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Among the stressors global heating will place on society there’s the fact that adapting to a hotter world is going to cost a ton of money. Stormwater systems, dams, and sea walls will need to be upgraded to withstand more intense flooding. Schools and hospitals designed to retain heat will need to be refitted to withstand punishing heatwaves.

In New York State alone, the costs of adapting public infrastructure due to the climate crisis is projected at $519 billion by 2050. That’s one state in one country. Multiply that across the world and you’re talking many, many trillions.

The question is: who is going to pick up the tab?

This question has vexed global climate talks for years. Low and middle income nations have done the least to cause global warming. Yet, they’re being hit hardest by punishing climate extremes. In response, Global South leaders have pushed the world’s wealthiest nations to pay their fair share for climate damages for decades.

This pushing is what helped create (the still shamefully underfunded) multilateral financing mechanisms, such as the Loss and Damage Fund and the Least Developed Countries Fund ― which are designed to move money to the world’s poorest countries to support climate mitigation and adaptation. 

Much more needs to be done to ensure nations that have benefited the most from fossil fuel-driven development are financially supporting those nations hit hardest by climate change: The estimated cost of the rebuilding from the deadly Nepal disaster is $5 billion, but they might not even get $20 million from the UN’s Loss and Damage Fund.

Here in the US, the question of who is going to pay the costs of adapting to a hotter, harsher world has become a key question at the local and state levels, too. 

This was the central observation of New York’s Climate Superfund Act. Passed in the twilight of 2024, the Climate Superfund Act requires the largest fossil fuel corporations to pay $75 billion to New York State. Payments would be made in annual $3 billion instalments over a 25 year period. 

This bill makes perfect sense. After all, somebody’s going to have to pick up New York’s $519 billion climate tab – and the industry that caused the problem should pay their fair share. 

Unfortunately, last week, New York’s efforts experienced a setback when a federal judge ruled that it cannot enact the legislation. While the case is sure to be appealed, it’s a frustrating development at a time the costs of the climate crisis are becoming ever more clear.

But a single court ruling in a single court can’t stop a movement. Climate superfund legislation has been introduced in sixteen states and one ruling in a single court district does nothing to stop other states from implementing their own Climate Superfund laws.

And across the world, additional efforts to make polluters pay are proliferating like wildflowers after a rain. 

In July, Portugal passed a 33% windfall tax on extraordinary profits earned by oil companies due to the Iran War. A bill to that end has also been introduced in the US Senate, and been championed by French campaigners and leading UK politicians. 

This year, legislation introduced in California, Hawaii, and New York would enable state attorneys general to sue fossil fuel companies for economic losses from climate disasters. 

In Connecticut, a bill we’re working on would place a 5% surcharge on fossil fuel companies’ insurance policies, raising millions for climate resilience programs; the bill passed out of the appropriations committee with a supermajority last year. It could well pass in 2027. 

The fossil fuel industry clearly sees these attempts for accountability as a serious threat. Big Oil’s puppets in Congress have introduced legislation that would provide the fossil fuel industry with near total immunity from lawsuits and legislation designed to make it pay for climate damages.

This front of the climate fight will enter a new phase next month, as the Supreme Court hears arguments in the Boulder vs Suncor case. If you’re in DC, you should join the People Vs Big Oil rally at the Supreme Court on October 5th.

No matter the outcome of the Supreme Court case though, the question of who is going to pay for the climate crisis is only going to become more salient in the years ahead.

Our job in this fight is to bring a new common sense into being: Polluters should pay for the harm they have caused. 

In Solidarity
– Alec Connon, Stop the Money Pipeline coalition director 

News & Updates from the Coalition

– Calls to Investigate Musk & DOGE gain traction

Members of Congress are responding to our calls to hold investigations into Elon Musk and DOGE in the new Congress. Since last month, we’ve secured new commitments from 8  elected officials, including Rep. James Walkinshaw (VA), Senator Cory Booker (NJ), and Rep. Mark Desaulnier (CA). See what they’re saying here. 

Check out our latest campaign video, made in collaboration with our friends at Feds Work for You and featuring a former FDA worker who was fired by DOGE last year. Months before the cyclospora outbreak, he warns our food supply will become less safe due to Musk’s disastrous mass firings at the FDA.

To get all the latest campaign updates, sign the petition here.

– Insure our Communities

Last week, news broke that as insurance companies abandon communities vulnerable to climate disasters, millions of Americans are being forced onto subprime insurance policies that offer less coverage and fewer protections. 

In the coming months, we’ll be announcing a major new campaign to hold insurers accountable and pass legislation to make insurers and fossil fuel companies pay for their role in the climate crisis.

If you’re in New York State, take two steps to support this effort right now:

• Complete the Insure our Communities survey – we’ll use the responses to this survey to advocate for the game changing Insure our Communities Act. If passed, the IOC Act would force insurance companies to stop underwriting new coal, oil, and gas projects, raising the costs of all new fossil fuel expansion. The survey takes 15 minutes to complete.

• Join us on Weds, Sept 23rd at City Winery in Manhattan for our New York Climate Week panel event: An Honest Conversation about the Insurability Crisis. We’ll be joined by NY Assemblymember Gallagher and Assemblymember Forrest’s legislative director, Mirabel Sandler, as we discuss how the climate crisis is driving the affordability crisis, why the Insure our Communities Act is a key part of the solution – and what you can do to help pass it in 2027.

 – Unplug AI Week of Action

Between September 19-24, our partners at Planet Over Profit, Climate Defenders, NYCC, RAN and Public Citizen, are organizing a week of action targeting the Big Tech companies driving the AI data center buildout. 

The data center build out is a huge threat to our climate goals. US power emissions could rise 20% from data center build out. Not only that but data centers raise our energy bills and pollute our communities, all in service of entrenching Big Tech’s political power over our lives.

The goal of the Unplug AI Week of Action is to make it crystal clear that Big Tech is a climate villain and challenge Big Tech’s political power. Join the Unplug AI Week of Action here.

 – BlackRock loses billions over climate concerns

The Dutch pension fund, Recreation Pension Fund (RPF), is divesting €450 million ($525 million) from BlackRock, owing to climate concerns. This makes RPF, the fourth major European pension fund to break ties with BlackRock, the world’s second-largest funder of fossil fuels. This news also follows analysis suggesting that BlackRock recently lost a $52 billion mandate from Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (PIF), owing to a shift in the pensions climate policies. If this is accurate, total divestment from the US-based asset managers, BlackRock and State Street, owing to climate concerns now stands at more than $102 billion. 

Meanwhile, New York City Comptroller Mark Levine has announced a search for new asset managers for the city’s pension funds and that “limits on carbon” will be a factor considered by the City. Currently, New York City invests approximately $60 billion of its funds with BlackRock.

– Two wins from the frontlines of fossil fuel expansion.

Two important developments from the Gulf South, which is home to the world’s largest buildout of new fossil fuel projects. First up, a federal court revoked a license for the Texas Gulflink deep-sea crude oil export terminal project planned off the coast of Brazoria County, Texas. 

Next up, one of Japan’s largest public financing institutions, JBIC, announced it would be investigating complaints filed by community advocates over its financing of the Freeport Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) export project. JBIC has provided more than $2.6 billion in financing for the construction of the Freeport LNG project, so this could potentially be a big deal. More here. 

– Align Your Money With Your Values

• Our partners at Third Act host an interactive on-line learning series every month on how we can take action to prevent our bank deposits, credit cards, home/auto insurance premiums, and investments from being used to finance the fossil fuel industry… and instead fund local businesses, community development, and the buildout of renewable energy. 

  The next learning session is on Monday, Sept 14th at 1PT/4ET. RSVP here.

– Costco campaign

The Costco Clean Up Your Credit Card campaign is still going strong. Last week, a coalition of frontline community organizations delivered a letter signed by nearly 500 Texans and Louisiana’s to Costco’s regional office in Plano, Texas. Shortly after, the team got confirmation from a local warehouse that this delivery caused the regional office to send a note to the nearby warehouses in the area, telling them that they are passing our concerns up to leadership.

We’ve also gotten an overwhelmingly positive response from Costco HQ employees, dozens of which have agreed to share our concerns internally with their teams. Check out this fun video of our canvassing efforts. 

Reach out to sarahlasoff@stopthemoneypipeline.org if you want to hear about upcoming on-the-ground campaign opportunities in San Antonio, TX, across Louisiana, or around the Seattle area.

And to close out this month’s newsletter, here’s a photo of Sarah – on helium, apparently  – outside of Costco’s HQ:

The post September Newsletter: Who’s going to pay? appeared first on Stop the Money Pipeline.

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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.”

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 Guest post: How extreme heat is ‘creeping’ from summer into autumn and spring 10.09.2026 Heatwaves Q&A: What can – and cannot – be said about global warming’s role in the 2026 Himalayan floods 08.09.2026 Rainfall and flooding

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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NBC Philadelphia: Speeding, double parking fuel safety concerns on East Girard Avenue – East Girard Avenue in Fishtown is an extremely busy corridor, and advocates held a walkthrough this week to push for safety improvements for pedestrians, drivers, cyclists, and transit riders. Issues facing this corridor include speeding drivers, double-parked cars, illegal turns, and pedestrians crossing outside of crosswalks. Improvements could include dedicated turning zones, pedestrian infrastructure, curb extensions, and more traffic signs.

Image Source: PA Trolley Museum

Mass Transit: Off the Beaten Path: Pittsburgh’s streetcar past keeps rolling at Pennsylvania Trolley Museum – Children can enter the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum for free throughout September. The museum, located in Washington County, has more than 50 trolleys and streetcars on display. Visitors can ride working trolleys along 4 miles of track. Pittsburgh’s trolley system dates back to the late 1800s, and visitors can learn all about that history and more.

Image Source: Metro Philadelphia

Metro Philadelphia: Gusset Plate Project brings art under the El in Kensington – Murals painted by residents over the past few years were installed onto triangular gusset plates that connect columns and beams holding up the Market-Frankford Line along Kensington Avenue. The Kensington and Harrowgate neighborhoods have received a little more color due to the mural plates, which can be found between Huntington and Tioga stations.

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PARK(ing) DAY PHL: PARK(ing) Day is September 18, 2026

Pennsylvania Capital-Star: The Pennsylvania Turnpike is added to Oklahoma’s PikePass system

New Jersey State Democrats: SINGLETON, CCSNJ, SJTA TO ANNOUNCE NEW MICROTRANSIT SHUTTLE IN BURLCO

Virgina Mercury: Amtrak to suspend Virginia-to-D.C. service for critical track upgrades Oct. 16–26

For Paula Swaner Sargetakis, co-owner of Frog Bench Farms in Salt Lake City, Utah, farming began with curiosity. She grew up on her family’s ranch, spending countless hours exploring the natural world. The first time she saw tree frogs, she recalls falling in love with the animals and collecting them in a bucket with leaves, rocks, and water to take home.

“There were no frogs left in the pot by the time we got home, because there was no lid on the pot,” says Sargetakis, joking that “we did have to get rid of that car.” Experiences like this, and generations of family gardeners before her, planted the seeds for what would become a career in farming.

Today, Sargetakis and her husband co-own Frog Bench Farms—a name inspired in part by her lifelong love of frogs. Using regenerative practices adapted to an urban setting, the small, 1.5-acre farm grows produce for local markets, community programs, and 22 restaurants in the Salt Lake City area.

When Sargetakis and her husband searched for land to build a farm, they looked near schools, knowing they wanted their farm to also serve as a classroom to teach students where their food comes from.

“They’re always surprised that there’s a farm right next door,” says Sargetakis. “But there’s joy in it, and they will ask questions, and they learn.”

When children visit, they are sometimes very nervous to taste unfamiliar vegetables like microgreens, she adds. But like in her own childhood, curiosity usually wins, “and most of them like it.”

Alongside education, reducing waste is central to Sargetakis’s work at Frog Bench Farms: “Everything we grow on site, we don’t waste anything.”

The farm donates surplus produce to the University of Utah’s student pantry and the Utah Food Bank. Crops that aren’t sold fresh are made into teas and other value-added products, while visitors learn how to preserve food using affordable tools available at local hardware stores.

That philosophy reflects Sargetakis’ broader understanding of sustainability—not simply protecting natural resources but strengthening local food systems and sharing knowledge. At the farm, she collects water, sources ingredients locally for value-added products whenever possible, and continually looks for ways to keep resources circulating within the community.

Running a small farm, however, comes with difficult financial realities. Frog Bench Farms is committed to paying employees a living wage, even though doing so adds another layer of economic pressure to an already challenging business.

“You don’t make money farming, you make it in other sides of the product,” says Sargetakis.

Sargetakis says diversification, education, and community partnerships make it possible to continue farming while staying true to the farm’s values. Ultimately, though, she hopes more people come to understand what farming truly requires, and why it matters.

“I’m hoping one day… [that] people understand and appreciate the hard work that goes into farming and how much fun we have doing it,” says Sargetakis.

On a small urban farm surrounded by classrooms and city streets, Sargetakis aims to show that agriculture doesn’t need large acreage to make a lasting impact. For her, all it takes is an acre and a half, a handful of curious students, and someone willing to keep getting their hands in the dirt.

This article is part of Food Tank’s ongoing Farmer Friday series, produced in partnership with Niman Ranch, a champion for independent U.S. family farmers. The series highlights the stories of farmers working toward a more sustainable, equitable food system. Niman Ranch partners with over 500 small-scale U.S. family farmers and is committed to preserving rural agricultural communities and their way of life.

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo courtesy of Paula Swaner Sargetakis

The post Growing Food, Community, and Curiosity in Salt Lake City appeared first on Food Tank.

In a bright, spacious factory on the outskirts of Lagos, young engineers in overalls work their way along the production line, carefully inspecting the shimmery blue solar cells that turn sunlight into electricity.

Quality checks completed, the finished solar panels are loaded onto forklifts and taken to a warehouse – ready for delivery to buyers across Nigeria and in neighbouring West African countries. Each panel is labelled “Made in Nigeria”.

But for Emmanuel Agbola, operations manager at Nigerian solar company LPV Technologies, the company’s mission goes beyond quality control and meeting customer orders.

“We are looking at addressing the immediate power needs of Nigeria,” Agbola told Climate Home News in a quiet room away from the steady hum of machinery on the factory floor, where production began last year.

That is no small task. About four out of 10 Nigerians – more than 85 million people – still lack reliable access to grid electricity, according to Nigeria’s Rural Electrification Agency.

An engineer works on a solar module inside LPV factory, Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News) An engineer works on a solar module inside LPV factory, Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News)

LPV Technologies is among a handful of startups making headway on the nation’s bold ambitions to build a domestic solar panel manufacturing industry, as solar becomes the go-to choice for Nigerian businesses and households fed up with frequent blackouts.

Nigeria’s national grid has collapsed about 22 times during the last two years due to transmission constraints, gas shortages and ageing infrastructure.

That is exactly why local solar panel manufacturing matters, according to Agbola.

“One of our slogans is ‘Make the sun pay for your bills’,” he said.

Solar transforms life for homes and businesses

Nigeria has become one of Africa’s fastest-growing markets for increasingly affordable solar systems, which are providing more reliable and cheaper electricity for homes and workplaces than the fragile power grid.

Solar panels installed across rooftops of shops in Wuse Market, Abuja, July, 2026 (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News) Solar panels installed across rooftops of shops in Wuse Market, Abuja, July, 2026 (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News)

Nigeria’s rapid solar adoption is being met mostly by small-scale solar installations which have helped bring the country’s total cumulative solar capacity to about 6 gigawatts (GW), according to a report by research provider BloombergNEF.

But almost every panel installed on homes, factories and public buildings across the country is imported – the vast majority from China – something the government wants to change.

“We are preparing to produce in this country the solar technologies that the entire continent will use,” President Bola Tinubu told a group of Chinese investors in 2024.

“Nigeria is a huge market for solar panels. Africa is a major consumer of solar technologies. I do not see why these panels and batteries cannot be produced here,” he said.

Two years on, that ambition is starting to bear fruit.

Not far from LPV’s factory, in the Agege neighbourhood of Lagos, workers are putting the finishing touches to a new commercial-scale veterinary vaccine cold-storage facility.

Up on the roof, 100 of LPV’s “Made in Nigeria” solar panels have been fixed into position. 

Once operational, the panels and attached battery storage will provide round-the-clock electricity for offices, laboratories and cold-storage rooms at the site, helping to keep millions of vaccine doses safely refrigerated even when the national grid fails.

“This will never go off – all year round,” said the civil engineer overseeing work at the site, pointing to the rooftop installation. “It’s off-grid – 24 hours, seven days; constant electricity to run these two cooling units.”

A worker looks over solar cells at the LPV factory in Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News) Government bets on local manufacturing

The Nigerian government wants solar power to play a central role in bridging the country’s electricity access gap, but it also wants the equipment that will drive that transition to be produced at home to create new jobs and reduce imports. That aligns with its wider Nigeria First industry policy.

Nigeria’s booming solar market is still overwhelmingly supplied by foreign-made panels. 

Last year, it imported about 2.9 million panels worth more than 400 billion naira ($295 million). More than 70% of them came from China, making Nigeria Africa’s second-largest importer of Chinese panels after South Africa. 

China dominates almost every stage of the global solar manufacturing supply chain and a series of government-led initiatives to kickstart local production have yet to make major headway.

More than a decade ago, the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure established the country’s first government-backed solar panel factory in Karshi, Abuja. While successive upgrades have increased its production capacity to about 50 MW annually, the facility still supplies only a fraction of Nigeria’s growing demand.

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The government has since announced more ambitious projects, including a Renewable Energy Industrial Park in Nasarawa state, expected to manufacture solar cells, panels and batteries, and a solar module assembly plant under construction by the Energy Commission of Nigeria in Enugu. Neither project has yet begun commercial production.

Last year, the government also proposed restricting solar panel imports to encourage domestic manufacturing, though the idea was swiftly dropped.

Chinese imports dominate solar panel trade

The scale of Nigeria’s challenge is obvious during a visit to Alaba International Market in Lagos, one of Africa’s largest electronics markets and a solar retail hub where thousands of panels change hands every week.

One recent morning in June, cart pushers could be seen weaving their way between crowds of shoppers and traffic jams, their trolleys stacked high with loads of freshly imported solar panels.

Nigeria is Africa’s biggest oil producer and fossil fuel exports have been the cornerstone of the economy for decades. But in the bustling market, solar has become such a good business in recent years that traders call it “the new oil“.

Signs advertising solar energy solutions at Alaba International Market, Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News) A labourer pushes cart full of imported solar panels across a road in Alaba International Market, Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News) Signs advertising solar energy solutions at Alaba International Market, Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News) A labourer pushes cart full of imported solar panels across a road in Alaba International Market, Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News)

Even so, few said they had ever seen panels made in Nigeria.

“Every panel we get is imported,” said wholesaler Ndubuisi Nwobodo, adding that it was the first time he had heard of panels being produced domestically.

At one of the market’s largest solar warehouses, manager Chidiebere Ani watched as workers unloaded another container of supplies from China. He said 95% of the warehouse’s stock of panels came from China.

China controls more than 80% of global manufacturing capacity, according to the International Energy Agency, spanning every stage of the supply chain, from polysilicon and wafers to solar cells and finished modules. 

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Meanwhile, production at the LPV factory in Lagos is running at about 180,000 panels per year, Agbola said.

“If we had 10 LPVs, we still won’t be able to meet [Nigeria’s] demand,” Agbola said. 

Even then, Nigerian producers face a tough contest on price. Imported 550-watt panels retail for about 150,000 naira ($110), the same price that LPV Technologies charges wholesalers.

Policy uncertainty seen as hurdle to investment

Nigeria has plentiful affordable labour and – with a population of roughly 240 million – room for market growth as the falling price of panels makes them accessible to more people.

Chinese firms increasingly see opportunities to build manufacturing partnerships with local businesses, said Susan Li, the founder of Chinese solar company Solar Run Energy.

“We have to grow the industry together,” she said, cautioning that foreign investment in the sector would hinge on stable government policies and a steady exchange rate.

Labourers unload a truck full of imported solar panels at Alaba International Market, Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News) Labourers unload a truck full of imported solar panels at Alaba International Market, Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News)

Last year’s short-lived proposal to ban panel imports, which was scrapped a month after it was floated, highlighted such investment concerns, said Wangari Muchiri, founder of Kenya-based RE.Think Energy.

“[One minute] solar imports were banned, and then they were not banned,” Muchiri said. 

“If investors come in and there is already a clear path such that everyone knows how tariffs and customs duties are handled, then businesses can plan for those costs,” she explained. “But when policies keep changing, the risk becomes much higher.”

Li said she believed that “as time goes by, [policies] will become more stable”.

Nigeria’s challenges to scale up production

While Nigeria is making its first panels, it does not yet have the industrial capacity to produce vital solar cell components such as polysilicon, wafers and ingots. 

At LPV, Agbola said having to import the components – up to 17 of them – eats into the company’s profit margins.

“When we combine [the cost of importing components] with other fixed-cost elements and we want to do our pricing, it becomes a big challenge for us in the market,” he said. 

Because cells are the main component in a solar panel, LPV’s senior brand and marketing manager Kabir Okehi said it would be “a huge relief” to produce them domestically and avoid the high shipping logistics costs associated with imports. It also takes imported solar cells between six weeks and two months to get to Nigeria.

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Many of the materials used in solar manufacturing – including silica, aluminium and steel – are available in Nigeria, but the country still lacks the technical know-how to turn them into higher-value components, experts say. 

“What is missing in our local production is knowledge transfer,” said Mustapha Abdullahi, director-general of the Energy Commission of Nigeria, a government body responsible for strategic national energy policy planning and coordination.

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He said Nigeria is still learning about the technologies needed to make solar cells domestically, with research institutes experimenting with materials such as graphene and production methods that could eventually support upstream manufacturing.

“We’re still in the pilot stages, doing reverse engineering to see how things are done,” he told Climate Home News.

Companies struggle to access startup capital

Another major challenge for homegrown solar manufacturing is finance, Abdullahi said, adding that several Nigerian companies have expressed interest in manufacturing solar panels, but many struggle to secure the capital needed to establish production lines.

The government has tried to bridge that gap by connecting local companies with international financiers, while offering incentives to prospective investors, he said.

Last year, Nigeria announced a partnership with Chinese solar giant LONGi to establish a 1,000 MW manufacturing facility in the country. The agreement, Abdullahi said, is intended to accelerate technology transfer and help Nigeria expand domestic production far beyond its current assembly capacity of roughly 300 MW of solar panels annually.

That is equivalent to 545,000 panels – of about 550 watts each – per year.

A conveyor belt producing solar cells at the LPV factory in Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News) Solar cells on a production line at the LPV factory in Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News) A conveyor belt producing solar cells at the LPV factory in Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News) Solar cells on a production line at the LPV factory in Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News)

Production will need to increase nearly ten-fold, Abdullahi estimated, to meet projected future demand.

As new investments and joint ventures start to yield results, that might be possible, he said.

“Nigeria can even be the solar panel hub globally, not just for Africa, and compete well even with China,” he added.

China as a partner, not a rival

But Nigeria should not be aiming to compete with China, rather learning from it as it seeks to build up its solar industry ecosystem – from assembling imported components to eventually making more of them locally, said Godson Ikiebey, a renewable energy specialist at PwC Nigeria.

China did not become the world’s solar manufacturing giant overnight, Ikiebey said. It developed a long-term industrial strategy, invested heavily in manufacturing capacity and steadily climbed the value chain.

“For now, it’s good to have the ambition, but the ambition does not yet match the action,” Ikiebey added. 

China dominates global solar manufacturing not simply because it produces panels cheaply, RE.Think Energy’s CEO Muchiri said, but because it controls technology, supply chains and economies of scale built over decades.

Rather than trying to recreate that system from scratch, Nigeria should join forces with Chinese companies to accelerate technology transfer while developing its own workforce and manufacturing base, she said.

Building an African solar industry should also extend beyond Nigeria, with different countries potentially specialising in different parts of the value chain, fostering regional trade. “This is going to be a big opportunity to look at a regional expansion rather than just one country,” she added.

Chidiebere Ani, Foresolar manager, shows solar panels in the warehouse near the Alaba International Market in Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News) Chidiebere Ani, Foresolar manager, shows solar panels in the warehouse near the Alaba International Market in Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News)

Bringing such plans to fruition will take time and the goals should be realistic, Chinese investor Li said.

Items such as frames and screws could eventually be produced in Nigeria, but more sophisticated components like solar cells would still need to be imported because their production requires highly automated factories and a stable electricity supply, she said.

“You grow step by step. If you look at the long term, if you grow the seed and water it today, you will get the harvest tomorrow,” Li said.

Clean energy jobs for the future workforce

When President Tinubu described his government’s solar hub plans to Chinese investors, he touted the country’s large, young workforce.

“The labour is cheaper. Our youths are vibrant and skilled. Our people are brilliant and adapt to new technology,” he said.

LPV’s factory in Lagos offers a glimpse of that vision.

Ibeimo Biobele explains the module production process inside the LPV factory floor in Ikotun, Lagos, Nigeria (Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News) Ibeimo Biobele explains the module production process inside the LPV factory floor in Ikotun, Lagos, Nigeria (Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News)

A graduate in petroleum engineering, Ibeimo Biobele, 28, had no experience in solar manufacturing when she arrived at the factory a year ago as a member of the National Youth Service Corps – Nigeria’s mandatory one-year national service programme.

Like many university-leavers, Biobele faced an uncertain job market.

More than 93% of Nigerians work in the informal economy, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, meaning there are few skilled jobs for graduates like Biobele.

Today, she works on the production line assembling panels and hopes more such jobs will become available for young Nigerians in the years to come.

“If we had more factories like this, more young engineers would have opportunities after school,” she said.

This article was made possible with support from Surge Africa and One World Media.

Main image: A man carries a solar panel on his head while unloading a truck in Lagos, Nigeria (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News)

The post Made in Nigeria: The race to build an African solar industry from scratch appeared first on Climate Home News.

As the planet heats up, tundras are thawing, wetlands are fermenting, and forests are succumbing to larger and more frequent wildfires. The breakdown of these natural systems is unleashing huge volumes of emissions, further intensifying warming from the burning of fossil fuels. According to new research, such feedback loops could amplify human-driven warming by 20 to 30 percent.

Read more on E360 →

Improved preparations and interregional power transfers played key roles in avoiding planned blackouts during bitter cold in early 2026, according to the agency and grid watchdog.

Microplastics are a scourge on the environment, accumulating in farm soils and wriggling their way into the food supply—reducing harvests and harming human health. But what if discarded plastics could be used instead, to improve crop yields and make farming more sustainable?

Researchers are trying to do just that. They’re working to develop a new generation of polymers that can be converted into farm fertilizers at the end of their life—rather than shoved into landfills.

A new study, published August 18 in Scientific Reports, documents an important new step in this effort: engineers have found a way to make plant-based polymers whose stiffness can be tuned for different uses such as shopping bags or fidget toys. These new plastics aren’t themselves biodegradable—so no one has to worry about sandwich bags rotting in the kitchen drawer. But when they’re discarded they can chemically converted into fertilizers.

People have spent years using isosorbide, a chemical building block produced from plant-derived glucose, to create experimental plastics that could do this. A study published by the same team in 2021 produced isosorbide-based polymers that could be recycled into fertilizers. But these plastics were too hard and brittle most uses.

Chemists who developed conventional plastics faced similar problems. So they tuned the mechanical properties of their polymers by incorporating other agents to either soften or harden them. But the chemicals that they used often turned out to be harmful to humans—like the now-infamous bisphenol-A (BPA).

In the new study, scientists created a novel derivative of isosorbide that functions as a softening agent—allowing them to concoct isosorbide-based plastics that were softer and stretchier. They could then recycle these bioplastics by treating them with ammonia—releasing the original isosorbide building blocks as well as urea—a chemical frequently used for industrial nitrogen fertilizers.

 

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These recycled mixtures improved the growth yield of Arabidopsis thaliana, a plant belonging to the mustard family, and komatsu, a Japanese mustard spinach that is cultivated as food in Asia, by 5-fold and 2.5-fold respectively, compared to no fertilizer at all.

In the experiments with Arabidopsis, the recycled mixture of urea and isosorbide also improved the yield by about 1.3-fold compared to standard urea fertilizer alone.

Based on experiments published by the same team in 2025, isosorbide appears to stimulate plant growth independently of urea, by increasing tolerance to nitrogen deficiency and salt stress.

More research will be needed to explore the usefulness of these plastics. For example, the plastics produced in this study were deemed appropriate for use in plastic bags or clear plastic wrapping—but not for other uses, such as book shelves or bike parts that require greater strength. The authors also cite the need to conduct a ‘lifecycle analysis’ of these plastics—to quantify their overall water usage, energy consumption, and greenhouse emissions and compare these to standard plastics, and standard fertilizers. They’ll also need to show that bioplastic-derived fertilizers don’t add to microplastic pollution. But at least these new plastics are designed to avoid that problem.

Fujimata, et al. “Plastics to fertilizer: A polymer system based on isosorbide as a monomer, plasticizer, and fertilizer.” Scientific Reports. 2026.

Agrahari, et al. “Novel role of isosorbide as a biostimulant in enhancing plant growth and development in Arabidopsis thaliana.” BMC Plant Biology. 2025.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

Janet Fleischman is an independent consultant with extensive experience in research, policy advocacy, and narrative storytelling. Jyotsna Uppal is a historian and narrative strategist, who supports individuals and organisations in change processes.

Global climate progress sits at the centre of an acute crisis, as the multilateral order that structured international climate cooperation for three decades frays at the seams.

The Trump administration’s withdrawal from 66 United Nations and international organisations in early 2026, compounded by its exit from the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change itself, has launched a rupture in the governance architecture and the geopolitical consensus that made multilateral climate action conceivable.

Institutions have been stripped of authority, voluntary commitments left contingent on political will.

At this precarious moment, what can and should climate funders be doing?

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We recently examined the state of environmental multilateralism through an extensive literature review and interviews with climate leaders from around the world – policymakers, UN officials, regional actors, philanthropic leaders and advocates.

Their perspectives reinforced a sobering finding: more consequential than any single country’s efforts to undermine the multilateral system is the deeper question of whether that system is still fit for purpose.

Climate philanthropy must do more than fill gaps left by retreating governments; it must ask harder questions about whether gap-filling is the right role at all – and prepare to catalyse the emergence of something new.

Change will not come without pain.

As Sarah Millar, programme director at the Climate Emergency Collaboration Group, an international philanthropic network and strategic regranter, told us: “What we’re trying to do here is fundamentally rewire the global economy… it’s everything everywhere, all at once. And that’s really hard to do.”

Filling the gaps or leading change?

The multilateral climate system, for all its limitations, remains relatively intact. Countries other than the United States continue to submit national climate plans and participate in global negotiations. Yet participation is not the same as effectiveness – many commitments fall short of what’s needed.

Meanwhile, new regional, thematic and plurilateral coalitions are emerging; voluntary groupings of countries, cities, companies, and civil society organisations aligned around specific climate objectives are increasingly filling the action gap.

Santa Marta coalition tested as co-chair Colombia turns back to fossil fuels

Climate philanthropy has often responded to these gaps by substituting for absent public finance. Arunabha Ghosh, the founder and former CEO of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), a climate think-tank based in New Delhi, explained: “Philanthropy is having to fill in the gap of public finance where development assistance is failing.” But this instinct deserves scrutiny.

A more fundamental question is whether gap-filling remains the right approach. Does philanthropy keep a failing system limping along, propping up dysfunction – or does it spur transformation and catalyse what comes next? There is no neutrality here – philanthropy cannot pretend its choices are inconsequential. The question is which position advances the transformation the moment requires.

Compounding these strategic questions is a more immediate threat. As formal multilateralism struggles, the civil society actors who might fill the gap face mounting restrictions – a closing of civic space evident not just in the US but in India, Israel, Russia, Turkey, and elsewhere. In the US, the Trump administration has stepped up attacks on philanthropies, threatening legal investigations and the withdrawal of foundations’ tax-exempt status.

A protester holds a placard describing the election of Donald Trump as a ‘climate disaster’ during a demonstration in London. (Photo: SOPA Images) A protester holds a placard describing the election of Donald Trump as a ‘climate disaster’ during a demonstration in London. (Photo: SOPA Images)

For climate philanthropy specifically, there’s a particular risk: support for climate action is increasingly portrayed in some US conservative circles as anti-American.

Conservative actors who emphasise fossil fuels for manufacturing and energy security often equate backing renewables with pro-China stances, since China is the largest green technology manufacturer. Yet the economic evidence points the other way, with the clean energy transition already underway – and the perils of fossil fuel reliance further underscored by the war in Iran.

Winning back the narrative

Underlying all these gaps is a failure of narrative. The story of climate progress – and there is real progress to tell – is not being written by governments.

As Christiana Figueres, an international leader on climate change and the former executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, put it this way: “The story of progress is being written by a plethora of other stakeholders – subnationals, finance corporations, NGOs – all of whom are doing their thing together. They’re writing an amazing story, and nobody’s writing it and nobody’s reading it and nobody’s taking note of it.”

This storytelling also needs to be more integrated: climate can’t remain a siloed concern but must be linked to health, education, gender equity and migration. Philanthropy can help make these linkages legible to policymakers and the public – expanding the coalition of actors who see climate as central to their own agendas.

UN sets out narrow path back to 1.5C warming after inevitable overshoot

Four directions stand out for catalytic philanthropic support in this fragmented landscape:

• Shift who gets supported, and convene diverse actors. New pathways are needed to support local communities, civil society coalitions, and subnational actors implementing national climate plans.
• Support compelling narratives and amplify affected voices. Listening to affected communities is critical to shaping a just transition that gives communities real agency over change.
• Engage the private sector differently. New financing instruments and blended finance opportunities require philanthropy to engage more strategically with private sector and corporate actors – not merely as funders but as partners to design how catalytic capital can flow.
• Take strategic risks. Philanthropy may need to fund approaches to implementation, finance, and technology that governments and financial institutions won’t support.

This is a precarious moment for multilateralism, civil society and the philanthropic organisations that sustain it.

But that complexity may also provide an opportunity. Philanthropy willing to ask harder questions, take greater risks, and invest in the connective tissue between issues may do more than keep a struggling system afloat.

To catalyse multilateral climate action, many philanthropies recognise that this is the time to deepen their reach. In the words of Ailun Yang, with the environment program at Bloomberg Philanthropies: “Our main way to engage in this is by supporting smart people and innovative ideas. Philanthropy doesn’t necessarily do these things ourselves, and that is really where our superpower is.”

This piece is adapted from a project conducted by Janet Fleischman and Jyotsna Uppal, funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s Environment Program; however, all the views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors’ own.

The post With multilateralism in crisis, what’s next for climate philanthropy? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Zack to the future Channel News brendan 11th September 2026 Teaser Media

Headline News:

• “Vestas Reaches New Turbine Heights” • Vestas claims that a new EnVentus 7.2-MW machine installed in Winnberg, Germany, has the highest hub height ever for an onshore turbine at 199 meters (653 feet). The prototype project also has a Firmengruppe Max Bögle concrete hybrid tower. A second turbine is planned for installation next year. [reNews]

Vestas wind turbine (Vestas image)

• “Spanish Zinc-Air Battery Design Boosts Capacity And Power By 80%” • Researchers at the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona developed an architecture for zinc-air batteries that can boost their power output by up to 80% without altering their core chemistry. This opens up a new avenue for designing more efficient, higher-performance batteries. [Euronews]
• “US Solar In 11-GW Q2 Surge” • The US solar industry added 11.4 GW of new electricity generating capacity in Q2 2026, a 45% year-over-year increase and a 43% increase from Q1. The Solar Energy Industries Association and Wood Mackenzie said that utility-scale solar led the Q2 surge with 9.6-GW installed, up 61% year-over-year. [reNews]
• “UK Households Face Higher Energy Bills Unless Aging Grid Is Upgraded, Report Warns” • Failure to accelerate updates to the UK’s aging power grid to handle rising renewable generation could cost consumers billions of pounds by 2030, the official spending watchdog has warned. Up to £70 billion in investment is required for upgrades. [Yahoo News UK]
• “MN Power Ordered To Continue Investigating Alternatives To New Gas Plant” • The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission rejected a request by Minnesota Power to build a costly new gas plant to meet future energy demand and ordered the electric utility to continue investigating alternatives that would maintain grid reliability. [CleanTechnica]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

Uncertainty persists over how COP31 will be managed, after Türkiye’s environment minister told journalists this week his country will have the final say at the UN climate conference despite a deal that gave Australia the role of chairing the negotiations in return for withdrawing its bid for the summit.

At COP30, the two governments resolved a deadlock by agreeing that Türkiye would host this year’s annual talks in the resort city of Antalya with its environment minister Murat Kurum serving as COP31 President, while his Australian counterpart Chris Bowen would act as COP31 President of Negotiations.

Previous COPs have occasionally been hosted by one country and presided over by another. For example, COP23 was held in Germany because of the remoteness and small size of Fiji, and COP25 took place in Spain after social unrest flared in Chile. But COP31 will be the first UN climate summit with the powers of the presidency split between two countries.

• Sep 9, 2026 News As science comes under attack at UN talks, climate movement splits over how to respond A rift over how IPCC messages are produced and turned into policy is creating tensions in the world’s most influential coalition of climate NGOs Read more
• Sep 8, 2026 Carbon markets Industry and NGOs lobby to weaken UN carbon credit rules in “coordinated” push In copycat submissions and a private briefing to government officials, the groups have opposed a proposal to tighten safeguards for emissions offsets Read more

Under the unusual arrangement, Türkiye will lead on the Action Agenda, the non-negotiated part of COP which brings together businesses, citizens and local governments to step up climate action in different areas, from curbing methane emissions and protecting health to adaptation in fragile states.

In Brazil last year, when the deal was announced to end the long-running rivalry for COP31, Australia’s Chris Bowen said his role would give him the powers of the COP presidency to manage the official climate negotiations, prepare draft texts and issue any overarching “cover” decision.

But speaking to international media in the Turkish city of Trabzon on Thursday, comments from Kurum – made in Turkish and translated into English by an official translator – suggest that Türkiye sees itself as having ultimate control over the formal outcome of the talks.

Asked how the “co-presidency” would resolve any differences that emerge during the negotiations, he responded: “Türkiye and Australia are not co-presidents. Türkiye is the President of COP31 and Australia is the President of Negotiations. We are in consultation with Australia but the final decision lies with the presidency of COP31.”

“No issues” so far

An official document setting out the “modalities” of the partnership notes that the COP31 President will assign an Australian representative as the “President of Negotiations” and “Vice President of the COP”, to whom the functions of leading the COP31 negotiations are delegated for the duration of the conference and “who will have exclusive authority in relation to the negotiations”.

“If there is a difference of views between Türkiye and Australia, consultations will take place until the difference is resolved to mutual satisfaction,” the document adds.

Kurum said this week that the two countries are working in “good harmony and in shared perspectives. So far, we’ve had no issues. We don’t believe we will have. I mean if Türkiye and Australia cannot agree on something, it’s not realistic to expect 196 countries [at the COP] to agree on the same thing.”

Australia’s pavilion at COP30 is right next to Turkey’s – an interesting dynamic as the two battled it out to be the host of COP31 next year. (Photo: Megan Rowling) Australia’s pavilion at COP30 is right next to Turkey’s – an interesting dynamic as the two battled it out to be the host of COP31 next year. (Photo: Megan Rowling)

Australia’s COP31 team pointed Climate Home News to a speech given by Bowen at the mid-year Bonn climate talks, in which he said: “Australia and Türkiye are working together seamlessly and with one goal.”

The oceans conference in Trabzon, organised by the COP31 presidency, issued a statement on Thursday saying that under Türkiye’s COP31 Presidency, and “in close cooperation” with Australia as President of Negotiations, “we aim to advance action on ocean and seas towards COP31 in Antalya, including through engagement with the Pacific at the Pre-COP”.

Electrification goal to reduce fossil fuels

On other topics, Kurum told reporters that, while the COP31 Action Agenda does not feature any explicit initiatives on transitioning away from fossil fuels, its flagship goal to promote the electrification of economies – through measures like heat pumps and electric vehicles – would “lead to a reduction in the use of fossil fuels and contribute to the clean transition”.

“What we want is to decrease the emissions, and for that we need to use clean energy, and for that we need to make electrification more widespread. And if you do that, automatically [you will] reduce the use of fossil fuels,” he said on the sidelines of the Trabzon oceans conference. He added that COP31 would “build on” the COP28 agreement to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems.

COP31 leaders unveil global targets, with spotlight on electrification

Asked by Climate Home News about a request by the government of Nepal for an emergency grant from the UN’s new Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage to help recovery from its recent devastating glacial flood, Kurum said he would be “pleased” if the fund supported the South Asian nation.

On August 31, Nepal’s finance and environment ministers asked the fund’s board to take a special decision to disburse post-disaster support for the first time, a call backed by developing-country board members. On September 9, the board’s co-chairs responded in a letter saying they were “engaging with the FRLD board to address your urgent request as rapidly as possible”.

Foreign minister: Nepal needs “meaningful” international support to face climate threats

Asked how he would respond to a UN scientific assessment this month that the world will exceed its goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels and must then work to bring it back down, Kurum said he accepted that the data shows that keeping to 1.5C is no longer possible. He added that limiting warming to “around 1.5C” would be a success.

Questioned by media as to how he would guarantee the right to protest at COP31, Kurum said his team will “try to meet” any request they receive from civil society.

With demonstrations temporarily banned, over 200 human rights and environmental activists were arrested before and during the NATO military alliance summit in Türkiye’s capital Ankara in January.

Kurum sought to reassure climate campaigners, however. “Don’t worry, thinking you will not be able to voice your opinions or really share your thoughts,” he said.

The post Türkiye says it has “final decision” at COP31 despite Australia running negotiations appeared first on Climate Home News.

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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.

Many of Ontario’s teachers started the school year underfunded, with no contract, and potentially with no supplies. We must continue to support educators and education workers in Ontario, as their fight is our fight, and if they win, we win.

The post Doug Ford is privatizing education at the expense of teachers, students, and taxpayers first appeared on Spring.

The financing on offer for recovery, largely structured as loans, simply turns a climate disaster into new sovereign debt for a country that had no hand in causing it.

The post Grants, Not Loans: ANPFA, Nepal’s Peasants’ Union, Demands Climate Justice After Deadly Floods appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Why people migrate, who profits from division, and how working people can build power together.

In this Q&A, Sammy Gensaw III discusses the intricacies of the Klamath River, the challenges posed by dam infrastructure, and the transformative power of grassroots activism. 

Nigel and Veronica traded conventional careers for a years-long voyage from the UK to New Zealand, using their journey to connect with coastal communities facing increasingly severe climate risks.

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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.

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The post Revealed: More than 1,000 NHS operations cancelled due to record UK heatwaves appeared first on Carbon Brief.

The Pan African Vision for the Environment (PAVE) is a Lagos-based grassroots non-profit accredited by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). 

Established to promote sustainable development through research, policy dialogue, advocacy, and consultancy, PAVE works on development issues across their environmental and socio-economic dimensions, with a focus on the Sustainable Development Goals, including water and sanitation, agricultural Value Chain promotion, Gender, Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), Climate change and Clean Energy promotion, Waste Management including E-Waste, Chemical Management, Blue Economy, Ocean Citizen Awareness and literacy, and Stakeholder Engagement

With over 20 years of experience in the development sector, PAVE has worked at local, national, regional, and international levels, presenting research and organising capacity-building workshops on sustainable development across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas.

Grassroots community members at a PAVE training. Lagos, Nigeria.

PAVE is a member of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) and one of the implementing partners of the GAIA-led Multi-Solving Action to Methane Reduction in Nigeria (MAMRN) Project.

In this article, the third of a series, we spoke with Anthony Akpan, Founder of PAVE, about their work as a partner in Lagos for the project.

In this project, several GAIA members are participating in several activities. Can you share insights on best practices for collaborating with other organisations in Nigeria?

Collaboration works best when it is built on trust, respect, and clear communication. 

In this project, PAVE has worked closely with GAIA members throughout our workshops and other activities, ensuring that each session runs smoothly, reaches participants effectively, and avoids duplication of efforts. Seeing everyone bring their expertise together to achieve shared goals has been inspiring and demonstrates how partnerships can multiply impact.

Rooting collaboration in local relationships has also been key. Engaging community leaders, local government representatives, and waste pickers early helped ensure that interventions were practical, culturally appropriate, and sustainable. 

By staying open to learning from each other and adapting to on-the-ground realities, the partnership has consistently achieved stronger outcomes.

Flexibility and accountability remain central to success. Operating environments in Nigeria can change quickly, and having a spirit of co-creation, regular check-ins, and openness to feedback has allowed PAVE and GAIA to stay aligned while delivering meaningful results.

Could you share some perspective on the current waste crisis in Nigeria and how this project aims to address this?

Nigeria faces a significant waste management challenge, with millions of tons of organic waste generated each year and only a fraction properly collected or treated. 

Open dumping, irregular collection systems, and limited infrastructure have led to environmental pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and public health risks, while informal waste workers often operate in unsafe conditions without recognition or support.

Grassroots community members at a PAVE training. Lagos, Nigeria

The MAMRN Project addresses this crisis through a holistic approach that combines community engagement, practical solutions, and policy-level support. Through the project, PAVE is working to divert organic waste from landfills, promote community-level composting, and strengthen local government systems for more effective waste management, while building the capacity of households, waste pickers, and local authorities with the knowledge and tools to manage waste sustainably.

A practical example from Lagos illustrates the impact: PAVE has trained over 50 waste pickers and approximately 300 households on organic waste segregation, composting, and Black Soldier Fly (BSF) rearing. 

Participants learned how to separate food and garden waste from general trash, which was then collected and converted into compost for local urban farms. Putting these practices into action not only reduces methane emissions but also provides valuable resources for the community.

Do you have a personal milestone or favourite moment in this project so far?

A personal milestone for us at PAVE has been supporting participants as they begin to apply what they are learning during our household and waste picker training in Lagos.

Seeing families and waste workers engage with organic waste segregation and composting in real time strongly affirms the project’s vision and highlights the potential for meaningful change on the ground. 

Our favourite moments have been during live demonstrations of Black Soldier Fly (BSF) rearing and composting at the workshops. Observing participants’ curiosity, excitement, and hands-on engagement is incredibly inspiring. 

Their enthusiasm underscores how knowledge becomes most impactful when experienced directly, and it reinforces the importance of practical, interactive learning in shaping both environmental practices and community action.

Grassroots community members pose for a picture at a PAVE training. Lagos, Nigeria

We have seen these key themes emerge in this project (Organic Waste Management, Infrastructure Development, Waste Picker Integration, Capacity Building and Awareness Raising, Local Government Engagement, National Policy Advocacy and Emissions Monitoring). Could you share experiences (as applicable) on any of these topics within this project so far?

Throughout the MAMRN project in Lagos, several key themes have guided PAVE’s work and shaped our impact. In organic waste management, households and communities have learned to transform food and garden waste into compost or feed for Black Soldier Fly (BSF) larvae.

On waste picker integration, informal waste workers received training and support to improve segregation practices and gain recognition within local waste systems. Seeing participants confidently separate organic waste for composting demonstrated both empowerment and practical impact.

Capacity building and awareness raising have been central to the project, with hands-on workshops bringing households and waste pickers together. Participants eagerly engaged in sorting exercises and BSF demonstrations, translating knowledge into real-world action.

Finally, through local government engagement, PAVE has worked closely with Lagos authorities to ensure that interventions align with municipal waste management plans, strengthen local infrastructure, and integrate informal workers into formal systems. 

Together, these experiences show how training, collaboration, and practical, community-driven solutions can tackle Nigeria’s waste challenges, reduce methane emissions, and create meaningful environmental and social impact.

What is the path forward for your organisation and possible next steps from this project?

With the MAMRN project still underway, PAVE is focused on building on the progress made so far and ensuring the remaining activities have maximum impact. We continue to engage households, waste pickers, and local authorities in Lagos, reinforce hands-on solutions like composting and Black Soldier Fly (BSF) rearing, and encourage practical application of the skills learned.

Next steps include expanding ongoing training sessions, deepening community participation, and supporting local government efforts to better integrate informal waste workers into structured waste systems. We are also capturing lessons in real-time, allowing us to adapt and refine our approach as the project unfolds.

Looking ahead, PAVE is committed to turning knowledge into action, empowering communities to adopt sustainable waste practices, and contributing to Nigeria’s methane reduction goals — one household, one waste picker, and one composting initiative at a time. The journey is ongoing, and the best outcomes are still ahead.

The post PAVE: Rooting collaboration in local relationships through the MAMRN Project first appeared on GAIA.