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China has released a five-year plan dedicated to addressing climate change. 

The 15th five-year plan for a national response to climate change is the latest in a series to outline in-depth climate and energy targets for the 2026-2030 period. 

These include five-year plans for “building a Beautiful China”, developing a “new-type energy system” and developing renewable energy. 

There are also separate “action plans” for the 2026-2030 period, such as for peaking carbon emissions. 

China has pledged to peak its emissions before 2030 and reach carbon neutrality before 2060.

The new plan does not include any major new targets, instead consolidating and reaffirming existing policies.

Nevertheless, it includes significant signals on key policy areas, such as non-carbon dioxide (CO2) greenhouse gases, global climate governance and carbon markets.  

Below, Carbon Brief examines some of the notable elements in the latest five-year plan and what it reveals about China’s policy direction through to 2030.

• What does the climate plan cover?
• What does the plan say about non-CO2 GHGs?
• What does the plan say about global climate governance?

What does the climate plan cover?

The Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) released the plan in late July, in unison with 18 other government departments. These include the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planning agency, and the National Energy Administration.

The document covers a range of topics, including CO2 emissions, other greenhouse gases (non-CO2 GHGs), carbon markets, carbon footprints, climate adaptation and international cooperation on climate change. 

For the first time at the five-year plan level, the plan creates a comprehensive target system covering all areas of climate policy, say officials in a MEE Q&A. 

They describe it as “the main policy instrument” for advancing China’s climate action during 2026-2030.

China rarely issues high-level multi-year policies dedicated to “responding to climate change”. In 2014, the NDRC published a plan on the topic running through to 2020, but this was not linked to a five-year plan period. 

Qin Yan, principal analyst at ClearBlue Markets, tells Carbon Brief that the plan  shows that China’s climate governance has reached “an unprecedented strategic level”.

She adds that the plan creates an “all-encompassing target system” to support China’s Paris Agreement climate pledges for 2030 and 2035.

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In its 2030 pledge, China aimed to peak emissions “before 2030” and reduce carbon intensity – its emissions per unit of GDP – by more than 65% from 2005 levels. 

Last year, president Xi Jinping personally announced China’s 2035 pledge to cut China’s greenhouse gas emissions to 7-10% below peak levels by 2035, while “striving to do better”. 

The five-year plan marks a new phase in China’s climate policy, according to researchers at CIB Research, an economic research body affiliated with the  Industrial Bank, whose largest shareholder is the Fujian provincial government.

Their analysis adds that the plan represents a broad effort to strengthen China’s climate-governance system, implementation mechanisms and underlying capacity. 

Nevertheless, several headline targets and policies in the document simply reiterate already established plans.

These include:

• Cutting carbon intensity by 17% across the five years
• Reducing carbon intensity per product in industries under China’s carbon market by 3%
• Substituting fossil fuels with renewables
• Strengthening climate adaptation
• Supporting the “free flow” of cleantech

What does the plan say about non-CO2 GHGs?

The plan also goes into detail on China’s approach to non-CO2 GHGs. This includes reaffirming a target of an emissions “reduction capacity” from these gases totalling 30m tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) by 2030, although the baseline is unclear.

The target previously appeared in the overarching five-year plan, as well as the plan for building a “Beautiful China”.

The goal refers to emissions reductions, which can be realised through implementing current non-CO2 emissions reduction policies and projects, says Chen Meian, programme director and senior analyst at the Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress (iGDP). 

She adds that it is “relatively achievable”, with sources including increasing the number of coal-mine methane utilisation projects. 

She points to an MEE explanatory note for a draft methodology under the China Certified Emission Reduction (CCER) scheme, China’s voluntary carbon-credit market. Chen says the note suggests that projects using ventilation air methane and coal-mine methane with concentrations below 8% alone could deliver around 20MtCO2e of reduction by 2030. 

The note states that, currently, such projects are estimated to be able to “generate annual emission reductions of approximately 4.5MtCO2e”. 

In addition, Chen says, measures targeting industrial nitrous oxide (N2O) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) could help make up the remainder needed to meet the target.

According to iGDP analysis of biennial reports submitted by China to the UNFCCC, China emitted around 14,000MtCO2e of GHGs in 2021, excluding land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF).

Non-CO2 GHGs accounted for around 2,700MtCO2e, or 19%, of the total, the majority of which was methane, as shown in the figure below.

iGDP analysis of China’s first Biennial Transparency Report and fourth Biennial Update Report.

China’s plans to curb these super-pollutants in the five-year period include coal-mine methane utilisation projects, end-of-pipe destruction technologies for HFCs and guidance on the use of catalysts to reduce N2O emissions.

The plan also calls for the recovery and replacement of sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) in power equipment.

For Chen, the plan’s focus on SF6 control is particularly noteworthy. She says the gas is “finally receiving policy attention” and that proactive action is “timely and will help avoid future emissions growth” as China’s power system expands.

What does the plan say about global climate governance? 

One of the plan’s clearest objectives for international cooperation is for China to play a more active role in global climate governance.

By 2030, it says China should markedly increase its “influence, guiding power, shaping power and moral appeal” in this area. 

It says China’s climate action could also feed into the Global Governance Initiative, a policy initiative aimed at reforming the global governance system.

China will also aim to “build a new narrative on climate governance”, it adds.

Prof Thomas Hale, a professor in public policy at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, writes on LinkedIn that the plan “marks a major rhetorical shift” towards China being increasingly willing to “lead and shape” global climate action.

Another clear focal point for international cooperation is in carbon markets. 

The plan calls for China to expand the global influence of its carbon market, such as through international rule-setting, cooperation on standards and by hosting the China Carbon Market Conference.

Qin says China’s more active role in global carbon pricing is already evident in the launch of the open coalition on compliance carbon markets with the EU and Brazil. This coalition is expected to adopt a work plan at the China Carbon Market Conference in September.

Qin also notes that China “could become the world’s largest [carbon] offset buyer” as its energy transition progresses. 

The country would, therefore, “benefit from helping shape global rules under the Article 6 framework [for carbon trading under the Paris Agreement]”, she adds. 

Related Interview: Dr Sun Yixian on his new database tracking Chinese climate ‘leadership’ 09.07.2026 China policy Q&A: What do China’s provincial five-year plans say about climate and energy? 18.06.2026 China policy Analysis: China’s new carbon metric leaves Germany-sized gap in its emissions 26.05.2026 China policy Q&A: China’s leadership calls for ‘strict control’ of fossil fuels 24.04.2026 China policy

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Heatwaves are becoming more likely and more intense due to climate change, impacting sources of power generation around the world as they work to meet increased demand.

When temperatures soared past 40C in parts of Europe in June and July 2026, nuclear reactors shuttered, gas plants’ efficiency fell, wind speeds dropped and electricity networks sagged.

Yet, while all types of electricity generation are affected variously by extreme heat, some commentators are quick to point the finger at “intermittent” wind and solar, while downplaying the impact on sources such as gas or nuclear power.

Extreme heat also drives up electricity demand, as people turn on air conditioning and fridges work harder. 

For example, in France, daily electricity demand rose by almost 20% during a two-week heatwave in June 2026. 

This often leads to an increase in power prices, as generation strains and demand rises, putting a premium on electricity. 

Below, Carbon Brief – amid a slew of misleading claims – explains how key power sources cope with extreme heat. 

• Nuclear
• Gas
• Wind
• Solar
• Storage

Nuclear

The impact of heatwaves on nuclear power generation is well documented, with a plethora of headlines often accompanying record temperatures in nations that rely on the technology. 

For example, around 70% of electricity is generated by nuclear power in France, leaving it vulnerable to the impacts of heatwaves. 

During the July 2026 heatwave, three of France’s 57 nuclear reactors had to shut down. Generation was reduced at another seven, causing an almost 9% dip in power production. 

(This is a well-known phenomenon – France has seen reductions in nuclear generation due to heatwaves in 2003, 2006, 2015, 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2025.)

A similar story is true across various countries in Europe. Low river levels on the Danube have hit nuclear reactors in Romania and Hungary this summer, while a Swiss nuclear reactor shuttered due to high river temperatures.

It is nuclear plants using river water to cool their reactors that are most significantly affected by heatwaves and droughts. These make up 14% of the global fleet. Around 60 of the world’s 440 reactors use once-through river cooling, of which eight are in France.

Nuclear power plants use fission to generate heat, which is used to create steam. This steam spins the blades of a turbine that is connected to a generator to create electricity. 

Following this process, the water is cooled to allow it to be recycled back through the system as steam again. Nuclear power plants generally use water from rivers or the sea to help cool and condense this steam. 

As such, when water temperatures rise due to a heatwave, their cooling capacity is reduced and the overall efficiency of the nuclear power station is affected. Similarly, if there is less water available due to drought, they cannot be cooled as effectively. 

Michael Tadrous, a researcher at McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business in Canada, tells Carbon Brief that the “impact [of heatwaves] is real, but it is far smaller than many headlines suggest” and that the “effect [of heat] is gradual”. He adds: 

“Warmer intake water makes a reactor slightly less efficient. [But] even an extreme 15C rise in cooling-water temperature would cost a large reactor only about 6% of its output. 

“The real pressure point during a heatwave is usually legal rather than technical. Plants return their cooling water to the river a few degrees warmer than they drew it and the law limits how warm that water may be in order to protect aquatic life.” 

Henry Preston, a spokesperson for the industry body the World Nuclear Association, adds that reactor shutdowns due to high river temperatures are “typically an automatic response to comply with regulations to protect local ecosystems, rather than a technological fault”.

He notes that in some extreme heatwaves, these regulations are waived given the “essential need for electricity and taking a proportional approach to climate risks”. 

While nuclear power plants can generally return to standard operation quickly if they have been affected by high water temperatures, drought can cause a more significant impact. 

Preston tells Carbon Brief: 

“In contrast to high river temperatures, which can quickly return to acceptable levels once a heatwave passes, low river levels can persist for much longer, if drought conditions continue. As a result, low water levels may have a more prolonged impact on plant operations than elevated water temperatures.”

This is set to be the case in the current European drought, where multiple reactors in Hungary and Romania have shut down or reduced their output due to low water levels.

The Danube is not expected to return to normal water levels for “days or even weeks as no significant rainfall is forecast”, reported the Associated Press on 3 August 2026. It said this was “push[ing] some countries in eastern Europe to the brink of energy emergency”.

According to data company Montel, on Monday 3 August, around 2.44GW or 40% of south-east Europe’s nuclear capacity was offline due to drought in the Danube.

Similarly, on Monday, as much as 12% of the French nuclear fleet was offline due to heat-related reasons, although that had been expected to drop to 7% by Tuesday. 

While heatwaves and drought can produce significant short-term effects, their impact on the availability of nuclear power across a full year is generally minimal. 

On average, heatwaves cut annual nuclear generation by 0.6% between 2003 and 2022, according to a recent study that Tadrous co-authored.

He adds that, across the whole period studied, the only time a national nuclear fleet lost more than 1% of its nuclear power over a year to heat- and drought-related curtailments was France in 2003, which lost 1.3%. 

According to an article in Forbes, for every additional degree Celsius in temperature, a nuclear power plant loses around 0.6-1% in cycle efficiency. 

However, nuclear power’s exposure to heatwaves can prove particularly challenging given the large capacity of individual plants and the central role it plays in certain nations’ energy systems. 

For example, Romania’s only nuclear power plant, at Cernavodă, is responsible for 20% of the nation’s electricity generation. Therefore, the impact of low river levels in the Danube is having a particularly acute impact on Romania’s energy security.

To minimise the impact on both energy security and costs, governments and nuclear companies are looking at a range of solutions to adapt to heatwaves.

For example, French nuclear-plant operator EDF is looking at additional cooling towers for its sites that are the most exposed to the impacts of a warming climate, reported Bloomberg recently.

Tadrous says the nuclear power industry is already adapting to heatwaves that are “more frequent and more intense”, adding:  

“France’s river-cooled fleet lost 5.5 terawatt hours (TWh) of output to the 2003 heatwave. By 2022, one of the most severe heat-and-drought summers on record, losses had fallen to 0.5TWh, a reduction of roughly 90%, as utilities upgraded cooling systems, refined operating practices and scheduled maintenance around periods of extreme heat.” 

There remain challenges for adapting nuclear power – and the wider electricity systems in which it sits – to heatwaves. However, Tadrous notes that this is less about “technical feasibility than of economic prioritisation and timely implementation”. 

Gas

Gas power plants have a reputation for being reliable and able to switch on at any moment, sometimes referred to as “firm, dispatchable” capacity.

Yet, as a type of thermal generation, they are subject to many of the same stresses during heatwaves as nuclear power. 

An article by the science advocacy organisation Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) notes that the “purported ability of gas plants to be available at all times to generate electricity, particularly when the grid needs it most, is increasingly under scrutiny” due to heatwaves.

As a matter of physics, the efficiency of gas power plants drops as temperatures rise. At 40C, a gas-fired power station can expect its capacity to be reduced by 13% and its efficiency by 7% compared to when running at 20C, according to Electric Insights. 

Dr Iain Staffell, associate professor in sustainable energy at Imperial College London, tells Carbon Brief: 

“Simple gas turbines (the kind which turn on rapidly to meet peak demand) are hit harder [than solar, for example], with their power output falling by about 10% per 10C.”

(He adds that the transmission system struggles more than electricity generation during high temperature. Power line capacity can fall by up to 16% for a 10C rise in temperature, according to a report for the UK government.)

Several types of gas power plants require cooling as part of their process, including gas steam and combined cycle turbines (CCGTs). They usually rely on nearby bodies of water for this. 

Additionally, as the UCS article notes, hot air has a lower density than cool air. As gas CCGTs rely on burning a mix of gas and air, this lower density means air takes up more space, leaving less room for gas. 

Ultimately, this means that when the air is hot, gas power plants cannot generate as much electricity as normal. 

These effects are not just theoretical. For example, across two nights in August 2020, there were rolling blackouts in California, US, as demand exceeded supply amid a heatwave.

While a number of factors contributed to the blackouts, gas plants made up around 79% of the capacity that dropped off the system on 14 August and a similar share the following day.

Amid record-breaking heat in summer 2026, gas power plants have also seen their capacity cut in the UK, France and other countries.

Dr Staffell adds that gas power stations are thought of as “reliable, because of the way we use them” in the UK. 

Whereas  wind and solar are usually used to the maximum extent possible, he says that on average, only around 40% of the gas fleet is in use at any one time. As such, even if the efficiency of one gas power plant is affected by high temperatures, “we have a lot of slack to call on more of them to run”. He adds: 

“The issue is less that they can’t deliver, but we have to pay through the nose to persuade more to turn on at critical times, adding to sky-high energy bills.”

Wind

The impact of heatwaves on wind generation is less direct than for other technologies. 

However, wind speeds often drop during heatwaves, which tend to build during periods of sustained high pressure into extreme events such as “heat domes”. 

Dr Staffell, explains to Carbon Brief: 

“The very hottest days tend to create heat domes with very low wind speeds, which directly reduces the output that windfarms can produce. Air is also less dense the hotter it is, so it carries less energy within it, so there is a double impact on wind turbines.”

High temperatures are linked to low wind speeds across three-quarters of the globe, according to one recent study, looking at data from 1980 to 2023. 

The study found that, as a result, across Australia, northern Asia and Europe, wind power decreased by an average of 30-50% during heatwaves. 

This is inconsistent globally, however, with the Amazon, the Great Plains in North America and central Africa actually seeing a slight increase in wind during high temperatures.

As such, while the effect of heatwaves on wind generation is less direct than other generation technologies, it can have a significant impact. 

In the UK in June 2026, wind generation fell to around 15% of the electricity mix due to low wind speeds, from an average for the month of about 30%, according to Octopus. 

Low wind generation during this period was a key feature of the strain on the grid experienced during this time – in particular, as demand rose amid record-high temperatures. 

On Wednesday 24 June, for example, the National Electricity System Operator (Neso) had to pay high prices to balance supply and demand. This included paying as much as £1,400 a megawatt-hour to secure around 1.7 gigawatts (GW) of imported power, nearly 20 times the average price for electricity in June 2025. 

A Neso spokesperson said in a statement: “This is due to the impact of extremely high temperatures affecting Great Britain and the continent, and low wind.”

While reduced wind generation is common during a heatwave, it is not generally viewed as a concern for energy system operators. This is due to wind following well-established seasonal patterns – it generates less power in summer than in winter – as well as being complementary to other renewable technologies, such as solar. 

Dr Chris Rosslowe, senior energy analyst for Europe at Ember, tells Carbon Brief: 

“Power systems are less reliant on wind power in the summer months and its lower-than-average output is already expected and planned for. Heatwaves often bring still, but clear conditions, highlighting the benefit of wind and solar as a duo – poor conditions for one often mean good conditions for the other.”

As such, wind power remains one of very few technologies considered “resilient” to heatwaves by the UK government.

However, this did not stop the anti-renewables Daily Mail from attempting to blame the technology for strain on the UK grid on 24 June 2026, despite its own article acknowledging that gas plants had also been forced to cut their output by 2.5GW on the day.

Solar

Another common claim seen in the media is that solar “struggles” during heatwaves, with high temperatures pushing down the technology’s efficiency. 

Yet heatwaves tend to coincide with long, cloudless days, when solar generation is reliably above average – despite the impact of high temperatures.

While hot weather does reduce the efficiency of solar cells, the effect is relatively modest – and widely understood. Each 1C of temperature rise reduces output by around 0.4-0.5%, according to a recent study. 

This is in line with an evidence review for the UK government, which suggests the performance of solar panels falls by 0.2-0.5% for every degree of heat above 25C.

Generally, however, this effect is easily outweighed by high sunlight hours during hot spells. For example, across a four-day heatwave in the UK in June 2026, solar generated 484 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity – a 46% increase over the same period a week earlier.  

Similar generation highs were seen across Europe, amid record temperatures and dangerous heat that was pushing people towards the use of air conditioning. 

Solar generated a record 52TWh across the EU in June 2026, beating the high set just the month before of 47TWh. 

In fact, solar – especially when combined with battery storage – is a complementary technology to air conditioning, given their similar seasonal patterns. Over the course of the day, demand from air conditioning and generation from solar also marry up well. 

Dr Rosslowe says: 

“Solar, battery storage and air conditioning are a highly complementary trio of technologies during heatwaves. There’s a high overlap between solar output and demand from AC.”

For example, on the hottest day of the year so far in Great Britain (the island grid serving England, Wales and Scotland), on 26 June 2026, solar surged to 13.9GW in the middle of the afternoon, as demand also hit its highest point, as shown in the chart below. 

Generation on the 26 June in Great Britain, highlighting the match between solar power (yellow) and the demand profile for electricity (blue line). Source: Neso.

Across June 2026, homes with solar panels generated the equivalent of five hours of “free” self-supplied air conditioning, according to recent analysis.  

Despite the impact of heat on solar efficiency, the technology is, therefore, well placed to bolster energy systems during heatwaves. 

Indeed, as Dr Rosslowe tells Carbon Brief, solar suppresses power prices during daylight hours. But, even though it is predictable, there are still challenges around managing the dip in solar generation as the evening sets in. This is often compounded because it coincides with the usual evening increase in demand. 

Dr Rosslowe explains: 

“Problems arise when the sun goes down, but demand for cooling remains high. In the early evening hours, when gas power typically ramps up to replace solar, we have seen prices spike to extreme levels, made worse by high international gas prices.”

Storage

Energy storage systems are increasingly key to managing the impact of heatwaves on electricity systems. 

The category of technologies is dominated by batteries, with more than 108GW of battery storage added in 2025 alone, according to the International Energy Agency. 

Already, batteries have been used to take advantage of surges in solar generation during the daytime, amid high summer temperatures. 

This is particularly useful to meet evening peaks in electricity demand, as well as the need for air conditioning overnight when temperatures do not fall. 

In a statement, Pawel Czyzak , Europe programme director at Ember, said: 

“Heatwaves will not go away – they will only get more severe in the future. Solutions that can help mitigate their impacts, such as battery storage, interconnection, demand flexibility and dynamic tariffs, should become a key part of grid planning and power market design.”

However, batteries are not without their challenges during heatwaves. Battery performance also decreases as temperatures exceed their optimal level. 

Additionally, high temperatures can accelerate the degradation of components in lithium-ion batteries, which dominate the sector. 

Analysis for the UK government found that prolonged operation at very high temperatures could – at least in theory – “overwhelm” the cooling systems built into batteries, “posing risks such as thermal runaway and explosions”. However, it noted that in practice, these cooling systems are “routinely” designed to handle temperatures of up to 45C.

(The analysis added that “developers and manufacturers have a strong understanding of risk to [battery storage systems] from high temperature and mitigate risks through regular maintenance, design improvements, and passive cooling strategies”.)

Other storage technologies also face challenges during heatwaves. For example, pumped hydro storage can be significantly impacted by drought.

Australia – which now has 4.3GW of large-scale battery storage capacity – saw its fleet of batteries and pumped hydro storage tested at the beginning of 2026, amid the most severe heatwave in years. 

Temperatures above 40C posed “challenges” to storage technologies, reported Energy Storage News, which explained that their output and operating times were reduced by the increased need for their cooling systems to operate. 

Despite these challenges, the use of battery storage is helping to spread the ability of renewables to meet electricity demand during heatwaves. For example, a combination of solar and battery energy storage “kept the lights on” in California amid a heatwave in 2024. 

By storing abundant power during the day, it can be discharged during evening peaks, helping to minimise generation constraints and thereby keep power prices down. 

Dr Rosslowe says: 

“The extreme price spikes that we witness during heatwaves are a blaring signal for more power system flexibility. That could come from battery storage, demand response, or increased interconnection between countries or regions.”

Related Chart: The rise, fall and rise of UK nuclear power over eight decades 13.06.2025 Energy UK spending review 2025: Key climate and energy announcements 11.06.2025 Nuclear Q&A: How China is using nuclear power to reduce its carbon emissions 14.08.2023 China policy The Carbon Brief Profile: Russia 22.09.2022 Coal

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When carbon dioxide (CO2) is released from a factory or power plant, the gas can be captured and permanently stored underground, preventing it from driving climate change.

This is the idea underpinning carbon capture and storage (CCS), a technology that is at the heart of many nations’ net-zero plans.

Influential organisations, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), describe CCS as “critical” for cutting emissions from key sectors – and for helping to avoid dangerous global warming.

In particular, capturing CO2 is seen as one of the only viable options for decarbonising some of the world’s highest-emitting industries, such as cement production.

The UK, for example, has committed to investing as much as £21.7bn over the coming decades in its nascent CCS industry, as part of the nation’s net-zero strategy.

Yet, in the UK and elsewhere, there has been a backlash against plans for CCS.

Citing high costs, ties to the fossil-fuel industry and a “history of poor performance”, critics describe CCS as a “dangerous distraction” or a “false climate solution”. 

Time and again, the outlook for the roll-out of CCS has been scaled back, as the technology has failed to deliver as quickly as expected – and as policy support has wavered.

Furthermore, critics state that the technology remains “unproven” on the scale required to make a meaningful impact on global emissions.

In this Q&A, Carbon Brief explores the role CCS is expected to play in achieving net-zero, its record to date and the reasons it has been criticised, using the UK as an example.

• What is CCS?
• How much CCS capacity has been built so far?
• What role is CCS expected to play in reaching net-zero?
• Why is CCS controversial?
• What are the UK’s plans for scaling up CCS?

Article Contents Expand menu

• What is CCS?
• How much CCS capacity has been built so far?
• What role is CCS expected to play in reaching net-zero?
• Why is CCS controversial?
• What are the UK’s plans for scaling up CCS?

What is CCS?

CCS involves capturing CO2 emissions released from a large source, such as a gas power plant or a cement factory.

The CO2 is separated from the facility’s exhaust stream, generally using a chemical solvent, before being compressed into a liquid and transported via pipeline or vehicle. The CO2 is then stored by injecting it into underground reservoirs, such as depleted oil fields or saline aquifers.

The term “CCUS” is sometimes also used, referring to the “utilisation” of CO2 to make products, including fertilisers, fuels or building materials. Such uses do not necessarily lead to permanent emissions cuts, as the CO2 can end up later being released back into the atmosphere. 

(“CCS” is used in this Q&A, unless quoting another organisation that specifically refers to “CCUS”.)

The infographic below shows the stages of capturing CO2 and transporting it to be either stored or used in other applications.

Infographic adapted by Carbon Brief from the IEA.

Carbon capture technology was originally rolled out at US and Canadian oil wells in the early 1970s as a way to achieve “enhanced oil recovery”. This involves injecting captured CO2 into depleted wells – a process that stores CO2, but also helps to extract more oil.

This remains, by far, the most significant end use for captured CO2 worldwide, with around three-quarters of it used for this purpose. 

Moreover, most of the CO2 currently captured is a by-product of gas purification – the process by which fossil fuels such as methane are separated from other, unwanted substances. Selling this CO2 can make such gas projects more economically viable.

Therefore, as shown in the chart below, which is based on International Energy Agency (IEA) data, the majority of CO2 that is both captured and used today helps the fossil-fuel industry to extract and sell more oil and gas.

CCS was first proposed as a way to deal with CO2 emissions in a 1976 academic article, which imagined injecting the captured gas into the ocean.

It is only since the early 2000s that CCS has gained traction as a proposed climate solution, with a 2005 “special report” by the IPCC exploring the topic. At that time, the authors note there were just three small-scale projects trying to capture and permanently store CO2.

Installing CCS at factories or power plants and permanently storing the CO2 would mean that, in theory, such facilities could continue using fossil fuels without contributing to climate change. 

Such applications are often mentioned alongside two related technologies, both of which could be used to “suck” CO2 out of the atmosphere and, thus, deliver “negative emissions”.

One is bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). Crops absorb CO2 as they grow and BECCS  involves a power plant burning these crops, then storing the resulting CO2. 

The other technology is direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS). 

These technologies are classed as “CO2 removal”, as they involve absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere using plants or machines and then storing it permanently.

By contrast, CCS installed at a factory is considered a way to avoid CO2 emitted by that specific facility from entering the atmosphere. This Q&A focuses on such applications, which account for the vast majority of existing and planned CCS.

First mention in the academic literature of capturing and storing CO2 for climate change mitigation. Source: Marchetti, C. (1977). How much CCS capacity has been built so far?

As of February 2026, there were a total of 75 operational CCS projects around the world. As noted above, almost all of them are at fossil-fuel extraction and processing sites, according to the IEA’s database. 

Together, these projects capture 62.5m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) each year. This is equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of Ecuador.

(This compares with the 22 CCS projects, promising to capture 40MtCO2 annually, that were operational or under construction as of 2014.)

As the chart below shows, the amount of CO2 currently being captured and stored is a tiny fraction of the total emissions from fossil-fuel use.

“CO2 captured and stored” includes all projects that capture CO2 and use it for enhanced oil recovery, store it permanently underground or use it “with significant climate benefits”, according to the IEA.

In a 2020 report, the IEA explained that the “story of CCUS has largely been one of unmet expectations: its potential to mitigate climate change has been recognised for decades, but deployment has been slow”.

A wave of interest in CCS in the 2000s, largely from countries in Europe and North America, focused on enabling coal power plants to continue operating with lower emissions. 

This interest largely petered out, as plummeting renewable energy costs weakened the case for coal plants with CCS. Today, there are only seven operating CCS-coal plants worldwide – five in China, one in the US and one in Canada.

Yet the Paris Agreement in 2015 – and the national net-zero targets that followed – highlighted the need for deep emissions cuts in sectors that previously expected to continue emitting for decades. This, once again, has fuelled interest in the use of CCS.

In recent years, there has also been growing interest in producing low-carbon “blue” hydrogen from gas with CCS. 

Hydrogen is widely seen as key for decarbonising certain sectors – particularly in industry – but analyses suggest that it may be difficult to make sufficient “green” hydrogen using renewable power on the timescales required.

As the map below shows, most CCS capacity is based in the US and Canada, with other major fossil-fuel producers such as Norway, Brazil and the Gulf states also contributing.

Projects listed in the IEA CCUS database as split between two countries are divided equally between them. This includes projects that only store CO2, but it excludes projects that only transport CO2. DACCS projects are excluded.

A surge of projects have entered the global CCS pipeline in recent years. According to the IEA, 93.7MtCO2 of capture or storage capacity is under construction as of February 2026 and another 1,279.6MtCO2 is in the “planning” stages.

“Planned” projects include any initiative at early concept, feasibility or engineering study stages and the industry has a long history of projects being cancelled or delayed. 

Nevertheless, this pipeline of projects could lead to a large expansion of facilities dedicated to permanent CO2 storage that does not involve extracting more oil.

The planned projects – if they are realised – would also include significant growth in sectors where CCS is virtually non-existent, such as steel, hydrogen and cement production, as shown in the chart below.

A project is considered “under construction” by the IEA if a final investment decision has been announced and construction is on-going or imminent. A project is considered “planned” if it is at concept, feasibility or engineering study stage. What role is CCS expected to play in reaching net-zero?

It will be impossible to stop dangerous climate change unless the world reaches net-zero emissions, according to the IPCC. The amount of global warming – and whether the Paris Agreement temperature target can be met – depends on when net-zero is reached.

Many global pathways that have been set out for achieving net-zero, including a majority of the IPCC-assessed pathways where global warming is limited to 1.5C, rely on the use of CCS at fossil-fuel plants and industrial sites.

“These models have been quite instrumental in bringing CCS back onto the agenda,” Lina Lefstad, an ecological economist at Lund University, tells Carbon Brief. 

Influential organisations relying on CCS in their net-zero scenarios range from the  International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) through to the oil company Shell. The IEA has stated that net-zero would be “virtually impossible” without CCS.

These scenarios often include 10s to 100s of times more CCS capacity being built in the coming decades. The IEA includes 1.7GtCO2 being captured by 2035 in its net-zero scenario – nearly 30 times more than is captured today.

(Some of the much higher numbers in scenarios assessed by the IPCC have been dismissed by experts as implausible, especially given the slow rollout of CCS to date.)

When considering CCS for both emissions cuts and removals, Dr Jennifer Roberts, a researcher at the University of Strathclyde and deputy director at the UK Carbon Capture and Storage Research Centre (UKCCSRC), tells Carbon Brief the situation is clear:

“From an IPCC climate modelling perspective…reaching net-zero without CCS is far more expensive, disruptive and potentially out of reach.”

This does not mean that it would be impossible to reach net-zero without using CCS. However, net-zero scenarios that use little or no CCS rely on dramatic changes elsewhere, such as much lower global energy demand.

Net-zero scenarios often include a crucial role for CCS in “hard-to-abate” sectors, referring to activities that lack available, low-cost options to fully decarbonise. In particular, CCS is widely seen as vital for decarbonising parts of heavy industry. 

The IPCC sixth assessment report (AR6) summary for policymakers calls CCS a “critical mitigation option” for some sectors, including cement and chemicals. The technical summary of the AR6 Working Group III report says that “CCS will be required to mitigate remaining CO2” in industrial sectors.

The IEA describes CCS as “virtually the only technology” that can significantly cut cement emissions, which account for around 7% of the global total. (Much of this CO2 comes from chemical processes, meaning it would still be released if the industry was electrified.)

Yet, the understanding of “hard-to-abate” emissions is changing, as alternatives to CCS become cheaper and increasingly available. As a result, CCS has become a less attractive option in some sectors, as well as being seen as less vital in some others.

Carbon Brief analysis shows that the IEA has reduced its outlook for CCS in the power sector by a third, compared to its expectations in 2021, as the chart below shows. 

This reflects both slow progress in deploying CCS and rapid cost reductions in renewables, which make running gas or coal power plants less attractive.

Data comes from IEA world energy outlooks between 2021-2025.

(Even prior to this adjustment, the IEA’s net-zero scenario was already at the lower end of CCS use, compared to those assessed by the IPCC.)

This declining role for CCS in the power sector would mean its use is more concentrated in industry. 

Industrial sectors – particularly cement, steel and chemicals – account for 60% of the CO2 captured in 2050 under the IEA’s net-zero scenario, as shown in the figure below. The remaining 40% is roughly split between electricity generation and blue hydrogen production.

Climate NGOs Bellona and E3G have stressed that with “limited public funding, infrastructure constraints and political attention, prioritisation is essential” for CCS. Their “CCS ladder” places CCS in cement and lime production at the top – with the highest “climate value” – while power CCS has “low and decreasing value”.

Despite this, the focus of the CCS sector so far has not been in heavy industry, which represents less than 10% of announced capacity.

Another key consideration is the role governments are assigning to CCS in their national net-zero strategies. 

One study found that 33 of the 67 long-term net-zero strategies submitted to the UN by governments, with a further 10 indicating some potential use. 

It concluded that high-income countries that produce a lot of oil and gas, such as Canada and Norway, showed the “firmest commitment” to capturing and storing CO2.

Nations have agreed at UN climate talks to “phase down” coal power that is “unabated”. This is generally understood to mean coal power without CCS – leaving space to develop “abated” coal plants. This could allow China, for example, to continue using its sizable coal fleet with CCS to reduce emissions.

Why is CCS controversial?

Despite its role in many net-zero scenarios, CCS remains a highly contested technology. 

It has long been framed in some circles as a “false solution” to climate change, that is backed and lobbied for by fossil-fuel companies to “delay” the clean-energy transition. 

Critics argue that CCS is expensive – especially compared to increasingly cheap wind and solar power – in part because it significantly increases the energy requirements of a facility. 

A University of Oxford working paper published in 2023 concluded that a “low-CCS” pathway to net-zero emissions would cost around $1tn less a year compared to a “high-CCS” pathway. The researchers stated that “no evidence is found for technological learning or associated cost reductions” in the development of CCS to date. 

(They added that CCS is “still likely necessary” for cement and chemical production.)

Pointing to the limited progress in scaling up the technology so far, some question whether CCS can play the role envisaged in many net-zero scenarios.

Responding to the IPCC’s most recent report, for example, the Centre for International Environmental Law stated that “abated fossil fuels only exist in models”. 

Proponents of CCS contest the notion that CCS is “untested” or “unreliable”, pointing to some projects that have been operating for many years. Moreover, most of the component parts that make up a working CCS project are in wide use for other purposes.

Yet, another key criticism levelled at CCS projects is that they simply do not capture enough CO2, diminishing their role as a climate solution.

There is a widespread view that CCS projects should aim to capture at least 90% of the CO2 being emitted. UK guidelines are among those targeting a higher capture rate of 95%.

The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) has assessed the performance of existing projects. Its 2023 analysis is shown in the chart below.

The thinktank concluded that, in reality, most existing CCS projects are far below such capture rates, meaning they continue to emit significant amounts of CO2. (Capture is the most expensive part of the CCS process.)

Based on data analysed by IEEFA from the following projects: Petra Nova and Boundary Dam coal plants, US and Canada; Terrell, Lost Cabin, Shute Creek and Century Plant gas processing facilities, US, and Gorgon, Australia; Quest, Air Liquide and Air Products hydrogen production projects, US and Canada; Great Plains Synfuel and Coffeyville gasification projects, US; Enid and PCS Nitrogen fertiliser projects, US; Bonanza Bio Energy ethanol production, US; and Emirates Steel/Al Reyadah steel project, United Arab Emirates. 

Once the CO2 is captured, it must be stored. The IPCC says there is ample global geological storage available for CO2. It also says that, as long as sites are “appropriately selected and managed”, CO2 “can be permanently isolated from the atmosphere”.

Nevertheless, critics have noted that even relatively low rates of leakage along the transportation and storage chain could have a big climate impact when deployed at scale.

The continued use of gas in gas-CCS or blue hydrogen projects also brings risks of upstream emissions more broadly, such as methane leaks. (See: What are the UK’s plans for scaling up CCS?)

Considering these factors, in 2023 Climate Analytics assessed a “high CCS pathway” from the IPCC database. It concluded that if CO2 was captured at rates seen in existing facilities – around 50% – and upstream emissions remain high, CCS use could see an extra 86GtCO2e emitted by 2050. 

The report found that even the IEA’s net-zero scenario, which relies on “more limited fossil CCS use”, could result in an additional 16GtCO2e due to “underperforming fossil CCS”.

All of this calls into question many uses of CCS, according to Andrew Reid, energy finance analyst at IEEFA: “Is there really any point in trying to decarbonise fossil fuels, which comes with significant technical, timing and additional cost risk?” Reid tells Carbon Brief:

“As for cement and chemicals, again, there are alternatives, but these are nascent and expensive. CCS may be a solution here and if investment is going to be made in any area, it most likely should be these.”

On the other hand, CCS advocates argue that gas, for example, is likely to be an important, “dispatchable” part of many electricity systems as nations transition to clean energy.

Prof Stuart Haszeldine, a CCS researcher at the University of Edinburgh, explains this position to Carbon Brief:

“If we’re going to burn gas, then we should be fitting CCS on that…Otherwise we’re just going to say it’s OK for us to burn lots of gas and carry on emitting.”

There is also a line of argument referred to – sometimes pejoratively – as “techno-optimism”, which often stresses CCS as a core climate solution. This was exemplified by a controversial report on climate action in 2025 by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), in which the former UK prime minister wrote that CCS should be “at the centre of the battle”.

This diverges from the IPCC’s conclusion that, while CCS will likely have a role in achieving net-zero emissions, its contribution will be dwarfed by that of renewables.

CCS also attracts criticism due to its connection to the fossil-fuel industry. Dr Jen Roberts at the UKCCSRC tells Carbon Brief that she agrees these links make for complicated messaging:

“CCS is critical for net-zero, but is intrinsically tied with an industry sector that is climate polluting and historically anti-climate lobbying.”

Roberts says careful policymaking, including the development of business models and standards, can support CCS in hard-to-abate sectors where it is most needed. 

Some experts suggest that governments should require companies to capture and store their emissions under the “polluter pays” principle.

Roberts also notes that fossil-fuel companies have the experience and the workforce needed to scale up CCS. “Oil and gas companies can evidence a track record in multi-million or billion-dollar subsurface engineering projects,” Roberts adds.

Despite the fossil-fuel industry’s apparent support for CCS, one 2021 study co-authored by Haszeldine noted that they had, in fact, invested relatively small amounts in the technology, compared to renewables and nature-based solutions.

Lina Lefstad at Lund University questions whether the fossil-fuel industry stands to benefit financially through the deployment of CCS as much as some critics imply:

“People seem really worried that the fossil-fuel industry is going to come out the winner again, but if that was the case I think we would have large-scale CCS by now.”

What are the UK’s plans for scaling up CCS?

The UK government has committed “up to” £21.7bn of funding over 25 years to support the nation’s first five CCS projects and to make the nation an “early leader” in the sector.

This package, supported by both the former Conservative and current Labour governments, is intended to help create “clusters” of connected facilities across industrial areas of the UK.

Some have suggested that this represents a large pot of government spending, which could be raided to support more pressing priorities. Indeed, media coverage often points to CCS funding as a potential target for government cuts, or as a way to boost, say, military spending.

This is in spite of the fact that three quarters of the funding is expected to come from levies on consumers, rather than government budgets.

The first two CCS clusters, which are currently set to be deployed in the late-2020s, are the East Coast Cluster in north-east England and HyNet in north-west England and north Wales. The second two, scheduled for around 2030, are Acorn in north-east Scotland and Viking in the Humber.

The projects are expected to include blue-hydrogen production, gas power with CCS and industrial uses. The CO2 captured would be pumped into offshore saline aquifers and depleted gas fields.

Former UK energy secretary Ed Miliband has stated that CCS will “unlock” hard-to-abate sectors and play an “important role” in achieving clean power by 2030.

This position is supported by the UK government’s climate advisors at the Climate Change Committee (CCC), who have consistently stressed that CCS is “essential” for net-zero. 

In the CCC’s most recent net-zero pathway, released as part of its seventh carbon budget advice, CCS contributes 2% of emissions cuts in 2030 and 8% in 2050, as shown in the chart below. (If CO2 removals using BECCS are included, this increases to 15% in 2050.)

The CCC maintains that it “cannot see a route to net-zero that does not include CCS”. Nevertheless, the committee has downgraded its expectations for CCS in recent years. 

Between the CCC’s sixth and seventh carbon budget advice, its recommendations for power and industry CCS capacity dropped from 46MtCO2 to 41MtCO2. 

Dr Jamie Tarlton, the committee’s CCS lead, addressed this at a conference in March 2025, stating that it was “partly because we see more opportunities for decarbonising the other sectors and reducing those residual emissions than we saw five years ago”.

More recently, the UK government also scaled back its expectations for industrial CCS in its latest carbon budget delivery plan for 2035, bringing it more in line with the CCC’s net-zero pathway. It still describes CCS as “part of the most cost-effective route to net-zero”.

The UK’s CCS plans have drawn criticism. A September 2024 letter to Miliband signed by 22 scientists and activists expressed concern about “locking the UK into a fossil-fuel based pathway”. 

They note that the gas-CCS power plants and blue hydrogen facilities initially backed by the government would leave the UK reliant on gas imports, as North Sea production declines. This could be expensive and result in “upstream” emissions due to methane leaks.

(At the end of 2025, BP withdrew its involvement in one of the blue hydrogen facilities at the Teesside site. A data centre is planned for the site instead.)

Net Zero Teesside, a gas-CCS power plant in the East Coast Cluster run by BP and Equinor, has been unsuccessfully challenged in court over its emissions savings. The challenge was based on the idea that potential upstream emissions could significantly exceed any emissions cuts from CCS use.

According to a report by Carbon Tracker, the lifecycle emissions of Net Zero Teesside gas-CCS power plant would depend heavily on where it sources its fuel.

The project could cut emissions by around three-quarters, relative to an unabated gas plant, says the report. But it adds that if the plant relies on imported gas with high upstream emissions, then it might only cut emissions by a quarter.

(Most of the upstream emissions from imported gas would be released overseas, meaning they would not be counted in the UK’s official emissions inventory.)

Besides driving “gas dependence” in the UK, the government’s approach has drawn criticism for failing to ensure that CCS is prioritised in the industries that are hardest to decarbonise.

A report by the Public Accounts Committee in early 2025 took aim at the government’s cluster-based approach. It said this “does not ensure that financial support for CCUS is directed at the sectors which will need it most” – highlighting cement production.

(Of the CO2 captured in the CCC’s net-zero pathway in 2050, around 40% is in the industrial and waste sectors, while the remaining 60% is from gas power plants and the production of fuels such as hydrogen.)

Dr Andrew Boswell, the energy analyst who challenged Net Zero Teesside in court, says he is “more nuanced” when it comes to applications of CCS that do not involve gas. “There may be a case for cement, lime and waste…However, the case is unproven,” he tells Carbon Brief.

The Public Accounts Committee report also criticised the “high-risk” approach of using public funds for CCS projects, as well as slow progress in developing the technology. 

Enrique Cornejo, head of energy policy at fossil-fuel trade body Offshore Energies UK, tells Carbon Brief that the UK needs to maintain momentum and deploy CCS in order to “achieve economies of scale” and to reduce the cost of the technology more broadly:

“It is indeed necessary to streamline the cluster sequencing process to ensure that emitters in sectors such as cement have a clear route to the CCS market.”

related Q&A: What do China’s provincial five-year plans say about climate and energy? 18.06.2026 China policy Analysis: China’s CO2 climbs 2% in early 2026 due to ‘wasted’ wind and solar 04.06.2026 Coal Q&A: What does India’s new Paris Agreement pledge mean for climate action? 27.03.2026 Emissions Analysis: India’s CO2 emissions in 2025 grew at slowest rate in two decades 26.03.2026 Emissions

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The general public often underestimate support for climate action, while overestimating the real-world actions taken by other people to address the problem, according to new research.

The study, published in Nature Climate Change, explores the differences between people’s support for climate change, their behaviour and their assumptions about other people’s behaviour.

It is based on multiple surveys of more than 5,000 people across Germany and the US.

The study expands on previous research on how the general public systematically underestimate the climate commitment of their peers.

The difference between actual and perceived support for climate action among the public is sometimes known as a “perception gap”. 

The surveys tested how people’s perceptions of climate attitudes and behaviours relate to their own willingness to contribute and undertake “climate-friendly” actions.

One of the authors tells Carbon Brief that this perception gap is not due to “ignorance or bias”, but because “people are just not good at making good estimations”.

The research also reveals that people’s opinions and behaviours are more “nuanced than previously assumed” and suggests that simply “correcting misperceptions” does not automatically lead to greater climate action.

Measuring climate actions

The study notes that correcting the perception gap is often seen as a “cost-effective” way to promote public engagement and drive action to reduce the intensification and impacts of climate change. 

Most studies that explore the perception gap have primarily focused on surveys that have asked people to report their willingness to support climate change. 

In other words, researchers have relied upon people saying they would support efforts to tackle climate change, rather than measuring people’s real-world actions, such as financial donations, attending protests or changing their behaviour.

To fill this gap, the researchers behind the new study surveyed a total of more than 5,000 people in Germany and the US over 2024-25. Surveys were split across five different experiments, each focused on public perceptions of climate attitudes and how they relate to individuals’ actual behaviour:

.cb-table tr td{ word-wrap: break-word; word-break: normal; font-size: 0.9em; } ExperimentWhat they didSurvey oneParticipants were asked if they were willing to donate 1% of their household income to WWF – and then were given the chance to do so. Follow-up questions asked participants to predict how many of their peers said “yes” and how many actually donated to the charity.Survey twoParticipants read a constitutional complaint against the German government, led by Greenpeace, which demands for stricter climate policies. They were asked if they were willing to participate as a claimant and/or donate to the cause – and then were given the chance to do so. Follow-up questions asked participants to predict how many of their peers said “yes” and how many went on to support the complaint.Survey threeParticipants were requested to complete an online “work for environmental protection task” where the more “pages” they completed  resulted in more donations to WWF. They then predicted how many pages their peers completed. Participants also rated their individual behaviours and support for eight climate policies and then estimated the same for other people.Surveys four and fiveParticipants were split into three groups that were either informed that 4% of participants had donated 1% of their household income to WWF, that “68% were willing to contribute” or given no information. They then had to state whether they were willing to support WWF and then were given the opportunity to do so. 

The authors note that Germany and the US are two of the “top 10 CO2 emitters” and are places where climate action is “especially necessary”. However, they add that the two countries are not reflective of “diverse cultural contexts” and further research is needed across the world.

The perception gap

The researchers find that most of their participants supported climate action, but much fewer actually performed verifiable behaviours. 

For example, survey one finds that 37% of participants said they were willing to donate to WWF, yet just 4% did when given the opportunity.

Participants generally overestimated the climate actions of their peers, predicting that 23% of other people donated. Willingness, on the other hand, was slightly underestimated with respondents averaging around 34%. 

The results from survey three suggest that this perception gap is likely due to general cognitive processes within the human brain that make accurate estimations about large groups difficult, say the authors. 

The chart below shows the actual percentage of people who supported different environmental policies and performed climate-friendly behaviours (blue dots) compared to average predictions from the surveys (red dots). 

They reveal a “consistent pattern” where “small proportions were overestimated and large ones were underestimated”, the authors say, driving predictions towards the middle. This phenomenon is known as “regression to the mean”.

In other words, where public support for a policy was high, participants in the survey estimated it was lower than it was. When the support was lower, estimates would be higher.

Comparison of actual percentage (blue dots) with the mean estimated percentage (red dots) across two main categories: policy support and individual behaviours. Source: Tiede, et al (2026).

The study finds that individual and environmental factors played a role in shaping people’s perceptions of their peers’ climate actions, which were distinct from general misestimations. 

For example, people who were already involved in climate action, had more frequent climate discussions and consumed more climate-focused news and media predicted a higher proportion of climate support “across the board”.  

The results from the fourth and fifth surveys show that knowing the context of other people’s beliefs and behaviour in surveys can impact the attitudes of participants.

Participants that were told that 68% of people were willing to donate 1% of their household income to the WWF were more willing to donate. 

In contrast, participants that were told that 4% of people actually donated did not report more willingness to “discuss climate change, sign petitions or donate” than the control group. 

However, there was no obvious impact on actual donations for any of the three groups, the study notes.

Lead study author Dr Kevin Tiede, scientific managing director of the Institute for Planetary Health Behaviour at the University of Erfurt, tells Carbon Brief that the findings suggest that “just telling people how many people support climate action is likely not enough to really change something”. 

However, Tiede adds that “direct comparability” between people saying they would donate and actually donating is “limited” and that giving people more time to answer and autonomy over where to donate might result in more people taking action. 

‘Pluralistic ignorance’ 

Tiede explains that the study findings demonstrate the existence of “pluralistic ignorance”, where a person believes their own views differ from the majority.

For climate change, this means that the “vast majority of people around the world support climate action, but people considerably underestimate the extent of this support”, the study says. 

However, the surveys reveal that pluralistic ignorance “in the climate domain” is more nuanced than previously thought, say the authors. 

Prof Madalina Vascleanu, an assistant professor at Stanford University’s Doerr School of Sustainability, who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief that encouraging climate action is complex. 

It may take multiple and repeated “attempts” at effective communication, or for people to directly “experience” the “norm” that climate change is widely supported, she says, rather than simply being told.

“Observable” behaviours, such as “identity signalling” – which could involve anything from protesting to vegetarianism – might have more of an impact on encouraging climate action among peers than “private behaviours like donations”, she adds. 

The study is a “great addition to the literature”, Vascleanu says, because “correcting” the perception gap did not have an effect on climate-friendly behaviour, as “scholars had previously assumed”. She adds that it has “sparked several new hypotheses” that her “lab is now working on”.

Prof Mauro Bertolotti, associate professor of social psychology at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, explains that the “attitude-behaviour gap” revealed by the research is a “rather common finding”. 

However, he is “sceptical” of the “simplified and abstract” measures, warning that experiment environments often come with “assumptions and expectations” that are different from real life. 

As a result, they might not “replicate” the process people go through when choosing to “make a donation to an environmental cause”, he says.

‘Targeted’ communication strategies

The researchers argue that it is more effective to focus on “targeted” communication strategies – encouraging climate-friendly behaviours that aim to reach the majority who already support climate action, rather than trying to convert climate sceptics.

They call for attention to be paid to the attitude-behaviour gap between people saying they support efforts to tackle climate change and following up with real-world climate actions. 

The study suggests strategies for decision-makers to reduce the attitude-behaviour gap, such as “facilitating climate-friendly behaviour” with “convenience and subsidies”. They also recommend ensuring environmental policy prioritises fairness to gain visible and widespread public support. 

They add that the public would benefit from understanding the “effectiveness and co-benefits” of climate action.

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Tiede, K.E. et al. (2026) People systematically under- and overestimate public engagement in climate action, Nature Climate Change, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-026-02668-z

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In recent days, prominent climate sceptics and rightwing commentators have shared charts on social media incorrectly implying that Europe is having its “quietest” year for wildfires in 2026.

These include Dr Matthew Wielicki, a former University of Alabama geochemist and self-described “professor in exile”, who was recently appointed by the Trump administration to lead the US Global Change Research Program.

However, these charts paint a misleading picture as they are skewed by encompassing the entirety of Russia in the data – including the vast plains of Siberia.

These charts also use data that include fires that are deliberately lit to manage cropland, which is a declining practice across much of Europe.

In this factcheck, Carbon Brief shows that the area burned by wildfires across the European Union in 2026 is second only to 2022 for this time of year.

The latest data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) also shows that France has set a new modern record for area burned and Spain’s wildfire season is among the worst on record.

The fires have displaced more than a third of a million people across south-western Europe, while an impending heatwave has also raised fears of the fires worsening in the coming days. 

‘Quietest year’

On 27 July, as wildfires raged across multiple European countries, former Conservative peer and climate-sceptic commentator Matt Ridley posted on Twitter that “2026 is the quietest year for wildfires in Europe by some distance”.

.cb-tweet img{ border: solid 1.25px #333333; border-radius: 5px; } @media (max-width:650px){ .cb-tweet{ width:100%; } }

Ridley, who sits on the academic advisory council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a UK-based climate-sceptic lobby group that refuses to reveal the sources of its funding, was responding to an article by Daily Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley.

Stanley’s column, headlined: “Climate change is real – and the right needs to get serious about it”, warned:

“This is no longer a matter of speculation: the wildfires of Europe, pitiless and persistent, are the way we live now.”

Ridley included a chart from Our World In Data, showing the cumulative area burned by wildfires by week for Europe. The chart puts 2026 as having the smallest area for this time of year in a dataset going back to 2012.

Ridley’s post was widely shared by prominent rightwing figures – including Richard Tice, deputy leader of the hard-right, climate-sceptic Reform UK party, former Conservative cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg and multiple commentators.

Ridley repeated the claim of Europe having a “quiet” year for wildfires in an article for the Spectator, which was reprinted in the Daily Mail.

Separately, Wielicki also shared a chart on Twitter to imply that wildfires in Europe are declining. Wielicki has previously claimed that the “science is not settled on climate change”.

Author and self-styled “sceptical environmentalist” Bjorn Lomborg has also shared similar charts on Twitter. 

These charts all use data from the Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS). The GWIS category for “Europe” encompasses all the countries on the continent and includes the whole of Russia.

As a result, Russia accounts for about 74% of the area included in the GWIS definition of “Europe”.

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Wildfires in Russia typically account for 80-90% of the burned area in the GWIS Europe dataset. In 2026, fires in Russia are substantially below average. Therefore, including Russia in this comparison creates the false impression that wildfire activity across Europe is unusually low.

Dr Calum Cunningham, a research fellow at the University of Tasmania’s Fire Centre, says that such claims are “highly misleading”, noting that “they rely on aggregating fire activity across an enormous and climatically diverse region”. He tells Carbon Brief:

“A relatively quiet season in Russia can easily mask an exceptionally active season in France or Spain. If the analysis is focused on the regions actually experiencing the current fires, the picture is very different.

“The reality is that western Europe has experienced an extraordinary sequence of climate conditions this year.”

In contrast, the EFFIS provides a subset of wildfire data specifically for the area covered by the 27 nations of the EU, which, therefore, excludes Russia. 

Another difference between the two datasets is that GWIS monitors all fires – including those on agricultural land that are intentionally set alight. The burned area as measured by GWIS contains significant cropland area. 

By contrast, EFFIS uses land-cover data and other information to filter specifically for forest fires. 

Looking at the EU-only data from EFFIS reveals that Europe is far from having its “quietest” year. The bloc’s burned area, as of 29 July, is almost 435,000 hectares (ha) – second only to 2022 for this time of year.

Notably, Wielicki has actually continued to post charts based on GWIS data, even after acknowledging that “includ[ing] all of Russia, including vast areas of Siberia…isn’t a good proxy for Europe”.

French fires

Even looking at EU-wide data misses the scale of this year’s wildfires for some individual countries.

The chart below shows the surge in burned area in France since mid-July.

For much of the first half of the year, the country was having a wildfire season that was only slightly above average in terms of total burned area. However, a notable uptick began in the first week of July.

The third week of the month saw France break its previous cumulative annual record by more than 19,000ha. That gap has widened as the fires continue to burn; as of 29 July, the cumulative burned area in France during 2026 was nearly 24,700ha above the previous record. 

The fires in France follow a record-breaking June heatwave that “dried out vegetation across the region, allowing fires to spread quickly”, wrote the New York Times. 

On 27 July, French president Emmanuel Macron called a “crisis cabinet meeting” in order to address the fires “ravaging several areas of south-west France”, said France 24.

More than 220,000 people have been evacuated due to the Gironde fire, west of Bordeaux, in “what may be France’s largest peacetime evacuation”, reported the Associated Press.

In the Conversation, Cunningham and two other University of Tasmania researchers write that evacuation orders “protec[t] human lives, but makes it more likely houses and other structures will burn if there’s no one to defend them”. They add:

“There is little doubt climate change has made France and Spain’s wildfires worse. They represent yet another reason to redouble our efforts to tackle climate change and stabilise our climate.”

Central Spain scorched

While Spain’s fire season has not broken records in the same way that France’s has, it is on track to be among the worst since EFFIS began reporting data in 2006. 

The chart below shows the rapid increase in burned area in Spain since 8 July. The latest data from EFFIS reveal that, as of 29 July, Spain has almost matched its previous record at this point in the year. It is also nearly five times the average area burned for this time of year.

In Spain, the wildfires have been concentrated in the central part of the country, near Madrid. 

BBC News reported that the fires outside the capital have burned “an area more than twice as large as the city itself”.

Nearly 90,000 people were forced from their homes in central Spain by the fires, said the Associated Press. 

Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, called the fires a “painful expression” of climate change.

Meanwhile, the UK, French and Spanish governments have issued joint statements this week in response to the fires. The UK/Spain statement begins:

“This summer’s wildfires demonstrated that climate change was now a national security emergency facing Europe and threatening our way of life.”

updated

This article was updated on 31/07/2026 to include Matt Ridley’s Spectator and Daily Mail articles.

Related Mapped: How climate change affects extreme weather around the world 19.03.2026 Attribution Climate change made ‘fire weather’ in Chile and Argentina three times more likely 11.02.2026 Attribution Global wildfires burned an area of land larger than India in 2024 16.10.2025 Land and soils Analysis: Record UK wildfires have burned an area twice the size of Glasgow in 2025 08.08.2025 Extreme weather

The post Factcheck: No, Europe is not having its ‘quietest’ year for wildfires appeared first on Carbon Brief.

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The global goal to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030 “will not be achieved” unless action by countries “accelerates rapidly”, says a draft UN report.

Countries are falling short on 22 of the 23 targets for 2030 they set under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), the “Paris Agreement for nature”.

That is according to a draft version of a global report prepared by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), published on 26 July.

The report will be finalised ahead of the next nature summit, COP17, taking place in Armenia in October of this year.

The second draft of the global report has undergone “peer review”, but will still be subject to “technical edits” before being formally published ahead of COP17.

The final version will inform a global review of countries’ progress towards meeting the world’s 2030 nature goals, which will take place in Armenia.

Below, Carbon Brief explains why the report has been produced and what it says about countries’ progress in areas such as restoring ecosystems and raising funds for biodiversity.

• Global report
• Overall findings
  • Protecting and restoring nature
  • Climate and biodiversity links
  • Subsidies
  • Mobilising finance
  • Genetic resources
  • Pollution
  • Invasive species

Article Contents Expand menu

• Global report
• Overall findings
• Protecting and restoring nature
• Climate and biodiversity links
• Subsidies 
• Mobilising finance
• Genetic resources
• Pollution
• Invasive species

Global report

In Montreal, Canada, in 2022, nearly every country in the world agreed to the GBF. The overall “mission” of the framework is to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. Its “vision” is to bring the world into “harmony with nature” by 2050.

The GBF includes a list of 23 targets for 2030. They cover an expansive range of topics, from restoring ecosystems, to addressing pollution and providing developing nations with finance to help cover the costs of protecting nature.

As part of the GBF and its underlying documents, countries agreed to a schedule for monitoring their progress towards achieving the 2030 targets.

This included the preparation of a “global report” of progress coordinated by the CBD, which will inform a “global review” undertaken by countries at COP17.

The global report draws on countries’ national reports, which were due to be submitted to the UN in February of this year. It also draws on countries’ national nature plans, known as “national biodiversity strategies and action plans” (NBSAPS) and national targets, which were both due in 2024.

Not all countries have met the call to publish these documents and targets. According to the UN, 45% of countries published NBSAPs in time to be considered for the report, 83% had submitted at least one national target and 66% had produced their new national report. 

The first draft of the global report was published on 29 June 2026. This draft was subject to a “peer review process”, which invited countries and observers, such as NGOs and businesses, to submit comments on all aspects of the report.

The second draft, which has been revised based on the peer review, was published on Sunday 26 July. (This was just ahead of COP17 preparatory talks being held in Nairobi from 27 July to 1 August.)

A final version of the global report will be formally published ahead of COP17, which will take place from 19-30 October.

Overall findings

The second draft of the global report says that the GBF has led to “unprecedented” interest in tackling biodiversity loss, but adds:

“However, unless collective implementation accelerates rapidly, the 2030 targets and mission will not be achieved.”

It says that countries have taken some action to address all 23 targets, but that “no target presents a fully positive picture”.

(The first draft has slightly softer language. It “concludes that the world is not yet on track to collectively meet the global ambitions that the parties to the convention set when they adopted the framework”.)

The report identifies “two distinct gaps in progress”, relating to ambition and implementation.

First, that the national targets and plans submitted by countries “do not yet fully reflect the scope and level of ambition” of the global targets in the GBF.

Second, countries are not taking sufficient action to achieve their targets, according to the report.

It adds that progress is “particularly lagging” for addressing the “indirect drivers of biodiversity loss”, such as harmful business practices and government subsidies promoting them.

In addition, countries are showing “consistent gaps” in making progress on taking action to protect “marine, coastal and inland water ecosystems”.

The report produces a “scorecard” assessing countries’ progress towards meeting each of the 23 targets of the GBF.

The scorecard includes an “overall score” of between 0 and 1 for each target. This is calculated by considering countries’ self-reported progress in their plans and targets, as well as an assessment of progress based on a set of agreed indicators.

The results are split into four categories: 0-0.25 is red, 0.25-0.5 is orange, 0.5-0.75 is yellow and 0.75-1 is green.

The report gives a “green” score for just one target, indicating overall positive progress. This is target 8, on “minimising” the impact of climate change on biodiversity, including through mitigation and adaptation.

Elsewhere, the draft says that countries have “reported gaps in the scale and timely provision” of “financial resources, capacity-building and development, technical and scientific cooperation, access to and transfer of technology, and knowledge sharing”. It adds:

“These barriers can result in uneven capacities and cause specific technical and financial constraints for all parties, but particularly for developing-country parties. It is likely these constraints are even more pressing for least developed countries and small island developing states.”

Protecting and restoring nature

Target 3 of the GBF is for countries to protect “30% of Earth’s land and sea for nature” by the end of the decade. 

This commitment – referred to as “30 by 30” – is widely considered the flagship target of the agreement.

Target 3 of the Global Biodiversity Framework. Credit: UN CBD

The report says that countries are making “progress in expanding and managing protected areas, especially for marine and coastal areas”. But it adds that “current ambition and implementation remain insufficient to fully achieve all aspects of the target”.

It continues that, according to countries’ available national targets, “monitoring and reporting of some elements of the target remains low”. This includes “those relating to equitable governance of protected areas” and “recognition of Indigenous and local territories”.

The report adds that countries “face significant challenges in implementation, particularly related to lack of finance and capacity”.

(An investigation by Carbon Brief and the Guardian in 2025 revealed that more than half of nations that have submitted UN biodiversity plans do not commit to “30 by 30” within their borders.)

Another conservation measure included in the GBF is target 2, which aims to ensure that at least 30% of land and sea areas are under restoration by 2030. 

Target 2 of the Global Biodiversity Framework. Credit: UN CBD

The report says that “restoration efforts are expanding”. However, it says that “current commitments to restore areas and implementation of those commitments remain below the level required” to achieve target 2.

It adds that countries’ national targets are “generally well aligned with target 2”, but that “addressing the effectiveness of restoration efforts is often absent”.

Moreover, the report adds that monitoring of progress is “constrained by inconsistent definitions and monitoring approaches for ecosystem degradation and restoration”.

Another “major barrier” is a lack of available finance for developing countries looking to restore ecosystems, it says.

Climate and biodiversity links

Target 8 of the GBF is the only one to specifically address climate change, one of the major drivers of biodiversity loss.

It says countries should “minimise the impact of climate change” on biodiversity through mitigation and adaptation, including “nature-based solutions” and “ecosystem-based approaches”.

Target 8 of the Global Biodiversity Framework. Credit: UN CBD

Target 8 was the only one to achieve a “green” marking in the report’s scorecard of progress (see: Overall findings).

The report says that actions to make biodiversity more resilient against climate change are “progressing”. Yet “implementation remains constrained by data gaps, limited means of implementation and the need for stronger coherence between biodiversity, climate and disaster risk reduction planning”.

It continues that countries’ national targets “generally” show “good alignment” with target 8, across “all elements apart from efforts to minimise the impacts of ocean acidification”.

It adds that the deployment of nature-based solutions and ecosystem restoration is not yet at a “sufficient scale”.

Subsidies 

Overall progress is “insufficient” on target 18, which calls on countries to identify subsidies and other incentives that are harmful for biodiversity by 2025, says the GBF report. 

It also outlines that nations should “eliminate, phase out or reform” these subsidies in a “proportionate” way, reducing them by at least $500bn per year by 2030. 

Countries should first target the “most harmful” incentives, while simultaneously scaling up positive incentives for nature, it adds. 

Target 18 of the Global Biodiversity Framework. Credit: UN CBD (2022)

The report finds that countries have made some progress in assessing, compiling inventories and commissioning studies on harmful subsidies. 

But issues remain, such as incomplete data and the lack of agreed definitions on which subsidies are deemed “harmful”. 

Several national reports also note “entrenched interests and political barriers to subsidy reform”, says the report. 

Only one-quarter of countries’ national targets that are “highly aligned” with target 18 are “on track” to be met, it finds. Most show “insufficient progress”. 

It notes that 38% of countries have addressed the 2025 aim to identify harmful subsidies in their national targets “to some extent”. 

Countries’ national reports do not “provide a sufficient basis to determine” whether this goal was met, says the report, but available evidence “suggests” that it was not. 

Recent analysis by Carbon Brief found that just 16% of the 134 national reports submitted so far appear to meet the aim. 

The report outlines that half of countries have set national targets addressing plans to eliminate, phase out or reform harmful incentives. Almost 60% mention scaling up positive incentives, it adds. 

Just 27%, however, address the issue of reducing subsidies by at least $500bn annually by 2030. Also, only 5% set quantitative national targets to reduce subsidies.

There are two headline “indicators” to measure progress on target 18. The first shows that 30% of countries have outlined information on their nature-positive incentives.

The second indicator shows that 22 countries submitted the value of their biodiversity-harmful subsidies, which amounted to a total of $268bn spent on harmful subsidies over 2022 to 2025 – averaging $67bn each year. 

Carbon Brief’s analysis had identified an estimated $270bn each year, based on a wider list of submissions from 32 countries. (More countries submitted national reports since the CBD’s deadline to be included in the global report in February.) 

All of these figures remain well below the estimated trillions of US dollars spent annually. 

The report notes that different methodologies could lead to global subsidy estimate “inconsistencies”, meaning that reported values are likely “underestimates”. 

The amount of positive incentives in place is also likely underestimated, it adds. 

The report says that harmful subsidies may have declined by around 20% in recent years, based on figures consistently reported by a minority of countries over 2022-24. 

Despite this, the total value of subsidies “remains higher than the resources that parties reported mobilising for biodiversity”. (See: Mobilising finance.) 

Mobilising finance

Overall progress on raising biodiversity finance has been “insufficient”, according to the report. 

Goal D of the GBF, shown below, states that countries must close a $700bn biodiversity gap by 2030 through ending harmful subsidies ($500bn per year) and mobilising resources from the global north to south ($200bn per year). 

Goal D of the Global Biodiversity Framework refers to a $700bn biodiversity finance gap. Credit: UN CBD (2022)

This target aims to raise “at least $200bn per year” by 2030 from “all sources”, including domestic, international, public and private funding. 

In all, countries reported raising a cumulative total of $186.4bn over four years, according to the report. 

While it adds that it “is still too early to conclude”, the report states that the total finance mobilised so far “falls far short” of what is needed to close the biodiversity finance gap.

Target 19, shown below, states that developed countries and others should boost finance for nature to “at least $20bn” per year by 2025 and “at least $30bn” by 2030. This falls to developed countries and others that “voluntarily assume” the obligation of contributing.

However, the report suggests that the milestone of raising “at least $20bn per year by 2025” was “likely not achieved”. 

Target 19 of the Global Biodiversity Framework. Credit: UN CBD (2022)

Between 2020 and 2023, reporting countries cumulatively raised just $17.7bn in international public funding for biodiversity, according to the report. 

This amounts to an average of $4.4bn per year between 2020-23, with the total touching its highest at $5.2bn in 2023. 

The report cautions that this figure “should be read as a minimum”, as it does not account for all potential flows of biodiversity finance. 

Both estimates “fall below the $20bn milestone”, although the report adds that a “definitive assessment will only be possible” once data for 2024 and 2025 are included. 

An earlier draft of the report included language noting that biodiversity-related “official development assistance” remains “well below the agreed 2025 milestone”. This was cut from the summary in this latest iteration of the report.

References to the OECD reporting a “shortfall in funding” and projecting “a decrease for 2024 and 2025” – suggesting the $20bn target was “unlikely to be met” – were also removed from the latest draft. 

The chart below shows how international public funding for biodiversity has varied from 2020 to 2023, according to the report. 

The yearly sum of official development assistance provided by donor countries (blue) for biodiversity conservation (in billions) and the average share of national GDP (in %) represented by their national value (red). Source: UN CBD 2026

By comparison, domestic spending makes the largest cumulative contribution to biodiversity finance, at ($135.9bn) over the four years. However, spending has “declined” as a share of GDP. It also notes that spending varies “greatly”, from 0.1% to 2.7% of GDP. 

According to the report, many countries highlighted that national budget allocations for biodiversity are “far too low” and that biodiversity “frequently loses out to competing development priorities”, including “defence, food security and infrastructure”.

At COP15 in Montreal, the EU and several other countries pushed for the inclusion of “all sources” of finance in the final text – including private finance and “innovative” schemes. 

Private and “innovative” biodiversity finance – which spans a plethora of sources such biodiversity offsets and debt-for-nature swaps – was eventually included in target 19.

The report, however, notes that private finance “peaked in 2021 and fell afterwards” and “remains particularly undeveloped”, with a cumulative total of $32.7bn between 2020-23. 

At the same time, the report notes that only 26% of all countries had reported data on private biodiversity finance, making it harder to assess funding declines in 2022 and 2023.

Genetic resources

The report finds there has been limited progress on sharing genetic biodiversity data. 

”Digital sequence information” (DSI) refers to genetic data derived from biodiversity, which is often sourced from species in biodiversity-rich developing countries. 

These countries have long called for an international mechanism to ensure that the benefits of DSI are shared fairly with the people living where the resources were “discovered”, including Indigenous communities.

At COP16, countries agreed to the first-ever global fund, called the Cali Fund, for companies profiting from genetic data to contribute to conservation goals on a voluntary basis.

However, experts have cautioned that much rests on whether countries develop strong national laws to support the COP16 agreement. This could include incentivising companies in their regions to contribute to the fund. 

In the GBF, target 13 and goal C address elements of DSI, including the sharing of benefits from genetic resources and their digital derivatives.

Target 13 of the Global Biodiversity Framework. Credit: UN CBD (2022)

According to the report, 79% of countries submitted national targets that address legal, policy and administrative measures to enable benefit-sharing from DSI. Some 71% included measures to facilitate access to genetic resources. 

The report finds that the “strongest progress” has been in developing laws and policies, which are now at an intermediate stage. 

The “most fundamental regulatory barrier”, according to many countries cited, is the lack of a “dedicated” national framework to enable access to genetic resources and share benefits with communities. 

This would involve enacting laws compatible with the GBF, setting up digital registries to catalogue and trace genetic resources, as well as implementing tracking systems to monitor how they are used. It would also include a financial mechanism to pay communities for the use of their traditional knowledge. 

Goal C of the Global Biodiversity Framework covers benefit-sharing from genetic resources and DSI, as well as protection of traditional knowledge. Source: UN CBD (2022)

Progress in monitoring monetary and non-monetary benefits from DSI is “much weaker” and is “particularly limited” for measures related to the Cali fund.

According to the report, most parties have “no monitoring systems [for evaluating benefits from genetic resources] in place, or [are] still developing them”. It says they add that the benefits from genetic resources are hard to track “across borders and along value chains through to the final product”.

For those that have tracked benefits, it says that countries reported a cumulative $6.9m in receipts from the use of genetic resources between 2022 and 2025. It adds that “several parties reported that they had received no monetary benefits” to date. 

Countries also reported more than 960 non-monetary benefits, ranging from technical training to research participation. The report cautions that these “fluctuated over time rather than increasing consistently, and cannot be seen as indicative of global benefit-sharing”. 

In December 2025, Carbon Brief reported that the Cali fund had received only one contribution of $1,000 as an “icebreaker”. No other major companies have stepped up to fill the fund. 

Meanwhile, the report states that the formal protection of traditional knowledge held by Indigenous peoples and local communities remained “underdeveloped”. 

It says that a “significant number” of countries raised concerns about gaps in recognition of Indigenous peoples’ rights and dedicated registries to document their traditional knowledge. 

The report says it is not yet possible to assess progress towards goal C:

“To date it is not possible to comment on whether benefits are being shared fairly and equitably nor on the role played by traditional knowledge and Indigenous peoples and local communities. Therefore, progress towards goal C cannot yet be assessed.”

Pollution

Target 7 of the GBF focuses on tackling pollution from pesticides, chemicals, plastic and other sources. 

It calls for countries to reduce pollution risks and negative impacts “from all sources” to “levels that are not harmful” to biodiversity and ecosystems by 2030. 

It also aims to reduce excess nutrients in the environment and overall risks from pesticides and hazardous chemicals by “at least half”. 

The draft report finds that there is no significant change or insufficient progress on 60% of national targets categorised as being highly aligned with target 7. Only one-third of these national targets (35%) are on track to be achieved by 2030. 

On average, it says countries have addressed around half of the various elements of target 7 “to some extent” in their national targets. 

The most frequently-mentioned aspect of the target – addressed by 72% of countries – refers to reducing pollution from all sources by 2030. 

One headline indicator related to target 7 focuses on the concentration of pesticides in the environment. 

Just five countries out of 125 submitted estimates on this, according to the report. It says only one country has met the aim of halving the overall risk from pesticides on a national basis so far.  

Measures to address plastic pollution are the most frequently reported actions by countries in relation to this target, including bans on single-use bags and straws. 

A number of countries in Europe and Asia have also implemented measures to reduce nutrient losses from fertilisers and slurry. 

A “major challenge” for countries in advancing pollution aims is “effectively and fairly considering and managing impacts on food security and livelihoods”, according to the report. 

Several countries point to a lack of national funding to implement measures towards achieving this target. 

Some developing countries also list poor wastewater-treatment infrastructure as a “persistent challenge” on this issue. 

Invasive species

Invasive alien species refers to those that have moved to and become established in a region outside their natural habitat, as a result of human activities. This has negative impacts for local biodiversity and ecosystems.

Target 6 of the GBF calls for countries to, among other things, reduce the rates of introduction and establishment of invasive alien species by 50% by 2030. 

The draft report says countries are “taking action” on this target, but progress is “difficult to assess”. 

Two-thirds of national targets aligned with target 6 show “no significant progress or insufficient progress”, it finds. Fewer than one-third are on track to be achieved by 2030 and just 1% of these national targets have already been achieved. 

But most countries have made progress in putting in place measures to manage invasive species – mostly focusing on reducing the introduction rate and impact of species. 

Countries have addressed around half of the different elements of the invasive species target “to some extent” in their national targets, finds the report. 

But fewer than one-third (30%) have set national targets that put a numeric goal on reducing invasive species. 

Island biosecurity programmes and measures to intercept invasive species at country borders are among the actions countries have put in place to tackle the issue. 

The report lists some barriers countries say stand in the way of achieving the target. These include a lack of baseline data from which to measure a 50% reduction rate, poor early-detection systems and a lack of funding for long-term reduction efforts. 

Some countries also cite capacity and technical challenges in monitoring invasive species, according to the report. 

They say many of these species “go unnoticed for years before impacts become apparent”, it adds, with countries arguing that setting a specific reduction target is “challenging”.

Related Factcheck: No, Europe is not having its ‘quietest’ year for wildfires 30.07.2026 Extreme weather Analysis: 84% of nations miss deadline to identify ‘nature-harming’ subsidies by 2025  28.07.2026 International policy UK withdraws millions in funding from world’s second-largest rainforest in Congo  15.07.2026 Nature Livestock heat deaths in transit doubled in UK record-hot summer of 2025 25.06.2026 Food and farming

The post World falling short on 22 of 23 nature targets for 2030, says draft UN report appeared first on Carbon Brief.

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Rising temperatures are redistributing the risk of childhood malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, resulting in areas of “new risk” in the east and south of the continent, but also “relief hotspots” in western Africa.

This is according to a new study, published in Nature, which provides the “most comprehensive look to date at the impact of climate change on any infectious disease”.

The research finds that since the year 1900, climate change has resulted in one extra case of malaria for every 1,000 children in sub-Saharan Africa on average. 

Over the 21st century, climate change is expected to drive down malaria rates across the continent on average, as temperatures rise above the optimum range for mosquitoes. 

However, the authors emphasise that continent-wide averages hide more detailed local trends. 

They find that cooler parts of Africa face an increase in malaria risk, as rising temperatures have made the regions more suitable for malaria-carrying mosquitoes, while warmer regions see a suppression in malaria cases.

The lead author tells Carbon Brief that this is the first study to use “attribution” – a field of climate science which uses models to compare conditions in a world with global warming to one without – to assess the impact of climate change on malaria.

The study also reveals that climate change is not the main driver of shifting malaria risk in Africa, with public health measures and government policy making a more significant impact.

The “most important” message from the study, according to another expert, is that to eliminate malaria entirely, “effective surveillance, prevention and treatment remain substantially more influential – and more actionable – than climate change alone”.

Childhood malaria

Malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people every year. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 610,000 people died due to the disease in 2024.

The disease is transmitted to humans by bites from mosquitoes infected with the malaria parasite. Malaria spreads most rapidly in warm, wet regions, where the parasite-carrying mosquitoes can live and breed.

However, malaria is preventable. A total of 42 countries – mainly in Europe and the Americas – have eliminated the disease entirely through a combination of measures including insecticide use, draining the swamplands that provide breeding habitats for mosquitoes and improving basic healthcare services .Global mortality from malaria declined by 90% over the 20th century. 

Today, the vast majority of malaria cases are recorded in Africa, which was home to 95% of malaria cases and deaths in 2024. Children under the age of five make up three-quarters of all African malaria deaths.

The malaria-causing parasite can be detected using a blood test. Over the last century, scientists, government officials and healthcare professionals have collected thousands of blood samples from people across sub-Saharan Africa and tested for the presence of the malaria parasite.

In 2017, scientists brought together more than 50,000 samples collected from sub-Saharan Africa over 1900-2016. This data provides a “snapshot” of the amount of malaria in the population in any year in the last century the study explains.

Dr Colin Carlson is an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Yale school of public health and lead author of the study. He tells Carbon Brief that malaria in Africa is “extraordinarily well documented”, as a result of academic interest and colonial rule in the continent.

The size and quality of the malaria dataset are “exceptionally rare”, Carlson says. He explains that the dataset stretches back to before the impacts of human-caused climate change were strongly felt, making it “extraordinarily” valuable for this analysis. 

The chart below shows the percentage of children between two and 10 years old who tested positive for the malaria parasite over 1900-2016. Each dot indicates one blood test result and the pink vertical bars indicate periods of “successful malaria prevention intervention”, such as the 1955-69 global malaria eradication programme.

The percentage of children between two to 10 years old who tested positive for the parasite that causes malaria between 1990 and 2016. Source: Carlson et al. (2026) Attribution

The authors use the blood test survey data to develop a statistical model separating out the climatic, social and economic factors that affect malaria, such as temperature, rainfall, economic development, healthcare and population changes. This allows the authors to isolate the effects of the climate on malaria.

They find that malaria prevalence in children peaks when average monthly temperatures reach 24.9C, dropping off in warmer and cooler climates. 

Mosquitoes also need stagnant or slow-moving water in which to lay their eggs. The authors find that periods of drought tend to decrease malaria prevalence one-to-two months later, whereas floods increase prevalence two-to-three months later. However, they conclude that rainfall is “less important than temperature” in predicting malaria rates.

They then combine the statistical models with climate models, to simulate childhood malaria rates in a range of past and future climates. 

First, the authors simulate malaria rates in the present day, by running the models using the climate of 2000-14. They then carry out the same analysis, using the climate of a hypothetical world without human-caused climate change.

By comparing the two, the authors were able to attribute the impact of climate change on malaria rates across Africa.

The link between climate change and malaria in Africa is complex and “surprisingly contentious”, according to the authors. For example, they write that “malaria resurgence in the east African highlands became a particular point of contention, with over a dozen studies arguing for or against climate change as a substantial driver”.

It adds:

“Today, malaria experts generally agree that climate change has contributed to elevational shifts in malaria epidemics and the geographical ranges of mosquito vectors. However, the cumulative effect of climate change on the burden of malaria is still an open question.”

Lead author Carlson says this paper is “one of the first impact attributions on infectious disease” and the first attribution study on climate change and malaria. He adds:

“I think it’s the most clarity we’ve had on the malaria question.”

Dr Teresa Yamana, an associate research scientist at Columbia University, who was not involved in the study, praises its “rigorous” methodology. She tells Carbon Brief that the work “demonstrates the potential of climate attribution methods to quantify the impacts of climate change on infectious diseases”. 

Warming world

The findings show that “climate change isn’t just making malaria worse or better – it’s moving it, says study author Prof Tamma Carleton, an assistant professor at UC Berkeley:

“Whether a place sees elevated malaria risks or reduced burdens under climate change depends on how hot it is today. We see relief in the hotspots and new risk nearly everywhere else.”

For example, in the Ethiopian highlands, low temperatures – which are unsuitable for mosquitoes to live and breed – have historically limited the spread of malaria. However, the region has seen childhood malaria rates increase by more than eight cases per 1,000 children since the year 1900 as rising temperatures have allowed the insects to expand their habitat.

The authors also found a similar increase in malaria prevalence in cooler southern African countries.

In contrast, global warming is pushing average temperatures above the ideal range for mosquitoes in many hotter parts of Africa, driving down malaria rates. The authors find that in western Africa, climate change has caused a reduction of four malaria cases per 1,000 children per year by 2014, reducing prevalence by 1-2%.

Overall, climate change has resulted in one extra case of malaria for every 1,000 children in sub-Saharan Africa since the year 1900, the study says.

The authors also run their models for three future climate scenarios: low (SSP1-2.6), intermediate (SSP2-4.5) and very-high (SSP5-8.5) emissions pathways. Comparing these to the present-day model results shows how climate change could affect malaria cases over the coming century. 

They find that the trends observed so far will largely continue into the future – meaning climate change will lower the prevalence of malaria in warm regions and increase the prevalence in cool regions.

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The study concludes that under the intermediate scenario, which is broadly in line with current climate policies, warming will drive down childhood malaria cases by about three cases per 1,000 children in central Africa and 16 cases per 1,000 children in west Africa by the end of the century. 

By contrast, cases could increase by around 20% over the same period in regions such as the Rift Valley and coastal southern Africa – a rise of 30 cases per 1,000 children.

The maps below show changes in childhood malaria prevalence due to climate change in today’s climate (left) and the climate of 2096-2100 under the intermediate scenario (right). 

Red indicates an increase in malaria prevalence and blue indicates a decrease. Greyer colours indicate greater uncertainty in the model results. White indicates regions where no data was collected.

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Carlson tells Carbon Brief that this is “the first study to really confidently answer the highland East Africa debate”. 

Eradicating malaria

Healthcare workers, governments and scientists have been working to eliminate malaria for decades.

On average, the authors find that climate change will reduce the prevalence of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, as temperatures rise above the optimum range for mosquitoes. This effect is more pronounced at higher warming levels. 

Under the low emissions scenario, about 1 case per 1,000 children will be averted by the end of the century. Meanwhile under the highest emissions scenario, average prevalence falls by 20 cases per 1,000 children, marking a 9% reduction.

The graph below shows childhood malaria rates over 1990-2024 in the historical climate (blue) and in a world without climate change (grey). These estimates are shown relative to baseline prevalence across 1901-30.

After the year 2014, the plot shows projected future changes in malaria prevalence, relative to a 2015-20 baseline, in the low (purple), intermediate (pink) and high (green) scenarios.

Malaria prevalence in the historical climate (blue), historical climate without global warming (grey), low emissions scenario (purple), intermediate emissions scenario (pink) and very-high emissions scenario (green). Source: Carlson et al. (2026)

Carlson emphasises that this does not mean that climate change is “good news” for healthcare in sub-Saharan Africa. He explains that climate change will bring a wide range of negative health impacts that will strain healthcare systems, adding: 

“A world that is too hot for malaria is not a good world for the health of children.”

He also notes that climate change is “not the primary driving factor of malaria dynamics”. For example, he notes that malaria prevalence fell over 2000-15, by about 16 percentage points, after the disease was identified as a “critical global target of the Millennium Development Goals”.

This reduction is 200 times greater than the increase seen so far because of climate change, Carlson says. He adds: 

“It would not be tremendously hard both to keep malaria out of new places and to eliminate it where it is maybe going to get a little bit of an assist from climate change.”

Dr Adugna Woyessa is a senior researcher at the Ethiopian Public Health Institute and was not involved in the study. He has previously carried out research on malaria in eastern Africa.

Woyessa praises the study, telling Carbon Brief that the research could bring about a “paradigm shift” in efforts to eliminate malaria. He argues that the study is a “tool for engaging giant development partners”, adding that “future work will be needed to situate these global trends in local contexts”.

Dr Janey Messina is an associate professor in the school of geography and the environment at the University of Oxford and was also not involved in the study. She praises the paper’s “strong” method.

However, she cautions that the findings “should not be interpreted as forecasts of total future malaria burden”, because they only model the impact of climate change on malaria, while excluding “social, demographic and public-health determinants”, such as inequality, migration, conflict and changing access to malaria interventions.

She adds:

“One of the paper’s most important messages is this: effective surveillance, prevention and treatment remain substantially more influential – and more actionable – than climate change alone.”

Carlson, C. et al. (2026) The past and future impact of climate change on childhood malaria in Africa, Nature, doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10840-w

Related Q&A: Europe’s May and June heatwave deaths – and how they were counted 17.07.2026 Extreme weather Guest post: France’s June heatwave caused more than 2,700 heat-related deaths 07.07.2026 Health and society Revealed: Floods have forced at least 67 closures at NHS hospitals since 2021 25.05.2026 Health and society Climate change could lead to 500,000 ‘additional’ malaria deaths in Africa by 2050 28.01.2026 Health and society

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China has released its “15th five-year plan for the development of renewable energy”, outlining key targets and policies for the sector in 2026-2030.

A key focus of the plan is boosting renewable generation and consumption as a share of China’s overall energy mix.

It calls for continued capacity additions of wind and solar – albeit at lower levels than previous years – as well as hydropower, biomass and other clean-energy sources.

Specifically, China will aim to install 3,500 gigawatts (GW) of renewables capacity by 2030,  2,800GW will be wind and solar. 

The country had previously pledged to install 1,200GW of wind and solar by 2030, a goal that China met six years early.

Another major theme is the provision of wind and solar supply that is “dependable” and “grid-friendly”.

Setting a target for “firm capacity” from wind and solar could help to entrench their role as a provider of “energy security”, according to analysts.

The government also aims to boost renewables consumption by developing non-power uses of renewable energy, in sectors such as steel and chemicals.

Below, Carbon Brief examines the key targets and policies outlined in the five-year plan and what they mean for China’s energy transition.

• Why are China’s five-year plans important?
• What overarching renewables targets are in the plan?
• Why does the plan focus on ‘firm capacity’ for renewables?
• What does the plan say about ‘distributed’ energy?
• What does the plan say about non-electricity use of renewables?
• What does the plan say about China’s cleantech dominance?

Article Contents Expand menu

• Why are China’s five-year plans important?
• What overarching renewables targets are in the plan? 
• Why does the plan focus on ‘firm capacity’ for renewables?
• What does the plan say about ‘distributed’ energy?
• What does the plan say about non-electricity use of renewables?
• What does the plan say about China’s cleantech dominance? 

Why are China’s five-year plans important?

Five-year plans are key to China’s political system. An overarching plan, covering all socioeconomic issues of importance to policy leaders, is published at the beginning of each five-year cycle. 

The plan for the 15th five-year period (2026-2030) was published in March 2026. 

It includes what the government considers to be the most important targets and policy signals for climate and energy. For example, binding targets for carbon intensity, the share of non-fossil energy in total energy consumption and total energy production capacity.

Following this overarching document, five-year plans focused on specific sectors or themes are then published over the course of the five-year plan period.

This year, the government has already published several five-year plans related to energy and climate change. One covers the development of the “new-type” energy sector more broadly. Another wraps climate goals together with other environmental targets under the “Beautiful China” programme.

By contrast, the renewables five-year plan focuses specifically on the development of hydropower, wind, solar, biomass, geothermal and wave energy.

It was published in late July by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country’s top economic planning agency, and the National Energy Administration (NEA). 

It covers topics including capacity and generation targets, as well as efforts to increase integration and reliability of wind and solar. It also has policies to encourage “non-power use” of renewable energy and ways to strengthen innovation of clean-energy technologies.

What overarching renewables targets are in the plan? 

China will aim to install 3,500 gigawatts (GW) of renewables capacity by 2030, according to the five-year plan.

Of this, 2,800GW will be wind and solar – a pledge reiterated from China’s action plan for peaking carbon emissions, which was released earlier this month. 

The goal more than doubles a previous 2030 target for wind and solar to reach 1,200GW, which China met six years early.

As of June 2026, the country has installed just under 2,000GW of wind and solar capacity, as well as 454GW of hydropower. Biomass, geothermal and wave energy hold very small shares of the overall energy mix. 

As such, China would need to build 160GW of wind and solar each year – and just under 220GW of renewable capacity in total – to meet the targets.

The country installed 277GW of new solar alone in 2024 – and 315GW in 2025. 

China’s total installed capacity of renewable energy from 2016-2025, and its target for 2030. Source: National Energy Administration, Carbon Brief.

A key part of meeting the targets will be the development of large-scale clean-energy bases in China’s northern regions. These will generate power to be exported elsewhere via ultra-high voltage lines. The plan also encourages greater “local consumption” and installations of distributed energy (see below).

The plan says that further research will be directed at increasing the renewable share of electricity generated by these large-scale energy bases to 100%.

A recent report by the thinktank Global Energy Monitor (GEM) finds that output from these bases “continues to be paired with coal-fired generation in the name of balancing and system flexibility”. It says that currently, coal generates 42% of the power transmitted to the rest of the country from these bases.

China will also add more hydropower, says the plan, with capacity rising from 448GW in 2025 to 570GW in 2030. Some 160GW of this will be pumped-storage hydropower.

Meanwhile, the plan sets a target for renewable power generation to reach 6,000 terawatt-hours (TWh), 4,000TWh of which would come from wind and solar. 

This would be a 50% increase in five years as renewables generated just under 4,000TWh of electricity in 2025, according to the National Energy Administration.

By 2030, the plan says that total consumption of renewable energy will stand at 1.8bn tonnes of coal equivalent (Gtce).

This would be up from 1.2Gtce in 2025, which represented about one-fifth of China’s total energy consumption of 6.2Gtce that year.

The renewable targets in the plan are lower than those suggested in a recent study by high-profile Chinese scholars.

The study, from the department of energy and power engineering and the Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development at Tsinghua University in Beijing, assessed the “likelihood of China attaining its carbon peak” under different pathways.

It found that, in order to meet its climate commitments, China would need to either install more than 4,000GW of “non-fossil energy capacity” before 2030, or to “maintain a total energy consumption” below 6.5Gtce.

The table below outlines some of the key renewables targets for 2030, as specified in the plan.

Key targets for 2030, adapted from 15th five-year plan for renewable energy  Type20252030Percentage changeRenewable energy use 1.2Gtce1.8Gtce53%Total renewables capacity2,340GW3,500GW50%Wind and solar capacity1,840GWMore than 2,800GW52%Of which: Solar thermal1.8GW15GW733%Hydro capacity450GW570GW27%Of which: Pumped storage hydropower66GW160GW142%Wave energy–0.4GW–Renewable generation4,000TWh6,000TWh50%Of which: Wind and solar2,300TWh4,000TWh74%Non-electricity use60Mtce150Mtce150%Renewable hydrogen0.25Mt2Mt700% Why does the plan focus on ‘firm capacity’ for renewables?

As well as increasing the overall size of China’s renewable power supply, the country must also maintain an “uninterrupted and reliable power supply”, officials from the NDRC and NEA told state news agency Xinhua in coverage of the new plan.

To support this goal, the plan says that the development of renewables will “enter a new stage”. This will mean that “improving quality and serving as a reliable alternative” to fossil fuels will be as important as “expanding scale”.

The plan, therefore, proposes targets for the “firm capacity” from wind and solar (置信出力). This is the amount plants or grids can be relied on to produce during critical supply periods, in conjunction with on-site storage.

The target for wind is a firm capacity of at least 11% of total installed capacity by 2030, while the equivalent goal for solar is 6%. 

Wind and solar will also be expected to supply more than 20% of total demand in peak periods during the summer and winter evenings, says the plan. It expects “reliable peak-shaving capacity from renewable sources” to reach more than 300GW.

The new targets are a “positive move”, says Yao Zhe, global policy advisor at Greenpeace East Asia, as it “only applies during peak load and critical supply periods, when coal power is typically used to stabilise the power supply”. 

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She adds that this could, theoretically, “prevent the construction of new coal-fired power projects that are proposed and approved for the reason of meeting peak demand”.

The new metrics mark a change in focus, says Lyu Wenbin, director general of the Energy Research Institute – a state thinktank under the NDRC – in an “explanatory reading” posted on BJX News. He says it “marks a shift in renewable energy development from the mere pursuit of installed capacity to…also taking into account system support capabilities”. 

The plan pledges to “accelerate the construction of grid-friendly wind and solar power stations”. It says this will enhance “reliable peak-load generation” and strengthen renewables’ ability to ensure “safe and stable operation” of the grid.

It says this will particularly be a focus in the energy-hungry east, central and south areas of China.

It sets out a slightly different focus for areas that already have a high share of renewables in their power mix, such as north-west China. Here, the aim will be to develop wind and solar parks that are “capable of providing voltage, frequency and inertia support”.

“This is a real challenge”, says James Norman, research analyst at GEM. He says these challenges are particularly acute in some circumstances:

“[For example], when the share of wind and solar is very high, relatively few synchronous generators (like coal) are online or large volumes of electricity are being transferred through high voltage DC lines.”

The plan mentions many technological solutions to address the problem, he tells Carbon Brief. However, he adds, there are no quantitative details for the issue. For example, he notes there is no target for “how many gigawatts of wind and solar must gain grid-forming capability”. This is in contrast to the goals for overall renewables capacity or generation.

Norman was a co-author on the recent GEM report, which identified further barriers to renewable uptake. It said these include transmission bottlenecks, alongside systemic features such as dispatching and power-contract mechanisms. 

As a result, said the report, renewable power – especially solar – is increasingly being “curtailed”, particularly in north-western and northern provinces.

Yao also notes that the plan does not “spell out specific measures to address systemic constraints” around the electricity grid and the role of coal in the power sector. 

“I interpret this as evidence that the vested interests are still strong in the policy debate,” she adds.

What does the plan say about ‘distributed’ energy?

Alongside gigawatt-scale clean-energy megabases, China also aims to expand construction of “distributed” energy. This means smaller-scale installations, such as rooftop solar.

More than 300GW of “distributed new energy” is to be added over 2026-30, some 60GW per year.

The plan aims for distributed new energy to be adopted in sectors such as industry, transport, buildings and agriculture. 

Applications include the use of distributed solar and wind in industrial parks, coal mines and oilfields, as well as encouraging residents to install solar panels on buildings and developing rural clean-energy grids.

In some regions, distributed solar and wind is “likely to meet a large proportion of local demand”, says Prof Pan Jiahua at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou). He tells Carbon Brief that micro- and mini-grids using such resources will be particularly important in central and coastal China.

The 60GW annual target for new distributed energy is not “overly ambitious”, says Isadora Wang, head of China at the thinktank Transition Asia. She tells Carbon Brief that distributed solar additions, alone, exceeded 100GW in both 2024 and 2025.

Cosimo Ries, analyst at the consultancy Trivium China, agrees that the target is reachable. The biggest question mark, he tells Carbon Brief, is whether it will continue to make sense for industry and utilities to build distributed power at the volumes seen during the 14th five-year plan period. 

He adds that market conditions for distributed solar have deteriorated sharply over the past two years. He says a range of factors have hit investor confidence:

“[Distributed solar faces] growing exposure to market trading, worsening returns in spot markets, growing risks of curtailment and new policies limiting or forbidding the selling of power back to the grid.”

What does the plan say about non-electricity use of renewables?

The plan also sets goals for renewable energy’s role in “non-electricity use”.

This means using renewable energy for purposes other than generating electricity, through converting it to other forms, such as heat or mechanical energy.

The government is aiming for non-power use to nearly triple from 60m tonnes of coal equivalent (Mtce) in 2025 to 150Mtce in 2030. 

Ries tells Carbon Brief that he thinks this target is “one of the main highlights” of the plan. However, he notes that limited available data means it is hard to assess the level of its ambition. He adds that, given the relative conservatism of China’s other recent clean-energy targets, this one may also be met relatively easily.

Key applications for non-power use of renewables include “green hydrogen, ammonia and methanol”, says the plan. It also points to using wind and solar for heat, as well as to biomass and geothermal for heating and cooling. 

Green hydrogen, ammonia and methanol are the “centrepiece” of the non-power push, according to state-owned newspaper Economic Information Daily.

For hydrogen alone, China plans to scale up renewable hydrogen production to 2m tonnes in 2030, up from 250,000 tonnes in 2025.

Today, non-power use of renewables accounts for only around 1% of China’s total energy consumption, NEA and NDRC officials said in a Q&A. They added that there is “considerable room for growth” in sectors such as industry, transport and buildings.

Potential new applications include the use of wind and solar for heat. This could see the use of centralised wind and solar heating stations in the chemicals, textiles, pharmaceuticals, papermaking and food sectors. 

New projects in the steel and cement sectors should use locally-generated wind and solar to power electric-arc furnaces and kilns, adds the plan.

Wang tells Carbon Brief that she believes the naming of individual sectors is a “clear indication” that they will be included in China’s renewable consumption quotas. These already cover aluminium and other heavy industry sectors.

She adds that power and heat demand from the named sectors may help absorb distributed renewable energy. It will also serve as a testing ground for matching demand with supply through increased grid flexibility and power price reforms.

To Ries, the growing focus on non-power use signals that China’s decarbonisation efforts are “now entering deeper waters”. That means regulators are turning from easier-to-abate sectors, such as aluminium, to more challenging industries, such as steel.

The plan could create a “second growth curve” for the new-energy industry, says He Zhao, in a commentary for China Power News Net. He, the vice-president of the China Electric Power Planning and Engineering Institute (EPPEI). says this might begin with non-power use, before shifting to fuel, feedstock and heat substitution.

What does the plan say about China’s cleantech dominance? 

The next five years is a prime opportunity for China to “consolidate our leading position across the entire industrial chain” for clean-energy technologies, says the plan.

It adds that the government will “strengthen technological innovation” and accelerate the roll-out of new applications of artificial intelligence in China’s renewable-energy system. 

A particular focus for new R&D will be “cutting-edge, original and disruptive technologies”. It also points to technologies that “enhance the reliability of renewable energy” as a substitute for fossil fuels.

The plan names technologies for further development. For wind power, these include “reliable and low-cost” blades, ultra-tall towers and new types of floating platforms. It also mentions the development of “high-altitude wind power”. For solar, it points to the development of perovskite and other “high efficiency” solar cells, as well as space-solar technologies.

The plan also pledges to develop a power market that supports the “full entry” of renewable-energy companies. It underscores that companies should plan for an increasingly market-based and competitive environment.

Meanwhile, the government will also deepen cooperation with other countries on clean energy and “advance” global climate cooperation, it says.

A priority will be “strengthening” international coordination on investment and development in “green energy projects”. Another is “actively promoting the free circulation of China’s high-quality green technologies and products in global markets”.

Chinese exports of clean-energy technologies have been surging, especially since the closure of the strait of Hormuz. 

At the same time, Chinese investment in clean-energy projects in Belt and Road Initiative member states totalled $20bn in the first half of 2026. This is also driven by the crisis.

The US, EU and others have launched tariffs and pricing mechanisms to curb imports of Chinese cleantech. This has contributed to pushback from China, against what it and others refer to as “unilateral trade measures”. 

China is transitioning from a “major energy nation” (能源大国) to an “energy powerhouse” (能源强国), writes the Energy Research Institute’s Lyu in his explanatory reading. He says this will enable China to increasingly shift to building “systemic” advantages in developing clean-energy technologies.

He continues that, from 2026-2030, China will “move to the very forefront of the global stage” on clean energy, “venturing into uncharted territory”. This will create both “major new challenges and significant opportunities” for the country, he adds. 

Related Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change? 06.08.2026 China policy Interview: Dr Sun Yixian on his new database tracking Chinese climate ‘leadership’ 09.07.2026 China policy Q&A: What do China’s provincial five-year plans say about climate and energy? 18.06.2026 China policy Analysis: Solar overtakes gas power in Asia for first time ever 12.06.2026 Oil and gas

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More of Germany’s electricity came from wind and solar power than fossil fuels for the first time ever in 2025.

Together, wind and solar power generated 225 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity – accounting for 44% of the total in 2025 – with just 217TWh (43%) coming from fossil fuels.

Solar and onshore wind have grown rapidly under Germany’s “Energiewende” strategy over the past two decades, as the nation transitions away from both coal and nuclear power.

Renewables have recently faced mounting opposition from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and the current coalition government has been trying to develop new gas-power plants.

Nevertheless, Carbon Brief analysis of Energy Institute data – shown in the chart below – illustrates how wind and solar have continued growing, emerging as the nation’s largest power source.

The success of renewables in Germany mirrors the EU as a whole, which also saw wind and solar overtake fossil-fuel power generation in 2025 for the first time.

“Other renewables” includes hydropower, bioenergy, geothermal and other renewable sources not otherwise stated. Source: Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy, 2026.

Germany has various targets in place that require a rapid expansion of wind and solar power, including cutting economy-wide emissions to net-zero by 2045. 

The nation is also aiming to increase renewables’ share of electricity consumption to 80% by 2030 to achieve a “largely climate neutral” power system by 2035.

Despite Germany’s rapid decline in coal power generation, the nation still relies far more on coal than most other European countries. It aims to decarbonise its electricity entirely once coal power has been phased out, which has a deadline of “no later than” 2038.

(The renewables targets also include electricity generated from hydropower and bioenergy. The latter produces a relatively large share of Germany’s power – roughly a tenth in 2025.)

Germany has to rely on renewables more than neighbours, such as France and the UK, to achieve its climate goals. This is due to its phaseout of nuclear power, which is a key part of the “Energiewende” strategy.

Nuclear power has long faced widespread public opposition in Germany. This year, the centre-right chancellor Friedrich Merz described the nuclear phaseout as a “strategic mistake”, but the government has ruled out a return to conventional nuclear power.

The country has an official coal phaseout date of 2038, but experts say the country is on track to eliminate coal from its power supply years earlier. This is despite some pressure to temporarily slow the transition away from coal during the recent energy crisis.

(Very few outside the AfD are calling to scrap the coal phaseout altogether, but the government will publish a review of the timelines in August.)

While coal generation has fallen quickly, even as nuclear was being phased out, some argue that coal could have been cut more quickly if nuclear had remained. 

Gas-power expansion has also been framed by the government in recent years as an essential component of Germany’s transition away from coal and nuclear power, to support a renewables-heavy grid.

The current government under Merz has tried to boost gas and recently adopted a law to provide state support for new gas-fired power plants. The plan is for these plants to be converted to run on “green hydrogen” by 2045, in order to meet the climate-neutrality goal.

Germany aims to install 115 gigawatts (GW) of onshore wind by 2030 and approved a record 20.8GW of new capacity in 2025. 

Meanwhile, solar generation has reached unprecedented levels during the hot summer of 2026.

However, the government’s planned grid reforms have been criticised by the renewables industry for risking slowing down the energy transition. Under the proposals, renewables developers would only be granted automatic grid connections in areas with limited grid capacity if they waive compensation for future curtailed generation.

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Most countries failed to meet a 2025 target to identify all of their subsidies that could be “harmful” to biodiversity, according to Carbon Brief analysis.

The findings also reveal that 32 countries spend an estimated $270bn on biodiversity-harming subsidies and other incentives each year.

This is the “tip of the iceberg”, one expert notes, with “trillions” spent globally.  

In 2022, almost every country in the world agreed on a set of “goals” and “targets” aiming to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. 

One of these targets asked countries to identify all subsidies that damage biodiversity by 2025, before phasing out or reforming at least $500bn of these incentives by 2030. 

The subsidies can be found in a range of sectors, including fossil fuels, agriculture, forestry, mining and fishing.

Just 21 countries appear to have met the 2025 goal, Carbon Brief finds, based on analysis of 134 national reports submitted to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) by 1 July 2026. 

Five of the world’s 17 megadiverse countries were among those that met the deadline.

Country progress 

Carbon Brief’s analysis looks at the number of countries that have met the 2025 target to identify their use of nature-harming subsidies.

However, the metrics to determine which countries have “met” this target are not explicitly defined. 

Carbon Brief included any country that says it has completed the process of identifying its subsidies. In almost every case, these countries also included a total figure for the value of those subsidies. 

The analysis finds that 21 countries say they have identified their harmful subsidies, as shown in the map below (yellow). This amounts to 16% of the countries that have submitted national reports so far. 

A further 11 countries, plus the EU, have provided figures for some of their subsidies, such as only those in a specific sector (dark blue). 

Of the 134 national reports submitted to the CBD, 66 make reference to beginning the process (medium blue), while the remaining 68 do not (light blue). The final 62 countries party to the CBD have yet to submit a national report (light grey). 

(Every country in the world participates in the CBD, except for the US and the Holy See – the governing body of the Catholic church, which is seated in Vatican City.)

Countries that have identified all of their harmful subsidies (yellow); provided figures for some sectors (dark blue); begun the process, but not provided any numbers (medium blue); not begun the process (light blue); and not submitted a national report to the CBD (light grey). Credit: Carbon Brief analysis

The 32 countries that have identified some or all subsidies spend almost $270bn on nature-harming incentives annually, according to Carbon Brief’s analysis. 

This is based on a tally of the figures for the most recent available year listed in countries’ national reports, in US dollars using conversion rates at the end of the given year and adjusted for inflation. The analysis also includes figures from other reports cited in the country submissions.

The $270bn reported in country submissions to date is “just the tip of the iceberg”, notes Eva Zabey, the chief executive of Business for Nature. The global figure could be as high as $1.8tn, according to a 2022 estimate from non-profit group, the B Team. 

The figures identified by Carbon Brief are a “warning” that the “world is not moving fast enough” to tackle harmful subsidies, Zabey says, adding: 

“The positive news is that some countries have shown it can be done and this should embolden others to follow suit…Subsidy reform should be treated as an economic necessity, not an environmental checklist.”

Harmful subsidies are expected to be among the key priorities at the upcoming COP17 UN nature summit, being held in Armenia in October 2026. 

Subsidy target

There is no single definition of a “harmful” subsidy. (See: ‘Harmful’ subsidies.) 

The aim to identify these subsidies stems from target 18 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) – the global agreement containing a series of goals and targets for nature. 

Target 18 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Credit: UN CBD (2022)

Target 18 calls on countries to identify subsidies and other incentives that are harmful for biodiversity by 2025. 

It also says that nations should “eliminate, phase out or reform” these subsidies in a “proportionate” way, reducing them by at least $500bn per year by 2030. 

It says countries should first target the “most harmful” incentives, while simultaneously scaling up positive incentives for nature. 

All 2030 targets in the GBF are global –  with countries each expected to outline how they will contribute nationally. So far, 169 countries have submitted these national targets. 

Only 38% of countries addressed the 2025 aim to identify harmful subsidies in their national targets “to some extent”, according to a draft version of an upcoming progress report.

Countries’ national reports do not “provide a sufficient basis to determine” whether the 2025 milestone was met, says the report, but available evidence “suggests” that it was not.  

‘Harmful’ subsidies  

There is no universally agreed-upon definition of a “biodiversity-harmful subsidy” – or how it differs from an environmentally harmful subsidy.

In general, “harmful” environmental subsidies impact humans’ surroundings, whereas those harmful to biodiversity directly affect species and ecosystems. Paul Elton, a PhD candidate at the Australian National University, tells Carbon Brief:

“If you were to do a study that focused on biodiversity-harmful subsidies versus one that focused on environmentally-harmful subsidies, there’d be a Venn diagram where a large percentage would overlap.”

A 2022 working paper on identifying subsidies harmful to biodiversity published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) depicted biodiversity as a subset of the environment, with climate and air falling outside the scope of “biodiversity”.

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However, the report also noted that climate change is one of the five key drivers of biodiversity loss, adding: 

“As such, subsidies that lead to larger greenhouse gas emissions, for example, will also indirectly impact on biodiversity.”

Distinction between the “environment” and “biodiversity”, according to an oft-cited working paper on identifying and assessing biodiversity-harming subsidies. Credit: OECD (2022)

Prof Jessica Dempsey, a political ecologist at the University of British Columbia, tells Carbon Brief that she would “absolutely” consider fossil-fuel subsidies to be biodiversity-harming – not only as a driver of climate change, but also because the extraction of fossil fuels can cause localised harms to biodiversity. She adds:

“I do think probably it is true that all harmful subsidies are not necessarily biodiversity-related. Some care in that is important, but subsidies to the sectors that are known drivers of biodiversity loss feel very obvious to me.”

Biodiversity-harming subsidies can be either direct or indirect. 

Direct subsidies refer to government expenditures that go towards a project that harms nature, such as construction of a new gas-fired power plant. Indirect subsidies could include tax exemptions that encourage a certain behaviour, such as lower tax rates on fuels for agricultural machinery. 

Subsidies in agriculture, fishery and energy sectors are most commonly deemed “harmful”, but damage can also be caused by support for forestry, infrastructure, transport, construction, water and other sectors. 

One recent estimate of the global total of biodiversity-harming subsidies put the figure at $1.7-3.2tn annually. An estimate of environmentally harmful subsidies put the figure at $2.6tn.

Elton tells Carbon Brief:

“It’s useful to contextualise the $500bn ambition of the GBF against those global estimates of how big [the total] actually could be, because that underscores the fact that so far, you’ve only got a subset of nations reporting about $250bn by your analysis, which is only half of the [phase-out target].

“It’s a significant lack of accountability.”

The chart below compares the $2.6tn estimated value of harmful subsidies to the $500bn phase-out target set in the GBF and the value of the subsidies identified so far in national reports.

Comparison of the harmful subsidies identified by countries in their national reports (light blue), the phase-out target for subsidies outlined in the GBF (medium blue) and a global estimate of environmentally harmful subsidies (dark blue). Credit: Carbon Brief analysis Sectoral breakdown

Many subsidies can have both negative and positive impacts on biodiversity, according to the 2022 OECD working paper. 

A subsidy on constructing dams for new hydropower can harm local biodiversity by disrupting water flows and flooding certain areas, for example. But it also reduces fossil-fuel dependence, lowering emissions and leading to a decrease in global warming. 

Ronald Steenblik, a subsidies expert and co-author of the report estimating $2.6tn of harmful subsidies, tells Carbon Brief:

“What’s harmful is somewhat in the eye of the beholder.”

Most experts agree that a few sectors receive the bulk of the world’s biodiversity-harming subsidies: fossil fuels, agriculture and infrastructure, with much smaller contributions from other sectors, such as forestry, mining and fisheries. 

Of the subsidies reported to the CBD, almost half were for the fossil-fuel sector, and around one-quarter for agriculture and fishing. 

Sectoral breakdown of identified subsidies. “Multiple” means a country either did not distinguish between sectors or reported one number encompassing several sectors. “Other” refers to specific sectors not named in the chart. Credit: Carbon Brief analysis.

Dempsey says it is “surprising” that mining “didn’t show up” in these figures. (Of the 32 countries that provided subsidy data, only one mentioned mining as an industry that received harmful subsidies.)

Limitations

One limitation of Carbon Brief’s analysis is the lack of standardisation of subsidy data.  

The methodology underlying the national reports lists several definitions of environmentally harmful subsidies, adding:

“[T]here is no standardised, globally agreed methodology for assessing the value of subsidies…nor is there a single global dataset providing this information.”

It adds that it is “important” for countries to identify harmful subsidies “within their national context”. Steenblik says:

“When you get down into the details, you can have lots of arguments of where you draw the line. And, so, the big question on this spreadsheet is where countries drew that line.”

For example, China’s national report says the country has already identified all biodiversity-harming subsidies and reformed them entirely.  

In Australia, a 2026 study – led by Elton from Australian National University – identified biodiversity-harmful subsidies worth $26.3bn over 2022-23, a number that amounts to just over 1% of the country’s GDP.

However, in its national report, Australia identified $155m worth of subsidies, largely in the agricultural sector. (The national report says that the identified agricultural subsidies are those that are “potentially most harmful to the environment”.)

Elton tells Carbon Brief that this discrepancy underscores the necessity of an independent assessment of harmful subsidies, “rather than this just being seen as a tick-the-box reporting exercise by officials in the environment department”.

When it comes to actually phasing out harmful subsidies, Dempsey says, focusing on the quality of the subsidy – and who benefits from it – is just as important as focusing on the numbers. She adds:

“If we don’t take this lens of understanding the beneficiaries and we only focus on the [numbers], we really risk having policy changes that then lead to increased affordability problems for everyday working people, and backlash.”

Methodology 

Carbon Brief analysed national reports submitted to the CBD by 134 parties – 133 countries and the EU – to assess which ones had identified all of their biodiversity-harmful subsidies and therefore met the 2025 deadline. 

The reports were submitted in 2026, with the analysis including those submitted by 1 July 2026. 

The figures for each country can be found in this spreadsheet. More than three-quarters of reports did not list any figures. 

To get the full tally for the amount listed, Carbon Brief used the figures for 2025 (or the nearest available year) and converted the local currency into US dollars, based on conversion rates in the given year using the currency exchange rates calculator from the US Treasury.

These figures were then adjusted for inflation to the year 2025. Numbers were rounded to the nearest $1,000.

In total, this amounted to $269,856,769,000 in subsidies across 32 countries.

Many countries listed the sector that each subsidy is going towards. Carbon Brief standardised these inputs using the following categories: 

• Agriculture and fishing
• Energy
• Forestry  
• Fossil fuels 
• Infrastructure
• Transport 
• Other
• Multiple sectors

“Multiple sectors” was assigned when a country provided only a partial sectoral breakdown of their subsidies or none at all. 

“Other” was selected to encompass sectors that were named more infrequently, including water, mining, tourism and construction.

The designations employed and the presentation of the material on the map in this article do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of Carbon Brief concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

UK withdraws millions in funding from world’s second-largest rainforest in Congo  15.07.2026 Nature Q&A: What England’s new ‘land-use framework’ means for climate, nature and food 20.03.2026 Food and farming Analysis: Half of nations meet UN deadline for nature-loss reporting 02.03.2026 Nature policy Brazil’s biodiversity pledge: Six key takeaways for nature and climate change 16.01.2026 Nature policy

The post Analysis: 84% of nations miss deadline to identify ‘nature-harming’ subsidies by 2025  appeared first on Carbon Brief.

This summer has seen Europe suffer through a series of record-breaking heatwaves.

Amid widespread media coverage of the number of deaths and the influence of climate change, the UK’s Daily Telegraph reported on new research with the incorrect headline: “Heatwaves caused by fall in pollution.”

The article was shared on social media by Richard Tice – deputy leader of the hard-right, climate-sceptic Reform UK party – along with a number of prominent rightwing commentators.

Tice claimed that “net stupid zero is contributing to rising temperatures, not helping”, adding that “we have been gaslit and lied to”.

GB News followed up with its own article, incorrectly headlined: “Britain’s scorching heatwaves caused by falling pollution levels, researchers find.”

Scientists tell Carbon Brief that the framing of heatwaves being “caused” by declining air pollution is “wrong”.

While a drop in pollution has reduced the cooling impact it has had in the past, the scientists say, Europe’s summer heatwaves are primarily becoming more extreme “as a result of greenhouse-gas-induced warming”.

Another scientist adds that “any attempt” to link this research to net-zero policies is “simply wrong”.

Fast warming

The extensive reporting around Europe’s heatwaves in recent months has often mentioned that Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent. 

The new study in question aims to unpack why Europe’s summer temperatures are rising more quickly than other regions of the northern hemisphere’s mid and high latitudes. 

The research – published in Geophysical Research Letters – explores the role of air pollution and, specifically, how it affects circulation patterns in the atmosphere. 

(The study focuses on long-term trends in European summers and does not include the very recent heatwaves.)

Human-caused emissions of aerosols – tiny, light‑scattering particles produced mainly by burning fossil fuels – have long acted to “mask” global warming. This is largely because they absorb or reflect incoming sunlight and influence the formation and brightness of clouds. 

To understand how the climate of Europe – or any region – is changing, scientists need to take into account a whole range of factors, says Prof Bjørn Samset, a research professor at Norway’s Center for International Climate Research (CICERO), who was not involved in the work.

This includes “greenhouse gases, aerosols, land-use change, natural variability and how they all interact”, he says, adding:

“The effects of air pollution on circulation, which is the topic here, has long been difficult to pin down.”

As European countries improved their air quality through the second half of the 20th century, the cooling effect of aerosols has gradually been removed.

This can boost heatwaves in two ways – directly, by letting more sunlight reach the land surface and, indirectly, by influencing the jet stream.

Using hundreds of simulations from nine climate models, the new study finds that a decline in aerosols is resulting in more frequent “quasi-stationary Rossby waves”. 

Rossby waves are huge meanders in the jet stream. Occasionally, they become slow-moving – or “quasi-stationary” – which allows weather systems to get stuck over one region, leading to prolonged heatwaves.

These circulation changes have contributed to Europe’s rapidly warming summers.

However, while Europe’s heatwaves are being influenced by declining aerosols, it is “wrong” to say they are being “caused” by them, says Prof Erich Fischer, a climate scientist at ETH Zurich.

Headline in the Daily Telegraph, 22 July 2026.

Fischer, who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief:

“Heatwaves are caused by high-pressure systems and are now much more frequent and intense because they are happening in a climate that is much warmer than 100 years ago as a result of greenhouse-gas-induced warming. 

“The paper shows that the greenhouse-gas-induced summer warming had been temporarily masked by air-polluting aerosols. The full extent for European summers only becomes visible now as the air-polluting aerosols have declined.”

Samset adds:

“Air pollution never causes or removes global warming, it only temporarily moderates it.”

Study lead author Dr Pedro Roldán‐Gómez, an associate researcher at the Barcelona Supercomputer Centre, is quoted in the Daily Telegraph saying that “most” of the “excess warming” in Europe, beyond that of comparable regions in the northern hemisphere, can be linked to declining aerosols.

But, earlier in the article, the newspaper interprets this as, simply, “most of the extra heat experienced in Britain and Europe” is down to air pollution. 

GB News uses a similar phrasing, reporting that “much of the additional warming across Britain and western Europe since the 1980s is linked to the sharp decline in airborne particles known as aerosols”.

This is “misleading”, says Fischer, while Roldan-Gomez tells Carbon Brief that this is a “tricky point”, which “could lead to wrong interpretations if not properly explained”. He adds:

“The contribution of greenhouse gases is, in any case, the most important factor.”

Headline on GB News, 23 July 2026.
Cleaner air

The Daily Telegraph’s article was seized upon by Reform’s Richard Tice to claim that “cleaner air” was causing higher temperatures, rather than CO2.

This continued his position – refuted by long-established climate science – that CO2 does not drive global warming. 

Tice also claimed in his post that net-zero policies are “contributing to rising temperatures”. Tice appears to be linking declining air pollution to a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

Samset points out that net-zero became a goal “decades later” than the cumulative efforts to reduce air pollution since the 1980s and that it is “simply wrong” to link it to the study. 

“The scientific community will keep working to understand how greenhouse gas warming and air pollution interact,” he says, but “nothing we do will change the fact that the consequences of global warming are due to human-induced CO2 emissions”.

Fischer adds:

“Let us not forget that cleaning up air-polluting aerosols is highly desirable. According to the World Health Organisation, 7 million people still die prematurely every year due to air pollution.”

Clean air legislation

Finally, the Daily Telegraph article and the study itself both attribute Europe’s declining air pollution from the 1980s onwards to the Montreal Protocol.

This is a “glaring error”, Samset says, and it is “surprising that it wasn’t picked up” in the peer-review process for the study. He explains:

“The Montreal Protocol did not deal with air pollution. It dealt with ozone-depleting gases and has been an extremely successful multi-national effort against environmental damage. “

Clean air legislation was already in place in many European countries by the time the Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987, says Samset. 

In response, Roldán‐Gómez says that while the protocol did not target aerosols specifically, it “boosted the clean air policies”.

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The post Factcheck: No, Europe’s heatwaves are not being ‘caused’ by declining air pollution appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Empowering women through greater access to finance could “strengthen” households’ resilience to “climate shocks”, according to a new study.  

Published in Climate Risk Management, it analyses the impact of financial access on “women-headed households” in sub-Saharan Africa. 

The study finds that where women had formal financial access – such as through owning a bank account – households were more able to withstand short-term shocks.

It adds that “climate shocks”, such as extreme weather events and the impacts of climate change, can cause economic crises, which destabilise communities and households. 

However, the authors say that in order to protect households from long-term climate vulnerabilities – including “droughts, floods and sea-level rise” – financial access would need to be paired with wider efforts to tackle gender inequality. 

They add that the findings could have important implications for policy in sub-Saharan Africa, where many countries and households are vulnerable to climate disasters. 

Financial inclusion 

The study highlights that entrenched gender disparities mean many women still have unequal access to financial services in sub-Saharan Africa

For example, women are still less likely to have their own bank accounts and instead are often dependent on male relatives for access to finance. 

The number of women with access to an account in the region had risen to 52% as of 2024, according to data from World Bank Group.

However, as shown in the chart below, the gap between men and women has also increased, rising from just under 5 percentage points in 2011 to 12 in 2024. 

Share of population with bank accounts by gender over 2011-2024, %. Source: Global Findex Database, World Bank Group

Using survey data from Afrobarometer, the new study analyses 25,511 women-headed households across 37 sub-Saharan countries. 

The authors use the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) framework to measure “financial inclusion”. This looks at factors such as having a bank account, owning a mobile phone and having internet access. 

Francis Anaisie, a co-author on the study, tells Carbon Brief the researchers were motivated by the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs). Anaisie, an economist at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, says the study specifically looked at SDGs five and 13, on gender equality and addressing climate issues. He adds: 

“Financial inclusion is one of the key policy tools for empowering women or for empowerment. But as to whether this actually translates into better climate outcomes for women is not known or is limited; this study seeks to address that gap.”

The study finds households with higher levels of financial access for women had higher levels of women’s empowerment, when this is defined as the ability to make choices and have control over economic and social outcomes. 

This was checked by cross-comparing financial access against different measures of women’s empowerment, such as financial security, voting rights and connection to communities.

In particular, the study found that “financially included” women had greater political and economic empowerment, such as financial security and voting rights. On some measures of social empowerment, however, the link was weaker – financial access alone was not enough to erase cultural and social barriers to gender equality. 

Women and climate change 

It has been well documented that women are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change than men. 

Environmental shocks affect women disproportionately due to a range of factors. These include income disparities, higher rates of displacement and unequal access to land.

Financial inequality and barriers to economic resources, such as needing internet access to make digital payments, play a key role in climate vulnerability, says Tracy Kajumba. She is director for the Least Developed Countries initiative for Effective Adaptation and Resilience (LIFE-AR) interim secretariat at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). 

Kajumba, who was not involved in the study, explains to Carbon Brief:

“Women are on the front line doing farming, planting, harvesting and these things that are all impacted [by climate change]. If they don’t have the income to invest either in drought-resistant crops or water-saving technologies, it becomes difficult for households to adapt.”

Calculating climate resilience 

The new study measures the impact of financial inclusion on women’s empowerment and, in turn, on climate resilience.  

It evaluates a household’s ability to withstand and recover from “shocks and stressors” by using a UN Food and Agriculture Organization metric for “resilience index measurement and analysis” (RIMA). 

For example, questionnaires are used to gather information about households in certain areas. The data is then used, together with key indicators, to quantify a household’s resilience to food insecurity, climate variability and economic crisis, amongst other risks. 

The 25,511 households surveyed across sub-Saharan Africa were found to be relatively resilient overall and had a high capacity to bounce back from climate shocks. However, they had much lower ability to adapt, in order to build protective capacity in advance of extreme events.

In addition, the study finds that women’s financial empowerment had a positive impact on a household’s ability to “absorb” a climate shock, suggesting that financial access is critical for responding to climate change. 

Community garden and climate adaption project, focusing on women’s empowerment, Niger. Credit: Joerg Boethling / Alamy Stock Photo

Increased empowerment through financial access enables women to make decisions about planting crops, to access credit in emergencies and to buy or sell food at a better price, the study notes. 

For example, it says increased financial access and women’s empowerment help households to deal with the immediate consequences of an extreme weather event, such as a drought. This could be through building community mutual-support networks and by enabling access to savings, to keep the household running. 

Anaisie says the study shows women’s empowerment has a significant impact on climate resilience. He tells Carbon Brief: 

“If we include women in the financial system, in the case of any climate issue they can save, they can be independent, they can rely on investment to absorb these shocks. This empowerment will help them to be more resilient to climate shocks…We can make progress because SDG goals are all about inclusiveness. It’s all about inclusive growth.”

However, the study notes that financial access does not necessarily create long-term change, which would make the household less vulnerable to extreme weather in the first place. 

The authors suggest that lasting structural and cultural change is important for bringing about long-term resilience. They say that policies to address gender inequalities would help bring this about.

They say such policies could include gender-sensitive agricultural credit schemes, subsidised climate insurance for women farmers in drought-prone regions, joint land-titling programmes and quotas for women in local climate-adaptation committees. 

Such policies would have helped women impacted by recent severe floods in Ghana to protect their savings, Anaisie explains. He tells Carbon Brief: 

“Women are engaged in economic activities, especially informal activities. They have resources and money, but when the flood came in, many women lost that. If they had access to insurance, this flood wouldn’t have cost them that much. 

“So, if the government comes out with financial initiatives, training, civic education and gender-focused initiatives, leadership training, women will be empowered and this will translate into their resilience with regards to climate change.”

Addressing climate vulnerability in sub-Saharan Africa 

The study could have policy implications for sub-Saharan Africa, a region particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The region faces increasingly extreme weather, heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and floods, as well as food scarcity and threats to crops. 

The study suggests that policies to address structural and cultural barriers to women’s financial autonomy could be a key way to build climate resilience across the region. 

However, it recognises that even where financial access is expanded, gender norms and cultural constraints continue to shape women’s social empowerment. This, in turn, affects their ability to adapt to climate change in the long term. 

Ultimately, addressing structural inequalities is needed to minimise climate vulnerability, says Kajumba. She adds that supporting adaptation with financial access can allow households to absorb shocks without falling into poverty – and to rebuild after climate impacts. 

Kajumba says that supporting adaptation with women’s financial access can allow households to absorb shocks without falling into poverty – and to rebuild after climate impacts. She adds:

“When they are supported [with] microloans, savings and all that, you will see change in income, change in households, change in health and education for the children as well.”

However, Kajumba notes that structural inequalities still “amplify” women’s vulnerability to climate impacts and make it harder for them to exercise agency and leadership. She adds:

“The tools that are being used are not always favourable for women…When we look at women in leadership and participation, you cannot lead or you cannot participate unless you have some level of income.”

Article information

Essossinam, A. et al. (2026) Effect of financial inclusion and women empowerment on climate resilience: Evidence from sub-Saharan African households, Climate Risk Management, doi:10.1016/j.crm.2026.100848

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As 2026 passes its halfway point, the world is watching one of the most rapidly intensifying El Niño events in the modern record take shape in the tropical Pacific.

The developing El Niño is boosting expectations for global temperatures, both this year and next.

El Niño is the warm phase of a recurring climate pattern in the tropical Pacific that releases heat from the ocean into the atmosphere, temporarily raising global temperatures and reshaping rainfall and extreme weather around the world.

Carbon Brief’s “state of the climate” report in April gave 2026 a 19% chance of setting a new global temperature record. 

That chance now stands at 35% – a near-doubling in four months – with virtually all of the change driven by ever-stronger El Niño forecasts.

The key findings from the first half of 2026 include:

• The first six months of 2026 were the third-warmest start to a year on record – around 1.4C above pre-industrial levels – behind only 2024 and 2025. 
• While the first few months of the year came in as the fourth or fifth warmest, both May and June were the second-warmest ever recorded as El Niño conditions took hold.
• El Niño conditions arrived in April and reached the threshold for a “strong” event by June, when the Niño3.4 index reached 1.6C. Of the 667 model runs Carbon Brief examined, 91% project a peak later this year that is above the strongest El Niño in history.
• The chance that 2026 beats 2024 as the warmest year on record has risen to 35%. Carbon Brief’s central estimate remains that 2026 will be the second-warmest year, at around 1.51C above pre-industrial levels.
• Whether 2026 sets a record will depend on the dataset: the odds range from around two-in-three in NASA and Berkeley Earth data to around two-in-10 in ERA5 and one-in-10 in the JRA-3Q reanalyses.
• June 2026 was western Europe’s hottest June on record, amid a heatwave that set hundreds of individual records. Nearly 9% of the world’s surface saw record June warmth.
• The developing El Niño will have its largest impact on 2027, which Carbon Brief projects to be around 1.7C above pre-industrial levels – this would comfortably set a new record for the warmest year.
• Arctic sea ice has spent 39 days of 2026 so far at, or below, record daily lows following its joint-lowest winter maximum in the satellite era.

Third-warmest start to a year

Carbon Brief analyses records from six different groups that report global surface temperatures: NASA GISTEMP, NOAA GlobalTemp, Hadley/UEA HadCRUT5, Berkeley Earth, Copernicus/ECMWF ERA5 and the JMA JRA-3Q reanalysis.

The first half of 2026 was the third warmest on record in every one of the six datasets, behind only 2024 and 2025. The figure below shows annual temperatures since 1970, along with the 2026 year-to-date average (January-June) for each group.

Annual global average surface temperatures from the six groups (lines), along with 2026 temperatures so far (January-June, coloured dots). Note that HadCRUT5 and ERA5 dots reflect January-May, as their June values were not yet published. Chart by Carbon Brief.

January 2026 was only the fourth- or fifth-warmest January on record, as lingering weak La Niña conditions suppressed temperatures. Since then, each month has climbed the rankings.

La Niña is the cool phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). It typically brings wetter conditions to Australia, Indonesia and equatorial South America and drier conditions to the southern US.

March was second-to-fourth warmest across datasets, April the third and both May and June were the second warmest ever recorded, behind only the corresponding months of 2024.

The chart below shows how June 2026 (thick red line) came in around 0.08C below the June record set in 2024 in the average of the six datasets.

Meanwhile, Copernicus reported that global sea surface temperatures over the ice-free oceans set a new June record.

Average global surface temperatures for each month from 1940 to June 2028 from six forecasting groups, with lines coloured by decade. Chart by Carbon Brief. A record-breaking El Niño 

ENSO is the largest source of year-to-year variability in global temperatures. 

The most common way to assess the strength of an El Niño or La Niña event is by looking at the sea surface temperature anomaly in the “Niño3.4” region of the tropical Pacific. 

El Niño and its sister La Niña occur when temperatures in the tropical Pacific are more than 0.5C (El Niño) or less than 0.5C (La Niña) below normal, where normal is defined by removing the effects of long-term climate change. 

The thresholds for defining the strength of an El Niño or La Niña are above/below 1C for “moderate” events, 1.5C for “strong” events and 2C for “very strong” (or “super”) events.

After two years dominated by La Niña conditions, the tropical Pacific flipped decisively in April when the Niño3.4 index crossed the 0.5C El Niño threshold. It subsequently reached 1C in May and hit 1.6C in June, marking one of the fastest onsets in the observational record. 

In the first few weeks of July, the index shot above 2C, significantly outpacing the speed at which any prior El Niño events developed.

Forecast models expect even more to come. 

An analysis by Carbon Brief of the median of 667 model runs from 14 different modelling groups suggests that sea surface temperatures in theNiño3.4 region could peak at 3.59C between July and December. 

More than 91% of runs predict the strongest El Niño event in the modern record. The previous record was set during the event of 2015-16, when temperatures peaked around 2.75C.

This is shown in the chart below, which features a histogram of the likelihood of different possible 2026 El Niño peaks across all the models on the top. The forest plot beneath shows the best estimate and range of outcomes predicted by each individual model.

Top panel: Model-weighted distribution of each member’s peak Jul-Dec 2026 Niño3.4 anomaly (red bars), with the dotted yellow line indicating the weighted median (+3.6C) and the dotted blue line the prior record peak (2015-16, 2.75C). Bottom panel: median and 10th-90th percentile peak for each modelling group, with its typical peak month. The figure includes 667 model runs from 14 different modelling groups (from the CFS, NMME, C3S, CanSIPS and SINTEX-F systems). Chart by Carbon Brief.

The median forecast in every one of the 14 models suggests a peak that exceeds the 2C “super” El Niño threshold, with most models peaking in November or December.

Some caution here is warranted, however. Raw model Niño3.4 anomalies are measured against a fixed climatology. Because the entire tropical ocean has warmed due to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, the models tend to overstate event strength relative to the historical record. 

A cleaner comparison uses the relative Niño3.4 index (RONI), which subtracts the average tropical ocean warming.

This relative measure suggests the median forecast peak for El Niño in the latter half of 2026 is 3.1C. The prior record stands at a lower 2.69C, set in 1982-83. 

Nevertheless, 77% of model runs still show a new record event occurring. This is shown in the chart below.

Top panel: Model-weighted distribution of each member’s peak Jul-Dec 2026 RONI (red bars), with the dotted yellow line indicating the weighted median (+3.1C) and the dotted blue line the prior record peak (1982-83, 2.69C). Bottom panel: median and 10th-90th percentile peak for each modelling group, with its typical peak month. The figure includes 667 model runs from 14 different modelling groups (from the CFS, NMME, C3S, CanSIPS and SINTEX-F systems). Chart by Carbon Brief.

In summary, on both indexes, the central expectation is now for the strongest El Niño in the observational record. 

Model forecasts made in the spring and early summer have historically shown some bias toward overpredicting event strength. However, forecasts made after the spring are considerably more reliable.

Widespread record warmth and a massive European heatwave

The map below shows the temperature anomaly for the first half of 2026 in the ERA5 dataset, relative to a 1981-2010 baseline period.

Global mean surface temperatures for January-June 2026 compared to a 1981-2010 baseline, using data from ERA5.

It shows how the largest warm anomalies were found across the Arctic – particularly north of Scandinavia and Svalbard – as well as western Europe, the western US, northern Mexico, central Asia, western China, eastern Russia and the Antarctic Peninsula region. 

The developing El Niño is clearly visible as a tongue of warm anomalies stretching along the equatorial eastern Pacific. Only a few regions – central Canada, Alaska and parts of the Southern Ocean – saw temperatures below the 1981-2010 average.

Where 2026 ranks against history is even more striking. The map below shows where the period of January-June 2026 ranked among all 87 years in the ERA5 record, which stretches from 1940 to 2026. Grid cells marked in red saw temperatures in the first half of the year that were in the top-five warmest years.

January-June 2026 per-gridcell ranks in ERA5. 30% of the global surface saw a top-five warmest first half of the year; 7.1% saw record warmth. No areas (0.0%) saw top-five cold.

More than 30% of the global surface had a top-five warmest start to the year and 7.1% saw its warmest on record, including much of western Europe, the eastern equatorial Pacific and the seas around Japan. 

Not a single grid cell had a top-five coolest start to the year. In June alone, 8.9% of the world’s surface saw record warmth for the month. This is illustrated in the map below, where grid cells marked in red saw temperatures that were in the top-five warmest years and grid cells in blue in the top-five coolest.

June 2026 per-gridcell ranks in ERA5.

The standout regional temperature event was a heatwave that struck Europe in late June. 

Western Europe had its hottest June on record, recording an average temperature of 3.05C above the 1991-2020 average and beating the record set only a year earlier, according to Copernicus. A heat dome over 22-30 June broke 10 all-time national heat records and around 400 long-record station records. 

France set a new June national record of 44.3C, while the UK broke its June record on three consecutive days, reaching 37.3C. The humid heat drove a death toll estimated in the thousands. 

A separate heat dome also brought record June temperatures to parts of North America in late June.

On track to be second warmest, but a real chance at first

Carbon Brief’s updated projection for 2026 as a whole combines the observed January-June temperatures with the latest El Niño forecast. It uses a statistical model trained on the historical relationship between the first half of the year, ENSO conditions and annual temperatures observed over 1950-2025, excluding major volcanic eruption years.

Carbon Brief estimates that 2026 will be around 1.51C above pre-industrial levels, with a 90% range of 1.45C to 1.57C, shown by the yellow dot in the chart below. 

This is up from 1.47C in the projection set out in April – and is notably more certain now that half the year has passed. 

This central estimate would make 2026 the second-warmest year on record, just below 2024 (1.52C) and ahead of 2023 (1.43C) and 2025 (1.41C).

Annual composite temperatures over 1970-2025, the 2026 year-to-date value (January-June, red dot), and Carbon Brief’s 2026 annual estimate (yellow dot with the 5th to 95th percentile range). Chart by Carbon Brief.

Carbon Brief’s modelling puts the chance that 2026 beats 2024 as the warmest year on record at 35%, using the average of the six different surface temperature records assessed. It puts the chance that 2026 comes in above 1.5C at around 63%.

If it does, 2026 would be the second calendar year – after 2024 – where warming averaged above 1.5C, in a further sign that the world is rapidly approaching the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C limit.

A single year above 1.5C does not by itself constitute a breach of the goal, which refers to the longer term average temperature of the planet. This is defined as the midpoint of a 20-year period by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

These likelihood of a record have been climbing rapidly throughout 2026. 

Global temperatures so far throughout the year have run well below the record-setting levels of 2024 – around 0.13C cooler over the first six months. 

On their own, temperatures observed so far in 2026 would make a new annual record unlikely. 

However, rerunning the projection using only the data available at the end of each month since March – including both the year-to-date observations and the El Niño forecast issued that month – shows a shifting picture.

Using March data, 2026 had just a 7% chance of setting a new record. That rose to 16% in April, 24% in May, 27% in June and 35% using the latest data in mid-July.

This is shown in the chart below.

Columns show the probability that 2026 exceeds 2024 as the warmest year on record, based on data available at the end of each month; the line shows the corresponding forecast of July-December ENSO conditions (relative Niño3.4 index). Chart by Carbon Brief.

Notably, this rise has little to do with observed temperatures. The year-to-date anomaly has actually drifted slightly down, from 1.41C after March to 1.39C after June.

Observed temperatures and fewer remaining months of the year contributed only around four percentage points of the 28-point rise in the likelihood; the remaining ~84% of the change comes from successive upward revisions to the El Niño forecast for late 2026.

However, whether 2026 ends up becoming the warmest year on record may end up depending on which dataset is used.

Running the same projection gives odds of a 2026 record of around two-in-three for Berkeley Earth (66%) and NASA GISTEMP (65%), but only 35% for HadCRUT5, 24% for NOAA and just 13% and 9% for the ERA5 and JRA-3Q reanalyses, respectively. 

This is shown below.

Observed annual temperatures since 1990, with each dataset’s own 2024 record (dashed line) and the 2026 projection (median, 25-75% bar and 5-95% whisker), with the per-dataset chance of a 2026 record in each panel’s title. Chart by Carbon Brief.

The divergence between projections mostly reflects how exceptional each dataset’s 2024 was. 

The reanalysis approaches recorded a particularly warm 2024, leaving 2026 more ground to make up. GISTEMP and Berkeley, on the other hand, project 2026 modestly above their 2024 values. 

A repeat of the situation in 2015 where different groups disagreed on record rankings is a real possibility. Headlines in January 2027 may hinge on choices of dataset.

2027 likely to be the warmest year in human history

The biggest climate story of the developing super El Niño may not be 2026 at all. 

Global temperatures typically lag in the tropical Pacific by around three months. So, an El Niño event peaking in November and December 2026 will have its largest warming influence on 2027. 

We saw this same pattern occur in 1997-98, 2015-16 and 2023-24 – where the year in which the El Niño developed was warm, but the following year was record-smashing.

Carbon Brief has extended its projection into 2027 by using the historical relationship between year-over-year temperature changes and ENSO conditions in the preceding autumn. 

This yields a best estimate for 2027 of around 1.71C above pre-industrial levels, with a 90% range of 1.49C to 1.93C. This is shown by a yellow square on the chart below.

Observed annual composite temperatures 1970-2025 and Carbon Brief’s projections for 2026 and 2027 (medians and 5th to 95th percentile ranges). Chart by Carbon Brief.

That would give 2027 a 92% chance of setting a new global temperature record and a 94% chance of exceeding 1.5C. 

Taking 2026 and 2027 together, there is a 93% chance that at least one of the two years sets a new record. 

The 2027 estimate is more uncertain than the 2026 one. As with 2026, there are uncertainties in the projection due to unknowns around exactly how strong the El Niño peak proves to be and how quickly it decays. 

However, even the low end of the 2027 range would put it among the warmest years on record and the central estimate of 1.71C would exceed 2024 by nearly 0.2C.

If these projections bear out, the 2020s will have delivered new global temperature records in 2023, 2024 and 2027 – and potentially 2026 too – with a number of individual years well above the 1.5C threshold. 

The long-term warming trend, driven by human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, has increased from around 0.18C per decade in the early 2000s to around 0.27C per decade today. El Niño and La Niña play a big role in determining which years along that rising path stand out as records.

Arctic sea ice at record lows 

Arctic sea ice has spent much of 2026 in record-low territory. 

Following the joint-lowest winter maximum in the satellite record in mid-March, daily extent has set or tied record lows for the date on 39 days so far this year, including extended spells in mid-to-late March and in early-to-mid June. 

The most recent record-low days were in early July.

The chart below shows how Arctic sea ice in 2026 (dark red line) has been below the historical range (shaded red). 

It also shows how Antarctic sea ice (dark blue), meanwhile, has remained below the 1979-2010 range for almost all of 2026 to date.

Daily 2026 sea ice extent (bold lines) compared to the 1979-2010 historical range (shaded) and the record daily low from any prior year (dotted). Chart by Carbon Brief using data from NSIDC

As of mid-July, Arctic extent is a bit below the 1979-2010 historical range for the date, though it remains around 0.6m square kilometres (km2) larger than the record low for the date set during 2020’s exceptional summer melt season. 

The trajectory over the coming two months will determine whether 2026 challenges 2012’s record September minimum. Early-summer conditions are a poor predictor of the September minimum, which depends heavily on summer weather.

Antarctic sea ice, meanwhile, is currently around 300,000km2 below the historical envelope, but has stayed well clear of the record lows set in 2023 and has not set any new daily records yet this year.

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The European Commission has put forward new plans to cut emissions under the EU carbon market more slowly, from 2031 onwards. 

On 17 July, the commission presented its long-awaited proposal for reform of the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS). 

It recommended a number of changes, including giving companies free allowances to cover their emissions for longer than previously planned, conditional on climate investment plans. 

The proposal would result in around 2bn tonnes of extra emissions from sectors that are part of the trading system, say WWF and other analysts.  

This means other sectors would need to pick up the slack in order for the EU to stick to its climate goals overall. 

The plan offers a more business-friendly and “savvy” approach, argued EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra in a press conference.

In this Q&A, Carbon Brief outlines the details of the new ETS proposal – which is subject to negotiation with member states – and explores what it could mean for climate action. 

• What is the EU Emissions Trading System?
• What did companies and countries want from the ETS review?
• What is in the new proposal from the European Commission?
• Free allowances extended
• Slowing path to reach zero emissions by a decade
• Aviation
• Auction money
• CO2 removals
• International credits
• Other sectors extended
• Market stability reserve review
• UK-EU ties
• What could the changes mean for greenhouse gas emissions?
• How was the proposal received?
• What is ‘ETS2’?
• What happens next?

Article Contents Expand menu

• What is the EU Emissions Trading System? 
• What did companies and countries want from the ETS review?
• What is in the new proposal from the European Commission?
• Free allowances extended 
• Slowing path to reach zero emissions by a decade
• Aviation 
• Auction money 
• CO2 removals 
• International credits 
• Other sectors extended 
• Market stability reserve review 
• UK-EU ties
• What could the changes mean for greenhouse gas emissions? 
• How was the proposal received? 
• What is ‘ETS2’? 
• What happens next? 

What is the EU Emissions Trading System? 

The EU ETS is a carbon market, which puts a price on the greenhouse gas emissions of companies in power generation, industry, aviation and other sectors.  

It covers everything from electricity generation to steel production, as well as flights within the EU and a handful of other European countries. 

Emissions in these sectors have halved since the ETS launched in 2005, according to the European Commission. 

A European parliament briefing describes the system as a “cornerstone” of EU climate policy, covering around 40% of the bloc’s overall emissions. 

It applies to emissions in all 27 EU countries alongside Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and electricity generation in Northern Ireland. (The UK established its own ETS after Brexit.)

The ETS operates as a “cap and trade” system, which puts a limit on the amount of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) that can be emitted within the sectors it covers. 

The “cap” on emissions gradually decreases each year until, eventually, they are expected to reach zero. 

The currency of trade within the system is “allowances”. One allowance is equal to one tonne of CO2-equivalent emissions. 

At present, around 57% of these allowances are bought by companies in auctions. The EU generated around €43bn in revenue from these auctions in 2025.

The remaining 43% of allowances are given to companies for free, to cover some or all of their emissions. 

This is intended to prevent “carbon leakage” – the idea that companies operating in countries with strict climate policies will relocate to countries with looser rules.  

The amount of free allowances varies by sector, depending on factors including the level of competition with overseas firms that do not face a carbon price. 

What did companies and countries want from the ETS review?

Countries and companies have been divided on how they wanted the ETS to evolve. 

Some pushed for more ambition to help meet European climate goals. Others called for it to be rolled back, amid rising costs for businesses. 

In March, 10 countries including Italy, Hungary and Poland wrote a letter to the commission calling the ETS an “existential risk” for key industrial sectors, reported Euronews. 

Italy had earlier even called for the system to be suspended outright. 

France and other countries favoured introducing a slower descent towards bringing the emissions cap to zero by 2039. 

Some steel and chemical companies also criticised the cost burden of the ETS. 

Other organisations focused on calls for stability and predictability in the system. 

In recent weeks, Spain, the Netherlands and five other countries called on the commission to “resist gutting” the ETS in its review, said E&E News. They said the ETS should be strengthened to “ensure long-term investment predictability and regulatory stability”. 

Weakening the system could “undermine investment signals and leave Europe more exposed to fossil-fuel shocks”, said a March 2026 briefing from climate thinktank E3G.

Another E3G briefing said the “risk” is that politicians weaken the system as a short-term economic fix, “undermining one of the EU’s main tools for delivering on its industrial transformation ambitions”. 

Dozens of investment organisations called on EU countries to facilitate a “robust and predictable” ETS. They said that “policy stability is the cheapest investment stimulus available to the EU”. 

In its list of priorities for ETS reform, the NGO Carbon Market Watch said that “now is not the time to backslide” on its aims and terms. 

What is in the new proposal from the European Commission?

The commission’s proposal outlines a number of changes to the ETS, to bring it in line with the EU’s climate goal to cut emissions to 90% below 1990 levels by 2040. 

The review will “bring relief to industry”, the commission says, while also continuing the ETS’ “essential” role in climate action. 

However, others are more sceptical about the impacts it could have on climate action. 

Below, Carbon Brief details the main aspects of the proposal. 

Free allowances extended 

The European Commission proposes to extend free allowances beyond a previously agreed date. 

Free allocations were due to reduce from this year and be fully removed by 2034. 

However, the commission has proposed to extend this to 2038, on the condition that companies receiving free allowances set out how they will invest in decarbonising their EU operations. 

It proposes that from 2031 onwards, 80% of free allowances in the system would be given to companies that have submitted plans for investment in EU decarbonisation. 

The remaining 20% of free allowances would only be allocated to those that can prove they followed through with planned investments and achieved the emissions reductions they had previously outlined. 

This move is a “step in the right direction”, says Dr Kirsten Scholl, the director for EU affairs at thinktank Epico, but it must not “impose excessive administrative burdens”.

The EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) was designed to replace the existing system of free allowances in the ETS. 

It is a tax applied to certain imported goods, based on the amount of CO2 emissions released during their production. It began to be phased in at the start of 2026. 

As a result, free allocation is being gradually phased out from 2026-38.

However, the commission has proposed that 15% of free allocations due to be removed  because of CBAM should be reintroduced from 2028, to “reduce the speed at which CBAM is phased-in and mitigate the remaining carbon leakage risk”. 

The commission says that preventing carbon leakage “remains a crucial element” of the ETS.

Pushing back the phase-out of free allowances and the full implementation of CBAM “risks squandering the EU’s credibility with investors and trading partners alike”, says Francesco Lombardi Stocchetti, a policy advisor on sustainable economy at the Bellona Foundation, an environmental NGO. 

“Europe cannot lead the clean industrial transition just by moving the goalposts,” he adds in a statement.

Slowing path to reach zero emissions by a decade

The commission has proposed to cut emissions in the ETS more slowly from 2031 onwards.

This could mean new allowances are able to enter the scheme into the 2040s, instead of ending in 2039 as previously planned. 

But the planned changes are still “aligned” with the EU’s 2040 climate target and net-zero requirement by 2050, says the commission. 

The overall ETS cap on emissions was reduced by 1.7% each year up to 2020 and then by 2.2% annually since 2021. 

It is then agreed to drop by 4.3% over 2024-27 and 4.4% from 2028 onwards. 

Maintaining similar rates after 2030 would not be “realistic”, says the commission’s proposal. 

Instead, it suggests that the cap should fall by 3.7% per year over 2031-35 and by just 1.7% annually over 2036-40. The chart below outlines how this would look.

Different trajectories for allowances in the EU Emissions Trading System over 2030-50, in MtCO2e. Source: Oeko-Institut analysis.

This will make the path to zero emissions within the ETS “more gradual and aligned with domestic climate ambition level”, claims the commission. 

But WWF says that the proposal would allow an extra 2bn tonnes of CO2e to be emitted. (See: What could the changes mean for greenhouse gas emissions?) 

Aviation 

The commission has proposed plans to incorporate more airline emissions into the ETS. 

The plan outlines that, from 2029, all flights departing from the European Economic Area (EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) and landing in other countries within 5,000km of a point in central Europe should be added to the ETS.

This distance means that the changes would not apply to flights landing in China or the US. (Both the US and China have opposed the expansion of ETS coverage for flights.)

The commission also proposes including emissions from private jets and other “business flights” in the ETS. 

It notes that aviation currently accounts for 14% of EU transport emissions. This is expected to skyrocket to around 90% by 2050, given it is more difficult to decarbonise than other modes of transport. 

Some aviation emissions have been included in the ETS since 2012. This included emissions from air travel within the EEA and flights departing from Switzerland and the UK.

The airline industry did not respond favourably to reports of plans to expand beyond this scope. 

On 8 June, the biggest airlines in Europe urged commission president Ursula von der Leyen not to extend the ETS to cover international flights, saying that it would raise ticket prices. 

A study commissioned by Carbon Market Watch found that the ETS encompassing all flights departing from the EEA, not just those within it, would result in a “very small impact on ticket prices and passenger demand”.  

Auction money 

Under the proposed changes, EU countries would need to funnel half of the money they receive from ETS auctions towards decarbonising sectors covered by the system. 

This would amount to more than €100bn in investment for decarbonisation before 2030, says the commission. 

Around three-quarters of the money generated by the ETS has been allocated to EU countries since 2013, the proposal notes.

Since 2023, countries have been required to spend all of this money on climate and energy-related activities – at least on paper. 

But the proposal says the “transparency and effectiveness” of this mechanism has been “insufficient”. 

Currently, only around 5% of the ETS money “directly supports industrial decarbonisation in sectors such as steel, chemicals and fertilisers”, it adds. 

Going forward, the proposal says that 50% should be put towards actions aiding clean-energy plans, industrial decarbonisation and improved waste management, as some examples. 

A briefing by thinktank Institut Montaigne noted that the money generated within the system for EU countries to help finance the energy transition should be “at the heart” of ETS discussions, amid budget constraints in many EU countries at the moment. 

CO2 removals 

The commission has proposed integrating permanent carbon removals into the ETS to “give additional flexibility” for certain sectors that struggle to decarbonise. This action was previously agreed within the terms of the EU’s 2040 climate target.

“Permanent” removals refer to direct air capture with carbon storage and similar measures, rather than temporary removals such as planting trees. 

The removals would be integrated into the system by increasing the allowance cap by an amount equivalent to the number of removals purchased. 

This will set up “additional emission space” for hard-to-abate sectors and also support the “scale-up of the carbon removals industry”, outlines the proposal. 

It also proposes that certain companies, such as shipping and aircraft operators, could compensate for their emissions with their own certified carbon removals. 

These emissions would not be permitted to “go beyond zero”, adds the proposal.

Sven Harmeling, the head of climate at Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe, says that adding carbon removals “would weaken the ETS impact, undermine the carbon price and create new loopholes for polluters instead of accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels”. 

The proposal “fails to ensure that only high-integrity removal technologies would be considered”, he adds in a statement. 

However, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Prof Ottmar Edenhofer, describes the move as “an important step”, saying: 

“For the first time, it creates a credible and long-term investment framework for carbon-removal technologies in Europe.”

International credits 

The commission proposes that firms covered by the ETS could make use of “high-integrity” credits bought on the global carbon market from 2036 onwards. 

This relates to the EU’s 2040 climate target, in which up to 5% of the 90% reduction in GHGs can come from global carbon credits. 

Amélie Laurent, a policy advisor in carbon accounting at the Bellona Foundation, says in a statement that these credits “should be in a strategic last resort reserve, not an excuse to avoid doing our homework”. 

Aurora D’Aprile, the EU policy director at the International Emissions Trading Association, notes in a statement: 

“For international credits, early preparation on governance and procurement and greater certainty around a pilot from 2031, will be essential to establish a credible demand signal.” 

Other sectors extended 

The commission has outlined plans to expand the inclusion of the maritime sector in the ETS. 

Maritime accounts for around 4% of the EU’s total emissions. The new proposals for the sector include adding certain small ships of 400-5,000 tonnes to the system.

The proposal also outlines plans to incorporate more waste incineration into the ETS on a gradual basis from 2031. 

Since 2024, some waste-burning companies have been required to monitor and report their emissions under the ETS. But they did not have to purchase credits. 

Now, the commission proposes introducing the sector on a gradual basis. 

Under the proposals, companies would require allowances for 25% of their emissions in 2031, 50% in 2032, 75% in 2033 and 100% from 2034 onwards. 

Market stability reserve review 

The market stability reserve was added to the ETS in 2019 to help stabilise the flow of allowances. 

It acts like an overflow container holding extra allowances. If the number of allowances in the market falls below a certain threshold, more are brought out from the reserve to balance things out. 

Equally, if the market is flooded with too many allowances, depressing prices, then some are removed and put into the reserve. 

The commission has proposed a reform of the reserve, including changing the upper and lower limits for when allowances are released or removed. 

It wants to reduce the rate at which allowances are withdrawn from auctions when they exceed a certain threshold from 24% to 12% from 2028. 

This means that the permits would be able to stay in the market for longer. 

As shown in the chart below, the price of carbon in the EU increased tenfold over 2017-2021, exceeding €80 (£68) per tonne of CO2.  

Carbon price in the EU ETS over 2012-26, in € per tonne of CO2. Credit: Carbon Brief, based on data from Energy Instrat and EEX

Nevertheless, the commission proposal says the reserve was “effective in mitigating price shocks” on the ETS caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the surge in energy prices after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2021. 

UK-EU ties

The EU and UK have agreed in principle to link their carbon markets, but the commission’s proposal says negotiations are still “under progress”.

It adds that the commission “foresees” future financial contributions from the UK to the EU’s ETS, if a final agreement is reached. 

Many companies have called for the systems to be linked. In June, dozens of carbon-capture organisations and industry groups signed a letter calling for greater certainty on EU-UK links to ensure cross-border carbon-capture and storage projects are covered, for example. 

Switzerland’s ETS has been linked to the EU since 2020. 

What could the changes mean for greenhouse gas emissions? 

The European Commission says the ETS plays a “crucial role” in meeting its climate targets “cost-effectively”.

Emissions in the sectors included in the ETS have halved since its launch in 2005, according to the European Commission. 

(Roughly three-quarters of this reduction has come from the power sector, according to Carbon Brief analysis of data compiled by the thinktank Bruegel.)

As highlighted in the chart below, the EU’s overall GHG emissions have dropped by 40% since 1990. 

Greenhouse gas emissions in the EU over 1990-2025 (solid line) and projections out to 2050 (dotted line). The red dots indicate climate targets for 2020, 2030, 2040 and 2050. Credit: Carbon Brief, based on data from the European Environment Agency

Climate commissioner Hoekstra told a press briefing that the proposal is “fully aligned” with the EU’s target to cut GHGs to 90% below 1990 levels by 2040. He called the plan “completely climate-law proof”.

He also noted that no other EU policy has contributed to reducing emissions on the scale of the ETS, describing it as a “phenomenal asset”. 

But campaigners and experts are concerned that the proposed changes could slow decarbonisation and put the EU’s climate goals at risk. 

Carbon Market Watch says the plans would “severely weaken” the ETS and “risk undermining the achievement of the EU’s 2040 and 2050 climate targets”. 

The proposals “would represent a major setback for EU climate ambition, weakening incentives to cut emissions, extending reliance on fossil fuels and putting the 2040 climate target at risk”, says a statement from WWF. 

WWF estimates that 2bn extra tonnes of CO2 would be emitted if the proposals were approved in the EU. 

This is similar to analysis by Ingmar Rentzhog, chief executive of the We Don’t Have Time platform and published in Forbes, which puts the figure at around 2.4bn tonnes by 2050. A figure of 2.4bn tonnes is also given in analysis by Benjamin Görlach, the EU climate economics and finance lead at thinktank Agora Energiewende.

Michael Bloss, a German member of the European parliament (MEP) for the European Greens, says the plans would release around 1.4bn tonnes of extra CO2 [likely due to considering a shorter time period]. He describes the proposal as “climate vandalism”. 

Chiara Martinelli, the director of CAN Europe, says:

“Every extra tonne of CO2 allowed under the ETS makes Europe’s climate challenge harder and more expensive. Weakening the ETS now is a gift to polluters that have prioritised shareholder payouts instead of investing in cleaner production.”

How was the proposal received? 

The European Commission’s new ETS proposal has been met with a mixed response. 

Scholl from Epico says the proposal has “important flexibilities that can help address competitiveness challenges and provide greater certainty for industrial investment”. But she adds in a statement: 

“Concerns remain about whether the proposed changes preserve the long-term investment signal of the ETS and sufficiently recognise companies that have already committed to ambitious decarbonisation pathways.”

Edenhofer from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research adds that the proposals provide “clarity on the contribution that emissions trading is intended to make towards the 2040 climate target”. 

Elisa Giannelli, a programme lead at E3G, says in a statement: 

“Today’s proposal might please some, but it risks increasing both the long-term cost and the time needed to deliver the EU’s growth strategy.”

Pepe Escrig, a senior researcher, also at E3G, adds that the commission held onto some of the ETS’ “essential foundation”, but “yielded to political pressure to weaken it as a quick fix to broader challenges”. 

This has left the plan “pull[ing] in two directions: strengthening support for industrial investment while weakening parts of the framework meant to drive it”, says Escrig. 

Andrea Spignoli, the policy manager of sustainable markets at Bellona Europa, says the proposal risks “weakening green investments”.

It also means “more efforts will be needed in other sectors…which come with their own political and economic challenges”, says Agora’s Görlach on LinkedIn. 

Greg Van Elsen, a senior industrial policy coordinator at CAN Europe, says in a statement:

“Free pollution permits were never meant to become a permanent subsidy. Extending them until 2038 rewards delay instead of industrial decarbonisation.”

Lobby groups also had mixed reactions to different aspects of the proposal. 

The International Air Transport Association says it is “deeply frustrated” with the proposal. 

The organisation’s director general, Willie Walsh, claims the consequences will be “harmful”, “sowing acrimony over extraterritoriality, slowing global decarbonisation and sapping European competitiveness”. 

WindEurope says the proposal risks “slowing decarbonisation and failing to channel billions in ETS revenues to industrial electrification”. 

BusinessEurope’s director general, Markus J Beyrer, says some aspects “raise concerns”. For example, he says the “new conditionalities for free allocations risk increasing bureaucratic complexity and the uncertain role for international carbon credits”. 

What is ‘ETS2’? 

ETS2 is a separate emissions trading system to the main ETS. It is due to take effect in 2028 and is not affected by the current ETS review or resultant proposals. 

It will operate under a similar system as the existing ETS, covering emissions from transport, buildings and smaller industries in other sectors.

One key difference, however, is that ETS2 will not provide any allowances for free. They will all be auctioned and bought by companies. 

On 15 July, 10 countries, including Italy and Poland, had urged the commission to also reconsider the ETS2 during this review. They were unsuccessful. 

Similar to the original ETS, the commission believes the carbon price under the new ETS2 system will “provide a market incentive for investments in building renovations and low-emissions mobility”. 

However, in June, member-state governments and the European parliament agreed on a number of “safeguards” to support price stability. 

For example, if allowance costs under the ETS2 exceed €45 per tonne of CO2, they agreed that 40m allowances will be put into the system from a reserve to normalise the supply – double the amount previously agreed.  

A European Environment Agency briefing said the ETS2 will “affect fuel prices and mobility costs” and that money will be syphoned into a social climate fund to “support vulnerable households and investments”. 

What happens next? 

EU countries will now negotiate over the terms of the commission’s proposal before it goes to a vote in the European parliament.

Ireland, which recently took over the six-monthly rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, has stated that it wants the ETS proposals to be signed off by the end of this year. 

A previous document from the council, which represents member-state governments, outlined a target to agree a deal by the first quarter of 2027.

Clean Energy Wire says that this would be an “unusually ambitious timetable for one of the bloc’s most technically complex pieces of climate legislation”. 

Politico notes that “months of arguing” is likely to occur.

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The post Q&A: What the EU’s carbon market review means for climate action appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed. 
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

This week Heat and firewaves

‘FIREWAVE’: Wildfires ravaged Europe and North America this week. France utilised water-dumping planes collecting from the Seine to contain a fire in the Fontainebleau forest near Paris, according to the Associated Press. The Financial Times reported that the UK has had “25 non-consecutive days with temperatures of 30C or more, including nine days above 34C”, creating a “firewave” and putting pressure on emergency services. Meanwhile, an “orange haze from Canada wildfires” could be “seen in Ontario and northern US”, said BBC News. 

‘NEW NORMAL’: Climate events previously seen as extreme are becoming the “new ‘normal’”, said the Met Office, in a report on the UK’s climate. While last year was the UK’s hottest on record, rising temperatures mean it is expected to be surpassed in the next few years, reported Reuters. Liz Bentley, head of the Royal Meteorological Society, told the Guardian that “climate change has been described by scientists for many years but is now increasingly being felt by the UK population in their own homes and communities”. 

Around the world

• ELECTRIFYING PUSH: The European Commission has announced a target for electricity to account for 46% of energy consumption across the bloc by 2040, reported Carbon Pulse. The commission has also made plans to adapt its emissions trading system to “bring relief to industry”, it said.
• FALLING OIL: The International Energy Agency said that global oil demand is expected to decline this year for the first time since 2020, reported the Associated Press.
• US ROLLBACKS: Trump cuts to clean energy support “led to the cancellation ​or delay of $83bn in investment across hundreds of projects”, reported Reuters. The Trump administration has also changed environmental law to allow development in the habitats of endangered species, according to CNN. 
• BURNHAM BEGINS: Incoming UK prime minister Andy Burnham is preparing to announce new North Sea drilling “within days of taking office”, said Bloomberg. Carbon Brief looked at 28 statements that Burnham has made about climate change and fossil fuels.
• DRY JULY: Drought in Uganda led to significant crop losses and at least 16 deaths from starvation, said BBC News. 
• ON AI: Australia planned to implement restrictions on energy and water usage for datacentres “amid [an] AI boom”, said the New York Times. 

38%

The drop in Brazilian Amazon deforestation in the first half of 2026, compared to last year, reported Al Jazeera.

Latest climate research

• The area of land burned by wildfires in Africa each year has reduced due to a shrinking dry season | Geophysical Research Letters
• Most people do not distinguish between climate adaptation and mitigation when thinking about tackling climate change | Climate Outreach
• An “effort-sharing framework” has been developed to support progress towards the Paris Agreement | npj Climate Action

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

Captured

Carbon Brief explained how more than 1,000 heat-related deaths in England and Wales during May and June were attributed to climate change, accounting for almost half of all heat-related deaths experienced during those months. The article also unpacked the different methods for estimating heat deaths around the world.

Spotlight Natural History Museum exhibits climate change

This week, Carbon Brief interviews Meaghan Macdonald, senior project and programme manager for London’s Natural History Museum, about their first permanent climate-themed exhibition, Fixing Our Broken Planet.

Carbon Brief: Why are programmes such as Fixing Our Broken Planet so important?

Meaghan Macdonald: One of the main things we’re trying to achieve with Fixing Our Broken Planet is to place the museum as a convener of conversations around the planetary emergency…trying to bring together the different groups of people who need to be involved in this conversation in order to work together to find a solution. 

And we find that a lot of the people who come into the gallery weren’t necessarily coming here to see it; they come across it, which is a really great way to engage people who may not have been engaged in that discussion previously.

CB: How does the exhibition engage and inspire visitors?

MM: A driving force for this exhibition is that you are dealing with a subject matter that can be quite disheartening, and one of the things that we were very careful about is to try to make sure that woven throughout the scientific data… is a sense of hope… to enable people to feel empowered to make a difference. 

We were able to do things like our “what you can do” labels, which give an example that people can take away with them. We also have “conversation starters”, which is a digital screen that asks people a series of questions related to the planetary emergency. Things like: “Should we mine the deep sea to power the green economy?”…And there’s no right or wrong answer. 

We [also] set out very specifically to…forefront the science that’s happening here. We know from multiple studies from thinktanks and organisations that people actually trust our scientists the most. 

Natural History Museum’s Fixing Our Broken Planet exhibition. Credit: Micheal Melia / Alamy Stock Photo

CB: The museum has set out a goal to “create advocates for the planet”. What does this mean? How does it relate to the exhibition and the museum’s wider climate action?

MM: The aim of the museum is to get to a place where both people and the planet thrive. Being a library of the natural world, it is our duty to be standing up for it and to help people find their way, fighting for nature’s side. 

In order to create those advocates, the aim of the [exhibition] and the wider advocacy programmes at the museum is to try to find ways to bring all these people [individuals, policymakers, industry, scientists] together. 

We have the wider programme with Fixing Our Broken Planet. We have Generation Hope…a free graphic panel version of our display in the gallery that we have been able to get into a number of venues in Bangalore…the very long-standing and beloved wildlife photographer of the year [exhibition]…our urban nature movement…[and] an initiative that we are doing with the Department for Education called the National Education Nature Park.

Watch, read, listen

STUBBORN HOPE: For the Conversation, climate scientist Prof Peter Stott argued that researchers need to “talk more about the very worst-case scenarios” and the possibility for action. 

EXTREME: Vox’s the Gray Area podcast spoke to New York Times journalist David Wallace-Wells about the possibility of a “Godzilla” El Niño.

RESPONSIBILITY: For Climate Home News, two researchers from the Center for International Environmental Law explored how “major emitting countries knew of climate risks decades earlier than claimed”.

Coming up

• 13-31 July: Meeting of the International Seabed Authority assembly and council, Kingston, Jamaica
• 17-19 July: 3rd International Conference on Environment and Sustainable Development, London
• 19 July: Presidential election, São Tomé and Príncipe

Pick of the jobs

• Zero Carbon Analytics, research lead | Salary: Unknown. Location: Remote
• Met Office, ocean climate scientific manager | Salary: £54,515-£58,582. Location: Exeter
• National Trust, land use and nature delivery partner | Salary: £44,499. Location: Newcastle or York

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 10 July 2026: Deadly Europe heat | EU electrification leak | COP31 president interview

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10.07.26

DeBriefed 3 July 2026: US faces scorching Independence Day | Record ocean temperatures | Vietnam’s EV surge

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03.07.26

DeBriefed 26 June 2026: Heat records broken across Europe | London climate action week | Introducing ‘Project Cosmos’

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26.06.26

DeBriefed 19 June 2026: Bonn talks end in ‘gridlock’ | Energy’s ‘new era’ | Oceans in climate negotiations

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19.06.26

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The post Debriefed 17 July 2026: UK ‘firewave’ | Fossil-fuelled heat deaths | London’s Natural History Museum spotlights climate appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Recent weeks have seen a flurry of reports from public health authorities and scientists that estimate the deaths caused by Europe’s record-breaking summer heatwaves. 

In France, the national public health agency reported 2,025 excess deaths over the week where the heatwave peaked in June. 

Authorities in Germany and Netherlands put the excess death toll during the same seven-day period at 5,753 and 533, respectively.

An analysis from climate scientists in Carbon Brief found that France saw more than 2,700 heat-related deaths over 17 days in June.

Separate research estimated there had been 2,700 heat-related deaths in the UK’s May and June heatwaves – 42% of which had been caused by human-caused climate change.

There are a number of methods for how academics and governments tally deaths caused by extreme heat, each with their own advantages and drawbacks.

Here, Carbon Brief looks at the different ways scientists and public health authorities have calculated the death toll of Europe’s record-breaking summer heat. 

• How established is the science of calculating heat deaths?
• What are the different approaches to counting heat deaths?
• What do the latest figures show for Europe’s May and June heatwaves?
• What are the pros and cons of the ‘excess deaths’ method?
• What are the pros and cons of the ‘statistical modelling’ method?

How established is the science of calculating heat deaths?

Economists and epidemiologists have been studying the relationship between heat and mortality for nearly a century. 

A pioneering study published in 1923 by geographer Ellsworth Huntington and economist Margaret Justin that looked at mortality data for New York City over 1882-88 found that deaths increased rapidly as temperatures rose above 17C. 

As global temperatures have risen in response to human-caused carbon emissions, scientists have increasingly sought to understand how warming could impact mortality. 

The study of mortality caused by specific heatwave events dates back a few decades, with a 1995 heatwave in Chicago among the earliest events to be studied in detail.

Over the past decade, a growing number of studies have gone a step further, by estimating the number of deaths caused by a specific heatwave event and then attributing a percentage or number of those deaths to human-caused climate change. 

Carbon Brief covered the first study of this type, which was published in Environmental Research Letters in 2016 and focused on a 2003 summer heatwave that caused tens of thousands of deaths across Europe.

The study estimated that 506 of the 735 summer fatalities in Paris and 64 of the 315 in London were a result of human influence on the climate.

More recently, a study in Climatic Change found that 27% of deaths in a 2018 heatwave in Zurich, Switzerland were linked to human-caused climate change and a paper in Science Advances estimated that 11-15% of deaths in a 2021 heatwave in British Columbia were attributable to global warming. 

Dr Christopher Callahan, assistant professor at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, tells Carbon Brief this type of “two-step” study has “really exploded” in recent years:

“It is really only in the last five to 10 years that we have seen this, partly because it does require interdisciplinary expertise. You need people who know how to run the epidemiological models and you need a climate analysis of the counterfactual [world] without climate change, which is its own effort.” 

What are the different approaches to counting heat deaths?

A central challenge in estimating deaths from a heatwave is that heat is rarely recorded as the primary cause of death on death certificates.

However, exposure to high temperatures has wide-ranging effects on the human body, including the strain of keeping cool. This effort places pressure on the heart and kidneys.

As a result, heat extremes can worsen health risks from chronic conditions and cause acute kidney injury. Researchers have linked heat to increased mortality from respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, as well as dementia and Alzheimer’s. 

As a result, public health authorities and scientists cannot depend on death certificates for a full count of heat-related deaths. They instead estimate heat deaths using a number of different approaches, each with assumptions baked into their calculations. 

Dr Garyfallos Konstantinoudis, who researches methods for calculating excess mortality due to extreme events at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College, tells Carbon Brief there is “no ground truth” when it comes to tallying heat-related deaths: 

“We don’t know what the heat-related deaths are, so we rely on different models to describe the picture.”

This makes the study of deaths from heatwaves similar to those from air pollution, he says:

“This sort of health-impact assessment has been done for years on studies related to deaths from air pollution, which have the same problem. Air pollution, until very recently, was not recorded on death certificates. 

“[However], for air pollution, the [scientific] literature is much larger, so no one questions that air pollution is toxic and kills. This sort of messaging for heat is more recent.”

There are, broadly speaking, two approaches to calculating deaths during a heatwave. 

The first involves counting the number of excess deaths relative to a period in the past. 

This method – often referred to as an “excess deaths” approach – looks at how many people died during a particular time period compared to a baseline period where there was no heatwave. 

To do this, public health authorities and researchers rely on official death figures reported by country authorities. 

The heat death tolls published in recent weeks by public health agencies in Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands relied on this approach. 

(For more, see: What are the pros and cons of the ‘excess deaths’ method?)

The second method uses long-term mortality data to understand the statistical relationship between temperature and mortality in a given place. The model that emerges can be used to infer the number of deaths from a heatwave in that place. 

In a rapid analysis published this week, researchers at Imperial College London, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and the Met Office used this approach to estimate that the May and June heatwaves in the UK caused the deaths of 2,700 people.

Dr Callahan – working with Prof Andrew Dessler, director of the Texas Center for Extreme Weather at Texas A&M University – used this method to estimate that more than 2,700 people had died in France over a 17-day period in June in an analysis for Carbon Brief. 

(For more: see: What are the pros and cons of the ‘statistical modelling’ method?)

The majority of the figures released in the wake of Europe’s June heatwave have relied on these two methods.

There is a third way to calculate heat deaths, which is to look at official counts of deaths attributed on death certificates to heatstroke.

Callahan tells Carbon Brief that the “death-certificate coding” appears to have fallen out of favour in Europe – which he says is a “smart move” given that it does not provide a “full accounting”. 

Nevertheless, some public health authorities are still using this method. For example, in the wake of the heatwave in the US earlier this month, public health data showed 29 people in New Jersey and three people in New York had died from “heat-related illnesses”.

Scientists tell Carbon Brief the excess deaths and statistical modelling approaches both have advantages and drawbacks. These are explored below.

What do the latest figures show for Europe’s May and June heatwaves?

The table below shows the death numbers that have been reported by governments and researchers for Europe’s May and June heatwaves, including the approach used to reach the figures.

It suggests that multiple countries in Europe experienced more than 1,000 heat-related deaths during the late June heatwave, with authorities in Germany counting more than 5,000.

Meanwhile, the EuroMoMo mortality monitoring system estimated there were more than 10,500 excess deaths across 27 countries during the June heatwave. 

ReportedSourceCountry / regionDatesDaysDeathsLinkApproach 28/06/2026Public Health France ​France22-27 June61,000santepubliquefrance.fr Excess deaths 29/06/2026World Health OrganizationEurope21-28 June81,300x.com/DrTedros/status Excess deaths 01/07/2026Carlos III Health Institute (MoMo)Spain1-30 June301,033dw.com Excess deaths (all-cause and temperature-attributable) 02/07/2026National Institute for Public Health and the EnvironmentNetherlands22-28 June7480rivm.nl
Excess deaths 03/07/2026Public Health France ​France22-28 June72,025santepubliquefrance.fr Excess deaths 07/07/2026Chris Callahan/Andrew DesslerFrance12-29 June182,766carbonbrief.org Statistical modelling 08/07/2026Chris CallahanEurope15-28 June1413,975zenodo.org Statistical modelling 08/07/2026SciensanoBelgium18 June - 1 July141,747brusselstimes.com

Excess deaths 09/07/2026Robert Koch InstituteGermany22-28 June75,120rki.de Statistical modelling 13/07/2026Met Office/LSHTM/ImperialEngland and Wales22-27 June62,183drive.google.com Statistical modelling 13/07/2026Met Office/LSHTM/ImperialEngland and Wales24-26 May3553drive.google.com

Statistical modelling 13/07/2026EURO Mo/Mo27 European countries22-28 June710,650reuters.com Excess deaths 07/07/2025National Institute for Public Health and the EnvironmentNetherlands22-28 June7577archive.ph

Excess deaths 14/07/2026Germany Federal Statistical Office (Destatis)Germany22-28 June75,753destatis.de
Excess deaths

In most instances, Carbon Brief has linked to the figures published by public health authorities, where numbers were first reported. In some instances, figures were released on dashboards or webpages that are updated weekly. In these cases, Carbon Brief has linked to media reports or archived web content. 

What are the pros and cons of the ‘excess deaths’ method?

The excess deaths approach looks at how many more people died during a particular time period compared to a baseline period of the same length. 

For instance, on 14 July, Germany’s federal statistics agency, Destatis, published figures showing Germany saw 32% more deaths than the average in the week of 22-28 June, which was dominated by the heatwave.

Specifically, the agency said that 23,932 deaths had been recorded that week, compared to an average of 18,179 in that calendar week across the years 2022-25.

This suggests there were 5,753 excess deaths during the heatwave week. (This was a slight increase from preliminary Destatis figures released a week earlier, covered by Bloomberg.)

The Netherlands similarly calculates excess deaths by comparing death figures against an average of deaths in a similar period during unspecified “previous years”.

Data published by the country’s National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) shows that, during the week of 22-28 June, an estimated 3,626 people died in total in the northern European country. 

This is 577 more deaths than the 3,049 expected at that time of year, it said. (This is a slight revision upwards from the 480 excess deaths reported on 4 July by NL Times based on preliminary figures from NVIM.)

Callahan says that the excess deaths approach has the benefit of being rapid and relatively uncomplicated:

“It is something that public health authorities can put out fairly quickly without having to run a fancy model and do coding like the academic scientists do. It is a short-term, high-impact, rapid estimate of mortality.” 

The drawback to the approach is that it is impossible to decipher what percentage of these “all-mortality” excess deaths are, in fact, heat-related. 

Imperial College’s Konstantinoudis notes that the public often “feels more comfortable” with the excess deaths approach over the statistical modelling approach because the data it is using – the official death numbers – is based on real-world data. 

However, he stresses that excess deaths figures are based on a series of assumptions, including the reference period picked by researchers and how the numbers are interpreted.

Statisticians and researchers have to make a series of decisions, including what period to use as a comparative baseline. For example, the baseline period could be the week before a heatwave, the same week a year before – or an average of the same week across multiple years in the past. If averaging mortality of a similar period across a number of previous years, they must decide how much “weight”, or influence, each year should have.

They must also decide how to account for spikes in deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic years, as well as the gradual rise in average temperatures due to global warming.

During the pandemic, many governments and the World Health Organization (WHO) used the excess deaths approach to count deaths. The WHO said this metric was more “comparable” and “objective” than relying on national reports of Covid-19 deaths, given that different countries used different criteria for this classification.

A notable example of how assumptions can skew excess death figures came during this period, when the WHO estimated in 2022 that Germany had seen 195,000 excess deaths over two years of pandemic. 

However, after statisticians and epidemiologists pointed out the assumptions in the model were not suited to Germany’s demographics, the WHO retracted the figure and eventually reduced it to 122,000 and then later to 102,000.

Konstantinoudis explains:

“Covid taught us that it is complicated. Depending on the different assumptions used in the excess-mortality approach, you get different results…There is a scientific basis, but we should acknowledge the assumptions.” 

What are the pros and cons of the ‘statistical modelling’ method?

In the statistical modelling approach, researchers use models to determine the specific relationship between mortality and temperature for a particular location and then apply it to temperatures observed during a heatwave. 

This allows them to estimate the overall number of deaths that were caused by a heatwave. 

Previous research has revealed that, in most places of the world, there is a U-shaped response of mortality to temperature – where deaths increase rapidly in cold or hot conditions as daily maximum temperatures depart further from an “optimum temperature”.

For example, research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2025 found that mortality rates in France rise as daily maximum temperatures move away from approximately 20C. This is shown in the chart below.

Relationship between daily high temperature and all-cause mortality rates in France, estimated using data over 2004-19. Credit: Dr Christopher Callahan, based on data and methods in Callahan et al. (2025)

Indiana University’s Callahan say this approach allows scientists to “formally establish a relationship between the temperature and the mortality”, adding:

“If you do these calculations right, you can credibly say your entire estimate of mortality is heat-related.”

Prof Antonio Gasparrini, biostatistician and epidemiologist at LSHTM, explains the method relies on “timeseries models that apply relatively sophisticated statistical methods in which you ‘smooth’ trends occurring in time, so you control for long-term trends and seasonality”. 

He says that these models also allow researchers to “remove” trends affecting mortality that are unrelated to heat – for instance, the impacts of the pandemic. They can also “add” other information, such as around how air pollution combines with heat to threaten vulnerable populations.  

Gasparrini adds:

“What statistical modelling can bring is that it is more refined. It can link specific temperatures to specific impacts rather than just looking at the event [in the whole]. And also, it can be localised – [data] can be stratified at a fine scale and we can look at impacts at different scales.

“So, it is more informative. But, at the same time, of course, it’s based on more assumptions than the [excess deaths approach] and, of course, needs to be checked and compared.” 

The approach depends on a number of judgment calls from scientists and statisticians, including the years picked to underpin the model and how to capture the lag in deaths in the days and weeks after a heatwave event. 

They must also decide at what threshold to start counting deaths – in other words, whether to count all deaths above the “optimum temperature” or set a higher, more extreme value – and whether and how to account for any adaptation to heat extremes that may have been put in place in the study area.

A benefit of the statistical modelling approach is that it opens the door for being able to attribute a specific number of deaths to human-caused climate change. 

By applying the temperature-mortality curve to both the temperatures of the recent heatwave and a counterfactual world without climate change, scientists can estimate what proportion of estimated deaths only occurred because the world is warming.

For instance, Imperial College, LSHTM and Met Office researchers found that 59% and 38% of heat-related deaths in the UK’s May and June heatwaves, respectively, could be attributed to climate change. Their findings are shown in the chart below.

Number of heat deaths in England and Wales over 21-29 May and 18-28 June attributable to climate change. Source: Barnes et al (2026).

Some climate-sceptic commentators have argued that modelled estimates are hypotheses and should therefore be treated with caution.

On 13 July, climate-sceptic news website GB News covered a blog post by Oxford academics that argued the figure that 2,700 people had died in the UK’s May and June heatwaves was not reflected in the provisional “all-mortality” data put out by the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS). Quoting the blog, GB News said:

“Modelling tells us nothing. Models explore possibilities; surveillance tells us what happened. When the two disagree, our instinct should be to investigate the data rather than simply trust the model.”

However, Imperial’s Konstantinoudis – who worked on the models behind the 2,700 figure – says it is important to await the UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA)’s annual heat mortality report before arriving at any conclusions. He explains:

“While we are entirely clear that our current findings are modelled estimates, this methodology has consistently delivered comparable results to the UKHSA’s own official analyses of observed deaths for past heat events.”

(The UKHSA report will include updated figures and estimate excess deaths from heat based on specific periods of heat in different regions, whereas the provisional ONS figures cover all national deaths during a full-week period.)

Konstantinoudis says both the excess deaths and statistical modelling approaches have been the subject of extensive peer-reviewed scientific study and can provide a “holistic view of what is happening” when used together. 

Studies that have compared statistical modelling approaches for estimating heatwave deaths with excess death figures in the UK have found they yield broadly similar results. 

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The UK has abandoned projects worth tens of millions of pounds that were meant to help protect Congo rainforests and support local people.

Together, these initiatives would have made up around half of the £200m that the UK pledged to support conservation in the Congo basin – the world’s second-largest rainforest.

When it hosted COP26 in Glasgow, the UK led a new initiative to end forest loss, which included a collective pledge by 12 donors of “at least” $1.5bn (£1.1bn) for Congo rainforest nations by 2025.

Development minister Jenny Chapman revealed last week that, as of 2024, the UK had only provided £39.8m towards this goal.

Alongside the US and much of Europe, the UK has significantly cut its aid budget in recent years, leading to much of its Congo rainforest spending being cancelled or reappraised.

The government says it still plans to “prioritise” rainforest regions, including the Congo basin, but civil society groups and MPs are concerned about the lack of “ring-fenced” forest funding in the UK’s new aid strategy.

COP pledge

At COP26, the UK – led by then prime minister Boris Johnson – launched the “Glasgow leaders’ declaration”, with a goal to “halt and reverse forest loss” by 2030. This was backed by more than 140 nations.

The UK also made various funding pledges, including £200m to protect the Congo basin, £350m for tropical forests in Indonesia and “up to £300m” for the Amazon.

These commitments target the world’s three largest rainforests, all of which face major forest loss due to threats such as agriculture, logging and climate change. 

The Congo basin is the planet’s largest forested carbon sink. Yet, its six host nations are among the poorest in the world and face significant funding barriers.

This has global ramifications. An official UK assessment warned that “degradation or collapse” of the Amazon or Congo rainforests “threaten UK national security and prosperity”.

Forest cuts

Following successive aid cuts introduced by both the Conservative and then Labour governments – tracking a global trend – the UK’s Congo funding is under threat.

The Congo basin forest action programme (CBFA) was launched by the UK at COP27. It was explicitly set up to provide “roughly half” of the UK’s £200m Congo pledge.

CBFA set out to “empower central African nations”, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), with support for “community forests” and other measures to curb forest loss.

Now, after reporting delays, the UK has slashed the CBFA as part of the Labour government’s recent aid cuts, intended to free up money for defence spending. 

Its original £90m budget has now been reduced to £18.8m. Government data shows that £15m of this has already been spent.

This is not the only Congo project that has been dropped due to this latest round of aid cuts.

The Congo part of the biodiverse landscapes fund – championed by the previous government and worth at least £12.3m – has been closed, just two years into its seven-year schedule.

Government documents reveal more Congo forest funding is at risk as the UK scales back its aid budget, including the UK’s two largest remaining projects in the region. 

One initiative, intended to “incubate forest-friendly enterprises” in DRC, faces “reduc[ed] budgets”. Officials working on the other, while more optimistic, reported that the project may be forced to operate in fewer countries as the cuts set in.

Documents also reveal the difficulties that come when operating in the Congo, including “complex political economies” and, in Gabon, a military coup – which “complicated matters”.

‘Breaking promises’

Damian Fleming, a senior director of forests at WWF International tells Carbon Brief:

“Tropical forest countries are making long-term policy and development choices in expectation that international partners will honour their commitments.”

In a series of recent parliamentary responses, Chapman revealed that the UK had only spent £39.8m on Congo forest finance, as of 2024. (She declined to provide any information on the Indonesia and Amazon regional goals.) 

Despite being presented as the UK’s “contribution” to the £1.1bn-by-2025 global goal agreed at COP26, the £200m target has a deadline of 2029. 

Therefore, while the collective goal has been met, the UK’s contribution so far has been relatively small.

Zac Goldsmith, a former Conservative minister who oversaw the forest targets at COP26, tells Carbon Brief that, in his view, the UK has “discarded” its regional pledges:

“We have gone from being perhaps the leader on protecting nature internationally to breaking promises to countries around the world for whom the environment is an existential issue.”

Future targets

The Labour government says it has met the five-year “climate finance” target of £11.6bn that expires this year.

Ministers also say the government has met “and exceeded” the £3bn and £1.5bn sub-goals for “preserving nature” and forests, respectively, within the £11.6bn. These are the funding streams that include support for the Congo basin and other rainforests.

The UK has funded a variety of projects in line with its forest goals, including mangrove restoration in Indonesia, support for carbon-offsetting projects in Brazil and promoting “forest stewardship” among farmers in Cameroon.

Chapman has stated that the UK will continue to “prioritise” the Congo rainforest, in line with its new plan for aid spending in Africa. The UK even helped to launch a new “call to action” for Congo basin funding at COP30 last year.

The UK government also says it supported the creation of Brazil’s flagship “Tropical Forest Forever Facility” (TFFF). However, so far it has not provided any funding for the facility.

When the government announced a new climate finance pledge for 2026 onwards, it stressed that nature would still be a “focus” and said it would also generate billions in “climate and nature positive investments”. Nevertheless, it dropped the “ring-fenced” amounts for nature and forests that had appeared in its previous pledge.

The UK, alongside other developed countries, has pledged to provide biodiversity finance to developing countries, under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) – a non-binding global pact to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030. 

Sarah Champion, chair of the international development committee of MPs, says “sub-pledges” for nature and forests are a “cost-effective and impactful” way to ensure this finance is provided, alongside climate finance. She tells Carbon Brief that she was “concerned” about the move away from this approach:

“When the minister recently appeared before the international development committee, I was concerned to hear her characterise this shift as a ‘gamble’.”

A government spokesperson tells Carbon Brief:

“We remain committed to providing finance for forests, including in the Congo basin, as a core element of our overall climate funding.”

A shorter version of this article was first published in Cropped, Carbon Brief’s fortnightly newsletter that provides a digest of food, land and nature news, on 15 July 2026. Subscribe for free.

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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.

Key developments Global drought and heat 

DRY THEN WET: A recent heatwave and months of low rainfall has led to a prolonged drought for Uganda, resulting in at least 16 deaths from hunger and significant crop losses, reported BBC News. Bastille Post Global suggested that “a developing El Niño later this year could bring heavier rainfall to parts of the region, raising the risk of flooding in areas now struggling with drought”. 

FUNDING FOOD: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have appealed for $200m in funding to help African nations deal with the impact of El Niño, stated Deutsche Welle. This would target 22 high-risk countries with measures, including “cash transfers, climate-resilient seeds, livestock protection and flood control.” The Guardian explained how El Niño could still “cause a severe shock to global food prices lasting into 2028”. 

FARMING FEARS: Extreme weather has devastated agriculture across the world. India saw its driest June in 12 years, reported BBC News, and France has had a “double-digit production” decline, according to Le Monde. The Financial Times reported that farmers in the UK are mitigating the impacts of extreme heat by eliminating “chemicals and intensive ploughing to improve soil quality so it retains water”.

EURO FIRES: Wildfires have spread across Europe, with Spain reporting at least 12 deaths so far, according to the Guardian, and France experiencing road closures, said Reuters. Wildfire Today reported that the most extreme conditions are “across France, Spain and northern Portugal, the Alpine arc extending into northern Italy, the south of the UK and south-east Ireland”. CNN explained how “the climate crisis is driving hotter, drier weather, which is setting the stage for fiercer fire seasons”.

Endangering species 

REDEFINING HARM: The Trump administration “reversed decades of longstanding environmental law protecting endangered species…opening up sensitive habitats…to drilling, mining, farming and real estate development”, reported CNN.  According to the story, the change “redefines what constitutes ‘harm’” to endangered species, which historically prohibited habitat modification or degradation. Agence France-Presse reported that US environmental groups sued the Trump government over the move, arguing that it had violated “common sense, biological science and federal law”. 

OPEN SEASON: Reuters reported that the change “limits the reach of the 50-year-old Endangered Species Act” (ESA), which is a “key regulatory consideration” when granting permits for “oil and gas, mining, electric transmission and ​other operations on federal lands and water”. Legal scholars told the New York Times the US government “was acting without conducting scientific research into the impact” of the change, while the National Mining Association “applauded the announcement”. 

News and views

• INTERNATIONAL WATERS: After a significant delay, the UK ratified the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement (BBNJ), also known as the High Seas Treaty. Oceanographic detailed how this will allow for “marine protected areas across international waters for the first time”, but also stressed that the “hard part” starts now. 
• SCOPE-FREE: The world’s largest meat supplier JBS “scrapped a key climate goal” in its net-zero plan that accounts for its suppliers’ emissions, “which make up the vast bulk of the company’s environmental footprint”, reported the Financial Times. The company told the paper it was difficult to control these “indirect” emissions.
• DEEP TROUBLE: Pacific gray whales are facing a “catastrophic die-off” as sea-ice loss threatens their food sources, said the Guardian. Separately, conservationists warned that more than half of all molluscs that “cluster around underwater vents” could face extinction from deep-sea mining, reported Reuters.
• ETHANOL PUSHBACK: India’s new rules to promote 100% ethanol fuel and make ethanol-blended fuel mandatory at pumps “triggered a political row”, reported the Times of India. While the Indian government defended the push to automobile owners, a Hindu editorial and an Indian Express comment warned against incentivising fuels made from “water-intensive” sugarcane and rice. 
• AMAZON ACTION: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell to its lowest level in a decade, but president Lula’s plans to “end illegal deforestation by 2030” could be hampered if he is not re-elected, reported Al Jazeera. Meanwhile, Colombia’s outgoing environment minister warned of greater environmental and climate risk under the incoming government, said the Associated Press. 
• WAR WORRIES: The International Energy Agency (IEA) warned of the impact of the Iran war on Africa’s clean cooking efforts as disruption in the strait of Hormuz has stunted supplies and increased prices of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), explained Climate Home News. 

Spotlight UK ‘discards’ Congo rainforest funding

Amid worldwide cuts to aid spending, Carbon Brief explores how the UK is backtracking on funding for the Congo basin – the world’s second-largest rainforest.

The UK has abandoned projects worth tens of millions of pounds that were meant to help protect Congo rainforests and support local people. 

Together, these initiatives would have made up half of the £200m that the UK pledged to support forest conservation in the Congo basin.

When it hosted COP26 in Glasgow, the UK led a new initiative to end forest loss, which included a collective pledge of “at least” $1.5bn (£1.1bn) for Congo rainforest nations by 2025.

Development minister Jenny Chapman revealed last week that, as of 2024, the UK had only provided £39.8m towards this goal.

COP pledge

At COP26, the UK – led by then prime minister Boris Johnson – launched the “Glasgow leaders’ declaration”, with a goal to “halt and reverse forest loss” by 2030.

The UK also made various regional funding pledges, including £200m for the Congo basin, £350m for tropical forests in Indonesia and “up to £300m” for the Amazon.

All of these rainforests face major forest loss. The Congo basin is the planet’s largest forested carbon sink, but its six host nations are among the poorest in the world and face significant funding barriers.

This has global ramifications. An official UK assessment warned that “degradation or collapse” of the Amazon or Congo rainforests “threaten UK national security and prosperity”.

African elephant pictured in Congo. Credit: BIOSPHOTO / Alamy Stock Photo Forest cuts

Following successive aid cuts introduced by both Conservative and Labour governments – tracking a global trend – the UK’s Congo funding is under threat.

The Congo basin forest action programme (CBFA) was explicitly set up to provide “roughly half” of the UK’s £200m Congo pledge.

Now, after reporting delays, the UK has slashed the CBFA as part of the Labour government’s aid cuts. Its £90m budget has been “quietly reduced by 79% to £18.8m”, according to the Times.

This is not the only Congo project that has been dropped due to aid cuts. The Congo part of the biodiverse landscapes fund – worth at least £12.3m – has closed five years early.

Official documents reveal more Congo forest funding is at risk, including the UK’s two largest remaining projects in the region. One initiative, intended to “incubate forest-friendly enterprises” in DRC, faces “reduc[ed] budgets”.

Documents also show the difficulties operating in the Congo, including “complex political economies” and, in Gabon, a military coup – which “complicated matters”.

‘Breaking promises’

Damian Fleming, a senior forests director at WWF International told Carbon Brief:

“Tropical forest countries are making long-term policy and development choices in expectation that international partners will honour their commitments.”

In a parliamentary response, Chapman said that the UK had spent £39.8m towards its £200m Congo target, as of 2024. 

Despite being described as the UK’s contribution to the £1.1bn-by-2025 global goal agreed at COP26, the £200m target has a deadline of 2029. Therefore, while the collective goal has been met, the UK’s contribution was relatively small.

Zac Goldsmith, a former Conservative minister who oversaw the forest targets at COP26, told Carbon Brief that, in his view, the UK has “discarded” its regional pledges:

“We have gone from being perhaps the leader on protecting nature internationally to breaking promises to countries around the world.”

The Labour government says it has met its overarching “climate finance” goals and still intends to “prioritise” the Congo rainforest. 

However, civil society groups and MPs are concerned about the lack of “ring-fenced” forest funding in the UK’s new aid strategy.

Watch, read, listen

TOXIC TROUBLES: DeSmog unpacked a new report that said Northern Ireland is being turned into a “toxic” pig and poultry farming “sacrifice zone” to satiate the UK’s meat appetite.

NEED TO NOAA: Laid-off scientists from the US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) launched Climate.Us – an independent, public-backed version of the climate information website shut down by Trump last year.

DRY FRUIT: A Dialogue Earth long read looked at how climate change is impacting apricot harvests in the “stark, high-altitude desert” region of Ladakh, India. 

READING ALOUD: A London Review of Books podcast discussed Robin Wall Kimmerer’s influential book “Braiding Sweetgrass”, weighing its compelling themes and where it veers into “scientific overreach”. 

New science

• Climate change could cause Indigenous peoples in the Amazon to lose 28-34% of their plant species and 18-23% of their associated services | Nature
• Biodiversity in forests can act as a “buffer” against compound extreme weather events | Nature Communications
• Zero-deforestation commitments in Indonesia’s palm oil sector have had “no additional impacts” on reducing forest loss | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

In the diary

• 7-15 July: High-level political forum on sustainable development | New York City 
• 13-31 July: Meeting of the International Seabed Authority assembly and council | Kingston, Jamaica
• 16 July: International Energy Agency critical minerals outlook 2026, online
• 27 July-1 August: Scientific and technical subsidiary body meeting of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity | Nairobi, Kenya

This edition of Cropped was written by Jess Milligan, Josh Gabbatiss and Aruna Chandrasekhar. Cropped is edited by Dr Giuliana Viglione. This edition was edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org.

Cropped 1 July 2026: Heatwave scorches Europe | UK 2050 farm plan | What’s next for the High Seas Treaty

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The UK’s incoming prime minister Andy Burnham has remained tight-lipped on his views on climate change during his leadership campaign.

When asked his views on reversing Labour’s manifesto pledge to stop new North Sea drilling in June – a move that the oil-and-gas industry and right-wing media have pushed for in recent months – he said he had “something of an open mind” on the issue.

But a trawl of Burnham’s past comments about climate change, net-zero and fossil fuels reveals a different picture.

Just a year ago in June 2025, Burnham, while mayor of Greater Manchester, gave his support to the fossil fuel treaty – a proposed international pact on phasing out coal, oil and gas – calling it a “lifeline” that “all governments” should join.

In a video message endorsing the treaty, he also said that “there should be no turning away from net-zero”.

During his last bid to be Labour leader in 2015, he used similar language, saying: 

“Labour under my leadership will never turn our back on either our duty to tackle climate change or the prospects offered by the green economy.”

Burnham has spoken about the threat of climate change since at least 2008, noting in 2021 that accelerated action could “create thousands of good jobs”, but also warning that net-zero risked becoming the “next Brexit”.

Burnham is yet to appoint his cabinet, but there is much speculation that he will select current net-zero secretary Ed Miliband as his chancellor – with their ally Miatta Fahnbulleh having a “strong chance” of taking Miliband’s former position.

Below, Carbon Brief recounts 28 things that Burnham has said about climate change, net-zero, fossil fuels, energy and transport.

Climate change 

“Tackling climate change isn’t just about protecting the planet – it’s a powerful opportunity to build a fairer, greener future for our communities and businesses.”  

Calling for local councils to be given more power and money for climate action, 29 November 2025 

“There is little doubt that Greater Manchester’s biodiversity has taken a hit over the years, with habitats being lost, destroyed and becoming less diverse due to the impact of development, climate change, pollution and invasive species…We are committed to delivering a city-region for all residents to enjoy – a fairer, greener and more prosperous place for everyone.” 

Statement after Greater Manchester declared a “biodiversity emergency”, 25 March 2022

“Over the next decade, if we accelerate our response to the climate crisis, we can create thousands of good jobs, improve homes, overhaul our transport system and make [Manchester] an even better place to live.”

Greater Manchester Green Summit, 18 October 2021

“The environment has never been higher on the national and international agenda.” 

Statement after visiting a peat bog restoration project in England, 9 January 2020

Andy Burnham (left) and others, including members of Massive Attack, endorsing the Fossil Fuel Treaty in June 2025. Credit: Fossil Fuel Treaty

“I think climate change [action] will be driven more quickly from the bottom up, if I’m honest. It’s the will of evolution if you wait for the government to act…When governments aren’t listening you get out and get your voice heard…so I think [climate protesters] deserve our encouragement, not our criticism.” 

Speaking to Manchester Evening News at a student climate protest in Manchester, 24 May 2019

“Labour under my leadership will never turn our back on either our duty to tackle climate change or the prospects offered by the green economy.” 

Labour leadership candidate speech, 15 July 2015 

“Climate change can seem a distant, impersonal threat – in fact the associated costs to health are a very real and present danger…We need well-designed climate change policies that drive health benefits.” 

Speaking to the Guardian about a study on climate and health, 25 November 2009

“The Stern report on the economics of climate change has changed the debate, in this country and around the world. It made it clear that the people who could suffer most from a failure to tackle climate change, or from a lack of ambition in our approach to it, are those living in the developing countries. They are the most vulnerable…[and] Stern said that the cost of not acting would be large. That is why the government took various measures in the recent spending review to ensure that we are prepared to face the challenges posed by climate change.” 

Speaking in the UK parliament on the economic impacts of climate change on his final day as chief secretary to the Treasury, 24 January 2008

Net-zero

“There should be no turning away from net-zero.” 

Speaking after giving his support to the fossil fuel treaty – a proposed global pact to introduce laws to phase out coal, oil and gas – on behalf of Manchester, 6 June 2025 

“An opportunity is opening up for Britain as other countries move away from net-zero. We should seize that…We can make Britain a green leader. This is not the time to tiptoe, it is the time to commit to this path.”

Speaking at Innovation Zero World Congress in London, 29 April 2025 

“[We] need a government that fully buys into the 2038 vision because the UK will not get to 2050 unless places like Greater Manchester are freed up to go faster – and we’re ready to go faster.”

Speaking about Greater Manchester’s aim to reach net-zero by 2038, 19 October 2022 

“In Greater Manchester we have plans to build 30,000 net-zero social rented homes because we recognise that a successful city region needs good quality, affordable accommodation for everyone.”

Speech on the future of cities, 24 June 2022  

“By building a broad consensus behind the drive to net-zero, we can ensure that the transition is a fair one that delivers social justice as well as climate justice. This is an opportunity for all of us to show how cutting carbon emissions in our cities can make a real difference to our communities – away from the abstractions and rooted in the real world.” 

Panel discussion in Glasgow during the COP26 climate summit, 12 November 2021 

“To the extent that people have picked up anything from COP26, it’s a sense that the drive to net-zero will mean cost and inconvenience for ordinary people and offsetting for the wealthy and entitled. All of a sudden, you can feel how net-zero could become the new Brexit –  a debate that gets very divided on class grounds…This has got to be a wake-up call. We cannot let this happen. We need to act now to build a broad social consensus behind the drive to net-zero. How to do that? It starts with taking control of the climate narrative from those steering it in the wrong direction and turning it around…We must show how, if done in the right way, the drive to net-zero is actually an opportunity to reduce the cost of living; to make people’s lives better and society fairer.”

Writing for the London Standard, 5 November 2021 

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“The drive to net-zero is a chance to re-industrialise the north of England, this time in a clean way. Create really good jobs, future-facing jobs for people, better public transport, improve people’s homes…If we go quickly towards net-zero, it’s the quickest way to level up the country.” 

ITV interview at COP26, 1 November 2021 

“If we really embrace the drive to net-zero, that is the route to level up the country…But it needs substantial investment, upfront, now, of the kind that Rachel Reeves, shadow chancellor [and chancellor under Keir Starmer’s government], has been talking about. We need long-term predictable funding.” 

Interview with GB News at COP26, 1 November 2021 

“I would have preferred to hear slightly less about carbonated wine and much more about a decarbonised economy.” 

Referencing a UK budget, which included tax cuts for sparkling wine and other drinks, 28 October 2021 

“Decarbonising is not just about lowering costs on to people. It’s the route to get better, cheaper public transport. It’s the route to getting homes that are cheap to run. It’s actually the way we can create thousands of good jobs for the people who live in Greater Manchester. This is the route to levelling up the country by going further and faster on decarbonisation.”

Speaking to Manchester Confidential, 20 October 2021 

“[I am] asking people to stop seeing the environmental agenda as a cost and a burden agenda. I think this is a barrier that we’ve got to get over. Already in the media interviews I’ve done today, people are saying ‘can you afford it?’, ‘can it be achievable when times are tough?’. 

“My answer to that is, at some point in the 21st century, all homes will be zero-carbon. At some point in this century, all buildings of any kind will be zero-carbon…All cars will be zero-carbon, all public transport will be zero-carbon…The question is: when? And surely the places that embrace those things first are putting themselves in a position of economic strength when it comes to facing up to the future. Rather than seeing the whole agenda as a burden, we’ve got to see it for the benefits that it can bring. 

“There may be a greater upfront cost in a zero-carbon home, but let’s stop thinking, as we tend to do in Britain, of the short-term, the short-termist approach to life. Surely let’s start talking to the public about the lifetime cost.”

Greater Manchester Green Summit, 21 March 2018 

Fossil fuels

“I’ve got something of an open mind, you know. I don’t have a sort of fixed position.”

Speaking on the issue of new North Sea oil and gas in a New Statesman interview, 3 June 2026

“We would fight this in GM [Greater Manchester]…Communities across the north would face all the danger and disruption while big oil and gas walk away with all the profits.”

In response to Reform’s call for fracking, on X, 25 August 2025

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“I am proud to endorse the fossil-fuel treaty proposal today on behalf of Greater Manchester. It’s not just a plan – it’s a lifeline. It’s a call to end coal, oil and gas, hold polluters accountable…I urge all governments, nationals and subnationals to join this fight.” 

Statement upon endorsing the fossil-fuel treaty, 5 June 2025

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“Fracking is the past, it is not the future.”

Speech at London climate protest, 20 September 2019

“I have called for a moratorium on fracking. Far too many potential risks and unanswered questions.”

On X, 22 June 2015

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“What I would do, if successful, is lay out a plan for more public control over water, energy, transport, so that over the period we can get those bills down, fares down, and give people and give businesses breathing space.”

LBC interview, 2 July 2026

“I am all in favour of tough decisions at a national level. I don’t believe there should be a third runway at Heathrow, for instance. But I think those are decisions for national government.”

Guardian interview, 13 June 2019

“There is a debate to be had about aviation, isn’t there? There are changing public attitudes about aviation. Rather than just saying no to people flying, don’t we need to accelerate research into low and zero-carbon forms of aviation?”

Guardian interview, 13 June 2019

“Today, I stand alongside the mayors of some of the greatest cities in the world. I’m committed to a cleaner, greener and healthier future for Greater Manchester. Around a third of greenhouse gas emissions in our city-region come from transport.”

When signing the C40 Fossil-Fuel-Free Streets Declaration, which includes support for zero-emissions vehicles and walking and cycling, on behalf of Manchester, 14 September 2018

UK withdraws millions in funding from world’s second-largest rainforest in Congo 

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Analysis: UK newspapers have already printed 63 editorials in 2026 backing North Sea drilling 

Media analysis

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Livestock heat deaths in transit doubled in UK record-hot summer of 2025

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Analysis: UK sales of electric vehicles just overtook petrol cars for the first time

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