Fiji’s climate relocation trust fund, which has already had more than 2,000 requests, or seasonal worker schemes to New Zealand, which have already issued 137,000 visas.
However, he noted that there is a “massive burden” for the women who stay on the Pacific islands when their husbands leave. He explained that not only do women substitute for the labour of the men, but climate change can also amplify their workload by making farming more difficult and illnesses more widespread.
He concluded:
“Migration cannot be the only adaptation strategy we offer to the Pacific Islands. It’s got to be one strategy in the portfolio.”
Speaking separately to Carbon Brief, he said:
“As climate change amplifies pressures on people’s livelihoods, we may end up with a whole series of transnational populations that are kind of constantly in churn – where they’re not just living on the island, but also in Australia, New Zealand, the US.
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing, I think, so long as people still have a right to return to their islands and can do so – and are making informed choices…to manage their climate risk.”
Demographer Prof Raya Muttarak, from the University of Bologna, told delegates that Italy is the only EU country with explicit legislation for climate-related protection.
This six-month residence permit was introduced in 2018, for people who are found to have faced a “contingent and exceptional calamity”. However, she noted that there are flaws in the evidence base for making these claims, which can make it difficult for people to obtain the permits.
Changing narrativesMany speakers discussed the framing of climate change and migration in their talks. There was also a workshop on how to develop and promote “new narratives” around migration as an adaptation response to a changing climate on the first day of the conference.
Workshop on “new narratives”. Credit: Hemant Kumar from the IIHS Media Lab.Dr Reetika Subramanian, a senior research associate at UEA who helped to organise the conference, told Carbon Brief that many media narratives around migration are “alarmist” and “crisis-based”, with a focus on people from poorer countries illegally entering wealthier countries.
However, explained that the conference convenors wanted to begin work on developing a new framing for migration – both in response to climate change and more generally – focusing on its “adaptive aspects”.
Dr Benoy Peter, the executive director of the Centre for Migration and Inclusive Development, told Carbon Brief that “far right” media and politics often “leverage” migration to present a negative framing.
However, he said that he sees migration as a “solution”, describing it as the “fastest way for intergenerational upward social mobility for people from socially and economically disadvantaged populations”.
Prof Kerilyn Schewel, assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told Carbon Brief that the migration community has “moved beyond a ‘push factor’ narrative – that climate change is coming and uprooting communities – to a more nuanced perspective that recognises that people are already moving for all kinds of reasons”.
She said the new “research frontier” is “seeing how environmental factors intersect with these other social or developmental outcomes”, such as education.
Liby Johnson, the executive director of development organisation Gram Vikas, told the conference his reason for hope:
Attendees of the “mobility in adaptation to climate change” conference. Credit: Hemant Kumar from the IIHS Media Lab.“Communities are figuring this out. They are not rejecting mobility – they are asking for mobility that is safer, fairer and more dignified. Communities affected by climate uncertainty are not simply enduring crises – they are actively using mobility to diversify risk, protect dignity and build better futures.”
Revi, from the IIHS, told Carbon Brief:
“The future of mobility is much more certain than the climate futures are. People have been mobile for a very long time. That’s been an important part of the transformation of societies and economies for centuries…Mobility is part of the solution. It is not the full solution, but it’s part of the solution. People are voting with their feet and with their aspirations to make a change.”
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Guest post: How CMIP7 will shape the next wave of climate science
Hundreds of scientists in dozens of institutions are embarking on the next phase of the world’s largest coordinated climate-modelling effort.
Climate-modelling groups use supercomputers to run climate models that simulate the physics, chemistry and biology of the Earth’s atmosphere, land and oceans.
These models play a crucial role in helping scientists understand how the climate is responding as greenhouse gases build up in the atmosphere.
For four decades, the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) has guided the work of the climate-modelling community by providing a framework that allows for millions of results to be collected together and compared.
The resulting projections are used extensively in climate science and policy and underpin the landmark reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Now, the seventh phase of CMIP – CMIP7 – is underway, with more than 30 climate-modelling centres expected to contribute more than five million gigabytes of data – so much that downloading it using a fast internet connection would take two and a half years.
Here, we look at what is new for CMIP7, including its model experiments, updated emissions scenarios and “assessment fast track” process.
What is CMIP?Around the world, climate models are developed by different institutions and groups, known as modelling centres.
Each model is built differently and, therefore, produces slightly different results.
To better understand these differences, CMIP coordinates a common set of climate-model experiments.
These are simulations that use the same inputs and conditions, allowing scientists to compare the results and see where models agree or differ.
The figure below shows the countries that have either produced or published CMIP simulations.
Countries that have contributed modelling or data infrastructure for CMIP. Credit: CMIPDuring this time, scientists use new and improved models to run experiments from previous CMIP phases for consistency, as well as new experiments to investigate fresh scientific questions.
These simulations produce a trove of data, in the form of variables – such as temperature, rainfall, winds, sea ice extent and ocean currents. This information helps scientists study past, present and future climate change.
As scientific understanding and technical capabilities improve, models are refined. As a result, each CMIP phase incorporates higher spatial resolutions, larger ensembles, improved representations of key processes and more efficient model designs.
CMIP7 objectivesEach CMIP phase has an “experimental design” that outlines which climate-model experiments should be run and their technical specifications, including the time period the models should simulate.
The CMIP7 experimental design has several components.
As in CMIP6, for a modelling centre to contribute, they are asked to produce a suite of experiments that maintain continuity across past and future CMIP phases.
This suite of experiments is known as the “diagnostic, evaluation and characterisation of klima” (DECK) and is used to understand how their model “behaves” under simple, standard conditions. These experiments are designed and requested directly by CMIP’s scientific governing panel.
Alongside the DECK, CMIP also incorporates experiments developed by model intercomparison projects (MIPs) run by different research communities. For example, experiments exploring what the climate could look like under different levels of emissions or those that explore how sea ice might have changed between the last two ice-ages.
Currently, CMIP is working with 40 MIPs. These groups investigate specific scientific questions at their own pace, rather than on timelines prescribed by CMIP.
Running a large number of simulations can take modelling centres a long time. To speed up the process, CMIP7 has launched the “assessment fast track”.
This is a small subset of CMIP7 experiments, drawn from past and present community MIPs, identified through community consultation as being critical for scientific and policy assessments.
Data from the assessment fast track will be used in the reports that will together form the seventh assessment (AR7) of the IPCC.
It will also be used as an input by other groups that create climate information, including organisations involved in regional downscaling and modelling climate impacts and ice-sheet changes.
The figure below shows the different components of CMIP7. It shows how a subset of CMIP7 experiments will be delivered on an accelerated timeline, while the majority of experiments will be led by MIPs.
The different components of CMIP7. Credit: CMIP CMIP7 experimentsThere are three categories of experiments set to take place in CMIP7:
- Historical experiments, which are designed to improve scientific understanding of past climates. Model runs exploring the recent historical period also allow scientists to evaluate the performance of models by checking how well they replicate real-world observations.
- Prediction and projection experiments, which allow scientists to analyse what different climates could look like under varying levels of greenhouse gas emissions, as well as near-term (10-year) prediction experiments.
- Process understanding experiments, which are designed to better understand specific processes and isolate cause-and-effect relationships. For example, a set of experiments might change the emissions of one greenhouse gas at a time to see how much each pollutant contributes to warming or cooling the climate.
Modelling centres typically produce and publish their data for the historical and projection experiments first.
CMIP expects the first datasets to be available by this summer, with broader publication recommended by the end of the year, in time to be assessed by IPCC AR7 authors.
Drafting of the reports of AR7 is currently underway. However, countries are yet to agree on the timeline for when they will be published. This presents a challenge for the climate-modelling community, given the difficulties of working with a moving deadline.
(For more on the ongoing standoff between countries around the timing of publication of the reports, read Carbon Brief’s explainer.)
New emissions scenariosScientists use emissions scenarios to simulate the future climate according to how global energy systems and land use might change over the next century.
Crucially, these scenarios – also known as “pathways” – are not forecasts or predictions of the future.
The group tasked with designing the scenarios for CMIP phases, as well as producing the “input files” for climate models, is the “scenario model intercomparison project”, or ScenarioMIP.
In a new paper, the group has set out the new set of scenarios for CMIP7:
- High (H): Emissions grow to as high as deemed plausibly possible, consistent with a rollback of current climate policies. This scenario will result in strong warming.
- High-to-low (HL): Emissions rise as in the high scenario at first, but are cut sharply in the second half of the century to reach net-zero by 2100.
- Medium (M): Emissions consistent with current policies, frozen as of 2025, leading to a moderate level of warming.
- Medium-to-low (ML): Emissions are slowly reduced, eventually reaching net-zero emissions by the end of the century.
- Low (L): Emissions consistent with likely keeping warming below 2C and not returning to 1.5C before the end of the century.
- Very low (VL): Emissions are cut to keep temperatures “as low as plausible”, according to the paper. This scenario limits warming to close to 1.5C by the end of the century, with limited overshoot beforehand.
- Low-to-negative (LN): Emissions fall slightly slower than in the VL scenario, with temperatures just rising above 1.5C. Emissions then rapidly drop to negative to bring warming back down.
The figures below show the emissions (left) and the estimated global temperature changes (right) under the seven new scenarios for CMIP7, from the low-to-negative emissions scenario (turquoise) to a high-emissions scenario (brown).
The greenhouse gas emissions for each of the CMIP7 climate scenarios (left) and the associated estimated average temperature change from 1850-1900 (right) using the FaIR emulator. Source: Adapted from Van Vuuren et al. (2026)As a set, the ScenarioMIP scenarios “cover plausible outcomes ranging from a high level of climate change (in the case of policy failure) to low levels of climate change resulting from stringent policies”, the paper says.
Compared to the scenarios in CMIP6, the range in future emissions they cover is now narrower, the authors say:
“On the high-end of the range, the CMIP6 high emission levels (quantified by SSP5-8.5) have become implausible, based on trends in the costs of renewables, the emergence of climate policy and recent emission trends…At the low end, many CMIP6 emission trajectories have become inconsistent with observed trends during the 2020-30 period.”
Put simply, progress on climate policies and cheaper renewable technologies means that scenarios of very high emissions have now been ruled out.
However, this progress has not been sufficient to keep society on track for the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C goal. The paper notes that, “at this point of time, some overshoot of the 1.5C seems unavoidable”.
[The change to the high end of the scenarios has sparked misleading commentary in the media and on social media – even from US president Donald Trump. A Carbon Brief factcheck unpacks the debate.]
Also notable in the new scenarios is the “low-to-negative” pathway, which has the explicit feature of emissions becoming “net-negative”. In other words, through carbon dioxide removal (CDR) techniques, society reaches the point at which more carbon is being taken out of the atmosphere than is being added through greenhouse gas emissions.
Reaching net-negative emissions is fundamental to “overshoot scenarios”, where global warming passes a target and then is brought back down by large-scale CDR.
Overshoot scenarios allow scientists and policymakers to investigate the impacts of a delay to emissions reductions and better understand how the world might respond to passing a warming target. This includes the question of whether some impacts of climate change, such as ice sheet melt, are reversible.
CMIP has encouraged modelling centres to run simulations using the “high” and “very low” scenarios first to ensure downstream users of the data – including groups working on regional climate projections (CORDEX), climate impacts modelling (ISIMIP) and ice-sheet modelling (ISMIP) – have enough time to produce their data for IPCC reports.
These two scenarios were selected as they sit at opposite ends of the spectrum of climate outcomes. The high scenario will demonstrate how models behave under high emissions, while the very low scenario will demonstrate how models behave when emissions are rapidly reduced.
CMIP has recommended that modelling centres then run the “medium” and “high-to-low” scenarios. The remaining scenarios should then follow and no official recommendation has been made yet on their production order.
Other new featuresIn addition to the assessment fast track and new scenarios, CMIP7 has a number of other new developments.
Updated data for simulationsClimate models use input datasets to define the set of external drivers – or “forcings” – that have caused the global warming observed so far. These drivers include greenhouse gases, changes to incoming solar radiation and volcanic eruptions.
CMIP recommends modelling groups use the same input datasets, as this makes it easier to compare model results.
In CMIP7, the historical forcing datasets available for modelling groups to use have been improved to better represent real-world changes and extended closer to the present day. The historical simulations will be able to simulate the past climate from 1850 through to the end of 2021, whereas CMIP6 only simulated the past climate through to 2014.
CMIP is also planning to extend these historical datasets through to 2025 and maybe further throughout the course of CMIP7.
Emissions-driven simulationsCMIP7 introduces a new focus on CO2 emissions-driven simulations, providing a more realistic representation of how the climate responds to changes in emissions.
In older generations of climate models, atmospheric levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gas concentrations have been needed as an input to the model. These levels would be produced by running scenarios of CO2 emissions through separate carbon cycle models. The resulting climate-model runs were known as “concentration-driven simulations”.
However, many of the latest generation of models are now able to run in “emissions-driven mode”. This means that they receive CO2 emissions as an input and the model itself simulates the carbon cycle and the resulting levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
This development is important, as climate policies are typically defined in terms of emissions, rather than overall atmospheric concentrations.
This new development in modelling will enable a more realistic representation of the carbon cycle and a better understanding of how it might change under different levels of warming.
Enhanced model documentation and evaluationAll CMIP7 models will be required to supply standardised model documentation that ensures consistency across model descriptions and makes it easier for end users to understand the data.
Additionally, CMIP scientists have developed a new open-access tool that dramatically speeds up the evaluation of climate models.
This “rapid evaluation framework” allows researchers to compare model outputs with real-world observations, providing immediate insight into model performance.
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New coal plants hit ‘10-year’ global high in 2025 – but power output still fell
The number of new coal-fired power plants built around the world hit a “10-year high” in 2025, even as the global coal fleet generated less electricity, amid a “widening disconnect” in the sector.
That is according to the latest annual report from Global Energy Monitor (GEM), which finds that the world added nearly 100 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-power capacity in 2025, the equivalent of roughly 100 large coal plants.
It adds that 95% of the new coal plants were built in India and China.
Yet GEM says that the amount of electricity generated with coal fell by 0.6% in 2025 – with sharp drops in both China and India – as the fuel was displaced by record wind and solar output, among other factors.
The report notes that there have been previous dips in output from coal power and there could still be ups – as well as downs – in the near term.
For example, nearly 70% of the coal-fired units scheduled to retire globally in 2025 did not do so, due to postponements triggered by the 2022 energy crisis and policy shifts in the US.
However, GEM says that the underlying dynamics for coal power have now fundamentally shifted, as the cost of renewables has fallen and low usage hits coal profitability.
China and India dominate growthIn 2025, coal-capacity growth hit a 10-year high, with 97 gigawatts (GW) of new power plants being added, according to GEM.
(Capacity refers to the potential maximum power output, as measured in GW, whereas generation refers to power actually generated by the assets over a period of time, measured in gigawatt hours, GWh.)
This is the highest level since 2015 when 107GW began operating, as shown in the chart below. This makes 2025 the second-highest level of additions on record.
Coal-fired power capacity that began operation each year from 2000 to 2025, GW. Source: Global Energy Monitor.The majority of this growth came from China and India, which added 78GW and 10GW, respectively, against 9GW from all other countries.
Yet GEM points out that, even as coal capacity in China grew by 6%, the output from coal-fired power plants actually fell 1.2%. This means that each power plant would have been running less often, eroding its profitability. Similarly, capacity in India grew by 3.8%, while generation fell by 2.9%.
China and India had accounted for 87% of new coal-power capacity that came into operation in the first half of 2025. The shift up to 95% in the year as a whole highlights how increasingly just those two countries dominate the sector, GEM says.
Christine Shearer, project manager of GEM’s global coal plant tracker, said in a statement:
“In 2025, the world built more coal and used it less. Development has grown more concentrated, too – 95% of coal plant construction is now in China and India, and even they are building solar and wind fast enough to displace it.”
Both China and India saw solar and wind meet most or all of the growth in electricity demand last year.
Analysis for Carbon Brief last year showed that, in the first six months of 2025 alone, a record 212GW of solar was added in China, helping to make it the nation’s single-largest source of clean-power generation, for example.
However, the country continues to propose new coal plants. In 2025, a record 162GW of capacity was newly proposed for development or reactivated, according to GEM. This brought the overall capacity under development in the country to more than 500GW.
China’s 15th “five-year plan”, covering 2026-2030, had pledged to “promote the peaking” of coal use, while a more recent pair of policies introduced stricter controls on local governments’ coal use.
For its part, in India some 28GW of new coal capacity was newly proposed or reactivated last year, bringing the total under development to 107.3GW and under-construction capacity to 23.5GW.
The Indian government is planning to complete 85GW of new coal capacity in the next seven years, even as clean-energy expansion reaches levels that could cover all of the growth in electricity demand.
Outside of China and India, GEM says that just 32 countries have new coal plants under construction or under development, down from 38 in 2024.
Countries that have dropped plans for new coal in 2025 include South Korea, Brazil and Honduras, it says. GEM notes that the latter two mean that Latin America is now free from any new coal-power proposals.
This means that both electricity generation from coal and the construction of new coal-fired power plants are increasingly concentrated in just a few countries, as the chart below shows.
Top 10 countries for total operating coal power-plant capacity (left) and for newly added capacity (right), GW. Source: Global Energy Monitor.Indonesia’s coal fleet grew by 7% in 2025 to 61GW, with a quarter of the new capacity tied to nickel and aluminium processing, according to GEM.
Turkey – which is gearing up to host the COP31 international climate summit in November – has just one coal-plant proposal remaining, down from 70 in 2015.
The amount of new coal capacity that started to operate in south-east Asia fell for the third year in a row in 2025, according to GEM.
Countries in south Asia that rely on imported energy are increasingly looking to other technologies to protect themselves from fossil-fuel shocks, such as Pakistan, which is rapidly deploying solar, states the GEM report.
In Africa, plans for new coal capacity are concentrated in Zimbabwe and Zambia, the report shows, with the two countries accounting for two-thirds of planned development in the region.
‘Persistence of policies’While new coal plants are still being built and even more are under development, GEM notes that the global electricity system is undergoing rapid changes.
Crucially, the growth of cheap renewable energy means that new coal plants do not automatically translate into higher electricity generation from coal.
Without rising output from coal power, building new plants simply results in the coal fleet running less often, further eroding its economics relative to wind and solar power.
Indeed, GEM notes that electricity generation from coal fell globally in 2025. Moreover, a recent report by thinktank Ember found that renewable energy overtook coal in 2025 to become the world’s largest source of electricity.
GEM notes that coal generation may fluctuate in the near term, in particular due to potential increases in demand driven by higher gas prices.
It adds that gas price shocks, such as the one triggered by the Iran war, can cause temporary reversals in the longer-term shift away from coal.
According to Carbon Brief analysis, at least eight countries announced plans to either increase their coal use or review plans to transition away from coal in the first month of the Iran war. However, a much-discussed “return to coal” is expected to be limited.
GEM’s report highlights that global fossil-fuel shocks can have an impact on the phase out of coal capacity over several years.
In the EU, for example, 69% of planned retirements did not take place in 2025, due to postponements that began in the 2022-23 energy crisis triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to the report. Countries across the bloc chose to retain their coal capacity amid gas supply disruptions and concerns about energy security.
Yet coal-fired power generation in the bloc is now more than 40% below 2022 levels. Again, this highlights that coal capacity does not necessarily translate into electricity generation from coal, with its associated CO2 emissions.
Overall, GEM notes that “repeated exposure to fossil-fuel price volatility is as likely to accelerate the shift toward clean energy as it is to delay it”.
GEM’s Shearer says in a statement:
“The central challenge heading into 2026 is not the availability of alternatives, but the persistence of policies that treat coal as necessary even as power systems move increasingly beyond it.”
In the US, 59% of planned retirements in 2025 did not happen, according to GEM. This was due to government intervention to keep ageing coal plants online.
Five coal-power plants have been told to remain online through federal “emergency” orders, for example, even as the coal fleet continues to face declining competitiveness.
Keeping these plants online has cost hundreds of millions of dollars and helped drive an annual increase in the average US household electricity prices of 7%, according to GEM.
Despite such measures, Trump has overseen a larger fall in coal-fired power capacity than any other US president, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Meanwhile, according to new figures from the US Energy Information Administration, solar and wind both set new records for energy production in 2025.
Despite challenges with policy and wider fossil-fuel impacts, the underlying dynamic has shifted, says GEM, as “clean energy becomes more competitive and widely deployed” around the world.
It adds that this raises the prospect of “a more sustained decoupling between coal-capacity growth and generation, particularly if clean-energy deployment continues at current rates”.
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Cropped 20 May 2026: Deforestation roadmap | Melanesian Ocean Summit | Returning pet parrots to the wild
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter.
Subscribe for free here.
COP30 ROADMAP: Brazil’s global roadmap away from deforestation will involve countries producing their own voluntary pathways to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030, according to a first outline covered by Climate Home News. At the COP30 climate talks in Belém last year, some 93 countries called for a deforestation “roadmap” to be part of the summit’s formal outcomes. Despite this, countries failed to agree to one – leading host nation Brazil to promise to bring forward a voluntary roadmap as a compromise.
FOREST FORUM: Speaking at the UN Forum on Forests earlier this month, Juliano Assunção, an advisor to the COP30 presidency on deforestation, presented a first outline of the roadmap, said Climate Home News. According to the publication, Assunção said the roadmap “will not prescribe a single model”, but would instead invite countries to convert their pledges “into forest roadmaps grounded on regional and national diagnosis”. Elsewhere at the forum, Indonesia announced carbon-offsetting plans involving the restoration of 12m hectares of degraded land, said Reuters.
GOALS REPORT: Amid the talks, the UN published its latest assessment on achieving six global forest goals for 2017-30, concluding that “progress is evident, but insufficient”. Down to Earth reported that, according to the report, the world remains off track on two of the “key” targets: ending deforestation and eliminating extreme poverty among forest-dependent populations. Sustainability magazine reported that the goals set a target of increasing global forest area by 3% by 2030, but that, in reality, forest area has declined by more than 40m hectares since 2015.
Melanesian Ocean SummitSEA SOLIDARITY: The leaders of Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Vanuatu signed a declaration to establish the Melanesian Ocean Corridor of Reserves, reported the Pacific Islands News Association. The corridor will “establish joint border governance, enforcement and marine science frameworks” across five Pacific nations and territories, said the outlet. Vanuatu’s prime minister, Jotham Napat, told the Melanesian Ocean Summit that the corridor “reminds us that our solidarity, not the legacy of colonial rule, determines our future”, according to Vanuatu’s Daily Post.
SEA SOVEREIGNTY: Part of the Melanesian corridor is a new marine protected area the size of the UK, announced by Papua New Guinea at the summit, said Oceanographic magazine. The new MPA will “prohibit all fishing within its boundaries”, reported the outlet. Meanwhile, Tuvalu’s Post Courier reported that the country is “currently developing its first-ever national-security policy, which will place maritime conservation and management at the absolute centre of the country’s strategic architecture”. Prime minister Feleti Teo stated: “The ocean is our sovereignty.”
CONSIDER THE OCEAN: In a comment article in the journal npj Ocean Sustainability, Dr Carlos García-Soto from the Spanish National Research Council wrote that there is a “structural weakness” in UN climate processes. He noted that the final decision text from COP30 “omitted the ocean entirely”, despite the summit “deliver[ing] the strongest ocean-related initiatives ever presented at a UN climate conference”. García-Soto also outlined five key priorities for integrating ocean considerations into climate governance.
News and views- CANADA OWN GOAL: The Canadian government has no plans to enshrine into law commitments meant to ensure the nation meets its international nature goals, despite hosting the pivotal COP15 biodiversity summit less than four years ago, said CBC News.
- CREDIT CHANGE: Brazil’s national monetary council has postponed a regulation that would have blocked farms involved in deforestation from receiving rural credits, reported Folha de São Paulo. The change occurs “following pressure from agribusiness groups to relax the rules”, said the outlet, and means the requirement will now not take effect until January 2027.
- SAND CRISIS: A growing global appetite for sand is outstripping demand and threatening ecosystems, according to a new UN report covered by Reuters.
- LAOS DAMMED: A natural world heritage site in northern Laos is being put at risk by a $3.5bn dam project, reported Nikkei Asia.
- RAPID RESPONSE: The European Commission released its fertiliser action plan to “provide rapid support to farmers…and prevent rising food prices” amid the conflict in the Middle East, said Agenzia Nova.
- MARSH REVIVAL: Rising water levels are “beginning to revive” southern Iraq’s Cibayish marshes following a years-long drought and “drawing buffalo herders and fishermen back to areas once abandoned”, said Reuters. The country’s water ministry was able to “release growing volumes” of water from reservoirs following heavy winter rains, added the newswire.
This week, Carbon Brief visits a conservation project working to return former pet parrots to the wild in Colombia.
Beautiful feathers. The playfulness and intellect of a small child. On occasion, the ability to partake in some pleasant conversation.
Parrots have captured the attention of humans for centuries. But their unique qualities have also contributed to their decline in the wild.
Some 16m parrots were moved across borders to be sold as pets over 1975-2016, according to one study, making them the most internationally traded bird in the world.
In Colombia, the world’s most biodiverse country by area, the introduction of tougher laws in 2016 means keeping a wild animal as a pet is now viewed as a “crime against the environment”, punishable with monetary fines.
These stricter rules led to greater numbers of wild parrots being seized by the police and more people giving up their birds voluntarily.
But this clampdown created a new conundrum: What will the Colombian authorities do with their growing population of these, formerly pet, parrots?
A charity called Fundación Loros – “Parrot Foundation” in English – hopes to have the answer.
Parrot rehabilitationThe foundation is based on 33 hectares of tropical dry forest in Bolívar – around a 40-minute car ride from the popular tourist city of Cartagena on Colombia’s Caribbean coast.
The deafening screeches of parrots when entering through the site’s gates were impossible to ignore.
Inside, foundation guide Corina walked Carbon Brief through the various stages of pet parrot rehabilitation.
Former pet parrots that are released directly into the wild are unlikely to survive. This is because they often lack the necessary skills, such as how to find food or stay away from predators, including monkeys and coatis.
Parrots arriving at the foundation follow a seven-stage process.
First, they are checked over by a vet and given a tag, so they can be continuously monitored.
Following this, they are kept in a large enclosure and slowly reintroduced to the types of food they might encounter in the wild, including wild fruits and nuts.
After this, they undergo “flight training” – many of the parrots will have been kept in a small cage and never learned how to travel long distances. This involves workers encouraging the birds to fly greater distances in exchange for rewards.
They also join other birds for “flock cohesion” lessons. In the wild, parrots are highly social animals who rely on their group to survive and raise chicks.
A scarlet macaw eats a small mango at its release site in Bolívar, Colombia. Credit: Daisy DunneFollowing these steps, parrots are taken deeper into the foundation’s forest reserve – away from loggers and poachers.
There, they spend some time in an enclosure getting acquainted with their new surroundings.
After this, the door to the cage is opened – allowing them to fly free, but return for shelter and food if they need. Eventually, the birds settle back into the wild.
Waiting listIn addition to their parrot rehabilitation programme, the charity built a series of nest boxes and installed them high in the tree canopy across the reserve.
Their continuous monitoring of the birds has shown that many of the former pets have started raising wild chicks.
The work is hugely rewarding, said Corina, but the charity currently has a waiting list that is “months long”, given the growing number of wild animals needing rehabilitation across Colombia.
Despite helping the authorities with their wild animal problem, the charity largely relies on private donations to continue, she said. The hope is to develop an eco-tourism model to make more revenue in the future, she added.
Watch, read, listenCARBON CONSULTATIONS: The Diplomat explored whether local residents were properly consulted on a carbon-offsetting programme in Cambodia.
FISH FIGHTS: The Ghanaian Times examined the tensions surrounding marine conservation in the country and how it is unduly burdening small-scale fisherfolk.
DELTA WORK: Mongabay reported on how the world’s “great deltas” are sinking, leading to the loss of a “global food system”.
LITHUANIA PEAT BOGS: The New York Times reported on Lithuanian efforts to restore peat bogs in order to “reinforce the border” and “lock away” carbon.
New science- Coastal marshes are encroaching on uplands “nearly twice as fast” on agricultural land as they are on forestland, suggesting that agricultural practices are “accelerat[ing] the impacts of saltwater intrusion” | Nature Sustainability
- Fungi that cause diseases in plants will approximately double in abundance around the Antarctic Peninsula by 2100 under a moderate emissions scenario | Global Change Biology
- Conserving Ethiopia’s protected areas currently involves managing “trade-offs between nature and people” that are “central to whether global biodiversity commitments can be delivered” | Nature Ecology and Evolution
- 20-22 May: Informal consultations of parties to the UN Fish Stocks Agreement | New York City
- 30 May-6 June: Meeting of the Global Environment Facility Assembly | Samarkand, Uzbekistan
- 31 May: Colombian presidential elections
- 8-18 June:Subsidiary body meetings of the UNFCCC | Bonn, Germany
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne and Orla Dwyer. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org
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CCC: Investing in ‘urgent’ UK adaptation action ‘cheaper than climate damages’
Investing in flood defences, air conditioning and other measures to protect the UK from climate change will provide “long-term savings” for the country, according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC).
The government’s climate advisors have proposed a set of climate-adaptation actions that would require at least an extra £11bn per year in spending, largely from the private sector.
Most of this investment would go towards keeping buildings cool and protecting them from floods, as well as building reservoirs and supporting water-efficiency measures.
The committee says this is a “manageable level of investment” that will shave billions of pounds off climate change-driven damages that the UK will experience in the coming years.
Crucially, the CCC stresses that this approach would be “cheaper than facing the damages”.
This analysis comes from the CCC’s new “well-adapted UK” report, which sets out more than 100 actions that the committee says could help the UK prepare for global warming up to 2C above pre-industrial levels by 2050.
The CCC highlights 20 overarching objectives and a set of measurable targets that it says should be prioritised in the coming years, such as curbing deaths related to extreme heat.
This first-of-its-kind “solutions-focused” report will feed into the UK government’s upcoming fourth climate-change risk assessment, due in 2027, and inform its approach to climate adaptation.
Here, Carbon Brief provides an overview of the key messages in the 554-page report, including the actions highlighted by the CCC and the policy levers required to implement them.
- What is the ‘well-adapted UK’ report?
- What are the climate risks facing the UK?
- How much will it cost to prepare the UK for climate change?
- What measures does the CCC recommend?
The CCC’s new report on how to create a “well-adapted UK” sits alongside a legal process designed to ensure the country is prepared for the impacts of climate change.
It warns that the UK has not yet done enough to adapt to climate change and sets out priorities – as well as potential solutions – for the challenges ahead.
The CCC’s work stems from the Climate Change Act 2008, under which the UK government must publish a Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA) every five years. This must set out the risks and opportunities the nation is facing due to climate change.
A key pillar of the act is the creation of the CCC, an independent body that provides advice on the climate-related risks facing the UK and how it should adapt.
The CCC has previously produced three technical reports to advise the government on adaptation. Today sees the publication of the fourth set of advice, officially known as the CCRA4-IA technical report. The “well-adapted UK” report sits alongside this.
(The CCC also makes more frequent assessments of adaptation strategies produced by England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland individually.)
This is the first time the CCC has produced “well-adapted UK”, which it describes as a “solution-focused report” providing suggested government actions to address adaptation needs.
Speaking during a press briefing ahead of the report launch, Baroness Brown, chair of the CCC’s adaptation committee, said:
“It’s a first for us, the first time we’ve produced a report of this sort.It forms part of our independent assessment for the fourth climate-change risk assessment and it contains our advice to government.
“It’s now nearly 20 years since the Climate Change Act was passed and, despite making very strong progress on reducing emissions since 2008, I think we all agree that we have done nothing like enough to address the increasing risk from the impacts of climate change to the UK today.”
The CCC report offers evidence to support action by individual UK governments, as well as other organisations focused on adaptation.
It highlights three priority areas as the UK prepares for 2C of warming by 2050: providing cooling to protect from heat; increasing flood preparedness; and improving water management.
The report says that deploying adaptation at scale around these priorities will help avoid loss of life, as well as disruption to people and the economy.
It also sets out climate risks, actions and enablers across 14 key systems, breaking the analysis down into sectors to allow for clear recommendations on what needs to be done and accountability for delivering progress.
However, the report notes that “climate risks do not simply sit in single systems. Many of the most dangerous risks will cascade across them.”
The CCC states that “adaptation cannot wait”, adding that the duty of the state to keep people safe and secure is being compromised by climate change. As such, it says adaptation needs the same level of focus and commitment as geopolitical and other threats.
The report says:
“Damage is already happening, which can be avoided. Taking action today is cheaper than taking action tomorrow. The main challenge is leadership, getting adaptation underway at sufficient scale and speed.”
Finally, the CCC states that adaptation cannot replace efforts to limit warming, but is instead an “essential complement” to cutting greenhouse gas emissions. It describes adaptation action as “both necessary and achievable, but also urgent”.
What are the climate risks facing the UK?The UK is already facing increased threats of heatwaves, extreme rainfall and sea level rise due to human-driven burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use, says the report.
Since 2000, the UK has experienced all 10 of its hottest years on record and temperatures passed 40C for the first time in 2022. There is a 50% likelihood of reaching those temperatures again in the next 12 years, says the CCC.
Warmer air can hold more moisture than colder air, with the result that these warmer temperatures have been accompanied by heavier and more intense rainfall in all seasons of the year across the UK.
Additionally, the UK has experienced about 200 millimetres of sea level rise since 1901, with this occurring at an accelerating rate over the last three decades, notes the CCC. The largest increases in sea levels have occurred on the country’s southern coast.
The level of risk facing the country in the future will be determined largely by the level of global emissions, states the report.
Under current emissions pathways, the world will reach around 2C of warming above pre-industrial temperatures by 2050, climbing to nearly 3C by the end of the century.
Lower warming levels are still possible, if countries strengthen their current climate policies and accelerate global emissions reductions. At the same time, scenarios involving even higher levels of warming “should be considered in long-term planning”, says the report.
The table below summarises potential changes to the UK’s climate hazards at 2C of global warming in 2050 and at 4C of global warming in 2100.
(function(){function e(){window.addEventListener(`message`,function(e){if(e.data[`datawrapper-height`]!==void 0){var t=document.querySelectorAll(`iframe`);for(var n in e.data[`datawrapper-height`])for(var r=0,i;i=t[r];r++)if(i.contentWindow===e.source){var a=e.data[`datawrapper-height`][n]+`px`;i.style.height=a}}})}e()})();In addition to direct impacts on the UK, says the report, the country “cannot be isolated” from global climate risks, such as destructive extreme-weather events.
The report notes that risk is based on three components: hazard; exposure; and vulnerability.
Hazard refers to the physical event that can cause damage. Exposure refers to the presence of people or assets in the area that may be affected by a hazard. Vulnerability is how susceptible something or someone is to experiencing damage if it is exposed to a hazard, accounting for the ability to take adaptation measures.
Current vulnerability and exposure are both highly variable across the country, with marginalised groups likely to be disproportionately impacted by climate change. How these will change in the future is highly uncertain, it says.
How much will it cost to prepare the UK for climate change?The CCC estimates that delivering its package of adaptation actions will require additional investment of at least £11bn per year, shared between public and private sectors.
(The report notes that, given limits in available information, this is “likely to be an underestimate, but it gives a sense of the scale of investment needed”.)
Roughly a third of this investment will likely be needed for air conditioning and passive cooling measures, according to the committee. Another third will be required for flood defences and water conservation.
Overall, the CCC says around 36% of the expected investment is in areas “that have tended to be funded by the public sector”, while 41% will likely fall to the private sector. The remaining costs are “undetermined”.
The committee stresses that “acting now is cheaper than acting later” and that investing in adaptation is “cheaper than facing the damages” caused by climate change.
Climate-related damages are already costing the UK economy and could grow to around 1-5% of GDP by 2050 – roughly £60-260bn per year – under scenarios of around 2C global warming, according to the CCC.
(The CCC has previously suggested that cutting emissions to net-zero would require investments of £20-40bn per year, yielding savings of a similar magnitude.)
In this context, the £11bn a year “is a manageable level of investment for the UK economy” that will deliver “long-term savings for both public and private actors”, states the report.
CCC analysis of a new adaptation package covering heat and health, urban heat and water scarcity suggests that these measures alone could save up to £12bn a year in climate-damage costs by the 2050s. This can be seen in the chart below.
Potential for a package of additional adaptation measures (light blue) to reduce costs from climate-change impacts, £bn, compared to existing adaptation measures (dark blue). Source: CCC analysis.At a launch event, Baroness Brown expanded on the figures, noting that climate change is already costing up to 2% of GDP per year. She added that this figure amounts to £60bn, which could rise to £260bn (5% of GDP) by 2050 without action.
.cb-tweet{ width: 65%; box-shadow: 3px 3px 6px #d3d3d3; margin: auto; } .cb-tweet img{ border: solid 1.25px #333333; border-radius: 5px; } @media (max-width:650px){ .cb-tweet{ width:100%; } }The CCC stresses that many adaptation actions are “low-cost or low-regret”, highlighting numerous examples that show very favourable benefit-cost ratios. For example, flood resilience measures tend to produce benefits five-times greater than their costs.
In addition, 53 of the 120 adaptation actions for which costs were assessed provided additional “co-benefits”, such as the energy and water bill savings that can result from water-efficiency improvements.
While the CCC does not provide a comprehensive estimate of the financial impact of such co-benefits, it says they “strengthen the case for action”.
The report also emphasises that it makes financial sense to target adaptation measures at people or assets that are particularly vulnerable to and at-risk from climate impacts.
What measures does the CCC recommend?The CCC’s report sets out a range of climate risks and required adaptation actions across 14 “key systems”, including health, land and the economy as a whole.
As well as proposing more than 100 “actions”, the committee lays out the kind of policies that could be implemented to achieve them. For example, actions in the building sector might require changes to planning policy.
The report also sets out key “enablers” for adaptation in each of these key systems. Common enablers are adequate financial resources, better monitoring processes and improved public awareness of adaptation issues.
The CCC sets out 20 overarching objectives and 39 proposed targets to guide the UK’s adaptation progress out to 2050, which “set out a clear and measurable ambition for a well-adapted UK”. These objectives and targets can be seen in the table below.
(function(){function e(){window.addEventListener(`message`,function(e){if(e.data[`datawrapper-height`]!==void 0){var t=document.querySelectorAll(`iframe`);for(var n in e.data[`datawrapper-height`])for(var r=0,i;i=t[r];r++)if(i.contentWindow===e.source){var a=e.data[`datawrapper-height`][n]+`px`;i.style.height=a}}})}e()})();The committee says its goals are “clearly measurable and time-bound” and will rely on actions being implemented – often cutting across different systems. For example, curbing deaths linked to extreme heat will rely on the construction of cooler buildings.
For each of the 14 key systems identified, the CCC says it has applied “10 principles for effective adaptation” in order to “inform meaningful recommendations to national government departments”.
Among other things, these principles include preparing for 2C of warming by 2050 and “considering” 4C of warming by 2100.
The following headings break down the key threats facing each of the key systems identified by the CCC – and the actions needed to prepare them for climate change.
HealthClimate change poses a direct threat to population health, with extreme heat linked to everything from increased threat of heart attacks to the spread of climate-sensitive infectious diseases.
At the same time, heatwaves and flooding can disrupt the normal functioning of the UK’s health and social-care system, which can also harm people’s health.
The CCC identifies the following “priority adaptation actions” to protect people from climate change, with a particular focus on minimising excess heat-related mortality and morbidity:
- Behavioural changes – supported by information services – to avoid health risks during hot weather;
- Public cooling spaces to protect vulnerable people during heat events;
- Visits by healthcare or community workers to high-risk people;
- Mental health treatment for people exposed to flooding;
- Surveillance and monitoring of climate hazards and climate-sensitive diseases;
- Early warning systems, including the expansion of heat alerts beyond England;
- Expanding natural areas that can provide shade and reduce the urban heat island effect;
- Maintaining “safe” water bodies that reduce breeding of endemic mosquitoes and harmful algal blooms.
The CCC also identifies priority actions to protect health and social-care facilities from extreme weather:
- Cooling measures in healthcare facilities, including retrofitting buildings with “passive cooling” measures and installing air conditioning;
- Flood defences and other protective measures, such as waterproofed electricals, at hospitals and care homes;
- Training for health professionals that focuses on climate-related health risks;
- Business continuity planning to manage staff absences during extreme-weather events;
- Occupational support to protect healthcare staff during extreme weather;
- Emergency scenario planning for climate-related emergencies.
Many of the required actions would fall to devolved governments and rely on public funding.
The CCC says the UK government could ensure facilities are built to cope with climate extremes by embedding adaptation in statutory health, building and environmental standards. It adds that there is also a need for education programmes to encourage behavioural change.
Crucially, the committee also highlights the need for sustained government funding for adaptation-specific measures. In total, the CCC says the known investment required to deliver adaptation in the health system could be around £0.7-1.7bn per year.
Built environment and communitiesClimate change presents numerous risks to the UK’s settlements, buildings and communities, according to the CCC.
The report notes that already, more than half of UK homes are at risk of overheating, 6.3m properties are located in flood-risk areas and extreme weather is causing millions of pounds of damage to properties every year.
Without additional adaptation measures by 2050, it says that the risk of overheating is projected to be 4.2 times higher and that 27% more homes are projected to be at risk of flooding and coastal erosion in England. In addition, the risk of subsidence in Great Britain will increase, with 11% of properties affected by the 2070s, as well as other impacts.
As such, the CCC has set out a series of recommended actions to ensure settlements, buildings and communities are fit-for-purpose and durable places to live and work:
- Building out catchment-scale flood defences, including a mix of engineering “hard” defences and natural defences;
- Expanding urban green infrastructure, for example, street trees, parks and waterways, to provide natural cooling and shade;
- Introducing more “sustainable drainage systems”, such as green roofs, permeable paving, rain gardens and others;
- Helping communities prepare for extreme-weather events;
- Build out nature-based solutions to manage changes from sea level rise and coastal erosion;
- Introducing cooling measures in buildings, including both active cooling – such as air conditioning – and passive cooling measures;
- Utilising government schemes, such as Flood Re, to help ensure all households can access insurance and that it is affordable.
The CCC highlights engagement with communities, ensuring that they are well informed about the future climate risks they face from extreme-weather events, as a key enabler of the above actions.
Holland Park, an affluent area of West London. Credit: BBA Travel / Alamy Stock PhotoIt notes that a number of policies are already in place to address flooding and overheating, as well as funding for large-scale flood-defence projects. However, it says more can be brought in to support the adaptation of the existing and planned building stock.
Public servicesThe CCC’s assessment of public services covers the facilities and operation of services outside of health and social care, such as education, justice and emergency services.
It highlights that hazards such as heatwaves and flooding can cause closure and disruption to the operation of services, as well as impact things such as children’s ability to concentrate. Even in the current climate, it says an estimated 4.3% of cumulative learning time is lost in England due to high temperatures.
Emergency workers are increasingly facing challenges created by climate change. For example, wildfires increase demand for fire and rescue, police and environmental-incident response services.
The CCC calls for the creation of new targets to help protect people from the impacts of increased temperatures and flood risk, including: internal temperatures in learning environments should be kept between 16-25C by 2050; and internal temperatures at prisons and justice facilities should be kept between 16-26C.
By 2030, all emergency services and incident responders should be equipped to meet all weather events, adds the committee.
The CCC sets out suggested actions the government could take to ensure that services operate during extreme weather at levels at least as good as today:
- Introducing outdoor shading, such as trees and canopies, at sites such as playgrounds and outside school gates;
- Rolling out passive cooling strategies;
- Introducing active cooling, such as air conditioning, where necessary to reduce indoor temperatures;
- Rolling out surface-water flood alleviation measures;
- Ensuring key assets are adapted, such as backup generators and response vehicles, so that climate change does not impact the delivery of public services;
- Rostering and timetabling should take into account climate-related travel and health issues, bolstered by flexible capacity within services and staff training;
- Introducing surveillance and early warning systems.
The CCC adds that retrofitting buildings to allow them to adapt to climate change will require both up-front funding and long-term revenue budgets, as will expansions of personnel.
It says policy should be used to ensure that building regulations and design standards for public buildings are suitable for future climate conditions. Additionally, the government should look to provide public funding, accessible and reliable climate information and help to improve joint working between different departments, delivery bodies and responders.
Cultural heritageThe CCC considers four aspects of cultural heritage in its report: cultural and archaeological sites and landscapes; buildings that are listed or otherwise significant; fixed assets, such as statues, monuments and shipwrecks; and moveable assets, such as art and historic documents.
Without adaptation, flooding, storms and coastal erosion may reduce access to these sites and assets, or even destroy them entirely. However, due to their varied nature, any adaptation plans need to be highly context-specific, it says.
Antony Gormley statue submerged in the Water of Leith at Bells Weir. Credit: Craig Brown / Alamy Stock Photo.The report notes that many of the CCC’s priority adaptation actions are broadly applicable across the four classes of cultural-heritage assets, such as:
- Increasing the frequency of inspections and repairs for built assets;
- Creating or strengthening flood barriers and coastal defences;
- Improving drainage around cultural-heritage sites;
- Adjusting opening times and access to help protect visitors and staff, such as temporary closures during extreme weather or installing raised walkways;
- Incorporating technology and digital solutions, such as early-warning systems, digitising collections and creating virtual tours;
- Managing loss, such as by relocating assets and transforming the use of historic buildings.
Adapting the UK’s cultural-heritage assets will require an unknown amount of funding, along with training to increase adaptation-planning capabilities, says the report. These plans must be developed for each context, it says, incorporating local risks, costs and the “potential acceptable future states” of these assets.
The report calls for heritage organisations to “plan for future climate conditions and share these plans for others to learn from”. It also recommends that such considerations should be required for projects receiving public funds in the future.
Water and wastewaterThe report groups together the UK’s water supply – both public and private – and wastewater infrastructure.
It notes that these systems are “not fit for the current, let alone future, climate”, with risks of both drought and floods expected to increase across the UK under future warming.
Droughts are the “most significant climate hazard” facing the water system, while heavy rainfall and flooding can damage both water and wastewater infrastructure and overwhelm the capacity of wastewater-transport systems.
The CCC proposes several priority adaptation actions for the water subsystem:
- Installing water-efficient products, such as low-flow fixtures on taps and toilets;
- Reusing non-potable water in specific instances, such as using rainwater to cool data centres;
- Encouraging behavioural changes, including through smart metering and water-efficiency labelling;
- Improving water-use efficiency in private use;
- Repairing leaks quickly – particularly the largest and most damaging ones;
- Installing protections against flooding and erosion;
- Increasing the use of reservoirs to store excess winter rainfall for summer usage;
- Improving pollution-management systems to protect existing water sources;
- Increasing water-treatment capacity and efficiency.
The committee also proposes actions to address adaptation in the wastewater subsystem:
- Separating the systems that carry rainwater from those that carry wastewater;
- Reducing the area of impermeable surfaces to decrease runoff;
- Encouraging behavioural changes to avoid blockages and flooding;
- Increasing the volume that the wastewater system can treat at a given time;
- Improving and decentralising water-treatment processes.
To adapt the water system to future climate change, the committee suggests creating minimum water-efficiency standards for appliances, as well as for new water users, such as data centres.
It also calls for increased planning and regulation between the water and wastewater sectors, as well as across other sectors that contribute heavily to water usage or wastewater generation.
Thames Water personnel fixing a burst water main near Windsor Castle. Credit: Maureen McLean / Alamy Stock Photo EnergyThe CCC warns that climate change is already impacting the energy sector. This includes electricity generation, storage and transport, as well as fuel production, storage and transport of gas, oil, bioenergy and sustainable aviation fuels.
It says that electricity networks are vulnerable to damage from flooding, high winds and increased heat, while heat and drought can reduce efficiency and capacity across the electricity grid and at power plants.
For example, the CCC says that in England, 22% of the electricity infrastructure is currently at risk of flooding, but this is expected to increase to 26% by 2040 due to climate change.
Flooding and water scarcity are the areas of most concern for the fuel-supply system.
The CCC adds that there are interdependencies between fuel and electricity systems.
The committee identifies the following adaptation actions to reduce the climate risk facing the energy system and to allow the current level of resilience to be maintained:
- Siting energy assets to reduce their exposure to climate hazards;
- Building redundancy into the energy system design to avoid single points of failure;
- Reinforcing existing energy assets and designing new ones with appropriate; protections;
- Ensuring that regular inspections of energy assets are undertaken and preventative maintenance is taken where possible;
- Managing vegetation around electricity and gas networks;
- Preparing ways to anticipate, respond to and recover from extreme events, such as early warning systems;
- Provide alternative sources of backup power.
The CCC identifies resources and funding as key enablers for undertaking these actions. It recognises the significant build-out of new equipment that is planned in the next five to 10 years in the energy sector, stating that it is “easier and more cost-effective to build resilience into infrastructure projects at the design stage rather than retrofitting later”.
Other enablers include clear plans, roles and responsibilities being set early and the use of technology and innovation.
The CCC notes that governance of the energy system is “complex”, with some elements centralised and others devolved, as well as splits across the public and private sectors. However, it says policy levers can be used to drive and monitor adaptation across segments, such as regulation, strategic planning and innovation provision.
The committee calls for continued UK government focus on timely and appropriate targets for investments, clarity on the future of the gas grid, wider mandatory adaptation reporting and other measures.
TransportThe committee’s transport-system assessment includes roads, rail and public transportation systems, as well as maritime and aviation infrastructure and operations.
The report notes that the interconnected nature of the UK’s transport system “offers some built-in redundancy”, but also increases the risk of cascading climate impacts.
The biggest climate hazard facing the UK’s transport system is flooding. However, it is also at risk from subsidence, erosion, high winds and extreme heat, according to the report.
Rail track dangling after heavy snow and floods at Stover Canal, Newton Abbot, Devon. Credit: nidpor / Alamy Stock PhotoThe CCC recommends the following measures as priorities for physically adapting the transport sector:
- Improving drainage systems across roadways, tunnels and urban rail systems;
- Installing coastal flood defences, such as seawalls and “rock armour”, near infrastructure located in floodplains;
- Reinforcing embankments, installing retaining structures and strengthening earthworks to protect against erosion;
- Using materials that are durable at higher temperatures, as well as integrating other temperature-reducing measures, such as shading and airflow;
- Reinforcing tall structures against high winds.
It also recommends several operational adaptations for the sector:
- Increasing preventative maintenance, including by clearing drains, dredging waterways, patching tarmac and painting rails;
- Using technology to optimise schedule, route and speed-limit adjustments;
- Implementing contingency plans to protect system-critical assets during severe disruptions.
To implement these adaptation measures, the CCC recommends improving the available guidance and reporting for planners and operators. It notes that planning policies and design codes should embed an “appropriate consideration of climate risk”, such as exposure to hazards.
It also calls for improved resilience standards and engagement with the public to determine the level of service expected in the future and the level of investment required to achieve that.
WasteThe waste sector is facing climate risks predominantly relating to mine tailings and historic landfill sites, with heavier rainfall increasing the risk of landslides that can threaten communities, according to the CCC.
For example, 368 out of 2,590 coal-mine tips in Wales are currently categorised as posing a potential risk to public safety. Increased rainfall and storms under a 2C of global warming in 2050 will increase the potential for landslides at these sites, as well as the number of sites that require adaptation.
The report says that government action is needed to reduce these risks. It adds that better data and monitoring should be used to prioritise the sites that pose the greatest risk.
The CCC sets out actions to ensure these waste sites are managed safely and do not harm people or the environment around them:
- Improving drainage at waste sites and stabilising their slopes stabilised;
- Installing coastal and flood defences at waste sites where needed;
- Treating waste to stabilise or remove hazardous materials;
- Permanently removing or relocating waste from vulnerable sites.
The biggest enabler for these changes will be resources and funding, according to the CCC.
Local authorities have some regulatory power to manage historic waste sites, which it says they should use to ensure adaptation actions are taken.
Digital and telecomsThe digital and telecommunications sector is made up of both public and private networks, as well as infrastructure such as data centres, wired connections and other assets.
Climate change threatens the sector directly, by damaging or otherwise challenging this telecommunications infrastructure, according to the CCC. However, says the report, the “main climate risk” facing the telecoms sector is its “fundamental dependency on the power system”.
The report notes that storms and flooding can damage infrastructure and cause power failures, while high temperatures can overwhelm cooling systems and force systems to overheat.
The CCC calls for several physical adaptation measures to protect digital and telecoms assets:
- Choosing infrastructure sites to reduce vulnerabilities to flooding and wind;
- Installing physical protection measures, such as flood defences and underground cables, for existing infrastructure;
- Completing the changeover to fibre-based digital systems, which are more water-resistant than existing networks;
- Adopting cooling systems and upgrading existing ones to withstand projected future temperatures;
- Adopting more water-efficient cooling systems to reduce vulnerability to water shortages.
Resilience can also be achieved through redundancy measures, it says:
- Installing backup generators, on-site batteries and other redundancies for the power supply;
- Providing backup batteries to consumers to ensure access to emergency services in case of power outages;
- Creating redundancy in cooling systems and network connections;
- Encouraging consumers to store key data in multiple locations to reduce the impact of data-centre outages.
Some of these actions are already underway, notes the report. For example, the changeover to fibre-based systems is expected to be completed by January 2027.
It says resilience will also require regulatory clarity, such as confirming that the UK’s Office of Communications (Ofcom) has a mandate to cover data centres, as well as climate resilience. It notes that this oversight is “expected to be confirmed” by the pending Cyber Security and Resilience Bill.
The CCC also calls for mandatory reporting of climate risks and resilience plans for companies that provide critical telecoms services.
LandEven if adaptation measures are taken, the land sector – including not just the UK’s terrestrial ecosystems, but also land-related commercial industries, such as farming and forestry – will “not all be able to stay the same as today”, says the report.
Changing temperatures and rainfall patterns are some of the most pressing challenges facing the land sector, with the hot-and-dry summer of 2025 causing more than £800m in revenue loss for England’s farmers.
Climate change is also increasing the frequency of threats, such as wildfires, pests and pathogens, as well as the spread of invasive alien species.
Flooded fields with hay bails on farmland on the Somerset Levels. Credit: Paul Glendell / Alamy Stock PhotoThe CCC identifies several priority actions for adaptation in the land sector, with different types of terrestrial ecosystems requiring different measures:
- Increasing the diversity and connectivity of habitats for both wild lands and land-based commercial activities;
- Rewetting peatlands and allowing other ecosystems to naturally regenerate;
- Managing the spread of invasive species, pests, pathogens and diseases;
- Preparing for wildfires, as well as reducing their occurrence and spread through managing fuel loads and maintaining fire breaks;
- Encouraging the use of resilient soil- and water-management practices and improving on-farm biodiversity;
- Adjusting farm planning in response to the changing climate, such as by shifting to different crops or adjusting the timing of planting and harvesting;
- Planting shade trees near riverbanks;
- Creating new coastal habitats;
- Manually moving vulnerable species to locations where they may be able to thrive under a changed climate.
It adds that achieving resilience in the land sector can also be aided by reducing the non-climate pressures that threaten habitats, such as pollution.
The committee notes that delivering on these actions will require both the support of government agencies and private landowners. It says that doing so will require public funding for adaptation, cultural awareness and acceptance of change, as well as flexible regulation and coherent frameworks on land use.
SeaSimilar to the land sector, the CCC’s suggestions for sea-system adaptation measures cut across multiple other sectors, including human health, international trade and food security.
The UK’s seas are already both warming and acidifying in response to human-caused fossil-fuel emissions, with impacts up and down the marine food chain.
By 2050, without adaptation measures, the UK could experience seabird population declines of more than 70%, fisheries employment losses of up to 20% and a rise in disease outbreaks, says the report.
The CCC identifies the following priority adaptation actions focused on both marine habitats and on human activities related to the sea sector:
- Creating larger, better-connected marine protected areas;
- Improving international cooperation around marine protection;
- Diversifying the species targeted by fisheries – moving away from cold-water species, such as cod and haddock, towards warmer-water ones, such as tuna;
- Increasing the genetic diversity of farmed species to increase resilience to disease;
- Sustainably managing wild fish populations, even if this means reducing fishing in the short term;
- Investing in more resilient equipment to withstand stronger storms;
- Relocating aquaculture away from the migration pathways of wild species;
- Preventing the spread of invasive species, diseases, pests and pathogens.
Similar to the land system, the committee says that reducing external pressures – including pollution and harmful fishing practices – can support achieving resilience in the sea system.
The report notes several existing policies that can aid in adaptation for the sea system, including the UK Marine Strategy and the 2020 Fisheries Act. However, it notes that “many actions to adapt [the sector] sit within the industry itself”.
Specific government actions that can support adaptation include changing the licensing and quotas for the fishing industry to reduce the pressure of overfishing, it adds.
Food securityThe report considers the “food security” system to include food and agricultural inputs imported from abroad, separate from the country’s own farming and fisheries.
It notes that in 2023, 40% of the UK’s food was imported.
A number of extreme weather events pose hazards to food production and transport, potentially impacting food security both in the UK and globally. These events can also drive up food prices, while warming trends can lower average crop yields and drive changes in the suitability of growing regions.
While agricultural productivity is projected to continue to increase in the future due to improved technological efficiency, it is “unclear how these trends will interact with climate change and extreme weather shocks”, says the report.
Dry and cracked soil in a field in rural Worcestershire, during dry weather. Credit: Alan Harbottle / Alamy Stock PhotoAdapting the UK’s food-security system will require undertaking a number of priority actions, says the CCC:
- Shifting working hours for agricultural labourers, providing shading and taking other measures to protect workers from heat stress;
- Investing in capacity-building, skills and technology to improve sustainability and efficiency for local producers;
- Diversifying the supply chains of both imported foods and inputs to UK agriculture, such as fertilisers, animal feed and fuel;
- Reducing food waste (edible food that is discarded at the retail level or by consumers);
- Investing in resilient cold-chain infrastructure for transporting and storing temperature-sensitive food products;
- Stress-testing the global commodity markets and preparing for potential shocks, such as export bans;
- Considering centralised stockpiling of critical food supplies.
Many of these actions are “expected to be delivered by market forces and industry”, says the report, although doing so will require engagement with and improved information for these actors. It suggests that requiring food-related businesses to disclose their climate risks could facilitate adaptation decisions.
The report also suggests strengthening international collaboration, such as through food-trade agreements, as well as providing support to vulnerable groups to alleviate potential food-price inflation due to climate shocks.
Economy and financeThe CCC divides the economy and finance sector into three subsystems: businesses, which provide goods and services; finance, which provides banking, investment and insurance services; and the macroeconomy, which accounts for the country’s overall economic strength through GDP, employment, inflation and other indicators.
All three of these subsystems are impacted by climate change, says the report.
Climate hazards, such as heatwaves, storms and flooding, can disrupt supply chains and daily operations in the business sector.
Climate-related damages can threaten financial assets and increase insurance costs, which can “reduce capacity to recover from climate events and create risks to financial stability and economic growth”, it says.
Meanwhile, macroeconomic indicators such as GDP and inflation can be “negatively affected by all climate-related impacts across sectors”, adds the report.
For the business subsystem, the CCC recommends the following priority adaptation actions:
- Identifying and managing climate-related risks to commercial assets, such as by installing flood defences and air-conditioning systems;
- Protecting workers from climate hazards, such as by adjusting working hours or providing shade and water;
- Reducing supply-chain exposure to climate hazards by diversifying suppliers, stockpiling resources and making procurement decisions with climate risk in mind;
- Identifying opportunities for businesses to provide adaptation innovations, goods and services.
For the finance subsystem, the committee outlines the following priorities:
- Collecting company-level data on climate risks and adaptation;
- Incorporating climate risks and adaptation costs into financial decisions;
- Reducing financial risks by accounting for the climate risks posed to financial institutions’ capital assets;
- Integrating adaptation into insurance products, pooling risk and issuing climate-responsive products, such as resilience bonds, which fund adaptation projects.
The CCC also details several priority actions for the macroeconomy:
- Creating a fiscal framework for the UK government that incorporates adaptation costs and potential future climate-related spending;
- Effectively responding to climate-related inflationary pressures;
- Reducing the climate risks associated with critical supply chains, such as energy, food and pharmaceuticals.
Carrying out these actions will require resources and capacity-building for businesses and financial institutions, as well as clearly defined roles and responsibilities for all involved actors, says the report.
National security and international engagementThe final sectoral section in the CCC’s “well-adapted UK” report looks at how international climate change poses risks to national security, foreign policy and development interests.
The committee says a key message is that the UK is interconnected with the rest of the world, meaning that no matter how well-adapted the country is domestically, it will be threatened by international climate risks.
The CCC says that national security ”cannot be ensured without climate resilience”. Moreover, it says that the UK has an obligation to help other countries adapt and build resilience – and that it will benefit from such aid.
This comes just days after the UK announced its intention to cut funding to the UN’s flagship Green Climate Fund, which provides climate financing for developing countries.
The CCC highlights that “climate-change impacts, weak economic development and inequality exacerbate each other”, as well as noting that climate hazards are a growing driver of involuntary migration.
It recommends the following measures to help maintain UK national security and fulfil international commitments in the face of global climate risks:
- Adapting the defence sector, including training and equipping forces to operate in more extreme weather conditions;
- Embedding climate considerations within decision-making processes;
- Providing direct adaptation assistance to support other countries and territories;
- Mobilising international private adaptation finance;
- Sharing and exporting the UK’s capabilities internationally, both in climate science and financial services.
Financial resources are one of the most important enablers for these actions, alongside a clear division of roles and responsibilities and effective use of data and monitoring.
The CCC also calls for sustained diplomacy and engagement on climate adaptation.
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