漫步在有着中国“新能源汽车第一城”之称的深圳街头，你不会错过停放在路边的大量新能源汽车，以及宣传“绿色低碳”生活方式的标语。
深圳是一座紧邻香港的城市，有着1800万人口。这座城市因40多年前成为中国的改革开放试验田而闻名。
如今，它在碳减排方面也走在前列，是中国“低碳城市”建设的“试点”地区之一。
深圳是中国首个将公交车、出租车和网约车全部实现电气化的城市。2024年，深圳新车销量中有约77%为新能源汽车，远高于48%的全国平均水平。
深圳还率先设立了碳排放总量控制机制，推动“能耗双控”向“碳排放双控”转型——这比全国层面出台碳排放总量控制政策更早。
此外，深圳的地方性碳排放权交易市场（ETS）和“绿色债券”也都早于国家层面推出。
尽管深圳在碳减排领域很早就采取了措施，但一些专家对Carbon Brief表示，深圳的政策——这被当地政府称为“深圳模式”——很难在中国其他进行低碳转型的城市复制。
Carbon Brief回顾了深圳在低碳转型方面迄今为止所做的努力，并评估了其减排成效。
电动交通
官方智库中国（深圳）综合开发研究院财税贸易与产业发展研究中心主任韦福雷对Carbon Brief表示，深圳的低碳转型并非一蹴而就，而是建立在早期规划、政府支持和市场驱动相结合的基础上。
深圳的低碳转型始于21世纪初，当时该市的空气重污染天数达到峰值。
BBC新闻2017年的一篇报道称，经过十年的污染治理，深圳的空气污染程度“下降了近一半”。
报道称，这一成果很大程度上源于其“产业基础”的改变，也使深圳成为全国首批“低碳城市”之一。
这一时期，当地官员们制定了“低碳发展”战略，其中包括培育一批“战略性新兴产业”，如“信息通信技术”。这些产业后来为深圳包括新能源汽车行业在内的低碳行业提供了核心技术支持。
例如，目前全球领先的电动汽车巨头比亚迪，正是在这样的背景下诞生于深圳的。
韦福雷指出：“有了这种‘产业基因’，深圳只需把产业链重新梳理一遍，，就能快速满足新能源汽车行业（在2020年代）的新需求。”
尽管人口仅占全国约1%，但2025年深圳地方“两会”上的政府工作报告显示，该市在2024年的新能源汽车产量占到全国的22%。
报告同时称，深圳将在未来一年启动大约100个“气候投融资项目”，计划新增“绿色贷款”约1800亿元人民币（约合240亿美元）。
能源与清洁空气研究中心（CREA）分析师和中国团队负责人沈昕一对Carbon Brief说，深圳地方政府在扶持新兴产业方面经验丰富。
她说：“20年前，风电、太阳能发电，以及电动汽车，都还是需要大量投资和技术研发的新兴行业……当时的失败风险很高，但深圳市政府敢于推出很多创新政策加以扶持。”
新能源汽车企业的迅猛发展带动本地市场中新能源汽车占比持续上升。除了国家层面的补贴，地方政府也在生产和消费两端给予有力支持。
2024年，深圳销售的新车中约77%为新能源汽车，远高于48%的全国平均水平。
此外，深圳还率先实现了本市公交车、出租车和网约车全部电气化，是中国首个做到这一点的城市。
伦敦大学学院（UCL）可持续基建、经济与金融学讲师郑赫然向Carbon Brief指出，“更环保的交通车队”加快了深圳的低碳转型步伐，因为一座城市的低碳转型主要依赖两个关键方面——“交通转型”和“产业脱碳”。
他说：“一个城市在碳减排上的政策工具其实有限，但它可以推动更绿色的交通。比如，伦敦设立了超低排放区，鼓励人们使用公共交通和更清洁的车辆。城市也可以推动产业升级和减排，但这更难做到，因为很少有城市愿意放慢经济增长的步伐。”
郑赫然表示，深圳“与中国一些煤矿城市不同”，在产业转型方面具有“优势”，这使其可以设定“更具雄心”的排放目标。
碳控机制
中国将能源强度和碳强度（即单位国内生产总值GDP的能源使用量和排放量）作为其气候政策的关键指标。
此外，自2016年以来，中国一直实行“能耗双控”机制，即同时控制能源消费强度和能源消费总量。但中国政府已经宣布将在2024年起转向“碳排放双控”机制。
新机制将对二氧化碳排放总量设定约束性上限，并将成为2030年后的主要目标，而2030年前的主要指标——碳强度——将逐渐成为次要目标。
在这一领域，深圳依然是先行者。据“对话地球”（Dialogue Earth）报道，早在2023年，深圳就已成为中国首个明确承诺实行“（碳排放）双控机制”的城市。
为此，深圳市在2023年发布了两份《实施方案》，同时设定了市级碳排放总量控制目标。
与国家层面的方案相比，深圳在进程上更具雄心，其目标是在2025年建立起市级“碳排放双控”机制，并计划于2026年至2030年“全面实施”。
其中一份方案提出：“力争到2028年实现深圳碳市场制造业基本采用碳排放双控方式开展配额分配工作……力争到2030年实现市场调节能力显著提升。”
深圳还计划到2025年底，将能源强度在2020年的基础上降低14.5%，高于同期全国13.5%的目标。
郑赫然表示，深圳的这些目标是“量力而行的”。他解释道：“（就中国整体而言）碳减排主要集中在三个领域——钢铁、水泥和电力。深圳没有大型钢铁或水泥产业，因此只需将重心放在电力领域……而且它也不属于化石燃料城市，不位于供应链上游，无需担心煤炭开采等业务。深圳的产业结构主要以‘高附加值’行业为主，比如科技和新能源汽车，这些行业的碳排放更容易削减。”
“此外，深圳是科技中心，很多高碳排企业已搬到周边城市，比如汕尾。这就是所谓的‘排放外包’，受益于此，深圳的绿色转型面临的障碍更少。”
去年，郑赫然和同事在《自然》杂志上发表了一篇有关中国城市间碳排放外包的研究，指出“一些城市从其他城市的碳减排成果中获得大于其自身的收益”，并建议政策制定者正视其影响。
他还指出，深圳与其他城市相比还有一个“巨大差异”：“深圳拥有自己的核电站”，而这对深圳实现电力转型具有“重要”意义。电力行业是深圳在当前低碳转型中需要着力的最后一环。
低碳能源
根据2021年的一份报告，大亚湾核电站是深圳“最大的本地电力来源”，总装机容量达6.1吉瓦（GW）。
2021年，核电在深圳总发电量中的占比达到35%。
这也拉高了深圳的低碳能源使用水平。2024年，深圳一次能源消费中约47%来自清洁能源。
对深圳而言，核能发电量远超其他并入城市电网的清洁能源来源。市政府在2025年工作报告中提到，当前本地太阳能发电装机容量约为1吉瓦，风电装机并未被提及。
《深圳市应对气候变化“十四五”规划》写道，由于本地能源资源匮乏，加之风电、光伏“受土地和资源限制”，可再生能源的增长空间“有限”。
与此同时，深圳对外来电力的依赖程度也非常高——约七成的用电从外部进口。
这种依赖限制了深圳对电力行业碳排放的掌控，也给本地电网在用电高峰期的调度带来压力。
2024年，中国批准在毗邻深圳的惠州建设更多核电机组。
根据2022年一份研究报告，深圳市政府计划“到2025年将天然气、核能和可再生能源在能源结构中的总占比从当前的77%提升至90%，远高于全国52%的平均水平”。
郑赫然表示，“深圳与邻近的香港非常相似，香港的能源转型也不依赖太阳能和风能的建设”。
他补充说，深圳和香港应充分发挥自身作为“金融城市”的优势，以实现可持续的能源转型。
“绿色金融”
韦福雷表示，深圳一直善于利用“市场机制”，“在政府支持与市场驱动之间”成功找到平衡。其中，企业“担任主力角色，承担了90%的工作”，政府只在必要时出手干预。
在政府干预较少的情况下，深圳早在2013年就成为全国首批建立碳排放权交易市场“试点”的七个省市之一，远早于2021年全国碳市场的上线。
和全国层面的碳市场类似，深圳的本地碳市场并不以绝对排放量为基准，而是根据企业的排放强度（即单位产值的碳排放量），为企业分配可交易的排放配额。
深圳本地的碳排放权交易市场启动时覆盖了全市约38%的碳排放量。国际碳行动伙伴组织（ICPA）在一份报告中指出，这一比例到2020年已经提升至50%，并将进一步扩大。深圳还宣布将从2027年起为碳排放设置“绝对上限”。
（目前，国家层面的碳市场也未设置排放总量上限，但这也将在未来有所改变。）
不过，咨询公司ClearBlue Markets分析师秦炎对Carbon Brief说，虽然深圳碳排放权交易市场的覆盖范围还在扩大，但许多试点地区的碳排放权交易市场正在“收缩”，因为越来越多企业选择退出地方市场，转而加入国家碳市场。
国际碳行动伙伴组织的研究也发现，自2019年深圳碳排放权交易市场“向国家市场过渡”以来，发电已不再被纳入深圳碳排放权交易市场。
尽管如此，秦炎强调，这些地方试点“仍是一个重要的试验田，为国家碳排放权交易市场的成功落地铺平道路。（它们）会继续存在，覆盖中小企业以及国家市场尚未涉及的行业”。
国际碳行动伙伴组织称，截至2022年，深圳的地方碳排放权交易市场涵盖了水利、燃气、供热、制造业和交通等多个行业。
根据《深圳商报》报道，截至2024年，深圳已拥有全国最大的地方碳排放权交易市场，年交易量连续多年居全国首位。
与此同时，深圳也在“绿色金融”领域积极布局，将私人投资引入市场。
2021年，深圳在香港发行了中国首支面向海外市场的“绿色政府债券”，并出台了中国首部地方性“绿色金融法规”。国际绿色金融研究所（International Institute of Green Finance）在一份对该立法的评估中指出，其为规范“绿色市场”提供了“坚实的制度保障”。
相比之下，中国的首支主权绿色债券自2025年4月起才向国际买家发行。
深圳还推出了多种“绿色金融”产品。据官媒《经济日报》报道，2024年上半年，沪深两地交易所内新能源、新能源汽车及其他环保相关行业公司的市值达约4.6万亿元人民币（约合6,330亿美元）。
不过，郑赫然表示，“绿色债券”的效果“很难评估”。他说：“有很多项目，比如污水处理，也可以被归入‘绿色债券’的范畴。”
据官媒中央电视台报道，深圳2021年发行的“绿色债券”涵盖了“普通公办高中建设、城市轨道交通和水治理”等项目。
郑赫然表示，这些项目虽然在一定程度上与提高能效有关，但它们对碳减排的直接影响仍“有限”。
他补充说，市场引导在一座城市的低碳转型中“不可或缺”，但“目前尚无关于绿色金融产品在减排方面能发挥多大作用的研究”。
沈昕一则指出，“金融工具”在支持低碳转型方面仍发挥着重要作用。
她说：“低碳产业的成本往往高于化石燃料相关行业……通过政策支持和金融工具，才能够规模化，成本才能够降下来。”
“深圳模式”
深圳地方政府和媒体将深圳在气候领域取得的成就誉为“深圳模式”，意在其可以被推广到其他地区。
深圳市生态环境局党组成员许化表示，在去年的联合国气候变化大会（COP29）上，这一模式“向世界展示了成果”：“一是持续完善顶层设计，坚持立法先行，构建政策体系……二是聚焦重点领域转型升级……将新能源、安全节能环保等战略性新兴产业纳入重点产业集群，培育赋能……三是坚持开放共享，探索绿色低碳发展新路径。”
许化补充说，深圳的“绿色发展水平走在全国前列”，截至2023年底，深圳的“万元GDP能耗、水耗、碳排放分别降到了全国平均水平的1/3、1/8和1/5”。
不过，沈昕一指出，深圳的发展路径并非完全“可复制”，因为“深圳抓住了时代的机遇”。
她对Carbon Brief说：“比如，深圳的产业链优势和技术工人的聚集，给其高端制造业提供了很好的基础。”
郑赫然也认同这一观点。他认为，深圳只能代表中国一种特定类型的城市。
“深圳就像中国的硅谷，在高端科技领域投入巨大。它只能代表一线城市这一（特定）类别的中国城市，比如北京、上海、广州。中国有三百多个城市，每个城市都面临着独特的转型形势。依赖煤炭的工业城市照搬深圳的做法并不现实。”
与此同时，中国的其他城市也开始探索各自的可持续发展之路。
苏州建成了中国首批低碳工业园区试点之一的苏州工业园区。当地还建立了“市场化碳普惠交易体系”，鼓励居民和中小企业“自愿”参与碳排放交易。
据新华社报道，天津也与新加坡开展合作，“探索城市绿色低碳发展路径”。
沈昕一表示，其他城市必须“因地制宜地制定策略”。这种理念也体现在国务院于2023年发布的《新时代的中国绿色发展》白皮书中。
该文件指出，地方政府要“依托资源环境禀赋和产业发展基础……充分发挥各地区比较优势。”
The post 解读：何为中国城市低碳转型的“深圳模式”？ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Absolute State of the Union
‘DRILL, BABY’: US president Donald Trump “doubled down on his ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda” in his State of the Union (SOTU) address, said the Los Angeles Times. He “tout[ed] his support of the fossil-fuel industry and renew[ed] his focus on electricity affordability”, reported the Financial Times. Trump also attacked the “green new scam”, noted Carbon Brief’s SOTU tracker.
COAL REPRIEVE: Earlier in the week, the Trump administration had watered down limits on mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, reported the Financial Times. It remains “unclear” if this will be enough to prevent the decline of coal power, said Bloomberg, in the face of lower-cost gas and renewables. Reuters noted that US coal plants are “ageing”.
OIL STAY: The US Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments brought by the oil industry in a “major lawsuit”, reported the New York Times. The newspaper said the firms are attempting to head off dozens of other lawsuits at state level, relating to their role in global warming.
SHIP-SHILLING: The Trump administration is working to “kill” a global carbon levy on shipping “permanently”, reported Politico, after succeeding in delaying the measure late last year. The Guardian said US “bullying” could be “paying off”, after Panama signalled it was reversing its support for the levy in a proposal submitted to the UN shipping body.
Around the world
- RARE EARTHS: The governments of Brazil and India signed a deal on rare earths, said the Times of India, as well as agreeing to collaborate on renewable energy.
- HEAT ROLLBACK: German homes will be allowed to continue installing gas and oil heating, under watered-down government plans covered by Clean Energy Wire.
- BRAZIL FLOODS: At least 53 people died in floods in the state of Minas Gerais, after some areas saw 170mm of rain in a few hours, reported CNN Brasil.
- ITALY’S ATTACK: Italy is calling for the EU to “suspend” its emissions trading system (ETS) ahead of a review later this year, said Politico.
- COOKSTOVE CREDITS: The first-ever carbon credits under the Paris Agreement have been issued to a cookstove project in Myanmar, said Climate Home News.
- SAUDI SOLAR: Turkey has signed a “major” solar deal that will see Saudi firm ACWA building 2 gigawatts in the country, according to Agence France-Presse.
$467 billion
The profits made by five major oil firms since prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago, according to a report by Global Witness covered by BusinessGreen.
Latest climate research
- Claims about the “fingerprint” of human-caused climate change, made in a recent US Department of Energy report, are “factually incorrect” | AGU Advances
- Large lakes in the Congo Basin are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from “immense ancient stores” | Nature Geoscience
- Shared Socioeconomic Pathways – scenarios used regularly in climate modelling – underrepresent “narratives explicitly centring on democratic principles such as participation, accountability and justice” | npj Climate Action
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
The constituency of Richard Tice MP, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of Reform UK, is the second-largest recipient of flood defence spending in England, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Overall, the funding is disproportionately targeted at coastal and urban areas, many of which have Conservative or Liberal Democrat MPs.
Spotlight
Is there really a UK ‘greenlash’?
This week, after a historic Green Party byelection win, Carbon Brief looks at whether there really is a “greenlash” against climate policy in the UK.
Over the past year, the UK’s political consensus on climate change has been shattered.
Yet despite a sharp turn against climate action among right-wing politicians and right-leaning media outlets, UK public support for climate action remains strong.
Prof Federica Genovese, who studies climate politics at the University of Oxford, told Carbon Brief:
“The current ‘war’ on green policy is mostly driven by media and political elites, not by the public.”
Indeed, there is still a greater than two-to-one majority among the UK public in favour of the country’s legally binding target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, as shown below.
Steve Akehurst, director of public-opinion research initiative Persuasion UK, also noted the growing divide between the public and “elites”. He told Carbon Brief:
“The biggest movement is, without doubt, in media and elite opinion. There is a bit more polarisation and opposition [to climate action] among voters, but it’s typically no more than 20-25% and mostly confined within core Reform voters.”
Conservative gear shift
For decades, the UK had enjoyed strong, cross-party political support for climate action.
Lord Deben, the Conservative peer and former chair of the Climate Change Committee, told Carbon Brief that the UK’s landmark 2008 Climate Change Act had been born of this cross-party consensus, saying “all parties supported it”.
Since their landslide loss at the 2024 election, however, the Conservatives have turned against the UK’s target of net-zero emissions by 2050, which they legislated for in 2019.
Curiously, while opposition to net-zero has surged among Conservative MPs, there is majority support for the target among those that plan to vote for the party, as shown below.
Dr Adam Corner, advisor to the Climate Barometer initiative that tracks public opinion on climate change, told Carbon Brief that those who currently plan to vote Reform are the only segment who “tend to be more opposed to net-zero goals”. He said:
“Despite the rise in hostile media coverage and the collapse of the political consensus, we find that public support for the net-zero by 2050 target is plateauing – not plummeting.”
Reform, which rejects the scientific evidence on global warming and campaigns against net-zero, has been leading the polls for a year. (However, it was comfortably beaten by the Greens in yesterday’s Gorton and Denton byelection.)
Corner acknowledged that “some of the anti-net zero noise…[is] showing up in our data”, adding:
“We see rising concerns about the near-term costs of policies and an uptick in people [falsely] attributing high energy bills to climate initiatives.”
But Akehurst said that, rather than a big fall in public support, there had been a drop in the “salience” of climate action:
“So many other issues [are] competing for their attention.”
UK newspapers published more editorials opposing climate action than supporting it for the first time on record in 2025, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Global ‘greenlash’?
All of this sits against a challenging global backdrop, in which US president Donald Trump has been repeating climate-sceptic talking points and rolling back related policy.
At the same time, prominent figures have been calling for a change in climate strategy, sold variously as a “reset”, a “pivot”, as “realism”, or as “pragmatism”.
Genovese said that “far-right leaders have succeeded in the past 10 years in capturing net-zero as a poster child of things they are ‘fighting against’”.
She added that “much of this is fodder for conservative media and this whole ecosystem is essentially driving what we call the ‘greenlash’”.
Corner said the “disconnect” between elite views and the wider public “can create problems” – for example, “MPs consistently underestimate support for renewables”. He added:
“There is clearly a risk that the public starts to disengage too, if not enough positive voices are countering the negative ones.”
Watch, read, listen
TRUMP’S ‘PETROSTATE’: The US is becoming a “petrostate” that will be “sicker and poorer”, wrote Financial Times associate editor Rana Forohaar.
RHETORIC VS REALITY: Despite a “political mood [that] has darkened”, there is “more green stuff being installed than ever”, said New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells.
CHINA’S ‘REVOLUTION’: The BBC’s Climate Question podcast reported from China on the “green energy revolution” taking place in the country.
Coming up
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean, Brasília
- 3 March: UK spring statement
- 4-11 March: China’s “two sessions”
- 5 March: Nepal elections
Pick of the jobs
- The Guardian, senior reporter, climate justice | Salary: $123,000-$135,000. Location: New York or Washington DC
- China-Global South Project, non-resident fellow, climate change | Salary: Up to $1,000 a month. Location: Remote
- University of East Anglia, PhD in mobilising community-based climate action through co-designed sports and wellbeing interventions | Salary: Stipend (unknown amount). Location: Norwich, UK
- TABLE and the University of São Paulo, Brazil, postdoctoral researcher in food system narratives | Salary: Unknown. Location: Pirassununga, Brazil
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Greenhouse Gases
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
The Lincolnshire constituency held by Richard Tice, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of the hard-right Reform party, has been pledged at least £55m in government funding for flood defences since 2024.
This investment in Boston and Skegness is the second-largest sum for a single constituency from a £1.4bn flood-defence fund for England, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
Flooding is becoming more likely and more extreme in the UK due to climate change.
Yet, for years, governments have failed to spend enough on flood defences to protect people, properties and infrastructure.
The £1.4bn fund is part of the current Labour government’s wider pledge to invest a “record” £7.9bn over a decade on protecting hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses from flooding.
As MP for one of England’s most flood-prone regions, Tice has called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
He is also one of Reform’s most vocal opponents of climate action and what he calls “net stupid zero”. He denies the scientific consensus on climate change and has claimed, falsely and without evidence, that scientists are “lying”.
Flood defences
Last year, the government said it would invest £2.65bn on flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) schemes in England between April 2024 and March 2026.
This money was intended to protect 66,500 properties from flooding. It is part of a decade-long Labour government plan to spend more than £7.9bn on flood defences.
There has been a consistent shortfall in maintaining England’s flood defences, with the Environment Agency expecting to protect fewer properties by 2027 than it had initially planned.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has attributed this to rising costs, backlogs from previous governments and a lack of capacity. It also points to the strain from “more frequent and severe” weather events, such as storms in recent years that have been amplified by climate change.
However, the CCC also said last year that, if the 2024-26 spending programme is delivered, it would be “slightly closer to the track” of the Environment Agency targets out to 2027.
The government has released constituency-level data on which schemes in England it plans to fund, covering £1.4bn of the 2024-26 investment. The other half of the FCERM spending covers additional measures, from repairing existing defences to advising local authorities.
The map below shows the distribution of spending on FCERM schemes in England over the past two years, highlighting the constituency of Richard Tice.
By far the largest sum of money – £85.6m in total – has been committed to a tidal barrier and various other defences in the Somerset constituency of Bridgwater, the seat of Conservative MP Ashley Fox.
Over the first months of 2026, the south-west region has faced significant flooding and Fox has called for more support from the government, citing “climate patterns shifting and rainfall intensifying”.
He has also backed his party’s position that “the 2050 net-zero target is impossible” and called for more fossil-fuel extraction in the North Sea.
Tice’s east-coast constituency of Boston and Skegness, which is highly vulnerable to flooding from both rivers and the sea, is set to receive £55m. Among the supported projects are beach defences from Saltfleet to Gibraltar Point and upgrades to pumping stations.
Overall, Boston and Skegness has the second-largest portion of flood-defence funding, as the chart below shows. Constituencies with Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs occupied the other top positions.
Overall, despite Labour MPs occupying 347 out of England’s 543 constituencies – nearly two-thirds of the total – more than half of the flood-defence funding was distributed to constituencies with non-Labour MPs. This reflects the flood risk in coastal and rural areas that are not traditional Labour strongholds.
Reform funding
While Reform has just eight MPs, representing 1% of the population, its constituencies have been assigned 4% of the flood-defence funding for England.
Nearly all of this money was for Tice’s constituency, although party leader Nigel Farage’s coastal Clacton seat in Kent received £2m.
Reform UK is committed to “scrapping net-zero” and its leadership has expressed firmly climate-sceptic views.
Much has been made of the disconnect between the party’s climate policies and the threat climate change poses to its voters. Various analyses have shown the flood risk in Reform-dominated areas, particularly Lincolnshire.
Tice has rejected climate science, advocated for fossil-fuel production and criticised Environment Agency flood-defence activities. Yet, he has also called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
This may reflect Tice’s broader approach to climate change. In a 2024 interview with LBC, he said:
“Where you’ve got concerns about sea level defences and sea level rise, guess what? A bit of steel, a bit of cement, some aggregate…and you build some concrete sea level defences. That’s how you deal with rising sea levels.”
While climate adaptation is viewed as vital in a warming world, there are limits on how much societies can adapt and adaptation costs will continue to increase as emissions rise.
The post Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
Greenhouse Gases
Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter.
Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Food inflation on the rise
DELUGE STRIKES FOOD: Extreme rainfall and flooding across the Mediterranean and north Africa has “battered the winter growing regions that feed Europe…threatening food price rises”, reported the Financial Times. Western France has “endured more than 36 days of continuous rain”, while farmers’ associations in Spain’s Andalusia estimate that “20% of all production has been lost”, it added. Policy expert David Barmes told the paper that the “latest storms were part of a wider pattern of climate shocks feeding into food price inflation”.
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NO BEEF: The UK’s beef farmers, meanwhile, “face a double blow” from climate change as “relentless rain forces them to keep cows indoors”, while last summer’s drought hit hay supplies, said another Financial Times article. At the same time, indoor growers in south England described a 60% increase in electricity standing charges as a “ticking timebomb” that could “force them to raise their prices or stop production, which will further fuel food price inflation”, wrote the Guardian.
‘TINDERBOX’ AND TARIFFS: A study, covered by the Guardian, warned that major extreme weather and other “shocks” could “spark social unrest and even food riots in the UK”. Experts cited “chronic” vulnerabilities, including climate change, low incomes, poor farming policy and “fragile” supply chains that have made the UK’s food system a “tinderbox”. A New York Times explainer noted that while trade could once guard against food supply shocks, barriers such as tariffs and export controls – which are being “increasingly” used by politicians – “can shut off that safety valve”.
El Niño looms
NEW ENSO INDEX: Researchers have developed a new index for calculating El Niño, the large-scale climate pattern that influences global weather and causes “billions in damages by bringing floods to some regions and drought to others”, reported CNN. It added that climate change is making it more difficult for scientists to observe El Niño patterns by warming up the entire ocean. The outlet said that with the new metric, “scientists can now see it earlier and our long-range weather forecasts will be improved for it.”
WARMING WARNING: Meanwhile, the US Climate Prediction Center announced that there is a 60% chance of the current La Niña conditions shifting towards a neutral state over the next few months, with an El Niño likely to follow in late spring, according to Reuters. The Vibes, a Malaysian news outlet, quoted a climate scientist saying: “If the El Niño does materialise, it could possibly push 2026 or 2027 as the warmest year on record, replacing 2024.”
CROP IMPACTS: Reuters noted that neutral conditions lead to “more stable weather and potentially better crop yields”. However, the newswire added, an El Niño state would mean “worsening drought conditions and issues for the next growing season” to Australia. El Niño also “typically brings a poor south-west monsoon to India, including droughts”, reported the Hindu’s Business Line. A 2024 guest post for Carbon Brief explained that El Niño is linked to crop failure in south-eastern Africa and south-east Asia.
News and views
- DAM-AG-ES: Several South Korean farmers filed a lawsuit against the country’s state-owned utility company, “seek[ing] financial compensation for climate-related agricultural damages”, reported United Press International. Meanwhile, a national climate change assessment for the Philippines found that the country “lost up to $219bn in agricultural damages from typhoons, floods and droughts” over 2000-10, according to Eco-Business.
- SCORCHED GRASS: South Africa’s Western Cape province is experiencing “one of the worst droughts in living memory”, which is “scorching grass and killing livestock”, said Reuters. The newswire wrote: “In 2015, a drought almost dried up the taps in the city; farmers say this one has been even more brutal than a decade ago.”
- NOUVELLE VEG: New guidelines published under France’s national food, nutrition and climate strategy “urged” citizens to “limit” their meat consumption, reported Euronews. The delayed strategy comes a month after the US government “upended decades of recommendations by touting consumption of red meat and full-fat dairy”, it noted.
- COURTING DISASTER: India’s top green court accepted the findings of a committee that “found no flaws” in greenlighting the Great Nicobar project that “will lead to the felling of a million trees” and translocating corals, reported Mongabay. The court found “no good ground to interfere”, despite “threats to a globally unique biodiversity hotspot” and Indigenous tribes at risk of displacement by the project, wrote Frontline.
- FISH FALLING: A new study found that fish biomass is “falling by 7.2% from as little as 0.1C of warming per decade”, noted the Guardian. While experts also pointed to the role of overfishing in marine life loss, marine ecologist and study lead author Dr Shahar Chaikin told the outlet: “Our research proves exactly what that biological cost [of warming] looks like underwater.”
- TOO HOT FOR COFFEE: According to new analysis by Climate Central, countries where coffee beans are grown “are becoming too hot to cultivate them”, reported the Guardian. The world’s top five coffee-growing countries faced “57 additional days of coffee-harming heat” annually because of climate change, it added.
Spotlight
Nature talks inch forward
This week, Carbon Brief covers the latest round of negotiations under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which occurred in Rome over 16-19 February.
The penultimate set of biodiversity negotiations before October’s Conference of the Parties ended in Rome last week, leaving plenty of unfinished business.
The CBD’s subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) met in the Italian capital for four days to discuss a range of issues, including biodiversity finance and reviewing progress towards the nature targets agreed under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
However, many of the major sticking points – particularly around finance – will have to wait until later this summer, leaving some observers worried about the capacity for delegates to get through a packed agenda at COP17.
The SBI, along with the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA) will both meet in Nairobi, Kenya, later this summer for a final round of talks before COP17 kicks off in Yerevan, Armenia, on 19 October.
Money talks
Finance for nature has long been a sticking point at negotiations under the CBD.
Discussions on a new fund for biodiversity derailed biodiversity talks in Cali, Colombia, in autumn 2024, requiring resumed talks a few months later.
Despite this, finance was barely on the agenda at the SBI meetings in Rome. Delegates discussed three studies on the relationship between debt sustainability and implementation of nature plans, but the more substantive talks are set to take place at the next SBI meeting in Nairobi.
Several parties “highlighted concerns with the imbalance of work” on finance between these SBI talks and the next ones, reported Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB).
Lim Li Ching, senior researcher at Third World Network, noted that tensions around finance permeated every aspect of the talks. She told Carbon Brief:
“If you’re talking about the gender plan of action – if there’s little or no financial resources provided to actually put it into practice and implement it, then it’s [just] paper, right? Same with the reporting requirements and obligations.”
Monitoring and reporting
Closely linked to the issue of finance is the obligations of parties to report on their progress towards the goals and targets of the GBF.
Parties do so through the submission of national reports.
Several parties at the talks pointed to a lack of timely funding for driving delays in their reporting, according to ENB.
A note released by the CBD Secretariat in December said that no parties had submitted their national reports yet; by the time of the SBI meetings, only the EU had. It further noted that just 58 parties had submitted their national biodiversity plans, which were initially meant to be published by COP16, in October 2024.
Linda Krueger, director of biodiversity and infrastructure policy at the environmental not-for-profit Nature Conservancy, told Carbon Brief that despite the sparse submissions, parties are “very focused on the national report preparation”. She added:
“Everybody wants to be able to show that we’re on the path and that there still is a pathway to getting to 2030 that’s positive and largely in the right direction.”
Watch, read, listen
NET LOSS: Nigeria’s marine life is being “threatened” by “ghost gear” – nets and other fishing equipment discarded in the ocean – said Dialogue Earth.
COMEBACK CAUSALITY: A Vox long-read looked at whether Costa Rica’s “payments for ecosystem services” programme helped the country turn a corner on deforestation.
HOMEGROWN GOALS: A Straits Times podcast discussed whether import-dependent Singapore can afford to shelve its goal to produce 30% of its food locally by 2030.
‘RUSTING’ RIVERS: The Financial Times took a closer look at a “strange new force blighting the [Arctic] landscape”: rivers turning rust-orange due to global warming.
New science
- Lakes in the Congo Basin’s peatlands are releasing carbon that is thousands of years old | Nature Geoscience
- Natural non-forest ecosystems – such as grasslands and marshlands – were converted for agriculture at four times the rate of land with tree cover between 2005 and 2020 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Around one-quarter of global tree-cover loss over 2001-22 was driven by cropland expansion, pastures and forest plantations for commodity production | Nature Food
In the diary
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean | Brasília
- 5 March: Nepal general elections
- 9-20 March: First part of the thirty-first session of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) | Kingston, Jamaica
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
The post Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate
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