§ Key developments

COP16 resumes in Rome

CALI CARRIES ON: The UN biodiversity summit, COP16, resumed in Rome yesterday after the countries failed to reach agreement on several key issues in Cali, Colombia last year. The latest round of talks “will focus on securing financial resources and developing a robust system to track biodiversity commitments”, DownToEarth said. Devex noted that the Rome meeting “won’t have the same pomp and circumstance” as the Colombia talks. On the first day of the resumed talks, the Cali fund for sharing the benefits derived from genetic data – seen as one of the big “wins” from the Colombia talks – was launched. 

DEFORESTATION IS UP: Last week, COP16 president (and former environment minister of Colombia) Susana Muhamad announced that deforestation in the country was 35% higher in 2024 than 2023. According to Climate Home News, the increase was “fuelled by an uptick in the Amazon region”, which Muhamad attributed primarily to “the involvement of organised crime more than rural communities”. Despite the uptick, the deforestation rate in 2024 was still the second lowest in the last 23 years, after last year’s record low.

NATURE PLANS LACKING: Meanwhile, a joint investigation by Carbon Brief and the Guardian found that of the 137 countries that had submitted updated biodiversity plans to the UN by 21 February, fewer than half were committing to protecting 30% of their land and sea by 2030. The so-called “30 by 30” target was a key goal of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, agreed at COP15 in Montreal. Responding to Carbon Brief and the Guardian, several countries said that they are still finalising their targets. Indonesia pointed out that the target is meant to be a global one, with no contributions specified for each country. Brian O’Donnell, director of Campaign for Nature, said: “This is troubling and action must be taken to put the world on track.”

Extreme weather driving up food prices

MAPPING DAMAGES: Carbon Brief published a new interactive map showing some of the impacts of extreme weather on global crops during 2023 and 2024. Using news reports in global media and other sources, the analysis identified 100 cases around the world where crops were damaged or destroyed by heat, drought, wildfires or other extreme events. According to the findings, Europe, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa were the regions most impacted by flooding, while Asia, Europe and Latin America were the most frequently hit by droughts. 

HUGE IMPACT: Extreme weather is “expected to” drive up food prices throughout 2025, according to analysis covered by the Guardian. The research showed a “long-term trend towards more extreme weather events would continue to hit regional crop yields, causing price spikes”. Of the studied crops, coffee and cocoa had the highest price spikes last year due to surging rainfall and temperatures. Elsewhere, Mongabay covered a new report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization pointing out that increasing droughts and floods, as well as rising temperatures in Latin America and the Caribbean, are leading to crop and livestock losses, interruption of supply chains and impoverishment among farmers. Those events are “highly frequent” in 74% of the countries in the region, the report said.

TOWARDS COP30: Warmer temperatures threaten wheat production in India, which has declined over the past three years, the New Indian Express reported. According to India’s Meteorological Department,  north-western areas have seen temperatures fluctuate 2-6C above normal during that time. In Brazil, the inflation rate for food and beverage reached nearly 7.7% last year due to the impacts of climate change, according to COP30’s official webpage. The website quoted Guilherme Mello, secretary of economic policy at Brazil’s ministry of finance, who stressed the need to “adapt and create adequate instruments to guarantee food and water security”. 

§ Spotlight

Biodiversity banking on a breakthrough 

This week, Carbon Brief traces the history and future of the fight for a new biodiversity fund as COP16 restarts in Rome.

The fight for a new biodiversity fund – dominating the agenda at the resumed nature talks in Rome and led by “megadiverse” countries – is a fight that has come a long way in the last four years.

From a proposal in Nairobi to an overlooked objection that soured nature’s “Paris” moment in Montreal, the call for a COP-governed biodiversity fund that could match climate’s $100bn-promise failed to materialise at COP15. 

Instead, the final nature deal for this decade – gavelled through in a hurry – gave the world an interim fund with a mandate to operate only until 2030. It gave rich countries a scaled-down, collective bottom line of paying $20bn per year by 2025 and $30bn per year by 2030 in biodiversity finance, against a $700bn-a-year nature funding “gap” that is widening every year.

With only $250m collected in the interim fund and developed countries accused of failing to pay their “fair share” by the start of COP16, Zimbabwe revived the fight for the fund on the very first day in Cali.

The decision “to establish a dedicated global financing instrument” eventually made it to a 3:30am draft issued by Colombia’s Susana Muhamad. That “L document” published well into overtime and an inability to gather a quorum put the brakes on COP16. It is now at the heart of what brings countries again to Rome.

To Muhamad, the “polarisation” around resource mobilisation has a lot to do with the “changing landscape of power in geopolitics”, the economic cost of conflict and the need to “substantially address” biodiversity loss and climate change.

The Rome session follows what has been described as a “betrayal” of climate finance talks at COP29 in Baku. It also comes as a re-elected Donald Trump dismantles US climate policy and many European countries cut their aid budgets. 

Although the US is not a party to the UN Biodiversity Convention (CBD), Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and geopolitical trade wars have cast a cloud over global environmental cooperation and tempered hopes for more public funding for nature and climate.

At the opening of the resumed talks, UN secretary general Antonio Guterres warned in a statement that “[w]ith the world approaching dangerous tipping points, it is imperative that [countries] reach agreement here in Rome” on how biodiversity finance commitments will be honoured. He added: 

“We share nature and we depend on nature. Multilateralism is our only hope.”

The Rome talks are already seeing countries bringing the same arguments to the table, even though $30bn is a 10th of the $300bn climate-finance goal. 

In general, developed countries want to broaden and review the list of donor states contributing biodiversity finance to include other countries, such as China and Russia, as well as private sources, such as biodiversity credits. They also typically do not see the need for a new fund after 2030. In contrast, developing countries do not want to leave Rome without a new fund or to let countries escape their historical obligations to pay.

Muhamad, meanwhile, is hoping nations will agree on a roadmap somewhere in between and make progress towards reforming the complex, but shallow, pool of biodiversity finance. 

After back-to-back regional consultations and bilateral meetings, her ambitious after-midnight draft has since been reformed into a “reflection note” attempting compromise. But, as she notes, “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”, including a monitoring framework that countries say is contingent on a strong finance outcome.

As a delegate from Panama pointed out on the first day of the Rome talks:

“Biodiversity financing beyond 2030 must reflect the urgency of the biodiversity crisis and align with the commitments under the framework. This is a matter of survival for ecosystems, economy and humanity. We cannot repeat the failures of climate finance. [The Rome talks] must deliver more than words. It must deliver funding.”

§ News and views

US AG DEPARTMENT CHAOS: Organic farmers have sued the US agriculture department over its deletion of climate-related information from its website, the New York Times reported. The now-missing pages contained “datasets, interactive tools and funding information that farmers and researchers relied on for planning and adaptation projects”, the newspaper wrote. The department also implemented a funding freeze on climate- and conservation-related programmes, although some freezes on the latter have been lifted, according to Civil Eats. Meanwhile, the department is “scrambling to rehire several workers who were involved in the government’s response to the ongoing bird flu outbreak” and had been fired on Elon Musk’s recommendation, according to the Associated Press. 

RIVER RESTRICTIONS: Norway’s parliament has approved a bill that would “open up protected rivers to hydropower plants”, the Guardian reported. Nearly 400 of the country’s waterways are currently protected from such development. The Guardian noted that “companies seeking to build hydropower dams would still face strict assessments before being granted a permit”. However, one member of the Norwegian parliament said the bill was “a historic attack on Norwegian nature”. The newspaper added that as a result of Norway’s network of hydropower dams, “the Norwegian electricity grid is among the cleanest on the planet”.

CONGO CORRIDOR: A plan to create the “world’s largest protected area” in the Democratic Republic of Congo does not have the approval of Indigenous peoples and local communities, Climate Home News reported. In January, DRC president Felix Tshisekedi announced the creation of a 2,600km-long “green corridor” in the Congo basin forest, which he said would “strengthen agricultural value chains and sustainable development”. However, the outlet noted that Indigenous and local groups have not been consulted about the project and “fear it could impinge on their land”. Groups that oppose the project, including Greenpeace Africa, fear it could “perpetuate neo-colonialism”.

ET TU, EU?: The European Commission plans to pare back the number of companies facing the EU’s sustainability reporting requirements and delay a key due diligence law that would require companies to address environmental and human-rights issues in their supply chains, according to a draft seen by Reuters. Politico published a set of five takeaways on the EU’s long-term “vision” for agriculture, which includes “stronger support for carbon farming [and] bioenergy production”. Environmental campaigners told the Guardian that the new farming strategy “ignores vital green proposals” including a just transition fund, a “necessary increase in environmental payments” and “the case for eating less meat”. Separately, Scandinavia’s largest dairy producer told the Financial Times that uncertainty about the EU’s rules “is deterring investment in food production and pushing up prices”.

TENSION OVER CORN: Mexico lifted its ban on genetically modified corn imports from the US, after a ruling made under the US, Mexico, Canada Agreement (USMCA), SciDevNet reported. In 2020, former Mexico’s former president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, had issued a decree to ban GM corn. After a recent ruling against such a ban, filed by a dispute settlement panel, current president Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration released a new decision on 5 February approving the use of GM corn for human consumption and calling off the plan to halt its use for animal feeding.

§ Watch, read, listen

PAYBACK TIME: The Straits Times’s Green Pulse podcast spoke to Dr Siva Thambisetty, who was closely involved in negotiations for the landmark Cali Fund that launched this week.

SEA TREASURES: A BBC Earth video showed the “top five whale scenes”, including everything from feeding techniques to the ongoing challenges they face. 

BANANA BOOM: Mekong Eye explored how booming demand for bananas has driven large-scale soil depletion in Laos.

KEEPING CHAPARRAL ALIVE: NPR explained the importance of California’s native chaparral brush and how clearing it will not reduce the risk of wildfires.

§ New science

• Research published in Bird Study found that solar farms contained greater numbers and diversity of birds, as compared to arable farmland. Researchers studied six solar farms in the UK, finding that these benefits could be magnified by managing the farms with biodiversity in mind.
• UK peatland fires emitted around 800,000 tonnes of carbon between 2001 and 2021, according to a study published recently in Environmental Research Letters. By looking at climate projections, the researchers found that 2C of warming could increase peatland-fire emissions by more than 60%.
• A new study, published in Nature Food, finds that 1.2 billion people globally are dependent on imported nitrogen fertilisers for food production. The authors suggest that shifting towards smaller-scale ammonia production could increase both food security and agricultural sustainability.

§ In the diary

• 24-28 February: 62nd session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change | Hangzhou, China
• 25-27 February: Resumed session of COP16 | Rome
• 26 February: UK Climate Change Committee seventh carbon budget advice published | London
• 26-28 February: Finance in common summit | Cape Town, South Africa
• 3 March: World Wildlife Day
• 5-7 March: World Sustainable Development Summit 2025 | New Delhi

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

§ Catching up

At COP15 in 2022, nations signed a landmark agreement called the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), which aims to “halt and reverse” nature loss by 2030. It is often described as the “Paris Agreement for nature”.

As part of the framework, countries agreed to submit new NBSAPs by COP16 in October 2024.

NBSAPs are blueprints for how individual countries plan to tackle biodiversity loss within their borders. The latest round of NBSAPs should also include information on how countries will meet the targets of the GBF.

They are similar to nationally determined contributions (NDCs), plans that outline how individual countries envisage meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. However, a key difference is that countries are legally obliged to submit NDCs, but not NBSAPs.

Carbon Brief and Guardian analysis released shortly before COP16 in October 2024 showed that just 25 countries and the EU had met the deadline to submit an updated NBSAP ahead of the conference.

Since then, a further 21 countries have released NBSAPs, including COP16 host Colombia. The UK releasing its plan brings the total to 47 – meaning three-quarters of countries have still not submitted NBSAPs.

Countries that were unable to meet the deadline to submit NBSAPs ahead of COP16 were requested to instead submit national targets. These submissions list biodiversity targets that countries will aim for – without an accompanying plan for how they will be achieved.

As of 26 February, 125 parties had submitted national targets.

§ UK ‘leadership’

Back in October, Carbon Brief reported that the UK was among countries to miss the UN deadline for submitting an NBSAP.

UK officials blamed a series of political changes for delay, including a change of power in Scotland in May 2024 and a general election ushering in a new Labour government in July.

In a press briefing on Friday 21 February, a UK official said the government was waiting for the release of Labour’s new Environment Improvement Plan, which is scheduled for later this year, before releasing its NBSAP.

However, after negotiating alongside other countries at the resumed talks of COP16 in Rome on Tuesday, the government reversed this and decided to publish its NBSAP immediately.

(Countries have gathered again in Rome for another session of COP16 after negotiators failed to reach agreement on a long list of issues in Colombia.)

The UK is seeking to play a leadership role at the Rome talks. It has been lobbying for other nations to come forward with new NBSAPs – making its status as the last G7 nation to submit one increasingly uncomfortable.

Ahead of publishing its NBSAP, the UK had already submitted national targets to the UN.

In its national targets submission, the UK committed to meeting the 23 targets of the GBF within its borders, ranging from protecting 30% of its land and seas through to reducing the overall risk from pesticides by half by 2030. 

As anticipated, the annex of the UK’s NBSAP repeats these commitments. The annex is accompanied by a “blueprint” document outlining the policies the UK is putting in place to try to meet its targets.

§ Un tercio de la Tierra

En la cumbre sobre la naturaleza COP15, realizada en 2022, los países acordaron el Marco Mundial de Biodiversidad Kunming-Montreal (MMB), un amplio conjunto de objetivos y metas con el propósito general de detener y revertir la pérdida de biodiversidad para 2030.

La meta 3 del MMB, que establece que los países deben garantizar que “al menos” el 30% de la Tierra esté en áreas protegidas o regida por otras medidas de conservación para 2030 “30×30”, es considerado por muchos como el objetivo insignia del acuerdo y se ha comparado con el objetivo de temperatura de 1.5°C del Acuerdo de París en artículos de prensa y discursos que subrayan su importancia.

Se pidió a todos los países que enviaran sus planes al Convenio de las Naciones Unidas sobre la Diversidad Biológica en los que se describiera cómo cumplirían los objetivos del MMB en sus territorios antes de la cumbre de la naturaleza COP16 en 2024. Dichos planes se conocen como estrategias y planes de acción nacionales en materia de diversidad biológica, o “EPANDB“.

Una investigación independiente de Carbon Brief y the Guardian realizada el pasado mes de octubre reveló que el 85% de los países no cumplieron el plazo para presentar sus EPANDB, y algunos argumentaron que el plazo era demasiado complicado o que no pudieron acceder a fondos para ayudar a preparar sus documentos.

A los países que no pudieron presentar sus EPANDB se les pidió que, en su lugar, presentaran objetivos nacionales a la ONU. Se trata de simples listas de metas que los países intentarán alcanzar sin un plan de acción que los acompañe.

Para el 24 de febrero de 2025, 44 países y la UE habían presentado sus EPANDB a la ONU, mientras que 124 partes habían presentado metas nacionales. (Dado que algunos países enviaron objetivos nacionales y EPANDB, esto significa que, en total, 137 países han presentado algún tipo de plan).

Para investigar si los países se han comprometido con la promesa “30×30” dentro de los límites de sus planes, Carbon Brief y the Guardian analizaron el texto completo de cada EPANDB, así como cualquier objetivo que fuera etiquetado como relacionado con la meta 3 del MMB.

El análisis revela que, de los 137 países que han enviado planes al CDB, más de la mitad (70 países, es decir, el 51%) no se comprometen a proteger el 30% de sus tierras y mares para 2030.

De estos, 21 países no proporcionaron un objetivo numérico para proteger su superficie terrestre, 26 establecieron objetivos de protección de la tierra inferiores al 30% y ocho establecieron objetivos de protección de la tierra iguales o superiores al 30%, pero objetivos de protección del mar inferiores al 30%.

De los países restantes, 13 no presentaron ningún objetivo relacionado con la cobertura de las áreas protegidas. Otros dos establecieron objetivos más allá de 2030.

Otros 10 países, es decir, el 7%, no dejan claro en los planes que presentaron si tienen o no un compromiso que cumpla las condiciones de “30×30”. Entre ellos se encuentran: países que especifican que protegerán el 30% de las “zonas de especial importancia”; países que dieron un objetivo de mejora, pero no proporcionaron una base de referencia; y países que entregaron solo una o dos metas.

Solo el 42% de los países (57 en total) se comprometen a proteger el 30% de la superficie terrestre y marina para 2030.

La siguiente gráfica muestra los países que han entregado sus EPANDB y/o metas nacionales a la ONU. En la gráfica, los países están agrupados según el porcentaje de tierra que se han comprometido a proteger y el tamaño de cada burbuja representa su superficie terrestre. (Los países agrupados alrededor de la línea del 30% y marcados en gris se han comprometido a proteger el 30% de la superficie terrestre).

Los países agrupados debajo de “sin objetivo” son aquellos que no se han comprometido a una meta numérica para proteger su tierra o aquellos que han elaborado un plan, pero no han incluido una meta de área protegida.

El análisis muestra que, en conjunto, más de un tercio de la superficie terrestre está cubierta por un compromiso que no cumple la meta “30×30”, mientras que alrededor de la mitad está cubierta por un compromiso “30×30”.

El análisis también revela que siete de los 17 países “megadiversos“, que en conjunto albergan el 70% de la biodiversidad mundial, no se han comprometido con la iniciativa 30×30. Entre ellos se encuentran Indonesia, Malasia, México, Perú, Filipinas, Sudáfrica y Venezuela.

Otros 61 países no han presentado una EPANDB ni metas nacionales, por lo que no se han evaluado en el análisis. Entre ellos se encuentra la nación con mayor biodiversidad del mundo, Brasil.

Las cifras tampoco incluyen a EE. UU., que, aunque es un país megadiverso, no forma parte del CDB y, por lo tanto, no está sujeto a los objetivos y metas del MMB.

El expresidente de EE. UU. Joe Biden comprometió a su país con el compromiso “30×30”. Sin embargo, el plan de políticas Proyecto 2025, que Donald Trump está siguiendo en gran medida, pide que se elimine el objetivo.

La UE entregó una EPANDB que abarca sus 27 Estados miembros y se compromete con el 30×30.

Sin embargo, los países individuales también son parte del CDB y se espera que entreguen sus propios planes nacionales. Para el propósito de este análisis, se consideró que los Estados miembros de la UE cumplían con el compromiso “30×30” solo si presentaban su propia EPANDB o su objetivo nacional que lo hiciera.

§ ‘Extremadamente desafiante’

Carbon Brief y the Guardian contactaron a países megadiversos y naciones desarrolladas para preguntarles por qué habían optado por no comprometerse con el “30×30” en sus planes de la ONU.

Indonesia, un país megadiverso que alberga la tercera selva tropical más grande del mundo, no dio una meta numérica sobre la cantidad de su territorio que puede proteger para la naturaleza en su EPANDB.

Un portavoz del gobierno afirma que Indonesia considera que “no es esencial declarar explícitamente que el objetivo de protección del 30% es para las áreas terrestres y marinas” de su territorio, y explica:

“Indonesia considera que todos debemos entender que el Marco Mundial de la Diversidad Biológica es realmente global. Y, al ser global, es natural que este marco se aplique de forma global y colectiva, sin imponer una carga innecesariamente pesada a algunos de nosotros.

“Indonesia se ha comprometido a alcanzar objetivos ambiciosos pero prácticos para el MMB, haciendo hincapié en el hecho de que no todas las partes están al mismo nivel si los objetivos se evalúan numéricamente”.

El portavoz añade que “gestionar la biodiversidad no es una tarea fácil” y que “se debe mantener el equilibrio de los aspectos económicos, sociales y medioambientales, especialmente en países en desarrollo como Indonesia”.

En su Estrategia y Plan de Acción Nacional sobre la Diversidad Biológica, México, una nación megadiversa, se compromete a proteger el 30% de sus océanos, pero solo el 22% de su tierra.

La Dra. Andrea Cruz Angón, coordinadora de estrategias y políticas de biodiversidad de la Conabio, la comisión de biodiversidad del gobierno federal, afirma que las metas aún están “siendo revisadas y ajustadas” por las agencias federales correspondientes.

Añade que los objetivos se elaboraron tras la celebración de talleres “con gobiernos subnacionales, jóvenes, pueblos indígenas y comunidades afromexicanas” para identificar “barreras y oportunidades para que estos actores se comprometan voluntariamente con los objetivos”.

Finlandia, uno de los estados miembros de la UE, aún no ha publicado una EPANDB, pero en agosto de 2024 presentó a la ONU sus metas nacionales para cumplir los objetivos del MMB. En estos planes, Finlandia no se compromete con el “30×30”.

Un portavoz del gobierno finlandés dice que todavía estaba preparando su EPANDB y que, por lo tanto, ninguno de sus objetivos es definitivo, pero añade:

“Lograr un aumento del 30% en el área protegida para 2030 sería extremadamente difícil, ya que para alcanzar esta meta, por ejemplo, el área protegida en las zonas terrestres tendría que aumentar unas 700,000 hectáreas al año”.

En su Estrategia Nacional de Biodiversidad, Noruega se comprometió a proteger el 30% de su territorio para la naturaleza para 2030, pero afirma que todavía está evaluando su meta de protección de los océanos y “volverá con un plan sobre cómo lograr un objetivo futuro de manera que también facilite el uso sostenible de las zonas marinas noruegas”.

Un portavoz de Noruega afirma que la nación está “comprometida a contribuir al objetivo 30×30”, y añade:

“Aún no se ha establecido una meta nacional de conservación para las zonas marinas noruegas. Esto se debe a un proceso nacional en curso para evaluar qué zonas marinas pueden ser reconocidas como protegidas a través de ‘otras medidas efectivas de conservación basadas en áreas’ (OECM), de acuerdo con los criterios [de biodiversidad de la ONU].

“La conclusión de este proceso aclarará el estado actual de conservación de las aguas noruegas y, en consecuencia, nos permitirá establecer una meta nacional”.

§ ‘Volver a empezar’

Inger Andersen, directora ejecutiva del Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Medio Ambiente, declara a Carbon Brief y the Guardian que “30×30” es una “meta global y la forma en que los países lo asuman a nivel nacional será diferente en todo el mundo, dependiendo de las circunstancias nacionales”.

Ella refiere el Informe Planeta Protegido 2024, que muestra que solo el 17.6% de la tierra y el 8.4% del océano se conservan actualmente para la naturaleza, a solo cinco años de llegar al plazo de “30×30”, y añade:

“A medida que el mundo se enfrenta a una crisis de pérdida de naturaleza y biodiversidad, está claro que debemos ir mucho más lejos, mucho más rápido. Esto no será posible sin apoyo financiero, técnico y de capacidad para muchos países”.

En respuesta a la investigación de Carbon Brief y the Guardian, Brian O’Donnell, director de la Campaign for Nature, un grupo que aboga por la meta 30×30, dice:

“Muchos países no han sido lo suficientemente ambiciosos con sus compromisos nacionales de conservación y, como resultado, actualmente no estamos en vías de cumplir colectivamente la meta global de “30×30”. Esto es preocupante y hay que tomar medidas para poner al mundo en buen camino”.

Para encaminarse hacia el “30×30”, los países desarrollados deben “financiar directamente” la meta para permitir que los países en desarrollo protejan más de sus territorios para la naturaleza, dice, y añade que el compromiso “30×30” también debe ser defendido a un nivel superior por los líderes mundiales y la ONU.

Añade que los países que no se comprometan con “30×30” en sus planes de la ONU “deberían volver a empezar y actualizar sus planes con otros en los que la conservación esté a la altura del desafío de la pérdida de biodiversidad y las necesidades de las comunidades”.

El análisis completo de Carbon Brief y the Guardian puede encontrarse aquí.

§ 清洁能源达到GDP里程碑

2023年，在清洁能源行业巨大的产能投资浪潮推动下，该行业贡献了中国约40%的经济增长。

正如去年的分析所预测，超常规的投资增长率在2024年不可避免地会降温，而新的数据也证明了这一趋势。

尽管如此，2024年清洁能源行业的投资仍然保持增长，并且该行业的商品和服务产值增速依然超过20%。

因此，正如下图所示，2024年清洁能源行业占中国GDP的比重首次超过10%。

清洁能源行业对中国经济的整体贡献达到13.6万亿元人民币（1.9万亿美元），其规模与沙特阿拉伯或瑞士等主要经济体相当。

同时，该行业在中国经济中的比重已超过房地产销售（9.6万亿元人民币）和农业（9.1万亿元人民币）。

§ 电动汽车和太阳能是增长主要驱动力

2024年清洁能源行业的生产和投资总值预计增长了13%，自2022年以来则增长了50%，如下图所示。

这些行业的商品和服务产值增长了21%，达到6.8万亿元人民币（9500亿美元）。

总体而言，电动汽车生产是最具价值的细分行业，其次是清洁能源生产、铁路运输、电力传输与储存，以及能源效率。

下表详细列出了各行业和活动的具体数据。

§ 价格下跌促进采用，但对生产商构成挑战

在全球大多数经济体都在担忧高通胀之际，中国却面临通货紧缩的压力，主要原因是制造业快速扩张，而国内需求相对疲软。

多个关键清洁能源行业都受到这一趋势的影响。尽管产量不断增长，但供过于求导致收入和利润增长乏力，使该行业的实际贡献在一定程度上被忽视。

以太阳能电池板制造为例，尽管产量大幅增长，但行业名义产值下降了41%。

不过，由于项目数量激增，加上太阳能电池板成本仅占整个太阳能发电项目成本的不到三分之一，太阳能项目的投资名义价值仍保持稳定。

太阳能发电电力价值增长了40%，使得太阳能行业对名义GDP增长的总体贡献率上升至正值。

总体来看，清洁能源行业的增加值按名义计算增长了约8.5%，低于实际增长率的15%，但仍远高于GDP增速，占名义GDP增长的17%。

2024年12月，一场重要的年度经济政策会议强调，需要“积极营造绿色低碳产业健康发展生态”。这表明政府可能会采取措施解决清洁制造业供应过剩和该行业盈利能力较弱的问题。

§ 清洁能源经济快速增长的影响

清洁能源行业连续第二年在中国经济增长目标的实现中发挥了关键作用。

供应增加和价格下降的双重因素，导致中国清洁能源部署速度远超几年前的预期，同时也促进了清洁能源在新兴海外市场的部署。

预计这一增长趋势将在2025年延续，这主要得益于多个重大项目都致力于在“十四五”规划（2021-2025年）收官前完工。

2025年以后，该行业的发展将在很大程度上取决于今年即将完成的下一个五年计划（2026-2030年）中的新目标和政策。

随着近几年清洁能源发电装机容量的闪电式扩张，该行业正陷入盈利能力下降和产能过剩的困境。

若要恢复行业盈利能力，中国既需要保持强劲的国内需求，也需要采取措施解决产能过剩问题。此外，弃电问题（尤其对太阳能发电产生限制）也亟需解决，以确保市场需求能持续释放。

根据中国主要部委提出的2030年和2035年目标所显示的初步迹象，中国难以将关键清洁能源技术需求维持在2023-2024年水平。

如果清洁能源行业在下一个五年规划时期的目标低于当前部署速度，该行业可能从拉动GDP增长的推动力转变为拖累因素，并加剧供过于求的问题。相反，更具雄心的清洁能源目标将有助于保持该行业对经济的积极贡献。

鉴于清洁能源在投资增长中发挥的重要作用，政府的经济刺激措施可能会支持清洁能源领域的投资。

此外，清洁能源现在在中国经济增长中的关键作用，也使得政策制定者更有动力确保该行业的健康发展。

§ What is the ‘seventh carbon budget’?

The UK’s efforts to tackle global warming are governed by the 2008 Climate Change Act, which was legislated by a cross-party parliamentary consensus of 463 votes to five.

After being amended by the Conservative government in 2019, the long-term target of the act is to cut the UK’s emissions in 2050 to 100% below 1990 levels – usually referred to as “net-zero”.

(The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has affirmed that reaching net-zero is the only way to stop global warming from getting worse – and that emissions would need to reach net-zero by 2050 globally to limit the rise in temperatures to 1.5C.)

In addition to the 2050 target, the Act sets a framework for five-yearly “carbon budgets”, which are “stepping stones” for the UK’s emissions along the pathway towards net-zero.

The UK met its first three carbon budgets, covering the 15 years from 2008-2022, and is currently at the mid-point of the fourth carbon budget period for 2023-2027.

Under the Act, the CCC is required to offer advice to government on the level of each carbon budget, 12 years in advance. In doing so, it must take into account a range of factors, including the latest scientific evidence, technological trends, the state of the economy and public finances.

Its advice on the seventh carbon budget, covering 2038-2042, is for the UK to cut its emissions to 87% below the 1990 baseline – equivalent to a three-quarters reduction on current levels.

Specifically, the CCC says emissions should fall from around 400m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) in 2023 to just 107MtCO2e on average across 2038-2042.

This is shown in the figure below, alongside previously legislated budgets and the UK’s international climate pledges for 2030 and 2035 under the Paris Agreement.

Note that the sixth and seventh budgets were set in line with the net-zero target, whereas previous budgets were set on a pathway to 80% by 2050, hence the step change.

These budgets also include emissions from international aviation and shipping, whereas previous ones had allowed “headroom” for these emissions. (The CCC notes that the government has yet to reflect this shift in legislation and calls for it to do so, when setting the seventh carbon budget.)

Now that the CCC has offered its advice, the government must pass legislation setting the level of the seventh carbon budget by no later than 30 June 2026.

Previous governments – whether Conservative or Labour – have always followed the advice of the committee. However, the government can choose not to do so, if it explains why.

This legislation is subject to the “affirmative procedure” in parliament, which can reject the government’s proposal. It must be debated and voted through by both houses of parliament.

Notably, the CCC backs a proposal by the former prime minister Rishi Sunak for the government to publish its plan for meeting the seventh carbon budget, before the target is voted on by parliament.

It suggests the government could publish a draft plan ahead of the votes in parliament. (The Climate Change Act requires the government’s final plan for meeting carbon budgets to be published “after” the carbon budget has been set.)

In line with its long-standing position, the CCC says the seventh carbon budget should be met via domestic action “without resorting to international [emissions] credits”.

Note that the CCC’s full methodology report will be published on 21 May 2025, alongside its advice to the devolved administrations of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

§ How could the UK cut emissions 87% by 2040?

The CCC says its recommended 87% emissions cut for the seventh carbon budget is “ambitious”, but remains “deliverable provided action is taken rapidly”.

In order to illustrate what it would take to reach this target, the CCC advice includes a “balanced pathway” that extends out to net-zero by 2050.

Speaking to a pre-launch press briefing, CCC chief executive Emma Pinchbeck, who took up the role last November, said this was designed to prove the 87% target was “feasible and deliverable”.

However, she stressed that the committee does not set policy and that it was up to the government to choose its preferred route. (See: What new climate policies does the CCC recommend?)

Still, the balanced pathway offers useful insight into how the UK could reach the 87% target by 2040 – and what the country would look like as a result.

To date, most of the reductions in UK greenhouse gas emissions have come in the power sector thanks to the expansion of renewable energy and the phase-out of coal-fired generation.

By 2040, however, this would need to change significantly, with emissions cuts taking place across every sector of the UK economy. (See: How would each sector need to change by 2040?)

Specifically, the UK would massively reduce emissions from surface transport (86%), building heat (72%), industry (78%) and the power sector (88%), historically the country’s largest polluters.

Notably however, these emissions reductions do not imply a reduction in industrial activity, said interim CCC chair Prof Piers Forster. He told a pre-launch press briefing:

“The country, in our pathway, does not deindustrialise, so we have just the same amount of industry as today…We do not want the story of decarbonisation to be one of deindustrialisation.”

By 2040, aviation and agriculture would be the UK’s largest emitters, shown in the figure below. Even in 2050, these sectors would continue to have significant emissions.

Under the CCC’s net-zero pathway, natural carbon sinks in the land sector would balance out emissions from agriculture, while engineered carbon removals would balance aviation.

While emissions cuts would be needed across the whole economy to meet the seventh carbon budget, the power sector would remain the lynchpin for wider progress. This is because electrification is now seen as the key solution for decarbonising the rest of the economy.

Whereas the sixth carbon budget advice hedged, offering five different routes towards net-zero, the CCC now offers a single balanced pathway built around clean power. The report says:

“In many key areas, the best way forward is now clear. Electrification and low-carbon electricity supply make up the largest share of emissions reductions in our pathway.”

This includes heat pumps in homes and businesses. The CCC says very clearly that there is “no role” for hydrogen heat.

In addition, the CCC now sees a far greater role for electrification of transport, including all HGVs, as well as in heavy industry.

Furthermore, the CCC points to important roles for energy efficiency, such as improved home insulation, and continued gradual changes in behaviour, such as reduced red meat consumption.

Where electrification is not possible, the CCC says other technologies will be needed. This includes bioenergy, synthetic fuels, such as hydrogen or methanol, and the continued use of small amounts of fossil fuels – in “limited circumstances” – with carbon capture and storage (CCS).

(The CCC says: “We cannot see a route to net-zero that does not include CCS.”)

The Sankey diagram below shows how the UK’s energy system looks today – and how it would need to change by 2050, if the seventh carbon budget and net-zero target are to be met.

On the left, each figure shows inputs of “primary energy” into the economy from low-carbon sources or fossil fuels. The central section shows the conversion of these fuels into final energy delivered to consumers, such as electricity or road fuel. The right-hand section shows the useful “energy services” that this final energy is able to provide, such as heat, light or motion (green).

Notably, the energy system would shift away from relying on fossil fuels (grey) towards a much greater use of electricity (blue). Technologies such as heat pumps and electric vehicles are far more efficient than boilers or combustion engines. As a result, the UK would get more useful energy (light blue) using far less primary energy, thanks to waste heat losses being halved (red).

The huge reductions in fossil-fuel use and related increase in the overall efficiency of the UK system would yield significant economic benefits, the CCC explains, covered in the next section.

The CCC says that the shift to net-zero would cut oil imports tenfold from current levels by 2050 and cut gas imports by two-thirds over the same period.

§ What are the costs and benefits of net-zero?

The CCC’s advice comes against a backdrop of record global temperatures, with 2024 the first full year more than 1.5C hotter than pre-industrial times and escalating extreme weather impacts.

At the same time, there is growing hostility to climate action from large parts of the UK’s right-leaning media, as well as climate-sceptic, right-wing populist politicians, such as US president Donald Trump.

In addition, Russia’s 2021 invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent spike in fossil-fuel prices continue to cause geopolitical instability – and high energy bills.

The CCC presents the pathway towards net-zero as a solution to all of these problems.

It says reaching net-zero would not only end the UK’s contribution to climate change, but would also reduce high energy bills and energy insecurity caused by reliance on fossil-fuel imports.

Moreover, it says the up-front investment needed to reach net-zero is much smaller than thought in its previous 2020 advice, bringing the net cost down to just £108bn over 25 years (0.2% of GDP).

(All of the costings are presented in current prices relative to a counterfactual where the UK makes no further investments in the transition to net-zero. For example, households would buy combustion-engine cars instead of electric vehicles and gas boilers instead of heat pumps.)

The new 2025 estimate of the net cost of reaching net-zero by 2050 is shown by the red bars in the figure below, compared with the previous sixth carbon budget advice from 2020 (blue). The chart also shows the capital investments and operational savings that make up the net cost overall.

Significantly, the new advice halves the CCC’s previous estimate published in 2020 of the capital investments needed to hit net-zero, from £1.3tn over 2025-2050 to £0.7tn. The earlier figure has been cited repeatedly by those attempting to undermine support for net-zero.

(Those attacking climate policy rarely mention the operational savings that would be delivered by investing in low-carbon technologies as a result of buying less oil and gas. Even under the earlier 2020 advice, the net cost of net-zero was £0.4tn, or around 0.6% of GDP.)

Notably, the large majority of the investment needed to reach net-zero would come from the private sector, according to the CCC, as long as the “right incentives” are in place.

It says that publicly funded outlays would need to range from £6-23bn per year out to 2035 and would never exceed 2% of government spending overall. Pinchbeck told a press briefing:

“We think 65-90% of the capital required is coming from the private sector…What the government needs to do is create the enabling environment to get that capital to move.”

There are several reasons for the fall in estimated net costs, with the largest contribution coming from the CCC assuming that EVs will be cheaper to buy than petrol equivalents within a few years.

This means that decarbonising the road transport sector would be cheaper than sticking with combustion engine cars, even before considering the considerable operational cost savings.

Another factor in the reduced cost is the more widespread use of electrification in heat, transport and industry, explains CCC chief analyst Dr James Richardson. He tells Carbon Brief that electrification in these areas “pushes out what looked like expensive but essential options”.

The figure below shows how the up-front investment needed for net-zero would deliver substantial operational cost savings from the 2040s under the CCC’s balanced pathway.

The figure shows that the largest capital cost would come in the buildings sector, where it expects the upfront cost of heat pumps could remain higher than gas boilers even in 2050.

As a result – and despite lower running costs, if electricity prices are cut in line with its advice – the CCC says the government would need to support households shifting to heat pumps.

In total, the CCC says that household energy bills for heat and power could fall to £700 below 2025 levels by 2050. In addition, it says that motoring bills would fall by another £700.

The advice considers distributional impacts for the first time, looking at how different types of households would be affected by the shift to net-zero. If the government reduces electricity costs then most types of households would see a cost saving. The exception to this would be homes unable to switch to heat pumps and using less efficient “resistive” heating instead.

In a pre-launch press briefing, Pinchbeck addressed those arguing against the transition:

“If you are an elected representative who is hostile to renewables, heat pumps, electric vehicles, what our numbers say is you are also hostile to your constituents saving £700 on their energy bill and [another] £700 on their fuel bill through making those changes.”

Beyond direct economic costs and benefits, the advice also considers “co-impacts” of the changes needed to meet climate goals. It says these co-impacts would include warmer and less damp homes, improved air quality, increased active travel and healthier diets.

These changes would deliver net benefits valued at £2.4-8.2bn by 2050, the CCC says. However, given the uncertainty around the monetary value of these impacts, they are not included in the overall benefit-cost analysis set out above.

§ What new climate policies does the CCC recommend?

The CCC says that achieving its recommended targets will rely on a “combination of markets, government support and choices by the public”.

It stresses that a “stable” and “consistent” set of climate policies would help to provide confidence to people and businesses during the net-zero transition. It adds that certain policies are also needed to “provide financial incentives, where necessary”.

Under the previous government, the committee repeatedly warned that the UK required more comprehensive climate policies. This shortfall was exacerbated by the Conservative leadership’s decision in 2023 to roll back some of its own net-zero policies.

The CCC has also warned that the Labour government, which was elected last year, must take urgent action to “make up lost ground”.

However, the committee’s new recommendations are less prescriptive about specific policies than its previous advice. (The last carbon budget advice, in 2020, was accompanied by an additional 209-page report titled: “Policies for the sixth carbon budget and net-zero.”)

Speaking to journalists at a press briefing, interim CCC chair Forster explained this new approach:

“We went back to the Climate Change Act and we did have a look at our core responsibility within that act – and that is to give government and parliament the very best non-partisan advice possible…It’s not up to us to make the policy, it’s up to government.”

Nevertheless, the new report still includes 43 “priority recommendations” for the government to support the delivery of the proposed seventh carbon budget. There are “seven core themes that underpin most of these recommendations”, which are:

• “Making electricity cheaper”: Rebalancing prices to remove policy levies from electricity bills could incentivise people and businesses to choose low-carbon technologies, the CCC says.
• “Removing barriers”: Processes and rules around planning, consenting and regulatory funding – including those covering grid infrastructure – “need to enable rapid deployment of low-carbon technologies”, according to the CCC.
• “Providing certainty”: For technologies where markets have already “locked into a solution”, the committee says the government should introduce clear policies for phasing out old technologies and scaling up new ones.
• “Supporting households to install low-carbon heating”: Government support is specifically needed to tackle the high up-front costs of heat-pump installations and other barriers such as “misconceptions”, the report states.
• “Setting out how government will support businesses”: The CCC says businesses, including farmers, need clarity on how much government support they will receive and how much to rely on market mechanisms, such as the UK emissions trading scheme (ETS), to decarbonise.
• “Enabling the growth of skilled workforces and supporting workers in the transition”: Government, businesses and affected communities should plan for changes in some industries, plus ensure that there is a workforce available to enable the net-zero transition, according to the CCC.
• “Implementing an engagement strategy”: Finally, the committee stresses the importance of the government providing ”clear information to households and businesses”, including on the benefits of low-carbon choices.

There is some more specific guidance within these recommendations. This includes confirming that there will be no role for hydrogen in heating, no new properties connected to the gas grid from 2026 and no extended contracts for large biomass plants operating extensively beyond 2027.

CCC lead analyst Dr James Richardson tells Carbon Brief that such specificity reflects the committee’s certainty on some policies. He contrasts this with rebalancing electricity pricing, which the committee thinks is necessary, but could be achieved in a number of ways.

The report also calls for the government to publish its long-awaited land-use framework, which it is currently consulting on, as well as a common sustainability framework for biomass, which would support bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).

More broadly, the CCC recommends that the government should produce a draft set of proposals and policies for delivering the seventh carbon budget. This would “aid parliamentary scrutiny in the setting of the budget level”, it says (See: What is the ‘seventh carbon budget’?).

It also says the government should introduce indicators to ensure emissions cuts are on track, as well as “contingency measures that could make up any shortfalls”.

Beyond emissions cuts, the CCC also calls for the government to strengthen the implementation of its third national adaptation plan, and introduce “clear objectives and measurable targets” across all departments.

§ How would each sector need to change by 2040?

The CCC lays out a detailed breakdown of how each sector in the UK economy could reduce its emissions in the coming years. 

This analysis aligns with its balanced pathway, which reduces overall emissions in line with the seventh carbon budget and, ultimately, achieves net-zero by 2050. 

The committee also details key metrics, from electric cars on the road to average meat consumption, and how they change on this trajectory.

Surface transport

Road and rail transport has been the sector with the highest emissions in the UK for a decade, currently accounting for around a quarter of the nation’s emissions. 

It is also the sector that would see the biggest dip in emissions in the CCC’s pathway – dropping by 86% from 103MtCO2e in 2023 to 15MtCO2e in 2040.

As the chart below shows, that drop is driven predominantly by the electrification of cars and vans. This accounts for 72% of the emissions savings out to 2040. 

Another 12% comes from zero-emission heavy-goods vehicles (HGVs) and 3% comes from other zero-emissions vehicles, such as buses and motorcycles. Most of these vehicles are also expected to be electric.

In total, by 2040 some 80% of cars, 74% of vans and 63% of HGVs would be electric, under the CCC’s balanced pathway.

The uptake of electric vehicles modelled by the CCC is faster than the trajectory in the government’s legally binding zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate. The committee says this is achievable, noting that “there has been strong early electric vehicle growth in the UK”.

In the CCC’s pathway, the electric-vehicle transition is “propelled by the falling cost of batteries”, which allows electric cars to match the purchase price of petrol and diesel cars by 2026-2028. 

The expansion of public charging points also plays an important role. The committee says there should also be efforts to make local public charging “more comparable to charging at home”.

The Labour government pledged to reintroduce the 2030 phaseout date for new petrol and diesel cars, which was delayed by Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government.

The CCC says the government should enact this pledge, as well as clarifying its position on similar phaseout dates for vans and HGVs with combustion engines.

Moreover, the committee says the government should consider including plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) in the phaseout. It says “ambitious targets” for the ZEV mandate would be needed beyond 2030, if PHEVs are not included in the ban.

The committee stresses that electric cars could also be included in a public information campaign to communicate their cost-saving potential. People have been “misinformed about battery longevity and electric vehicle lifecycle emissions”, the report says.

In addition, the committee says there is a need for a suite of policies, subsidies and regulatory mechanisms to scale up sales of electric vans and HGVs.

The CCC sees little or no role for hydrogen in any form of transport.

Another sizable chunk of emissions savings, amounting to 9% by 2040, comes from the replacement of 7% of car journeys with buses, walking and cycling. This is an “ambitious assumption” that the committee says is based on evidence from Germany and the Netherlands.

To achieve this shift, the committee says the government should “provide local authorities with long-term funding and powers”.

The CCC emphasises that many of the biggest benefits associated with net-zero will come from a switch to low-carbon forms of transport. For example, people will save money because electric cars are cheaper to run. 

However, this also applies to the £2.4-8.2bn annual “co-benefits” that will accrue across the economy by 2050. Most of these benefits, including better air quality, fewer road accidents and reduced congestion, result from a switch to electric cars or away from cars altogether.

Building heat

Heat pumps are going to drive the biggest reduction in heating emissions in the UK, while there is “no role” for hydrogen in the sector, according to the CCC. 

Residential buildings are currently the second highest emitting sector in the UK, accounting for 12% of emissions (52MtCO2e) in 2023. 

The largest source of emissions within the sector is fossil fuels for space heating and hot water, representing 96% of emissions. Of this, 80% comes from gas, while oil and liquefied petroleum gas make up another 12%. 

Emissions in the sector have gradually decreased since the early 2000s, driven by policies to improve the efficiency of heating technologies and invest in energy efficiency. A sharp decrease in emissions since 2021 has been caused by high gas prices and mild winters.

Under the CCC’s balanced pathway, emissions from residential heat would fall to 66% below 2023 levels by 2040. By the middle of the century, the sector could almost totally decarbonise. 

Building emissions fall faster in the 2030s in the seventh carbon budget advice than in the sixth carbon budget report, predominantly due to the use of “S-curves” for the pickup of heat pumps. 

Speaking to Carbon Brief, the CCC’s director of analysis Dr James Richardson says that, while the UK is behind other European countries in the installation of heat pumps, the advantage of being such a “laggard” is that it can learn from other markets, making the modelling “more precise”. 

While there will be a limited role for other electric-heating technologies, there is no role for hydrogen heating in residential buildings, the CCC says.

Speaking during a briefing, Richardson highlighted the weight of research showing that hydrogen heat would be expensive and challenging to roll out. He said: 

“Hydrogen is a limited resource. It’s quite costly to make and you need quite a lot of equipment that doesn’t already exist, so we can’t just magic it out of the air, as it were, and using it for heating is not a particularly efficient use of hydrogen.” 

The share of existing homes with low-carbon heating increases from 8% in 2023 to 68% in 2040 under the CCC’s balanced pathway, including the share of homes with a heat pump growing from sound 1% to 52% over the same time period. 

This would mean 75% of low-carbon heating systems installed by 2040 are heat pumps, with 94% of these being air-source heat pumps, the advice suggests.

In the CCC’s pathway, the rate of heat pump installations grows from 60,000 in 2023 to nearly 450,000 in 2030, and then 1.5m by 2035. While this represents a rapid increase, it falls short of the government’s target of 600,000 installations a year by 2028. 

Other forms of low-carbon heating systems expected to grow are: communal heat pumps (3% by 2040); low-carbon heat networks (9%); and direct electric heat (13%). 

In addition to getting rid of their boilers, most homes would also receive small energy efficiency improvements and 17% would see big efficiency improvements installed by 2050. 

Energy efficiency would be responsible for 10% of emissions reductions in 2040, according to the CCC.

The committee’s balanced pathway assumes all new homes would be built to be highly efficient and have low-carbon heating systems. These represent 14% of emissions reductions in 2040. 

There are substantial upfront capital-cost requirements for lowering emissions within the residential sector, but energy efficiency measures and low-carbon heating systems have additional social benefits beyond long-term savings. The CCC estimates the co-benefits of its pathways at £650m by 2040. 

The transition represents an opportunity to reduce fuel poverty in the UK, it says, reducing the number of households in fuel poverty by 77% by 2050 compared to 2025.

To facilitate this transition, the CCC recommends electricity bills be made cheaper by removing levies and other policy costs, as well as decarbonising the electricity system. (See: Electricity below.) 

Additionally, the government should confirm that there will be no role for hydrogen in home heating, reinstate regulations that all heating systems installed by 2035 are low carbon and provide long-term funding for energy efficiency, amongst other policy moves.

Electricity

Emissions from the electricity sector have fallen by 81% since 1990, to 38MtCO2e in 2023, according to the CCC. 

The majority of this decrease has happened since 2012 due to the phase-out of coal – the UK’s last coal-fired power plant closed last year – and an increase in low-carbon generation. 

Between 2010 and 2023, the share of generation from wind and solar rose from 3% to 34%, helping to displace coal and gas, the CCC notes. The remaining emissions in the electricity sector are largely from unabated gas, which accounted for 30% of UK generation in 2023. 

Under the CCC’s balanced pathway, emissions from electricity supply fall by 88% to just 5MtCO2e in 2040. The committee notes that the sector can almost completely decarbonise by 2050. 

Over the next 25 years, demand for electricity is expected to more than double, from 274 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2023 to 692TWh in 2050. This is due to the increase in electric vehicles, heat pumps and other electric technologies to decarbonise other sectors. 

Renewable generation would make up 80% of generation in 2040. This would require the deployment of offshore wind – which would be the “backbone” of the system – to increase from around 1-2 gigawatts (GW) per year to 5.7GW per year out to 2030, before then maintaining a rate of 4GW per year, on average, out to the middle of the century.

Onshore wind would require an average deployment rate of 0.8GW per year, peaking at 1.9GW in 2030 – this is comparable to its historical peak of 1.8GW in 2017. Solar would need an average deployment rate of 3.4GW per year – below the historical peak seen in 2015 of 4.1GW. 

The CCC says there are several potential barriers to deployment, including planning, grid connections and supply-chain bottlenecks. 

The CCC expects “firm power” from nuclear and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) to make up 13% of generation in 2040. This would require an additional 5GW of nuclear capacity to be built, in addition to the Hinkley C new nuclear plant under construction in Somerset. 

“Dispatchable” generation from gas with CCS or hydrogen-fired turbines would make up the final 7% of the mix, but with a large capacity of 38GW by 2050. The electricity network would also need to be expanded “at pace” to ensure that the growing demand for electricity is enabled.

The electricity system of the future would include much more grid storage, the CCC says, with 35GW of short-duration batteries by 2050, more than a ten-fold increase on 2023 levels. A range of medium-duration technologies are also expected to be rolled out, with 7GW on the grid by 2050. 

Smart demand flexibility systems would need to be expanded and interconnectors to increase in capacity from around 10GW today to 28GW by 2050.

Together with storage, these would help manage grid security, with the CCC modelling a one-in-20 “adverse weather year” that includes wind droughts, to ensure the system would remain reliable.

The CCC states that these changes would allow the emissions intensity of electricity – its emissions per unit of generation – to fall by 95% by 2040 and 99% by 2050. 

The growth of cheap renewable energy would displace unabated gas generation, resulting in operational savings, the CCC says, as shown in the chart below. In order for the effect of this to be felt by consumers, policy costs should be rebalanced away from electricity bills, the CCC adds.

Despite the “significant investment” required to decarbonise and expand the electricity system under the CCC’s pathway, the underlying costs of electricity supply fall compared to the baseline. 

The shift provides a number of co-benefits as well, including industrial opportunities, increasing energy security by reducing reliance on volatile international prices and improving air quality. 

To meet the requirements of the balanced pathway, the CCC calls on the government to ensure the funding and auction design for the next contracts-for-difference subsidy auctions are sufficient.

It also calls for reform processes and rules around planning and consenting of new projects, as well as clarity around electricity market arrangement, amongst other actions.

Industry

By 2040, the CCC’s balanced pathway sees emissions from industry falling by 78% from 52MtCO2e in 20223, with industrial output remaining largely unchanged. 

It says that industry could almost completely decarbonise by 2050, with a large part of these reductions coming via electrification. 

Emissions from industry have fallen by 63% since 1990, due predominantly to a steep decline in UK production of emissions-intensive materials. 

A “structural shift” has seen lower-carbon, but higher-value industry outputs increase, such as pharmaceuticals and aerospace, allowing “gross value added” from the sector to grow by 26%, while energy consumption for each unit of output has fallen by 45% between 1998 and 2022. 

At the same time, however, steel production has fallen from 18Mt in 1990 to 6Mt in 2023 and cement from 15Mt to 8Mt.  

The closure of one of the UK’s last remaining blast furnaces, along with the expected closure of a second site, are expected to reduce emissions in the sector by at least another 8MtCO2e in 2024, the CCC says. It adds that the owners are planning to build electric arc furnaces at both sites, to maintain steel production with lower emissions.

Going forward, the largest share of emissions reduction for industry under the CCC’s balanced pathway is expected to come from electrification, representing 57% of savings in 2040. 

The committee notes that there are already electrical alternatives to most types of fossil-fuelled heating used in industry, with many bringing “important advantages”, such as greater efficiency. 

In cases where electrification is not possible, the CCC envisages fuel switching to hydrogen, as well as a limited amount of bioenergy and carbon capture and storage (BECCS) being used to compensate for industrial process emissions that cannot be avoided.

CCS is expected to account for 17% of industrial emissions cuts 2040, helping to tackle those from industrial subsectors with a high level of process emissions or where switching away from fossil fuels is not practical. As such, it is only deployed in two industrial subsectors within the balanced pathway: chemicals, and cement and lime. 

The CCC has assumed that the capture rate of CCS technologies will be 90% until 2040, and 95% beyond that.

Hydrogen is expected to represent 7% of emissions reductions in 2040. In particular, it would play a “meaningful role” in decarbonising chemicals, glass and other minerals, iron and steel, as well as non-road mobile machinery.

Bioenergy is expected to reduce emissions by 5% by 2040. While many processes could, in theory, run on bioenergy, the CCC notes that it should be prioritised for subsectors that use CCS, particularly cement.

Combining bioenergy and CCS is expected to deliver 0.8 MtCO2e of CO2 removals by 2050.

Resource efficiency and energy efficiency are expected to represent 7% and 6% of emissions reductions in 2040, respectively. 

The CCC’s pathway between 2025 and 2050 increases sector costs compared to a baseline. But there are potential additional benefits, for example, electrification offers an opportunity for manufacturers to provide more demand management services to the national grid. 

It also notes that there is a potential competitive advantage for UK industry in decarbonising early, with low-carbon production expected to buck the wider trend of high-carbon goods demand falling. 

To support the decarbonisation of industry, the CCC recommends that the government make electricity cheaper relative to gas, speed up the grid connection process, maintain support for CCS and hydrogen, plus strengthen the UK Emissions Trading Scheme, amongst other measures.

Agriculture and land use

Agriculture accounted for 11% of emissions in 2022 (47.7MtCO2e), while net emissions from land use, land-use change and forests were 0.8MtCO2e. 

The CCC expects agricultural emissions to fall by 39% by 2040. Agricultural emissions will make up 27% of the UK’s emissions by 2040, making it the second-highest emitting sector at the time.

By 2050, the CCC’s pathway shows agricultural emissions falling to 26.4MtCO2e. 

Emissions in the sector start lower in the seventh carbon budget’s modelling than in the previous iteration and fall further by around 10Mt. This is due to several factors, including changes to the inventory and emerging trends within meat consumption.

Speaking to Carbon Brief, the CCC’s director of analysis Dr James Richardson says:  

“There is a trend in which red meat is losing ground within meat overall. And so we’ve reflected that trend in our assumptions that for any given amount of meat, less red meat within that reduces emissions. So that’s helping to bring down those agriculture numbers.”

In the CCC pathway, some land must be diverted from farmland to other uses, such as growing trees and restoring peatland. Lower livestock numbers free up 68% of this released land by 2040 and account for around a third of this sector’s emissions cuts.

The government should support this shift, including helping to reduce average meat consumption by 25% by 2040 and 35% by 2050 compared to 2019 levels, according to the CCC.

Other measures, such as cutting food waste and improving crop yields, are expected to release the remaining 32% of converted agricultural land. These only account for 2% of emissions cuts in 2040.

Soils and livestock measures are expected to reduce emissions by 14% in 2040 and decarbonising machinery by 21%, as shown in the chart below.

Land-use emissions are now 10MtCO2e lower than 1990 levels and are expected to become a small carbon sink of 1.9MtCO2e in 2040.

The CCC pathway sees peatland restoration and management reducing emissions by 17% in 2040. Woodland creation and management also reduce emissions by 4%, rising to 15% by 2050. 

This follows the UK missing its tree-planting targets, failing to plant an area of forest nearly equivalent to the size of Birmingham, according to Carbon Brief analysis published last year.

Energy crops account for 7% of emissions reductions, with 0.7m hectares or almost 3% of UK land area allocated to three perennial crops – miscanthus, short-rotation coppice and short-rotation forestry by 2050. Agroforestry and hedgerows account for a 2% emissions reduction in 2040. 

Aviation

Aviation emissions drop by 17% to 29.5MtCO2e in 2040 in the CCC’s balanced pathway. By which point, aviation would have risen from sixth position to be the highest-emitting sector, due to its slow pace of decarbonisation.

As aviation has “no credible way to completely decarbonise”, roughly 60% of the engineered CO2 removals by 2050 may need to balance out its emissions, according to the CCC. (These removals primarily come from bioenergy with carbon capture and storage.)

A core message within the CCC’s report is that the aviation sector should “pay for [its] share” of removals, as well as the broader costs of decarbonising and addressing the non-CO2 effects of flights on global warming. These costs would be “reflected in the price of flying”.

This, in turn, would help to discourage growth in the sector, which would also help to curb emissions, the CCC says. Overall, limiting the number of flights accounts for more than half of the emissions savings out to 2040.

However, this is compared to a baseline scenario in which per-capita distance flown grows 53% above 2025 levels by 2040. In the CCC’s pathway, demand remains fairly steady for the next decade, then increases 16% from 2025 levels by 2040

The advice comes in the wake of the government recently supporting the expansion of Heathrow and, potentially, other airports.

The CCC’s latest pathway allows for greater growth in passenger numbers than previous advice – 402 million by 2050, rather than 365 million. It has also dropped a previous recommendation that there should be “no net increase” in airport capacity.

However, it stresses that government and industry “may need to take additional demand management measures”, if technologies do not expand sufficiently to reduce emissions.

“Sustainable” aviation fuels (SAFs) account for 33% of emissions cuts by 2040 in the CCC’s pathway. This involves SAFs rising from meeting 1% of total demand today to 17%.

(The government and industry have emphasised their focus on SAFs, but many experts have doubts about how much they can be relied on to curb emissions.)

A further 13% of emissions savings in the CCC’s pathway come from efficiency improvements and, to a much lesser extent, the use of hybrid and zero-emission aircraft. The overall breakdown of emissions reductions is laid out in the chart below.

However, the CCC says that, with SAFs and CO2 removal still in the early stages of development, there remains great uncertainty around how aviation will decarbonise. 

This means the final breakdown between these technologies and demand reduction could be very different. Therefore, it stresses that “all must be pursued” to ensure the UK meets its goals.

Finally, the CCC advises that the government should commit to monitoring and tackling the non-CO2 warming effects of aviation, as well as working with other countries to “go further” than the UN International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to curb emissions from international flights.

Other sectors

The CCC’s balanced pathway also covers sectors that contribute smaller shares of UK emissions. 

The largest of these is fuel supply – primarily, oil and gas production, as well as hydrogen and bioenergy – which accounts for 7% of UK emissions. 

Even smaller shares come from waste and shipping, as well as fluorinated gases (F-gases), which are used in refrigeration, air conditioning, heat pumps and medical inhalers.

Here, Carbon Brief rounds up some of the key points and recommendations for these sectors:

• Fossil-fuel supply emissions are expected to decline even without any new policies, as North Sea production dwindles and demand falls due to electrification. Oil and gas production would fall 68% by 2040 and 85% by 2050 under the balanced pathway.
• The CCC says the government should provide incentives to encourage the electrification of oil and gas platforms and CCS use in refineries. It suggests “proactive transition plans” to help oil and gas workers find new employment.
• “Low-regret” hydrogen infrastructure, such as networks and storage, should be “fast-tracked” so it is available from the 2030s, the committee says.
• Bioenergy has an “important, but limited role in enabling decarbonisation”, met by increasing domestic supply of energy crops and fewer imports from overseas.
• Shipping emissions drop by 62% by 2040 and – unlike aviation – the sector could almost completely decarbonise by 2050 through improved efficiencies and a switch to low-carbon fuels and electricity, according to the CCC.
• Waste is one of the few sectors that is expected to continue emitting in 2050, due to hard-to-abate processes in wastewater, landfill methane emissions and uncaptured CO2 from energy from waste.
• The CCC says the UK will need to introduce regulations to replace F-gases with less harmful alternatives. It says 2024 EU regulations provide a useful model for what needs to be achieved.

§ What does the CCC say about imported emissions?

The CCC notes that a significant share of the UK’s overall carbon footprint is associated with goods and services imported from overseas.

Specifically, it says that imported emissions – at 381MtCO2e in 2021 – are of a similar scale to those that take place within the UK’s borders, which were 423MtCO2e that year.

Contrary to widespread perception, however, the committee notes that these imported emissions have barely changed over the past four decades.

In other words, emissions cuts within the UK’s borders have not been wiped out by increasingly “offshored” emissions embedded in imports.

Moreover, the report shows that nearly a third of these imported emissions – some 29% – relate to trade with the EU, whereas only 12% come from China. Similarly, the largest sectors are food and forestry imports (21%), rather than manufactured goods.

Many commentators have tried to argue that the UK should set climate goals based on its overall emissions footprint, on a so-called consumption basis rather than a territorial one.

However, the CCC explains that emissions taking place overseas are not under the jurisdiction of the UK government. It adds that attempting to regulate emissions imported into the UK “could undermine the accountability of other countries for their territorial emissions…[given] ultimate responsibility for reducing emissions lies with the producer”.

In addition, it notes that statistics on consumption-based emissions are “inherently uncertain”, which would make them “problematic” as a basis for legally binding carbon targets.

Instead, the CCC proposes a non-legally binding “benchmark” on imported emissions, which would set out the government’s expectations for how emissions from imports should decline over time.

§ A third of Earth

At the COP15 nature summit in 2022, countries agreed to the GBF, a broad set of targets and goals with an overall aim to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.

Target 3 of the GBF – which says countries should ensure “at least” 30% of Earth is in protected areas or governed by other conservation measures by 2030 (“30 by 30”) – is considered by many to be the flagship aim of the agreement and has been likened to the 1.5C temperature goal of the Paris Agreement in articles and speeches stressing its importance.

All countries were asked to submit plans to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity outlining how they will meet the targets of the GBF within their territories ahead of the COP16 nature summit in 2024. These are called national biodiversity strategies and action plans, or “NBSAPs”.

A separate Carbon Brief and Guardian investigation last October found that 85% of countries missed the deadline to submit their NBSAPs, with some arguing that the deadline was too challenging or that they were not able to access funds to help prepare their documents.

Countries unable to produce their NBSAPs were asked to instead submit national targets to the UN. These are simple lists of targets that countries will aim for without an accompanying plan of action.

As of 24 February 2025, 44 countries and the EU had submitted NBSAPs to the UN, while 124 parties had submitted national targets. (As some countries submitted both national targets and NBSAPs, it means that, overall, 137 countries have put forward a plan of some kind.)

To investigate whether countries have committed to the “30 by 30” pledge within their borders in these plans, Carbon Brief and the Guardian analysed the full text of each NBSAP, as well as any target that had been tagged as relating to target 3 of the GBF.

The analysis finds that, of 137 countries that have submitted plans to the CBD, more than half – 70 countries, or 51% – do not commit to protecting 30% of their land and sea by 2030. 

Of these, 21 countries did not supply a numerical target for protecting their land area, 26 set targets for land protection that were less than 30% and eight set land targets of or greater than 30%, but sea-protection targets less than 30%. 

Of the remaining countries, 13 did not submit any targets relating to coverage of protected areas. Two others set goals further in the future than 2030.

A further 10 countries, or 7%, do not make it clear from the plans that they submitted whether or not they have a pledge that meets the conditions of 30 by 30. This includes: countries that specify that they will protect 30% of “areas of particular importance”; countries that gave a target for improvement, but did not provide a baseline; and countries that submitted only one or two targets.

Just 42% of countries – 57 in total – commit to protecting 30% of both land and sea by 2030. 

The chart below shows the countries that have submitted NBSAPs and/or national targets to the UN. On the chart, countries are clustered by the percentage of land they have pledged to protect and the size of each bubble represents their land area. (Countries clustered around the 30% line and outlined in grey all have pledges to protect 30% of land area.)

Countries clustered below “no target” are those that have not pledged a numerical target for protecting their land or those who have produced a plan, but have not included a protected area target.

The analysis shows that, collectively, more than one-third of the Earth’s land area is covered by a pledge that does not fulfil the “30 by 30” target, while around half is covered by a “30 by 30” pledge. 

Seven of the 17 “megadiverse” countries – which together provide a home to 70% of the world’s biodiversity – have not committed to 30 by 30, the analysis finds. This includes Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines, South Africa and Venezuela.

A further 61 countries have not submitted an NBSAP or national targets and so have not been assessed in the analysis. This includes the world’s most biodiverse nation, Brazil.

The figures also do not include the US, which  – although a megadiverse country – is not party to the CBD and, therefore, is not subject to the goals and targets of the GBF.

Former US president Joe Biden committed the country to the “30 by 30” pledge. However, the “Project 2025” policy blueprint – which Donald Trump is largely following – calls for the target to be scrapped.

The EU submitted an NBSAP that covers its 27 member states and commits to 30 by 30.

However, individual countries are also party to the CBD and are expected to submit their own national plans. For the purposes of this analysis, EU member states were only considered to be meeting “30 by 30” if they submitted their own NBSAP or national target that did so.

§ ‘Extremely challenging’

Carbon Brief and the Guardian reached out to megadiverse countries and developed nations to ask why they had chosen not to commit to “30 by 30” in their UN plans.

Indonesia, a megadiverse country that is home to the world’s third-largest rainforest, did not give a numerical target for how much of its territory it is able to protect for nature in its NBSAP.

A government spokesperson says that it is Indonesia’s view that “it is not essential to explicitly state that the 30% protection target is for terrestrial and marine areas” in its territory, explaining:

“Indonesia is of the view that all of us need to understand that the GBF is indeed global. And, by being global, it is natural that this framework should be implemented globally and collectively, without putting an unnecessarily heavy burden on some of us.

“Indonesia is committed to ambitious yet practical targets for the GBF, with an emphasis on the fact that not all parties are at the same level if targets are assessed numerically.”

The spokesperson adds that “managing biodiversity is not an easy task” and that the “balance of economic, social and environmental aspects must be maintained, particularly for developing countries like Indonesia”.

In its NBSAP, megadiverse nation Mexico commits to protecting 30% of its oceans, but only 22% of its land. 

Dr Andrea Cruz Angón, coordinator of biodiversity strategies and policies at Conabio, the federal government’s biodiversity commission, says that the targets are still “being reviewed and adjusted” by the appropriate federal agencies.

She adds that the targets were produced after workshops were held “with subnational governments, youth, Indigenous peoples and Afro-Mexican communities” to identify “barriers and opportunities for these actors to make voluntary commitments to the targets”.

Finland, one of the EU’s member states, has not yet released an NBSAP, but submitted its national targets for meeting the goals of the GBF to the UN in August 2024. In these plans, Finland does not commit to “30 by 30”.

A spokesperson for the Finnish government says it was still preparing its NBSAP and, as a result, none of its targets are final, but adds:

“Achieving a 30% increase in protected area by 2030 would be extremely challenging, as to reach this target, for example, the protected area in land areas would have to increase by about over 700,000 hectares per year.”

In its NBSAP, Norway committed to protecting 30% of its land for nature by 2030 – but says it was still assessing its ocean protection target and “will come back with a plan for how a future goal can be achieved in a way that also facilitates the sustainable use of Norwegian marine areas”.

A spokesperson for Norway says the nation is “committed to contribute towards the 30 by 30 target”, adding:

“A national conservation target for Norwegian sea areas has not yet been concluded. This is due to an ongoing national process to assess which marine areas that can be recognised as protected through ‘other effective area-based conservation measures’ (OECM), in accordance with [UN biodiversity] criteria. 

“The conclusion of this process will clarify the current conservation status of Norwegian waters, and consequently enable us to set a national target.”

§ ‘Go back to the drawing board’

Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, tells Carbon Brief and the Guardian that “30 by 30” is a “global target and how countries take that on board at the national level will be different across the world, depending on national circumstances”.

She points to the Protected Planet Report 2024, which shows that only 17.6% of land and 8.4% of the ocean is currently being conserved for nature – with just five years to go until the “30 by 30” deadline, adding:

“As the world faces a nature and biodiversity loss crisis, it is clear we must go much further, much faster. This will not be possible without financial, technical and capacity support for many countries.”

Responding to Carbon Brief and the Guardian’s investigation, Brian O’Donnell, director of the Campaign for Nature, a group advocating for the 30 by 30 target, says: 

“Many countries have not been ambitious enough with their domestic conservation commitments and, as a result, we are collectively not currently on track to meet the global ‘30 by 30’ target. This is troubling and action must be taken to put the world on track.”

To get on track for “30 by 30”, developed nations must “directly fund” the target to enable developing countries to protect more of their territories for nature, he says, adding that the “30 by 30” pledge also needs to be championed at a higher level by global leaders and the UN.

He adds that countries not committing to “30 by 30” in their UN plans “should go back to the drawing board and update their plans with ones in which conservation is commensurate with the challenge of biodiversity loss and the needs of communities”.

The full Carbon Brief and Guardian analysis can be found here.

§ This week

Brazil’s oil ‘evolution’

OIL BE FRIENDS: Brazil’s government has approved an invitation to join OPEC+, a group representing the interests of oil-exporting nations, just months ahead of hosting the COP30 climate summit, the Associated Press reported. The move signals the “country’s evolution into a major oil state”, the newswire said. Brazil’s energy minister said the country’s participation will be limited to a “forum for discussing strategies” and that “we should not be ashamed of being oil producers”.

SHIPPING SHOWDOWN: Brazil was also among 15 countries that asked the UN to ditch plans for a new levy on CO2 emissions from global shipping, reported the Guardian. Ahead of an International Maritime Organisation (IMO) meeting this week, the group – which includes China, Saudi Arabia and South Africa – “argued a levy could reduce exports from the developing world, raise food prices and increase inequalities”, the newspaper said. It added that the levy “could still pass”, if the IMO takes a “firm stance”. 

NO HOTEL, NO PROBLEM: During a visit to Belém, the host city for COP30 this November, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva responded to concerns that it does not have enough accommodation by saying delegates could “sleep [under the] star[s] in the sky…which will be wonderful”, Folha de São Paulo reported. And Reuters covered the latest raids as part of “Operation Maravalha” to curb illegal logging in the Amazon.

Trampling Trump

ACCESS DENIED: US state department officials have been denied permission to participate in an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meeting in China next week, Axios reported. A contract for an IPCC working group technical support unit was also “recently terminated by NASA”, it added. Axios also reported that NASA and NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) are in line for a “10% reduction in staff”, which could “imperil” the work of the National Weather Service.

‘CHAOTIC’: In US president Donald Trump’s latest move to dismantle federal climate policies, the Department of Homeland Security has been ordered to “eliminate all climate change activities and the use of climate change terminology”, Bloomberg reported. This includes the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which “has been responding to more disasters”, the newswire added, as “wildfires, storms and floods increase”.

‘LIQUID GOLD’: Trump has signed an executive order formally creating a “National Energy Dominance Council”, reported the Associated Press, and “directed it to drive up already record-setting domestic oil and gas production”. Trump said: “We’re going to make more money than anybody’s ever made with energy.” E&E News examined how his ambitions could hit “economic and geologic realities”.

§ Around the world

• ABOUT TURN: In a “major policy shift”, Japan’s newly approved energy plan will aim to produce 20% of its electricity from nuclear power by 2040, reported BBC News.
• RISING SEAS: The Pacific Ocean nation of Nauru is aiming to sell citizenships to help meet the cost of moving 10,000 residents from low-lying areas into the island’s “barren interior”, Bloomberg reported.
• LANDSLIDE RISK: Heavy rainfall in Peru has killed at least 46 people and left more than 8,000 people homeless, reported El Comercio, which noted that the extreme weather was expected to continue in the coming days.
• ‘GREEN CORRIDOR’: Environmentalists warned that a new protected area – the size of France – in the Democratic Republic of Congo has so far failed to include Indigenous people and local communities in its design, Climate Home News said.
• ICE IN DECLINE: According to BBC News analysis of satellite data, global sea ice extent dropped to a record low in mid-February.
• ‘FRAGILE GLOBAL EXISTENCE’: A G20 meeting of foreign ministers has started in Johannesburg, South Africa, with “stepping up the fight against global warming” on the agenda, reported Bloomberg. US secretary of state Marco Rubio has “snubbed” the event due, in part, to its climate focus, it added.

§ 10%

The record proportion of China’s GDP coming from clean-energy technologies in 2024, according to analysis published by Carbon Brief.

§ Latest climate research

• Glaciers across the world collectively lost 273bn tonnes of ice every year between 2000 and 2023, a new Nature study found, with a 36% increase in ice loss from the first (2000-11) to the second (2012-23) half of the research period.
• New research in a Royal Society journal used data collected from 600 green turtles over three decades to show that females are bringing forward their nesting dates by six days for every 1C of sea surface temperature rise.
• The timing of plant flowering and insect flight in the US is “highly responsive” to extreme weather events, a Nature Climate Change study showed.

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

§ Captured

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) forthcoming special report on climate change and cities has more women than men on its authorship team, for the first time in the organisation’s history, according to analysis by Carbon Brief. The analysis covers all assessment, special and methodology reports published over the IPCC’s 37-year history. It revealed how the representation of women in the IPCC has steadily risen over time, from just 8% of authors in its first report in 1990 to 53% in its cities report, due to be published in March 2027.

§ Spotlight

Cooling cities with ‘smart’ surfaces

Carbon Brief reports on how “smart” surfaces can be used to cool cities in the face of worsening extreme heat.

Last month, new research showed that increasing the reflectivity of surfaces at San Francisco International airport could cut the risk of heat stress in its outdoor workers and see fewer working hours lost at the height of summer.

At its heart, the idea is a simple one – making the ground surface and roofs of buildings more reflective means they absorb less of the sun’s energy. This, in turn, means they warm up less and radiate less heat back into the surroundings.

This helps offset the “urban heat island” effect, where temperatures in cities are consistently higher than in the surrounding countryside due to heat-trapping urban infrastructure.

Heat inequality

The airport study was conducted by the Smart Surfaces Coalition, a not-for-profit organisation that works with cities to use “smart” surfaces – including reflective, porous and green surfaces, solar panels and urban trees – to help manage the impacts of extreme heat and rainfall.

The coalition is working with 11 “partner cities” in the US – plus Bhopal in India – to drive adoption of smart surfaces through citywide policies and local implementation projects. 

According to coalition founder Greg Kats, cities have typically followed “business as usual” for public construction projects – opting for “dark, impervious surfaces of tarmac” at the lowest cost, which “absorbs 90% of the incoming sunlight”.

As well as leaving cities at higher risk of getting “hotter and hotter and more prone to flooding”, these choices have contributed to urban inequality, Kats explained to Carbon Brief.

In the case of Baltimore on the US east coast, “at the same time of day in the summer afternoon” there will be a “14F [7.8C] temperature difference between wealthy, treed areas and low-income, dark, impervious areas”, he said.

This “structural inequality is a legacy of redlining” – long-abolished discriminatory lending practices in the US – and is a “hallmark of American cities”, Kats added.

Urban cooling

In partner cities, the coalition is conducting citywide surface mapping and heat modelling, developing cost-benefit tools and helping cities craft policies and building codes.

In Baltimore, for example, installing smart surfaces could bring more than 5F (2.8C) of citywide cooling, coalition analysis has shown, with benefits that outweigh the costs at a ratio of 10 to 1.

These measures also reduce the need for air conditioning, Kats explained:

“For 1F of ambient temperature reduction, it reduces an air conditioning electricity bill by 4-5%, so a 5F reduction is a 20-25% reduction in electricity bills.” 

As a result, smart surfaces are a “really big deal” for climate mitigation, Kats said. And it taps into another aspect of the urban island effect – a key contribution comes from human activity, such as the use of cars and air conditioning. 

Air conditioners cool the air inside buildings by pumping waste heat outside, so “you have this perverse effect of private cooling heating the city, which means more air conditioning”. Kats explained:

“So you’ve got two different pathways for a city: do you do citywide cooling, or do you keep relying on the private sector to buy more air conditioning?”

While cool surfaces do have their barriers and challenges, Kats argued that they offer the “only viable, scalable, cost-effective, urban-cooling strategy”, adding: “There really isn’t anything else.”

§ Watch, read, listen

‘TRAPPED IN EXPLOITATION’: Climate Home News reported on how “nearly all” Bangladeshi migrants who leave areas hit hard by climate change to seek work elsewhere end up “subject to forms of forced labour”.

RECORDS SMASHED: A Guardian interactive mapped the record heat experienced by two-thirds of the Earth’s surface in 2024.

PRESERVING WEBSITES: A research librarian and policy scholar in North America outlined in the Conversation how to “find climate data and science the Trump administration doesn’t want you to see”.

§ Coming up

• 23 February: Germany general election
• 24-28 February: 62nd session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Hangzhou, China
• 25-27 February: Resumed session of the UN biodiversity summit COP16, Rome
• 26 February: UK Climate Change Committee seventh carbon budget advice published
• 26-28 February: Finance in common summit, Cape Town, South Africa

§ Pick of the jobs

• The China Global South Company, critical minerals editor | Salary: Unknown. Location: Remote (Africa preferred)
• Dioceses of Leicester and Peterborough, net-zero carbon projects development officer | Salary: £30,000. Location: Peterborough, Leicester or Northampton, UK
• Imperial War Museum, head of sustainability and environment | Salary: £65,000. Location: Duxford, London or Manchester, UK
• Groundwork, goals for climate co-ordinator | Salary: £24,716. Location: Hybrid (Northern Ireland)
• Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, consultant analyst – trade and net-zero | Salary: Unknown. Location: Flexible

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.

§ Gender balance 

Carbon Brief has analysed the coordinating lead authors, lead authors and review editors who have worked together to produce dozens of IPCC reports.

The chart below shows the gender balance of the authors of all IPCC reports ever published. 

Each IPCC assessment cycle is marked by the publication of three working-group reports, which are summarised in a synthesis report. Carbon Brief has grouped these four reports under the headline “assessment reports” for every assessment cycle.

The first, second and third assessment reports are indicated by the acronyms FAR, SAR and TAR. Subsequent assessment reports are indicated by AR, followed by the name of the assessment cycle.

Most assessment cycles also saw the publication of “special reports”, focusing on specific areas of climate change, and “methodology reports” – technical documents that focus on specific areas of the IPCC’s methodology. Acronyms for these reports are given as SR and MR, respectively, followed by the name of the assessment cycle.

For example, the special reports on 1.5C, the ocean and cryosphere and climate change and land – published over 2018-19 – are part of the sixth assessment cycle and are referred to collectively as SR6.

To assign each special and methodology report to an assessment cycle, Carbon Brief assumes that assessment reports are the last documents to be published in each assessment cycle. Carbon Brief has grouped the authors from special reports (“SR”) and methodology reports (“MR”) separately for each assessment cycle.

The analysis shows that when the IPCC’s first-ever assessment report was published in 1990, only 8% of authors were women. The representation of women in the IPCC has steadily risen over time and by the sixth assessment cycle (2018-22) more than one-third of authors were women.

The special report on climate change and cities is the only output from the seventh assessment cycle with a publicly available authorship list to date. With 46 men and 51 women, the IPCC cities report is the first in the organisation’s history to have more women than men on its author list. 

The IPCC’s seventh assessment cycle – which will include the three main working group reports, one special report and two methodology reports –  is likely to have hundreds of authors. The authorship teams for the other reports have not yet been selected.

The graphic below shows a more detailed view. Each dot represents one person – with women shown in orange and men in purple. Where one author contributed to multiple working group reports in the same assessment cycle, these repeats have been removed. Grey dots indicate that the gender of the author could not be determined.

For more information on why gender representation is important in climate science, read Carbon Brief’s 2021 analysis on the lack of diversity in climate science.

§ Global-south representation

Carbon Brief also analysed how the proportion of IPCC authors from institutions in the global south has changed. 

Here, “global south” is defined as countries in Africa, Asia (excluding Japan), Latin America and Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand). “Global north” is defined as countries in North America and Europe, as well as Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

The chart below shows the percentage of authors from the global south in every IPCC report.

When the IPCC published its first assessment report, only 11% of authors were from institutions in the global south. This percentage has risen over the years, reaching 38% in the sixth assessment reports, the analysis shows.

With 58 authors from institutions in the global north and 39 from the global south, the IPCC’s cities report is the organisation’s fifth-most global south-dominated report.

(The highest-ranking report for global-south authorship, with 53 authors from the global north and 54 from the global south, was the special report on climate change and land. Published in 2019, this was part of the sixth assessment cycle.)

The graphic below shows a more detailed representation of IPCC authors from institutions in the global north and south. Each dot represents one person – with experts from global-south countries shown in dark blue and global-north countries in light blue. Where one author contributed to multiple working group reports in the same assessment cycle, these repeats have been removed.

The upcoming cities report includes authors from institutions in 54 different countries. The most highly represented countries are Japan, the Netherlands, the UK and the US, with six authors each.

The map below shows the number of authors from institutions in each country, across all IPCC reports included in this analysis. The map on the top shows countries in the global north while the map on the bottom shows those in the global south. Darker colours indicate more authors.

Every author in the cities report has two countries listed next to their name, labelled “country” and “citizenship”. Carbon Brief used the former – which indicates the country where the scientist works – for the analysis above, because citizenship data is not available in earlier reports.

However, IPCC scientists previously told Carbon Brief that, sometimes, experts from the global south find it easier to apply to join the IPCC via institutions in the global north.

An analysis of the citizenship of authors of the IPCC cities report finds that 51 are from global-south countries. However, only 39 are affiliated with institutions in the global south.

§ Methodology

Carbon Brief obtained data used in this analysis from a range of sources, including the IPCC website, the IPCC’s technical support unit and analysis by Carbon Brief staff.

(The “methodology” section of Carbon Brief’s 2023 analysis on IPCC authorship contains more details on how Carbon Brief collected authorship data from the main working group reports and recent special reports.)

Carbon Brief downloaded authorship data on the AR7 special report on climate change and cities from the IPCC website, which lists data on each author’s gender, citizenship and the country where their institution was based.

For authorship data on all the methodology reports and the special reports published before the fifth assessment cycle, Carbon Brief manually extracted information from the report pdfs, which were accessed on the IPCC archive.

In many early reports, only the initials were given for authors’ first names. In these instances, Carbon Brief used internet searches or a ChatGPT-based tool to find first names. If ChatGPT provided a name, Carbon Brief double-checked its accuracy with internet searches. 

Similarly, Carbon Brief used internet searches and ChatGPT to suggest the most likely gender of the authors based on the information available. In some instances, it was not possible to find the authors’ first name or gender and so gender was recorded as “unknown” in the analysis.

Carbon Brief recognises that gender is not best categorised using a binary “male” or “female” label and appreciates that the methods used of determining author gender could result in inaccuracies. However, for the purpose of this analysis, this method was deemed suitable.

As many results were recorded manually, or with the use of artificial intelligence, Carbon Brief acknowledges the possibility of human error. Authorship data collected from earlier reports are more likely to contain these errors. However, the large sample size of more than 5,600 authors in total may mitigate the effect of any such inaccuracies on the overall trends identified.

§ Key developments

China fails to submit 2035 climate pledge

MISSED DEADLINE: China, along with 181 other countries, missed the deadline to submit its next “nationally determined contribution” (NDC), a key climate pledge to the UN that “acts as an accountability measure to ensure countries are taking climate change seriously”, Agence France-Presse reported. It added that, according to unnamed analysts, China is “expected to release its much-anticipated NDC in the second half of 2025”. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said China will follow its “own path, approach and pace to fulfil the ‘dual-carbon’ targets to which it has committed”, in comments covered by industry newspaper China Energy Net. According to the outlet, he added that the country has “always been a doer and an activist in addressing climate change” and will submit its NDC “at the proper time”.

WAIT AND SEE: According to the Guardian, China and other countries would prefer “putting off the publication of [NDCs]” until the early disruption caused by the second Trump administration subsides. In a statement, Yao Zhe, global policy advisor at Greenpeace East Asia, said that “China’s submission will happen later this year”, adding that China must set “ambitious” goals that “include both a strong commitment to renewables and clear measures to move away from coal”. Li Shuo, director of the Asia Society Policy Institute’s China climate hub, told Eco-Business that China’s desire to wait and see how the US will “reshape” global political and economic orders is “natural”, adding that “the hope is that more time will lead to better quality”. China was not alone in missing the NDC deadline, with countries accounting for 83% of global emissions falling short, according to Carbon Brief analysis.

OIL ‘SLOWDOWN’: Elsewhere, a new report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and covered by Bloomberg found that “China’s use of the three most important fuel products – gasoline, jet/kerosene and gasoil – declined slightly to 8.1m barrels a day in 2024”, marking an “unprecedented” slowdown. The outlet said the shift, attributed by the IEA to the uptake of electric vehicles and economic changes, could drive a plateau in the country’s overall oil demand this decade.

Clean-energy technology’s economic contribution rises

GROWTH DRIVER: Clean-energy technologies contributed 13.6tn yuan ($1.9tn) to the Chinese economy in 2024, comprising more than 10% of GDP for the first time, new research for Carbon Brief has found. Much of the rise was driven by the value of goods and services, which grew 21% compared to 2023, as opposed to investment, which was up 7% year-on-year, the analysis added. 

‘NEW THREE’ LEAD: The “new three” industries accounted for most of this growth. Electric vehicles and vehicle batteries “were the largest contributors to China’s clean-energy economy in 2024”, comprising almost 40% of its value. The next largest category was solar power, which generated 2.8tn yuan ($390bn).

GAINING IMPORTANCE: Clean-energy technologies contributed more to the economy in 2024 than real-estate sales (9.6tn yuan, $1.3tn) and agriculture (9.1tn yuan, $1.3tn), the analysis said. It added that China’s investment in clean energy alone is “close to the global total [investment] put into fossil fuels in 2024”. Investment is set to grow in 2025, due in part to a “race to complete” large-scale projects before the end of the five-year plan period (2021-2025). The importance of clean energy to supporting economic growth now “creates incentives for policymakers to ensure the economic health of the sector”, the analysis added.

Wang Yi’s European tour

STRATEGIC DIALOGUE: Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi met with UK prime minister Keir Starmer in his first official visit to the country in a decade, Reuters said, adding that the two “discussed strengthening cooperation in dealing with climate change, artificial intelligence and clean energy”. Wang also held talks with his UK counterpart David Lammy, English-language state broadcaster CGTN said, in which the two foreign ministers “emphasised the importance of advancing the full and effective implementation of the Paris Agreement and supporting both countries’ green transitions”.

WARM WELCOME?: Bloomberg covered development of China’s “impending listing of an inaugural sovereign green bond in London”, quoting Nneka Chike-Obi, head of Asia-Pacific ESG ratings and research at Sustainable Fitch, saying the move would allow China “to get…feedback from international investors” during roadshows and deliver assurances about its climate plans. China has released a “framework” for its green sovereign bonds, the Communist party-affiliated People’s Daily announced, adding the document will be used as the “basis for issuing Chinese green sovereign bonds overseas”. Meanwhile, the UK’s security services are reviewing whether “Chinese technology such as solar panels or industrial batteries could pose potential future security threats”, the Financial Times reported.

SECURITY TALKS: Wang also travelled to Germany, where he said at the Munich Security Conference that China has “acted earnestly on the Paris Agreement”, adding countries “should tackle common challenges in solidarity, rather than resort to bloc confrontation”, according to a transcript published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. State news agency Xinhua reported that climate change was also raised in Wang’s meetings with representatives of the EU, France and Germany on the sidelines of the conference.  

MEDIA VOICES: Meanwhile, Chinese media issued a number of editorials and commentaries emphasising the need for China-Europe cooperation. One editorial in state-run newspaper China Daily noted “it is good to see both [the UK and China] oppose decoupling and…promote a nondiscriminatory and open business environment”. Another China Daily editorial said “collaboration on climate change…has borne fruit through joint initiatives such as the China-EU Partnership on Climate Change”. Meanwhile, the state-supporting news outlet Global Times published an editorial arguing “there are broad common interests between China and the EU in maintaining a multilateral framework” to address issues such as climate change. The Global Times also published a commentary under the byline “GT Voice” arguing that there is a “pressing need for the rest of the world, particularly China and the EU, to strengthen cooperation on green development”.

New energy storage plan

STORAGE STRENGTH: China issued a plan to strengthen its energy storage sector, aiming to develop more “leading” manufacturers, improve “innovation” and increase the sector’s “overall competitiveness” by 2027, Xinhua reported. The policy will also “support research into emerging technologies”, such as alternative battery compositions, compressed air and hydrogen energy storage, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post said. Chinese news outlet Jiemian said the policy nevertheless warned against “blind investment and disorderly development”. Critical minerals were also covered, according to Reuters, with the government pledging to “strengthen support for exploring domestic mineral resources including lithium, cobalt and nickel” and “strengthen foreign investment and cooperation” towards overseas mineral exploration. 

TIGHTENING CONTROL: Meanwhile, China also issued draft regulations which, if approved, would “tighten [its] control” over its rare-earth resources, Reuters reported, such as through “quotas for mining, smelting and separating” the minerals. Another Reuters investigation found that at least one Chinese company is following a draft proposal by the commerce ministry to restrict exports of certain technologies used to process lithium. The development, according to the Financial Times, is part of a broader move to “keep critical knowhow within [China’s] borders as trade tensions with the US and Europe escalate”, adding that the country has also “made it more difficult for some engineers and equipment to leave the country”. Environment NGO Transport & Environment has warned that Europe must develop a “regulatory framework for knowledge sharing” or else risk becoming “an assembly plant” for Chinese battery makers, another Financial Times report said. Elsewhere, the People’s Daily said China’s wind turbine exports rose 70% year-on-year in 2024, with solar and lithium battery exports showing a “strong performance”.

§ Spotlight 

How China’s renewable pricing reforms will affect its climate goals

China’s solar and windfarms would no longer be guaranteed sales at a fixed price linked to coal benchmarks, under a new policy released by the central government.

Under the new “sustainable new energy pricing mechanism”, new wind and solar schemes would be paid a fixed price determined at auction.

In this issue, Carbon Brief examines how the new guidelines will affect China’s energy transition. 

More ‘market-oriented’

From 2026, China has announced that the price of electricity generated from solar and wind schemes will be determined according to competitive auctions. 

This will replace the existing fixed rates solar and wind received for their power, which was pegged to benchmarks for coal-fired power, with the new mechanism likely making prices for renewables much cheaper than coal.

The new system resembles the two-way “contract for difference” (CfD) mechanism used in the UK and elsewhere.

This setup would allow developers to have “reasonable and stable expectations” for revenue, supporting a “healthy” industry and China’s energy transition, a government Q&A said.

Despite some reporting to the contrary, the move does not constitute a rollback of subsidies for renewables. Grid operators have paid wind and solar power the same price as for coal-fired power since 2021. 

The policy also cancels mandatory energy storage requirements for new wind and solar projects, which will significantly impact demand for energy storage.

Bringing prices up to date

The change to the rules has been attributed to the sharp reduction in the cost of building new solar and windfarms. 

“The coal-fired grid benchmark rate was last updated in 2017 and actually has no relationship to the generation cost of renewables,” David Fishman, senior manager at energy consultancy Lantau Group, told Carbon Brief, adding it was effectively “arbitrary”. 

The government Q&A argued that renewable energy schemes operating on a fixed tariff “cannot fully reflect market supply and demand” and do not “fairly [distribute] responsibility for power system flexibility”.

No pain, no gain

The exact impact that this will have on renewable developers will depend on the implementing rules adopted by local governments, according to Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. 

In the short-term, these companies will be hit by the loss of the guaranteed demand and the need to adapt to low prices and fierce competition, Fishman told Carbon Brief. 

Companies will also need to develop stronger marketing and sales capabilities, and focus on “high-efficiency” and “large-capacity” technologies, said Wang Jihong, senior counsel at law firm Zhong Lun.

This may impact China’s growing distributed solar and wind sector. Distributed projects are much more likely to be run by smaller companies who may not have the resources to adapt to the new mechanism, according to Fishman, which could cause opportunities for distributed energy to “dry up”.

At the same time, the new policy may also force renewable energy power companies to innovate – both in terms of technology, and of business models and management practices, Dr Muyi Yang, senior energy analyst for Asia at the thinktank Ember, told Carbon Brief.

Stronger in the long-term?

The new pricing system may nevertheless give wind and solar the advantage in the long-term. Reform of the power market has long been seen as crucial to increasing uptake of renewables.

Myllyvirta wrote that wind and solar, as the “most affordable” sources of power, should be able to “hold their own in competition if the rules are set right”. 

Yang told Carbon Brief that the pressure of being subjected to the market could make low-carbon energy “more competitive” and “help reduce inefficient investment”, which will be a “critical factor for the long-term transition of China’s energy sector”.

But local governments would need to take steps to maintain investor confidence in the face of low prices, Fishman said. For example, significantly raising provincial renewable consumption targets could provide a strong demand signal, showing wind and solar developers that there is still a “way to make money” through increased volume.

If the government “gets the numbers just a little bit wrong”, he added, the amount of new wind and solar being added to the grid “will drop off a cliff”.

At the same time, coal-fired power plants are continuing to receive policy and financial support, in the form of guaranteed demand from long-term contracts and compensation to keep excess capacity online.

China has ramped up construction of new coal plants, with almost 100 gigawatts of new capacity expected to come online in the next few years.

If coal plants are not also exposed to competition, Myllyvirta argued, then renewables may be “crowded out from the power market”.

Fishman was more sanguine, telling Carbon Brief that the new policy may give coal plants “a little bit of a boost” in the short-term, but that China’s carbon peaking goal sets a hard deadline for reducing their role in the power system.

He added that the real competition for coal plants are other coal plants, as only the “newest, the most efficient [and] the super-critical” plants will have a future as China moves towards carbon neutrality.

A full-length version of the article is available on the Carbon Brief website.

§ Watch, read, listen

FARMERS PROTEST: Current affairs news outlet Sixth Tone looked at how China is reversing its “zero-tolerance stance on crop burning” in the face of backlash from farmers.

PROSPECTS FOR DIPLOMACY: Laurence Tubiana, head of the European Climate Foundation [which funds Carbon Brief] and one of the architects of the Paris Agreement, gave a lecture at the University of Oxford on her outlook for climate diplomacy and China’s role within it. 

CLIMATE NATIONALISM: Environmental Politics Journal interviewed the authors of a new study on how China uses “populist narratives” in propaganda to “mitigate the political costs” of its climate policies.

HYDROPOWER HISTORY: The New Books in Environmental Studies podcast discussed the history of hydropower development in China in the early-to-mid 1900s.

§ Captured

China began building 94.5 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-power capacity and resumed 3.3GW of suspended projects in 2024, according to new research by energy thinktanks the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and Global Energy Monitor (GEM) covered by Carbon Brief. This burst, spurred on mostly by investments from the coal mining industry, marks the highest level of new construction in the past 10 years, the report added.

§ New science 

Elderly vulnerability to temperature-related mortality risks in China

Science Advances

Intensity and duration are the most important factors to consider when assessing the impact of extreme heat on mortality risk in elderly people in China, a new study found. The authors assessed survey data of more than 27,000 “elderly Chinese citizens”, collected between 2005-2018, to determine the links between extreme heat, temperature variability and mortality risk. The authors said their paper “highlights the compound effects of rising temperatures for elderly populations”.

Weakened future surface warming in China due to national planned afforestation through biophysical feedback

npj Climate and Atmospheric Science

A new study found that afforestation in China, in line with the government’s afforestation plan, would cool the land surface by 0.21C in the day and cause nighttime heating of 0.05C. The authors used models to simulate how afforestation would affect land surface temperature in China over the coming decades. They found that under the mid-warming SSP2 scenario, afforestation will cause “significant cooling” between 2041 and 2060 – especially in winter. According to the study, the cooling would offset 3.7% of the projected increase in land surface temperature due to global warming on average, and “even overcompensates” for global warming in southwest China.

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