100F: Temperatures in New York City reached 100F (38C) for the first time since 2013, as a heat dome “crushed” the eastern side of the US, reported the Associated Press. Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston all also surpassed three-digit temperatures, it added.
CHIOS FIRES: More than 400 firefighters have been fighting wildfires on the Greek Island of Chios, with evacuation orders in place across the island, reported Reuters. Strong winds and 40C temperatures have made the fire “extremely difficult to control” amidst Greece’s first heatwave of the summer, added BBC News.
HEATWAVES: Japan is currently facing a two-week heatwave, driving up energy demand and keeping power prices high, reported Bloomberg. The Financial Times warned that temperatures could reach dangerous highs as “heat domes” continue to hit the US and Europe. The Daily Mail said the UK Health Security Agency had “activated the five-day alert amid concerns that there could be ‘a rise in deaths, particularly among those ages 65 and over or with health conditions’”.
BUDGET GROWTH: Reuters reported that more than 200 countries have agreed at the Bonn climate talks to increase the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) budget by 10% to €81.5m for 2026-27. (Carbon Brief has just published its in-depth summary of the Bonn intersessional.)
JUST TRANSITION: After talks stalled at COP29 last year, activists have welcomed progress on the just transition work programme (JTWP) in Bonn, reported Climate Home News. Campaigners hope the JTWP will lead to the creation of the Belém Action Mechanism at the upcoming COP30 in Brazil, helping to facilitate a just transition on the ground, the article added.
EYES ON COP30: As the two weeks of talks in Bonn came to an end, Bloomberg noted that “it’s still not clear what Brazil will need, or is aiming, to deliver” at COP30 in November. It added that, before the climate summit, most countries still need to submit new “nationally determined contributions”, detailing their plans to help meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, but, currently, less than 30 countries have done so.
Between 2000 and 2019, 55 climate-vulnerable economies lost approximately $525bn “because of climate change’s temperature and precipitation patterns”, according to a new report from the United Nations Development Programme.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Emissions from the electricity sector in the UK have now fallen from being the largest emitter in the UK up until the mid-2010s, to the sixth-largest emitter, according to the Climate Change Committee’s latest progress report. As Carbon Brief’s chart above shows, this dramatic drop means that the electricity sector now produces fewer emissions than surface transport, industry, residential buildings, agriculture and – as of 2024 – aviation.
Negotiations in Bonn have laid bare divergent political and cultural stances as countries dispute gender terminology, reports Carbon Brief.
As technical discussions drew to a close in Bonn, Argentina inserted a footnote into one of the event’s many documents, defining “gender” as “two sexes, male and female”.
This seemingly innocuous move came at the end of a week-long terminology dispute, as nations debated a new “action plan” to centre gender equality in climate action.
Climate change often disproportionately harms women and can also have an outsized impact on other marginalised communities.
However, divergent political and cultural stances meant countries disagreed about the right ways to discuss these issues, ahead of a major decision later this year.
UN climate talks are taking place amid a “global rollback” of rights for women and girls.
In some countries, notably the US and Argentina, this rollback has gone hand-in-hand with a rejection of so-called “gender ideology” and a reversal of trangender rights.
Right-wing populist leaders are also conflating environmental protection with efforts to protect women and marginalised groups.
For example, Argentine president Javier Milei has described “environmentalism”, “feminism” and “gender ideology” as “heads of the same beast” – namely, “wokeism”.
These views have manifested in unexpected places. Negotiations at a UN working group on pollution earlier this month saw the US insist that the output text stated: “Women are biologically female and men are biologically male.”
While the US was absent from Bonn, Argentina was a prominent voice in the gender sessions. This was despite the nation sending just one negotiator: Eliana Saissac.
Jennifer Bansard, who led the Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB) team that reported from within the Bonn talks, told Carbon Brief that Argentina took a “hard stance”:
“There’s definitely strong divergences on gender terminology and broader societal debates are affecting the talks.”
ENB’s reporting captures these disagreements. Argentina wanted to define “gender” based on a contentious 1998 statute of the international criminal court, referring to “two sexes, male and female”. Paraguay sought a similar definition.
Bansard noted that the divergence was “in both directions”, with some expressing more expansive views. Norway discussed “women and girls in all their diversity”, Canada referred to “gender-diverse people” and Iceland stated that it “[does] not support binary terms”.
The talks also saw the Holy See – the governing arm of the Vatican City – make a rare intervention calling for a reference to “sex” rather than ”gender”. Saudi Arabia was among those flatly rejecting the notion of “gender diversity”.
These religiously conservative states have previously aligned in UN talks on gender. At COP29, they were among those reportedly blocking progress on the action plan.
In Bonn, they argued for cultural sensitivity and respect for nations’ differing laws. Claudia Rubio Giraldo, a lawyer who works with the Women and Gender Constituency, told Carbon Brief that she sympathised with this view:
“I think we all come here assuming that we are all on the same ground, understanding certain terminology…but there is a process of bridging that is necessary.”
Nevertheless, Giraldo championed an “intersectional” approach, backed by some nations, that benefits not only women, but also other marginalised groups.
NGOs also warned of parties attempting to roll back existing language on “gender mainstreaming” and “gender responsive” action.
Despite the disagreements, participants noted a constructive tone and agreed on an “informal note” to feed into future negotiations.
Yet, with the gender plan expected to be one of the more tangible outcomes from COP30, civil-society observers were cautious. Francesca Rhodes, a senior policy adviser at CARE International UK, told Carbon Brief:
“These negotiations are taking place in the wider context of a global rollback on rights and inclusive approaches to gender…Progress made must not be sidetracked by these efforts.”
BESTING BIG OIL: The New Statesman had a feature on campaigner Sarah Finch and her victory in the supreme court in the UK last summer, which has “sunk billions of pounds worth of oil and gas projects”.
THIN ICE: Scientists at the University of Cambridge, including Prof Michael Meredith, discussed on The Naked Scientists podcast how the latest polar science is tracking climate change’s impact in Antarctica.
MAMDANI’S ‘GREEN ABUNDANCE’: The Jacobin examined how the focus of New York City mayor frontrunner Zohran Mamdani on lowering the cost of living can serve as a “blueprint” for embedding climate action in everyday life.
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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Once again, the UN negotiations were marked by protracted “agenda fights” and calls for developed countries to provide more funding for climate action in developing countries.
This year, the meetings came in the wake of a UN climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, which disappointed many and, combined with the election of Donald Trump as US president, left some questioning the future of multilateral climate negotiations.
The Brazilian COP30 presidency had hoped to see progress in measuring climate adaptation, ensuring a “just transition” for workers and taking forward the “global stocktake” – including its pledge to “transition away” from fossil fuels.
The just-transition talks saw some progress, but there was little convergence on the stocktake and deadlock on adaptation pushed the talks into overtime.
Here, Carbon Brief gives an overview of the key outcomes and disputes at the 62nd biannual sessions of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) subsidiary bodies (SB62).
Much of the narrative around the COP29 climate summit in Baku focused on threats to multilateralism. Seven months later, the geopolitical situation has deteriorated further.
Escalating conflict, cuts to foreign aid and efforts by major powers to undermine global institutions all have a bearing on climate politics.
The US, which has withdrawn from the international climate process and did not send any negotiators to Bonn, has loomed large in all of these issues.
In this context – and with 2025 marking a decade since the Paris Agreement – many have started to consider how UN climate talks can be reformed.
This was recognised by the Brazilian COP30 presidency in a letter ahead of the conference, which stated:
“Recognising growing calls for change at COPs, the COP30 presidency invites all parties to reflect on the future of the process itself.”
One strand of the SB62 negotiations dealt with this directly. A note by the UNFCCC secretariat acknowledged the “growing scale and complexity” in climate talks, “particularly with regard to the increasing number of agenda items and mandated events”.
With this in mind, countries used sessions on “arrangements for intergovernmental meetings” (AIM) to discuss how the process could be made more efficient.
Ideas on the table included capping the size of national delegations at 200, “sunsetting” some agenda items and limiting the number of items that could be added to agendas.
Nevertheless, as the talks drew to a close after two weeks in Bonn, Erika Lennon, a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) told Carbon Brief:
“It seems as though parties wanted to keep discussing ways to increase efficiency as they could not reach agreement on many concrete proposals here.”
Notably, while AIM discussions are normally restricted to SB sessions in Bonn, parties decided that this year they would continue at COP30.
Shreeshan Venkatesh, global policy lead at Climate Action Network International, told Carbon Brief that these AIM discussions were just one part of the wider calls for reform.
“There are deeper questions as well that the UNFCCC and all the parties here need to be a part of…Questions of what it is that is stopping us from making the leap towards transformational progress.”
These ideas were exemplified by a “united call for urgent reform of UN climate talks”, backed by more than 200 civil society groups and released during the SB talks.
One eye-catching proposal from the “united call” is “majority-based decision making” – or voting – if talks fail to reach consensus, which would stop single nations blocking progress. Another idea – following a series of “petrostates” hosting the COP in recent years – is described as “ensuring integrity” of COP presidencies.
In the meantime, existing negotiating tracks continued as normal at SB62. The chairs of the two SBs, Adonia Ayebare from Uganda and Julia Gardiner from Australia, released a joint note ahead of the talks calling for “swiftly advancing” technical work, stating:
“With over 50 agenda items and over 30 mandated events, focused and efficient work at SB62 will be essential.”
Despite this plea, talks did not get off to a good start, as an “agenda fight” delayed them by two days. This followed an attempt by Bolivia, on behalf of the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDCs) – a group that includes China, India and Saudi Arabia – to introduce two additional agenda items.
One, which was backed by the developing-country coalition of the G77 and China, focused on encouraging developed countries to provide more climate finance from their public coffers. The other raised the issue of “unilateral trade measures”, such as the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM).
(This is far from the first time agenda disputes have delayed UN climate talks. At the Bonn sessions in 2023, the agenda was only agreed the day before the event ended.)
In the end, a compromise was reached where both proposals were not added to the agenda, instead being reflected elsewhere in the negotiations. (See: Climate finance and Just transition.)
With all the elements of the Paris Agreement finally operational, the COP process is now meant to be geared towards action, as Alden Meyer, a senior associate at E3G, told journalists on the final day:
“There’s no real central negotiating issue, the way there was in Baku [or Dubai]…So it’s really going to be these real-world impacts that people will measure in Belem.”
The COP30 presidency spoke to this need with another letter, released during the first week of Bonn, which set out an “action agenda” consisting of 30 “key objectives” for the summit.
These objectives are very broad, including some that nations have already agreed at previous summits – such as “tripling renewables” and “transitioning away” from fossil fuels – as well as everything from “water management” to “promoting resilient health systems”.
Adaptation came to the fore at the Bonn negotiations, with the decision on the “indicators” within the global goal on adaptation (GGA) of particular significance.
Unlike for mitigation, where there are clear metrics of progress relating to national and global greenhouse gas emissions, there have never been any concrete and measurable indicators to track countries’ collective efforts to adapt to a warming climate.
In 2023, parties in Dubai agreed to an overarching framework for the GGA, which defined targets to guide action in key areas, such as food, water and health.
Parties also launched work to define the indicators that can be used to measure progress on adaptation, with 2025 as the deadline for these quantifiable targets.
At one point, there were as many as 9,000 potential indicators on the list.
Going into Bonn, these had been “miraculously” refined down to a list of 490 potential indicators. Still, this was a long way from the aim of agreeing 100 indicators at COP30.
A mandated event took place on the first day of Bonn, despite the agenda fight, within which eight experts ran through the work they had done on the indicators.
While parties broadly welcomed this work, according to the Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB), time-consuming problems quickly emerged.
Parties had only been provided with consolidated reports of the experts’ work on the indicators. As such, questions emerged over aspects that were covered in the full reports, slowing the process, one observer told Carbon Brief.
Following the event presentations, negotiations got underway. Debates covered the inclusion of “means of implementation” (MoI) – meaning climate finance – as well as whether the consolidated list of 100 indicators being aimed for should include a headline and subhead structure. Parties also discussed the timeframe of events that would follow Bonn.
MoI has long been a challenge for the GGA, as it broadly refers to financial support from developed countries to support introducing adaptation measures in developing countries.
However, Prof Lisa Schipper, a professor of development geography at the University of Bonn and IPCC author, told Carbon Brief that MoI was core to the GGA:
“It has always been a very challenging agenda item, because…it’s essentially about making sure that there’s finance for adaptation. The idea of the goal is to set a kind of a marker, so that you can say, ‘Okay, this is how much adaptation we need, this is how much we have, this is where the gap is and therefore this is how much money is needed’, right? So that’s kind of the main purpose of it.”
In particular, following on from COP29 as the “finance COP”, which saw a “new collective qualified goal” (NCQG) for international climate finance receive mixed views, questions around funding for adaptation filtered through all of the negotiations within this workstream.
Bethan Laughlin, senior policy specialist at the Zoological Society of London, told Carbon Brief as negotiations in the second week of Bonn got underway:
“In general, what we’re seeing this week is the real legacy of the NCQG coming up everywhere. It has come to a head in every negotiating room. It is clear this is what happens when you don’t make adequate financing decisions at COP29. It leads to a week of moderately successful negotiations in week one, followed by stalling and deadlock over finance decisions going up to the wire.”
The divisions over whether to include MoI within the indicators for the GGA followed familiar patterns. Broadly, developed country parties expressed “dislike” for such indicators, while developing countries emphasised their importance.
Other financial elements within the potential list of indicators were also points of division, including those tracking domestic budget allocations.
Prof Schipper told Carbon Brief that there is a “really serious” issue in these discussions on the question of sovereignty. She said that developed countries are asking developing countries to disclose how much of their own budgets they are spending on climate action, including adaptation. This information could then be used against developing countries when they ask for assistance, she explained. Schipper added:
“I think this is really a colonial practice…Countries create climate change and then make the countries that are most affected jump through these hoops, just to get access to funding.”
G77 and China highlighted what they said was a widening adaptation “finance gap”, according to TWN.
At the 2021 COP26 summit in Glasgow, countries had agreed a goal to double the provision of climate finance for adaptation between 2019 and 2025.
A UN Environment Programme report from 2024 found that public adaptation finance flows to developing countries had increased from $22bn in 2021 to $28bn in 2022 – the largest absolute increase and relative year-on-year increase since the Paris Agreement. Yet it noted that even if this trend continued and the doubling goal were achieved by 2025, this would still only meet about 5% of the adaptation finance needed.
With that doubling goal coming to an end in November – and developed countries set to fail to meet it – there were calls for a new goal to triple adaptation finance that filtered through GGA and other adaptation negotiations, as well as actions from civil society groups that took place in the corridors.
A first draft text was published on 19 June, which included a number of options on key points, including the structure of the indicators, MoI and access to and the quality of finance.
Agreement did emerge on having a globally applicable list of headline indicators, which will be complemented by a more context-specific set of sub-indicators to choose from.
However, it remained unclear whether – and if so when – further workshops would take place ahead of COP30, to continue work on these indicators, noted ENB.
As talks continued to progress, discussions also turned to other key elements of the GGA: the Baku Adaptation Roadmap (BAR) and the inclusion of “transformational” adaptation. (This is the idea that fundamental change to the socio-ecological systems that currently exist is required, to truly adapt to global warming.)
There were diverging views on what the BAR should do, what its mandate is and even what evidence there is for needing to create it, as well as its relationship with other agenda items such as the “global stocktake”. Some called for a synthesis report on party submissions on the roadmap, while others pushed for postponing it until COP30.
Similarly, with transformational adaptation, it seemed little agreement could be found. Grupo Sur, for example, stated that the understanding of the concept and what it would entail was not yet sufficiently mature to allow for informed discussion.
Prof Schipper explained that there are wider problems with the concept of transformational adaptation, adding:
“We don’t know how to implement it. [Transformational adaptation] would be the kind of adaptation that really changes the systems and really questions power structures and so on. Of course, no government wants to have those kinds of things coming up. So they got sidetracked by this.”
As the first week’s negotiations came to a close, there were significant disagreements within the GGA discussions in particular on the timelines for work on the GGA indicators, the inclusion of MoI or other financial referencing and both BAR and transformational adaptation.
The ECO newsletter, produced by Climate Action Network, criticised negotiators for “dawdl[ing] over timelines and quibbl[ing] over technicalities”.
Speaking to Carbon Brief at the beginning of the second week of Bonn, Emilie Beauchamp, lead for monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) for adaptation at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), said that given time constraints, there were just “too many” aspects to discuss under the GGA. She added:
“We haven’t had time to discuss fully [the BAR, transformational adaptation and the other aspects of the GGA], so there are many divergences still. Cutting corners on process could risk tricky issues exploding at COP – and issues linked to MoI and finance will definitely still show up in Belém.”
A second draft text was produced on 24 June, as time began to run short at Bonn. This contained many elements that were still bracketed – showing points that are yet to be agreed – or listed as options.
Talks on this draft ran late into the night, with co-facilitators noting that progress was being made. However, haggling over MoI resurfaced on the penultimate day.
This to-and-fro mirrors the GGA negotiations in Baku, when there was a push to soften language from “means for implementation” to “enablers of implementation” or other terms.
Parties eventually agreed to task co-facilitators with streamlining the text further on the indicator guidance, while leaving other sections unchanged.
Throughout the final day of Bonn, negotiations continued. The official end time of SB62 came and went without an agreement on the GGA.
A text outlining draft conclusions on the GGA did not get uploaded until mid-way through the final plenary, causing complaints from parties about their ability to review the contents before it was gavelled through.
Sections on the BAR and transformational adaptation were removed from the draft conclusions, with a final paragraph noting that instead they will be captured in an informal note, which will be used as the basis of negotiations at COP30.
The text in the informal note is identical to that from paragraph 21 down of the previous draft text, meaning there are many outstanding elements in brackets or listed as options – there are still eight separate options for the text on the BAR, for example.
Observers told Carbon Brief that it was unsurprising that the text got split, with BAR and transformational adaptation only captured as an informal note. These elements are not time sensitive and there was a general agreement that the GGA indicators were the priority.
On MoI, the draft conclusions replaced multiple options that had been in paragraph 15 of the previous version with language stating that “indicators for means of implementation and other factors that enable the implementation of adaptation action are to be included, and those that are not relevant to the Paris Agreement are to be removed”.
Lina Yassin, a researcher at IIED who provides support to the LDC Group, told Carbon Brief that paragraph 15 remained a sticking point throughout 25 June, but was “crucial” for developing countries.
Developing countries want MoI to be “grounded” in the Paris Agreement, Yassin explained, whereas developed nations prefer what she called “weaker language from the Baku decision that frames MoI as merely one type of ‘enabler of adaptation’”.
Yassin added that the text adopted in Bonn was a “compromise” but still contained “important gains for developing countries, especially in moving away from the ambiguous Baku language”.
Importantly, the text invites experts to continue working on the indicators, to submit a final technical report and list of potential indicators to the secretariat in August 2025.
This will allow further negotiations at COP30 to further whittle down the list of indicators under the GGA, towards the 100-indicator goal.
At COP29, despite some progress within negotiations, discussions on national adaptation plans (NAPs) ultimately ended without agreement and were pushed to Bonn.
Talks got underway with the co-facilitators inviting views on the final draft negotiating text from the talks in Baku.
However, discussions quickly ground to a halt when the G77 and China asked for the text to be projected onto the board, a move opposed by the EU and the UK.
Jeffrey Qi, policy advisor with IISD’s resilience program, told Carbon Brief, the text that came out of Baku was “unmanageable”. The first few sessions were therefore dominated by debates as to how to get the text to a position that could truly be negotiated. Qi explained:
“The text from Baku is so unstructured. So I guess the question is, do you open it up for line-by-line negotiation? Like, do you go into drafting mode right away, or do you take general reflections on specific paragraphs?”
The Baku text included 159 brackets and 18 options, highlighting the lack of clarity within it.
After a huddle, the G77 and China submitted a conference room paper (CRP), based closely on the Baku text, but clustered into sections under different headings, according to TWN.
The EU requested additional time to engage with the CRP before proceeding to substantive decisions, but on 21 June, parties returned to negotiations using this new text as the basis.
However, “stark differences” quickly appeared between developed and developing countries, according to TWN.
The ECO newsletter of 23 June called for further action on the NAPs, stating:
“Can someone shake the National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) negotiations out of its slumber?…No more excuses for delaying the much-needed support from developed countries for the formulation and implementation of NAPs in developing countries. Any NAPs decision text not backed by accessible public finance will remain without substance.”
Further informal consultations took place on 24 June and on 25 June, a draft negotiation text was published. However, it was riddled with brackets.
Issues around the inclusion of MoI remained in the text, in particular its role as a key enabler of adaptation.
Ultimately, no further agreement could be reached and Bonn ended without draft conclusions for NAPs.
Qi told Carbon Brief that this was a “disappointing” outcome. He said:
“I think it’s quite disappointing that we are leaving Bonn with essentially the same messy, unbalanced draft texts from Baku. Both developing and developed countries have shared legitimate concerns over the MoI section in the texts and the only way forward is to seek common ground and make a compromise on both sides, so we could move on to the many other substantive elements in the NAP assessment, like gender responsive approaches and adaptation mainstreaming.
Qi added that he expected “the same jujitsu over the texts in Belém”.
There were numerous other adaptation-focused negotiation tracks at Bonn, after a series of matters had been pushed from COP29. These included discussions on the adaptation fund, the adaptation committee and adaptation communications.
Discussions took place on numerous elements of the adaptation fund, with parties focusing on the fund’s board membership, its fifth review and arrangements for it to exclusively serve the Paris Agreement, according to ENB.
Ultimately, it was only procedural conclusions that could be agreed upon by parties.
During negotiations on adaptation communications, parties discussed the need for further support for developing countries, the limitations of drafting a universal template for adaptation communications and the need for further training courses, according to ENB.
Numerous texts were produced over the two weeks of intersessionals, with the main takeaway being the need to extend the deadline for parties to make submissions to help inform a synthesis report on adaptation communications.
Draft conclusions on the matter with an invitation for parties to submit further views, but with no firm timelines for this to happen.
On the review of the adaptation committee, disagreements centre on complicated issues of governance relating to whether it serves the Paris Agreement or the overarching UN climate convention.
Ultimately, negotiators could only agree an informal note stating that the issue will be postponed.
There was minimal disagreement over the Nairobi work programme and draft conclusions were published on 23 June. Their main focus was recognition of the importance of the work programme and a call for strengthened collaboration with “diverse knowledge holders”, amongst other points
Finally, negotiations took place on matters related to Least Developed Countries (LDCs) within the adaptation workstream, with parties focusing on a report prepared by the LDC Expert Group (LEG).
The LDCs expressed “profound disappointment” about the barriers they still face to adaptation finance, in particular for NAPs, noting that the lack of resources is “not just frustrating but demoralising”, according to ENB.
Draft conclusions published on the penultimate day of SB62 mostly recognised the findings within the LEG report and invited continued work.
At COP29 last year, nations agreed on a landmark target of at least $300bn a year in “climate finance” by 2035, coming primarily from developed countries.
This money is meant to help developing countries curb their emissions and prepare for worsening climate hazards.
There was broad agreement among global-south nations and NGOs that the $300bn “new collective quantified goal” (NCQG) was insufficient to address these challenges.
This is nothing new. Climate finance is a highly contested issue in UN climate talks and developing countries have long argued that they need far more help to take climate action.
Yet the SB talks in Bonn took place against a particularly negative backdrop.
The US, previously one of the biggest contributors, has cancelled virtually all of its climate aid. Major European donors, including Germany, France and the UK, have also announced aid cuts, meaning less support for climate projects overseas.
Negotiators in Bonn were keenly aware of this context. The talks saw developing-country diplomats remind developed countries of their obligations to provide this climate finance, while developed countries highlighted alternative ways to raise money.
As is often the case, finance was a pivotal issue in many of the negotiating strands, from the global stocktake to adaptation. However, there was little time carved out to focus solely on the topic, with just two formally mandated “workshops”.
One of these events gave delegates opportunities to discuss their understanding of Article 2.1c of the Paris Agreement, which focuses on “making finance flows consistent” with emissions cuts and climate-resilience.
The other workshop allowed parties to discuss the information provided by developed countries in their “biennial communications” of climate-finance pledges, including a new report capturing these commitments.
The most contentious climate-finance discussions took place beyond these mandated events, with the topic at the centre of the “agenda fight” that delayed talks by two days (See: “Future of the process”).
The LMDCs, with support from other developing countries, proposed a new agenda item specifically focusing on the “implementation of Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement” two weeks ahead of the Bonn meeting.
Article 9.1 says developed countries “shall provide” finance to developing countries. This is often interpreted as a legal obligation to provide public, grant-based funding rather than loans or private investments.
Only a fraction of climate finance is currently distributed in this way, but developing countries argue that hundreds of billions of dollars per year should come from such sources.
Developed countries in Bonn pushed back against the proposal, arguing for a broader focus that included contributions from wealthy developing countries and a wider range of sources.
In the end, the new agenda item was dropped, with a compromise of “substantive consultations” on Article 9.1, which would be led by the SB chairs and, ultimately, feed into COP30.
These consultations involved “fiery” exchanges, with developing countries highlighting – among other things – a need for developed countries to triple adaptation finance and provide loss-and-damage finance with public money (See: Loss and damage and Adaptation).
The LMDCs described Article 9.1 as the “weakest link” in finance talks and accused developed countries of “diluting” it across all relevant agenda items.
Notably, the influential group led various middle-income nations in calling for a “work programme” on the topic. They said this could focus partly on overcoming barriers that prevent developed countries from scaling up public finance.
Developed countries argued that they were not averse to providing such funds. Outi Honkatukia, lead EU climate-finance negotiator, told a side event attended by Carbon Brief:
“We’ve heard so much about the 9.1 here over the week-and-a-half so far. I just want to assure [you] that in terms of going forward and priorities for the EU, we honour and abide by our legal commitments on 9.1.”
From the EU’s perspective, Honkatukia said provision of public finance is an “essential part” of the $300bn goal. However, the bloc – and other developed-country parties – also argued for a broader focus that included the “mobilisation” of funds from private finance.
A counter-proposal in the Article 9.1 discussion was made by the Environmental Integrity Group (EIG), fronted by Switzerland, with support from several other developed countries.
It involved a new package of three agenda items, with one that covered the whole of Article 9, including parts relating to mobilisation from private sources and other providers. The group suggested this could replace almost all other existing finance agenda items.
Meena Raman, head of programmes of the Third World Network (TWN) – which is closely aligned with the LMDCs – told Carbon Brief the idea was opposed by South Africa and Saudi Arabia. She said the expansion of focus echoed a compromise seen in COP29 NCQG talks:
“[Developed countries] didn’t want 9.1, so the compromise was an Article 9 reference, but, having followed the negotiations, they were very clear this is about mobilisation.”
Both the LMDCs and LMDC member India had already stated plainly in the opening plenary that they intended to continue pushing this issue. The group’s Bolivian spokesperson, Diego Pacheco, told delegates:
“We have been denied this starting point, but rest assured the LMDCs will [go] back to these items at COP30.”
Perhaps the most high-profile finance-related events in Bonn were two consultations on the Baku to Belém roadmap to $1.3tn.
Besides the core $300bn target that emerged from COP29, there was a looser, aspirational call for “all actors” to scale up climate funds to “at least $1.3tn” by 2035.
This reflected the demands of developing countries, based on various needs assessments, for trillions of dollars to meet their climate targets. However, unlike the $300bn – which is expected to mainly come from developed countries – this NCQG element is vague, with the possibility of “all public and private sources” contributing.
The Baku to Belém roadmap was launched in a bid to appease those who were unhappy with the NCQG outcome. It will draw on nations and civil society groups communicating their views on how climate finance can and should be scaled up to reach the $1.3tn target.
The process is coordinated by the Azerbaijani and Brazilian COP presidencies, which will work together to produce a final roadmap document by the end of October.
Going into Bonn, 116 submissions, including 18 from countries or country groups, had been filed, laying out a variety of views on this matter. The SB62 consultations saw a similar diversity of views being offered up, albeit with nations sticking to long-held positions.
For example, the G77 and China argued that the burden of climate finance provision should not be shifted onto developing countries, while the EU encouraged “all with the capacity to do so” to contribute climate finance – implying there ought to be inputs from wealthier developing nations.
The consultations also saw some discussion of the “circle of finance ministers” organised by Brazil, which is also expected to feed into the roadmap discussions.
Ultimately, the roadmap is not yet a formal part of the negotiations. Given this, observers noted that its impact will depend on how it is integrated into the COP30 process in Belém.
When asked about what Brazil’s expectations are for the roadmap report, COP30 executive director Ana Toni told Carbon Brief:
“It’s up to the parties…Many decisions related to finance are not taken by the UNFCCC, like the reform of the multilateral banks is nothing that can be decided here. So, it depends on what comes in the report. Some things, perhaps, will be talking to the negotiation – I would imagine that most to mobilise the $1.3tn won’t.”
In Baku in 2024, there was consistent frustration with the management of the just transition work programme (JTWP), which ultimately ended without agreement.
Coming into Bonn, however, the Brazilian presidency made the matter one of its three priorities for COP30, alongside the GGA and implementing the first global stocktake.
Speaking to Carbon Brief, Anabella Rosemberg, senior advisor on just transition at NGO umbrella group CAN International, welcomed the priority given to the work programme by the presidency and the secretariat, including “silly things” such as longer time slots for negotiation and a good room during the intersessionals. She added:
“It’s showing that this is being prioritised and that helps. We are not anymore the sort of black sheep at the end, negotiating at 9pm when no one is paying attention, which is where we were last year. So…I’m optimistic, because I feel like the soil is a bit more fertile.”
Additionally, the JTWP ended up absorbing discussions on “unilateral trade measures”, which had been part of the agenda fight at the start of the meeting.
Within the negotiations, old divides quickly emerged between global-north parties that wanted a focus on a workers’ transition and global-south parties that wanted the JTWP to be more holistic, observers told Carbon Brief.
Areas of disagreement included the language around the how to reflect means of implementation (MoI), trade measures, 1.5C pathways, human rights and Indigenous Peoples in the JTWP process, noted the ENB newsletter.
Antonio Hill, advisor at the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) told Carbon Brief that overall, negotiations on the JTWP had been more “amenable” than other tracks, adding:
“But I think it’s also true that right throughout, the finance issue keeps cropping up, left, right and centre., And so it’s clear that, as usual, even if things kind of were looking decent, things could get held up because of bigger forces.”
Additionally, there were ongoing debates about the next steps for the JTWP, which is set to come to an end in November 2026.
Parties, including the UK, said it was “premature” to be discussing the next steps, wishing to focus instead on the knowledge sharing dialogues that take place within the JTWP, Dr Leon Sealey-Huggins, a senior campaigner at the charity War on Want told Carbon Brief.
The issue of whether and how to continue the JTWP beyond 2026 was the only significant disagreement remaining, in an informal note published on 23 June.
This included options for a new institutional arrangement, which could set up a mechanism to follow on from the current work programme.
The inclusion of an option for an institutional arrangement is a “big win” for civil society groups, Rosemberg told Carbon Brief.
Similarly, the ECO newsletter also welcomed this option, writing that “the establishment of the Belém Action Mechanism for Just Transition would allow for holistic just transition pathways across the whole economy, covering contexts both within and between countries”.
There were additional points welcomed by civil society groups and parties in the text of the informal note, as Rosemberg told Carbon Brief.
“The idea that a just transition needs to be added in climate plans, it’s the first time that this is stated a bit more formally, directly and with the principles [outlined in the text] in mind. So there is a bit more flesh to how they are brought to the NDC. The idea that climate finance needs to also be made available for covering some of the social justice aspects of the transition, that’s also a very positive message.
However, he acknowledged that the text was far from final agreement, saying “we have to try to keep [these positive elements] for as long as possible”.
Following on from this, a subsequent informal note was published on 25 June, which was nearly identical to the previous version.
The only significant change was the inclusion of options under paragraph 25 on recognising the impact on trade.
The informal note was broadly welcomed, reported ENB. It said that parties, including the UK, AOSIS, the EIG, LDCs, the EU, the Philippines and others, wanted the text to be sent on to COP30 without further changes.
The text was ultimately passed to Belém for further negotiations, despite calls from the LMDCs and the Arab Group to include alternatives to a paragraph on clean energy, an objection from Paraguay to language on gender-based approaches, as well as a Russian call for a reference to unilateral trade measures.
Dr Sealey-Huggins told Carbon Brief that the text was a “good basis” for negotiations in Brazil that could provide an “anchor for our movements on the outside”.
For years, small islands and other at-risk states fought to raise the status of “loss and damage” at UN talks, securing a new fund in 2023 to support those struck by climate disasters.
Yet, as it stands, the fund has only received $768m in pledges from primarily developed countries, of which just $339m has actually been paid. This is less than 0.2% of developing countries’ estimated needs in a single year.
There was disappointment among climate-vulnerable nations at COP29 when talks failed to produce a new finance target that centres loss and damage.
However, Raju Pandit Chhetri, a climate-finance expert who works with the LDCs, told Carbon Brief in Bonn that “it’s our understanding that the NCQG decision also includes loss and damage”.
He said that while the agreement does not include a specific sub-goal, as hoped, broader references to “climate action” and the “evolving needs” of developing countries encompassed the need for loss-and-damage finance.
Developing countries, therefore, continue to push for a loss and damage focus in finance talks, including consultations on the Baku to Belém roadmap to $1.3tn. (See: Climate Finance.)
Beyond the fund, there is a broader UN loss-and-damage architecture that requires countries’ attention at climate negotiations. This can also provide opportunities for developing countries to push for more loss-and-damage finance.
One key component is the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) for loss and damage, a work programme that has a goal – among other things – of “enhancing action and support, including finance”.
At COP29, parties were meant to finish discussing a review of the WIM, which takes place every five years. They were also meant to finalise a joint annual report of the WIM executive committee (ExCom) and the Santiago network, another component that is meant to help countries in need gain technical assistance.
Nations failed to reach a conclusion on either of these issues in Baku. Both were simply pushed onto the agenda for the talks in Bonn.
Progress there was limited, despite many hours spent in closed-door discussions.
Negotiators settled on “draft conclusions” for the joint annual report, which will be passed on to COP30. But as the talks reached their final stages, they had failed to agree on a WIM review text.
In the end, an emergency half-hour session was convened on the penultimate day of SB62 that saw negotiators agree to forward an “informal note” to COP30. While the text is less official and full of brackets – indicating areas of indecision – this meant their work had not been wasted.
Hafij Khan, a co-chair of the WIM Executive Committee (ExCom) from Bangladesh, told Carbon Brief:
“We made some progress, even though there is no conclusion – but all the views of the different parties are captured here with bracket, bracket, bracket.”
“Placeholders” in the final text indicate some of the more contentious discussion points, including “scaling up finance”. Text added to the final note, lifted from the NCQG itself, mentions “significant gaps” in loss-and-damage finance and the need to fill them.
Broadly, observers told Carbon Brief that developed countries felt the WIM review was not the venue in which to discuss loss-and-damage finance. Developing countries noted that this is one of the WIM’s functions.
Another function that developing countries wanted to see included in the WIM review was a mandate to launch a global, scientific assessment of loss and damage.
Speaking at a side event in the first week, Vicente Paolo Yu, who leads on loss and damage for the G77 and China, explained that this was one of the group’s priorities. He said that this did not mean nations were unhappy with similar reports produced by NGOs and insurers:
“What we are saying is that many of these kinds of global assessments of disaster risk or whatever are produced by these organisations based on their institutional perspectives.”
Observers have noted that such a report, under the WIM, could be used to map out the scale of the problem and gaps – including finance gaps – in countries’ responses.
Other items left undecided included guidance on the creation of national loss-and-damage plans and discussing the cost-effectiveness of the Santiago network.
These items will continue to be debated when negotiators reconvene at COP30.
Over the two weeks of Bonn, negotiations took place within the “mitigation work programme” (MWP) over how to ensure it was a “safe space” and on the development of a digital platform.
Consultations began with “heated” discussions on 18 June, according to ENB.
This included AOSIS arguing that the programme was not delivering on its mandate to scale up mitigation ambition and implementation, while AILAC “lamented” the lack of substantial outcomes from the first five dialogues under the MWP, according to ENB.
As part of the discussions on how to ensure that the MWP offers “safe space for overcoming barriers and tak[ing] actionable solutions”, parties including LMDCs, African Group, Arab Group, India, China and others noted that it would remain a safe space as long as its mandate was respected, according to TWN.
As discussions on the MWP moved into their second day, the programme’s purpose and function were called into question. Some want it to remain a space for sharing knowledge, while others want a clearer focus on accelerating action.
One observer told ENB that there was growing frustration as the MWP became “toothless and deadlocked”.
Teppo Säkkinen, advisor on climate, energy and industries at the Finland Chamber of Commerce, told Carbon Brief:
“The main problem in the dynamic with the MWP has stayed the same: for the EU and others with high ambition, it was supposed to be the place to drive the mitigation work; on the other side, some feel that any language on the content of mitigation is prescriptive and top-down.”
Discussions moved onto the establishment of a digital platform and took a “strange turn toward the architecture of IT-infrastructure”, noted ECO.
AOSIS and AILAC cautioned that this should not divert focus from the MWP’s core purpose of scaling up mitigation ambition, noted ENB, a thought shared by wider observers.
Lola Vallejo, diplomacy and partnerships director at the European Climate Foundation (which funds Carbon Brief) and former co-chair of the MWP said that much of the disagreement is on whether the development of a digital platform truly falls under its mandate. She told Carbon Brief:
“There’s disagreement because the idea [of developing a digital platform] didn’t convince everyone – somehow surprisingly maybe some developed countries could give it a try, but others are dead against it on the basis that i) the UNFCCC wasn’t set up for this and doesn’t have the capacity for matchmaking projects to financiers and it’d be veering too far from its skillset ii) see it as a distraction that would scupper the MWP’s ability to be the only space to tackle mitigation head-on.”
Disagreements around what exactly this digital platform would consist of stalled negotiations in the second week.
Informal notes published during the second week mostly consisted of placeholders, outlining the structure of conclusions to be adopted at COP30, with minimal substantive contents. They also made clear that parties disagreed on whether the MWP should continue.
Despite the brevity of the second note, the text is still welcome, Vallejo told Carbon Brief:
“Bonn is about preparing the text of the decisions adopted at COP. Even if ‘just’ headlines are adopted, it’s progress. And no one would expect full decisions to be adopted during SBs.”
As negotiations on the final day of Bonn got underway, the MWP remained one of the streams without draft conclusions.
A final informal note was produced at 2pm, but there was little that was different to the previous version, beyond an additional reference to “global dialogues” and “investment-focused events”.
Fernanda de Carvalho, head of policy for climate and energy at WWF International, told Carbon Brief that it was “unfortunate that after three years, the MWP is far from delivering its mandate of scaling up mitigation ambition and implementation this decade”. She added:
“While developed countries are correctly pushing for mitigation outcomes, we can’t see a single funded partnership on any of the global dialogues’ themes coming out of the MWP, which could build trust among significantly diverging views. Other countries are doing their best to avoid the mitigation work programme to discuss…mitigation, with GST and NDCs becoming forbidden acronyms.”
On the virtual platform, de Carvalho said that it “started as a good idea” but “got trapped in a very visible delaying tactic”. She concluded that despite these challenges, civil society groups “still believe this track can become a ‘safe space’ in Brazil, as part of a political response to the ambition gap”.
COP30 is taking place in a key year for the international climate regime.
Under the Paris Agreement’s “ratchet” mechanism, countries must submit more ambitious plans for cutting emissions every five years.
In 2025, they are due to offer pledges covering the years, ideally bringing the world on track for the Paris Agreement temperature target.
However, nearly every nation missed the first UN deadline to come forward with a new, more ambitious climate plan or “nationally determined contribution” (NDC).
NDCs are expected to trickle in over the coming months in time for the extended September deadline, setting the tone for COP30 talks.
In the meantime, the Brazilian presidency has highlighted the work triggered by the global stocktake (GST) back in 2023 as a priority, describing it as a “blueprint to course correct on the climate trajectory towards a 1.5C-aligned future”
It says the GST, with its pledges to triple global renewable energy capacity and “transition away” from fossil fuels, should function as a “global NDC”:
“Using the GST as a reference, we will be able to transform climate action from cacophony into an orchestrated symphony – where multilateral negotiations set the score, and NDCs and the action agenda provide the instruments.”
In practice, the GST has proved highly contentious since it was agreed at COP28. GST negotiations continued across three agenda items at the climate talks in Bonn, after they failed to reach a substantial outcome at COP29 last year in Baku.
The stocktake continued to stoke division in Bonn, particularly in discussions on the United Arab Emirates (UAE) dialogue on “implementing GST outcomes”. As talks drew to a close, Alden Meyer from E3G told Carbon Brief:
“There is a fundamental divide in the room on what the purpose of these dialogues should be and what the outcomes should be.”
Broadly speaking, developed countries, small-island states, LDCs and the Independent Alliance of Latin America and the Caribbean (AILAC) want to see more focus on some of the “mitigation” outcomes from the GST, including the transition away from fossil fuels.
Some developing countries – particularly the LMDCs – would rather the dialogue focus exclusively on finance. They argue that, because the paragraph establishing the UAE dialogue was under a subheading for “finance” in the GST text, this should be the only focus.
As negotiations dragged on, it became clear by the final day that parties were simply not going to reach any kind of common ground.
The final text to emerge was simply two documents – separate iterations that negotiators had been considering – combined together, with no attempt to seek consensus.
There is no direct reference to “transitioning away” from fossil fuels, but an allusion survives in one of the iterations.
In bracketed text, meaning it has not been agreed, the document makes a reference to “decid[ing] that the UAE dialogue will…consider collective progress and identify opportunities for implementing the elements that do not have an institutional home, including collective calls on energy transition”.
The document states clearly at the top that it “includes divergent views, has not been agreed upon, does not reflect consensus, is not exhaustive, has no formal status and is open to revision”.
Both texts within the document contain many brackets and “options”, indicating even more areas of divergence that will need to be addressed before COP30.
Catherine Abreu, director of the International Climate Politics Hub, told Carbon Brief that parties had not “given up” on fossil-fuel language, adding “we heard many bringing it up in the rooms”. Abreu said:
“The vast majority of countries remain committed to what was agreed at COP28…But we’ve seen an active attempt from a tiny number of parties to unravel the agreement in the last couple of years, across multilateral spaces not just the UNFCCC – and the same tactics were on full display in Bonn.”
However, Abreu noted that for many countries, a deal on this topic was “contingent” on progress in other areas, particularly on finance and adaptation.
With Bonn coming to a close, attention is turning to COP30 in Belém, Brazil, in November.
Once again, discussion around the host country’s oil and gas industry has drawn criticism from observers and environmental campaigners.
In June, Brazil’s oil sector regulator, ANP, announced that the country would auction the exploration rights for 172 oil and gas blocks spanning 56,000 square miles, mostly offshore.
Despite opposition from environmental campaigners and Indigenous communities, the auction is still set to go ahead, just months before the country hosts the climate summit.
Throughout the Bonn intersessionals, the challenges of finding accommodation in Belém were highlighted in a number of forums. Over recent months, there have been reports of people paying more than $15,000 for a hotel room and more than $400,000 for an apartment, for the two weeks of the summit.
After the Brazilian presidency attempted to alleviate concerns by suggesting delegates could dock boats near the venue, one observer joked to ENB, “now I just need to get my yacht to Brazil”.
Beyond logistics, civil society groups have been setting out their hopes for the Brazilian presidency’s focus areas of measuring adaptation, just transition and the stocktake.
But the underlying issue of finance remains “unresolved”, meaning “we have only seen baby steps when what we need is a giant leap”, said Cosima Cassel, programme lead on climate diplomacy and geopolitics at thinktank E3G, in a statement. She added:
“COP30 must mark a decisive step change in delivery. Brazil has shown energy and creativity in shaping its presidency vision, but this alone is not enough. In the coming months, it must get specific and transparent about what the COP30 package – both negotiated and non-negotiated – will include.”
Cassel said this package would need to “credibly close the ambition gap” that was likely to remain, even after countries submit their new climate pledges, due by September 2025.
David Waskow, director of the international climate initiative at the World Resources Institute, said in a statement that national leaders “need to start delivering”:
“With the 1.5C window closing fast, every fraction of a degree – and every decision – matters.
Beyond Brazil, there is yet to be a decision as to who will host COP31 in 2026. There are competing bids from Australia, with the Pacific Islands, and Turkey.
In the closing plenary, both reaffirmed their commitment to working with the presidency to resolve this decision – and to upholding multilateralism more broadly.
| 30 June to 3 July 2025 | Fourth finance for development summit, Spain |
| 14-23 July 2023 | High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development |
| 9-29 September 2025 | UN general assembly, New York |
| 10-21 November 2025 | COP30, Belém, Brazil |
| 22-23 November 2025 | G20 summit, South Africa |
China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.
UK-CHINA CATCH UP: On 16 June, Huang Runqiu, head of China’s Ministry of Economy and Environment (MEE), met Ed Miliband, the UK’s secretary of state for energy and climate change, as well as Rachel Kyte, UK’s special representative for climate, in London, reported Chinese media outlet Jiemian News. The meeting was the first of a “new annual UK-China climate dialogue” announced during Miliband’s trip to China in March. The meeting has not been widely reported by major Chinese state media or English-language outlets. A short report from the MEE said the ministers discussed multilateral climate governance and “next steps” for climate cooperation. The MEE also said they had agreed to cooperate in areas such as adaptation, carbon markets, climate “investment and [private] financing” (气候投融资) and methane emissions controls.
‘NEW CLIMATE AGREEMENT’: While there was no public announcement on the event from the UK side, a government spokesperson told Carbon Brief via email: “There is no route to energy security for today’s generation without our clean energy mission, and there is no climate security and no route to keeping future generations safe without engaging global climate action. It is negligent not to engage with China on their important role in reducing global emissions.” The government email said that at the meeting, the UK had “secured a new climate agreement with China”, explaining that the two ministers “signed a new climate memorandum of understanding [MoU], setting out where both countries can work together to reduce global emissions, such as climate change mitigation and emissions reduction targets”.
‘FRANK CONVERSATIONS’: According to the UK government email, Miliband had “frank conversations” with his counterpart. It added that the new MoU offered a “forum to encourage greater action from China”, including “more ambitious targets”. It also “allows the UK and China to collaborate on…measuring and controlling methane emissions…[and] climate finance”. The inclusion of methane in the MoU “suggests the UK is looking to work with China in areas that the US previously did”, according to an individual who participated in the talks.
CHINA-EU: A few days earlier on 13 June, Huang had attended the 10th China-EU ministerial dialogue in Belgium, meeting Jessika Roswall, EU commissioner for environment, water resilience and a competitive circular economy, reported China Environment News. Huang said facing “multiple challenges in environmental and climate governance”, there is a “greater need” to strengthen cooperation between EU and China, added the outlet. The Chinese state news agency Xinhua published two articles praising the EU and China’s “green-energy” partnership as well as “green cooperation”. Meanwhile, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen “accused Beijing of deliberately creating a near-monopoly” in the global rare-earth supply at the G7 summit in Canada on 16 June, adding that “no single country” should control 80-90% of the “raw materials and downstream products like magnets”, reported the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.
PEAK IN 2027: Following the ongoing debate on whether China’s oil demand has already peaked, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said that it would “top out in 2027” – two years earlier than previously forecasted – “reinforcing the outlook for a global peak and prolonged supply surplus this decade”, reported Bloomberg. Japanese media outlet Nikkei Asia said “slowing demand” in China, which had accounted for 60% of oil demand growth in the world in the past decade, marked what the IEA called a “fundamental transformation” of the global energy market. However, according to Reuters, the IEA “stuck to its prediction that global [oil] demand will peak by 2029”, despite China’s more rapid transition. The news agency added that the IEA’s view “sharply contrasts with that of producer group OPEC, which says [global oil] consumption will keep growing for much longer”. In its coverage of the IEA report, the Times said China’s early peak was due to the “unexpectedly ‘breakneck’ switch to electric vehicle[s] (EVs)”. The sale of EVs surpassed more than one million in May, up 24% from a year ago, reported Reuters. China’s “trade-in” subsidies that boosted sales of EVs, however, were suspended in some cities as “funds run short and officials scrutinise the prevalence of zero-mileage used cars”, according to Bloomberg.
ENERGY TRENDS: China’s demand for imported liquified natural gas (LNG) is expected to fall by 6-11% this year, said Reuters. This “unusual downturn” would be the first fall in three years due to “weak industrial demand and strong domestic and piped gas supply”, added the newswire. Separately, China’s thermal power output – mostly coal – grew 1.2% from a year earlier in May – the first rise since November – reported Bloomberg, attributing the rise to heatwave-induced demand and weak hydro output. Covering heavy rain that also caused floods (see below), Bloomberg reported that the “filling up” of rivers and reservoirs in central and southern China that “feed the country’s mighty dams” posed a “threat to the coal market that competes with hydropower in electricity generation”. Meanwhile, the Chinese government said that China’s overall energy intensity decreased by a cumulative 11.6% over 2021-24, reported state broadcaster CCTV. The outlet added: “This is equivalent to saving 1.4bn tonnes of standard coal and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by about 3bn tonnes.”
FLOODS AND HEATWAVES: The government issued its most severe “red” flood alerts for the first time this year after heavy rains in central and southern China, reported Reuters. State broadcaster CCTV said that floods “exceeding the warning level” occurred in 27 rivers across the country. Huaiji, a county in southern Guangdong province, was “hit with [the] worst flood in a century”, said state broadcaster China Global Television Network (CGTN). Record-breaking rain also fell in Hunan province in central China, affecting more than 400,000 people, reported Xinhua. About 400 ninth-grade students and 30 teachers were evacuated in Guangxi, in the south, the day before the senior high school entrance examination, said Xinhua. Meanwhile, ahead of the arrival of the first typhoon of the year, named Wutip, more than 16,000 people were transferred to safer places from “construction sites, low-lying flood-prone areas and regions at risk of flash floods” in Hainan province in south China, said Xinhua. At the same time, parts of China were hit by a “brutal heatwave”, with Xinjiang province in the northwest experiencing temperatures of up to 46.8C, according to the Guardian.
FLOOD RELIEF: About 60m yuan ($8m) were issued “to bolster flood relief efforts in Guangdong Province”, said Xinhua. In addition, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), “urgently” allocated 100m yuan ($14m) to support “disaster relief work” in Guizhou, with an additional 100m yuan to Guangdong and Hunan, according to China News.
WIDER COVERAGE: China is planning to expand the coverage of its national emissions trading scheme (ETS) to “ALL industry sectors and aviation by 2027”, according to a LinkedIn post by Yan Qin, principal analyst at consultancy firm Clearblue Markets, citing a new “high-level policy (Opinions)” document dated 24 May. The document – not seen by Carbon Brief – has been named publicly and, while its contents have not been put into the public domain, they have been “confirmed…by analysts with access to the draft”, reported Table.Briefings. In his own LinkedIn post, Lauri Myllyvirta, co-founder of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) said it was not yet clear if the expansion would only cover “main emitting sectors” – likely including the chemicals industry at a minimum, said Myllyvirta – or all industry and aviation, as Qin suggested.
CARBON CAP: According to Qin’s post, the plan would also “introduce absolute [emissions] allowance caps for sectors with stabilised emissions, starting in 2027, and [an] absolute cap for the ETS by 2030”. To date, the ETS has only covered the power sector and has lacked an absolute cap on emissions. New sectoral caps would be conditional, according to Table.Briefings, which described this flexibility as an “escape hatch”. In his post, Myllyvirta said: “The introduction of a national [ETS] cap by 2030 is in line with expectations – that’s when China’s emissions are supposed to have peaked, at the latest, and when the focus shifts from reducing carbon intensity to absolute emission cuts, in the current policy roadmap.” He added that while past slippage on ETS implementation gave “reason to be skeptical about any new timelines”, the document did “imply to me that there is a push from the top to make the ETS…relevant in China’s decarbonisation effort”.
The capacity of China’s solar-power installations – some 1.08 terawatts (TW), up 57% year-on-year – as of May 2025, according to China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) and reported by PV magazine. China added 198 gigawatts (GW) of new solar capacity in the first five months of the year, reported the Guardian, including 93GW in May alone.
A group of prominent experts of climate policy from academia, thinktanks and civil society shared their thoughts about China and climate change at the 2025 Bath Conference on China & Global Sustainability Transition earlier this week, organised by the SGAIN project at the University of Bath.
A wide range of topics – including the potential for China to show climate leadership – were discussed under the Chatham House rule. Carbon Brief outlines some of the key messages from the conference.
In an on-the-record opening keynote, Erik Solheim, former minister of climate and the environment of Norway and former executive director of the UN environment programme, said that, while European leaders currently appear to have “no time for long-term environmental problems”, China’s president Xi Jinping has been speaking a “lot more about the environment”.
Xi’s attitude was illustrated by his “two mountains” theory, said Solheim. He added that this theory – showing that “going green is not just for the environment, going green is also good for the economy” – was the “primary driver” of China’s “green transition”.
In a second on-the-record keynote, Kate Logan, director of the China climate hub and climate diplomacy at the Asia Society, said that other than the “new three” – solar panels, EVs and batteries – being a new engine of China’s economic growth, its exports of clean-energy technology have also surpassed that of “traditional energy”.
China has made major overseas climate-related investments, said Max Schmidt, a researcher from the Perspectives Climate Group, who agreed to be named despite the Chatham House rule.
Other speakers said that China’s overseas investments – both from the state and private capital – have largely shifted from infrastructure to renewable energy projects, while largely phasing out money going towards foreign coal plants.
Asked by Carbon Brief about ongoing Chinese investments in overseas coal-fired power, despite its pledge to end such activity, another speaker said that this commitment had been “by [and] large…diplomatic”. They added: “As we understood, it does not apply to what has already been in the pipeline.”
China’s role in the new international climate-finance goal agreed at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan last year. One speaker said:
“Strategically, we promote cooperation…[and] multilateralism…[But] if [the developed countries] say China needs to provide public [climate] funds, fill[ing] the gap left by the US, these prominent [Chinese climate] negotiators will definitely say no.”
Another speaker said that talks on climate finance between the UK and China have not been “very productive”.
The person said China urged developed countries, including the UK, to increase their climate finance, while the UK urged China to “count their south-south climate support towards the [international] climate finance goal”.
“Neither side wants to budge, so there has been little progress and it is unclear how the gap left by the US will be filled,” added the person.
In answering Carbon Brief’s question on how to move things forward, one speaker said:
“Stop trying to set any formal obligations for China…Instead, set an open-ended opportunity…Keep China happy and you will see…a lot of donations…That’s my understanding of dealing with the government for so many years.”
Addressing recent security concerns over China’s clean-energy exports, a speaker suggested that in an ideal world, the UK would have a “list” of products that it “welcomes” from China.
However, complex clean-energy products containing many components, such as EVs, present “huge grey areas”, which are “in the middle” and are likely to have to be decided on a “case-by-case basis” due to the uncertainty involved, added the speaker.
In the US, meanwhile, “climate conversations” were being “disrupted” by another factor – the supply of critical minerals amid geopolitical concerns – according to a different speaker, who said this was intensified by China “leapfrogg[ing]” in the EV industry.
Another speaker said that critical minerals were being “politicalised”, in part because of the different ways they are used in each country.
The speaker said that critical minerals had a wide range of uses. For the US they were mainly used in semiconductors, petrochemicals and defence, whereas China also used them in EVs and wind turbines, they explained.
Speaking to Carbon Brief on the sidelines of the event, Dr Yixian Sun, who leads the SGAIN project, said that the rest of the world could take “useful lessons” from China’s efforts towards sustainable development. He added:
“To keep the 1.5C goal alive, stronger international cooperation is urgently needed – to help China deepen its own transition and [to] develop inclusive partnerships with the rest of the world.”
EMISSIONS PEAKED?: Bloomberg’s “Zero” podcast interviewed CREA’s Myllyvirta, about whether China’s emissions have “finally peaked”, citing his analysis for Carbon Brief.
‘GREEN DEVELOPMENT’: Prof Bai Quan, from the Academy of Macroeconomic Research (AMR) under China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), who Carbon Brief interviewed last year, published an article about “green development” at state-run media outlet Economic Daily.
INDUSTRY MITIGATION: Prof He Kebin, dean of the Institute for Carbon Neutrality at Tsinghua University, gave a talk about “industrial decarbonisation”, reported China Energy Net.
‘NATIONAL LOW-CARBON DAY’: A short video promoting combating climate change for China’s “national low-carbon day” (25 June) was produced and published by the MEE.
Persistent emissions of ozone-depleting carbon tetrachloride from China during 2011–2021
Nature Geoscience
China was responsible for half of the world’s emissions of the ozone-depleting greenhouse gas carbon tetrachloride over 2011-20, according to new research. The paper used both long-term atmospheric observations from a network of sites from across China and a “top-down approach” to estimate the country’s carbon tetrachloride emissions. The authors noted that “substantial” carbon tetrachloride emissions are permitted for feedstock use in China, but still found thousands of tonnes of “unexplained” carbon tetrachloride emissions from the country per year.
Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
The extreme heatwave and drought in North China in 2022-23 caused more than 80,000 hectares of forest canopy dieback, a new study found. The researchers used remote sensing forest monitoring algorithms and drone-captured images to identify forest canopy dieback during this period. The most severe dieback occurred in May 2023, they found. Areas with high forest cover were hardest hit in the early stages of the extreme weather, which suggests that “afforestation efforts may have inadvertently increased forest vulnerability”, the study authors wrote. They added that this extreme weather event was “highly severe, widespread, and prolonged, causing historically low anomalies in regional greenness and productivity”.
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
Speaking ahead of the launch of the Climate Change Committee’s 2025 progress report, Prof Piers Forster, the CCC’s interim chair, told journalists it would be “possible” to meet the UK’s 2030 international climate goal, as well as its 2050 target to cut emissions to net-zero.
Moreover, Forster responded to attacks on climate policy from opposition parties, the Conservatives and Reform UK, by saying that reaching net-zero would, “ultimately, be good for the UK economy”.
The CCC’s report points to progress in areas such as windfarm planning rules, plans for clean power by 2030 and the accelerating adoption of clean-energy technologies for heat and transport.
It says that 38% of the emissions cuts needed to hit the UK’s 2030 target are now backed by “credible” policies, up from 25% two years earlier.
However, it says “significant risks” remain – and its top recommendation is for government action to reduce electricity prices, which would support the electrification of heat, transport and industry.
Carbon Brief has covered the CCC’s annual progress reports in 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021 and 2020.
This is the first progress report from the CCC to assess climate policy and action under the new Labour government, which took office in July 2024.
Last year’s edition had said that “urgent action is needed” and that the UK was “not on track” for its 2030 international climate goal, namely, a 68% reduction in emissions relative to 1990 levels.
In contrast, the 2025 report says: “This target is within reach, provided the government stays the course.”
Speaking at a pre-launch press briefing, CCC interim chair Prof Piers Forster said: “[This is] an optimistic report, [showing] that it is possible for the country to meet its climate commitments.”
Moreover, in comments aligned with the shift in language since last year, he said that the report was “more optimistic” than the 2024 edition. Forster explained:
“We are not a political organisation and our job as a committee is just to look at the evidence, but, in terms of looking at the evidence, we are more optimistic than we were this time last year.”
The reasons for this were a mixture of policies from the previous government starting to deliver and the impact of decisions taken by the new administration, he said.
While the tone is relatively optimistic, the latest progress report uses less prescriptive language than previous editions, according to Carbon Brief analysis shown in the figure below.
For example, the word “must” occurs once every 10 pages in this year’s report, down from seven times in 2021. Similarly, the word “should” only occurs four times per 10 pages, down from 13.
This shift in language appears to be a continuation of the approach taken by the committee in its advice on the UK’s seventh “carbon budget”, published in February.
(Under the Climate Change Act 2008, the government has until June 2026 to legislate for this budget, which is a legally binding emissions limit for the five-year period from 2038 to 2042.)
The committee has faced inaccurate criticism from some opponents of climate action, who have argued that it was, in effect, setting government policy.
Pushing back on this, Forster had reiterated in February: “[O]ur core responsibility…is to give…the very best non-partisan advice possible…It’s not up to us to make the policy, it’s up to government.”
Beyond the overall tone of the latest progress report, it also puts a stronger emphasis than last year’s on the need for action to reduce emissions.
It sets out the rationale for the world reaching net-zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to stop global warming, but also asserts the benefits this would bring to the UK in terms of energy security, a more efficient economy and lower bills:
“[C]ontinued reliance on fossil fuels undermines UK energy security…[A] fossil-fuelled future would leave the UK increasingly dependent on imports, and energy bills would remain subject to volatile fossil fuel prices.”
In language that could be interpreted as pushback against the leader of the opposition, the Conservative’s Kemi Badenoch, who recently falsely claimed that reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 was both “impossible” and only possible “by bankrupting us”, the CCC report states:
“The science is unambiguous. Only by achieving net-zero CO2 emissions, with deep reductions in other greenhouse gases, can the UK stop contributing to an ever-warmer climate…The 2050 net-zero target for the UK remains deliverable and affordable, with whole-economy costs estimated at an annual average of 0.2% of GDP.”
Asked directly if he agreed that the net-zero by 2050 target was “impossible” and would come with “catastrophic” costs – as Badenoch has asserted – Forster said that on the contrary, it was “possible” and would, “ultimately, be good for the UK economy”. He told journalists:
“We think that, provided there is further government policy, it is possible both to reach our [2030 target], our carbon budgets and then, ultimately, get to net-zero…[and that] while the benefit doesn’t come instantly…it will, ultimately, be good for the UK economy.”
The report also makes the point that the UK is far from alone in its efforts, with global investments in clean-energy technologies reaching $2tn last year, double the sum going to fossil fuels. It adds:
“Most of the world is investing heavily in low-carbon technologies, driven by falling costs, energy security concerns and a realisation of the need to respond to rising climate impacts.”
(This is despite the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and a “period of uncertainty” in international relations since the US election, the report notes.)
Last year’s report, published just days after Labour’s “landslide” election victory, had set the scene for the new administration, saying that it needed to “make up lost ground” to get back on track.
That report had called on the new government to “limit the damage” from Conservative climate policy rollbacks, which had been implemented ahead of the election.
This year’s report looks at how things have progressed since then, based on three sets of metrics:
The assessment includes policy changes introduced up until 23 May 2025, meaning that it does not consider the June spending review or the industrial strategy published earlier this week.
Greenhouse gas emissions have more than halved since 1990, with a 50.4% reduction, making the UK “one of the leading economies in the world”, Forster said. The report adds:
“The UK should…be proud of its place among a leading group of economies demonstrating consistent and sustained decarbonisation.”
It says that UK emissions fell again during 2024, with a 2.5% reduction marking the tenth year of steady decline, excluding the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent rebound.
Echoing Carbon Brief analysis published in March, the CCC says that the latest drop in emissions was due to the power sector, industry and transport, where EVs are starting to have an impact.
However, the report emphasises once again that progress to date has largely come in the electricity sector, where the UK became the first country in the G7 to phase out coal power in 2024.
Indeed, the CCC says that electricity supply is now only the UK’s sixth-largest source of emissions, after surface transport, buildings, industry, agriculture and aviation, as shown in the figure below.
In order to continue cutting emissions to meet UK climate goals, the CCC says that reductions will be needed across a broader range of sectors, including transport, buildings, industry and land-use.
The pace of emissions cuts outside the power sector – an average of 8m tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) per year since 2008 – is roughly on track for the fourth carbon budget covering 2023-27.
However, the report says this pace will need to “more than double” toward the end of the decade, hitting 19MtCO2e per year, in order to hit the UK’s NDC and sixth carbon budget.
Turning to the indicators of progress on the ground, the CCC says that there are some “clear signs” of such shifts starting to take place, in areas such as transport, buildings and land-use.
For example, the report points to “significant increases” in the rates of heat-pump rollout (up 56% year-on-year in 2024), tree-planting (+59%) and peatland restoration (+47%).
(See the sections below for further detail on policies and progress in each sector.)
Turning to its assessment of government climate policy, the CCC report says there has also been some “positive progress” since Labour came to office last year.
Specifically, it points to the removal of planning barriers for onshore wind and heat pumps, as well as implementation of the “clean heat market mechanism” to drive heat-pump sales, reinstatement of the 2030 combustion car ban and publication of the 2030 clean-power action plan.
As a result, the CCC says that there are now “credible policies” in place to make 38% of the emissions cuts needed to hit the UK’s 2030 target, up from 25% in 2023 and 32% last year.
At the same time, the share of emissions savings subject to policies facing “some” or “significant risks” has fallen from 53% in 2023 and 50% in 2024, down to 43% in the latest report.
These improvements are illustrated in the figure below, which shows that the credibility of UK climate policies towards the 2030 target has been steadily increasing.
Nevertheless, there are still “insufficient plans” to make 14% of the cuts needed by 2030, the same share as last year. The biggest policy gaps are around heat-pump rollout, the report says.
The CCC says: “With 39% of policies and plans needed to hit the 2030 NDC rated as having significant risks, or insufficient or unquantified plans, the government must act swiftly.”
The figure below illustrates the implications of falling to “act swiftly” more clearly.
If only the most “credible” policies actually deliver emissions savings (solid dark blue line) then the UK would miss its international targets for 2030 and 2035 (black circles) by significant margins.
The UK would get somewhat closer to its goals, if emissions cuts are successfully achieved as a result of policies subject to “some” (light blue) or “significant” delivery risks (grey line).
At the pre-launch briefing, Dr Emily Nurse, head of net-zero at the CCC, told journalists that further action was needed to get on track for the 2030 target. She said:
“Around three-fifths of what’s needed is covered by either credible plans or [those] having some risks…The UK can hit its upcoming emissions reduction targets and remain on track for net-zero, but only with further policy action.”
The government has the chance to fill these policy gaps when it publishes its updated “carbon budget delivery plan”, which has a deadline of 29 October this year.
This plan must set out how the government intends to meet the UK’s legally binding climate goals, after the previous administration’s plan was ruled unlawful by the High Court.
While there has been “good or moderate progress” on 20 of the 35 policy recommendations made last year, the CCC says there has been “no progress” on its top recommendation to make electricity cheaper.
The report says this remains its top recommendation for the second year in a row.
The reason for emphasising this, it says, is that electrification of transport, heat and industry will be the key to making required emissions cuts over the next decade, according to the CCC, with these shifts being facilitated by the expansion and continued decarbonisation of the power sector.
CCC chief executive Emma Pinchbeck told journalists that making progress in lowering electricity prices was “absolutely critical”, particularly relative to the price of gas. She said:
“The reason we keep banging on about [this], very simply, [is] that the evidence from every other country that’s had a successful rollout of electric technologies – particularly for heat – is that you need a three-to-one electricity-to-gas price ratio.”
(At present, domestic electricity prices are roughly four times higher than gas prices.)
Pinchbeck reiterated the committee’s call for the government to remove policy “levies” from electricity bills, adding that failing to do so would mean “slowing down” the transition. She said:
“If you’re effectively taxing your future fuel, you’re slowing down your energy transition, when the economy is going to become more and more dependent on electricity…It is just sensible economic policy to have cheap fuel going into your economy.”
While Pinchbeck welcomed plans in the government’s just-published industrial strategy to cut levies on industrial electricity bills, she said that it should do the same for households.
Road-transport emissions fell for a second consecutive year in 2024, says the report.
The number of electric vehicles (EVs) on UK roads is roughly doubling every two years.
If this trend continues, the road-transport sector will produce the emissions savings required for its contribution to the UK’s 2030 climate target, the CCC says (see below).
EVs made up 19.6% of new car sales in 2024, compared to 16.1% the previous year, according to the report. In the first quarter of 2025, this figure rose to 20.7%.
This represents “strong growth”, but is below the headline targets of the zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate, a government regulation that requires car manufacturers to sell an increasing percentage of zero-emission vehicles each year, the CCC says.
The mandate targets a 22% market share for 2024 and a 28% share for 2025, according to the CCC.
The CCC notes that lower-cost EVs are becoming increasingly available. It adds that “price parity with petrol cars has already been reached in parts of the second-hand market”, with this milestone set to arrive for new cars by between 2026 and 2028.
Overall, there has been a “small improvement” in the UK’s policy efforts to decarbonise road transport since last year’s report, it says.
This is largely down to Labour’s decision to reinstate a 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles, which was weakened to 2035 under Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak, explains the report.
The CCC describes the move as a “welcome market signal to accelerate the transition to EVs”.
As well as reinstating the 2030 ban, the government announced changes to the ZEV mandate.
The government essentially weakened the mandate by extending flexibilities and allowing the sale of hybrid vehicles between 2030 and 2035.
Ministers said this move was in response to import tariffs announced by Donald Trump.
The CCC says the changes “risk allowing existing planned plugin hybrid vehicle sales to slightly reduce the emissions savings from EVs”, adding:
“It is also possible that manufacturers could divert investment towards [hybrids], diluting the consumer offer for EVs – we currently think that this risk is minimal due to progress in scaling up the EV market to date, but it is something that we will monitor closely.”
It adds that “for the transition to accelerate, further reductions in the cost of purchasing EVs, as well as improved access to, and reduced costs of, local public charging, are needed”.
Heat pump installations increased by 56% in 2024 compared to the year before, the report says. Some 98,000 heat pumps were installed.
A total of 23,000 heat pumps were installed under the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, which allows homeowners to claim grants for replacing fossil-fuel boilers. This is an increase of 83% on 2023 levels, says the CCC.
However, the speed at which heat pumps are rolled out remains one of the “biggest risks” to the UK meeting its 2030 climate target, it adds.
The UK’s heat pump market share is around 4%, much lower than comparable countries, such as Ireland (30%) and the Netherlands (31%), the CCC says.
The government has taken steps to “remove planning barriers” for heat pumps. This includes amending the planning policy in England to remove the requirement for planning permission for heat pumps located less than 1m from a property boundary.
However, the government has “not yet provided clarity on whether [it] will continue with the proposed phase-out of new fossil fuel boiler installations from 2035”, or “make alternative plans to ensure that low-carbon heating reaches the installation rates required”, the CCC says.
The report adds that the ratio of residential electricity to gas prices is “significantly off track”.
The ratio is important because it underpins the “underlying cost savings of switching to electric technologies are reflected in the bills paid by households and businesses”, the CCC says, continuing:
“Action has not been taken to remove policy costs from electricity prices which would address this, despite it being our first recommendation last year…Currently, a typical household with a heat pump is paying around £490 per year in policy costs, which inflate their bills above the underlying cost of the additional electricity used.”
Data from other nations suggests that the “market share of heat pump installations are correlated with more favourable electricity-to-gas price ratios”, says the CCC (see chart below).
Forster told the press briefing that the CCC’s “biggest recommendation” to government remains reducing the price of electricity in relation to gas:
“By far the most important recommendation we have for the government is to reduce the cost of electricity, both for households and for businesses and industry as well…If we want the country to benefit from the transition to electrification, we have to see it reflected in utility bills.”
The report adds that, on efforts to increase the energy efficiency of residential buildings, the “proportion of homes with insulated cavity walls has steadily increased over recent years, but this will need to accelerate later in the decade” to be in line with net-zero.
Industry emissions decreased by 4.7MtCO2e in 2024, compared to the year before, the CCC says. Emissions are now 48% lower than 2008 levels.
From 2023-24, annual emissions dropped quickly due to the removal of blast furnaces at Port Talbot steelworks in 2024. They are due to be replaced by electric arc furnaces by 2027, with the move leading to 2,500 job losses.
The government should have developed a “more proactive and decisive transition plan” for Port Talbot and the report describes the UK’s upcoming steel strategy as “an opportunity to set out plans for the low-carbon transition at Scunthorpe steelworks and other UK steel production”.
To deliver the emissions savings needed to meet the UK’s 2030 climate goal, companies will “increasingly need to switch to electric alternatives to fossil-fuelled technology”, the report says, adding:
“A high ratio of [industrial] electricity-to-gas prices currently presents a barrier to this.”
It adds that, currently, “there is now no major source of government support for manufacturers to invest in electrification”.
The CCC notes that the government did not launch the latest round of the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund, which was due in December 2024. It has “not clarified whether this or similar funding will continue”.
On 23 June, the UK government announced a 10-year industrial strategy, including measures to slash the price of electricity for energy-intensive businesses from 2027 by exempting them from green levies.
In the press briefing, Pinchbeck described the move as “good”, but urged the government to introduce similar measures for household electricity bills, too. (See: Buildings.)
On efforts to introduce carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies to UK industries, the report says progress “is not on track to be deployed at the pace required” by government plans to reach net-zero.
The report says that the UK’s “continued reliance on fossil fuels undermines energy security”, continuing:
“Household energy bills rose sharply following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and have remained high since. It is the price of gas that has driven up both gas and electricity bills.”
(See Carbon Brief’s factcheck on what is causing high electricity bills in the UK.)
The report does not directly address the Labour government’s policies on oil and gas production in the North Sea.
Labour has ruled out new oil and gas licences. However, the government has indicated it might approve new projects that already have a licence, if they can pass a new environmental impact assessment that will consider the emissions from burning the oil and gas produced.
In regards to the North Sea, the report says:
“With North Sea resources largely used up, a fossil-fuelled future would leave the UK increasingly dependent on imports and energy bills would remain subject to volatile fossil fuel prices.”
The CCC adds that the “main progress in the fuel-supply sector in the past year has been around low-carbon hydrogen production”.
In the 2024 autumn budget, the government confirmed support for 11 “electrolytic”
hydrogen production projects, which are expected to start operating by the end of 2026. (These projects use electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.)
The UK’s transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy in its electricity supply continued to drive the bulk of emissions reductions in 2024, the CCC says. It accounted for 41% of the total in-year reduction in emissions.
From the 1990s until 2024, the power sector has transformed from the largest source of emissions to only the sixth largest, behind aviation. (See: Overall progress.)
The UK’s last coal-fired power plant, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, closed in October 2024. (See Carbon Brief’s detailed explainer on how the UK became the first G7 nation to phase out coal.)
Coal emissions from electricity generation were 99% lower in 2024 than in 2008 and will reach zero in 2025, the CCC says. It describes this as a “major milestone on the UK’s path to a decarbonised power system”.
Falling gas generation accounted for 72% of emissions reductions in the power sector in 2024, the CCC says.
The electricity supplied by gas fell by 15% in 2024, compared to the previous year. This was “made up with roughly equal proportions of imports and low-carbon generation”.
The rollout of wind and solar capacity in 2024 was larger than in any of the previous six years, the report says.
But to achieve the government’s goal of “clean power” by 2030, total renewable capacity will need to more than double.
Based on projects in the pipeline, both offshore and onshore wind “appear on track” for the government’s goal, according to the CCC.
However, “roll-out of solar is significantly off track and will need to improve to deliver its contribution to a decarbonised electricity system”.
The report says that, overall, “positive policy progress has been made in decarbonising electricity supply over the past year”.
It continues that “concrete steps have been made to remove barriers and support the deployment of low-carbon technology”.
These steps include removing barriers facing onshore wind developments, “streamlin[ing]” the approval of nationally significant infrastructure, including renewable projects and introducing reforms to speed up connecting projects to the grid.
However, the CCC adds that there are “remaining uncertainties on the future electricity market arrangements and further challenges to deploying infrastructure to overcome”.
There was a “significant increase” in both tree-planting and peatland restoration in 2024, the report says.
Some 20,700 hectares of new trees were planted, an increase of 59% on the year before and the highest rate in 20 years, it adds, as shown in the chart below.
Over the same period, the restoration of peatlands increased by 47%.
This “demonstrates that a rapid increase in rates is feasible” for the land-use sector, the CCC says.
However, woodland creation remains “slightly off track”. (Carbon Brief reported last year that successive UK governments have fallen so far short of their tree-planting targets since 2020 that they have failed to plant an area of forest nearly equivalent to the size of Birmingham.)
In addition, Scotland accounted for 73% of the total trees planted from 2023-24 and the CCC has “concerns that recent reductions in funding for woodland creation in Scotland could reverse this trend”.
A target to have 35,000 hectares of peat under restoration in England by 2025 is also “expected to be missed”.
Livestock numbers continued to fall in 2024, the report says.
Meat eating has declined steeply over the past couple of years. The average amount of meat eaten per person each week dropped by around 100g from 2020-22, according to CCC data.
Pinchbeck told the press briefing that meat-eating in the UK is now lower than what the CCC had anticipated in its central pathway for meeting net-zero:
“There’s lots of factors behind that, including the cost of living crisis. So we are not necessarily saying that trend will increase. Farming is facing a number of pressures, outside having to deal with a changing climate, reduced crop yields [and] difficulty making farms sustainable.”
Both the reduction in livestock and meat eating are “key to freeing up land required to increase tree-planting and peatland restoration”, the report says.
The government’s progress on addressing land-use sector emissions with policies has been “mixed” over the past year, according to the CCC.
The government is expected to produce a long-awaited land-use framework by the end of this year, but it “remains unclear how this framework will drive change on the ground”, the advisers say.
The government paused the sustainable farming incentive, part of the environmental land management (ELM) schemes, in March 2025.
This was due to all of the funding being allocated, which is “positive”, says the CCC. However, the decision has left a “gap in delivery grants for on-farm actions”.
The Nature for Climate Fund has been extended by one year, but is “unclear” what will happen to this scheme in the long term, it adds.
Emissions in the aviation sector increased by 9% year-on-year in 2024, “marking a return to pre-pandemic levels”, the report says.
In government and CCC scenarios for net-zero, emissions stay flat and start slowly decreasing over the rest of the decade, the report says, adding:
“Aviation emissions will likely exceed the trajectories assumed in all [these] pathways if they continue to increase, posing a risk to the UK’s emissions targets.”
The biggest driver of aviation emissions since 1990 has been “rising demand for international flights, particularly leisure”, it continues.
Aviation now causes more emissions than the UK’s entire power grid. In 1990, aviation emissions were 10 times lower than those from electricity, according to the report.
The CCC “recommends that the government should develop and implement policy that ensures the aviation sector takes responsibility for mitigating its emissions and, ultimately, achieving net-zero”, adding:
“This includes paying for permanent engineered removals to balance out all remaining emissions. Robust contingencies should also be in place to address any delays in decarbonisation, including through managing the forecasted increase in aviation demand.”
The share of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) as a proportion of all jet fuel rose from 0.7% to 2.1% from 2023-24, the CCC says.
It notes that the SAF mandate came into force in January 2025 and the sustainable aviation fuel bill was introduced to parliament in May.
Achieving the government’s target of 10% of jet fuel from SAF by 2030 “remains uncertain as different types of SAF will need to scale up”, it adds.
There are currently no operational UK SAF plants, but some are under construction.
On shipping, the report notes that the UK has set out a maritime decarbonisation strategy, with an aim to reduce the domestic maritime sector’s fuel lifecycle emissions to zero by 2050 and interim goals of cutting pollution by 30% by 2030 and 80% by 2040, compared to 2008.
The targets are “broadly aligned” with government plans for net-zero, the CCC says.
Another sector tracked by the CCC is “engineered removals”, technologies that suck CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Aside from small experiments, there is no deployment of such technologies in the UK. However, the government’s pathway for net-zero expects such methods to remove 6MtCO2e from the atmosphere by 2030, the report says, adding:
“This sector will need to develop and scale up notably over the coming five years.”
One of the CCC’s “top 10” priority actions is for the government to “finalise business models for large-scale deployment of engineered removals”.
On this, the advisers say:
“There has been little progress…This puts the contribution of engineered removals to the UK’s 2030 NDC at increasing risk.”
Another issue assessed by the CCC is waste, which produced 26.7MtCO2e in 2024, making it the eighth most polluting sector.
The report says there has been “some progress” on waste policy, but notes the government is “yet to confirm its intention to prevent biodegradable waste from going to landfill, a key measure to reduce emissions from waste”.
It is well known that explosive eruptions can cause sudden cooling at the Earth’s surface and that multiple eruptions shape climate variability over decades and centuries.
When sulphur dioxide is injected into the stratosphere during an eruption, it forms aerosols that block sunlight from reaching the Earth’s surface.
Unlike human influences on climate change, which occur slowly and can be accounted for in climate models under a range of socioeconomic scenarios, the sporadic nature of volcanic eruptions poses a challenge for climate projections.
Scientists cannot currently forecast the occurrence of volcanic eruptions – including when and where they will occur and how much sulphur they will emit.
How, then, to account for the climate impact of volcanic eruptions when projecting into the future?
In a recent study, published in Communications Earth & Environment, we show that volcanic eruptions make a substantial contribution to the uncertainty in projections of global temperatures.
Our findings suggest that, when sporadic volcanic eruptions are included in climate projections, breaching of the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C warming limit is slightly delayed – but we will also see more decades with rapid rates of warming and cooling.
Climate scientists refer to the influence volcanic eruptions have on the climate – largely through the release of sulphur dioxide gas into the atmosphere – as “volcanic forcing”.
Current climate models apply a constant volcanic forcing value when running future projections. This value is calculated based on the historical average of forcings from 1850 to the present day.
This is the case with the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), the international modelling effort that feeds into the influential assessment reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
However, this approach has significant limitations.
For starters, historically averaged forcing does not capture the episodic nature of eruptions.
Large-magnitude volcanic eruptions happen sporadically – sometimes clustering within decades and other times leaving century-long gaps between events.
Meanwhile, the reference period of 1850 to the present day has seen a relatively low frequency of large-magnitude eruptions that emitted more than 3 teragrams (Tg) of sulphur dioxide (SO2), when compared to multimillennial records.
Finally, volcanic forcing reconstructions used in earlier generations of CMIP climate models did not include small-to-moderate magnitude eruptions that emitted less than 3Tg of SO2.
This is because these eruptions went largely undetected before the satellite era began in 1980. Nonetheless, these smaller, but more frequent, eruptions contribute to 30-50% of long-term volcanic forcing.
Traditionally, climate scientists have recognised three main sources of uncertainty in climate projections: internal variability, model uncertainty and scenario uncertainty.
Here, “internal” variability refers to natural fluctuations that are generated within the climate system, such as by El Niño; model uncertainty refers to the differences in the results between multiple climate models; and scenario uncertainty refers to the different ways that the world could develop over the decades to come.
Our results show that volcanic eruptions should be specifically considered as a fourth significant source of uncertainty in climate projections.
To explore how climate projections change when accounting for volcanic forcing uncertainty, our study uses a probabilistic approach that builds on a 2017 methodology developed by Bethke et al.
To do this, we develop “stochastic forcing scenarios” – essentially, 1,000 different plausible timelines of volcanic activity extending to the end of the century.
These scenarios draw from past volcanic activity recorded in ice cores going back 11,500 years, along with satellite measurements and geological evidence. Each scenario represents different combinations of eruption magnitudes, location, timing and frequency.
(In mathematics, “stochastic” systems involve randomness or uncertainty of outcome, making them unpredictable. This is in contrast to “deterministic” systems, which are characterised by having outcomes that are completely predictable based on initial conditions and a set of rules or equations.)
We then simulate climate projections using both stochastic and historically-averaged volcanic forcing between 2015 and 2100, exploring temperature rise under three different emissions scenarios drawn from the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). These are a low-emission scenario (SSP1-1.9), an intermediate scenario that is in line with current climate policies (SSP2-4.5) and a very-high emissions scenario (SSP5-8.5).
For this step, we use a simple climate model, or “emulator”, called FaIR.
By simulating 1,000 different volcanic futures, we find that the climate uncertainty caused by future 21st century eruptions could exceed the internal variability of the climate system itself over the same period.
We also find that volcanic eruptions could account for more than one-third of total uncertainty in global temperature projections until the 2030s.
You can see these results in the plot below. It shows the contribution to the total uncertainty from the different sources. The colours represent volcanoes (orange), internal variability (dark blue), climate model response (yellow) and scenarios of future human emissions (green).
Our simulations demonstrate that incorporating possible timelines of volcanic activity slightly reduces the probability of crossing the Paris Agreement’s aspirational 1.5C temperature limit in the near term.
We find that – depending on the emissions scenario – the probability of exceeding 1.5C decreases by 4-10%, compared to projections using constant volcanic forcing.
While this might sound encouraging, future volcanic activity does not provide any long-term mitigation of human-caused warming.
The eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 offers a dramatic illustration of this point. While the event cooled global temperatures by an average of 0.8C, it led to a “year without a summer” and caused crop failures and widespread famine across Europe, North America and China.
Eruptions produce temporary cooling lasting just a few years. They do not alter the underlying warming trend driven by human emissions.
Our study finds that, taking into account a range of future volcanic activity, global warming will still exceed 1.5C within decades under all but the very lowest emissions scenarios.
A high level of volcanic activity over the 21st century would help offset just a small fraction of global warming – meaning that emission reduction remains essential for meeting long-term climate goals.
The charts below show the probability of scenarios exceeding 1.5C using stochastic volcanic forcing (solid lines) and constant volcanic forcing (dashed lines) under three emissions scenarios (top) and the difference in probability between the two forcing approaches (bottom).
Another important insight from our research is that extreme warm and cold decades become more likely once the variability of volcanic forcing is accounted for.
We find that the chance of a negative decadal trend – a decade where global surface temperature cools on average – increases by 10-18% under the intermediate emissions scenario.
We also find a corresponding increase in the probability of extremely warm decades, reflecting how volcanic forcing variability enhances the likelihood of both cooling and warming extremes.
This underscores how volcanic eruptions could introduce significant variability into the global temperature trends over decadal timescales.
Understanding volcanic effects on the climate is essential for comprehensively assessing future risks to agriculture, infrastructure and energy systems.
Running thousands of volcanic scenarios with full-scale Earth system models is not practical as it requires too much computing power. On the other hand, current approaches have significant limitations, as described above.
However, there is a middle ground for future climate modelling efforts.
The next phase of future climate modelling experiments – the Scenario Model Intercomparison Project for CMIP7 – can use a more representative “average” volcanic forcing baseline that incorporates the effects of small eruptions often missed in historical records. This bias has now been addressed in the historical volcanic forcing dataset that will underpin the next generation of climate model simulations.
Additionally, modelling teams should run additional scenarios with high and low future volcanic activity to capture the range of volcanic uncertainty on climate projections.
While human-caused greenhouse gas emissions remain the dominant driver of climate change, properly accounting for volcanic uncertainty provides a more complete picture of possible climate futures and their implications for society.
Since then, there have been significant improvements in the cost and performance of batteries, making it cheaper than ever to pair solar with energy storage using batteries.
In our new Ember “white paper”, we present modelling showing that solar with batteries in major sunny cities, such as Las Vegas or Mexico City, can now get more than 90% of the way to continuous generation, at costs below those of coal or nuclear power.
Even in cloudier cities away from the equator, such as Birmingham in the UK, it is possible to run on solar plus storage across the majority of hours in the year.
The white paper sets out how near-continuous “24/365” solar power has become an economic and technological reality in sunny regions.
A solar panel generates most electricity when the sun is shining, meaning it cannot provide constant power throughout the year. Put another way, 100 watts (W) of solar capacity only generates around 20W on average – and that output will be concentrated in daylight hours.
Our report shows that battery energy storage can unlock solar’s full potential, by turning daytime generation into around-the-clock electricity.
Indeed, when paired with sufficient battery storage, that same 100W of solar capacity can provide electricity around the clock – up to 100% of the time.
This also means up to five times as much solar generation can be delivered using the same connection to the electricity network, reducing the need for costly grid upgrades.
Battery energy storage is now cheaper than ever, with global average prices falling by 40% in 2024 alone. The cost of a full battery system fell to a record-low $165 per kilowatt hour (kWh), according to BloombergNEF.
Additionally, there have been a number of technological improvements boosting battery energy storage.
Recent innovations mean almost all grid batteries are now cobalt- and nickel-free, reducing the need for so-called “critical minerals”. They are longer-lasting than ever, with some batteries now having 20-year warranties. And they are safer than ever – with fire risk improving by a hundred-fold since 2019.
Improved container design has also cut maintenance and installation costs.
Our white paper shows that supply is ready to scale, with manufacturing capacity already exceeding demand. There is also significant new production capacity under construction outside of China.
The next frontier is sodium-ion “salt” batteries, which would eliminate the need for lithium and drive prices down even further. One large salt-battery plant has already been commissioned in China.
These technological advances and declining costs mean the world’s first “24/365” battery and solar plants are now coming online:
These examples show that 24/365 solar electricity has already been supplying customers and that it will increasingly start being used to power parts of the grid.
In order to investigate the potential for 24/365 solar, Ember’s white paper modelled a hypothetical system, using real weather data, for a series of cities around the world.
The modelling is based on a system with 6GW of solar capacity and 17GWh of battery storage, because there are roughly 15 hours of darkness in winter in the mid-latitudes.
The modelling shows that solar and battery in the sunniest cities could already get more than 90% of the way to 24/365 solar generation, covering almost every hour of every day in the year.
For example, Muscat in Oman could draw on 1GW of continuous solar electricity for 99% of hours in the year, if it paired 6GW of solar panels with 17GWh of battery capacity.
Las Vegas in the US, Mexico City in Mexico and Johannesburg in South Africa could all rely on such solar-plus-storage systems for at least 95% of hours in the year.
Even Birmingham in the UK could achieve 1GW of solar output for 62% of hours annually. (This is lower than for sunnier cities due to a stronger seasonal cycle and cloudier weather.)
In the sunniest places, solar and storage could generate reliable output, close to 24/365, for around $100 per megawatt hour (MWh), based on average global costs for solar and batteries in 2024.
For each city, the yellow shading in the figure below shows the share of hours each year that it could rely on 1GW of solar output if it installed a 6GW solar plus 17GWh battery system, given historical weather conditions.
Over the past year alone, the levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) for solar-plus-storage systems fell by 22%, driven by a 40% fall in battery prices. This is based on $165/kWh, which was BloombergNEF’s assessment of the global battery pack price at the end of 2024. The LCOE of solar and battery had fallen by 28% over the previous four years.
This makes solar with battery storage cheaper than both coal and nuclear when compared with US-based LCOE, as shown in the chart below.
There is evidence that 2025 solar and battery prices will continue to fall again. Already in early 2025, tenders for large-scale battery storage projects in Tabuk and Hail, Saudi Arabia, reported battery prices as low as $72/kWh.
Our modelling shows that the greatest challenge to generating constant, year-round electricity from solar plus storage is not nighttime, but clouds.
In the mid-latitudes, with around 15 hours of darkness in winter, around 17 hours of battery capacity is sufficient to bridge the period from sunset to sunrise.
This is because batteries typically do not fully charge and discharge to maintain high performance over time.
However, getting to 24/365 solar is harder, as while every day has daylight, not every day has full sunlight. Even though clouds do not reduce solar generation to zero – and despite batteries being cheaper than ever – extra battery storage is still not an economical option for bridging cloudy periods across multiple days.
The graphic below illustrates this, based on the same 6GW solar plus 17GWh storage system as described before, generating electricity under the weather conditions and seasonal cycles of the same 12 cities around the world.
The chart for each city runs from January to December on the horizontal axis and across 24 hours of each day on the vertical axis. Direct use of solar power is shown in orange, with stored solar from the battery shown in yellow and periods with a shortfall in dark blue.
The figure shows that, even on the cloudiest day of the year in Muscat, this solar-plus-storage system would generate constant electricity for 18 hours. Madrid in Spain would see lower output on some shorter and cloudier days in November, December and January. In contrast, Hyderabad in India would be impacted in the summer by cloudy monsoon days.
Overall, the figure shows that the sunniest cities would only fall slightly short of 24/365 solar electricity, but clouds would have a larger impact elsewhere.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has described solar power as offering the “cheapest electricity in history”.
For example, solar power costs just $41/MWh in Las Vegas, according to Ember’s calculations using average global equipment and borrowing costs. However, this is only delivering electricity through daytime hours. As a result, on average around the world, solar has a “capacity factor” of 21% – meaning each unit of solar capacity generates 21% of its maximum theoretical output.
Raising this all the way to 97% raises the price to $104/MWh. However, this also substantially improves the value of solar, now that it is delivering close to 24/365. However, as the chart below shows, meeting the last few percent of demand from solar and storage alone significantly increases the price.
The best value between solar alone or solar with plentiful storage depends on the use case.
It may be optimal to build solar without a battery, so long as a factory can access cheap grid electricity when the solar panels are not generating, for example.
On the other hand, it may be optimal to build solar and batteries to get to 99.7% for an off-grid data centre that values reliability over price. Even in the most sunny places, exactly 100% supply will generally be uneconomic – but it is possible to get very close.
For many cases and based on current prices, the sweet spot may be to size the system for a constant supply of solar electricity for 60-90% of the time, our modelling suggests.
This provides cheap, low-carbon solar power most of the time. It would enable electricity to be used flexibly through the night or during high-price hours.
If widely deployed, such systems would allow for a significantly downscaled need for grid investment, whether they are large-scale solar farms exporting more electricity to the grid or industrial sites drawing from public supplies less often.
‘DOOMED TO BREACH’: At current carbon dioxide (CO2) emission levels, the world is “doomed to breach the symbolic 1.5C warming limit” in as little as three years, according to research by 60 climate scientists covered by BBC News. (Carbon Brief carried a guest post by two scientists involved in the study.) Co-author and Carbon Brief climate science contributor Dr Zeke Hausfather told the Washington Post: “Some reports, there’s a silver lining. I don’t think there really is one in this one.”
FLOODED AFRICA: South Africa declared a national disaster after floods killed more than 90 people in four of the country’s nine provinces, Bloomberg reported. This is the “second time in about seven months” that the government has invoked the measure to “free up funds for relief and reconstruction”, it added. Separately, 29 people were confirmed to have died “after heavy rains at the weekend triggered floods and landslides” in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Associated Press reported.
CHINA DELUGE: Heavy rainfall fuelled by Typhoon Wutip has caused the “worst flood in a century” in China’s southern province of Guangdong, with the Sui river in the Huaiji county swelling to “over five metres above the official danger level…the highest on record”, reported state broadcaster CGTN. Local authorities have declared a “top-level emergency” as economic losses from the floods are estimated at $5.7m, the outlet added.
HURRICANE AND HEAT DOME: In North America, forecasters have warned that parts of the US could see “dangerously high temperatures and extreme humidity” from an incoming heat dome, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Associated Press reported that a “fast-moving brush fire” burned hundreds of acres and forced the evacuation of 50 Maui residents in Hawaii, even as 2023 wildfire survivors struggle with declining health, per the Guardian. Hurricane Erick made landfall on Mexico’s Pacific coast on Thursday “shortly after being downgraded slightly from an ‘extremely dangerous’ category 4” storm, noted BBC News.
BEGIN AGAIN: The Bonn climate talks – the annual two-week preparatory talks held each June deemed “critical to thrash out differences” before each year’s COP – began on Monday “amid severe geopolitical turmoil and renewed tensions”, the Hindustan Times reported. It added that the meetings are shrouded by a “shadow of failed climate-finance talks” at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan last year and “divergent views” on a roadmap to raise climate finance to $1.3tn.
AGENDA FIGHT: The start of the talks was delayed by an “agenda row”, after Bolivia – on behalf of the Like-Minded Group of Developing Countries (LMDC) – sought to include items on climate finance from developed nations and “climate change-related trade-restrictive unilateral measures”, Climate Home News reported. Donald Trump’s administration “decided…not to send a delegation to the preparatory meetings” – meaning the US was absent in Bonn for the first time ever, it added.
‘BITTER EXCHANGES’: After 30 hours of “bitter exchanges”, the agenda was adopted on Tuesday “to polite applause and a bigger sense of discontent”, another Climate Home News article said. The Bonn chairs agreed to hold “substantive consultations” on climate finance and report back in Belém at COP30, it continued. Negotiators can now “turn their full attention to equally thorny discussions” on climate adaptation indicators and fossil fuels, it added. (Carbon Brief’s Josh Gabbatiss and Molly Lempriere will report live from Bonn next week.)
The amount of calories the average person could lose per day for every 1C of warming, due to climate change’s impact on six key crops, according to research covered by Carbon Brief.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Carbon Brief charted eight decades of the UK’s nuclear energy fleet – from setting up the world’s first commercial reactor in Cumbria in 1956 to UK chancellor Rachel Reeves greenlighting the Sizewell C reactor last week. The chart shows the contribution of each of the UK’s nuclear plants to the country’s overall capacity, according to when they started and stopped operating. It also shows timelines for new planned nuclear capacity yet to come on board, plus known planned closure dates.
This week, Carbon Brief visits Mumbai’s official monsoon monitoring centre and “war room” to examine how the city is responding to its earliest downpour on record.
If extreme weather had a poster-child capital, it would be Mumbai. The megacity has it all – catastrophic urban flooding every monsoon, sea level rise, landslides, climate-change induced tropical cyclones, heatwaves across all its seven islands – and, with further climate change, it will only get worse.
Famed for its “spirit”, Mumbai’s 26 million metropolis dwellers have come to loathe the term that valorises their resilience every monsoon, evident from the memes that flooded the internet on 26 May when the monsoon arrived earlier than ever before in the city’s history.
On its first monsoon day of the year, the city received 135.4mm of rainfall rather than its normal of 0.2mm – an excess of 67,600%. Visuals of a flooded metro line that opened only 17 days ago went viral.
Faced with criticism, the state’s deputy chief minister Eknath Shinde equated the rains to a “cloudburst” and admitted that the country’s richest civic body – that he heads in the absence of elected representatives – was caught off-guard this year.
Despite having a year to prepare, Shinde admitted that pumps meant to remove water from a city that is barely above sea level were not working to full capacity. They stand in sharp contrast to the billion-dollar highways that have robbed the city of its natural flood defences and now dominate its skyline and waterfront, but are already being overwhelmed by extreme weather.
In India’s financial capital – where 73% of all offices and commercial establishments are within 500m of a flood hotspot and 69% of all employees experience “hindered access” from waterlogging trying to get to or leave work – forecasting the monsoon is fraught, essential and getting trickier with climate change.
Dr Sushma Nair, a meteorologist with the India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) regional monitoring centre, has the unenviable job of getting it right.
Nair and her team work out of the Colaba Observatory, at the southernmost tip of the city. Established in 1826 by the East India Company, it is one of world’s longest-running observatories and is older than the IMD itself – as well as many parts of the city that have been reclaimed from the sea.
“As weather-in-charge, it’s a 24/7 job,” Nair told Carbon Brief during a visit to the observatory.
Nair’s day begins at 8:30am, when her team prepares a forecast, checks upper air observations, runs models and decides what colour – yellow, orange or red – to assign the region for the next 24 hours, before hopping on a video call with her regional contemporaries and the IMD HQ.
“No journalist will get a forecast from us before 11:30 or 12:30, because we are discussing the weather,” she said.
Meteorological Centre has a Nowcast that refreshes every three hours, allowing forecasters to account for sudden changes in the weather and upgrade the city to a red alert, based on satellite and radar warnings.
Nair confesses that she “normally” checks the Nowcast at 4am, “because I lose my sleep at 3am”, and has the city’s chief disaster manager on speed dial for a red nowcast, no matter what the hour. “I am an insomniac, so don’t take that as a regular forecaster’s sleep hours,” she joked.
Her biggest source of dread is two-hour intense downpours in which the island city receives more than 150mm of rain, caused by an offshore vortex that is a “very small-scale, sub-grid system” that weather models cannot capture. She said:
“Low-pressure cyclonic systems, we can see coming. [But] this is the goblin that I haven’t seen who rushes in usually at night, creates havoc and leaves. Climate change is already contributing to these types of events: a whole lot of rain in smaller spells.”
As a coastal city, scientists told Carbon Brief that the city should be prepared to soak in 300mm of rain, but, because of choked drains, rivers and built infrastructure, it currently cannot even take in 100mm.
Fifteen minutes away from the observatory, a whiteboard in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) “monsoon war room” shows the state of affairs: rivers that should have been desilted by May are still only 66% done.
In its disaster control room three flights down, the phones will not stop ringing. The city’s residents, police and fire brigades are calling to report waterlogging, fallen branches and landslides.
While one giant screen streams live CCTV footage from 25 of the city’s worst traffic chokepoints, another screen shows live Doppler radar footage – when it is working.
“Whatever resources an emergency needs, we mobilise them from this control room,” a senior BMC disaster management official told Carbon Brief:
“If we get an orange alert from the IMD, all of our agencies, the navy, army: all of them get an alert message from us asking them to stand by.”
Many fault the BMC for delayed alerts, desilting and a city dug up beyond recognition. Officials say they are using all platforms – from X to SMS – to warn people about monsoon impacts. They blame TV channels that have “stopped carrying the news” – and people who have stopped watching it for weather updates – for a lack of awareness. The official told Carbon Brief:
“We have sufficient funds. You can’t reduce natural hazards and, in such a crowded city, to survive, the only thing that can save you is your wits.”
ET TU, PETROSTATE? A Foreign Affairs essay by two US professors argued that, as the US’s energy exports have grown, it has “begun to behave more like a classic petrostate”, less likely to “embrace multilateralism and cooperate on international rules”.
ADRIAN VS ADANI: BBC World Service’s Life at 50C had a new documentary following Indigenous Queenslander Adrian Burragubba’s “battle against Adani[‘s]” coal mine in Australia’s Galilee Basin.
NO SHADE: Adaptation policy researcher Aditya Valiathan Pillai spoke to the Migration Story about heat stress and the “politics of shade”.
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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However, there is an intriguing – and underappreciated – role played by the world’s rivers.
Right now, plants and soils absorb about one-third of the CO2 released by human activity, similar to how much the oceans take up.
Over thousands to millions of years, some of this land-fixed carbon can end up being buried in sediments, where it eventually forms rocks.
The waters that feed rivers flow through plants, soils and rocks in landscapes, picking up and releasing carbon as they go.
This process is generally considered to be a sideways “leakage” of the carbon that is being taken up by recent plant growth.
However, the age of this carbon – how long it resided in plants and soils before it made it into rivers and then to the atmosphere – has remained a mystery.
If the carbon being released by rivers is young, then it can be considered a component of relatively quick carbon cycling.
However, if the carbon is old, then it is coming from landscape carbon stores that we thought were stable – and, therefore, represents a way these old carbon stores can be destabilised.
In our new study, published in Nature, we show that almost 60% of the carbon being released to the atmosphere by rivers is from these older sources.
In total, this means the world’s rivers emit more than 7bn tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere each year – more than the annual fossil-fuel emissions from North America.
This means that there is a significant leak of carbon from old stores that we thought were safely locked away.
Previous work has shown that local land-use change, such as deforestation and climate-driven permafrost thaw, will directly release old carbon into rivers. Whether this is happening at the global scale remains a significant unknown for now.
How do you tell how old carbon is? We employ the same technique that is used to determine the age of an archaeological relic or to verify the age of a vintage wine – that is, radiocarbon dating.
Radiocarbon is the radioactive isotope of carbon, which decays at a known rate. This enables us to determine the age of carbon-based materials dating back to a maximum age of about 60,000 years old.
We know that some of the carbon that rivers release is very young, a product of recent CO2 uptake by plants.
We also know that rivers can receive carbon from much older sources, such as the decomposition of deep soils by microbes and soil organisms or the weathering and erosion of ancient carbon in rocks.
Soil decomposition can release carbon ranging from a few years to tens of thousands of years. An example of very old soil carbon release is from thawing permafrost.
Rock weathering and erosion releases carbon that is millions of years old. This is sometimes referred to as “radiocarbon-dead” because it is so old all the radiocarbon has decayed.
In our new study, we compile new and existing radiocarbon dates of the CO2 emissions from around 700 stretches of river around the world.
We find that almost 60% of the carbon being released to the atmosphere by rivers is from older sources (hundreds to thousands of years old, or older), such as old soil and ancient rock carbon.
In the figure below, we suggest how different processes taking place within a landscape can release carbon of different ages into rivers, driving its direct emission to the atmosphere.
So, while rivers are leaking some modern carbon from plants and soils as part of the landscape processes that remove CO2 from the atmosphere, rivers are also leaking carbon from much older landscape carbon stores.
One major implication of this finding is that modern plants and soils are leaking less carbon back to the atmosphere than previously thought, making them more important for mitigating human-caused climate change.
We find that the proportion of old carbon contributing to river emissions varies across different ecosystems and the underlying geology of the landscapes they drain.
In the figure below, we show that landscapes underlain by sedimentary rocks, which are the most likely to contain substantial ancient (or “petrogenic”) carbon, also had the oldest river emissions. We also show that the type of ecosystem (biome) was also important, although the patterns were less clear.
What is obvious is that at least some old carbon was common across most of the rivers we observed, regardless of size and location.
We provide evidence that there is a geological control on river emissions. And the variability in the ecosystem also indicates important controlling factors, such as soil characteristics, vegetation type and climate – especially rainfall patterns and temperature which are known to impact the rate of carbon release from soils and rock weathering.
Long-term carbon storage in soils and rocks is an important process regulating global climate.
For example, the UK’s peatlands are important for regulating climate because they can store carbon for thousands of years. That is why restoring peatlands is such a great climate solution.
Rivers emit more than 7bn tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere each year – that’s equivalent to about 10-20% of the global emissions from fossil fuel burning annually.
If 60% of river carbon emissions are coming from old carbon stores, then this constitutes a significant leak of carbon from old stores we thought were safely locked away.
Another major implication of our study is that these old carbon stores can be mobilised and routed directly to the atmosphere by rivers, which would exacerbate climate change if these stores are further destabilised.
As can be seen in the figure below, we found that river carbon emissions appeared to be getting older since measurements first began in the 1990s (lower F14Catm means older radiocarbon ages).
We found that river carbon emissions appeared to be getting older since measurements first began in the 1990s.
While there are several caveats to interpreting this trend, it is a warning sign that human activities, especially climate change, could intensify the release of carbon to the atmosphere via rivers.
Given the strong link between soil carbon and river emissions, if this trend is a sign of human activity disturbing the global carbon cycle, it is likely due to landscape disturbance mobilising soil carbon.
Rivers collect waters from across the landscapes they flow through and therefore provide a tool to track processes happening out of sight.
A drop of water landing in a landscape travels through soils and rock before reaching the river, and its chemistry, including its radiocarbon age, reflects the processes occurring within the landscape.
Monitoring the age of carbon in rivers can therefore tell you a lot about whether their landscapes are storing or releasing carbon.
This has been shown to help identify carbon loss in degraded tropical peatlands, thawing Arctic permafrost and due to deforestation.
River radiocarbon is sensitive to environmental change and could therefore be a powerful monitoring tool for detecting the onset of climate tipping points or the success of landscape restoration projects, for example.
While we present data spread out across the world, there are quite a few gaps for important regions, notably where glacier change is happening and others where droughts and flood frequencies are changing.
These include areas with low amounts of data in Greenland, the African continent, the Arctic and Boreal zones, the Middle East, eastern Europe, western Russia, Central Asia, Australasia and South America outside of the Amazon.
All these regions have the potential to store carbon in the long-term and we do not yet know if these carbon stores are stable or not under present and future climate change.
River radiocarbon offers a powerful method to keep tabs on the health of global ecosystems both now and into the future.
This is the stark picture that emerges in the third edition of the “Indicators of Global Climate Change” (IGCC) report, published in Earth System Science Data.
IGCC tracks changes in the climate system between Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) science reports.
In doing so, the IGCC fills the gap between the IPCC’s sixth assessment (AR6) in 2021 and the seventh assessment, expected in 2028.
Following IPCC methods, this year’s assessment brings together a team of over 60 international scientists, including former IPCC authors and curators of vital global datasets.
As in previous years, it is accompanied by a user-friendly data dashboard focusing on the main policy-relevant climate indicators, including GHG emissions, human-caused warming, the rate of temperature change and the remaining global carbon budget.
Below, we explain this year’s findings, highlighting the role that humans are playing in some of the fundamental changes the global climate has seen in recent years.
(For previous IGCC reports, see Carbon Brief’s detailed coverage in 2023 and 2024.)
Last year likely saw global average surface temperatures hit at least 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. This aligns with other major assessments of the Earth’s climate.
Our best estimate is a rise of 1.52C (with a range of 1.39-1.65C), of which human activity contributed around 1.36C. The rest is the result of natural variability in the climate system, which also plays a role in shaping global temperatures from one year to the next.
Our estimate of 1.52C differs slightly from the 1.55C given by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) state of the global climate 2024 report, published earlier this year. This is because they make slightly different selections on which of the available global land and ocean temperature datasets to include. (The warming estimate has varied by similar amounts in past years and future work will aim to harmonise the approaches.)
The height of 2024’s temperatures, while unprecedented in at least the last 2,000 years, is not surprising. Given the high level of human-induced warming, we might currently expect to see annual temperatures above 1.5C on average one year in six.
However, with 2024 following an El Niño year, waters in the North Atlantic were warmer than average. These conditions raise this likelihood to an expectation that 1.5C is surpassed every other year.
From now on, we should regard 2024’s observed temperatures as unexceptional. Temperature records will continue to be broken as human-caused temperature rise also increases.
Despite observed global temperatures likely rising by more than 1.5C in 2024, this does not equate to a breach of the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal, which refers to long-term temperature change caused by human activity.
IGCC also looks at how temperatures are changing over the most recent decade, in line with IPCC assessments.
Over 2015-24, global average temperatures were 1.24C higher than pre-industrial levels. Of this, 1.22C was caused by human activity. So, essentially, all the global warming seen over the past decade was caused by humans.
Observed global average temperatures over 2015-24 were also 0.31C warmer than the previous decade (2005-14). This is unsurprising given the high rates of human-caused warming over the same period, reaching a best estimate of 0.27C per decade.
This rate of warming is large and unprecedented. Over land, where people live, temperatures are rising even faster than the global average, leading to record extreme temperatures.
But every fraction of a degree matters, increasing climate impacts and loss and damage that is already affecting billions of people.
Undoubtedly, these changes are being caused by GHG emissions remaining at an all-time high.
Over the last decade, human activities have released, on average, the equivalent of around 53bn tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. (The figure of 53bn tonnes expresses the total warming effect of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide, using CO2 as a reference point.)
Emissions have shown no sign of the peak by 2025 and rapid decline to net-zero required to limit global warming to 1.5C with no or limited “overshoot”.
Most of these emissions were from fossil fuels and industry. There are signs that energy use and emissions are rising due to air conditioning use during summer heatwaves. Last year also saw high levels of emissions from tropical deforestation due to forest fires, partly related to dry conditions caused by El Niño.
Notably, emissions from international aviation – the sector with the steepest drop in emissions during the Covid-19 pandemic – returned to pre-pandemic levels.
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, alongside the other major GHGs of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), is continuing to build up to record levels. Their concentrations have increased by 3.1, 3.4 and 1.7%, respectively, since the 2019 values reported in the last IPCC assessment.
At the same time, aerosol emissions, which have a cooling effect, are continuing to fall as a result of important efforts to tackle air pollution. This is currently adding to the rate of GHG warming.
Notably, cutting CH4 emissions, which are also short-lived in the atmosphere, could offset this rise. But, again, there is no real sign of a fall – despite major initiatives such as the Global Methane Pledge.
The effect of all human drivers of climate change on the Earth’s energy balance is measured as “radiative forcing”. Our estimate of this radiative forcing in 2024 is 2.97 Watts per square metre (W/m2), 9% above the value recorded in 2019 that was quoted in the last IPCC assessment.
This is shown in the figure below, which illustrates the percentage change in an array of climate indicators since the data update given in the last IPCC climate science report.
Continued emissions and rising temperatures are meanwhile rapidly eating into the remaining carbon budget, the total amount of CO2 that can be emitted if global warming is to be kept below 1.5C.
Our central estimate of the remaining carbon budget from the start of 2025 is 130bn tonnes of CO2.
This has fallen by almost three-quarters since the start of 2020. It would be exhausted in a little more than three years of global emissions, at current levels.
However, given the uncertainties involved in calculating the remaining carbon budget, the actual value could lie between 30 and 320bn tonnes, meaning that it could also be exhausted sooner – or later than expected.
Our assessment also shows how surplus heat is accumulating in the Earth’s system at an accelerating rate, becoming increasingly out of balance and driving changes around the world.
The data and their changes are displayed on a dedicated Climate Change Tracker platform, shown below.
The radiative forcing of 2.97 W/m2 adds heat to the climate system. As the world warms in response, much of this excess heat radiates to space, until a new balance is restored. The residual level of heating is termed the Earth’s “energy imbalance” and is an indication of how far out of balance the climate system is and the warming still to come.
This residual rate of heat entering the Earth system has now approximately doubled from levels seen in the 1970s and 1980s, to around 1W/m2 on average during the period 2012-24.
Although the ocean is storing an estimated 91% of this excess heat, mitigating some of the warming we would otherwise see at the Earth’s surface, it brings other impacts, including sea level rise and marine heatwaves.
Global average sea level rise, from both the melting of ice sheets and thermal expansion due to deep ocean warming, is included in the IGCC assessment for the first time.
We find that it has increased by around 26mm over the last six years (2019-24), more than double the long-term rate. This is the indicator that shows the clearest evidence of an acceleration.
Sea level rise is making storm surges more damaging and causing more coastal erosion, having the greatest impact on low-lying coastal areas. The 2019 IPCC special report on the oceans and cryosphere estimated that more than one billion people would be living in such low-lying coastal zones by 2050.
Overall, our indicators provide multiple lines of evidence all pointing in the same direction to provide a clear and consistent – but unsurprising and worsening – picture of the climate system.
It is also now inevitable that global temperatures will reach 1.5C of long-term warming in the next few years unless society takes drastic, transformative action – both in cutting GHG emissions and stopping deforestation.
Every year of delay brings reaching 1.5C – or even higher temperatures – closer.
This year, countries are unveiling new “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs), the national climate commitments aimed at collectively reducing GHG emissions and tackling climate change in line with the Paris Agreement.
While the plans put forward so far represent a step in the right direction, they still fall far short of what is needed to significantly reduce, let alone stop, the rate of warming.
At the same time, evidence-based decision-making relies on international expertise, collaboration and global datasets.
Our annual update relies on data from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and input from many of their highly respected scientists. It is this type of collaboration that allows scientists to generate well-calibrated global datasets that can be used to produce trusted data on changes in the Earth system.
It would not be possible to maintain the consistent long-term datasets employed in our study if their work is interrupted.
At a time when the planet is changing at the fastest rate since records began, we are at risk of failing to track key indicators – such as greenhouse gas concentrations or deep ocean temperatures – and losing core expertise that is vital for understanding the data.
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NEAR-RECORD HIGHS: Global ocean temperatures remain “near record temperatures”, according to data from the EU’s Copernicus Earth-monitoring service, which was covered by the Financial Times. Dr Julien Nicolas, a senior scientist at Copernicus, said the warmer-than-usual oceans of 2023 and 2024 were “partly driven” by the El Niño phenomenon, but that the continued highs “underscore the long-term warming trend”. Meanwhile, the Sydney Morning Herald said that a marine heatwave currently stretching across 40m km2 of the south-western Pacific Ocean was “bringing intense heat, extreme rainfall and sea level rise” to the region.
‘UNUSUALLY INTENSE’: The New York Times carried an interactive looking at how marine heatwaves have increased in frequency over the past few decades. It noted that the UK and Irish coasts have “experienced an unusually intense marine heatwave, one of the longest on record” in recent months. It also pointed out that most studies of marine heatwaves focus on a very small number of countries. Dr Dan Smale, a community ecologist at the UK’s Marine Biological Association, told the newspaper: “There are lots of regions around the world where monitoring isn’t as good as other places and so we don’t really know what’s happening.”
‘UNPRECEDENTED HEATWAVE’: Western Australia’s Ningaloo reef has been hit by an “unprecedented heatwave” since August 2024, “turning corals white” across a 1,500km span of reef, the Guardian said. It added that “government scientists are reporting widespread coral death, which they say is the worst bleaching to hit the state…The scale of mortality has left many shocked.” Temperatures on western Australia’s reefs have “reached as high as or higher than ever recorded”, according to Dr James Gilmour, a research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science. The Guardian delved into the emotions affecting the scientists who study the reef.
SETBACK IN BRAZIL: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon surged 92% in May compared to the same period last year, according to official monitoring data covered by the Associated Press. The data showed 960km2 of forest loss, an area “slightly larger than New York City”, the newswire added. João Paulo Capobianco, executive secretary of Brazil’s ministry of the environment, told the outlet that wildfires have become one of the major drivers of deforestation in the Amazon. He called on countries to support the Tropical Forests Forever fund, a scheme proposed by Brazil to compensate for forest conservation, the article noted.
PERU NOT FALLING BEHIND: Peru lost 4.1m hectares (41,000km2) of forest – an area the size of Switzerland – in the last 40 years, according to a report released by the MapBiomas Peru platform and covered by Mongabay. Agricultural activities lead the list of drivers of deforestation, especially with oil palm and rice plantations, followed by mining, the outlet noted. The report found that the Amazon and the equatorial dry forest are the ecosystems most affected by deforestation, with the latter losing 9% of its territory compared to the 1985 level.
COLOMBIA REDUCES DEFORESTATION: Colombia’s environment ministry announced a decrease in deforestation of 33% early this year, compared to the same period in 2024, the Washington Post reported. The outlet cited Colombia’s environment minister, Lena Estrada, who said deforestation fell from 40,219 hectares (402km2) in early 2024 to 27,000 hectares (270km2) so far this year. The biggest reductions took place in Amazon national parks, due to “community coordination and a crackdown on environmental crime”, the ministry said. The outlet added that the Colombian Amazon holds the highest levels of deforestation in Colombia, accounting for 69% of the country’s deforestation.
In this Spotlight, Carbon Brief highlights three key takeaways of the third UN ocean summit.
The third UN Ocean Conference ended last Friday (13 June) after a week of negotiations covering various aspects of the problems faced by the world’s oceans – including pollution, overfishing and the share of the benefits from the use of genetic resources in the high seas.
The summit took place in the French port of Nice and was co-hosted by France and Costa Rica. It brought together 15,000 attendees, including more than 60 heads of state and government.
The agreement on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), also known as the High Seas Treaty, was adopted in 2023 after 20 years of negotiations.
The treaty aims to “safeguard marine life in international waters”.
During the conference, 19 countries ratified the treaty, taking the total to 50 of the 60 countries required for the treaty to enter into force. According to BBC News, dozens of other countries also indicated their intent to ratify the treaty in the near future.
Sara Zelaya, a biologist and the senior advocacy officer for the ecosystems programme at the Inter-American Association for Environmental Defence, said that she hopes the treaty will complement other global governance mechanisms and allow for the fairer use of the “common heritage of mankind” that is the ocean.
She told Carbon Brief:
“For the global south, it brings a little bit of justice – or at least a hope of justice – in the sense of how we are using the resources in the high seas”.
José Julio Casas, technical secretary of the Eastern Tropical Pacific Marine Corridor (CMAR) encompassing Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and Ecuador, told Carbon Brief that ratification of the agreement would see countries able to restrict the activities that can be implemented in specific areas of the high seas, according to their economic, ecological and social relevance.
The conference saw several countries commit to ocean conservation funding.
The European Commission announced the largest investment of the summit, worth €1bn, for ocean conservation, science and sustainable fishing. Germany and New Zealand committed to allocate $115m and $52m, respectively, for conserving and strengthening the ocean governance of their territorial waters.
Several countries also committed to protecting large swathes of their ocean. French Polynesia pledged to create the world’s largest marine protected area, which will encompass around 5m km2 of ocean. Spain said it will establish five new marine protected areas.
Panama and Canada jointly announced the formation of a 37-country coalition called the High Ambition Coalition for a Quiet Ocean, which will focus on addressing ocean noise pollution.
Zelaya said that to make sure that these commitments translate into effective conservation of marine ecosystems, countries should include and prioritise oceans in their public policies and allocate specific budgets for ocean conservation.
At the summit, more than 170 countries adopted the Nice Ocean Action Plan, comprising a political declaration to commit to “urgent action” to protect the world’s oceans and a list of voluntary commitments.
The declaration calls on countries to boost ocean protection, reduce marine pollution, regulate the high seas and provide finance for vulnerable countries and island nations.
Alongside the political declaration are more than 800 voluntary commitments from a range of stakeholders, such as governments, scientists, civil society and UN agencies.
Mongabay reported that the Nice declaration is not legally binding, but “is intended to reflect the willingness of countries to invest more in ocean protection”. However, it added, reducing the use of fossil fuels was left out of the discussions.
Casas told Carbon Brief that governments now need to demonstrate “political commitment”. He said that such commitments are “improving”, but they “must be accompanied by financial support”.
The fourth UN Ocean Conference is to take place in 2028 and will be co-hosted by Chile and South Korea.
HARVEST AT RISK: UK farmers could face “another terrible harvest” after the country registered its “hottest spring on record and the driest conditions in decades”, according to an analysis by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank, covered by the Press Association. It found that the production of crops, such as wheat, barley, oats and oilseed rape, “could once again be near all-time lows”. This year, the UK saw its driest spring in the last 50 years, with rainfall 40% lower than average, the outlet added.
WHALE, WHALE, WHALE: Angelika Lātūfuipeka Tukuʻaho, the princess of Tonga, called for the “recognition of whales as legal persons” during the UN Ocean Summit in Nice, France, last week, Inside Climate News said. Lātūfuipeka Tukuʻaho told the conference: “The time has come to recognise whales not merely as resources, but as sentient beings with inherent rights.” The outlet added that the Pacific island nation could move forward with legislation ensuring this recognition and allowing for “appointing human guardians to represent [whales] in court”. The bill would also seek to ensure whales’ “rights to life, migration, a healthy habitat and cultural protection”, Inside Climate News added.
RED LINES: India has staked out “clear red lines” on certain agricultural export items in its ongoing trade negotiations with the US, Business Standard reported. The outlet outlined three categories for the country’s commodities: “non-negotiable, very sensitive and liberal – based on their economic and political sensitivity”. The outlet said that “no tariff concessions will be entertained” in India on agricultural staples, such as wheat and rice, while “high-value” crops primarily consumed by the higher-income portion of the population would fall under the “liberal” categorisation.
FROM PLEDGES TO ACTION: Experts interviewed by the Brazilian outlet ((o))eco stressed the need to implement Brazil’s national biodiversity strategy and action plan (NBSAP). The NBSAP, which is a plan submitted to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, aims to increase funding and political support for the conservation and sustainable use of Brazil’s biodiversity. Prof Alexander Turra from the Oceanographic Institute of the University of São Paulo said that although the NBSAP is aligned with international agreements, Brazil has not “necessarily succeeded” in achieving its strategy, adding that the country “[needs] to make a huge effort to implement it”.
ALREADY MANDATORY: In a video, Deutsche Welle explained how New York City is composting organic waste, now that it has made it mandatory for residents to separate it from their rubbish.
‘SPONGE PARKS’: A NPR podcast addressed how Copenhagen has converted 20 green areas into “sponge parks” to hold rainfall as part of efforts to adapt to climate change.
JUST NATURE: A France24 video reported on how farmers and scientists are working together in western France to re-establish its biodiversity by avoiding chemical fertilisers and pesticides.
BEYOND ELECTRIC VEHICLES: A BBC News article shared drone images revealing the impacts of nickel mining, used for electric vehicle batteries, in one of the most marine-biodiverse zones in Indonesia.
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
