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The UK has avoided the need for gas imports worth £5.9bn since the start of the Hormuz crisis as a result of record electricity generation from wind and solar, reveals Carbon Brief analysis.

While gas prices are surging towards levels not seen since the 2022 energy crisis, the UK has been generating record amounts of power from wind and solar, up 14% year-on-year.

This unprecedented clean-power generation is directly cutting the need for gas-fired electricity, which is down by nearly 10% year-on-year in 2026 to date.

In total, wind and solar have generated a record 41% share of the UK’s electricity needs in 2026 to date, compared with 25% from gas, according to Carbon Brief’s analysis.

The figure below shows that wind and solar generation has avoided the need for UK gas imports worth a total of £5.9bn since the outbreak of war between the US and Iran in February 2026.

The analysis shows that these avoided gas imports would have required the UK to secure the equivalent of more than 100 additional tanker deliveries of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

The £1.3bn import saving in September 2026 to date is the result of record wind and solar output, at nearly 10 terawatt hours (TWh), combined with surging gas prices.

Wholesale gas prices in the UK have remained elevated ever since Russia cut off supplies to Europe in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Gas averaged 90p per therm from 2023 until the start of this year, roughly three times above 2019 prices, before the Covid and Ukraine crises.

Since the outbreak of war in the Middle East in March, gas prices have climbed higher still, averaging 134p per therm or nearly four times the level seen in 2019.

In September 2026 to date, gas prices have averaged 189p per therm, reaching their highest level since the global energy crisis in 2022, as shown in the figure below.

UK gas prices are spiking again because winter is approaching – meaning higher demand for heating – and there is no end in sight for the Hormuz crisis.

At the same time, European gas stocks are low. This means Europe will have to compete with Asia to secure the cargoes of LNG needed to keep warm.

In the UK, high wholesale gas prices are hitting household gas bills under the price cap set by energy regulator Ofgem – but thanks to clean energy, electricity bills have barely increased.

From this Thursday, 1 October, typical household gas bills will be 33% higher than they were in April, some £200 per year, according to thinktank Nesta.

In contrast, household electricity bills will only have risen 4%, according to Nesta’s analysis.

Andrew Sissons, director for sustainable future at Nesta, explained in a social media post that “the link between electricity and gas prices has already begun to break”.

The UK and other fossil-fuel importing nations are being hit not only by high gas prices, but also by high prices for oil, diesel and other refined fuels. The EU has reportedly had to pay an extra €100bn for fossil-fuel imports since the start of the crisis.

For example, UK diesel prices this week hit record levels of nearly £2 per litre. In contrast, recent Carbon Brief analysis shows that electric cars are up to nine times cheaper to drive.

In her speech to the Labour party conference this week, energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh said that energy bills were high because the UK is “exposed to global fossil-fuel markets”.

In his own conference speech, prime minister Andy Burnham said the expansion of clean energy was easing the impact of high gas prices on electricity bills. He said:

“We are already taking more control of our electricity prices with a massive expansion of home-grown renewables and nuclear. I have asked Miatta to speed up the breaking of the link between what we pay for power at home and the international gas market, to get bills down.”

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• ‘Brazil is back’
• New Jersey-sized forest
• Election significance
• ‘Greenest’ policies 
• Soy moratorium and Brazilian congress

An area of Amazon forest roughly the size of the US state of New Jersey has remained standing due to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s leadership of Brazil, according to Carbon Brief analysis. 

Lula beat Jair Bolsonaro in the 2022 election to become president of the nation that is home to nearly 60% of the Amazon rainforest. 

Forest loss surged during Bolsonaro’s far-right presidency and dropped sharply under the left-wing Lula, with Amazon deforestation likely to hit its lowest level on record this year. 

Now, as another presidential election approaches, Lula is facing off against Bolsonaro’s son, Flávio Bolsonaro, whose “anti-environmental” policies are similar to his father’s.

Carbon Brief’s analysis suggests that at least 20,000 square kilometres (km2) of deforestation has been avoided since Lula took office and prioritised Amazon protection.

The analysis is based on modelling by an international research team of an alternative scenario in which Brazil’s flagship forest code legislation was not enforced – a proxy for Jair Bolsonaro’s leadership. 

Experts tell Carbon Brief that this estimate is likely “conservative” and that actual deforestation under Bolsonaro could have been “much higher”. 

With Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro tied in the polls, the upcoming election is expected to significantly shape the level of environmental action in the world’s fourth-largest emitter, whose emissions are largely driven by deforestation. 

‘Brazil is back’

When Jair Bolsonaro was president of Brazil between 2019 and 2022, he championed the nation’s powerful agribusiness sector and oversaw an unprecedented increase in Amazon deforestation.

Bolsonaro weakened regulations, slashed federal agency budgets and empowered illegal activities in the Amazon, while attacking Indigenous and environmental groups.

This meant that the forest code – Brazil’s flagship legislation that requires landowners to preserve and restore forest on their property – was not properly enforced.

After Lula’s presidential victory in 2022, he promised to target “zero deforestation” by 2030, telling the COP27 UN climate summit that “Brazil is back”.

Lula rolled back Bolsonaro’s wave of deregulation and reinstated a deforestation “action plan”. Led by celebrated environmentalist Marina Silva, the environment ministry scaled up enforcement and policing activities in the Amazon. 

As a result, annual deforestation in the Amazon has more than halved from 11,594km2 per year in 2022 to 5,731km2 in 2025.

Data from August 2025 to July 2026 – the timespan used in government records – is yet to be released, but preliminary satellite alerts put the deforestation figure at 2,874km2.

While the final figure is likely to be higher, experts still think Amazon deforestation in 2026 could hit its lowest level since records began in 1988.

New Jersey-sized forest

Compared to a scenario in which Bolsonaro won in 2022, Carbon Brief analysis suggests that at least 20,000km2 of Amazon forest remains standing today due to Lula’s leadership.

This area – roughly the size of Wales, Belize, Slovenia or the US state of New Jersey – is indicated by the grey area in the chart below.

Each year covers a period from August to July. Deforestation data is from INPE’s PRODES dataset, except for the 2026 figure. This is based on INPE’s DETER real-time satellite alert data, which tends to give lower estimates than PRODES. The “Bolsonaro” projections are based on a scenario with no forest code enforcement, from a 2023 study.

This analysis is based on a 2023 study on the role of nature-based solutions in Brazil’s pathway to net-zero emissions. This was a refined update of a 2018 study that used the same GLOBIOM-Brazil model, from researchers at the University of Oxford, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE).

It is based on a comparison of forest code implementation with a “baseline” scenario in which the code is not enforced, reflecting the kind of weak governance seen under the Bolsonaro administration. (See Carbon Brief’s 2022 article for more details of this modelling.)

Dr Aline Soterroni, a University of Oxford researcher who led the 2023 analysis, tells Carbon Brief that the reversal seen under Lula “shows how quickly deforestation can respond to political will”.

However, she stresses that the modelling of the “no forest code” scenario is “relatively conservative”, with deforestation remaining high but not rising. 

Deforestation in this scenario – used here as a proxy for a Bolsonaro election win – is tempered by slower demand growth for Brazilian beef and soy, says Soterroni. She notes that the scenario also does not capture the potential for illegal forest clearing in response to weak governance.

Indeed, some experts anticipated in 2022 that a Bolsonaro victory would send deforestation rates rising to near-record levels.

Claudio Angelo, international policy coordinator at Brazil’s Climate Observatory, tells Carbon Brief that if Bolsonaro had won in 2022, “we have reason to believe [this would have resulted] in much higher rates than during his first term”.

Angelo says the “political signal” would likely have driven an “explosion of wildcat mining” and illegal deforestation in the Amazon. He also points to efforts – including by Flávio Bolsonaro – to formally dismantle the forest code in the Brazilian congress, during Jair Bolsonaro’s first term.

Soterroni notes that deforestation rates did not immediately drop following Lula’s election, as suggested by modelling of a full “forest code compliance” scenario. She says this reflects the “gradual and imperfect process” of restoring and enforcing the law.

Nevertheless, she tells Carbon Brief:

“The key message from our modelling is the contrast between these trajectories: weak environmental governance keeps deforestation substantially higher than full implementation of the forest code. That message remains relevant today.”

Election significance

With Jair Bolsonaro in prison for plotting a coup after losing the 2022 election, his son Flávio Bolsonaro, a senator for Rio de Janeiro, is standing against Lula in the upcoming contest for president.

There are 13 candidates, but Flávio Bolsonaro and Lula are by far the frontrunners and are currently neck-and-neck in opinion polls. 

If Lula wins, experts say he is likely to continue with the “zero deforestation by 2030” agenda that has already had a pronounced impact on forest loss. 

As the chart below shows, periods when Amazon deforestation fell in recent history all occurred during Lula’s three terms as president. 

In contrast, experts say Flávio Bolsonaro, a climate sceptic who has indicated he will continue his father’s political agenda and favour agribusiness and mining, will likely drive a surge in deforestation. Angelo tells Carbon Brief:

“At the risk of sounding alarmist, I’ve been saying that Lula’s re-election is the only thing standing between us and a wide destruction of the Amazon.”

A Bolsonaro win would be a “tremendous disaster”, says Dr Patricia Pinho, deputy science director at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, adding: 

“I don’t think we can afford four years of increasing deforestation [and] violence against Indigenous peoples.” 

Dr David Lapola, an ecologist focused on Amazon research at the University of Campinas in Brazil, says he believes deforestation “would certainly rise” and Brazil’s climate and deforestation goals “would be thrown in the trash bin”. He tells Carbon Brief: 

“The Bolsonaro administration in the 2019-2022 period showed that the deconstruction of environmental policies and institutes can be done very, very quickly. 

“In a matter of a few months, they can destroy what has been constructed over decades of environmental policy and activism in Brazil.” 

‘Greenest’ policies 

Lula has the “greenest” policy proposals of Brazil’s six top-polling presidential candidates, according to analysis by the Climate Observatory. 

The analysis identifies 16 “positive and detailed” environmental commitments in Lula’s proposals, including reaffirming his “zero deforestation by 2030” goal. 

Flávio Bolsonaro, on the other hand, has one positive environmental commitment and seven “clearly anti-environmental” proposals. 

The right-wing politician has committed to zero “illegal” deforestation by 2029. However, he has also previously led an attempt to change the forest code, opening up large tracts of previously out-of-bounds forest for legal clearance by extractive industries. 

Given this, Angelo tells Carbon Brief that he is sceptical about the 2029 pledge. 

“The only way you can trust him on this is to think that he is going to revoke the forest code and make all illegal deforestation legal.”

Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro with a cardboard cutout of his father, former president Jair Bolsonaro. Credit: ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo

Lula is also the only major candidate to list a clear target for cutting national emissions, sticking with Brazil’s existing goal to cut emissions by 59-67% by 2035, compared to 2005 levels. 

Overall, the Climate Observatory notes that climate change and environmental issues “are off the radar for most candidates”, who are instead focusing on the economy and security issues. 

Pinho adds that deforestation and the Amazon have not been at the “forefront” of this election, compared to 2022. 

If Bolsonaro wins, up to 95% of the Amazon would fall under the leadership of right-wing national governments – including those in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru – reported Mongabay. It noted that presidents in all these nations “explicitly favour agribusiness and mining over environmental conservation”.

If no candidate receives a majority of votes in the first round of Brazil’s election on 4 October, a runoff will take place on 25 October, as has happened at every presidential election since 1998.

Soy moratorium and Brazilian congress

Other factors will also play a role in future deforestation in Brazil, regardless of the next president. 

One is the effective end of the Amazon soy moratorium. This is a voluntary agreement signed by companies committing to not buy soya beans grown on land in the Brazilian Amazon that was deforested after 2008. 

Conservation organisation WWF’s international director general, Kirsten Schuijt, previously described it as the “most impactful voluntary supply chain policy ever implemented”. 

However, major grain traders withdrew from the agreement earlier this year, effectively bringing it to an end. Pinho describes this move as a “huge destruction” of Brazil’s environmental protections. 

Research shows the moratorium prevented around 18,000km2 of deforestation in its first decade of operation from 2005-16. 

In contrast, a 2026 study estimated that the end of the moratorium could result in 14,000km2 of additional deforestation in the Amazon by 2036. 

Alongside choosing a new president on 4 October, Brazilian voters will elect state governors and members of congress, which will also factor into future environmental impacts.

Right-leaning parties, including the far-right Liberal Party linked to the Bolsonaros, currently hold half the seats of the two chambers of congress. 

This has led to conflict between lawmakers and Lula. For example, in 2025, congress bypassed Lula’s veto of several aspects of a controversial piece of legislation dubbed the “devastation bill”. 

Pinho says that the potential for a right-wing congress and president would be “devastating for the environmental and climate agenda”. 

Lapola notes that a Flávio Bolsonaro presidency “would consolidate the view in Brazil that environmental protection is solely a matter of political preference, and not a crucial need of all people”. He adds: 

“Land pillage, destruction of precious biodiversity and scorning of Indigenous peoples simply cannot be a nation’s project in the 21st century. We have got to be smarter than that, for sure.”

related Q&A: What change of power in Colombia could mean for world’s fossil-fuel transition 26.06.2026 International policy Brazil’s biodiversity pledge: Six key takeaways for nature and climate change 16.01.2026 Nature policy COP30: Could Brazil’s ‘Tropical Forest Forever’ fund help tackle climate change? 05.11.2025 COP30 Belém Guest post: How Caribbean states are shaping climate legislation 10.10.2025

The post Analysis: Lula presidency saved at least 20,000km2 of Brazilian Amazon since 2022 appeared first on Carbon Brief.

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Antarctic sea ice has recorded its third-smallest winter peak extent since satellite records began 48 years ago, new data reveals.

Provisional data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) shows that Antarctic sea ice hit its annual winter peak on 14 September, with an extent of 17.59m square kilometres (km2).

The organisation notes that the data is still preliminary, adding that “large fluctuations in extent are typical of Antarctic sea ice near the seasonal maximum”.

One expert tells Carbon Brief that it is “concerning to see these low values persisting”, but says that scientists need more time to determine whether this represents a “structural shift” in Antarctic sea ice extent.

Meanwhile, at the Earth’s other pole, Arctic sea ice reached its annual minimum on 12 September, ranking as the joint-10th lowest in the satellite record.

The NSIDC notes that the last 20 years have seen the lowest 20 Arctic sea ice extents in the satellite record.

Antarctic peak

Dr Lettie Roach, a polar climate scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, tells Carbon Brief that this year’s Antarctic sea ice maximum was “well below average for the season”. She warns that, “after several decades of stable or increasing winter Antarctic sea ice conditions, it is concerning to see these low values persisting”.

She adds:

“Compared with the Arctic, it’s less clear how recent changes in Antarctic sea ice are attributable to human-caused warming vs natural variability. We need more years of observations to better understand whether this is truly a structural shift.”

Dr Clare Eayrs, a postdoctoral researcher at the Korea Polar Research Institute (KOPRI), tells Carbon Brief that, since recording a “near-average February minimum” extent, Antarctic sea ice has “returned to unusually low winter coverage”.

She notes that Antarctic sea ice extent in July and August this year were the fifth and fourth lowest on record, respectively, adding that “all five of the lowest July extents have occurred since 2022 and all four of the lowest August extents since 2023”.

The chart below shows Antarctic sea ice extent in 2025 (dark blue) and 2026 (red) so far. For comparison, the chart shows decadal averages (dotted lines) as well as 2023 (mid blue), the year of the smallest winter sea-ice maximum on record.

Daily Arctic sea ice extent for 2026 and 2025, with decadal averages for comparison, based on data from the NSIDC. Chart by Carbon Brief.

Eayrs tells Carbon Brief that the regional pattern of Antarctic sea ice cover “changed substantially during the growth season”.

For example, she says that “in April, the Bellingshausen Sea remained almost entirely ice-free, while the neighbouring Amundsen Sea had more ice than usual”.

However, by late August, changes in atmospheric pressure and wind meant that “the Bellingshausen deficit had largely recovered, while ice was unusually scarce in the Amundsen Sea and across much of East Antarctica”. 

Map showing the main regions of the Antarctic. Credit: Carbon Brief
Arctic minimum

Meanwhile, the Arctic recorded its minimum summer sea ice extent on 12 September. At 4.60m km2, this year ties with 2025, 2010 and 2008 as the 10th-lowest sea ice extent on record.

The chart below shows Arctic sea ice extent in 2025 (dark blue) and 2026 (red) so far. For comparison, the chart shows decadal averages (dotted lines) as well as 2012 (mid blue), the year of the smallest summer sea-ice minimum on record.

Daily Antarctic sea ice extent for 2026 and 2025, with decadal averages for comparison, based on data from the NSIDC. Chart by Carbon Brief.

Roach tells Carbon Brief that although this minimum is not “record setting”, it is still “lower than any sea ice minimum before 2007”. She adds:

“Human-caused climate change has reduced Arctic sea ice cover and thickness, so the region is fundamentally different compared to a few decades ago.”

Scientists have been tracking Arctic sea ice thickness using a reanalysis produced called the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) since 1979.

In March 2026, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) terminated a global dataset of air pressure that scientists relied upon to produce PIOMAS, forcing both datasets to stop publishing updates.

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The PIOMAS website says it will take “considerable effort and time” to find alternative data to use in their reanalysis. It adds that “we don’t yet have a good sense if that’s possible with available funds and if so, when we will be able to resume production of a new PIOMAS timeseries”.

Roach also notes that August saw record-breaking heat sweep across much of the world, explaining that high temperatures “extended into Arctic coastal regions, close to regions with substantial sea ice loss – particularly the Barents-Kara and East Siberian seas”.

Dr Zack Labe, a scientist at Climate Central, tells Carbon Brief that the absence of a new record does not mean that ice cover is becoming more “resilient”. He says:

“Local weather patterns across the Arctic play a really important role in year-to-year sea-ice extent, even as the long-term trend is clearly downward.”

Labe tells Carbon Brief that weather in the Arctic this summer was “influenced mainly by lower pressure toward the central Arctic, which brought cloudier and cooler conditions that limited surface melt and delayed the start of the melt season”.

He explains that this “was most obvious across parts of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, where the melt season didn’t really kick off until after early July, which was more than two weeks later than normal”. 

In contrast, he says, the Atlantic side of the Arctic “had a much more extreme summer”, with sea ice in the Barents Sea recording its “earliest melt-out on record”.

This was partly due to “unusually warm air and ocean temperatures”, Labe says. He notes, for example, that parts of western Siberia saw unusually persistent temperatures more than 5C above the 1981-2010 average for much of the summer, which extended out over the Kara Sea and contributed to substantial ice melt in this area”.

Map showing main regions of the Arctic. Credit: Carbon Brief

Labe tells Carbon Brief that, going forward, scientists need “more data and observations of other sea-ice metrics, like ice thickness, which may give us better insight into the overall condition of the ice pack, especially during years like 2026 when it is very fragmented”.

(In March 2026, Arctic sea ice reached its peak extent for this winter, clocking in as the joint-smallest in a satellite record going back almost half a century.)

Related Guest post: Climate change has caused one-fifth of Pine Island glacier retreat 29.06.2026 Antarctica ‘Very alarming’ winter sees Arctic sea ice hit record-low for second year running 27.03.2026 Ice Q&A: How Trump is threatening climate science in Earth’s polar regions 20.02.2026 Antarctica Limiting warming to 2C is ‘crucial’ to protect pristine Antarctic Peninsula 20.02.2026 Antarctica

The post ‘Concerning’ low sea ice persists as Antarctic hits third-lowest winter peak appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Almost three-quarters of the 72 five-year plans published by China this year include policies or targets related to climate change and energy, according to Carbon Brief analysis.

Five-year plans are an important part of China’s policymaking process, signalling key priorities and setting targets for the coming years.

The post Interactive: What China’s dozens of ‘five-year plans’ say about climate and energy appeared first on Carbon Brief.

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The latest surge in fossil-fuel prices means it is now up to nine times cheaper in the UK to drive an electric vehicle (EV) than a petrol or diesel car, shows Carbon Brief analysis.

Since February, when the US first attacked Iran, the average price of diesel has increased by 38% to £1.96 a litre, according to Carbon Brief analysis of government figures. 

Following the attack on the Kapotnya oil refinery in Russia on 20 September and with tensions in the Middle East growing, this is expected to pass a record £2 a litre. 

(Russia was the second-largest exporter of diesel in the world, but its refineries have been hit every three days on average in the first six months of 2026.)

Similarly, petrol prices have surged by 31% since February to £1.72, based on government figures, with some locations reaching nearly £2 per litre, according to BBC News.

These increases have been driven by oil prices jumping to more than $100 per barrel as the conflict between Yemen’s Houthis and Saudi Arabia escalates – a roughly 50% increase from June. 

As such, it now costs an estimated 21p per mile to drive a diesel car and 20.1p per mile for petrol, according to Carbon Brief analysis of the latest figures from the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ).

In contrast, it is currently nine times cheaper to drive an EV charged using an off-peak tariff, at 2.3p per mile, as shown in the chart below. 

Even if charging with electricity bought at the domestic price cap – the maximum amount a supplier can charge for a unit of energy and standing charge, set by the regulator Ofgem every three months – it still only costs around 7p per mile to drive an EV, three times cheaper than the price for petrol or diesel cars. 

The price cap is set to increase in October, but almost all of the increase is for gas, with the unit rate of electricity only expected to rise by less than 1% from 26.1p per unit to 26.3p.

A larger 20% increase in electricity unit rates under the price cap is expected in January 2027, as higher gas costs filter through to an increase in wholesale electricity prices. Nevertheless, EVs would still remain far cheaper to drive than petrol or diesel cars.

UK drivers could save around £80 by charging an EV at home, in comparison with filling up a petrol car at the pump, as shown in the figure below. This is based on comparing the cost of an average full tank of petrol with the cost of enough electricity to drive the same distance.

Despite their much higher running costs, petrol still dominates the UK’s roads, making up 55% of all cars on the road. Only 6% of the roughly 35m cars on the road are fully electric battery EVs, with a further 3% being plug-in hybrids that can run on fuel or electricity.

However, sales of EVs are continuing to increase, with around 30% of new cars sold in August being battery EVs, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders (SMMT). This is up from 26.5% in August 2025.

Separate analysis from Carbon Brief in June suggested that the UK’s EV drivers were saving £1,100 a year in fuel costs, compared to petrol car drivers. Following the latest hike in fuel prices, these savings would now be even higher at £1,200 a year.

Compared with average pump prices of £1.72 per litre of petrol or £1.96 per litre of diesel, it would cost as little as 20p – around nine times cheaper than petrol – for an equivalent amount of electricity using off-peak charging.

As shown in the figure below, even charging at the household price cap would only cost the equivalent of 60p per litre, making EVs still significantly cheaper to drive.

Public charging points remain significantly more expensive than domestic rates. However, the UK government estimates that around 90% of electric car charging takes place at home.

In addition, the government plans to introduce a pay-per-mile tax on EVs from April 2028. This would add 3p per mile to the cost of driving an EV. Yet the considerably lower fuel costs mean they will remain far cheaper to drive than petrol or diesel cars.

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The post Analysis: EVs are now nine times cheaper than petrol or diesel to drive in the UK  appeared first on Carbon Brief.

For millions of people around the world, rising sea levels are already reshaping economies, livelihoods and cultures.

The world’s oceans are currently rising at a faster rate than at any time in at least the past three millennia, with human influence the “dominant cause” of sea level rise since at least 1970.

At the UN general assembly in New York this week, world leaders are set to adopt a high-level declaration on the “existential threats” posed by sea level rise. 

The declaration notes: “Sea level rise is not a distant scenario, but a real and lived experience for many.”

On average, global sea levels rose by 20 centimetres (cm) between 1901 and 2018. 

This is due to both the melting of glaciers and ice sheets and the expansion of seawater as it warms, as well as changes in land-water storage.

The rate of the rise has accelerated in recent years, with ocean levels rising 10.6cm since 1993. 

Sea level rise can vary locally due to seismic and volcanic activity, groundwater extraction and changes to the Earth’s surface resulting from ice melt. 

Under a moderate-emissions scenario, scientists predict that global average sea level will rise an additional 56cm by 2100, relative to a 1995-2014 baseline. 

Here, Carbon Brief unpacks some of the key ways that sea level rise threatens both societies and ecosystems. 

• Cities and coastal communities
• Biodiversity and coastal ecosystems
• Small island developing states
• Coral reefs
• Heritage sites

Article Contents Expand menu

• Cities and coastal communities
• Biodiversity and coastal ecosystems
• Small island developing states
• Coral reefs
• Heritage sites

Cities and coastal communities

Around 770 million people – 10% of the world’s population – are at “acute risk” of negative impacts from sea level rise, according to a report from the UN secretary general released last month. 

(The report defines locations at acute risk as those that are less than five metres above the high-tide line.)

The people at risk include the residents of several of the world’s largest cities, including Mumbai and Kolkata in India and Shenzhen and Guangzhou in China. It also encompasses the entire populations of many island nations. (See: Small island developing states.)

There are two ways to consider sea level rise. 

Global-average sea level rise is the amount the ocean surface has moved upwards, on average, relative to a baseline. 

Relative, or local, sea level rise, is how much the ocean has risen in a given place. This can vary from the global average due to a number of factors, including land motion and ocean circulation, as well as changes to the Earth’s surface, rotation and gravitational pull due to the melting of the ice sheets.

Higher sea levels bring with them myriad dangers for coastal communities: they can increase persistent flooding and inundation, strengthen dangerous storm surges and erode beaches and cliffs. Sea level rise also causes the water table of coastal land to rise, which exacerbates flood risk.

The frequency of 100-year “extreme sea level events” has already increased 12-fold since 1900. These are events where high tides, storm surges and relative sea level rise combine to produce exceptionally high sea levels. Under a moderate-emissions scenario, these events are likely to occur at least annually – and, potentially, even more frequently – in many places by the end of the century.

In addition to damage to homes and other buildings, critical infrastructure – such as water systems and wastewater management projects – is increasingly vulnerable to flooding as a result of sea level rise. Flooding can cut communities off from essential services, such as hospitals and markets, with low-income and other marginalised groups disproportionately affected.

Inland encroachment of seawater leads to the saltwater intrusion and threatens agriculture in low-lying coastal areas.

Vertical land motion can also amplify the risk of rising seas. This includes a shifting of the land in response to seismic or volcanic activity or to land sinking, known as subsidence. The changes in local sea level due to these types of vertical motion can equal or surpass the contributions of climate-driven sea level rise.

Many of the coastal cities experiencing the largest changes in their relative sea level are located in east and south-east Asia. One notable example is Jakarta, Indonesia, which has been sinking by up to 15cm per year over the past decade, due largely to the overextraction of groundwater, which leads to the collapse of underground aquifers. 

But even as the risks from sea level rise increase, population growth in coastal areas continues to outstrip that of inland areas. Between 2000 and 2018, the global population grew by slightly more than 23%. The population living within 5km of a coast increased by 28% over that same time.

The associated development of coastal areas means that, even without future sea level rise, global losses from flooding in the world’s largest 136 coastal cities could reach up to $52bn per year by 2050 – up from $6bn in 2005.

In response to the growing threats posed by sea level rise, communities around the world have implemented a number of adaptive actions. 

Venice’s MOSE 1 flooding protection system, Italy. Credit: James Hancock / Alamy Stock Photo

In 2003, the Italian city of Venice began a years-long project to construct three floodgates that could be raised during high tide events to protect the city’s lagoon from the encroachment of the Adriatic Sea. The system was engaged for the first time in October 2020 and then another 48 times in the following two years. 

Other communities have opted for less technologically intensive adaptations, including constructing seawalls, restoring mangrove forests and marshes, disincentivising development in high-risk areas and relocating residents, buildings and infrastructure to higher ground or inland areas. 

However, existing adaptations may not be sufficient to protect communities. Under a low-emissions scenario, these protections may be breached 10 times as frequently over the next 30 years as they currently are.

Biodiversity and coastal ecosystems

The world’s coastal ecosystems are rapidly being destroyed due to both development and sea level rise. 

This combination of pressures is called “coastal squeeze”, where ecosystems that may have otherwise shifted inland in response to sea level rise find their paths blocked by human-made structures. 

Coastal squeeze has contributed to the widespread loss of the world’s wetlands.

Globally, nearly 28m hectares of coastal wetlands – including estuaries, tidal flats, mangroves and seagrass – have disappeared since 1970, according to the 2025 “global wetland outlook” report. This is an area equivalent to roughly the size of Ecuador. 

Although the report names conversion to agriculture as the largest driver of wetland loss, it notes:

“Climate change is increasingly exacerbating the impact of other drivers on wetlands and human wellbeing through changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, associated fires, floods and droughts and through sea level rise.”

In the continental US, just 16% of coastal wetlands are migrating inland at rates that exceed local sea level rise. Nearly three-quarters of sites are moving at rates that do not outpace sea level rise, while 11% are submerging. 

Low-lying islands are particularly threatened by sea level rise, due to their large amounts of coastline relative to their land areas. At the same time, islands are often “hotspots” of biodiversity, with many home to species found nowhere else in the world. More than 20% of the Earth’s known plant species are found only on islands.

A 2013 study modelled the impact of different amounts of sea level rise on 10 island biodiversity hotspots, comprising nearly 4,450 individual islands. It found that in a future with one metre of sea level rise, around 6% of the island habitat area would be completely submerged, while more than 11% of the hotspot islands would see their land area reduced by at least half. This could put dozens of species at risk of extinction, the study said.

Beach spectaclepod (Dithyrea maritima). Credit: piemags/nature / Alamy Stock Photo

In 2024, researchers documented the first known extirpation, or local extinction, of a plant species in the US due to sea level rise. Hurricanes and storm surges – amplified by sea level rise – began to kill off the only US population of the Key Largo cactus in the 2010s. 

The remaining cacti suffered from soil erosion and saltwater intrusion and the final remaining specimens were removed in 2021 in an effort to cultivate them in greenhouses. (Other Caribbean islands, including Cuba, do still have surviving populations of the cactus.)

As native flora and fauna are diminished or even eliminated by rising sea levels, coastal ecosystems may become vulnerable to colonisation by invasive alien species, further harming biodiversity. 

And as coastal communities are forced to relocate due to sea level rise, there are knock-on effects for biodiversity as they develop on new lands. These secondary biodiversity impacts are likely to be particularly prevalent in south-east Asia, due to the large number of people living in low-lying areas who may be forced to migrate due to sea level rise.

Small island developing states

Sea level rise poses an “acute and disproportionate” threat to small island developing states, says the recent UN report. It adds:

“Even under moderate scenarios, rising seas will render many low-lying coastal zones and small island developing states increasingly uninhabitable without extraordinary adaptation.”

Climate change is already resulting in loss and damage to small island nations, which are particularly vulnerable to both climate change in general and sea level rise specifically.

This vulnerability is in large part due to the geography of these countries. Several small island Pacific states are made up of atolls – ring-shaped coral or sandy islands that encircle lagoons. These often have average elevations of 1-2 metres above sea level and maximum elevations of 3-5 metres above sea level. 

Panoramic aerial view of Kanton Island. Kiribati. Credit: Galaxiid / Alamy Stock Photo

Some modelling evidence has shown that reef islands can grow vertically in response to sea level rise, as waves washing over the islands transport sediment from the ocean onto the surface. However, the strength of such waves would likely make these islands unsuitable for building on.

Other research has shown that Pacific islands respond in many different ways to rising sea levels, with “complex” outcomes, both positive and negative.

In addition, most of the small-island nations in the Pacific Ocean are located in a region where relative sea level rise from the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet is projected to be 11-33% higher than the global average rise in 2100 – regardless of emissions scenario.

The effects of this higher-than-average sea level rise is already evident.

In 1999, Kiribati lost two small, uninhabited islands to the rising seas. Several uninhabited islands in the Solomon Islands had vanished by 2014, while a further six islands had been severely eroded by the ocean, necessitating the relocation of some communities. 

In addition, most small island developing states are located in parts of the ocean that are often hit by tropical cyclones. Sea level rise can enhance storm surge, leading to greater destruction during such storms.

However, small island developing states are also vulnerable “because they lack the means to address the impacts on their own”, reads the UN report. 

According to the UN, these countries will require up to $6bn annually by 2035 in order to adapt to climate change. However, they received just $1.2bn in public adaptation finance in 2022-23.

Aerial view of the damage caused by hurricane Dorian, Bahamas. Credit: AC NewsPhoto / Alamy Stock Photo

Currently, small island developing states experience “expected” annual climate damages of $1.64bn due to coastal flooding, equivalent to 0.13% of their cumulative GDP. But, even if warming were limited to 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures, these annual damages are projected to grow to $24bn.

In the international policy arena, questions have arisen over what should happen to island nations’ maritime boundaries as their land is enveloped by the sea. This is because maritime holdings, such as exclusive economic zones, are determined based on a country’s land borders.

However, a 2025 report by the UN International Law Commission considered the legal implications of sea level rise. It concluded that international law allows for countries’ borders to stay the same, “notwithstanding changes to the coastline as a result of climate change-related sea level rise”. It also noted:

“There is a need to develop legal and practical solutions to better protect persons affected by sea level rise, including those who remain in situ and those who are internally or externally displaced by it.”

Other small islands also face similar issues in their exposure to threats posed by sea level rise.

Coral reefs

Coral reefs are among the ecosystems that are most vulnerable to climate change.

They are also being visibly affected already – almost entirely due to ocean warming. Even though these ecosystems are completely submerged to begin with, they are also impacted by sea level rise. 

As the ocean rises, the water over shallow ecosystems deepens. 

The effects of this are twofold. Deeper water reduces the temperatures experienced by reefs. This can act as a buffer against marine heatwaves and global ocean warming. 

At the same time, the increased depth reduces the amount of light that can reach the coral communities, which can impact their survival.

In addition, sea level rise-assisted erosion will add more sediment to the near-shore waters. These particles can settle on corals, impeding their ability to feed and reproduce, as well as interfering with photosynthesis by the zooxanthellae algae that live symbiotically with corals. Together, this leads to slower coral growth and increased stress on reefs. 

So far, reefs in some parts of the world have been able to “keep pace” with sea level rise, growing vertically at accelerated rates and therefore maintaining suitable levels of light availability.

However, modelling has shown that few reefs have the capacity to continue to maintain their distance from the surface under a moderate-emissions scenario. 

Coral reef. Credit: imageBROKER.com / Alamy Stock Photo

As coral reefs degrade, the seafloor below them can wear away. This erosion is contributing to greater apparent levels of sea level rise on coral reefs in the Caribbean, as well as the US states of Florida and Hawaii. 

Sea level rise may also have the ability to spur reef growth in shallow environments previously thought to be uninhabitable for corals. In Sanya Bay in the northern South China Sea, sea level rise since the mid-1980s has allowed for the recolonisation of a reef that had been dormant for more than five millennia. 

But the opportunities for such recolonisation are far outstripped by the loss of coral elsewhere. Since 1980, the world has lost nearly 10% of its coral cover due to climate change-induced ocean warming. The UN declaration reads:

“Every fraction of a degree of global warming increases the risks to coral reefs.”

Heritage sites

Throughout human history, many societies developed along rivers and coastlines, due to the abundance of food and ease of transportation. However, their proximity to the sea means that many of these sites are now at risk of being damaged or destroyed by sea level rise.

Cultural heritage includes “physical sites, living heritage, traditional lands, burial grounds, underwater cultural heritage, archaeological and sacred sites and culturally significant coastal landscapes”, according to the UN sea level rise report. 

Tongariki, Rapa Nui, Chile. Credit: Robert Wyatt / Alamy Stock Photo

Several studies have mapped the cultural and natural heritage sites that are most at risk from flooding and erosion due to sea level rise. 

There are 49 Unesco world heritage sites located at low elevations along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Nearly every one of these is already at risk from erosion or severe flooding events – 42 face issues with erosion, while 37 are at risk from a 100-year flood event. Both of these risks will increase over the remainder of the century as sea levels continue to rise. 

The locations at risk include the archaeological sites of the ancient cities of Carthage in present-day Tunisia and Ephesus in Turkey, the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Italy and the medieval Cathedral of St James in Šibenik, Croatia. 

The sea level rise associated with warming of 3C above pre-industrial temperatures would impact nearly one-fifth of all Unesco cultural world heritage sites. The sites at risk include Japan’s Hiroshima Peace Memorial, South Africa’s Robben Island, Chile’s Rapa Nui and the Sydney Opera House. Many of these become vulnerable at lower levels of global warming.

In Africa, 56 out of 284 cultural and natural heritage sites already face threats from flooding or erosion due to sea level rise. This number is expected to nearly triple – to 191 threatened sites – by 2050 under a moderate-emissions scenario. However, mitigating emissions could reduce the number of very-highly exposed sites – those with at least 75% of their area vulnerable – by one-quarter.

Globally, there are 386 Unesco heritage sites along the coast that are, at most, 20 metres above sea level and are therefore potentially affected by coastal erosion and flood hazards.

These threatened sites include 289 cultural heritage sites and 91 natural heritage sites, as well as six “mixed” sites that are recognised for both their cultural and natural significance.

The UN declaration calls for action to mitigate damage to significant sites, saying:

“Protection, preservation and documentation of cultural heritage is a priority.”

Mombasa: Key outcomes from the Our Ocean Conference in Kenya 24.06.2026 Marine life Guest post: How a record-high ‘energy imbalance’ is driving global warming 10.06.2026 Climate system AMOC: Is global warming tipping key Atlantic ocean currents towards ‘collapse’? 24.04.2026 AMOC Guest post: The challenges in projecting future global sea levels 17.02.2026 Greenland

The post Explainer: How sea level rise poses an ‘existential threat’ to humans, heritage and nature appeared first on Carbon Brief.

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• Nepal’s needs
• Requests vs pledges
• ‘Rapid response’

The Nepali government has requested $20m from the UN fund for “loss and damage”, following the devastating floods that hit the country in late August.

This amounts to just 0.7% of the $2.7bn it has estimated in “physical damage” to infrastructure and “economic losses” from the flooding, according to Carbon Brief analysis.

The $20m request would, nevertheless, make Nepal the fourth-largest claimant to the UN loss-and-damage fund, which is intended to help deal with climate-related disasters.

Developing countries have already made 176 applications to the UN fund for responding to loss and damage, requesting, in total, $2.8bn to help recover from a variety of damaging events, such as drought, floods and storms.

Yet, to date, predominantly developed nations have only pledged $0.8bn to support the fund.

This means requests to the fund are already three times larger than the total amount pledged, raising questions about its potential to respond to emergencies.

As yet, no funding has been paid out of the fund to developing countries grappling with intensifying and more frequent climate change-induced disasters since it was established in 2023.

Nepal’s needs

On 26 August, Nepal was hit by flash floods following a catastrophic rock-ice avalanche in the Himalayan border region. The flooding has killed more than 1,400 people, with thousands still missing. 

Days later, the Nepali government sought an “urgent response” from the board of the UN fund for climate-driven loss and damage. 

It subsequently requested $20m in “financial compensation” from the fund. This is the maximum amount that can currently be requested for a single project.

“Loss and damage” is a term used to describe how climate change is causing serious and, in many cases, irreversible impacts around the world. Nations established the UN fund in 2023, after decades of effort by climate-vulnerable nations.

Nepal’s national disaster management authority has now released an extensive rapid preliminary assessment of “damage and needs” from the floods.

As the chart below shows, Nepal’s $20m loss-and-damage claim would only cover 0.7% of what authorities describe as $2.7bn in “total damage and loss” from the floods.

When accounting for another $4.8bn in “recovery and reconstruction” costs – part of how loss and damage is internationally defined – then Nepal’s $20m claim would be just 0.3% of the needs it estimates.

Reacting to the analysis, Nepal’s climate negotiator Raju Pandit Chhetri tells Carbon Brief that the country’s $20m request was for “rapid response”, adding: 

“That money is going to be a peanut if it was to be invested into reconstruction.”

Requests vs pledges

Vulnerable, developing countries have long argued that developed nations should be held responsible for loss and damage, while countries such as the US have blocked moves that could have led to them being liable for climate-related damages

From December 2025 until July 2026, developing countries made 176 applications to the loss-and-damage fund, requesting over $2.8bn in assistance.

So far, predominantly developed countries have pledged only $822m to the fund. (Some nations that are not categorised as “developed” under the UN, such as the UAE and South Korea, have also committed funds.)

Funding requests from developing countries to date are, therefore, more than triple what has been pledged.

Apart from Nepal’s new request, “requested” data is based on the project pipeline as of 29 June 2026. Analysis by Carbon Brief.

Moreover, only around half of the money pledged so far has been paid into the fund by donor nations, with large sums from France, Italy and the UAE still outstanding.

The fund has made $342m available in its initial funding round in July 2026. However, as of September, no money from the fund has been distributed to any countries facing climate-related disasters.

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According to Carbon Brief analysis, off the 176 loss-and-damage fund requests received from 118 countries, more than 60% are from least developed countries  – such as Nepal – and small-island nations. So far, each individual funding request is capped at $20m. 

The flood-related request is Nepal’s fourth appeal to the fund and, as the chart below shows, this makes it the fourth-largest claimant overall. 

Apart from Nepal’s new request, data is based on the project pipeline as of 29 June 2026. Analysis by Carbon Brief.

Nine other countries have made multiple requests to the fund. Madagascar – hit by back-to-back cyclones after a prolonged drought – has made six requests in total. 

Drought-ravaged Suriname, Ecuador, Brazil and Barbados have specified that their funding requests are part of an “emergency response”.

‘Rapid response’

Nepal’s $20m claim has sparked a conversation on climate justice and the ability of the loss-and-damage fund to deliver, in the face of increasingly frequent extreme-weather events.

In a letter sent five days after the disaster, Nepal’s finance minister Dr Swarnim Wagle appealed to the fund’s board to mobilise an “urgent response” that would “signal” that the fund:

“[I]s capable of responding with humanity, speed, flexibility and solidarity when climate-vulnerable countries face losses and damages beyond their capacity to address alone.”

Board members from Asia-Pacific and African countries wrote a letter in support of the Himalayan country in crisis, urging the board to convene and “potentially agree to a provisional set-aside allocation of resources to support rapid response funding for Nepal”. 

They pointed out that the board’s response to Nepal could offer “procedural lessons” in how to strengthen its “rapid-response” to sudden-onset extreme-weather events. Such support is explicitly part of the fund’s mandate.

On 14 September, developed-country members of the fund’s board wrote that they supported a “consultation” on Nepal, but made no commitments in terms of actual funding. 

Harjeet Singh, loss-and-damage expert and global convenor of the Fill the Fund campaign, tells Carbon Brief that the fund’s board deals with most funding requests as regular projects, rather than emergencies. Singh continues: 

“Developed countries gave a really cold response to Nepal’s request. They have not addressed it because they know that if this happens once, they are going to be under pressure all the time. This is unacceptable.” 

Meanwhile, BBC News reported that Nepal plans to use climate attribution studies to strengthen its claim.

According to a rapid attribution study by World Weather Attribution and climate experts who spoke to Carbon Brief, factors such as glacial retreat and permafrost thaw that played a key role in the disaster have been linked to climate change. A full attribution study is pending. 

Nepal’s prime minister Balendra Shah will address the UN general assembly on 24 September and is expected to raise issues around climate justice, loss and damage and the vulnerability of mountain countries.

The next board meeting of the loss and damage fund is on 15 December, two months from now, and a fortnight after the conclusion of COP31 in Turkey.

Pandit Chhetri tells Carbon Brief:

“It’s a shame that, until now, the fund has not been able to even give a penny to developing countries. And, starkly, the event in Nepal only demonstrates why this kind of fund is so important for highly vulnerable, poor, developing countries.”

Pandit Chhetri adds that, after nearly three weeks since the disaster, there is yet to be a decision on the request and that the country has “only received messages of solidarity”, with no assurance of rapid response funds. He says that it is “quite an interesting scene for [us] to observe”, adding:

“If the fund cannot respond in a crisis like this for a country like Nepal – when you have this massive destruction and devastation – then what is the use of the fund itself? That’s why it is a test for the fund, though the resources are limited.”

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The post Analysis: Nepal’s $20m ‘loss-and-damage’ claim only covers 0.7% of flood costs appeared first on Carbon Brief.

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This year’s so-called “super El Niño” is entering into record-breaking territory. 

Sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific now equal the previous daily record set in 2015 and will likely keep rising in the days ahead.

El Niño is a naturally occurring climate phenomenon in the Pacific that reshapes weather patterns around the world and temporarily boosts global temperatures. 

The current El Niño event – which has been underway since June and is expected to last until next year – has been developing faster than any previous event on record. 

The strength of an event is tracked using the “Niño 3.4 anomaly”, which measures how much warmer sea surface temperatures in a section of the central Pacific are than average. 

As of 19 September, the daily anomaly in the Niño 3.4 region stands at 3.07C, putting it in a statistical tie with the previous record of 3.08C.

Some scientists, using a different baseline for calculating the anomaly, have already called the new record. 

Either way, this is remarkable, in part because of how early in the calendar year it is occurring. El Niño typically peaks in the winter months, most commonly in November or December. 

Every strong El Niño on record has continued to strengthen after mid-September – and there is every reason to think that this one will as well.

(For more on El Niño, see Carbon Brief’s recent interactive explainer.) 

Record territory

El Niño events are typically classed as “weak” when the Niño 3.4 anomaly reaches 0.5C, “moderate” above 1C, “strong” above 1.5C and “very strong” above 2.0C.

For this year’s event, the Niño 3.4 anomaly has now reached 3.07C, which puts it in a statistical tie with the record set on 18 November 2015, set during a “very strong” El Nino event.

The chart below shows how the strength of the current El Niño (red line) is dramatically outpacing both 2015-16 (blue) and another “very strong” event in 1997-98 (light blue).

Daily Niño 3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies, 1982-2026, each relative to a centred 30-year climatology (ONI convention). Chart by Carbon Brief.

To analyse the developing El Niño, Carbon Brief followed the convention of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Oceanic Niño index (ONI).

ONI is calculated by subtracting the latest 30-year average temperature in the Nino 3.4 region from daily sea surface temperatures. This approach allows for the most recent years to be compared against the most recent 30-year period. It removes much of the influence of longer-term, human-driven warming from the index. 

(While meteorological organisations typically track changes to ONI on a three-month rolling average basis, Carbon Brief’s analysis looked at how the metric is changing on a daily basis.)

If ONI is calculated using a baseline of 1991-2020 then the current El Niño has already set a new record.

Since the start of June, El Niño’s strength has been greater than any other year. In early September in both 1997 and 2015, anomalies were around 1.9C – more than one degree below where they are this year.

An alternative index 

There is another commonly used metric – the relative Oceanic Niño index (RONI) – used to study El Niño. 

Introduced by NOAA in 2024, the RONI index adjusts for tropical ocean warming linked to human-caused climate change. To do this, it takes sea surface averages in the Nino 3.4 region and subtracts out temperature anomalies observed across the tropical oceans (between the latitudes of 20 degrees north and south). 

This approach may better remove the influence of climate change in this specific region, but can also diminish the apparent strength of strong El Niño events, such as the current one, which extend well outside the Niño 3.4 region.

The chart below shows daily RONI values, which are record setting for this time of year, but remain below an all-time daily record set during the 1982-83 El Niño event.

Daily relative Niño 3.4 (RONI) anomalies for every year, 1982-2026. Chart by Carbon Brief.

RONI stood at around 2.5C in mid-September, some 0.7C below the 1982 record. 

However, that record was set in late December, at the peak of the event. 

The 1982-83, 1997-98 and 2015-16 events added between 0.5C and 1.9C to their RONI values between mid-September and their peaks.

On track to smash monthly and seasonal records  

Because daily El Niño values are noisy, scientists typically turn to monthly or seasonal averages to compare El Niño events. 

The latest full calendar month for which data is available – August 2026 – had a Niño 3.4 anomaly of around 2.45C. This is higher than the peak of every prior El Niño event on record except 2015-16 – where the anomaly reached 2.75C – and 1877-78, when the anomaly sat at around 2.7C, based on a reconstruction of sea surface temperatures using sparse ship data.

The figure below shows the monthly evolution of the five strongest El Niño events on record alongside 2026, as well the current forecast from 14 seasonal forecast models.

Monthly Niño 3.4 anomaly (degrees C) for the five strongest El Niño events on record, for 2026 through August and the 2026-27 forecast across 14 models, each relative to a centred 30-year climatology (ONI convention). Data from NOAA CPC, Copernicus C3S, ECCC and JAMSTEC. Chart by Carbon Brief.

Taken together, the models project a peak monthly anomaly later this year of around 4.1C, with 80% of the 674 individual model runs falling between 3.4C and 4.6C. 

Every single model run peaks above the 2015-16 record. The projected margin over that record, some 1.3C, is larger than the entire gap between the strongest and fifth-strongest El Niño of the past 150 years.

Some caution here is warranted, however. No seasonal forecast system has ever been verified against an event of this size, because none has ever occurred. The models also predicted temperatures slightly warmer than observed this summer, with real-world observations for August coming in around 0.3C below forecasts.

However, all strong El Niño events on record have continued to strengthen well into the winter – and the models are in near-unanimous agreement that this one will, too. If the forecast holds, the current event will peak between November and January at a level far beyond any event previously observed in the instrumental record.

El Nino’s effect on global temperatures typically lags rising ocean temperatures in the Pacific by several months, so most of the impact will be felt in 2027 rather than 2026. 

Carbon Brief’s most recent “state of the climate” quarterly analysis found 2026 on track to be the warmest or second-warmest year on record. The next update in early October will examine what a record El Niño means for 2027.

El Niño: Indonesia fire emissions in 2026 ‘on track’ to match record for this century 11.09.2026 El Niño and La Niña Explainer: How the ‘super El Niño’ will reshape the world’s weather 18.08.2026 El Niño and La Niña Analysis: What are the causes of recent record-high global temperatures? 10.12.2025 Climate pollutants State of the climate: First quarter of 2020 is second warmest on record 20.04.2020 Climate modelling

The post Analysis: ‘Super El Niño’ reaches ‘remarkable’ all-time record appeared first on Carbon Brief.

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• Flatlining fossils
• Clean-energy growth matches power demand
• Which states led the clean-power shift?
• Fall in oil and gas consumption continues
• Rapid emission growth from heavy industry continues
• New investments in coal 
• Outlook for India’s emissions
• About the data

A surge in clean energy has kept carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in check across India’s power sector, with no growth from the first half of 2024 to the same period in 2026.

This guest post is by:

Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) 

Anubha Aggarwal, India analyst at CREA

This is the first time in more than 50 years that there has been no growth in India’s coal power over a two-year period, even as electricity demand grew overall.

At the same time, both oil and gas consumption have fallen across the nation for two years in a row, helping alleviate the shock of the Hormuz crisis.

Nevertheless, the new six-monthly analysis for Carbon Brief shows that India’s emissions grew by 3.7% year-on-year in the first half of 2026, due to increases from steel, cement and other sectors.

Other key findings for the first half of 2026 include:

• India’s power-sector emissions flatlined at 2024 levels, after a 2.2% decline in the first half of 2025 and a 2.3% rise in the same period this year.
• Clean energy met all of the 7% rise in India’s electricity demand over the two years, adding 63 terawatt hours (TWh), equivalent to the total demand of Switzerland.
• India has added 77 gigawatts (GW) of solar in this two-year period, helping meet 60% of the rise in electricity demand overall.
• While fossil-fuel generation stagnated, generators added 8.5GW of new coal capacity, leading to fewer running hours and increased costs to electricity consumers.
• CO2 emissions from oil and gas fell by 7% year-on-year, extending a reduction that began in 2025, despite higher demand for road transport fuels.
• Steel and cement emissions grew by 8% year-on-year, reaching a 23% share of India’s total CO2 in the first half of 2026. 

If the pace of India’s clean-energy expansion is to continue, it will need to upgrade its electricity grid, rapidly build out energy storage and boost the flexibility of coal power.

While clean-energy expansion is covering most or all of India’s power-demand growth, the fossil-fuel industry continues to pursue major capital investments.

This includes large amounts of new coal-power capacity, ambitious plans for the conversion of coal-to-chemicals and efforts to boost domestic coking coal production for the steel sector.

While CO2 output from the power sector is flat, with oil and gas in decline, India’s emissions still went up due to the contribution from industry.

India lags behind its competitors – including most large emerging economies – when it comes to electrifying its industrial sector.

Faster progress would enable clean electricity to substitute for fossil fuels in industry, as well as for power, offering the potential for India to cut its emissions overall.

Flatlining fossils

Last year, India’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and cement grew at their slowest pace in two decades, according to previous analysis for Carbon Brief.

This sharp slowdown was due to rapid clean-energy growth and flat oil demand, combined with rising emissions from steel and cement.

The first half of 2026 marks a continuation of these trends.

Most strikingly, the ongoing surge in clean-energy generation means that emissions have flatlined in India’s power sector for two years, as shown in the figure below.

Power-sector CO2 was the same in the first half of 2026 as two years earlier, with a small decline in 2025 having been reversed over the same period this year.

For further details, see: About the data.

Beyond electricity generation, India’s key emitting sectors continued to see divergent trends in the first half of 2026, as some saw ongoing decline while others reached new heights.

This is shown in the figure below, which compares year-on-year changes in emissions during the first half of 2026 with the same periods in 2025, 2024 and the average for 2021-23.

Specifically, emissions grew by 2.3% in the power sector, reversing last year’s decline, while demand for gas and oil products fell for another year.

The biggest increases were for steel and cement, where emissions growth accelerated to 8% year-on-year in the first half of 2026, well above the recent trend.

For further details, see: About the data. Clean-energy growth matches power demand

The period from the first half of 2024 to the first half of 2026 saw the largest increase in non-fossil power generation on record in India.

This enabled fossil-fuel consumption and CO2 emissions from the sector to stay flat, even as electricity consumption increased.

Indeed, this is the first time in more than 50 years that there has been no growth in coal power over a two-year period, even as electricity demand grew overall, as shown below.

For further details, see: About the data.

Over this two-year period, India’s total power generation increased by 7%, some 63TWh, equal to the total consumption of Singapore or Switzerland.

The additional power requirement of 63TWh was met entirely by clean energy. Solar grew by 44TWh, alongside growth from wind (13TWh), nuclear (7TWh) and hydro (8TWh).

Together, clean-energy sources added 70TWh over two years, more than the net increase in demand.

(For comparison, China’s nuclear, wind and solar output increased by 485TWh in 2025.)

The figure below shows that new investments are more than sufficient to maintain this trend, as added power generation from new clean power capacity has stayed above average demand growth for the past 18 months.

For further details, see: About the data.

Over the past two years, India added 77GW of new solar capacity, 11GW of wind, 5GW of hydro and 0.6GW of nuclear capacity.

Solar power continues to dominate clean-energy growth, but, collectively, the other non-fossil sources still contributed 40% of the overall increase in generation. 

One factor in electricity demand growth in 2026 is the El Niño, which delayed the monsoon and intensified heatwaves, driving up cooling demand.  

India is accelerating investment in energy storage, which will support further growth in clean power. The National Electricity Plan projected a requirement of 82 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of energy storage capacity by 2026-27 and 411GWh by 2031-32.

As of May 2026, the government has issued tenders for around 272GWh of energy storage capacity, including 142GWh of pumped hydro and 133GWh of battery storage systems. Current capacity is 7.5GWh of battery storage and around 60GWh of pumped hydro.

Which states led the clean-power shift?

The fall in power generation from fossil fuels from the first half of 2024 to the same period in 2026 was concentrated in a few states.

Gujarat saw both the largest reduction in fossil-fuel generation and the largest expansion in clean power, as shown in the figure below.

For further details, see: About the data.

After Gujarat, the largest increases in clean-power generation were seen in Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, which also saw reductions in power generation from fossil fuels.

Several other states saw declines in fossil-fuel generation due to higher net imports, rather than local clean power. These included Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Punjab. 

Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh also succeeded in increasing clean-power generation faster than power demand, thereby contributing to keeping fossil fuel-based power generation stable nationwide across the two-year period. However, they exported much of the increase and consequently saw local increases in power generation from fossil fuels.

The two states with the largest increases in power demand, Maharashtra and Telangana, managed to almost match the rise with growth in clean-power generation.

Fall in oil and gas consumption continues

India’s oil consumption continued to fall during the first half of 2026, dropping 1.3% year-on-year, a slight acceleration from the 0.7% reduction in the same period last year.

While diesel and petrol consumption continued to grow, oil consumption was pulled down overall by declines in liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), petcoke (a solid derivative of oil used in the cement industry) and industrial feedstocks. Growth of aviation fuel use eased.

Diesel consumption growth accelerated from 1.8% to 4.1% in the first half of the year, supported by higher freight movement and increased agricultural demand, as the delayed monsoon led to greater use of diesel-powered irrigation.

Petrol consumption returned to growth, increasing 6.9% year-on-year after zero growth in the same period in 2025, reflecting sustained growth in passenger and two-wheeler mobility.

A significant increase in ethanol blending shaved a full percentage point off the growth of petrol consumption. India achieved its 20% ethanol blending target five years ahead of schedule in 2025-26. (Ethanol blending has faced public opposition.)

Electric vehicle (EV) adoption in India is also gaining momentum, with EVs adopted in a widening range of categories.

In Delhi, an EV policy was launched to accelerate electrification of the vehicle fleet, with a particular focus on two-wheelers, three-wheelers (auto rickshaws), commercial vehicles and high-mileage segments, alongside expanded charging infrastructure. Higher EV adoption rates will moderate the growth in emissions from petrol consumption in India. 

In contrast, aviation fuel demand growth slowed down from 5% to 2%. The slowdown coincided with the strait of Hormuz and wider crisis, which disrupted international aviation through temporary airspace closures and flight cancellations to several Middle Eastern destinations. Elevated aviation fuel prices also increased airline operating costs, contributing to lower fuel demand. 

LPG consumption contracted by 7%, after 5.7% growth in the same period last year, amid disruptions in global LPG markets following the Hormuz crisis.

Petcoke consumption fell 9.9%, more than reversing a 9.3% increase in the same period last year. Rising petcoke prices encouraged cement manufacturers to switch to coal.

Consumption of other petroleum products continued to drop, although the pace of decline moderated from 14% in 2025 to 9% in 2026. 

Industrial feedstock use was affected by shortages and price increases.

Naphtha demand contracted as import prices nearly doubled and domestic prices increased by around 60%, prompting petrochemical manufacturers to reduce operating rates and suppress demand for imported naphtha.

Bitumen consumption remained subdued due to slower road construction, driven by persistent land acquisition challenges and higher bitumen costs.

Meanwhile, higher light diesel oil (LDO) prices and shortage of LPG led some industrial consumers to switch back to furnace oil in boilers and heaters, despite the higher air pollutant emissions. Supply of fuel oil to industry increased for the same reason.

Rapid emission growth from heavy industry continues

Steel and cement output in India grew by 8% and 9%, respectively, year-on-year in the first half of 2026, despite rising input prices and weakening profitability.

The growth in steel and cement was supported in part by increased investment in India’s real estate sector, especially in the second quarter. Steel consumption growth outpaced production, implying that inventories built up last year were tapped.

Despite domestic demand growth, profit margins of Indian steel and cement manufacturers remained under pressure for much of the period due to elevated raw material costs – particularly imported coking coal – and higher freight costs stemming from the Hormuz crisis.  

The pressure on prices could dampen growth. Cement prices are expected to rise to levels last seen in the 2021-22 financial year, when Russia’s decision to cut back gas exports to Europe drove a sharp increase in fossil-fuel prices.

Outside the steel, cement and power sectors, coal-consumption growth accelerated to 14% in the first half of 2026, up from 3% last year, as the LPG shortage prompted a shift to coal.

Gas shortages resulted in some additional burning of coal for cooking in March and April. The government officially authorised the hospitality industry to use coal, refuse-derived fuel pellets, biomass and kerosene for one month.

The ceramic and tile industry also requested that the government allow the use of coal gasifiers amid the gas shortage. State governments including Delhi NCR, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Maharashtra also allowed industries to temporarily use alternative fuels, including coal. 

India’s industrial energy use is dominated by fossil fuels, particularly coal. Indian industry has the second-lowest electrification rate in the G20, as shown in the figure below. The share of electricity in total energy consumption in the sector also lags the world average, in terms of both current levels and the rate of increase.

For further details, see: About the data.

The current low rates of electricity use in Indian industry imply that there is major potential for electrification, using technologies and processes already in place in other countries.

New investments in coal 

While the clean-power expansion is starting to meet most or all of India’s electricity demand growth, there are still large investment plans across the coal supply chain.

Some 43GW of coal-power capacity was under construction at the end of June. Additional coal-power capacity is seen as necessary to meet increasing peak loads, even as solar power and energy storage are already playing a role in covering daytime and evening peak demand, respectively. The expansion of energy storage will increase this contribution.

Outside the power sector, India has major ambitions to produce chemical-industry products, such as fertiliser and plastic feedstock, from coal through coal gasification, in pursuit of energy security.

The government is targeting a capacity to process 100m tonnes of coal per year in the next four years, despite the technology for coal gasification still being nascent in India. At present, the only operational use of coal gasification is at Jindal Steel Limited, which is reportedly using syngas in its steel-making process. 

Meanwhile, India plans to reduce its average CO2 emissions per tonne of steel by 25% by 2025-26, mainly by reducing the share of coal-based steelmaking.

At the same time, the government is aiming to increase the use of domestic coking coal, which it notified in January this year as a “critical and strategic mineral”. Coal miners and steel companies are reportedly planning to establish additional washeries for coking coal to make it suitable for blending with imported coal for use in steel production. 

India is also looking to invest in new coal mines in the near future. 

These continued investments in coal gasification, domestic coking coal and new coal mining capacity could lock in coal use across industry for several decades.  

Outlook for India’s emissions

Over the two-year period from the first half of 2024 to the same period in 2026, India has achieved its largest clean-energy expansion on record.

As a result, power-demand growth has been met entirely by clean electricity and CO2 emissions in the sector have flatlined.

This expansion of clean energy also allowed a reduction in fossil-fuel imports for power generation, with the use of imported coal falling 38% and the use of gas by 35%, supporting the energy security aims of the government and reducing exposure to the Hormuz shock.

In order to keep the clean-energy growth going, India would need to overcome multiple obstacles, including expansion of the electricity transmission network, improvements in grid flexibility to accommodate variable renewables and the timely completion of new projects. 

For example, renewable power projects totalling 5.3GW missed completion deadlines and are having to pay penalties to the grid operator in order to retain network access.

Curtailment has emerged as an issue, particularly for projects relying on interstate power transmission, pointing to the need to upgrade the network. (Curtailment refers to electricity generation that is “wasted” because it cannot be accommodated by the power network.)

Another obstacle to be overcome if clean energy is to keep growing will be making coal-power plants more flexible, so they can ramp down during high renewable output.

A flexibility plan for coal-power plants has been delayed by more than a year due to persistent regulatory bottlenecks, contributing to the curtailment of renewable energy. 

Expanding energy storage has the potential to ease grid and flexibility constraints, while reducing or eliminating the need for adding thermal-power capacity to meet peak loads.

The Central Electricity Authority has proposed that, after June 2027, all new government-owned solar and wind projects would have “mandatory” two-hour battery storage. (This mirrors a policy that was in place in China until early 2025 and was subsequently scrapped, in favour of more market-based approaches.)

For oil and gas, India’s consumption has been flatlining for the past two years, after half a century of continuous growth that was only briefly interrupted by Covid-19.

This has reduced the impacts of the Hormuz crisis on the country’s trade balance, helping close the gap between supply and consumption. But it has entailed disruptive shifts in many oil-dependent sectors.

For example, high prices and fuel shortages due to the Hormuz crisis led state governments to reverse their orders banning the use of dirtier fuels such as fuel oil, kerosene and coal in industries and commercial establishments.

Meanwhile, EV adoption has also begun to influence oil consumption. 

Despite the progress in the power sector and reductions in oil consumption, India’s total emissions went up over the past two years due to a major increase in industrial emissions.

Low levels of electricity use in industry mean that growing industrial output results in increasing direct fossil-fuel use and emissions.

Unless the rate of industrial electrification picks up, increases in heavy industry output will continue to translate into increases in fossil-fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.

About the data

This analysis is based on official monthly data for fuel consumption, industrial production and power generation from different ministries and government institutes. 

Coal-power emissions are estimated by combining plant-level coal consumption from the Central Electricity Authority’s (CEA) monthly coal reports with data on the calorific value and emission factors of coal used at different power plants from the CEA’s CO2 baseline database.

For each station and month, total coal consumption is split into domestic and imported coal using the imported share of coal receipts over a trailing two-month window, found to best reproduce the actual split in data available for 2023.

Consumption is converted to CO2 using each plant’s station-specific gross calorific value from the CEA database and IPCC emission factors for domestic coal, imported coal and lignite. The national-average calorific value is used for recently added plants, for which data is not available in the baseline database. 

Coal use at steel and cement plants, as well as process emissions from cement production, are estimated using production indices from the index of eight core industries released monthly by the Office of Economic Adviser, assuming that changes in total fossil-fuel use follow production volumes. These production indices were used to scale fuel use by the sectors in 2022.

To form a basis for using the indices, monthly coal-consumption data for 2022 was constructed for the sectors by combining the annual total coal and petcoke consumption reported in IEA World Energy Balances with monthly production data. This work was set out in a paper by Robbie Andrew, a researcher at Norwegian research institute CICERO, on monthly CO2 emission accounting for India. Monthly petcoke consumption was available from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell, while coal consumption by the cement industry was calculated by subtracting petcoke use from total fossil-fuel use.

Annual cement-process emissions up to 2025 were also taken from Andrew’s work and scaled using the production indices. This approach better approximated changes in energy use and emissions reported in the IEA World Energy Balances, than did the amounts of coal reported to have been dispatched to the sectors, showing that production volumes are the dominant driver of short-term changes in emissions.

For other sectors – including aluminium, auto, chemical and petrochemical, paper and plywood, pharmaceutical, graphite electrode, sugar, textile, mining, traders and others – coal consumption is estimated based on data on despatch of domestic and imported coal to end users from statistical reports and monthly reports by the Ministry of Coal, as consumption data is not available.

Coal consumption by “captive” coal-power plants – those supplying power to industrial sites, not to the public electricity network – was calculated based on capacity changes from Global Energy Monitor, assuming constant utilisation, as utilisation has been very stable year-to-year, as calculated from Central Electricity Authority data.

The difference between coal consumption and dispatch is stock changes, which are estimated by assuming that the changes in the amount of coal stored at end-user facilities mirror those at coal mines, with end-user inventories excluding power, steel and cement assumed to be 70% of those at coal mines, based on comparisons between our data and the IEA World Energy Balances.

Stock changes at mines are estimated as the difference between production at and dispatch from coal mines, as reported by the Ministry of Coal.

Coal consumption is estimated in two ways for sectors beyond power, steel and cement. Consumption of domestic coal in these other sectors is taken from the monthly reports by the Ministry of Coal. Their consumption of imported coal is estimated from the total imports of thermal coal reported by consultancy Kpler, by subtracting demand for imports at coal-power plants. The basis for this assumption is that steel and cement industries use little imported thermal coal, according to Ministry of Coal data.

Product-by-product consumption data for petroleum products, as well as gas use by sector, is from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.

As the fuel dispatch and consumption data is reported as physical volumes – such as tonnes or litres – calorific values are taken from IEA’s World Energy Balance and CO2 emission factors from 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories.

The emissions factor for motor oil or petrol was updated, based on the blending percentage of ethanol each year. The ethanol-blending percentage is as reported by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. 

Calorific values are assigned separately to different fuel types, including domestic and imported coal, anthracite and coke, as well as to petrol, diesel and several other oil products.

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Global fossil-fuel emissions are set to fall by around 0.5% in 2026 amid the fallout from the Hormuz crisis, according to Carbon Brief analysis.

The US-Iran war has severely disrupted trade through the strait of Hormuz, causing a spike in oil and gas prices that continues to ripple around the global economy.

Each month of disruption – and each new flashpoint, such as in Yemen – is increasing the incentive to switch to alternatives.

Those alternatives include coal, with the latest forecasts pointing to a 1.2% rise in coal demand this year – apparently supporting media claims of a “return to coal” in the wake of the crisis.

Yet Carbon Brief’s analysis shows the rise in emissions associated with this increased coal use, much of which is unrelated to Hormuz, is set to be more than offset by declines for oil and gas.

The estimated overall impact on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels in 2026 is shown in the figure below and amounts to a reduction of around 0.5% from 2025 levels.

(Fossil fuels account for two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions.)

The emissions estimates for each fossil fuel are based on the latest forecasts from the International Energy Agency (IEA) for coal, oil and gas, in light of the ongoing global energy crisis.

For example, the agency initially estimated that global coal demand would decline this year. In its 2025 coal report, published in mid-December, it said that declining coal demand in China would outweigh the impact of pro-coal policies under US president Donald Trump.

In contrast, the latest update, published in September 2026, said that global coal demand would rise by 1.2% in 2026, instead of the small decline that had been expected.

The report highlighted the boost to coal demand from higher gas prices in the wake of Hormuz. However, there are limits to this, because few countries can switch from gas to coal at large scale.

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The IEA’s latest report also noted the role of a strong El Niño, which is pushing up the need for cooling and depressing hydropower output in key markets. Other short-term factors are also affecting coal demand this year, including a rising amount of “wasted” wind and solar in China.

For gas, the IEA did not initially update its previous forecast that global gas demand would rise by 2.0% in 2026, which had been published in January of this year.

Its most recent forecast – published in July – already pointed to a 0.6% drop in demand in 2026. Since then, pressure on gas demand from high prices has only grown stronger.

For oil, there has been an even more dramatic shift in forecasts since the start of the year.

In its January 2026 oil market report, the IEA forecast a rise in demand in 2026 of 930,000 barrels per day (bpd). As shown in the figure below, this has been steadily revised downwards over the course of the year, as the Hormuz crisis was first ignited – and then extended.

By September, the IEA was forecasting a 2,500,000bpd drop in oil demand in 2026, equivalent to a reduction of 2.4% from 2025 levels.

(A 15 September research note from Morgan Stanley, not available online, found a “consensus” forecast of a 2,415,000bpd drop in demand in 2026.)

While there are many short-term factors at play in the shifting forecasts for 2026, it is clear that the latest energy crisis will also affect fossil-fuel demand in the next year and beyond.

For example, whereas the IEA initially forecast that oil demand would rebound in 2027 to well above 2025 levels, it is now expecting use of the fuel to be effectively flat for two years.

This puts a question mark over its previous expectation – published in October last year – that global oil demand would not peak until as late as 2030.

“For every month the conflict lasts, the probability of permanent [oil] demand destruction increases,” wrote Sverre Alvik, vice president at consultancy DNV in a late August analysis.

As fuel prices have surged, electric vehicles (EVs) have captured record shares of major car markets, from Australia and China through to Europe, Indonesia and Thailand.

In July, EV sales nearly doubled year-on-year in “new markets”, noted Alvik, pointing to countries outside China, Europe and North America.

The IEA says the 2027 outlooks for coal and gas are interdependent, with coal demand potentially increasing again if gas prices remain elevated – or dropping back if gas prices ease.

At the same time, governments in countries that had planned to rely on imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) have been signalling shifts towards favouring domestic clean energy instead – or continuing to use coal for longer.

The current crisis, therefore, has the potential to not only lower fossil-fuel use and emissions in the short term, but also on a more lasting basis.

Related Analysis: India’s power-sector emissions flat for two years due to clean-energy surge 17.09.2026 Emissions CCC: Heathrow expansion could push flights to ‘80% of UK emissions by 2050’ 16.09.2026 Emissions Analysis: China’s CO2 emissions fall in Q2 2026 due to plummeting oil use 03.09.2026 Emissions Explainer: The CMIP7 emissions scenarios – and how they explore future climate change 01.09.2026 Climate modelling

The post Analysis: Global fossil-fuel emissions set to fall in 2026 amid Hormuz crisis appeared first on Carbon Brief.

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Aviation is on track to be responsible for 80% of the UK’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2050, according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC).

Emissions from flying have more than doubled since 1990 – driven by rising passenger numbers – even as the climate impact of every other sector in the UK economy has fallen.

The UK does not have “credible” policies in place to reverse this trend of rising emissions, says the CCC in new advice to the government on future aviation policy.

The government has signalled its support for expanding Heathrow, the nation’s largest airport, while relying on “techno-fixes” such as “sustainable aviation fuels” (SAFs) to cut emissions. 

Yet, even without Heathrow expansion, the CCC says aviation emissions are on track to be higher in 2050 than they are today – reaching 38m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2).

As the chart below shows, this would account for most of the remaining CO2 from the UK economy, all of which would need to be removed from the atmosphere in order to meet the legal target of net-zero emissions.

Expanding Heathrow would add another 2.4MtCO2 in 2050, amounting to around 5% of all the UK’s emissions. (This would increase to 4.5MtCO2 when expansion is complete in 2054.)

With a final decision on Heathrow expansion expected by 2029, the government asked the CCC  for its advice on whether the plan is compatible with the UK’s climate targets. 

The CCC has concluded that the UK simply lacks sufficient policies to reduce aviation emissions and “expanding Heathrow would compound the problem”. In a press briefing, CCC chair Nigel Topping told journalists:

“The UK does not currently have a credible plan to reduce [aviation emissions] in line with net-zero, so that creates a serious challenge for meeting our climate commitments.”

The “jet-zero strategy”, launched by the previous Conservative government in 2022, set out plans to cut aviation emissions. However, the Labour government has since accepted that the strategy’s expectations for SAFs, electric planes and fuel-efficiency improvements were unrealistic.

The CCC says a “credible and robust net-zero policy framework for aviation” should be set out in a revised strategy, which is planned for 2027. Only then could Heathrow expansion be aligned with the net-zero goal, adds the committee.

As part of this new strategy, the CCC says the “aviation sector needs to take responsibility for its emissions”. It says policies should be designed based on the “polluter pays” principle, requiring the aviation industry to fund its own SAFs and CO2 removal.

Specifically, the committee says funding will be needed for “engineered removal” technologies, such as direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS). 

These technologies are currently “not yet available at the scale required”, but are vital for the kind of permanent CO2 removal needed to mop up aviation emissions, says the CCC.

(“Natural solutions” such as tree planting are the other main way CO2 is expected to be removed from the atmosphere. However, the CCC envisages these removals offsetting the remaining methane emissions from livestock agriculture in the UK, whereas it says “engineered removals” would be required to remove and store CO2 from flights.)

The CCC acknowledges that placing decarbonisation costs on airlines would likely lead to higher ticket prices. It estimates that this could mean an increase, in 2024 prices, of around £150 for a return trip to Alicante, Spain, and £400 for a return trip to New York by 2050. 

However, it says this is preferable to a public spending approach, which would result in the roughly 50% of the population who do not fly paying for flight-related CO2 removals.

In addition, the committee notes that higher costs would help to manage demand for flights, which would otherwise be expected to increase considerably over the coming decades.

related Analysis: Global fossil-fuel emissions set to fall in 2026 amid Hormuz crisis 16.09.2026 Emissions El Niño: Indonesia fire emissions in 2026 ‘on track’ to match record for this century 11.09.2026 El Niño and La Niña UK aviation emissions to be 50% higher than thought by 2050, government admits 10.09.2026 Aviation and shipping Analysis: UK solar power hits record high over summer 2026 04.09.2026 Renewables

The post CCC: Heathrow expansion could push flights to ‘80% of UK emissions by 2050’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.

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All the ambulance services in England experienced some of their busiest-ever days during this summer’s record-breaking June heatwave, according to data obtained by Carbon Brief.

In June, temperatures climbed past 37C in parts of the country as authorities declared only the second ever “red” extreme heat warning.

Four out of 10 NHS ambulance services, including London’s, responded to unprecedented numbers of life-threatening emergencies on at least one day from 23-27 June.

Another two services – in the south-west and east of the country – received their highest volume of 999 calls on record.

Ambulance services provided data on their busiest days since records began, in response to freedom-of-information (FOI) requests from Carbon Brief.

The results show how demand during the June heatwave exceeded levels seen during the traditionally busy winter season in other years – and even the height of the Covid-19 pandemic – for many services.

Heat demand

Extreme heat ramps up the risk of numerous life-threatening conditions, including heart disease and respiratory problems. 

England experienced record-breaking temperatures at the end of June, with the whole country covered by amber or red “heat health alerts” from the government.

A red alert, which was issued for the entire Midlands and south of England, indicates “significant risk to life for even the healthy population”. This was only the second time such an alert has been triggered.

Researchers calculated that there were nearly 3,000 heat-related deaths in the UK this summer. There has also been unprecedented demand for A&E departments and some ambulance services.

To investigate the strain facing ambulances, Carbon Brief sent FOI requests to the 10 NHS ambulance trusts in England, asking for lists of their busiest days. 

This covered both the total volume of 999 calls and “category 1” responses – referring to incidents involving “life-threatening injuries and illnesses”, such as heart attacks.

The chart below shows the busiest days on record for England’s ambulances, including both total calls and category 1 responses. Most services were able to provide records back to the 2010s. (See: Methodology.)

The five-day period from 23-27 June is overrepresented in these results, with at least two heatwave days ranking in the top 20 for every service in the country.

The top 20 rankings for services across England cover different periods of time. See Methodology for more details.

This trend is especially pronounced in the south and east of England, where June temperatures exceeded 36C and even approached 38C in some regions.

London, South East Coast, South Central and North East ambulance services all reported daily records for responding to life-threatening emergencies during the heatwave.

For the South East Coast and South Central services – which cover a region stretching from Oxfordshire to Kent – 25, 26 and 27 June all saw unprecedented numbers of category 1 callouts. 

South Western and East of England services both saw record numbers of 999 calls on 26 June, the same day the highest-ever June UK temperature was reported in Norfolk.

It is worth noting that demand for ambulance services – including category 1 calls – has been growing for many years, driven by factors such as an ageing population, more complex health conditions and growing mental-health pressures.

This helps to explain why dates from before the 2020s are rare in the top rankings provided to Carbon Brief.

Beyond the heatwave, 2026 as a whole is on track to be a record year for ambulance demand.

‘Stifling heat’

On 26 June, the busiest day of the heatwave, ambulances across England responded to 4,084 life-threatening emergencies.

The average daily volume of such incidents is normally around 2,500 during the summer months.

Stu Holliday, head of emergency preparedness, resilience and response at North East Ambulance Service, tells Carbon Brief: 

“During periods of hot weather, we typically see an increase in calls from people affected by dehydration, heat exhaustion and heatstroke, as well as those whose existing health conditions, particularly heart and respiratory illnesses, can be made worse by prolonged high temperatures.

“Older people, young children and pregnant people can be especially vulnerable.”

Ambulance teams are generally busier in the winter because cold weather and seasonal illnesses drive up the number of severe medical emergencies.

However, the data from June shows that extremely hot days are starting to match or even edge out cold ones as the busiest days. This is a trend seen across the healthcare system.

While not every service provided records back to 2019, the data broadly shows that ambulances were busier during the heatwave than at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

As well as patients, heatwaves put pressure on ambulance workers. The UNISON union has warned of crews facing “stifling heat with faulty or no air conditioning” and “back-to-back callouts” due to increased demand.

Methodology

Carbon Brief requested data on the top 50 busiest days for England’s 10 main ambulance services.

These are: London; South East Coast; South Central; South Western; West Midlands; East Midlands; East of England; North East; Yorkshire; and North West.

Data was requested for as far back as service records go. Most were able to provide records going back to some point in the 2010s, with the exception of North East and South Central, which only had records from 2021 and 2022 onwards, respectively. 

Rising annual demand for ambulance services means that most of the busiest days for ambulances have been in the 2020s. For example, all but four of the busiest days for category 1 emergencies reported to Carbon Brief were in the 2020s. 

Carbon Brief requested data on ambulance demand for all the UK nations. In Scotland and Northern Ireland – where temperatures are cooler – services did not see call volumes reach the top 50 rankings during the June heatwave. The Welsh Ambulance Service did not respond to Carbon Brief’s request.

related Revealed: More than 1,000 NHS operations cancelled due to record UK heatwaves 11.09.2026 Health and society Climate change is driving a ‘shift’ in childhood malaria risk across Africa 29.07.2026 Health and society Q&A: How heat-related deaths are counted by scientists and public health authorities 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

The post Revealed: England’s June 2026 heatwave sparked record demand for ambulances appeared first on Carbon Brief.

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Wildfires currently burning large swathes of land in Indonesia are on track to produce emissions on a par with the country’s most-intense fire season this century, according to experts. 

Data from the Global Fire Emissions Database reveals that, as of 7 September, fires in Indonesia produced 76m tonnes of carbon (MtC) in 2026.

This puts 2026 on the same trajectory as 2015, when fires burned 2.6m hectares of land across the country and generated a total of 333MtC. 

Dr Guido van der Werf, a researcher at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, tells Carbon Brief that the fires in Indonesia are “more or less on track” to reach levels seen 11 years ago.

Parts of the country – including the eastern province of Papua – are “burning more than they’ve ever burned”, he says.

Indonesia is no stranger to emissions-intensive fires. Research has estimated that the record 1997 fire season generated carbon emissions equivalent to 13-40% of all global fossil-fuel emissions that year. 

Meanwhile, a separate study that looked at carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the 2015 fires in south-east Asia – which primarily burned Indonesia – found they were greater than the total of the EU’s fossil-fuel emissions that year. The “severe haze” from the fires has been linked to more than 100,000 premature deaths across the region.

El Niño influence

As in 2015 and in 1997, this year’s Indonesian fires come during an El Niño year.

The naturally-occurring climate phenomenon, linked to ocean temperatures in the Pacific, periodically drives up temperatures and dries out land in Indonesia – creating the conditions for fires so immense that they imprint on global emissions. 

Scientists are projecting that this year’s El Niño – which started in June and is expected to last into 2027 – will be one of the most intense on record.

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Dr Mark Parrington, a senior scientist from the Copernicus Climate Change Service explains: 

“From August until the end of October [to] November is the dry season in Indonesia. We do normally see fire around this time of year, but nowhere near the scale that we’ve seen this year, or indeed any of the previous El Niño years”.

Dr Nisa Novita, strategic lead for peatland at Indonesian environmental NGO Yayasan Konservasi Alam Nusantara, tells Carbon Brief that El Niño “does not directly cause most fires”, but acts as a “major amplifier by creating hotter and drier conditions, making fires easier to ignite, spread faster and much harder to control”. 

Studies have shown that fires in Indonesia often occur where there has been significant land clearance and peatland drainage for agriculture and palm oil plantations. These practices create a dry landscape that is highly flammable during times of drought.

Pink bars show years in which an El Niño event was called by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. GFED fire emissions data for 1980-96 is from Field et al. (2009) and Van Marle et al. (2017); data for 1997-2022 is from Van der Werf et al. (2025); and data for 2022 onwards is from Chen et al. (2026).

Van der Werf says the scale of this year’s fires – and whether they will end up being more intense than 2015 – will depend on the length of this year’s El Niño event, as well as the effectiveness of recent peatland conservation efforts.

Novita explains that Indonesia’s fires are heavily emissions-intensive due to its large tropical peatland ecosystem: 

“When peatlands are degraded and drained due to canal development for agriculture, the water table drops, making the peat dry and highly flammable especially during dry seasons or El Niño events, like now.

“Unlike fires in dry ecosystems, peat fires can smolder underground, so the soil itself becomes readily available fuel.”

Extensive peatland restoration efforts in Indonesia in recent years have been credited with reducing the number of fires during the 2019 El Niño.

After the catastrophic fires in 1997-98, the Indonesian government introduced a range of measures designed to strengthen peatland protection and restoration through dedicated institutions and regulations. This included the introduction of a moratorium on licenses to convert forests and peatlands into plantations and logging areas. 

In the aftermath of the 2015 fires, it established an official peatland restoration agency, which was given an additional mandate for mangrove restoration in 2021. This agency was dissolved last year. Novita says:

“We have learned and improved…But the question is: is it enough? Or are we still underestimating the risk that degraded peatlands pose, especially when we face another El Niño?”

Van der Werf says it remains unclear from the 2026 fire data how great an impact recent efforts to restore peatland in Indonesia have had on reducing the impact and spread of the fires: 

“I had hoped that this year Indonesia would be relatively quiet, even though we have a big El Niño…You could argue if those regulations worked, then this wouldn’t be a big fire [season], even though it [has been] very dry. 

“This is maybe the case in Sumatra [which has seen a quiet fire season], but definitely not in other regions. Papua [a region of Indonesia] and [neighbouring country of] Papua New Guinea – those are the new frontiers. They are basically going through the same thing that Sumatra went through 20 years ago.”

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The post El Niño: Indonesia fire emissions in 2026 ‘on track’ to match record for this century appeared first on Carbon Brief.

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• Climate science
• Net-zero target
• Energy costs
• Oil and gas
• Impacts and adaptation
• Clean energy

Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, has emerged as a major force in UK politics in recent years – pushing anti-net-zero policies, alongside vehement opposition to immigration.

The hard-right populist party is currently mired in a funding controversy and only has a handful of MPs, yet, until recently, it had been leading in national polls for more than a year.

As seen with many similar parties across Europe and beyond, a rejection of climate science is central to Reform’s ideological outlook.

Richard Tice, the party’s deputy leader, is a vocal critic of what he calls “net stupid zero” and has incorrectly blamed “the sun or volcanoes” for human-caused global warming.

As Reform’s energy spokesperson, Tice has also been clear that, if the party were ever to form a national government, it would scrap the UK’s net-zero target, support fossil-fuel expansion and tear up existing contracts for renewable energy.

While less vocal on the subject, Farage has, nevertheless, expressed climate-sceptic views and falsely blamed net-zero policies for the “deindustrialisation of Britain”.

These views draw on long-standing, inaccurate climate-sceptic narratives and are reflected in Reform’s election manifestos, its actions in local government and the opinions of many of its supporters.

Here, Carbon Brief gathers together by topic and factchecks 45 false or misleading claims made by the party’s leadership relating to climate change, renewables and net-zero.

• Climate science
• Net-zero target
• Energy costs
• Oil and gas
• Impacts and adaptation
• Clean energy

Climate science

FALSE

Tice: “There’s no evidence that man-made CO2 is going to change climate change…The Norwegian government’s own equivalent of our ONS [Office of National Statistics] has recently produced a report along the lines of what I’m saying.”

Sky News, February 2025

The world’s authority on climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says it is “unequivocal” that humans have warmed the planet, primarily through releasing greenhouse gases.

The IPCC says that, due to human activities, concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) “have increased at rates that have no precedent on centennial timescales in at least the past 800,000 years”.

It adds that concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are now higher than they have been for at least the past two million years.

The report that Tice is referring to is by two independent authors, with Statistics Norway clarifying in 2024 that their views are “not the official stance” of the statistics bureau. (It has also not been formally peer reviewed.)

A factcheck of the Norwegian report by a climate scientist for RealClimate describes it as “misguided” and a “distraction due to errors”.

Another factcheck published by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found it “contains standard talking-points of climate denial”.

MISLEADING

Tice: “Look, the climate’s always changed for millions of years. And it goes through cycles, long, medium and short.”

Bloomberg, May 2026

Global temperatures are currently around 1.4C hotter than when the industrial era first began in 1850-1900, as shown in the figure below.

The IPCC says that this amount of warming is likely to have made Earth hotter than at any time in about 125,000 years.

Data from NASA GISTEMP, NOAA GlobalTemp, Hadley/UEA HadCRUT5, Berkeley Earth, Copernicus ERA5, JRA-3Q, DCENT, and China-MST. Temperature records are aligned over the 1981-2010 period and use the WMO approach to calculate warming relative to pre-industrial levels (1850-1900).

Scientists overwhelmingly agree that approximately 100% of this warming has been caused by humans. 

There are also natural influences that can affect Earth’s climate on shorter timescales, such as El Niño events, volcanic eruptions and small variations in the output of the sun. However, scientists have found that these have only a limited effect on the underlying trend of long-term global warming.

When looking at longer timescales of millions of years or more, Earth has experienced multiple ice ages interspersed with warmer periods.

These changes in climate were triggered by variations in Earth’s orbit around the sun, in combination with subtle fluctuations in the tilt and rotation of the planet, over tens of thousands of years. However, the resulting changes to CO2 levels in the atmosphere also played a role.

This should serve as a “cautionary example”, according to Dr Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist and Carbon Brief contributor, “because human emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases push the Earth further out of the range of climate conditions that have characterised the past few million years”.

FALSE

Tice: “The idea that you can stop the power of the sun or volcanoes is simply ludicrous.”

BBC Breakfast, June 2024

Scientists overwhelmingly agree that humans have caused 100% of recent climate change.

Tice’s suggestion that the sun or volcanic eruptions are behind current warming is false.

As the video below explains, the sun and volcanic eruptions have little bearing on the long-term trend of global temperature rise since the Industrial Revolution.

MISLEADING

Farage: “All I do know is that man produces about 3% of the CO2 produced in the world every year and that it is nuts to call CO2 a poison.”

BBC Radio 5 Live, June 2024

The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is now higher than it has been for at least two million years, having spiked dramatically since the Industrial Revolution.

This surge in CO2 levels is entirely due to human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels. While Farage is correct that, on an annual basis, humans only account for a few percent of all the CO2 that is released into the atmosphere, this is irrelevant.

The world’s land and ocean naturally release hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 each year. However, the land and ocean also absorb hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 each year, meaning that – before the start of the fossil-fuel era – these flows were broadly in balance.

The recycling of CO2 through Earth’s natural systems is known as the “global carbon cycle”.

Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, humans have disrupted Earth’s natural balance by releasing vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.

The IPCC says that, because of humans, concentrations of CO2 “have increased at rates that have no precedent…in at least the past 800,000 years”.

It adds that concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are now higher than they have been for at least the past two million years.

FALSE

Tice: “Many thousands of scientists fundamentally disagree about the need to [reach net-zero], or the pace to [achieve net-zero]…But they have been smeared and labelled. They can’t get any research grant funding.”

Bloomberg, May 2026

Contrary to Tice’s claim, there are not “thousands” of scientists that disagree on the need for net-zero.

Tice is likely referring to a “world climate declaration” that was circulated on social media by climate sceptics in 2022, supposedly signed by “1,200 climate experts”. A closer look at the list of signatories revealed that less than 1% described themselves as climate scientists – and six of the people on the list were dead.

Reaching net-zero emissions globally is the “only way” to stop climate change, according to the IPCC. The IPCC’s most recent set of reports involved 721 scientists in 90 countries.

All modelled pathways for limiting global warming to 1.5C by 2100, the ambition of the Paris Agreement, involve reaching net-zero emissions around the middle of the century.

This is reflected in the text of the Paris Agreement, which aims to “achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century”.

FALSE 

Tice: “The proof of my argument is one of the IPCC reports a few years ago that said even if you get to net-zero effectively tomorrow, it’ll make no difference to one of the key things people are most worried about, which is sea level rise, for somewhere between 200 years on the one hand and 1,000 years on the other hand.”

Bloomberg, May 2026

Although it is true that sea level rise is set to worsen, even if countries reach net-zero, it is certainly not the case that making efforts to cut emissions will make “no difference”.

Tice is likely referring to the IPCC’s special report on 1.5C released in 2018.

It said with “high confidence” that human-caused global warming to date will “persist for centuries to millennia and will continue to cause further long-term changes in the climate system, such as sea level rise”.

A more recent study, published in Nature Climate Change in 2025, found that following current climate policies would cause an extra 79cm of sea level rise by the year 2300.

However, reducing emissions in line with 1.5C would cut this additional sea level rise to 15cm. 

Moreover, the best-available evidence shows that warming will more or less stop when the world reaches net-zero emissions. Even if some sea level rise continues, net-zero would still prevent a long list of other increasingly severe climate impacts from taking place.

FALSE

Tice: “The IPCC has just resiled from one of its core assumptions, which was the [RCP]8.5 scenario…One of the foundations of the IPCC’s very ethos in the last 20-30 years, they’ve just abandoned.”

Bloomberg, May 2026

The “foundations” of the evidence on climate change, as well as the risk of “catastrophic” warming without stronger action, are unchanged by the recent shift on “RCP8.5”.

“RCP8.5” is one of a range of emissions scenarios that climate scientists have used  when making projections about future climate change. It is a scenario of very high global emissions, imagining a future with large increases in coal use and no climate policies.

In May 2026, a new set of emissions scenarios were published, no longer including a scenario with emissions as high as those in RCP8.5 (or its successor, SSP5-8.5). 

This moment was seized upon by a range of climate-sceptic and rightwing figures – including US president Donald Trump – who falsely claimed it as evidence that the IPCC had to “admit” that it was “wrong” about future climate change.

This is incorrect because it both misrepresents the meaning of the shift on RCP8.5 and because the set of emissions scenarios in question were not developed by the IPCC in the first place. Instead, they were put together by a group of climate modelling experts. (See Carbon Brief’s factcheck for more information.)

While the new scenarios no longer include such high emissions as in RCP8.5 – partly as a result of limited climate policy success – they also show it is now “not possible” to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels without significant “overshoot”.

Moreover, projections suggest that the world is still on course for between 2.5C and 3C of warming. This level of warming was previously described as “catastrophic” by the UN.

MISLEADING

Tice: “Cleaner air equals higher temperatures, not CO2.”

Twitter/X, July 2026

According to the IPCC, 100% of warming since the Industrial Revolution is due to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, particularly CO2.

Tice cites a Daily Telegraph article with the incorrect headline: “Heatwaves caused by fall in pollution.” He erroneously claims this as evidence that “we have been gaslit and lied to” about the causes of climate change.

In fact, as a Carbon Brief factcheck of that article notes, scientists say that the framing of heatwaves being “caused” by declining air pollution is simply “wrong”.

The claim is based on a paper in Geophysical Research Letters, which looks at how air pollution affects circulation patterns in the atmosphere and influences summer temperatures in Europe. 

Scientists have long known that human-caused emissions of aerosols “mask” global warming, partly because they reflect or absorb sunlight. Curbing air pollution, therefore, removes some of this cooling effect.

Nevertheless, the lead author of the study in question is clear that greenhouse gas emissions remain the “most important factor” driving Europe’s extreme heat events, due to their role in global warming. 

A recent attribution study by the World Weather Attribution service concluded that the June heatwave in Europe would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change.

Net-zero target

FALSE

Tice: “Net-zero will make zero difference to climate change.”

BBC Breakfast, June 2024

In fact, reaching net-zero emissions globally is the “only way” to stop climate change, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 

At that point, when carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have been cut substantially and any remaining emissions are balanced out by CO2-removal technology or tree-planting, then warming is expected to essentially stop.

FALSE

Tice: “It’s incredibly stupid for the UK to almost unilaterally say, we’re going to lead the way in the world.”

Bloomberg, May 2026

It is completely false to argue that the UK is acting “unilaterally” to tackle climate change.

The UK has indeed been a leader in climate legislation. When the then-Conservative government set the UK a legally binding “net-zero by 2050” target in 2019, it was the first major economy to do so. 

However, 140 of the world’s 198 countries now have net-zero targets, covering 74% of the world’s emissions. Some have set more ambitious goals, such as Germany’s target of reaching net-zero by 2045, while others are even aiming for “net-negative” emissions.

The UK is, therefore, not pursuing net-zero “unilaterally”. Indeed, if the UK abandoned its net-zero target, it would join the US and Iran as the only major emitters without one.

MISLEADING

Tice: “We’re responsible for 0.7, 0.8% of CO2 emissions.”

Bloomberg, May 2026

The UK’s annual emissions, including emissions from fossil fuels and land-use changes, were roughly 0.7% of the global total in 2024, the most recent year for which data is available. When only considering fossil-fuel combustion, the figure is 0.8%.

Yet, while the numbers Tice quotes are accurate, it is misleading to use them as a justification for abandoning climate policies.

Only six nations each produce more than 2% of the world’s annual emissions. In 1990, the UK was one of those rare countries, but it has roughly halved its share since then, largely due to renewable-energy expansion. Even today, it remains the world’s 22nd largest emitter.

As the chart below shows, more than a third of all greenhouse gases come from the roughly 180 nations that produce 1% or less of the world’s emissions. If none of them acted, the world would never stop climate change.

Finally, some analysts point out the UK’s “moral responsibility” to act on climate change, given its large historical contribution to current levels of global warming. 

The UK, through its historical CO2 emissions, is responsible for around 3% of current warming. When emissions in other countries under the UK’s colonial rule are counted as well, its share grows to more than 5% of the global total.

FALSE

Tice: “[Net-zero is] killing our economy.”

Bloomberg, May 2026

Efforts to cut the UK’s emissions are not “killing the economy”. In fact, there is plenty of evidence that they are boosting the economy.

UK emissions in 2025 were 54% below 1990 levels, the baseline year for the nation’s climate goals. The UK economy has nearly doubled in size over the same period, as the chart below shows. 

GDP has also continued to grow since the net-zero target was introduced in 2019.

A 2026 report from the CBI Economics – the consultancy arm of the Confederation for British Industry (CBI) – concluded:

“Net-zero is already one of the UK’s most productive and geographically distributed industrial sectors, generating high-value employment, driving supply chain activity, and anchoring the UK within one of the defining economic transformations of our era.”

The report concludes that the net-zero economy generated around £105bn in gross value added in 2025. It also supported 1.1m jobs across the country, with considerably higher wages than the UK average.

FALSE

Tice: “The cost of net-zero, which the Climate Change Committee admits is in the trillions of pounds, we don’t know how many trillions, who’s paying that? The British people.”

Bloomberg, May 2026

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) estimates that it would cost the UK a total of £108bn to reach net-zero by 2050, equivalent to 0.2% of GDP, while the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) says this would be far cheaper than failing to act.

The idea that net-zero will cost the UK trillions of pounds is false. Such claims invariably rely on analysis that exaggerates the capital cost of net-zero, while excluding both the benefits of cutting emissions and the costs of a system without net-zero policies.

One prominent recent example, promoted by Reform UK, relied on the assumption that gas boilers and petrol cars, for example, would cost nothing to buy and would have free fuel.

The idea that the CCC has “admitted” that net-zero will cost “trillions” may stem from a misinterpretation of CCC analysis from 2019, which estimated a net cost of £321bn.

Alternatively, Tice may be conflating this with another misinterpretation in the 2024 Reform UK manifesto, which falsely claimed that the cost of net-zero would be “£2tn or more”, according to the National Energy System Operator (Neso).

In fact, Neso had estimated that the cost of a net-zero energy system would be “broadly the same” as a high-carbon alternative.

Since then, the CCC has calculated that the net cost of investments needed to reach economy-wide net-zero will be around £108bn out to 2050, or less than 0.2% of GDP. Not only are the up-front investment costs lower than originally thought, but, by the 2040s, there will likely be large operational savings, due to clean technologies being cheaper to run.

There are also benefits from reaching net-zero, such as avoiding climate damages from cutting emissions and shielding the UK from fossil fuel-driven energy price spikes. 

The government, therefore, expects net-zero to deliver substantial economic value to the UK, when weighing both the costs and benefits of meeting the target. The government says meeting its climate target for 2040 would yield net benefits worth £865bn.

Similarly, other bodies, such as Neso and the OBR, find that net-zero is the “cheapest” option for the UK, when compared with failing to cut emissions.

Finally, contrary to Tice’s comments, the vast majority of the capital costs of reaching net-zero will not be borne by public funding from the “British people”. The CCC estimates that 65-90% of the capital required will come from the private sector.

FALSE

Tice: “Labour’s reckless net-zero fantasies are destroying hundreds of thousands of industrial jobs.”

Press Association, July 2025

The transition to a net-zero economy is expected to boost the UK economy and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.

In a “landmark moment”, as of 2024, there were more people employed in the UK clean-energy sector than the oil and gas industry for the first time, according to the Renewable Energy Association.

While jobs in some sectors are expected to decline in the coming years, there is currently no evidence that “hundreds of thousands” of jobs have been “destroyed” by the net-zero target.

The CCC says that there is a lack of “robust data” on whether UK climate policies have already driven job losses, but notes that “this is unlikely to be the case, as most decarbonisation has occurred in sectors where employment declined for other reasons”.

This can be seen in the employment figures for coal mining, steelmaking and oil and gas production, three industries that were mainstays of the UK economy.

As the chart below shows, all of these sectors employ fewer people today than they did in the past. But their major declines happened long before the net-zero target was set, resulting from a wide range of factors including coal being replaced by cheaper fuels, cyclical downturns in oil prices and competition with steel production overseas.

The grey shaded area indicates the period in which the UK has a net-zero target in place. Definitions from ONS Nomis have changed over the years, but the broad categories covered in this chart are “mining of coal and lignite”, “manufacture of basic iron and steel and of ferro-alloys”, “manufacture of other products of first processing of steel”, “extraction of crude petroleum and natural gas” and “support activities for petroleum and natural gas extraction”.

(The chart above only includes jobs in oil and gas extraction, but figures for UK fossil-fuel jobs vary considerably between sources, depending on the sectors classed as relevant. Industry body Offshore Energies UK cites a much broader figure of 180,000 jobs in 2024, which includes “supply chains and regional economies”.)

This does not mean that there will be no impact on the UK workforce in the future. 

A literature review by the CCC concluded that the “phase-down of high-emitting sectors and redirection of sectors” could threaten 8,000-75,000 jobs. This could include roughly 15,000 oil-and-gas workers and around 1,000 people working in coal mines.

One of the sectors that could see big changes is livestock farming, as UK diets shift away from emissions-intensive animal products. Notably, this shift is already taking place without any intervention from the government, let alone net-zero policies.

The CCC also expects there to be “extensive job creation” as the country transitions to a net-zero economy. Job gains in low-carbon sectors, such as renewable energy and clean heating, are set to far surpass losses in other sectors, as the chart below shows.

Overall, the committee says 135,000 to 725,000 “net” new jobs are set to be “created by net-zero”. 

Rather than opposing net-zero targets, some trade unions have stressed the need to support a “just transition” for workers in fossil fuel-intensive sectors. 

Industry groups have also pointed to the significant employment opportunities that a “net-zero economy” will bring. 

FALSE

Farage: “We view the net-zero targets as being the prime reason for the deindustrialisation of Britain.”

Reform UK press conference, February 2025

Net-zero is at the heart of the UK’s industrial strategy and it has frequently been described as the “economic opportunity of the century”. 

CBI chief economist Louise Hellem has described the net-zero economy as “a major part of the national industrial base”, while the Aldersgate Group says net-zero has the potential to be “the UK’s growth engine”.

Moreover, net-zero targets – set in 2019 – are clearly not the “prime reason” for the UK’s “deindustrialisation”, which has been underway for decades.

Since around the 1960s, major industries such as steel and mining have declined in the UK. There are various reasons for this, including globalisation, but the timeline does not match up with the creation of climate legislation.

Around 30% of the nation’s workers were employed in manufacturing after the second world war. By 2000-2016, the period in which the UK introduced its first major climate policies, this had already dropped to 10%, according to the ONS.

In recent years, businesses have warned that the UK’s relatively high industrial electricity prices are driving further “deindustrialisation”. This has been a talking point for those seeking to blame the nation’s net-zero strategy for driving high prices.

However, these arguments tend to omit the UK’s high exposure to expensive gas, which sets the nation’s wholesale electricity prices most of the time. 

The UK steel industry itself says that this exposure to gas is the key reason why it faces much higher electricity prices than counterparts in countries such as France and Germany. 

Energy costs

FALSE

Farage: “If we had carbon-free electricity it would cost over a trillion – and maybe nearer two – to upgrade the entirety of our grid.”

Press conference, August 2025

Cutting the UK’s emissions by using clean power to run an electrified economy is expected to significantly reduce consumer bills.

This is because electrified technologies, such as EVs and heat pumps, are significantly more efficient than fossil-fuel alternatives.

Moreover, the UK would be consolidating three separate energy systems – electricity, gas and transport fuel – into a unified, more efficient and electrified whole.

It would cost £108bn to reach the UK’s net-zero target – including a “carbon-free” electricity grid – according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC).

This includes the investment needed to build a low-carbon energy system, instead of maintaining one built on fossil fuels.

Crucially, it also takes into account the running costs of the two systems, such as the much higher cost of fuel needed for petrol cars, as shown below.

Investing in a net-zero economy would bring benefits worth around £865bn, according to the government. Unlike the CCC figures, this includes avoided climate damages.

It is not clear where Farage’s false claim comes from.

The 2024 Reform UK manifesto included a similar false claim that the “cost of net-zero has been estimated by the National Grid and others at some £2tn or more”.

In reality, the then-National Grid Electricity System Operator – now Neso – had said in 2020 that the cost of building and operating the UK energy system would be “broadly the same”, with or without net-zero.

It is true that the UK will need to invest heavily in upgrading its electricity grid. This will cost some £64bn out to 2030 and another £89bn in the following decade, according to Neso.

This is around 10 times lower than Farage’s claim. But, crucially, it does not include the savings this investment will unlock, such as cheaper travel with electric vehicles.

FALSE

Tice: “There was a direct link between the growth in renewable generating capacity and the growth in electricity prices in the UK.”

Bloomberg interview, May 2026

It is expensive gas that has largely driven up electricity prices in the UK.

High gas prices caused two-thirds of the rise in electricity bills over recent years, according to the UK Energy Research Centre – and this was before the Iran crisis.

The UK has high electricity prices principally because its electricity system remains heavily reliant on gas-fired power plants. This means gas usually sets the price of UK power.

Moreover, the growth in renewable capacity has helped to protect UK billpayers during the latest fossil-fuel price shock, after the US and Israel attacked Iran.

This is an “early sign” that the government’s clean-power plan “may be working”, according to thinktank NESTA. It says “electricity [prices are] beginning to decouple from gas“.

Electricity systems that have high shares of renewable energy tend to have lower wholesale power prices, according to evidence from US states and from European countries.

As the University of Oxford’s Prof Jan Rosenow explains in a recent post on his Bright Spots substack, the “‘renewables make electricity expensive’ claim doesn’t survive contact with the wholesale data”. He adds:

“The countries with the most expensive wholesale electricity are the ones still dependent on gas to set their prices.”

Rosenow notes that the relationship between renewables and consumer bills is less clear, because these also include network charges, policy costs and taxes. He argues for reforms to ensure that “lower wholesale prices [from clean power] feed through into lower bills”.

The CCC also argues for reforms to make electricity cheaper. Still, it concludes that clean power coupled to faster electrification is the clearest route to lower energy bills for the UK.

FALSE

Farage: “Perhaps the real unfairness of net-zero policies…has been the impact on domestic bills, something about which there has been an absolute wall of silence.”

Press conference, February 2025

By far the biggest driver of increases in domestic energy bills in recent years has been the rising cost of gas, not “net-zero policies”.

Gas prices have been trending upwards since the mid-2000s, long before the UK even had a net-zero target. Initially, this was due to dwindling supplies in Europe – including the North Sea – as well as more global competition for gas.

Gas prices then surged in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine and cut off supplies to Europe. This year, war in the Middle East has once again sent gas prices soaring.

Most of the energy bill increases in recent years have been the result of wholesale gas costs rising due to these successive global crises.

There are some parts of domestic energy bills that could be described as “net-zero policies” – notably, the subsidies or “green levies” to support both old and new renewable energy. 

However, these are not the drivers of recent price rises and are a much smaller component of a domestic energy bill than wholesale gas costs. (In addition, a chunk of policy costs have recently been moved off bills into general taxation.)

Moreover, the renewables they support have helped to curb the UK’s reliance on imported gas, saving the nation money.

Finally, the idea that this issue has faced a “wall of silence” is simply not true.

Energy bills and net-zero have been endlessly debated by politicians, commentators and the media. A pledge to cut energy bills was one of the central pillars of the Labour government’s election manifesto in 2024.

FALSE

Tice: “The cost of renewables plus backup, literally by definition, must cost more than backup because there is a cost of capital and a cost of retention of all of the backup…Don’t build it in the first place. We don’t need batteries.”

Bloomberg interview, May 2026

The UK is building a clean-energy system that will cost more to build – and much less to operate – than the current fossil-fuel economy.

Tice is ignoring half of this equation and – by definition – this means he is not giving a full picture.

For example, wind and solar do not need fuel to operate, whereas “backup” plants cannot generate power without gas or fuel oil.

It is highly misleading to look only at the capital investments needed to build wind, solar or gas plants, while ignoring the cost of operating them.

Electricity generation from wind and solar helped the UK avoid gas imports worth £1.7bn in the first two months of the Hormuz crisis alone, according to Carbon Brief analysis.

The CCC says that households could cut their bills by an average of £1,200 per year – even after higher upfront costs – by adopting solar, heat pumps and electric vehicles, as shown below.

.cb-tweet img{ border: solid 1.25px #333333; border-radius: 5px; } @media (max-width:650px){ .cb-tweet{ width:100%; } } Household energy costs for heat, power and transport, £ per year. The upfront costs of purchasing cars, heating systems, chargers and solar panels are annualised. Source: CCC progress report 2026.

Ultimately, an electrified economy built on renewables and other sources of clean power will reduce energy waste and cut bills, according to the CCC and others.

FALSE

Tice: “It is as cost-effective or indeed cheaper to put the cables underground.”

Press conference, February 2025

Contrary to repeated claims by Tice, there is clear evidence that it is significantly cheaper to build overhead electricity pylons than it is to “put cables underground”.

It is 3.5-5 times more expensive to bury cables than to run overhead wires, according to research published in May 2026 and shown in the figure below, with other similar studies.

The latest study, by consultancy Ramboll, shows that underground cables remain far more expensive, even where techniques such as “cable ploughing” are used to bury them.

The findings are in line with previous research published by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) in April 2025.

This found that “underground cables are, on average, 4.5 times more expensive than overhead lines”. It said that undersea cables “can be up to 11 times more costly”.

Another consultancy, DNV, reached very similar conclusions in 2024. The IET said the same back in 2012, when it estimated underground cables to be five times more costly.

All of these reports directly contradict claims made by Tice in a 2025 press conference:

“We are serving notice on National Grid…put the cables underground…It is as cost-effective, or indeed cheaper, to put the cables underground.”

Tice’s claim is based on a highly misleading interpretation of the East Anglia network study, published by Neso in 2024.

This study put a price on various options to reinforce the electricity network in the east of England, including a planned overhead route from Norwich to Tilbury.

Contrary to Tice’s claims, figures from project developer National Grid suggest that using underground cables for this route would be 6.5 times more expensive than overhead wires.

If all of the country’s planned new electricity cables were put underground, it could cost up to an extra £22bn, according to Sam Dumitriu, head of policy at thinktank Britain Remade.

FALSE

Tice: “[A ‘windfall tax’ on renewables] is the best way that we can help get the bills down and lower the cost of living.”

Press conference, February 2025

Expensive gas has been the main driver of UK energy bill increases in recent years, particularly as successive global crises have sent global gas prices spiralling.

As such, reducing the UK’s exposure to international gas prices – as well as cutting its reliance on imported fuels for cars and boilers – is key to reducing bills.

Yet, Tice has claimed that the “best way” to cut bills would be through a so-called “windfall tax” on wind and solar power generators.

It is unclear how it would be possible to cut bills – by even a small amount – through an additional tax on renewables, which generate around half of the nation’s electricity.

With “windfall”, Tice borrowed a term that is often used for new taxes on the fossil-fuel companies making billions in additional profits due to war in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Renewables have helped to shield the UK from the impact of these conflicts, by curbing its reliance on gas and saving billions that would otherwise have been spent on costly imports.

Tice suggested that a new tax on renewable energy firms could help “recover” the money previously paid to them in subsidies. However, he has not offered any detail on how the proposed tax would work, how much money it would raise or what impact it might have.

A retrospective change to the tax treatment of existing energy infrastructure would hamper future investment in the system, whether that is for clean power or Tice’s own preferred energy sources.

Blocking renewables through a windfall tax and other changes could stop investments worth tens of billions of pounds, according to the New Economics Foundation thinktank.

MISLEADING
Farage: “Our electricity prices for industry are between five and six times higher than those in America.”

Press conference, February 2025

The UK primarily has high industrial electricity prices due to its exposure to high gas prices.

In turn, the UK and other European countries face much higher gas prices than the US.

This is particularly true since Russia cut off pipeline gas supplies to the continent amid its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – a shift that has been reinforced by EU sanctions.

This means Europe is reliant on internationally traded liquified natural gas (LNG), for which it competes with Japan and other countries.

In contrast, gas prices are low in the US because supplies are often a by-product of more valuable oil extraction, which comes out of the ground with “associated” gas. The demand for US gas is also limited by the amount that can be exported overseas as LNG.

As such, while it is true that UK industrial electricity prices are high compared to other countries, the reasons are different to what Farage implies.

In addition, his claim that costs are “five to six times higher” than the US is overstated. 

The most widely cited figures, based on International Energy Agency (IEA) data, suggest industrial prices are four times higher in the UK than those in the US.

Despite claims made by right-leaning commentators, it would not be possible for the UK to recreate the US gas market dynamics by fracking for shale gas, or by ramping up North Sea gas extraction.

Oil and gas

MISLEADING

Tice: “Let me remind you, in the 80s and 90s…we were growing at between 2.5% and 4% a year. We had deep, plentiful energy driven by oil and gas from the North Sea, right? No one was worried about the price of electricity. No one was worried about the quantity of supply. No one was worried about the reliability of supply.”

Bloomberg, May 2026

The UK extracted a significant proportion of its oil and gas resources from the 1980s onwards, after privatising the industry and using the revenue to cut income taxes.

Now, as anticipated at the time, there is very little fuel left to drill.

The UK went through a “dash for gas” in the 1990s, with North Sea gas production levels steadily increasing from the 1980s until the 2000s. 

However, gas production in the North Sea fell by 74% between 2000 and 2025, while oil output fell by 75%.

This is not because policies favouring new oil and gas production ended, but rather because of competition from cheaper sources of the fuels and because the amount of fossil fuels left in the North Sea basin started to run out.

According to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) thinktank, around 90% of the oil and gas that is likely to be produced from the North Sea has already been burned.

It is also true that electricity prices were much lower in the 1990s than they are today. This is largely explained by rising gas prices – and increasing exposure to imports. 

The UK dash for gas power was driven by cheap gas prices, which favoured a shift away from coal and nuclear. This included cancelling a planned fleet of new nuclear reactors.

When gas subsequently became expensive, electricity prices went up, because the UK was heavily exposed to the fuel. This dynamic continues today, although the rise of renewables is starting to break the link between gas and power prices..

FALSE

Tice: “We [would] allow licences to drill…If you increase the supply of anything, it’s basic economics, the price of that good will come down, as it does in America, where their gas price, their wholesale gas price, is give or take 30% of ours.”

Bloomberg, May 2026

Gas is cheap in the US because it is widely extracted as a byproduct of more valuable oil and because demand is limited by export capacity.

These dynamics – and the abundant, easily accessible shale resources in the US – are a function of geography and cannot be replicated in the UK.

North Sea production is in long-term decline and this cannot be reversed by new licenses, because most of the oil and gas that was under the ground has already been burned.

In addition, the production of oil and gas in the North Sea has very limited effects on global energy prices, which determine the cost of UK energy bills.

This is because the country is a relatively small producer, accounting for around 1% of global output. By contrast, the US is the world’s largest oil-and-gas producer.

FALSE

Tice: “If we’d had this common sense not to abandon our North Sea, we wouldn’t have been in that pickle [referring to importing LNG from the US].”

Bloomberg, May 2026

The UK is increasingly reliant on imported fossil fuels, because it has already used up most of the oil and gas that was once under the North Sea.

The country was a net energy exporter in 2000, but, by 2010, was dependent on imports for 30% of its energy supplies. On the same metric, the UK’s net import dependency reached 44% in 2024.

This is not because policies favouring new oil and gas production ended, but rather because the amount of fossil fuels left in the North Sea basin started to run out.

Gas production in the North Sea fell by 74% between 2000 and 2025, while oil output fell by 75%.

This decline has occurred despite the previous Conservative government, which was in power from 2010-24, holding six new licensing rounds and issuing hundreds of new oil and gas licences.

FALSE

Tice: “Why are the Norwegians drilling 49 new wells last year? Because they think there’s plenty more to go that’s worth going for. So, why are we so stupid that, on our side of the line, we think it’s a good idea to drill zero new wells?”

Bloomberg, May 2026

The UK has already used up most of the oil and gas that was under its part of the North Sea, whereas the state-run Norwegian system has taken a different approach.

Nevertheless, even the most optimistic of Norway’s official forecasts sees a steady decline in production over the coming decades, as their oil and gas also starts to run out.

UK fossil-fuel production is lower than Norway’s because of geology and the decisions that were taken in the past, neither of which can be changed by the current or any future UK government.

Specifically, the UK has already used up the large majority of its North Sea resources, having extracted around 90% of the oil and gas that is available.

In contrast, Norway has only used up 57% of the “expected recoverable resource” from its part of the North Sea, according to official estimates published by Norwegian Petroleum.

FALSE

Tice: “We’ve got lots of [oil and gas] reserves, but if you just say it’s not viable because you make the regulations and everything too expensive, then don’t be surprised if people say, well, there’s not much to go for.”

Bloomberg, May 2026

Projections of the amount of oil and gas that will be recovered from the North Sea have barely changed since the Labour government took office in 2024.

Tice’s suggestion that official estimates of North Sea reserves have been revised down as a result of the Labour government’s policies is, therefore, provably untrue.

For gas, there is little difference between official projections published before and after the government’s 2024 election win and its decision to ban new licensing, as shown below.

North Sea oil (right) and gas production (right), million tonnes of oil equivalent, under the baseline NSTA projection or with further drilling. Source: NSTA.

While the NSTA projections for oil have shifted more noticeably between 2023 and 2026, this largely relates to output from existing fields, rather than the potential from new drilling.

FALSE

Tice: “I go to Aberdeen and they’re literally losing a thousand jobs a month in and around Aberdeen and the oil and gas industry because of this mad policy.”

Bloomberg, May 2026

Jobs in North Sea oil and gas have been declining rapidly for decades, having fallen by a third between 2014 and 2023 – well before the current government took office.

However, the major driver of job losses has been the irreversible decline of the North Sea basin. Gas production in the North Sea fell by 74% between 2000 and 2025, while oil output fell by 75%.

This decline has occurred despite the previous Conservative government, which was in power from 2010-24, holding six new licensing rounds and issuing hundreds of new licences.

MISLEADING

Tice: “All of the nations who’ve got energy treasure, who are extracting it, they are growing, whether it’s America, whether it’s the Middle East, whether it’s in Asia.”

Bloomberg, May 2026

Fossil-fuel producers have received windfall profits as a result of price spikes in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the effective closure of the strait of Hormuz.

On the flip side of this, countries that rely on fossil-fuel imports – particularly in Europe and China – have been hit with an extra $330bn in costs since the Iran crisis began.

For the UK, the most effective way to cut the need for costly fossil-fuel imports is to continue expanding clean-energy supplies and the electrified technologies that use them.

It is true that the US economy is growing at a faster rate than Europe’s. This is down to a range of reasons, experts say, including the nation’s rapid uptake of AI.

Another factor is that import dependency has left the UK and others particularly exposed to the economic impacts of the recent fossil-fuel price spikes.

Meanwhile, there is also plenty of evidence to show that investing in clean energy is driving economic growth in countries around the world.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), the world’s energy watchdog, estimated that clean energy accounted for 10% of global GDP growth in 2023. The figure was 30% for the EU, according to the IEA.

Analysis published by Carbon Brief shows that clean energy drove more than a third of China’s GDP growth in 2025. And the International Monetary Fund (IMF) says that climate action will provide a long-term boost to China’s economy and energy security.

In the UK, emissions have “decoupled” from economic growth, according to Carbon Brief analysis.

The analysis found that UK emissions fell to 54% below 1990 levels in 2024, while GDP was up 84%.

FALSE

Farage: “Countries that frack get rich. Countries that don’t frack get poor.”

Edinburgh press conference, August 2025

The availability and accessibility of shale resources – and, therefore, the potential economic return from extracting oil and gas via fracking – is a function of geography and geology.

The UK’s shale gas resources are hard to extract and roughly 10-times smaller than initially thought. As a result, their potential to boost the UK economy is extremely limited.

While fracking has boosted economic growth in the US, there is little evidence to suggest this could be replicated by countries in Europe. 

Only four countries frack for oil and gas at a large-scale commercial level: the US, Canada, China and Argentina.

Across much of Europe, fracking faces legal bans over concerns that the practice can contaminate water supplies and impact public health.

There are also practical and economic hurdles to fracking in Europe.

US oil majors abandoned efforts to establish a shale gas industry in Poland more than a decade ago. As the Economist noted in 2014: “There is no getting around geology.”

In the UK, fracking is unpopular with the public, with just 17% of people supporting it and 45% opposing it.

Any attempt to produce oil and gas via fracking would likely face protests and lengthy legal battles. Even if projects were able to go ahead, it would likely take years to produce a meaningful amount of gas .(See Carbon Brief’s fracking factcheck.)

Impacts and adaptation

MISLEADING

Tice: “Actually, what we need to do with climate change…we need to adapt to it.”

BBC Breakfast, June 2024

Climate change will keep getting worse until the world cuts emissions to net-zero.

Moreover, there are hard limits to adaptation, which can be overwhelmed by higher warming.

The longer emissions continue, the higher global temperatures will rise and the more nations such as the UK will have to adapt. It is, therefore, misleading to present adaptation as an alternative to cutting emissions. 

The IPCC says that risks “will become increasingly complex and more difficult to manage” as climate change worsens. It also stresses that there are limits to adaptation, some of which have already been reached.

In response to the latest IPCC assessment report, Dr Aditi Mukherji told Carbon Brief:

“Effectiveness of most adaptation responses decreases drastically at global warming levels of 1.5C to 2C, showing that mitigation and adaptation efforts have to go hand in hand.”

In its latest advice to the UK government, the CCC set out the need to prepare for extreme heat, drought and flooding and states: “Without global emissions reductions, these risks may go past the point where the UK can protect itself with adaptation measures.”

FALSE

Tice: “It’s much cheaper to adapt to climate change than to think you can stop it.”

Bloomberg, May 2026

Cutting emissions to net-zero will be much cheaper for the UK than dealing with the economic damages of unmitigated climate change, according to the OBR.

In addition, adapting to unavoidable warming will be far cheaper than “facing the damages”, according to the CCC.

While Tice frequently presents a false dichotomy between cutting emissions and adapting to climate impacts, they are not either/or alternatives. In fact, both are required to reduce the dangers of climate change – and both will require substantial investment.

Climate-related damages are already costing the UK, with one recent estimate concluding that the June 2026 heatwave alone led to a £1.15bn hit to the economy.

These costs will spiral if global emissions are not reduced. It is well established that the cost of inaction on climate change is considerably higher than the cost of cutting emissions.

The CCC estimates that climate change is already costing the UK economy £60bn a year in damages and this could rise to around £260bn by 2050, under around 2C of global warming. 

The committee says a comprehensive climate-adaptation programme in the coming decades will reduce these costs. 

As the chart below shows, CCC analysis has concluded that an adaptation package covering heat and health, urban heat and water scarcity could avoid up to £12bn a year in climate-damage costs across the UK by the 2050s.

In total, climate-adaptation actions are expected to cost at least £11bn per year out to the 2050s – a considerable sum, but one that the CCC says is “manageable” and will largely come from private-sector investment.

At the same time, the CCC says there is a risk of “catastrophic damages”, especially if warming continues to rise above 2C. Given this, it stresses that “reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions remain essential” to minimise such risks.

FALSE

Tice: “The issue [with drought] is not the quantity of water in the UK. The issue is how the water companies do or don’t capture it.”

Bloomberg, May 2026

Climate change is making drought more frequent and severe in the UK, even as it makes winters wetter than they were in the past.

This is increasing the need for new reservoirs and other measures to manage the quantity of water available in the UK throughout the year. 

The summer of 2026 saw record-low levels of rainfall across much of the south of England and Wales, as shown in the map below.  

July 2026 was the driest month on record in England and Wales, according to the Met Office. This coincided with the two nations recording their sunniest July on record as well. 

These “remarkable conditions” in 2026 come as part of a summer “marked by multiple heat records, which have contributed to drought conditions”, the Met Office notes.

The Environment Agency says that, due to climate change, “we are experiencing longer, hotter summers…leading to an increased likelihood of drought”.

FALSE
Tice: “I’m old enough to remember 1976. This feels a bit the same. That was 50 years ago.”

Press conference, August 2026

Since 1976, global warming has made heatwaves “more frequent, long-lasting and intense”.

As a result, summer 2026 was the UK’s hottest on record, with the Met Office finding that this was made around 130-times more likely by human-induced climate change.

Moreover, this year’s record means that summer 1976 is now only the seventh-warmest for the UK, with the top five all having occurred since 2003.

In the summer of 1976, there were 15 consecutive days when somewhere in the UK was above 32C. This led to water shortages and frequent wildfires, followed by flash floods.

There has been a lot of comparison to this “historic event” amid the record-breaking temperatures seen in 2026.

However, climate change means that a 1976-style weather pattern would be 3-4C hotter today than it was at the time.

There were just three days in which UK temperatures breached 36C in the entire 20th century, including 1976. Yet there were three days above 36C in 2026 alone.

Summer 2026 also saw 10 separate days with temperatures above 35C, breaking the previous record of five days, which had been set in 1976.

Additionally, the humidity was much higher in 2026 than in 1976. According to the Met Office, this meant that “even where peak air temperatures were comparable, the perceived heat and associated health risks were often greater in 2026”.

Clean energy

MISLEADING

Tice: “80% of the offshore renewables is overseas owned. So the British consumer is being shafted to help overseas investors.”

Bloomberg, May 2026

Around the world, more than 90% of new renewable power projects are cheaper than new fossil-fueled generation.

An energy system built around renewable power and electrified technologies such as EVs   is also the lowest-cost option in the UK.

While it is true that more than 80% of UK offshore windfarms are owned by foreign companies, this is just ​​a feature of the country’s privatised energy sector.  

For example, 40% of North Sea oil and gas licences are also owned by foreign investors. 

Additionally, regardless of the windfarms’ owners, their presence on the electricity grid is helping to protect consumers from high fossil-fuel prices. 

In 2025, windfarms cut wholesale power prices by a third, according to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank. 

MISLEADING

Tice: “Why are we so stupid that we spent £700m on Hinkley Point C, £700m of taxpayers’ cash, to protect a bunch of salmon? About 70 salmon, for God’s sake.”

Bloomberg, May 2026

Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant will include a system designed to protect millions of fish. 

However, the cost of this system amounts to just 1.5% of the overall £46bn cost of building the new reactors in Somerset. 

The £700m system is expected to stop more than 2.6m fish a year from being sucked into the cooling pipes at the site on the Severn estuary. 

Additionally, the use of the system is replacing plans to flood 900 acres (364 hectares) of farmland in neighbouring Gloucestershire, originally proposed by the site’s main developer, EDF. 

The construction of Hinkley Point C is being financed by EDF and the China General Nuclear Power Group, not the taxpayer. When it begins generation, it will benefit from a “contracts for difference”, which is funded via electricity bills.  

MISLEADING

Tice: “A hell of a lot more people have died building wind turbines than have died in the nuclear power industry. Little stated fact by the renewable industry.”

Bloomberg, May 2026

Both wind and nuclear power are considered to be among the safest forms of energy generation in the world.

There are occasional fatalities among workers at windfarm construction sites, but these are very rare, particularly when compared with accidents in the fossil-fuel industry. 

This is before taking into account that fossil-fuel pollution is responsible for one in five deaths globally, according to research by University College London. 

Death rate from accidents and air pollution. Nuclear energy deaths include those from the Fukushima and Chornobyl disasters. Deaths from hydropower include those from the Banqian Dam failure in China.

Analysis from 2020 suggests that solar power was the safest source of energy, followed by nuclear and then wind. All three clean-energy sources are orders of magnitude safer than fossil fuels, as shown in the figure below.

For example, each unit of electricity generation from coal is associated with more than 600 times as many deaths as the same amount of power from wind.

Our World in Data, a non-profit collaboration between the University of Oxford and the Global Change Data Lab, which did the analysis, explains:

“People often focus on the marginal differences at the bottom of the chart – between nuclear, solar and wind. This comparison is misguided: the uncertainties around these values mean they are likely to overlap.

“The key insight is that they are all much, much safer than fossil fuels.”

MISLEADING

Tice: “[Solar is a] good use of rooftops, there’s no subsidy on those.”

Bloomberg, May 2026

Solar power is the cheapest electricity in history and keeps getting cheaper.

It is expected to play a key role in the energy transition, including in the UK.

While the government’s subsidy scheme for domestic solar – the “feed-in tariff” (FiT) – closed to new applicants in 2019, several other incentives have subsequently been introduced.

It was directly replaced by the “smart export guarantee”, wherein utilities pay households for any excess power they generate from their solar installations. This – together with the savings from using self-generated power – helps to offset the cost of the installation of solar panels. 

Additionally, the government’s warm homes plan offers grants and loans designed to triple the number of homes with rooftop solar by 2030. 

Ultimately, Tice’s focus on rooftop solar (which his firm uses) positions it in opposition to ground-mounted solar farms – creating a false dichotomy between a “good use” and a “bad use”. 

Ground-mount solar is set to play a significant role in decarbonising the UK. It is much cheaper than rooftop solar and is not limited by the availability of rooftops. 

FALSE

Tice: “All the renewables, all the wind turbines and the solar farms, they want a fat subsidy for very long-term contracts.”

Bloomberg, May 2026

Renewables are the cheapest source of new electricity in the UK, where recent surges in energy bills have been predominantly due to the role of gas in setting electricity prices.

The first subsidy-free solar farm in the UK was opened in 2017 near Flitwick in Bedfordshire. 

Across the UK, there are now a number of subsidy-free solar and windfarms, which either rely on selling power into the market or private power purchase agreements. 

The majority of solar and windfarms hold government contracts, but these are fixed-price deals rather than subsidies. 

The new wind and solar projects secured at the latest government auction of “contracts for difference” will be significantly cheaper than new gas, according to the government.

No new gas plants have been built in the UK without long-term subsidy contracts through the government’s capacity market. In addition, the price of fuel for gas-fired generation continues to spike in response to the latest global energy crisis in the Middle East.

The most recent large new gas plant was Keadby 2, which opened in 2023 and would now cost 3.5-times as much to build, according to its owner.

FALSE

Tice: “There is nothing environmentally friendly about covering 100 square miles of Lincolnshire, agricultural, productive farmland, with solar panels, surrounding whole villages, decimating property prices in those villages or making them unsaleable, and thinking that’s going to end well.”

Bloomberg, May 2026

Even if solar farms expand in line with net-zero targets, they would cover just 0.7% of land in the UK – less than golf courses do currently. 

Solar farms are very rarely built on productive agricultural land in the UK – with the majority built on low-grade land – and pose “no threat to national food security”, according to the National Farmers Union. 

There is limited evidence that property prices are impacted by solar farms, with some studies suggesting that well-screened solar farms have no impact.

A London School of Economics study from 2021 did “not find any statistically significant effects [of solar on house prices], even at relatively small distances of 1km”. 

Other studies have found very small negative impacts – on the order of 1-3% – while one study of 70 solar farms in the US identified a small boost to house prices.

As such, there is nothing to suggest that solar farms either “decimate” property prices or make homes “unsaleable”. 

FALSE

Tice: “I drive a Tesla. Do I think it’s going to change the climate? No.”

Bloomberg, May 2026

As an electric vehicle (EV), driving a Tesla is far better for the environment than a petrol or diesel car, as it produces fewer greenhouse gases, air pollutants and noise. 

Typically, an EV driven in Europe emits around two-thirds fewer greenhouse gas emissions than an equivalent petrol car, even accounting for battery production and disposal. 

Carbon Brief analysis found that a Tesla Model Y, for example, will emit about 68% less CO2 over its lifetime than the average petrol car. 

In addition to cutting costs for drivers, EVs are a key part of decarbonising road transport.

In the UK, transitioning away from petrol and diesel vehicles to EVs is expected to account for 23% of the total reduction in emissions being targeted by 2050. Net-zero is the “only way” to halt global warming. 

MISLEADING

Tice: “The government says that the cost of renewable subsidies in the last 15 years is £100bn.”

Press conference, February 2025

Upfront renewable subsidies – in the UK and elsewhere – have helped deliver dramatic reductions in the cost of wind and solar power.

Since 2010, the cost of solar power has fallen by 89%, onshore wind by 71% and offshore wind by 63% – and these declines are set to continue.

As a result, 90% of new wind and solar installed in 2025 was cheaper than new fossil-fuel power, according to the International Renewable Energy Association (IRENA).

In the UK, wind power saved consumers more than £100bn between 2010-2023, after accounting for renewable subsidies, according to researchers at University College London.

In contrast, high fossil-fuel prices since the global energy crisis in 2022 had already cost the UK more than £180bn by the end of 2025, according to ECIU, with the first six months of the Iran crisis adding another £10bn in extra costs. 

FALSE

Tice: “Those farmers who want to sell out to the renewable industry for solar farms – you can’t have it both ways, folks. Either you’re part of food production, part of food security for our nation, or you’re part of the renewables industry.”

Press conference, February 2025

Contrary to Tice’s claims, farmers can – and indeed often already do – “have it both ways”. Government statistics for 2023/24 suggest that 32% of farm businesses make use of renewable energy, mostly solar power. 

Furthermore, some 37% of farmers, landowners and tenant farmers say the revenue from solar power helps secure their farms for future generations, according to interviews carried out by trade association Solar Energy UK. 

Finally, solar can also be combined directly with food production through the use of “agrivoltaic” systems. This concept combines farming – including livestock grazing and shade-tolerant crops – with solar panels and has been gaining momentum as a solution to land-use conflicts.

FALSE

Tice: “The British people are not being told that these battery energy systems are dangerous – and until they can be proven to be absolutely safe, they should be banned.”

Press conference, February 2025

Battery energy storage systems are safe and getting safer all the time. 

In the UK, there are over 1,659 large-scale battery storage projects and there have been only two reported fires in the past five years – neither of which had any injuries or fatalities.

Home battery storage systems are also safe. A recent study that looked at installations in Germany found the probability of a fire is 0.005% – this is around the same level as a tumble-dryer fire, 50 times lower than a general house fire and 18 times lower than a petrol or diesel engine fire.

(In contrast, there has been a spate of fires at UK waste facilities caused by the inappropriate disposal of lithium batteries in consumer devices, usually vapes.) 

FALSE

Farage: “The argument that wind power makes us less reliant on other sources of energy from around the world just is not true. The national grid is not fit to deal with intermittent renewable energy.”

Press conference, August 2025

Wind power is already making the UK less reliant on imported fuels.

Moreover, expanding clean-energy supplies will be a much more effective route to reducing the UK’s reliance on energy imports than efforts to increase North Sea drilling.

ECIU found that the growth of offshore wind had reduced the nation’s spending on imported fuels by at least £30bn by the end of 2025. 

Separately, Carbon Brief analysis found that wind and solar saved the UK from gas imports worth £1.7bn in March and April 2026 alone, amid the pressures of the Iran war. 

The UK’s electricity grid does require upgrades as part of the transition to an energy system dominated by renewables, EVs and heat pumps. This transition will enable the UK to cut its imports of not only gas for heat and power, but also oil for transport.

Regardless of net-zero targets, higher spending on the electricity network is partly making up for decades of “under-investment”.The grid needs upgrades to connect new nuclear plants and data centres, as well as to meet growing electricity demand from homes and businesses.

Despite the need for investment, there is nothing to suggest that the grid is “not fit to deal” with renewables.

Power cuts for the average UK household are now happening 43% less often than they did in 2011. During that time, renewables have grown from 9.5% to 47% of electricity supplies.

Related Revealed: England’s June 2026 heatwave sparked record demand for ambulances 14.09.2026 Health and society Revealed: More than 1,000 NHS operations cancelled due to record UK heatwaves 11.09.2026 Health and society UK aviation emissions to be 50% higher than thought by 2050, government admits 10.09.2026 Aviation and shipping Analysis: UK solar power hits record high over summer 2026 04.09.2026 Renewables

The post Factcheck: Reform UK’s 45 false or misleading claims about climate and energy appeared first on Carbon Brief.

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More than 1,000 operations at NHS hospitals were cancelled due to heat during the UK’s record May and June heatwaves, Carbon Brief can reveal.

This includes 167 orthopaedic surgeries, such as knee and hip replacements, as well as heart, eye and skin cancer operations.

At least 10 emergency surgeries – those for “life-threatening” conditions – had to be cancelled because of the record-breaking heat, according to the investigation.

Carbon Brief sent freedom-of-information (FOI) requests to 140 NHS trusts to investigate the impact of heatwaves on operations being cancelled in England and Wales.

Areas with the most operations cancelled due to heat include Surrey and Sussex, south Essex and parts of London – all regions experiencing among the highest temperatures.

High temperatures can threaten patient safety by stopping the ventilation systems used in theatres from working, increasing the risk of infection, experts tell Carbon Brief.

Less than half of the NHS trusts provided details of heat-related surgery cancellations – and Carbon Brief understands that many hospitals do not routinely record this information.

Carbon Brief’s figure is therefore likely to be a significant underestimate, but still provides an unprecedented insight into a surgical system “poorly prepared” for heatwaves and the impact on patients.

Overheating operations

The record-breaking heatwaves that have repeatedly struck the UK in 2026 – amplified by climate change – have already been linked to thousands of deaths. 

High temperatures can lead to all sorts of health complications and worsen respiratory, cardiovascular and kidney diseases. 

Extreme heat also threatens healthcare systems. News outlets have reported on the NHS “struggling”, as it faces record A&E demand, hospital wards reaching “unsafe” temperatures and equipment failing due to heat.

Among these reports was coverage of hospitals being forced to cancel operations, or even abandon them midway through, as surgical theatres became intolerably hot.

To investigate this problem, Carbon Brief sent FOI requests to the 140 NHS trusts and health boards in England and Wales responsible for hospitals with surgical theatres.

They were asked about all the operations that were cancelled due to extreme heat during the May and June heatwaves, when “amber” and “red” heat warnings were in place.

In total, 59 trusts and health boards responded with details of 1,110 heat-related cancellations across the 17-day period covering 22-28 May and 18-27 June.

(Of the 63 trusts that responded but did not provide details of heat-related disruption, many said that they simply did not record this data, rather than stating that heat was not a problem. See Methodology for more details.)

The map below shows the location of these cancelled surgeries, which cover everything from routine hernia operations to heart surgeries.

Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust reported the most cancellations – 140 in total – all in the surgery unit at Crawley Hospital. This hospital was in one of the hottest parts of the country in June, with temperatures approaching 36C.

Other hotspots for cancellations include south Essex, Dudley in the West Midlands, south Wales and parts of London. Many of the hardest-hit hospitals were in southern England, where temperatures were highest. 

Of the trusts that provided full datasets of all surgery cancellations in the period, around 7% were heat-related. This data illustrates how heat is placing more strain on an already stretched NHS, adding to existing issues such as staff shortages and lack of beds.

Nearly all of the cancelled surgeries were “elective”, meaning they were scheduled in advance and not immediately life-saving. Nevertheless, the list of cancellations includes at least eight heart operations and seven skin-cancer removals.

There were also 10 “emergency” operations cancelled due to heat in surgical theatres. Another 18 surgeries had to be abandoned mid-way through.

Dr Dmitri Nepogodiev, a public health researcher focusing on surgery at the University of Birmingham, says hospitals will always prioritise “time-sensitive, life-threatening” surgeries. 

Nevertheless, he tells Carbon Brief that every cancellation can cause significant “distress” and harm to patients’ quality of life, adding:

“Behind all of these statistics…are real people who have probably already been waiting a long time.”

Each dot in the graphic below indicates a cancelled surgery. Of the 596 for which trusts provided details, 167 are orthopaedic surgeries, such as knee and hip replacements.

Eye surgeries, gynaecological and urological surgeries are also among the most frequently cancelled, broadly reflecting how common such procedures are.

Richard Egan, an endocrine surgeon and a national clinical director within NHS Wales, notes the knock-on effects of cancelling surgeries for several days during heatwaves. He tells Carbon Brief:

“That’s a significant impact on waiting lists…For every week that patients are waiting on a waiting list, their condition could get worse and deteriorate.”

‘Increased risks’

When providing specific reasons for cancellations, most NHS trusts simply indicated that surgical theatres were “too hot and humid”. 

Sometimes, this was accompanied by comments about “risk of infection” or “overheating for both patients and staff”.

There are several reasons why it can get “too hot” for operations to take place, but the main one is that the complex ventilation systems installed in theatres can stop working above a certain temperature, explains Dr Ed Robinson, an NHS anaesthetist. He tells Carbon Brief:

“An operating theatre is a very tightly engineered clinical environment. There are quite complicated ventilation systems, which dilute airborne contaminants, remove fumes from different [medications] and anaesthetic gases.

“We have generalised airflow systems that make the air in theatre flow outwards to adjacent areas, so pathogens and fumes get carried away from the patient into non-clinical areas. When it gets to a certain heat, those systems can fail.”

These systems are also responsible for controlling heat and humidity levels inside theatres, says Robinson.

When the systems fail, it is not possible to guarantee patient safety, he continues, meaning surgeries may need to be cancelled.

Although most hospitals simply stated that it was “too hot” for operations to take place during the heatwaves, there were 48 cases where staff specified that this was due to air conditioning or ventilation units that were either broken or unable to sustain appropriate temperatures. 

Tim Lane, a urological surgeon and president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (RCS England), tells Carbon Brief that heat places “extra physical strain” on patients:

“Extreme heat can increase risks and make it harder to deliver care under the conditions clinicians would consider ideal.”

If air in operating theatres is too humid, excess moisture can condense on surgical implements and transmit infections, he says.

Extreme heat and humidity inside theatres can also pose a risk to staff having to wear heavy protective clothing. Robinson explains:

“Staff are usually wearing PPE [personal protective equipment]. If it’s orthopaedics, they will be wearing ‘leads’ a lot of the time. This is because they will be doing lots of X-rays, and there’s no time to descrub and rescrub every time. 

“So if the ventilation system is not working, you’re going to overheat [and] that’s going to affect your ability to concentrate and perform a safe operation. You just wouldn’t start under those conditions.”

There are also “certain pieces of equipment and medications” that are not “validated to be used outside of certain ranges of temperature”, he says.

This includes specialised “cement” used to secure hip and knee replacements, which can set too quickly at higher temperatures, according to Lane.

‘Poorly prepared’

Following the record-breaking heat of 2022, one study found that surgical services in the UK were “poorly prepared for heatwaves”. 

Based on staff surveys, the study concluded that ambient temperatures “could not be controlled” in two-fifths of NHS operating theatres.

With hospitals once again under significant pressure this summer, health secretary Yvette Cooper told the Guardian that the NHS “has to make sure we are preparing for summer pressures now in the same way we prepare for winter”.

Nepogodiev notes that the problem of extreme heat extends from increased patient numbers to staff shortages, which can be the result of a range of wider factors such as heat-related train cancellations. He tells Carbon Brief.

“There isn’t a single magic solution because it’s a kind of complex, multifactorial challenge – so it also underlines the importance of broader preparedness.”

Egan, who is investigating ways to prepare surgical theatres for extreme heat, says the response so far has been “ad hoc”. He suggests it may be possible to continue with less risky operations, even at higher humidity levels.

As it stands, many NHS hospitals are old and not designed for increasingly extreme temperatures.

Government advisers at the Climate Change Committee (CCC) have recommended that all healthcare buildings should work to “maintain safe and appropriate temperatures” by 2035.

The UK’s national adaptation programme already says NHS England will work to “adapt NHS infrastructure to extreme weather events and overheating risks”, by incorporating adaptation measures into plans for new buildings. 

However, years of underinvestment have left many sites with what the King’s Fund thinktank calls “deteriorating buildings” and “outdated technology”.

Following the extreme heat this summer, the government has announced £32m from a £1.5bn spending programme for projects that strengthen hospitals’ “resilience to extreme heat, including improved “cooling and ventilation systems”.

RCS England president Lane tells Carbon Brief that heat-related surgical cancellations underline the need for investment in hospitals, ventilation systems and modern equipment:

“NHS staff work incredibly hard to adapt, often reorganising services and finding practical solutions to keep care running, but resilience alone cannot compensate indefinitely for outdated infrastructure or sustainability.”

Methodology

Carbon Brief contacted 140 NHS trusts and health boards in England and Wales, only including those that perform surgical procedures. Mental health trusts, community trusts and other specialist trusts were therefore excluded.

These requests covered the periods 22-28 May 2026 and 18-27 June 2026, when heatwaves affected much of England and Wales. 

At the time of filing the FOIs, these were the two periods when the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) had issued “amber” or “red” heat-health alerts across much or all of England. There were also comparable weather warnings in place across Wales for some of this time.

(Scotland and Northern Ireland were excluded from the analysis, on the basis that they did not experience such extreme heat.)

The FOI requests asked for details of all surgical procedures – both elective and emergency – that were cancelled during this period. Specifically, the requests also asked trusts to state which cancellations were related to extreme heat. Of these, 59 provided details of surgeries that were cancelled due to heat. 

Of the remaining 63 that responded to the FOI requests, only a few stated explicitly that there were no surgeries cancelled due to heat. Most either said that they did not record this information, or provided lists with standard cancellation reasons that may – or may not – indicate heat as a factor, such as “failure of equipment”. The remaining 19 did not respond to the request by the time of publication.

NHS trusts and health boards responded to Carbon Brief’s FOI requests in a large variety of ways, reflecting the inconsistent way in which heat-related cancellations are recorded.

Among those that disclosed data, some provided all the information requested while others only provided parts. Some would not provide exact numbers when the number of cancellations was five or less. In those cases, Carbon Brief assumed that two surgeries had been cancelled. (This assumption accounts for fewer than 50 of the 1,110 cancellations.)

The full dataset is available here, with details of all the surgeries cancelled and the reasons given for their cancellations.

related Factcheck: Reform UK’s 45 false or misleading claims about climate and energy 11.09.2026 UK policy UK aviation emissions to be 50% higher than thought by 2050, government admits 10.09.2026 Aviation and shipping Analysis: UK solar power hits record high over summer 2026 04.09.2026 Renewables How this summer’s heat and drought impacted crops in Europe – in six charts 04.09.2026 Food and farming

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Extreme heat is one of the deadliest climate hazards, but no two heatwaves are the same.

Heat extremes that happen outside of the peak summer months are often more dangerous because they can catch people off guard.

Heatwaves that hit during the spring or the first heatwave of the summer are riskier because  people’s bodies are not yet accustomed to the heat and cooling strategies, such as air conditioning or public cooling centres, might not be available.

On the other hand, heatwaves that happen in the autumn, after a long summer season of heat exposure, can place further strain on bodies and local infrastructure that are already under stress.

As the climate changes and global temperatures rise, research has shown that heatwaves are becoming more frequent, intense and lengthy. 

Our study, published in AGU Advances, is the first to measure whether the timing of extreme heat during the calendar year is changing around the world.

We find that, in more than half of the world, extreme heat events are spreading into the “shoulder seasons”, but doing so unevenly – in other words, they tend to creep more into autumn or spring, depending on the location. 

Defining heat seasons 

Meteorological summer is often assumed to be the warmest three-month period of the year. It is simplistically defined as June to August in the northern hemisphere and December to February in the southern hemisphere.

However, extreme heat seasons vary from place to place and do not always neatly map on to these defined periods. 

Our study, therefore, goes beyond traditional definitions of seasons and instead focuses on “local heat seasons”. We define these as the three consecutive months when extreme heat events happened most often in the 1980s. 

From this starting point, our research looks at how extreme heat is creeping into the two-month periods before and after a local heat season. We call these periods “shoulder seasons”.

This flexible definition of heat and shoulder seasons allows us to measure how the timing of extreme heat has changed over time. 

Specifically, we look at the percent of annual heat days that occurred in the heat season and shoulder seasons at each location on Earth and measure how those relative shares have shifted over the last 45 years.

For our analysis, we use climate data from 1980-2024 from the MERRA2 reanalysis dataset. To ensure our results were robust, we repeated the process using ERA5 reanalysis data. 

We picked the 1980s as our baseline decade as it was the start of the common time period between the two reanalysis datasets. We compared this to climate data in the decade between 2015-24. 

Comparing these two time periods – the opposite ends of our datasets – allowed us to register a larger magnitude change and account for cumulative effects of climate change.

We consider measures of both dry and humid heat, as each has distinct impacts. Dry heat tends to be more dangerous to plant and ecosystem health, while humid heat is more strenuous for humans.

We use the dry-bulb temperature and wet-bulb globe temperature as our measures of dry and humid heat, respectively. 

Created in the 1950s by the US military, wet-bulb globe temperature has a long history as an international standard used for outdoor sports and occupational hazard monitoring. It combines measurements of temperature, humidity, wind speed and solar radiation.

Changing heat seasons

Our research finds that, in the 1980s, extreme heat around the world was closely confined to a single heat season. For example, some 93% of the world’s land area experienced more than 80% of extreme dry-heat days during its traditional dry-heat season. 

Surprisingly, this was even true in the tropics, where there is much less of a seasonal swing in temperatures.

We also show that extreme dry- and humid-heat seasons are often different from one another, typically offset by one month. This is especially true in places influenced by monsoon systems, such as north-western Mexico and central India, where the extreme dry-heat season precedes the extreme humid-heat season. 

But, the edges of these extreme heat seasons are starting to blur. 

Extreme heat events are spreading out significantly in the calendar year in more than half of global land areas.

This extension of the extreme dry- and humid-heat seasons means that dangerous heat has started to creep into the shoulder seasons – but not equally so.

The maps below show how, in western Europe, southern Africa and north-western India, a larger fraction of each year’s extreme heat events are happening in the months before the historical dry- and humid-heat seasons. These regions are shaded in green.

On the other hand, in much of the US, eastern China, northern Africa and eastern Europe, extreme heat events are increasing in frequency in the months after the traditional heat seasons. These regions are shaded in purple.

Shift of the extreme dry- (top) and humid-heat (bottom) seasons, where green indicates a greater percentage of heat events in the two months before the traditional heat season (analogous to spring in the mid-latitudes) and purple a greater percentage of extreme heat events in the two months after (autumn in the mid-latitudes). Black shading indicates locations without a consecutive three-month heat season. Credit: Ivanovich et al. (2026) Boosting existing seasons

It is possible that these observed changes have a straightforward – and somewhat simple  – explanation.

In many regions, one shoulder season – spring or autumn – is warmer than the other. One hypothesis we explored was whether a simple step up in daily heat across the calendar year makes it more likely for extreme heat days to occur in one shoulder season over the other.

Our research shows that things are not so simple.

To investigate, we created a new, “synthetic” timeseries in order to identify the impact of annual average warming. To do this, we took the baseline 1980s timeseries and “shifted up” the data by the average change in local dry or humid heat between the first and last 10 years of our dataset (1980-89 compared to 2015-24).

We find that, in most locations, intensifying the baseline seasonality in a given location by warming evenly over the course of the year explains the changes in extreme heat timing within the traditional heat season.

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However, annual average warming alone cannot explain the uneven changes in how extreme heat is occurring in the shoulder seasons. 

As such, we conclude there must be other factors at play. 

Long-term changes in seasonal precipitation and soil moisture – whether drying or moistening – could be contributing. 

There could also be potential links to land-use changes, such as agricultural intensification or increased irrigation. Natural fluctuations in regional climates, caused by phenomena such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, could also be playing an important role.

To tease out the contributions of each of these drivers, scientists will need to conduct more regionally-focused studies.

Managing hazards

The expansion of extreme heat events into the shoulder seasons indicates that key protections, such as heat early warning systems and the establishment of cooling centres, may be needed outside the traditional summer months.

Further research is also required to look into whether the overlap of extreme heat with other seasonal hazards is increasing.

For example, we find that, throughout much of the US, there is a larger expansion of the heat season into the autumn than the spring. In the western US, extreme heat which stretches later into the year could increase the overlap between the extreme heat and wildfire seasons. 

Meanwhile, a similar extension of the heat season into the autumn in the eastern US could increase the overlap between the extreme heat and Atlantic hurricane seasons.

Understanding how the intersection of these seasonal hazards is changing is essential for developing targeted climate adaptation strategies, given that multiple hazards happening at once or in quick succession are much more dangerous than when they happen in isolation.

Ivanovich, C. et al. (2026) Extreme dry- and humid-heat seasons are changing asymmetrically, AGU Advances, doi:10.1029/2026AV002516

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The UK government has slashed its hopes for electric planes and “sustainable aviation fuels” (SAFs), ahead of giving the green light to a third runway at Heathrow.

An “ambitious” rollout of new technologies and efficiency upgrades will only cut flight emissions by a quarter over the next two decades, according to forecasts quietly released in June.

This would leave aviation emissions in 2050 nearly 50% higher than expected under the “jet-zero” strategy, launched by the previous Conservative government in 2022.

The Labour government has signalled its support for a contentious third runway at Heathrow airport, with a final planning decision expected by 2029.  

Ministers have justified this expansion by citing the rollout of clean-aviation technologies.

Yet, the updated forecasts suggest that rising flight numbers and a reduced role for “techno-fixes” will leave aviation emissions stubbornly high in 2050 – the UK’s legal target for net-zero.

If this is to be compatible with UK climate goals, then these higher emissions from flights in 2050 would need to be taken out of the atmosphere using costly and largely unproven “carbon dioxide removal” technologies – or by planting gigantic new forests.

Emissions up 

The previous government’s “jet-zero” strategy committed the UK to a “high ambition” pathway that would have seen aviation emissions peak at 38.2m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) in 2019 and drop to 19.3MtCO2e in 2050.

At the time, the Conservative government said this “clear goal” was achievable, alongside airport expansion and rising flight numbers.

Its strategy relied heavily on the extensive use of early-stage technologies, such as SAFs and battery-powered planes, as well as wider fuel-efficiency improvements.

In public statements, Labour has broadly continued this approach, backing new airport runways while supporting SAFs as a way to curb aviation emissions.

However, the government’s latest forecast, quietly published ahead of the formal approval of a new runway at Heathrow, sets far lower expectations for these technologies.

Its “technology development” pathway, with “ambitious carbon abatement measures”, only sees emissions drop to 28.1MtCO2e in 2050. As the chart below shows, this is around 9MtCO2e higher than the jet-zero strategy’s stated goal – a roughly 50% increase.

The shift is down to much lower expectations for SAF uptake, fuel-efficiency improvements and the roll-out of battery-powered planes, as well as lower international carbon prices.

The government now expects SAFs to make up 30% of aviation fuel by 2050, rather than 50%. It also concedes that SAFs will save less carbon over their lifecycle than previously thought.

SAFs have faced considerable criticism, due to limited supplies and uncertainty around the extent to which they cut emissions. Even meeting the UK’s relatively modest goal of 22% SAF uptake by 2040 would require enormous – potentially unattainable – volumes of waste products, which are currently the main source of the fuel.

For its new forecasts, the government commissioned a separate analysis of likely aircraft fuel-efficiency improvements over the next few decades. This analysis, from the Aviation Impact Accelerator, yielded “less optimistic” projections than earlier work.

Fuel-efficiency improvements have therefore been revised downward from 2% per year in the “jet-zero” strategy to 1.3% in the new “technology development” scenario.

There is also a reduced role for battery-powered planes, with only some of the smallest zero-emissions aircraft expected to be in use by 2035.

Crucially, even making the more limited emissions cuts in the new “technology development” pathway would require greater efforts to decarbonise the aviation sector.

If the UK fails to implement new policies or innovations, while flight numbers continue to rise, then aviation emissions would be even higher in 2050 than they are today. 

This is illustrated by the pink “current trends” pathway in the chart above, in which emissions increase to 41.1MtCO2e by 2050.

This is roughly double the amount targeted by the jet-zero strategy and recommended by government climate advisors, the Climate Change Committee (CCC).

Budget ‘busting’

The new forecasts all account for the growth of several UK airports, including “planned Heathrow expansion”. Overall, passenger numbers would be at least 50% higher by 2050. 

In contrast, the CCC and other experts have advised that the rise in passenger numbers may need to be limited, in order to keep emissions down.

In order to meet the UK’s net-zero target, any aviation emissions that remain in 2050 would need to be offset by planting many thousands of hectares of new forest, or by relying on costly and largely unproven CO2 removal technologies.

Tim Johnson, director at the Aviation Environment Federation (AEF), says the new forecasts present “a more honest and realistic vision of what’s possible in the next 24 years”. However, he tells Carbon Brief:

“Less reliance on cleaner technology and fuels reopens the debate about the role and scale of greenhouse gas removals and ways to tackle the projected 50% growth in demand for air travel.”

AEF calculations, based on government data and shared with Carbon Brief, suggest that emissions from the third runway at Heathrow would initially be relatively modest, reaching 3.5MtCO2e per year in 2050. Its emissions would then be expected to rise significantly beyond the legal 2050 net-zero deadline.

Previously, the Labour government has explicitly cited SAFs and other new technologies as part of its justification for expanding Heathrow airport.

Dr Lois Pennington, a research associate at the University of Manchester who has analysed Heathrow’s emissions impact, says the government’s new forecast shows “we are projected to be well over aviation’s share of the carbon budget even before a third runway is considered”. 

She tells Carbon Brief:

“For Heathrow, it means expansion can no longer be waved through on the promise of technology, and any approvals will be in the full knowledge that it will bust our legally binding carbon budgets.”

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• What happened?
• How did bedrock collapse trigger the flash floods?
• How have temperatures risen in the affected region? 
• How have rising temperatures affected mountain stability?
• How have glaciers retreated in the affected region?
• Can the event be attributed to climate change?

On the morning of 26 August, flash floods surged through a Himalayan border region of Nepal and the Chinese region of Tibet, killing more than 1,300 people, with thousands still missing.

In the days since the floods, scientists have examined satellite imagery, drone footage and seismic data in order to understand and explain the forces behind the event.

While initial theories pinned the flood on a glacial collapse, scientists now understand the event as a “multi-hazard cascade”, which began with a bedrock collapse. 

Some climate sceptics have tried to use this to falsely claim that human-caused climate change had no impact on the event. 

Yet, scientists have noted that, while no formal attribution study has been carried out thus far, warming is making such ice-rock avalanches in the region more likely.

Researchers have highlighted how rapid warming is dramatically reshaping Asia’s high-mountain region – and identified rising temperatures, glacier retreat and permafrost thaw as factors that may have all contributed to the disaster. 

Balendra Shah, Nepal’s prime minister, has called the floods a “serious signal that…the risks we must bear in the Himalayan region are increasing” due to climate change.

Here, Carbon Brief unpacks what scientists currently know about the causes of the catastrophic event and what they can – and cannot – say about the role of climate change. 

• What happened?
• How did bedrock collapse trigger the flash floods?
• How have temperatures risen in the affected region?
• How have rising temperatures affected mountain stability?
• How have glaciers retreated in the affected region?
• Can the event be attributed to climate change?

What happened?

A report published on 28 August by the HiRisk scientific consortium of high mountain experts detailed the events that led to the flash floods.

It said that events were set in motion on 26 August when a mass of bedrock, as well as the glacier ice on top of it, broke off a slope of Langtang-Lirung mountain in the Nepalese Himalaya, plunging from approximately 5,200 metres above sea level to the valley floor at 3,000 metres. 

The landslide shook the ground hard enough that, at 8:37am Nepal local time, the US Geological Survey (USGS) initially reported a magnitude 4.4 earthquake. Later that day, it clarified the shaking was caused by glacier collapse and debris flow, equivalent to a magnitude 5.2 earthquake.

On the valley floor, the melting ice, water and debris slammed into the Lhende Khola river, a high-altitude river that runs along Nepal’s border with China. 

Known downstream as the Bhote Koshi river in Nepal and the Poiqu or Poqu in China, the Lhende Khole feeds a network of rivers across Nepal and the Chinese region of Tibet, including the Trishuli river. (In China, the Lhende Khola is known as the Donglin Tsangpo.)

The designations employed and the presentation of the material on this map 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. Credit: Carbon Brief.

A large “debris” lake was briefly formed on the valley floor. When this lake burst, a wall of water and rock travelled downstream, killing more than a thousand people and destroying settlements, roads, bridges, hydropower plants and border posts across Nepal and Tibet.

HiRisk said that the floodwave travelled down rivers as fast as 30km an hour (around 19 miles per hour) and reached Mugling – a Nepalese town more than 130km downstream – at around 1pm local time.

A separate report from the Center for Land Surface Hazards in the US noted that the flood moved “exceptionally fast, was sediment-laden and extreme in scale”. For example, in the Nepalese municipality of Galchhi, the Trishuli river rose by nine metres in 30 minutes, it said.

Writing in the Conversation, Dr Umesh Haritashya, a glaciologist at the University of Dayton in Ohio, explained that the disaster “wasn’t finished when the first wall of water passed [on 26 August]”. 

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He continued that a new “barrier lake” – estimated to hold a few million cubic metres of water – had developed in a location where two rivers meet in Tibet before crossing into Nepal. This lake burst on 28 August and the river rose again, he said. 

On 4 September, the chief of Nepal’s National Disaster ​Risk Reduction and Management Authority, told Reuters that property and infrastructure worth “at least” $2.5bn (£1.9bn) had been lost. Dharma Raj Upreti estimated the cost to build roads and temporary shelters, provide drinking water and ⁠restore power would be around $53m (£39m). 

How did bedrock collapse trigger the flash floods?

In the immediate aftermath of the floods, initial reports suggested that the trigger was a collapsing glacier or earthquake in the high mountains of Nepal.

After confirming that a seismic tremor was as a result of falling rock and ice, the USGS said the trigger was likely a “glacial collapse and debris flow”. This was widely picked up by the media. 

Subsequently, satellite imagery revealed that an “enormous chunk of the mountainous bedrock” beneath the glacier had also given way, reported the New York Times. 

Dr Kristen Cook, a geomorphologist at the Université Grenoble Alpes in France, told the newspaper:

“The rock that the glacier was sitting on collapsed…It was a much larger collapse than we were initially able to see in the satellite imagery.”

The result was a “deluge of rock and ice, which pulverized into mud and water as it surged down the mountainside”, the newspaper said.

Dr Jakob Steiner a geoscientist at the University of Graz in Austria, tells Carbon Brief:

“It was not a glacier that collapsed. It was the mountain below the glacier that collapsed and the glacier had no other chance but to go with it because it was sitting on top of it. 

“The trigger for that is something that we are not 100% certain about, but, in the end, it very much looks like simply a mechanical failure of the rock material because of stressors that have built up over a long period of time.”

Failures of “bedrock” – the hard, solid rock that sits below looser rocks and soil – are an “increasingly common occurrence”, says Prof Bethan Davies, a professor of glaciology at Newcastle University. She tells Carbon Brief:

“These massive landslides occur in mountain regions, commonly following rapid deglacierisation [the melting away of a glacier]. Similar events happened in the Chamoli event in 2021 [in the Indian Himalaya] and in the Blatten landslide last year in Switzerland. They’ve also occurred recently in Alaska.”

With a shift in focus from the failure of a glacier to the bedrock underneath, some climate sceptics seized on the development to falsely claim that climate change had not played any role in the disaster.

These include Dr Matthew Wielicki, recently appointed by the Trump administration to lead the US Global Change Research Program, on Twitter, as well as former Conservative peer and climate-sceptic commentator Matt Ridley in the Spectator. 

However, scientists have highlighted the likely contribution of rapid warming in the region. These factors include the thawing of permafrost and glacier retreat. (For more, see sections below).

Fundamentally, “this would have been a much less significant tragedy if it had been just a rock-slope failure”, notes Davies.

The initial landslide took a mixture of rock and ice into a valley that “contains buried ice” as well, she says, providing the water that “resulted in the hyperconcentrated flow, which took so many lives”.

How have temperatures risen in the affected region? 

Global temperatures have risen by roughly 1.4C since the pre-industrial period. However, this increase is not uniform across the planet, with some regions warming faster than others. 

A study published in Global and Planetary Change in June 2026 investigated changes in the Langtang catchment – a river basin in central Nepal, in which the Langtang-Lirung mountain is located, which eventually drains into the Ganges. Around one-quarter of the area is made up of glaciers.

The paper found that glacial areas of the catchment – found at 4,000 metres above sea level – warmed at 0.31C per decade over 1960-2023. This was “more than three times” the rate observed at a lower elevation weather station, the authors said.

Looking in more detail at the site of the glacial collapse, Dr Robert Rohde, chief scientist for Berkeley Earth, used ERA5 reanalysis data to show how temperature has changed at the 5,200-metre elevation site where the mass of ice and rock broke loose. 

Rohde’s analysis found that June-to-August temperatures have been rising at the site of the glacier collapse since the year 1940, with 2026’s summer the fourth warmest on record, behind 2024, 2025 and 2022. This is shown in the graph below.

Average summer (June-August) temperature at the ice-rock avalanche site over 1940-2026. Data source: Rohde, Bluesky (2026)

Rohde also found that the days leading up to the disaster recorded the hottest August temperatures ever experienced at the site. This is shown in the graph below.

Daily average temperature, from 1 June-1 September, at the ice-rock avalanche site. 2026, 2025 and 2024 are shown in dark, mid and light blue. All other years from 1940-2023 are shown in grey. Source: Rohde, Bluesky (2026)

On social media, Rohde stated:

“Given the warming trend, this Nepali glacier had probably been thinning and weakening for years, or even decades. But it ultimately failed during the warmest week in one of its warmest years on record. It would be a hell of a coincidence if global warming wasn’t at least partially to blame.”

How have rising temperatures affected mountain stability?

Many experts have linked warming temperatures in the region to thawing permafrost – ground that has been frozen for at least two consecutive years, whose thickness ranges from less than one metre to more than a kilometre. 

Steiner is part of a research team that has been using sensors to monitor permafrost in the region since 2014. He tells Carbon Brief that it is “pretty clear” the permafrost has been thawing “very actively” at elevations as high as 5,200 metres above sea level “for many years”. He adds:

“This means that the ground has, over the last decades, moved from being in a solid state into – at least, periodically during the warm season – patchy ground where some is frozen and some isn’t…

“If you have frozen ground next to non-frozen ground, you have dynamics happening between that because there are different densities and there’s movement happening, which is conducive to interventional failure – and that we know from many other cases.”

Davies also points to the “degradation” of perennially frozen ground as a factor in the disaster:

“This permafrost acts as a glue to hold together the rocks and, as it melts, the rock can become weakened.”

Permafrost thaw can also result in saturated ground, says Davies, which adds “pressure in the joints” of rock and can “facilitate” failure. She continues:

“Sources of the water include melting permafrost and meltwater from the overlying glacier. We know that this event happened during a period of warmth, but in the absence of heavy precipitation, pointing to ice melt as the source of water.”

A 2025 study of rock and ice avalanches in High Mountain Asia found that more than two-thirds started in areas “where permafrost is probable”.

How have glaciers retreated in the affected region?

Glaciers – frozen rivers of ice holding three-quarters of the global freshwater supply – are extremely vulnerable to climate change.

In the Himalaya, the rate of glacier retreat has doubled since the late 20th century, according to a 2019 study in Science Advances.

The Global and Planetary Change study found that glacier area loss rates in the Langtang catchment increased more than fourfold from 1964 to 2023 – with melting accelerating after 2000.

It added that glaciers in the region also experienced “fragmentation” and “widespread thinning” over this period.

The study noted that this loss “coincided with elevation dependent warming”.

The figure below provides an overview of glacier loss in the Langtang catchment over 1964-2023, with orange, red and dark red indicating areas of retreat.

In addition, green dots note points of glacier fragmentation, while blue dots show separation and pink show disconnection.

Glacier loss in the Langtang catchment over 1964-2023. Orange, red and dark red indicate areas of retreat. Green dots note points of glacier fragmentation, while blue dots show separation and pink show disconnection. Credit: Silwal et al. (2026)

In comments released by the University of Reading, Prof Maria Shahgedanova, a climate scientist researching climate impacts on mountain glaciers, said that the glacier involved in the floods had “retreated by approximately 450 metres between 1990 and 2020”.

She adds that this “potentially reduce[d] the mechanical support provided by the glacier to the underlying rock slope”.

Speaking to Carbon Brief, Davies reiterates that the retreat of the glacier is “potentially a contributing factor” to the bedrock collapse and subsequent disaster.

This is because the removal of the glacier from the lower slopes leaves the “upper rock slopes less stable”, she says.

The most recent assessment by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development said that glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region are “rapidly shrinking” as a result of climate change. (This region extends 3,500km over Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan.)

It said this loss is threatening the safety of the nearly two billion people, including by increasing the risk of “glacial lake outburst floods” (GLOFs). A GLOF is a sudden and catastrophic release of meltwater from a glacial lake. 

Although this disaster was not caused by a GLOF, it is known that climate change is making such events more likely.

Can the event be attributed to climate change?

In the wake of the flash floods, climate campaigners, media outlets and Nepalese politicians have linked them to human-caused climate change.

However, many climate scientists have cautioned that it is too early to say precisely how climate change impacted the disaster. 

Davies tells Carbon Brief:

“These events happen so quickly that the exact causes and drivers can take a little time to uncover, especially if the event was a surprise and there had been no monitoring system in place.”

When trying to determine the role human-caused climate change played in the intensity or likelihood of extreme weather, scientists turn to the field of “attribution science”. 

To date, no formal rapid attribution study has been produced that attempts to quantify whether – and how – climate change contributed to the event.

Scientists have noted that climate attribution of ice-rock avalanches – which are typically driven by a variety of factors – remains limited, in part because of the lack of a long-term observational record of previous collapses in high mountain areas.

Meanwhile, the studies that do exist stop short of directly linking such disasters to climate change. For example, the authors of a 2021 study into the Chamoli ice-rock avalanche concluded that “we cannot attribute this individual disaster specifically to climate change”. 

However, they added, the “possibly increasing frequency of high-mountain slope instabilities can likely be related to observed atmospheric warming and corresponding long-term changes in cryospheric conditions (glaciers and permafrost)”.

In the aftermath of the disaster, many researchers have similarly highlighted that climate change could not be singled out as the cause of the disaster, even if warming likely increased the probability of its occurrence.

On the Climate Brink substack, Carbon Brief’s climate science contributor Dr Zeke Hausfather noted that a “definitive single-event attribution” of the more recent disaster “may never be possible” due to the “messy causality of rock-ice avalanches”.

However, he added that both the existing scientific literature and “essentially every scientist working on these hazards point in the same direction” – namely, that warming is making such events more likely in the Himalaya.

Steiner tells Carbon Brief it might be possible to attribute different factors that played a role in the disasters to climate change – for instance, the recession of the glacier – but it would be more difficult to do so for the event as a whole.

Part of the reason for this, he says, is that rock failures in this region of the Himalaya have occurred for millennia, well before humans started altering the climate. 

However, he continues:

“The physics of it is not something that has been made possible by climate change. This could have happened without it. But the chance of it happening – and the likelihood of it happening five years after a previous, similar event [in Chamoli] – we, as the scientific community, can be pretty confident about that [being increased because of a changing climate].

“This is because so many of the changes that we know are related to climate change can potentially drive the build-up to eventual failure.”

Ultimately, says Davies, a “careful attribution study is needed, but it is hard to argue that the rapidly warming climate is not having an effect in these regions”. She adds:

“A single event may have multiple drivers, but we are seeing an increase in these events and are likely to see more as the permafrost and glacier melt continues.”

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The post Q&A: What can – and cannot – be said about global warming’s role in the 2026 Himalayan floods appeared first on Carbon Brief.

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Solar power generation in the UK reached a new record over the summer of 2026, as temperatures across the nation soared, according to new analysis by Carbon Brief. 

Collectively over June, July and August, solar farms and rooftops generated 8.8 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in the UK*, as shown in the chart below. 

Speaking to Carbon Brief, Chris Hewett, chief executive of trade association Solar Energy UK welcomed the new record, adding that it was driven by “clear skies and continued growth in deployment”. 

This surge in generation took place amid the hottest summer on record in the UK, with five heatwaves between May and August.

Summer 2026 was the sixth sunniest on record, with more than 620 hours of sunshine, according to the Met Office. England and Wales – which experienced the most extreme heat – saw their second-sunniest summers on record. 

June 2026 was the hottest June in England since records began in 1884, according to Met Office data, while Wales and the UK as a whole experienced their second-warmest June. 

It was the driest July for England and Wales since records began in 1836, with some parts of London seeing no rain at all in the month, while Wisley in Surrey had no rain for 62 days. 

In England, temperatures peaked at 38.1C at Kew Gardens in London on 13 August. 

According to the Met Office, this summer’s record mean temperature was made 130 times more likely by climate change.  

Amid these hot and sunny months, solar power generation increased 23% from the same period in 2025. This is double the level of solar generation over the summer of 2021, according to Carbon Brief analysis. 

While solar panels can be affected by periods of extreme heat, the longer hours of daylight and higher levels of irradiation over the summer more than offset any efficiency losses. 

June, July and August all saw solar set new monthly records for solar generation – July saw the highest solar generation in a calendar month ever, with 3.3TWh meeting 15% of overall electricity demand for the month. 

As of the end of August, the total UK solar generation in 2026 stood at 17TWh – 13% higher than the same point in 2025. 

The number of solar farms and rooftop installations has grown substantially in recent years, helping to boost generation. Domestic rooftop solar accounts for around 29% of total capacity.

In 2025, the UK’s solar capacity reached 21 gigawatts (GW) by the third quarter of the year, according to UK government figures. This is a jump of 3GW, or 18%, year-on-year, as Carbon Brief reported in January. 

(Capacity is the maximum output possible from an electricity generation, whereas generation is what was produced over a certain time period, such as a day, month or year.)

According to the University of Sheffield, the installed solar capacity is now nearly 24GW. 

This includes nearly 172,000 solar installations that have been fitted across the UK since the start of 2026, according to recent government figures. In July alone, more than 19,800 rooftop solar panels were installed – the equivalent of one installation every two minutes. 

In total, nearly 1.7m households in the UK now have solar panels installed. 

Over 26 heatwave days this summer – periods of at least three days when temperatures exceed the Met Office’s county-level heatwave temperature threshold – UK households with rooftop solar panels avoided an estimated £86.7m in electricity costs, according to analysis by Utility Bidder.

Talking about the surge in solar generation this summer, Hewett says: 

“[It] not only kept bills down for people with solar and batteries in their homes, but helped keep overall power prices much lower than they would have been if Britain had been relying on more gas generation during the day”.

Despite the record generation, no new half-hourly solar power output record was set in the summer of 2026. This still stands at 15.2 megawatts (MW) on 23 April 2026.

* This article refers to the UK throughout, but strictly relates to the island of Great Britain, made up of England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland is part of the separate, all-Ireland electricity system.

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The post Analysis: UK solar power hits record high over summer 2026 appeared first on Carbon Brief.

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Farmers around Europe are dealing with the aftermath of a summer of extreme heat, drought and wildfires that were exacerbated by climate change. 

Human-caused climate change is increasing the severity and likelihood of many extreme weather events around the world, which is increasing volatility for food producers.

This summer resulted in, for example, shrunken potatoes in the Netherlands, reduced carrot harvests in France, dried-up rice fields in Italy and scorched olive groves in parts of the Mediterranean region.

Global food prices are currently at their highest level since early 2023 due to “heatwaves and energy price dynamics”, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. 

Other factors such as blocked fertiliser supplies in the Strait of Hormuz and high fuel costs have also played a role in this year’s agricultural outputs. 

In the six charts below, Carbon Brief provides a snapshot of the impact this summer’s extremes are considered to have had on crop production and yields across Europe. 

1. Most EU countries expect to see declines in cereal production this year

2. Most countries are recording reduced crop yields

3. Around €2bn worth of cereal losses after June heatwave

4. UK yields of wheat, barley and oats are all due to drop in 2026

5. Maize production in France is due to hit a four-decade low

6. Declines in EU grains since 2025

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• 1. Most EU countries expect to see declines in cereal production this year
• 2. Most countries are recording reduced crop yields 
• 3. Around €2bn worth of cereal losses after June heatwave 
• 4. UK yields of wheat, barley and oats are all due to drop in 2026
• 5. Maize production in France is due to hit a four-decade low 
• 6. Declines in EU grains since 2025

1. Most EU countries expect to see declines in cereal production this year Changes in cereal production in 26 EU countries between 2025 and 2026. Malta is excluded due to a lack of available data. Source: European Commission.

France, in particular, will see heavy losses in the amount of cereals – such as wheat, barley and oats – it produces this year, according to European Commission data. 

French cereal production is expected to drop by almost 8 megatonnes (Mt) in 2026, compared to 2025. 

The chart above shows that most European countries, aside from Bulgaria, will also see production losses this year. 

Germany is due to see the second-largest losses in production, dropping by almost 4Mt compared to 2025.

Prof Til Feike, a cropping systems expert at the Julius Kühn-Institut, says many areas in Germany and Austria, as with other parts of Europe, have been “hit hard by a long-lasting dry period in combination with record-high heatwaves”.

This has resulted in dry grassland for animals and lower yields of maize, which is a “key fodder crop” for livestock. He tells Carbon Brief: 

“In the long run, farming must adapt better to more extreme weather conditions, not only heat and drought, but also prolonged wet periods. So, there is no one-fits-all solution for climate change adaptation.” 

2. Most countries are recording reduced crop yields 

Heat and a lack of water have “substantially worsened” crop expectations this summer in western and most of central Europe, according to a recent bulletin from the EU Joint Research Centre.

Yields are expected to be “significantly reduced”, with local crop failures “likely” in areas such as France, southern Germany, northern and central Italy, and Hungary, it added. 

The chart below shows that yields of cereal grains – which, here, refers to the tonnes of a grain grown per hectare of land – are expected to fall in most EU countries in 2026.

Changes in cereal yields in 26 EU countries between 2025 and 2026. Malta is excluded due to a lack of available data. Source: European Commission.

Slovakia, Austria and Hungary are expected to see the largest declines in cereal yields, reducing by more than one tonne per hectare in 2026 compared to 2025.

The recent EU bulletin noted that irrigated crops performed well in Portugal this summer – the country with the largest yield increases. Other crops relying on rainfall showed growing signs of heat stress, it added.  

3. Around €2bn worth of cereal losses after June heatwave 

The record heatwave that hit many parts of Europe in June contributed to an estimated €2-2.3bn in cumulative grain production losses, as shown in the chart below.

Estimates of revenue lost due to changes in production forecasts between June and July 2026. Source: ECIU.

The intense June heat in western Europe would have been “virtually impossible” just 50 years ago, according to a rapid climate attribution study. It was the region’s hottest June on record. 

The Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) thinktank analysed June and July 2026 grain forecasts from Coceral, a European grain traders association.

ECIU estimated lost supply by multiplying the change in tonnes of grains between these two months by prices for harvest delivery in 28 European countries. 

Major grain producers France, Germany, Hungary and Spain accounted for 86% of the lost revenue, according to the ECIU.  

Extreme heat is also expected to have a wider economic impact across the continent. Analysis from Triodos Bank found that this summer’s extreme weather could reduce the EU’s gross domestic product (GDP) by around 1% this year, or around €180bn. 

4. UK yields of wheat, barley and oats are all due to drop in 2026

If current trends continue, the average yields for cereals and oilseeds will result in the UK’s worst harvest since detailed records began in 1984, according to ECIU.  

Yields of cereals and oilseed rape in the UK over 1990-2026. Source: Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs and Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board.

Barley yields could fall by 15%, oats by 14% and wheat yields by 6% year-on-year, according to 2026 harvest surveys from the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, a non-departmental public body that provides agricultural data to the UK government. 

ECIU said that, even if the situation improves, this year is still expected to be one of the five worst harvests on record. This means that four of the five worst harvests in the UK have occurred in the past decade. 

Consumers will likely see higher prices and/or smaller vegetables in supermarkets as a result, Tim O’Malley, chairman of UK company Nationwide Produce, told BBC News in August.

Other crops, such as berries, have grown successfully in the extreme heat. But the Guardian noted fears this could dip later this year “as plants become exhausted from heavy cropping during the heatwave”. 

5. Maize production in France is due to hit a four-decade low 

France has been acutely affected by this summer’s extreme weather, with more than 7,300 excess deaths during heatwaves and a record number of weather stations recording temperatures of above 40C. 

The country is the EU’s largest agricultural producer, but heat, drought and wildfires have affected many crops. 

The chart below shows that maize production is set to drop by more than one-third (35%) year-on-year. 

Maize production in France over 1980-2026. Source: Agreste.

This could result in France’s lowest maize production since 1980, according to data from Agreste, the country’s agriculture ministry’s statistics service.  

Due to the heat, “record-early” grape harvests have also been recorded in various parts of the nation since mid-July, reported Le Monde. In some cases, this means “smaller, less juicy grapes, which will yield less wine”, explained the newspaper. 

6. Declines in EU grains since 2025 Production of cereal crops in Europe over 1993-2026. The “other” category includes oats, rye, sorghum, millet and buckwheat. Source: European Commission.

Overall in the EU, data and projections indicate declines in the output of cereal grains this year. 

Cereal production is set to fall by 9% compared to 2025, according to the European Commission. 

Just one year in the past decade – 2024 – recorded lower production levels. 

Maize production is set to be particularly affected, with projections indicating a 13% drop, to 52Mt – the lowest level in the EU since 2007. 

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