MISSED DEADLINE: During a virtual meeting of 17 world leaders, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and UN secretary general António Guterres urged countries to come forward with their overdue climate plans, according to Folha de São Paulo. Diplomats from Brazil, which is hosting COP30, are working with UN officials to encourage countries to launch their new 2035 “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) by September, Reuters explained. Carbon Brief analysis showed nearly every country missed the original deadline to submit new NDCs in February.
CHINA PLEDGE: Chinese president Xi Jinping announced during the meeting that China will submit its new NDC, covering all economic sectors and all greenhouse gases, ahead of COP30 in November, according to Xinhua. In addition, China Daily reported that Xi told attendees China would not slow down its climate action, “regardless of changes in the international landscape”.
NO END IN SIGHT: Coral bleaching has struck 84% of the world’s reefs in what the International Coral Reef Initiative has described as the worst global bleaching event on record, the Associated Press reported. The ongoing incident, caused by warming oceans, began in 2023 and it is “not clear” when it will end, according to the news outlet.
GLOBAL THREAT: In total, reefs in at least 82 countries and territories “have been exposed to enough heat to turn corals white”, according to the Guardian. Scientists in north and central America “were among the first to raise the alarm” after record ocean temperatures in the summer of 2023 and in recent weeks bleaching has spread to east African reefs, the newspaper added.
The scale of the climate-related damage caused by emissions from 111 of the world’s biggest companies, according to a new Nature paper that the Washington Post said could “fuel” global climate litigation.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
A Conservative victory over the Liberals in the upcoming Canadian election could lead to nearly 800m extra tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade, according to Carbon Brief analysis. Modelling by researchers from Simon Fraser University and University of Victoria shows that if the Conservatives follow through on their pledges to cut various climate policies, Canadian emissions would likely start to creep up in the coming years. However, as the analysis shows, even the Liberals’ policy platform would not put Canada on track to meet any of its climate targets, on the way to net-zero emissions by 2050.
Following the death of Pope Francis, Carbon Brief explores the various papal contenders’ views on climate issues.
Pope Francis, who died this week, has been praised for making climate action a core part of his work as the spiritual leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.
His influence extended far beyond the church and included directly lobbying oil companies, engaging in UN climate talks and criticising world leaders’ lack of action.
In 2015, the pope published Laudato Si – the first papal encyclical dedicated to the environment. As Carbon Brief reported at the time, it drew heavily on climate science and even called for fossil fuels to be phased out.
There is much speculation about whether Francis’s successor will continue his relatively progressive agenda, including on climate change.
Below, Carbon Brief examines the climate credentials of the cardinals that have been tipped as most likely to be chosen as the next pope during the church’s secret “conclave” process.
The current favourite to become pope is Pietro Parolin, an Italian cardinal who has served as the Vatican’s secretary of state since 2013. He leads the Holy See’s delegation at UN climate summits.
He has stressed the “unequivocal” evidence and “scientific consensus” behind climate change. Speaking on behalf of Francis at COP28, Parolin described environmental destruction as “an offence against God, a sin that is not only personal, but also structural”.
The Holy See ratified the Paris Agreement in 2022 and has been actively involved in COP negotiations. In 2024, Parolin’s delegation attracted controversy when diplomats accused it of aligning with Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia to block gender discussions at COP29.
Ghanaian cardinal Peter Turkson, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, has been influential in international climate politics.
During his time as president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Turkson spent 18 months guiding the drafting of Laudato Si. He was described by the Guardian as “the public face of Pope Francis’s war on global warming”.
The encyclical was launched to influence the nascent Paris Agreement and commentators have pointed to similarities in wording and themes between the documents. Turkson attended the Paris summit with a Vatican delegation and the goal of being a “catalyst” for action.
Another frontrunner, cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle has not had as much high-level involvement in climate politics as other candidates. However, he has often been compared with Francis due to his focus on social justice.
Tagle has been a vocal supporter of Laudato Si and has been involved in climate activism in his native Philippines. He has been active in the response to extreme weather in his country and has made the link between such events and climate change.
A conservative cardinal from Guinea, Robert Sarah has been welcomed by multiple right-leaning media outlets and is viewed by some as an “anti-woke” successor to Francis.
However, he has cited Francis’ teachings on the environment and pointed to the role of foreign interests in exploiting African resources. “They pollute the environment and leave the continent in endemic poverty,” he wrote in 2019.
There is huge uncertainty surrounding the conclave voting process to choose the new pope and several other candidates are thought to be in the running.
Among them are the Italian cardinal Matteo Zuppi, another progressive who has called for “bold” action on climate change.
Another is Péter Erdő, a leading conservative candidate from Hungary. While Erdő has not been vocal on climate change, he has close ties with Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, a strong opponent of climate action.
SILENT MAJORITY: Covering Climate Now has launched “the 89% project”, a global media collaboration based on the idea that there is a “silent majority” of people around the world who want climate action.
ATTRIBUTION AND LITIGATION: Dr Friederike Otto and Dr Joyce Kimutai from the World Weather Attribution project at Imperial College London appeared on the New Scientist Weekly podcast to talk about how climate attribution science can be used to achieve climate justice, in part through litigation.
NIMBY NEWSCAST: Tortoise Media’s Slow Newscast investigated the “so-called zealots” who have been taking legal action against everything from road-building to energy projects in the UK, in an episode titled “nimby nation”.
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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This is despite weak La Niña conditions during the first two months of the year – which typically result in cooler temperatures.
With temperature data for the first three months of the year now available, Carbon Brief finds that 2025 is very likely to be one of the three warmest years on record.
However, it currently remains unlikely that temperatures in 2025 will set a new annual record.
In addition to near-record warmth, the start of 2025 has seen record-low sea ice cover in the Arctic between January and March – and the second-lowest minimum sea ice extent on record for Antarctica.
In this quarterly state of the climate assessment, Carbon Brief analyses records from five different research groups that report global surface temperature records: NASA, NOAA, Met Office Hadley Centre/UEA, Berkeley Earth and Copernicus/ECMWF.
The figure below shows the annual temperatures from each of these groups since 1970, along with the average over the first three months of 2025.
(It is worth noting that the first three months may not be representative of the year as a whole, as greater historical warming rates mean that temperatures relative to pre-industrial levels tend to be larger in the northern hemispheric winter months of December, January and February.)
Starting with this state of the climate update, Carbon Brief will be showing a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) aggregate of the five surface temperature records, rather than highlighting any particular one, reflecting a single best-estimate across the different groups.
The WMO aggregate is calculated by averaging the different records using a common 1981-2010 baseline period, before adding in the average warming since the pre-industrial period (1850-1900) across the datasets – NOAA, Hadley, and Berkeley – that extend back to 1850.
The figure below shows how global temperature so far in 2025 (black line) compares to each month in different years since 1940 (with lines coloured by the decade in which they occurred) in the WMO aggregate of surface temperature dataset.
The first three months of 2025 have been unusually warm, coming in in the top-three warmest on record across all the different scientific groups that report on global surface temperatures. This is despite the presence of moderate La Niña conditions in the tropical Pacific, which typically suppress global temperatures.
January 2025 was the warmest January on record in the WMO aggregate, February was the third warmest and March was tied with 2016 as the second warmest.
When combined, the first three months of the year in 2025 were the second-warmest Q1 period in the historical record, just 0.035C below the record set in 2024 after the peak of a strong El Niño event, as shown in the figure below.
The persistence of warmth after the end of the 2023-24 El Niño event – and through a weak La Niña – has been highly unusual by historical standards. In most prior cases, global temperatures returned closer to the long-term temperature trend following the return to neutral El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) conditions in the tropical Pacific.
Weak La Niña conditions have faded over the past month, with ENSO-neutral conditions returning and expected to persist for most models through the remainder of the year. However, predictions of ENSO status are particularly uncertain at this time of year due to a phenomenon known as the “spring predictability barrier”.
The figure below shows a range of different forecast models for the ENSO for the rest of this year, produced by different scientific groups. The values shown are sea surface temperature variations in the tropical Pacific – known as the El Niño 3.4 region – for overlapping three-month periods.
By looking at the relationship between the first three months and the annual temperatures for every year since 1970 – as well as ENSO conditions for the first three months of the year and the projected development of El Niño conditions for the remaining nine months – Carbon Brief has created a projection of what the final global average temperature for 2025 will likely be.
The analysis includes the estimated uncertainty in 2025 outcomes, given that temperatures from only the first quarter of the year are available so far.
The chart below shows the expected range of 2025 temperatures using the WMO aggregate – including a best-estimate (red) and year-to-date value (yellow). Temperatures are shown with respect to the pre-industrial baseline period (1850-1900).
Carbon Brief’s projection suggests that 2025 is virtually certain to be one of the top-three warmest years, with a best-estimate approximately equal to global temperatures in 2023.
However, this model assumes that 2025 follows the type of climate patterns seen in the past – patterns that were notably broken in 2023 – and to a lesser extent in 2024. Other recent estimates – such as one published by Berkeley Earth – give a higher probability of around 34% that 2025 will set a new temperature record.
The figure below shows Carbon Brief’s estimate of 2025 temperatures using the WMO aggregate, both at the beginning of the year and once each month’s data has come in. The estimate jumped notably after t2025 saw the warmest January on record, but has been relatively stable over the past three months.
Both Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extent spent much of early 2025 at record, or near-record, lows.
The figure below shows both Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extent in 2025 (solid red and blue lines), the historical range in the record between 1979 and 2010 (shaded areas) and the record lows (dotted black line).
(Unlike global temperature records, which only report monthly averages, sea ice data is collected and updated on a daily basis, allowing sea ice extent to be viewed up to the present.)
Arctic sea ice saw a new record low nearly each day between January and March, recording a record-low winter peak extent in late March. Ice extent subsequently moved out of record-low territory in April.
It is worth noting that, as northern hemisphere winter conditions remain cold enough to refreeze sea ice, there tends to be less variability in extent year-to-year in the winter than in the summer, as the chart below illustrates.
Antarctic sea ice started the year within the historical range (1979-2010), before plunging to tie for the second-lowest minimum on record in late February. It has since recovered in April, and is currently on the low end of the historical range.
The ruling centre-left Labor party has for the past three years attempted to fix Australia’s “climate-laggard” reputation by setting a legal net-zero target and approving a record number of renewable energy projects.
Prime minister Anthony Albanese is also hoping, if reelected, to stave off Turkey to host the COP31 climate summit in Adelaide, South Australia, in 2026.
However, the Labor party has faced criticism from climate analysts for approving new coal mines and expansions and pledging support for new gas projects until “beyond 2050”.
Labor’s main opposition, the Liberal-National Coalition, an alliance of right-leaning parties, hopes to reenter power on a plan centred around building seven nuclear power plants across the country.
Australia currently has no nuclear power.
The Coalition has also pledged to “ramp up” domestic gas production, slow the rollout of renewables and keep coal-fired power plants open for longer.
Its leader, Peter Dutton, has said that hosting COP31 would be “madness” and cost “tens of billions” of dollars.
In contrast to the two major parties, Australia’s Greens have policies to stop new coal and gas projects, end fossil fuel subsidies and instead pay homes and businesses to install solar and batteries.
Voting is compulsory in Australia.
Its preferential voting system will all but guarantee that one of the two major parties will enter power.
Current polling suggests that Labor will edge ahead of the Coalition to win the election, after preferences are distributed between the top two parties.
In the interactive grid below, Carbon Brief examines where Australian parties stand on climate change, energy and nature.
Each entry in the grid represents a direct quote from a party document.
The piece will be updated to include the Labor Party’s full plans once they have been announced.
Australia is the third-largest exporter of fossil fuels in the world. Coal accounts for three-quarters of the nation’s total exports.
From 2021-22, Australia produced 422m tonnes of coal. When burned, this will create 1.1bn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e).
Australia’s richest citizen, Gina Rinehart, makes her fortune from coal mining and is a supporter of climate-sceptic groups and a friend of Donald Trump.
Her company, Hancock Prospecting, is now the Coalition’s second-largest donor.
Coalition leader Dutton was forced to clarify that he believed in climate change after refusing to comment on the increasing impacts of warming during a TV debate with Albanese.
Newspaper magnate Rupert Murdoch rules over 60% of Australia’s print media through his company News Corp. He has been accused of using his media empire to sow “confusion and doubt” about climate change.
Australia is also one of the world’s 17 “megadiverse” countries, meaning it is home to some of Earth’s most rare, unique and abundant wildlife. It is one of just two developed countries to have this status, alongside the US.
The nation is facing a species extinction crisis. The Great Barrier Reef, Earth’s largest living structure, is projected to die off if the world does not meet its climate goals.
The logging of natural forests is still permitted in several Australian states, including Tasmania, New South Wales and Queensland.
Both of the major parties have been criticised for failing to centre the biodiversity crisis in their campaigning.
By contrast, the Greens have pledged to spend 1% of the budget on nature, end native forest logging nationally and spend $20bn on biodiversity restoration over the next decade.
]]>The election comes after Justin Trudeau stepped down as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada in January following nine years leading the party as prime minister.
Trudeau cited “internal battles” within the party for the decision, and stated that Canada “deserves a real choice in the next election”.
His successor Mark Carney – the former governor of the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada – called for a snap election on 23 March, just a week after being elected Liberal party leader and, thus, becoming prime minister.
Carney is facing a stiff challenge from Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, whose party was leading in the national polls from 2023 till the beginning of 2025.
However, the campaigning has occurred under the shadow of US president Donald Trump’s tariffs, with 25% taxes placed on Canada’s steel, aluminium and vehicles exports.
The US president’s tariffs and calls to make Canada the “51st state” have contributed to a late surge of support for the Liberals, according to multiple polls.
Carbon Brief analysis finds that a Conservative victory over the Liberals could lead to nearly 800m extra tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade.
In the interactive grid below, Carbon Brief tracks the commitments made by major political parties in their latest election manifestos. The grid covers a range of issues connected to nature, energy and climate change.
The parties covered are:
Each entry in the grid represents a direct quote from one or more of these documents. The grid will be updated as each party publishes their manifesto.
Climate and energy issues have dropped down the election agenda in Canada.
In a poll of 2,000 adults in late March, just 5% of Canadians said that climate issues would most influence their vote.
More than a third cited the “cost of living” as the top issue influencing their vote, while 19% chose Trump’s impact on Canada. Other key issues singled out by respondents were healthcare, housing, jobs, taxes and government spending.
Trump’s election and subsequent tariff announcements have had a dramatic effect on polling ahead of the election, as seen below which highlights the extreme change in probability of each party winning enough seats to form the next government.
Nevertheless, despite slipping down the priority list for many voters, there are a number of climate and energy issues on the ballot, including the future of the oil and gas industry, electricity grid infrastructure, wildfire protection and the rollout of electric vehicles and “green home” retrofits
In the last general election, held in 2021, all major parties committed to pursuing the 2050 net-zero target, signed into law that year by the ruling Liberal party.
Four years later, that consensus appears to be under strain.
Conservative leader Poilievre has distanced himself from Canada’s net-zero target at rallies, telling supporters the Liberals’ “radical net-zero environmental extremism” has driven investment away from Canada. He has also said that the “radical net-zero movement” means “net-zero growth, net-zero jobs, net-zero paycheque”.
As part of plans to make Canada a “leading energy superpower”, Carney has said his party will “aggressively develop projects that are in the national interest” guided by three objectives: energy security; trade diversification; and long-term competitiveness. In a TV debate, he said he will support production of “low-risk” and “low-emission” oil.
The Liberals have said they will support the construction of an “east-west” electricity grid, which could carry electricity from the hydropower-rich provinces of Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia to provinces reliant on fossil fuels for electricity generation.
(This is no small feat as electricity falls under provincial jurisdiction and regional systems vary widely. Some provinces have a fully deregulated electricity market, whereas, in others, electricity is produced and sold by “crown corporations” owned by the provincial government.)
The US’ trade war on Canada has also reignited debates around fossil-fuel pipelines, amid widely reported polling which suggests an uptick in support for new oil-and-gas transportation projects.
(Supporters claim pipelines can reduce the oil-and-gas sector’s reliance on the US, by opening up new export opportunities from eastern ports and reducing the flow of oil which travels from western to eastern Canada via pipelines in the US).
Carney has said the Liberals are open to new oil-and-gas pipelines – but only with the support of the provinces and First Nations.
The Conservatives have said they will support pipelines that would transport oil and gas to eastern Canada. (Previous attempts to get west-east pipelines off the ground – including the Energy East crude oil project and the LNG Quebec scheme – have failed amid fierce opposition focused on economic and environmental concerns.)
To fast-track approval of oil-and-gas production and pipelines, Poilievre has said he will repeal a key federal environmental assessment law – bill C-69.
The NDP opposes the Energy East and LNG Quebec projects specifically, but has said it will not rule out pipelines altogether. However, the left-leaning party has said an east-west electricity grid is its “first priority” for growing the energy market.
The Greens, the NDP and Bloc Québécois have pledged to eliminate tax breaks for oil-and-gas companies and redirect funds towards efforts to tackle or adapt to climate change.
Specifically, the Greens say they would invest freed-up funds in clean energy, the NDP on energy-saving retrofits in homes and the Bloc Québécois on climate adaptation measures.
The Liberals have committed to reinstating a zero-emission vehicle subsidy programme paused earlier this year.
Parties have also put forward plans to boost the country’s preparedness to climate change and, in particular, to wildfires. The Liberals have pledged investment, additional training and modern firefighting equipment for the national parks service’s wildfire response teams.
The Greens, on the other hand, are advocating for the launch of a national civil defence corps – a civilian-led national service dedicated to building Canada’s resilience and preparedness for emergencies.
US president Trump’s tariffs and the ensuing trade war have “dominated” the messaging within the campaigns and “transformed the dynamics of the race”.
On 1 February, Trump signed an executive order imposing 25% tariffs on nearly all goods from Canada and Mexico, claiming this was in response to fentanyl smuggling and illegal immigration.
Following this, there have been months of back-and-forth on the tariffs and their levels, with numerous pauses and steps by Canada to retaliate. This included a threat to place a 10% tariff on oil-and-gas exports to the US.
This includes then-prime minister Trudeau announcing tariffs of 25% on C$155bn of US goods, a move welcomed by government-funded policy research organisation the Canadian Climate Institute. In a statement, the institute’s president Rick Smith said:
“The Canadian Climate Institute is in full support of efforts taken by the federal and provincial governments to retaliate against the unprovoked and illegal tariffs imposed by the United States on Canada.”
In March, Trump suspended many of the tariffs, but imposed 25% on steel and aluminium.
Following this, Ontario announced its own tariffs, including a 25% surcharge on electricity exported to Michigan, Minnesota and New York.
Trump dubbed this an “abusive threat from Canada”, threatening to double tariffs on the country’s steel and aluminium. Ultimately, both sides backed down.
There is an asymmetry in economic dependence between the two countries that leaves Canada particularly exposed to the trade war.
In 2023, nearly 77% of Canada’s overall exports were to the US, of which energy products and vehicles were the largest categories, representing 40%. The US accounted for 97% of Canada’s C$124bn of oil exports that year, as well as 45% of its gas, according to government figures.
Meanwhile, Canada only accounts for 14% of US goods exports, ensuring “Canada suffers disproportionately in economic confrontations”, notes Forbes.
Speaking at the beginning of April, Carney said that the tariffs on Canada would “directly affect millions”.
The effect of the tariffs will particularly hit those in the automotive industry. A recent article in Bloomberg suggested that the tariffs threaten to “throw a wrench into the prospects for decarbonising both economies”.
It highlights that Canada is a “world leader” in lower-carbon aluminium and has been building up its electric vehicle (EV) sector. As such, the impact of 25% tariffs on the automotive sector could hamper the transition to EVs.
Additionally, the renewable-energy sector is particularly reliant on cross-border supply chains, leaving it vulnerable to the disruption created by the tariffs and ensuing trade war.
All of the major parties have responded within their campaigns. The Liberal party is planning to match the 25% tariffs on vehicles, along with investing C$5bn into a “trade diversification corridor fund”.
The Conservatives, meanwhile, have said they will not remove the counter tariffs until the US removes all of its tariffs on Canada. They would put almost all of the collected tariffs into tax relief for the workers hit by them.
Elsewhere, the NDP is in favour of the retaliatory tariffs and has threatened to impose a 100% tariff on Tesla products, if Trump moves to apply a tariff to all Canadian goods. Bloc Québécois has called for a pandemic-style wage subsidy to support workers impacted by the tariffs.
The Green party would work with other democracies to pursue joint retaliatory economic measures.
An early point of contention within the Canadian election has been the so-called “carbon tax”.
The “pan-Canadian climate framework” was brought in in 2018 and is modelled on the “groundbreaking” carbon-pricing system introduced in British Columbia in 2008.
It places a surcharge on carbon-based fuels and other sources of greenhouse gas emissions. The system has two parts, one for consumers and one for industry, with different rates applied to either.
A key element of the carbon tax is that it is revenue-neutral, with the government paying back any money raised to the taxpayer in the form of rebates.
Despite the criticism levied against it, between 60-70% of non-Conservative leaning voters continue to support the concept of carbon pricing, according to a poll in February.
The carbon tax has previously been “heralded as a cornerstone of the country’s strategy to tackle climate change”, but, amid the cost-of-living crisis, in recent years it has increasingly come under fire.
Throughout 2024, Poilievre sought to position the tax as a key point of difference between his party and the Liberals, arguing that Trudeau must “call a ‘carbon-tax’ election”.
In a statement made in March, Poilievre argued that the tax would combine with the tariffs imposed by the US government, leaving “Trump grinning from ear to ear”. He added:
“We will take the carbon tax off your gas, heat and food. But we will also axe the tax on Canadian steel, aluminum, natural gas, food production, concrete and all other industries. We will be strong, self-reliant and sovereign, standing on our own feet and standing up to the Americans.”
Following Carney’s election as Liberal party leader, one of his first actions was to cut the carbon tax rate to zero for consumers, effectively ending it.
Speaking on his first day in office, Carney said:
“This will make a difference to hard-pressed Canadians, but it is part of a much bigger set of measures that this government is taking to ensure that we fight against climate change, that our companies are competitive and the country moves forward.”
The industrial carbon tax still stands, however, and has drawn increasing focus within the election campaigns.
In March, Poilievre pledged to “completely eliminate the carbon tax” while speaking from a steel mill in eastern Ontario.
(The steel mill had received more than C$3.5m from the carbon-tax scheme, helping it to replace its old gas furnace and consequently reducing its emissions by 17%.)
Carney has promised to bolster the industrial carbon tax, noting that it will be necessary for trade with Europe and other countries in the future.
The NDP has said it will keep the industrial carbon price. Bloc Québécois did not comment on the federal carbon tax explicitly, but has said it will “advocate for carbon pricing across Canada”.
Analysis from the Canadian Climate Institute found that “large-emitter trading systems” – a group which includes the industrial carbon tax, as well as Quebec’s cap-and-trade emissions pricing system – are on track to be the single biggest driver of cuts to Canada’s emissions by 2030, contributing 20-48% of anticipated reductions.
This amounts to the entire annual emissions of the UK and France combined.
These extra emissions would cause around C$233bn ($169bn) in climate damages around the world, based on the Canadian government’s official costings.
The right-leaning Conservative party, led by Pierre Poilievre, has pledged to cut one of the nation’s most significant climate policies – industrial carbon pricing – as well as other key regulations.
If these policies are removed and not replaced, modelling by researchers from Simon Fraser University and University of Victoria shows that Canada’s gradually declining emissions would likely start to creep up again in the coming years.
In contrast, emissions would continue to fall under the policies currently backed by Mark Carney’s centrist Liberal party, which has overseen a modest decrease over the past decade.
However, Carbon Brief analysis of the modelling also suggests that neither of the major parties’ policy platforms would put Canada on track to reach any of its climate targets.
These figures complement analysis by the Canadian government showing that the nation still needs to implement more ambitious measures in order to reach its target to cut emissions to net-zero by 2050.
(For more on Canada’s election, see Carbon Brief’s manifesto tracker, which captures what the major parties have said about climate change, energy and nature.)
Canada is the world’s 10th biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. Significant contributors include its sizeable oil-and-gas sector and high emissions from transport.
The nation has been relatively slow to decarbonise. However, after a decade of rule by the Liberals, led by prime minister Justin Trudeau, there has been a small dip in Canada’s emissions.
With a federal election looming, an unpopular Trudeau resigned and was replaced in March by Carney, an economist with a background in climate finance.
His main rival in the election, which takes place on 28 April, will be the Conservatives, a party that until recently was the clear favourite. Conservative leader Poilievre has accused the Liberal government of pursuing “net-zero environmental extremism” and Carney of being part of the “radical net-zero movement”.
A sudden shift in polling that put the Liberals ahead has been widely attributed to their right-leaning opponents’ alignment with Donald Trump. This alignment has become politically toxic, following the US president’s tariffs and talk of annexing Canada.
Carbon pricing is at the heart of Canadian climate politics. Poilievre has long pledged to “axe the tax”, referring to a consumer levy that is meant to incentivise people to use less fossil fuel.
When Carney took office, his first action was to cut this carbon tax to zero, effectively ending his party’s signature climate policy.
In response, Poilievre pledged to cut the “entire carbon tax”, referring to a federal backstop on carbon pricing applied to major industrial emitters, such as fossil-fuel producers. He has also committed to abandoning other climate regulations.
The impact of these rollbacks is illustrated by the “Conservatives” line in the figure below, based on the party’s climate-related announcements to date. Notably, Canada’s emissions would be expected to start rising again, reversing some of the recent decline.
The “Liberals” line is based on current federal policies, excluding the consumer carbon tax. It would see a continued, steady drop in emissions if the Liberals retain power, even if they fail to implement any new climate policies after the election.
As such, a Conservative victory could mean an additional 771m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) entering the atmosphere by 2035.
Along with the US, Canada has long calculated the “social cost of carbon” and other greenhouse gases, in order to place a value on any emissions changes resulting from new regulations.
Based on Carbon Brief analysis of the government’s own figures for this metric, the extra emissions released under a Conservative government could result in global damages worth C$233bn ($169bn).
The emissions trajectories out to 2035 are based on modelling carried out by climate scientists Emma Starke, a PhD researcher at Simon Fraser University, and Dr Katya Rhodes, an associate professor at the University of Victoria.
Starke and Rhodes simulated the policy platforms of the two major Canadian parties using the CIMS energy-economy model, a well-established tool for understanding the country’s federal climate policies.
The researchers ran the models out to 2035, twice the normal parliamentary term length, to reflect the timespan it can take for policies to significantly affect annual emissions.
Starke tells Carbon Brief the “simple message” of their work is that a federal Liberal government is “likely to continue reducing emissions while a Conservative government would see them rise significantly”.
If the Conservative party were to trigger such a reversal, Canada would be the only G7 nation with rising emissions.
The nation is already something of an outlier, with slower emissions cuts than most major global-north economies and per-capita emissions three times higher than the EU average.
Even in the “Liberals” scenario modelled by Starke and Rhodes, emissions would only fall to 1990 levels in 2035. Meanwhile, nations such as the UK and Germany have already roughly halved their emissions from 1990 levels, even as their economies have expanded.
Canada has a net-zero target for 2050. Under the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, it also has interim targets of cutting its emissions to 20% below 2005 levels by 2026, 40-45% by 2030 and 45-50% by 2035.
As the yellow lines in the chart above show, neither of the major Canadian parties has set out a policy programme that is sufficient to achieve the nation’s climate targets.
Emissions cuts from land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF), which count towards these targets, are not captured in the CIMS modelling of the two parties’ climate policies.
However, even when accounting for projected LULUCF emissions reductions, Carbon Brief analysis suggests a potential Liberal government’s annual emissions could be nearly one-third higher than the 2030 target.
Under a Conservative government, this gap could widen to more than 50% higher. (For more information about LULUCF estimates, see the Methodology.)
For context, the Conservatives’ gap in 2030 would be nearly equivalent to the entire annual emissions of Bangladesh. The Liberals’ gap in the same year would be roughly the size of Kuwait’s annual emissions.
This pessimistic outlook is supported by analysis from the Canadian government itself and independent analysts at the Canadian Climate Institute (CCI). Both have repeatedly shown that Canada is not on track to achieve its climate targets. (Analysts at Climate Action Tracker have also described Canada’s policies as “insufficient” to reach the world’’s Paris Agreement targets.)
This is confirmed by the most recent official projections, published by the government in December 2024 alongside Canada’s first “biennial transparency report” (BTR) to the UN.
The chart below shows that neither of the main scenarios modelled by the government would be sufficient for Canada to reach its targets, meaning further policies would be needed to get on track.
Even in the government’s most optimistic scenario, Canada would only achieve an 18% emissions cut by 2026 – rather than the 20% being targeted – and a 34% cut by 2030, rather than 40%.
The “reference” scenario, shown by the upper grey line in the chart above, accounts for all federal, provincial and territorial policies that were in place by August 2024 and assumes no further government action. (This means it does not include more recent actions, such as scrapping consumer carbon pricing.)
The “additional measures” scenario, shown by the lower grey line in the chart above, includes extra measures that were announced, but not yet implemented.
It also includes extra emissions cuts from nature-based solutions, agricultural changes and a small number of international carbon credits purchased from the Western Climate Initiative. (Both scenarios also include accounting contributions from LULUCF.)
As the chart shows, the “Liberals” scenario modelled by Starke and Rhodes broadly aligns with the reference scenario, once LULUCF contributions are included. (This is despite Starke and Rhodes excluding the consumer carbon tax, see below.)
In the introduction to Canada’s 2024 BTR, Liberal climate minister Steven Guilbeault writes:
“We have more work to do to achieve our enhanced 2030 target of 40-45% below 2005 emissions.”
In an election dominated by the growing economic threat from the US, climate change has not been seen as a key issue by either politicians or voters. (See Carbon Brief’s election manifesto tracker for more on how climate has featured so far.)
The modelling by Starke and Rhodes captures the impact of the climate policy proposals that have been announced by the Liberals and the Conservatives ahead of election day.
These mainly consist of Conservative commitments to eliminate parts of Canada’s climate strategy, citing high costs. Perhaps most significantly, the party has pledged to scrap industrial carbon pricing.
This policy involves setting limits on emissions from high-polluting businesses such as steel and fossil-fuel companies. Industries pay for emissions above a certain limit and can obtain saleable credits if they reduce their emissions below that limit.
Provinces and territories can set up their own pricing systems, but there is a federal backstop representing the minimum standards that are required.
Oil-producing regions have already moved to abandon industrial carbon pricing, challenging the federal government to enforce the backstop.
Canada’s climate policies overlap and complement each other in various ways, making it difficult to assign shares of emissions cuts to specific policies.
However, the CCI calculated in 2024 that industrial carbon pricing was set to be the “single biggest driver of emissions reductions” by 2030, accounting for 20-48% of emissions cuts expected over the next five years.
Consumer carbon pricing, commonly referred to simply as the “carbon tax”, is paid by households and small businesses on fuels such as petrol and gas. The CCI estimates that it would only have been responsible for 8-14% of emissions cuts by 2030.
Both parties have abandoned consumer carbon pricing and this is captured in the emissions trajectories modelled by Starke and Rhodes.
The Conservative election manifesto confirms earlier pledges to scrap a list of climate policies, which are also captured in the modelling. These include Canada’s electric vehicle sales mandate, clean-fuel regulations and clean-electricity regulations.
The electric-vehicle targets, part of Canada’s objective to phase out petrol and diesel vehicle sales by 2035, have been dismissed by Poilievre as a “tax on the poor” that result in people being “forced to pay” extra for electric cars.
Poilievre has referred to clean-fuel regulations, which are intended to boost hydrogen and other alternative fuels in the transport sector, as another form of “carbon tax”. Government estimates suggest these measures would cut emissions by 26MtCO2s annually by 2030.
Unlike these transport-related measures, the clean-electricity regulations are not set to kick in until 2035, so they make minimal difference to the two parties’ trajectories.
The Conservatives have also pledged to scrap the planned emissions cap on Canada’s oil-and-gas sector. The modellers left this out of their simulations, as it has yet to be legislated and there are still uncertainties about its implementation.
The modelling assumes that the Conservatives remove these climate policies and then do not replace them with anything else.
This may not be how things would play out. While the Conservatives are traditionally more opposed to climate action than the Liberals, they have not confirmed that they would withdraw from their national or international obligations altogether.
Indeed, Poilievre has described “technology, not taxes” as “the best way to fight climate change”, saying clean industries should be encouraged in Canada by expanding tax credits. Such proposals are not captured in this modelling.
Starke and Rhodes write that these would in any case have limited impact:
“We do not analyse the effect of various subsidies such as tax credits and grants because all political parties promise these and they have only a marginal effect on greenhouse gas emissions.”
There is also uncertainty around the impact an escalating trade war might have in Canada – including its fossil-fuel sector – as politicians seek to bolster domestic industries. This makes it harder to predict future emissions trajectories under the two parties.
The Conservatives have been more vocal about backing Canada’s fossil-fuel industry, but the Liberals have also expressed support for the sector, including pipeline projects. However, the lack of clarity on such measures mean they only have a “modest effect” in the CIMS modelling, according to Starke and Rhodes.
The “Liberal” and “Conservative” scenarios in this article come from modelling by Emma Starke, a PhD researcher at Simon Fraser University, and Dr Katya Rhodes, an associate professor at the University of Victoria.
They used the CIMS energy-economy model to simulate the impact of removing key climate policies, in cases where parties have been clear about their intention to do so.
They did not account for policies that were deemed to have “only a marginal effect on greenhouse gas emissions” and focused on “key regulatory and pricing policies because these are the most important for reducing greenhouse gas emissions”. Their approach is outlined in an article for Policy Options.
The analysis uses the “medium growth scenario” from Statistics Canada forecasts of population and GDP growth.
In the first chart, Carbon Brief uses historical emissions data from Canada’s official greenhouse gas inventory, which at the time of publication includes figures up to 2023. Note that Canadian historical emissions data has undergone changes between years as the government has shifted its methodology. This results in differences between datasets.
Canada’s emissions targets use the baseline year of 2005, for example a 40-45% reduction from 2005. In the most recent inventory, annual emissions in 2005 were 759MtCO2e. This baseline year does not include emissions from LULUCF.
However, Canada can use “accounting contributions” from the LULUCF sector to meet its emissions targets. This involves using a “reference level approach” for managed forest and associated harvested wood products, meaning the government compares actual emissions and removals to a projected “reference level”. It uses a “net-net approach” for all the other LULUCF sub-sectors, meaning both emissions are removals are accounted for to get a net emissions figure.
For simplicity, Carbon Brief has left LULUCF contributions, which are relatively small, out of the historical emissions figures used in the first chart.
The CIMS modelling does not include emissions from LULUCF, so these are not included in the “Liberal” and “Conservative” emissions trajectories. However, in order to calculate the size of the emissions gap between the trajectories and Canada’s future targets, Carbon Brief simply added figures from government projections to these trajectories. These figures amount to emissions reductions of roughly 28-31MtCO2e annually from 2030 out to 2040.
In the second chart, Carbon Brief has used emissions data from the Canadian government’s most recent emissions projections, which appeared in its BTR, published at the end of 2024. These figures are slightly different from the ones in the most recent inventory, include LULUCF contributions and only go out to 2022.
Besides LULUCF contributions, the government reports separately on the impact of nature-based climate solutions, “agriculture measures” and credits purchased under the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), all of which are considered “additional measures” in its modelling. Nature-based solutions and “agriculture measures” cut another 12MtCO2e annually from 2030 onwards, whereas WCI credits are barely used. These figures are included in the “additional measures” government estimate in the second chart.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
COP30 LOOMS: Ahead of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil later this year, the Guardian has published a series of articles spotlighting the beef industry’s destruction of the Brazilian Amazon. In the first, journalists from the Guardian, Unearthed and Repórter Brasil interviewed more than 35 people, including ranchers and ranching union leaders, who expressed disbelief that the world’s largest meat company, Brazilian firm JBS, would be able to sufficiently curb its deforestation. JBS has overseen large-scale deforestation in the Amazon, but pledged to “clean up its beef supply chain in the region by the end of 2025”, the Guardian said. JBS told the Guardian that it contested the conclusions.
‘BULLETS AND BEEF’: The second focused on the diminishing fortunes of the Amazon’s “cowboys” – cattle ranchers that seized forest for beef production and now face an uncertain future as local climate impacts worsen. According to the newspaper, Vinicius Borba, a land owner representing rural producers in the Indigenous territory of Apyterewa, told a meeting of farmers: “I am called a land-grabber, an invader, a deforester, but it is not my fault…I have a property that we have occupied for over 20 years and, to this day, the government has not given me the title.” The third followed the life and death of a “laundered cow” in the Amazon.
PERUVIAN AMAZON IN PERIL: Elsewhere, environmental and Indigenous groups have warned that a recent amendment to Peru’s Forestry and Wildlife Law could accelerate deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon, the Associated Press said. The amendment removes a requirement for landowners or companies to get state authorisation before converting forested land to other uses, the newswire said, adding: “Critics say the change could legitimise years of illegal deforestation.”
SOY IT GOES: Senior diplomats from China and Brazil met this week in Brasilia for talks on Brazilian agricultural exports “against the backdrop of unprecedented [US-China] trade tension”, South China Morning Post reported. Topics included “expanding Brazil’s [soya] harvest and accrediting Brazilian slaughterhouses for export to China”, it added. Brazil and Argentina “are emerging as early winners in the global trade war that’s upending agricultural markets”, Bloomberg wrote. A Global Times comment from a professor at Shanghai University said that China-Brazil trade cooperation “is not only an urgent necessity, but also an obvious possibility”.
‘FRENCH FRY WAR’: The global impacts of tariffs on food products and farmers were extensively reported this past fortnight. Business Insider covered the “french fry war” over canola oil prices. The New York Times looked at how US competitors could edge out Italian food producers using products “made to look and sound as if they are from Italy”. The Japan Times looked at how reciprocal tariffs could “throw cold water” on Japan’s agricultural exports to the US, including green tea, sake, scallops, beef and rice. At the same time, Japan reeled from its own “surging rice prices”, importing the staple from South Korea for the first time in 25 years, Bloomberg reported.
REALITY BITES: Trump’s tariffs are a “shock to the system” that could drive US farmers to “financial ruin” on the back of “worsening climate shocks”, the Guardian reported. It added that unprecedented flooding caused “millions of dollars of crop losses” in the midwest and Texas in recent weeks. Separately, Al Jazeera reported that farmers across villages in India burned effigies of US vice president JD Vance, who was visiting the country “as the Modi government desperately tries to duck US tariffs”. The story noted that “India has kept tariffs high to safeguard its farmers from imports that might otherwise flood domestic markets”. Nearly half the country’s population is dependent on agriculture.
Carbon Brief recently published a glossary of 25 ‘climate-friendly’ farming methods, including methods for growing vegetables, fruits, grains and legumes, as well as those for raising and pasturing livestock.
This week, two experts in sustainable farming discuss the pros and cons of some of the techniques laid out in the glossary.
Large farms, which typically involve industrial farming, occupy 70% of the world’s agricultural land.
Intensive farming arose with the industrial revolution between 1760 and 1840 and seeks to maximise crop production and yield by mechanising processes, planting monocultures and using chemical inputs, such as fertilisers and pesticides. Although industrial farming has had higher yields compared to other farming methods, it has also led to problems such as soil depletion, greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss.
In the decades since, a myriad of so-called climate and environment “friendly” farming methods have emerged as potential solutions to the environmental and social problems sparked by industrialisation, Dr Michele Gomes, an agroecologist and professor at Vânia Medeiros Lopes State School, in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, told Carbon Brief. Examples include agroecology, regenerative agriculture, silvopasture systems and sustainable agriculture.
These less-intensive methods typically use fewer pesticides and fertilisers, along with promoting more interactions with biodiversity.
Many of these terms are widely used in environmental spaces, reports and international conferences, including the UN biodiversity and climate negotiations.
Some of the farming methods laid out in the glossary have clearer definitions than others.
Ecological farming, agroecology and organic farming are examples of methods with more established definitions. This is due to a combination of factors, including a strong scientific foundation, potential application to various regions and the ability for farmers to obtain certifications, Gomes told Carbon Brief.
She added that newer methods, which are still being studied, may have different interpretations and uses – as is the case with climate-smart farming and precision agriculture.
Many of the glossary’s methods share common goals and advantages, such as mitigating climate change impacts and economic and social viability, said Dr Erica Muñiz, a researcher at Mexico’s National Institute of Forest, Agriculture and Livestock Research (INIFAP) and president of the Mexican Society of Sustainable Agriculture.
However, some only focus on addressing ecological problems, while others also consider social and economic aspects. For example, precision agriculture uses technology to solve environmental problems by reducing the use of fertilisers, but it does not necessarily address food sovereignty, food security or social justice, she added.
Both Muñiz and Gomes agreed that many factors go into choosing the best farming method. The optimal method for a given farm depends on the availability of land and inputs and the desired objectives of farmers.
However, they provided general considerations for selecting the most sustainable and cost-effective farming methods.
Muñiz said that producers “urgently require the implementation of agroecological principles” and apply them to local contexts. At the same time, she said, governments need to implement policies that include sustainability and incorporate peasants’ knowledge. She told Carbon Brief:
“Sustainability is the optimum point to which we aspire to reach and each of these kinds of agriculture contributes to a greater or lesser extent to achieving this.”
For Gomes, among the most sustainable farming methods are agroecology and ecological agriculture, as they do not use chemical inputs, but integrate social factors and peasants’ knowledge. Other methods, such as silvopasture and precision agriculture, “when applied sustainably, can be extremely efficient and profitable for farmers”, she added.
Gomes told Carbon Brief:
“The transition is a complex process, but with a combination of public policy, education and consumer demand, it is possible to move towards a more sustainable global agricultural system.”
POISONED PADDY: New research found that as “carbon emissions rise and the Earth continues to warm, so too will arsenic levels in rice”, BBC News reported. While “almost all rice contains arsenic”, amounts can vary, the study noted. Rising CO2 levels could contribute to “approximately 19.3m more cancer cases in China alone” due to increased arsenic intake, it said. The outlet pointed out that the worst-case warming scenario in the study was “beyond the high emissions” scenario used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But, it added, the research “provides a snapshot” of what could happen to rice crops globally – not just in China, where the researchers conducted their experiments.
LANCET LOBBIED: A “mud-slinging” campaign against a landmark climate-friendly diets study published in 2019 was coordinated by a PR firm on behalf of the meat lobby, according to a DeSmog investigation. The EAT-Lancet report recommended that people in the global north eat less meat to benefit both the planet and their health. DeSmog obtained a document that “indicates that [PR consultancy] Red Flag briefed journalists, thinktanks and social media influencers to frame the peer-reviewed research as ‘radical’, ‘out of touch’ and ‘hypocritical’”. According to the document, Red Flag was acting on the behalf of the Animal Agriculture Alliance, a meat and dairy industry coalition, DeSmog said. Neither organisation responded to requests to comment.
GLOBAL BLEACHING: Scientists warned that the world’s coral reefs have been pushed into “uncharted territory” by the “worst global bleaching event on record that has now hit more than 80% of the planet’s reefs”, the Guardian reported. Reefs in at least 82 countries and territories “have been exposed to enough heat to turn corals white since the global event started in January 2023”, it added. Reuters noted that the scientists say that the “devastating mass bleaching [has been] spurred by record-high ocean temperatures”. The newswire quoted Dr Melanie McField, a marine scientist working in the Caribbean, who said: “The magnitude and extent of the heat stress is shocking.” Meanwhile, the Guardian reported that Australia’s next government, to be elected on 3 May, could represent a “last chance” for ensuring the survival of the Great Barrier Reef.
OCEANS TREATY: The first of three meetings to decide how the world will implement a landmark ocean treaty began on 14 April in New York. Decisions to be made include the meeting frequency, as well as information-sharing and voting procedures. The “countdown is on towards reaching 60 ratifications, which will allow the agreement to enter into force”, Earth Negotiations Bulletin reported, with only 21 governments having ratified it so far. Elsewhere, Scientific American reported from “the closest thing in the world to an operational deep-sea mining site” in Papua New Guinea, with an exploration company using a “controversial mining license” to conduct seafloor mining tests.
DIVINE NATURE: There was widespread coverage of the environmental legacy of Pope Francis, who died on Monday at the age of 88. The New York Times noted that the Pope’s “Laudato Si” was the first papal encyclical focused solely on the environment. (See Carbon Brief coverage from the time.) The newspaper called the encyclical a “sprawling call to action” that “recognised climate change as both a social and environmental crisis” and “emphasised that its greatest consequences were shouldered by the poor”. It continued that Pope Francis published a follow-up in 2023 with “Laudate Deum”, which called out climate sceptics and said that “human beings must be recognised as a part of nature”.
CRISPR, HAPPIER, MORE PRODUCTIVE: National Public Radio spoke to Dr Brad Ringeisen, executive director of the Innovative Genomics Institute, on whether CRISPR gene-editing “may hold the key” to climate-resilient crops.
PESTICIDE PALSY: A Politico long read profiled Dutch neurologist Bas Bloem and his “fight” to contain the environmental drivers of Parkinson’s disease, especially after finding a pattern of cases cropping up in areas dominated by intensive agriculture.
DOCTOR’S ORDERS: CNN’s Chasing Life podcast explored the relationship between nature and human health.
SECRETS OF THE FOREST: NOVA followed scientists in forest landscapes from Costa Rica to Australia to understand how much carbon forests can store.
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org
In a new review article, published in Nature Reviews Clean Technology, we look at where hydrogen could plausibly become competitive – and the applications where it is unlikely to ever be a viable solution.
For each use case, the review looks at the cost and carbon emissions of using hydrogen relative to alternative solutions, identifying the barriers which stand in the way of uptake.
For example, high-profile applications, such as home heating and fuelling cars, are still widely promoted, but are failing to take off.
Fundamentally, this is because hydrogen is an inefficient and costly option in these cases, with Ferraris globally outselling all makes of hydrogen fuel-cell cars combined.
Finally, the review looks at the current state of government hydrogen policy around the world, plus the ways that its potential could be maximised in the future.
Hydrogen’s versatility means it has been proposed for many applications, from laptops to aeroplanes, along with a succession of bizarre novelties, such as the hydrogen-powered ride-on robotic horse.
However, global production has grown more slowly than was projected by oil companies, NGOs and academics over the last 50 years. As shown in the chart below, production has only grown by around 3% per year since the 1970s – far short of expectations.
Hydrogen is not always the best option for decarbonising and several high-profile use cases are struggling to gain traction, despite decades of investment.
Many of these, such as home heating and cars, are now being electrified at an extremely rapid rate, with hydrogen unlikely to ever catch up.
For example, electric heat pumps have outsold gas-fired boilers in the US since 2022. In the UK, the then-Conservative government cancelled what would have been the world’s largest hydrogen heating pilot. And oil-and-gas giant Shell has closed all of its hydrogen filling stations in the UK and the US.
Similarly, one-fifth of all cars bought last year were electric, with sales growing quickly in the first part of 2025. Only a handful of hydrogen car models are on the road worldwide.
Moreover, hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle sales tanked in 2023, dropping 40%, with customers put off by lack of choice, minimal options for refuelling and the high cost of both the car and its fuel.
Clearly, decades of research and development from the major US, German and Japanese automakers has failed to deliver a fuel-cell vehicle with mass-market appeal.
The chart below shows that battery electric vehicles outsell hydrogen fuel-cell models by 1,000-to-1 and that more Ferraris are now sold each year than all makes and models of fuel-cell vehicle combined – despite the iconic Italian sports cars costing upwards of $350,000 each.
It is not all doom and gloom for the hydrogen sector. The gas, or its derivatives such as methanol and ammonia, are among the very few options for decarbonising sectors that are difficult or impossible to electrify, such as steelmaking, fertilisers, petrochemicals and shipping.
As countries move beyond “low-hanging fruit” in the energy transition, such as renewables, electric vehicles and heat pumps, decarbonisation will become more expensive and technically challenging.
Petroleum refining, fertiliser and methanol production currently rely on hydrogen sourced from fossil fuels. Our research shows that switching these to clean hydrogen produced from renewables, or with carbon capture, could cut global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2%, more than double the UK’s total CO2 emissions.
Steelmaking is another promising area. The main alternative of adding carbon capture to existing blast furnaces is failing to take off. Hydrogen-based steelmaking is still at pilot scale, but the first commercial plant is expected to start production in Sweden next year.
Hydrogen also attracts interest in heavy-duty transport, where batteries face challenges due to vehicle range, weight and refuelling constraints.
Trucks, ships and aeroplanes could be powered by fuel cells or by burning hydrogen in combustion engines, though both technologies are still prohibitively expensive.
Airbus recently announced it was delaying the development of a hydrogen-powered commercial aircraft, citing the slower-than-expected expansion of the wider hydrogen ecosystem.
A fourth promising area is long-duration energy storage. As power systems worldwide build more wind and solar, issues related to their variable output increase in prominence.
The UK is grappling with how to replace the gas-fired power stations that currently ensure security of supply when the wind does not blow. At the same time, it spent £393m last year shutting off wind turbines when the grid was unable to carry their output.
Hydrogen is one of the few ways to store surplus renewable electricity for weeks or months, without resorting to fossil fuels. Converting it back to power when demand – and prices – are high might help countries completely decarbonise power generation, with benefits across the board.
High costs are arguably hydrogen’s biggest hurdle, both compared to fossil fuels and to clean alternatives such as electrification.
Electrolysers – the machines which use electricity to split water into hydrogen – are rapidly becoming cheaper, as happened with solar panels in recent years, driven by innovation and the scaling of production, as manufacturing has shifted to China.
As the chart below shows, while the cost of fuel cells and electrolysers are falling over time, they are falling more slowly and from a higher starting point than solar panels.
Hydrogen from current projects is still many times more expensive than analyst projections, but as electrolyser costs fall, so too will the cost of fuel production.
However, the machine is only part of the cost. So-called “soft costs” are substantial, including project administration, engineering and installation, as well as the electricity to power electrolysers.
Producing “green” hydrogen – created using renewable energy – still costs the equivalent of several hundred dollars per barrel of oil equivalent, compared to the 2024 average for oil itself of $75. There is a limit to how much hydrogen costs can fall.
Blue hydrogen – made from methane gas with carbon capture – is cheaper than green hydrogen today, but will always cost more than burning gas directly, unless the resulting CO2 emissions are subject to a carbon price. This route also ties hydrogen’s fortunes to volatile global gas markets, which have caused household energy bills to surge over the past few years.
Green hydrogen can be produced with very low emissions across much of the world, but our research shows it still has a substantial upstream carbon footprint from manufacturing renewable generators (wind and solar farms) and hydrogen generators (electrolysers).
Even if green hydrogen could be produced with zero emissions, every megawatt-hour of clean electricity used to make hydrogen is one less that could replace coal or gas on the power grid, or go into powering electric vehicles or heat pumps. These direct uses of low-carbon power can deliver several times greater emissions savings per unit of electricity than hydrogen can.
Until there is a genuine surplus of renewable power, our research suggests that using the electricity directly to displace fossil fuels results in greater emissions savings.
The climate impact of blue hydrogen is hotly contested, with leading academics arguing over what assumptions and data to use when assessing its potential emissions, given that there are not any blue hydrogen plants operating, from which to get real-world data.
Producing blue hydrogen with low emissions would require eliminating nearly all methane leaks from upstream extraction and transport, as well as capturing more than 95% of the CO2 from the process of turning methane into hydrogen. Both are possible, but not what is practised today.
Only Norway and a handful of other countries can feasibly produce consistently low-carbon blue hydrogen.
Carbon is not the only issue to consider in terms of the wider sustainability of hydrogen production. For example, the water needed to make green hydrogen could affect arid regions, where renewable resources are greatest.
As with wind, solar and batteries, hydrogen also depends on metal catalysts and other critical minerals, potentially intensifying strain on these resources and the communities who extract them.
Hydrogen technologies also rely critically on “forever chemicals”, which are linked to cancers, liver damage and other chronic illnesses. This is only starting to be understood, raising questions about long-term supply risks and pollution.
Governments around the world are launching hydrogen strategies, but the outlook is mixed.
Clean hydrogen requires three things – production, dedicated infrastructure and reliable demand – all of which must scale up at the same time. This “three-sided chicken and egg problem” requires careful coordination to avoid stranded assets.
The US Inflation Reduction Act initially offered generous production tax credits, bringing billions of dollars of announced investments and optimism that clean hydrogen could soon become cost-competitive. However, under the Trump administration, these credits are now on pause, leaving project developers uncertain.
European policy leans towards renewable green hydrogen, with auctions and subsidies available, though uptake will remain modest until costs fall further.
Our research shows that of the 60-plus countries that have launched national hydrogen strategies, 58 plan to become exporters. Who will want to import all their hydrogen remains to be seen.
Only Japan, Israel and a handful of European countries actively plan to import clean hydrogen, yet the cost, inefficiency and climate impacts of hydrogen transportation present a formidable barrier to international trade.
Much of the world now has a national hydrogen strategy in place, as shown in the figure below, with most countries taking an inclusive approach to the source of hydrogen production.
Hydrogen can be part of the energy transition, if used where it offers clear advantages over alternatives, our research shows.
However, many past attempts to develop mass-market hydrogen use cases, including in home-heating pilots and for fuel-cell vehicles, have struggled to demonstrate that advantage.
Instead, these hydrogen-based technologies have been outsold by cheaper and more efficient electrified solutions, such as heat pumps and battery electric vehicles.
Policymakers and investors face tough choices. The review indicates that hydrogen’s highest-value use cases are in industry, heavy transport, steel and energy storage, where alternative technologies are either expensive, inconvenient or non-existent.
These more competitive use cases are near the top of the “ladder” for hydrogen competitiveness, illustrated in the figure below. In contrast, heating and light vehicles are at the bottom.
The evidence suggests that supporting hydrogen in areas with clear competitive advantages could help avoid past pitfalls, which have included:
Put another way, policymakers can avoid these pitfalls by comparing proposals to use clean hydrogen to decarbonise different sectors with the alternatives, in terms of costs and emissions.
If clean hydrogen is prioritised for the most advantageous use cases, which better justify subsidies and infrastructure investments, then policymakers are more likely to avoid a repeat of historical “hype cycles” of boom and bust, our research suggests.
Ultimately, hydrogen’s role will hinge on delivering meaningful emissions cuts at competitive costs, rather than substituting for simpler, more direct routes to cutting fossil fuel use.
China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.
ESCALATED RATES: The US-China trade war deepened, with, as of today, US tariffs on China standing at 145% (with some products facing up to 245% tariffs) and China responding with 125% tariffs. Huang Runqiu, head of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, “emphasised that unilateral trade measures such as…imposing tariffs on new-energy products have undermined global efforts to address climate change”, reported China Environment News.
LIMITED IMPACT: Currently, most Chinese low-carbon products are not significantly impacted. Financial outlet Yicai said high tariffs from the Biden administration had ensured Chinese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers “have virtually no presence in the US market”. The wind industry, facing a similar situation, has worked on “minimising” the negative impacts since 2018, reported industry outlet BJX News. Carbon Brief confirmed that solar products were not included in a subsequent US tariffs exemption. Chinese solar manufacturers told Jiemian that they were “psychologically prepared” for the tariffs and were not keen to expand business in the US. Semafor said Chinese clean-energy technology producers may “emerge stronger as a result of increased isolation from the US market”, as a “narrowing export market may actually force China’s clean-tech companies to do some long-overdue housecleaning” which could improve their business models and China’s climate action. Nevertheless, the Chinese new-energy storage sector faces “major challenges” amid the trade war, as the high global demand makes overseas expansion a “must” for producers, said Chinese outlet Outlook Weekly.
CRITICAL MINERALS: Following Beijing’s announcement on export restrictions on critical minerals, shipments of minerals were also “halted” at ports, said the New York Times. The Chinese government is drafting a “new regulatory system”, which “could permanently prevent” those minerals from reaching “certain companies”, added the newspaper. Yicai reported that China recently registered newly discovered “deposits” of “high-purity quartz” – a material mainly produced in the US and Norway for making solar silicon wafers – on its list of domestically available minerals, in a development which could “cut the country’s dependence on imports of the key material”. Meanwhile, US president Donald Trump ordered a “probe into potential new tariffs on all US critical minerals imports”, most of which are from China, said Reuters.
WORRIED EU: The US tariffs has the EU “increasingly panicked” over a potential flood of Chinese products originally destined for the US market, said the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP). EU leaders will likely “travel to Beijing” in July to “re-engage” with Chinese president Xi Jinping, according to another SCMP report. It added that the EU and China have agreed to “immediately start negotiations” on setting minimum prices for Chinese-made EVs and to “monitor the trade diversion effects stemming from” the US tariffs. Reuters said Europe is likely to “produce only a small portion of rare earths it needs for EVs and wind turbines by 2030, mainly due to cheap competition” from China.
HAWKISH UK: The UK government has been “urged to phase out Chinese ownership of UK oil, nuclear power and renewable energy infrastructure after claims of attempted ‘sabotage’ at British Steel”, said the i newspaper. The Times said “sources” told it that plans for China’s state-owned nuclear company to operate UK nuclear site Bradwell B will likely be abandoned. Instead, the UK will “take a more skeptical approach to future Chinese investment in sensitive sectors…business secretary Jonathan Reynolds said”, reported Bloomberg, adding that “he also said that a lot of UK-Chinese trade is in non-contentious areas such as…the automotive industry.” The Guardian reported China denied Jingye, the owner of British Steel, “an arm of the Chinese government”, saying that “the UK should ‘avoid politicising trade cooperation or linking it to security issues’.” The Times also ran a frontpage story with the headline: “[UK climate secretary Ed] Miliband signed up to close ties with China on energy.”
CONSTRUCTIONS CONTINUE: China issued a new policy to allow coal-fired power plants to be “built through [to] at least 2027” in places that “lack existing capacity, or the ability to balance electricity supply from wind and solar projects”, reported Bloomberg. The policy “raise[s] questions about China’s commitment to phasing down coal use during the 2026-2030 period”, said Reuters. The China National Coal Association said that “coal consumption is expected to peak around 2028”, according to state-run newspaper China Daily. It added that this deadline “does not automatically signify an immediate decline in coal consumption afterward”, but, instead, a “transitional phase”. China’s thermal power generation – mainly coal – fell 4.7% year-on-year in the first quarter of this year, according to official data, reported Reuters. However, government data shows that the raw coal production grew 8.1% year-on-year and coking coal grew 2.4% in the first quarter.
‘LOW-CARBON UPGRADING’: The new coal policy reinforces calls for the power system to “upgrade” the “next generation” of coal plants, with a focus on “clean-carbon reduction”, reported BJX News, although it added that the plan “does not mandate all [coal-fired] units to implement low-carbon transformation”. Bloomberg explained that, under the plan, new coal plants must “burn coal more efficiently and their carbon intensity should fall 10% to 20% from [current] levels”.
GRID MANAGEMENT: China issued a guideline on “accelerating the development of virtual power plants” – a management system that helps regulate the flexibility of the electricity grid – to “ensure the security of electricity supply” and “promote the uptake” of renewable power, said BJX News. According to International Energy Net, the capacity of virtual power plants nationwide should reach more than 50 gigawatts (GW) by 2030 under the plan.
ETS EXPANSION: A new government notice on China’s national emissions trading system (ETS) set out key dates for the opening of accounts, data monitoring and verification, plus compliance obligations, reported BJX News. Yan Qin, carbon analyst at consultancy firm ClearBlue Markets, wrote on Twitter that, as well as covering existing power-sector participants, the document also covers the newly added aluminium, cement and steel industries, “confirm[ing] the recent work plan to expand [the] national ETS”. Meanwhile, “mismatched supply and demand” continues to affect the pricing of Green Electricity Certificates (GECs), according to state-managed newspaper China Reform Daily.
HEAT-PUMP EFFICIENCY: A new policy by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) aims to promote heat-pump adoption by setting a target of “increasing the energy-efficiency level of key products by more than 20%” by 2030, reported Dialogue Earth.
The year-on-year sales growth of “new-energy vehicles” in China across the first quarter of this year, as reported by state news agency Xinhua.
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies has driven the “surging” growth of data centres in China, with associated increases in energy demand and emissions.
There were 449 data centres in China at the end of 2023, the most in the Asia-Pacific region. While estimates differ, some reports suggest data centre electricity demand could increase from around 100–200 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2025 to as much as 600TWh by 2030, with associated emissions of 200m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e).
In this issue, Carbon Brief explains China’s efforts to build “green data centres” and the hurdles faced in meeting their growing electricity demands with low-carbon resources.
In common with other countries, China expects the electricity consumption of its data centres to grow rapidly over the next few years, partly as a result of the rise of AI. However, the scale of current demand – and any future increase – is uncertain.
A government report said electricity demand from China’s data centres was 77TWh in 2022, rising to 150-200TWh in 2025 and 400TWh by 2030.
In early 2025, Bloomberg reported even higher estimates from Goldman Sachs, saying that data centre electricity demand in China was “expected to more than triple to almost 600TWh by the end of the decade”.
The IEA said data centres accounted for just 3% of new demand since 2022 – and perhaps 6% out to 2027.
Still, the amount of CO2 associated with data centres could reach 1% of the country’s emissions by the end of 2025, according to a report by the Development Research Centre of the State Council.
In 2021, China announced a three-year action plan to construct “new data centres” that are “efficient, clean, optimised and circular”.
The three-year action plan included measures to enhance data centres’ power usage effectiveness (PUE), the most widely used metric for gauging their energy efficiency. By the end of the action plan, the average PUE had been reduced to 1.48, down from 1.54 in the previous year. In other words, data centres in the country are, on average, becoming more efficient.
The new goal, announced in 2024, was to cut the PUE of large data centres down to 1.25 by 2025. In comparison, Germany, which hosts the highest number of data centres in Europe, requires its existing data centres to reach an average PUE level of 1.5 from 2027.
Meanwhile, in 2022 China launched a long-awaited national project named “east data west computing” (东数西算), which aimed at processing data produced in the more populous eastern provinces in the west of China.
This encourages new data centres to be built in the west, where large solar and windfarms are based, in order to assist the busy metropolis centres in the east.
Since 2020, the Chinese government has tracked a range of information on data centres’ energy transitions. The latest update from 2024 said more than 50 data centres nationwide have met a standard for “green” energy requirement.
By 2030, China’s data centres are projected to consume anything from 400TWh to 600TWh of electricity, with associated emissions of perhaps 200MtCO2e.
Currently, renewable resources in China are primarily distributed in the northern part of the country, while demand is still concentrated in the south-eastern coastal areas, where coal is still the dominant power source. This means that data centres often rely on long-distance transmission to use renewable power, even with efforts from the “east data west computing” programme.
“Green electricity has broad application prospects in the data centre industry, but it still faces many challenges,” said Lü Xin, project lead at Beijing-based thinktank Greenpeace East Asia.
“It’s still very difficult to complete interprovincial trading of green power,” she told Carbon Brief, pointing to the variable output of renewables as well as the high operational cost of long-distance transmission lines.
Another challenge is data centre water demand for cooling, which could exacerbate water stress in the country’s already arid western and northern regions.
Governments in Beijing, Ningxia and Gansu are mandating higher water use efficiency for data centres, as well as phasing out the ones with low efficiency of power and water use.
The IEA estimated that both renewables and nuclear power will “together make up 60% of China’s data centre electricity supply” by 2035.
This Spotlight was written by freelance climate journalist Yuan Ye. The full version is available on Carbon Brief’s website.
LIU SPEECH: The Shanghai-based Paper published Chinese climate envoy Liu Zhenmin’s speech at the opening ceremony of an environmental conference in China. Liu said: “Climate change is a challenge, but also an opportunity [for the ‘environmental protection industry’].”
ELECTRICITY PRICING: The Communist party-affiliated People’s Daily interviewed leading experts about the “negative price” of electricity in China, which, according to the interview, relates to the “oversupply of ‘new energy’”.
CLIMATE JUSTICE: Deaf British and Chinese artists presented art works in Suzhou to raise the “sense” of “responsibility in climate change“, reported Sixth Tone.
FARMING IMPACTED: A new Greenpeace East Asia report analysed climate change’s impact on farming communities in China.
Nature Food
New research found that around two-thirds of the greenhouse gas (GHG) “footprint” of salt marshes converted into aquaculture farms in China stemmed from the destruction of the original habitat’s capacity to absorb GHG emissions. This conversion generated 20.3 tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions per hectare per year in China’s coastal regions, the study authors calculated. Feed, fertiliser and energy emissions comprised around 20% of the footprint, while direct emissions from the pond made up just 10%.
Springer Nature
A study investigating “if consuming spicy food can help improve people’s adaptability to [a] hot environment” found that eating hotpot – a popular dish in the study area – can “improve thermal adaptation, thereby underscoring the significant influence of dietary habits on thermal adaptability” based on more than 1200 surveys for people aged between 18-30 years old.
China Briefing is compiled by Wanyuan Song and Anika Patel. It is edited by Wanyuan Song and Dr Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org
TESTING LIMITS: Temperatures in India and Pakistan climbed to “dangerous levels” this week, CNN reported. Delhi has recorded temperatures above 40C “at least three times this month” and parts of Pakistan are “likely to experience heat up to 8C above normal,” the outlet added. Climate experts told the outlet that “rising temperatures are testing human limits” and warned that, by 2050, “India will be among the first places where temperatures will cross survivability limits”.
HUMAN IMPACT: Balu Lal, a farmer from Rajasthan, told CNN: “We cannot even stand to work…When I am out, I feel that people would burn due to the heat outside. We have nowhere else to go”. According to Berkley researchers’ estimates published in Down to Earth, a single day of an India-wide heatwave “leads to an estimated 3,400 excess deaths nationally”, while a “single five-day heatwave leads to approximately 30,000 excess deaths, distributed across rural and urban districts”.
MONITORING THE HEAT: According to a Himal Southasian investigation published this week, India’s top meteorological scientists and administrators “admitted, on condition of anonymity, that India’s heatwave alert system needed to be updated” and that “temperature readings from automatic weather stations are unreliable”. Elsewhere, the Independent reported that the Philippines also faced dangerous heat, with temperatures reaching 50C in some areas.
SEEKING SCAPEGOATS: Some right-leaning voices in the UK parliament and media have seized upon an unfolding steel crisis to “falsely blame” net-zero policies, the Guardian reported. The government passed emergency legislation last weekend to keep the British Steel plant in Scunthorpe open after crisis talks collapsed with its Chinese owners.
COAL QUESTIONS: As noted in Carbon Brief’s daily newsletters, many of the commentators have misleadingly tried to tie the crisis to net-zero policies, as well as Labour’s decision to withdraw government support for a new coking coal mine in England. This is despite the company behind the now-abandoned project saying that the coal produced would not have been high enough quality for use in Scunthorpe.
The amount set to be disbursed by the UN’s “fund for responding to loss and damage” until the end of 2026, according to Climate Home News.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.)
The share of fossil fuels in Germany’s electricity mix has fallen continuously over the past 25 years. A new coalition government in Germany said it would continue to support the country’s energy transition towards clean energy, according to Carbon Brief.
This week, Carbon Brief reports on how Nigerians are increasingly turning to solar to power their homes and businesses in the face of rising fossil-fuel costs.
Gabriel Folorunsho has sold, installed and repaired solar-power equipment in Nigeria for more than a decade. He trained as an electrical engineer before transitioning into the renewable energy space.
“It is a profitable business,” Folorunso told Carbon Brief. In a month, he can – after deducting operational costs and taxes – earn up to N800,000 (about £400), more than 10 times the federal minimum wage in Nigeria.
In May 2023, the Nigerian government announced the removal of fuel subsidies. The price of petrol, which fuels the private generators relied on by millions of Nigerians for electricity, skyrocketed.
With the national grid, which is powered mostly by gas, continuing to prove unreliable, more Nigerians are on the hunt for viable alternatives for their homes and businesses.
Folorunso said he has experienced a rise in the demand for his services since the fuel subsidy removal: “In the long run, it is extremely cheap because you don’t have to pay for the sun.”
But the upfront cost of solar remains a problem for many Nigerians.
To fill the financing gap, traditional financial institutions have started to market solar financing products.
Private-equity funding has also come onstream. In September 2024, Earthbond, a Nigerian clean-tech startup, raised $200,000 in pre-seed funding. A much older competitor, Arnergy, raised an additional $3m in February 2024 to expand its services.
The Nigerian government and its international partners also see the opportunity. In March, the country’s sovereign fund partnered with a bevy of global actors to launch a $500m fund that targets investments in solar-power solutions for homes and businesses.
The current demand for solar-power products is unmatched, said Ayodele Sodeye, a solar-equipment distributor in Alaba international market, one of the largest electronics hubs in West Africa.
Folorunso is one of the admins of a 700-member WhatsApp group for solar-power technicians and equipment distributors.
In the group, members make enquiries about equipment pricing, specifications and other technical information.
Certified by Coren, a body that regulates the engineering profession in Nigeria, Folorunso notes that inexperienced technicians have infiltrated the renewable energy space. They are aided by customers who want to cut costs and often end up buying “the wrong cables and batteries”.
“We created the WhatsApp group as a network for people who want to buy original equipment,” Folorunso said. “We [group members] are able to showcase materials that are authentic. We also do some training on the group.”
But there are no formal rules to ensure quality. Sometimes, a deal goes wrong and a member posts an angry message to the group.
Folorunso said it is hard to determine the quality of products. He reeled off the names of brands he has come to trust. Some brand themselves as German, others as Australian.
“But when we dissect them and trace their origin, we discover they are all from China,” he said. “They just brand it differently.”
Recently, the Nigerian government said it was considering a ban on solar-power imports. According to the country’s minister of technology, Uche Nnaji, the ban would boost Nigeria’s domestic energy sector.
While there has been considerable pushback, some local companies have already established plants to manufacture solar panels.
Folorunso believes the ban could help to boost the local economy. But he remains sceptical. “We cannot really validate the experience and performance of these [locally-made] panels,” he said.
EV FUTURES: On the Big Take podcast, Bloomberg’s David Welch and host David Gura analysed the road ahead for General Motor’s big bet on electric and what it means for the electric vehicle revolution in America.
SILENT FIRES: A new analysis by Our World in Data showed that more than half of the area burned globally by wildfire is in Africa.
COP30 SPOTLIGHT: Ahead of the first climate summit in the Amazon, the Guardian reported on the tension between “what the area’s farming lobby wants and what the world needs” in a new series of articles.
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
There were 449 data centres in China at the end of 2023, the most in the Asia-Pacific region.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) says in a new report that China accounted for 25% of global data-centre electricity consumption in 2024, the second largest consumer following the US.
In common with other countries, China expects the electricity consumption of its data centres to grow rapidly over the next few years, partly as a result of the rise of AI.
However, the scale of current demand – and any future increase – is uncertain.
For now, other drivers of rising electricity demand remain far more important than data centres.
Still, while estimates differ, some reports suggest data centre electricity demand could increase from around 100–200 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2025 to as much as 600TWh by 2030, with associated emissions of 200m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e).
China’s central and local governments have enacted a range of policies to address the environmental impacts of data centres, but challenges remain.
China’s State Council posted a 2021 report from state-owned newspaper China Daily, which said the electricity consumption of China’s data centers in 2020 was 200TWh, some 2.7% of demand that year, rising to 400TWh (3.7%) by 2030. More recent government figures put demand at 77TWh in 2022, 150-200TWh in 2025 and 400TWh by 2030.
In early 2025, Bloomberg reported even higher estimates from Goldman Sachs, saying that data centre electricity demand in China was “expected to more than triple [from 200TWh today] to almost 600TWh by the end of the decade”.
In contrast, the IEA estimates Chinese data centre electricity demand of just 100TWh in 2024, with the potential to double by 2027.
Furthermore, data centres remain relatively small, both in terms of their share of China’s electricity demand overall and as a driver of demand growth.
Currently, data centres in China use between 0.9% and 2.7% of the country’s annual electricity, according to different estimates.
However, Bloomberg reports they use “less than a 10th” of the electricity required by the manufacturing sector, noting that demand from factories grew by 300TWh in 2024 alone.
The IEA says data centres have accounted for just 3% of new demand since 2022 – and will grow to perhaps 6% out to 2027. It says larger drivers of demand growth in China are industry, including industrial electrification, as well as electrification of heat and transport.
Still, the amount of CO2 associated with data centres could reach 1% of the country’s total emissions by the end of 2025, according to Han Xue, deputy director of the department of resource and environment policy at the Development Research Centre of the State Council.
In 2021, China announced a three-year action plan to construct “new data centres” that are “efficient, clean, optimised and circular”.
The three-year action plan included measures to enhance data centres’ power usage effectiveness (PUE), the most widely used metric for gauging their energy efficiency.
The calculation is the total amount of energy used divided by IT equipment energy usage. The higher the ratio, the less energy efficient the data centre.
By the end of the action plan, the average PUE had been reduced to 1.48, down from 1.54 in the previous year.
The new goal, announced in 2024, was to cut the PUE of large data centres down to 1.25 by 2025. In comparison, Germany, which hosts the highest number of data centres in Europe, requires its existing data centres to reach an average PUE level of 1.5 from 2027.
Meanwhile, in 2022 China launched a long-awaited national project named “east data west computing” (东数西算), which aimed at processing data produced in the more populous eastern provinces in the west of China. It encourages new data centres to be built in the west, where large solar and windfarms are based, in order to assist the busy metropolis centres in the east.
Under the project, the data centres in central and western regions handle more of the non-realtime cloud computing needs, such as offline analysis and storage backup, while the time-sensitive data services continue to be met in the east.
Regional governments, such as Inner Mongolia in northern China, have also issued local policies encouraging data centres to be paired with renewable energy facilities.
Elsewhere, Beijing’s local government has provided financial support to data centres for improving their PUE. Meanwhile, Guangdong province, the southern technology hub, has opted to move some data centres undersea, in order to reduce the need for cooling technology and cut power use.
Since 2020, the Chinese government has tracked a range of information on data centres’ energy transitions. The latest update from 2024 said more than 50 data centres nationwide have met a standard for “green” energy requirement, including one from State Grid and 14 from the country’s internet companies.
By 2030, China’s data centres are projected to consume anything from 400TWh to 600TWh of electricity, with associated emissions of perhaps 200MtCO2e.
Currently, renewable resources in China are primarily distributed in the northern part of the country, while demand is still concentrated in the south-eastern coastal areas. This means that data centres often rely on long-distance transmission to use renewable power, even with efforts from the “east data west computing” programme.
“Green electricity has broad application prospects in the data centre industry, but it still faces many challenges,” says Lü Xin, project lead at Beijing-based thinktank Greenpeace East Asia.
“It’s still very difficult to complete interprovincial trading of green power,” she tells Carbon Brief, pointing to the variable output of renewables, as well as the high operational cost of long-distance transmission lines.
China has issued policies supporting direct transmission of renewable electricity to data centres and has established “green power industrial parks”, with dedicated renewable sources and storage.
“These policy developments and improved market mechanisms will bolster the adoption of green power by data centres,” says Lü.
Another challenge is the water demand of data centres. As they often require a lot of water for cooling, this could exacerbate water stress in the country’s already arid western and northern regions.
To alleviate the concern, governments in Beijing, Ningxia and Gansu are mandating higher water use efficiency for data centres, as well as phasing out the ones with low efficiency of power and water use.
As data centres expand to handle AI workloads, more “hyperscale” data centres with gigawatts of energy demands may emerge, demanding higher power capacity. A cleaner fuel mix in a country’s overall power structure can help to mitigate the emissions.
For now, however, data centres in China are at a “significant disadvantage from the emissions perspective”, due to the country’s reliance on coal, according to research firm SemiAnalysis.
Coal accounts for about 60.5% of China’s power mix. The IEA says most data centres in China are located in the east where about 70% of electricity supply is from coal, but the rise of renewables and nuclear power should ”push coal to decline” after 2030.
The report estimates that both renewables and nuclear will “together make up 60% of China’s data centre electricity supply” by 2035.
