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Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

This week

‘Leeway’ for fossil fuels

METHANE EXEMPTION: The European Commission is considering making changes to its flagship methane emissions regulation to give fossil-fuel companies “leeway to avoid penalties…in what would be a major win for the oil and gas sector”, reported Politico. According to new draft government guidelines seen by the outlet, “national authorities would be able to grant exemptions to companies on energy security grounds”. A separate Politico story said the move comes after the Trump administration “has intensified pressure on the regulation”.

GAS EXPANSION: The Guardian reported that the Norwegian government has been “heavily criticised for approving plans to reopen three North Sea gasfields nearly three decades after they were closed”, with the justification of helping to “fill the gap in energy supplies created by the Middle East war”. Oslo has also given its approval for oil and gas companies to explore 70 new locations in the North Sea, Barents Sea and Norwegian Sea, the newspaper added.

RENEWABLES INVESTMENT: The Financial Times reported that investors are “piling into clean-power funds at the fastest pace in five years as the Iran war accelerates a global push for energy security and alternatives to oil and gas, boosting a slew of stocks linked to the transition away from fossil fuels”. It added that more than £3bn has been invested in global funds linked to renewable energy in April, bringing their total net asset value up to $43bn.

Around the world

  • SHIPPING TALKS: Nations are “back on track” to adopt a framework for curbing global shipping emissions, following the latest International Maritime Organization’s meeting in London, according to a Carbon Brief Q&A.
  • SUPER El NIÑO: Global sea temperatures were the second highest on record for the month of April, “stoking concerns among scientists that an El Niño warming cycle is brewing that would intensify extreme weather”, reported the Financial Times.
  • ROUND-THE-CLOCK: An International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) report found that “solar and wind power paired with battery storage systems are already delivering reliable, round-the-clock electricity at a lower cost than fossil fuel-dominated energy systems in a growing number of regions”, said BusinessGreen.
  • KENYA FLOODS: At least 18 people have died in floods and landslides driven by heavy rain in Kenya, reported Al Jazeera.

0.15C

The average amount by which trees lower summer temperatures in cities globally, according to research in Nature Communications.


Latest climate research

  • Airborne microplastics and nanoplastics have the potential to contribute to warming by absorbing sunlight | Nature Climate Change
  • A mega tsunami in Alaska in 2025 was “preconditioned by glacial retreat caused by climate change” | Science
  • “Net-zero global power systems meeting universal electricity needs for decent living standards are technically feasible” | Nature Energy

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

Captured

Chart showing that wind and solar have saved UK from gas imports worth £1.7bn since Iran war began

The UK has avoided the need for gas imports worth £1.7bn since the start of the Iran war, as a result of record electricity generation from wind and solar, according to Carbon Brief analysis. The chart above shows that wind and solar have generated a record 21 terawatt hours (TWh) on the island of Great Britain since the end of February 2026, when the US and Israel first attacked Iran. The record wind and solar output avoided the need to import 41TWh of gas – roughly 34 tankers of liquified natural gas (LNG). Importing those 34 tankers of LNG would have cost around £1.7bn, according to Carbon Brief analysis.

Spotlight

Tipping troubles

New research published this week shows how even small increases in global temperature, when combined with deforestation, could push the Amazon rainforest past a “tipping point”.

Crossing this threshold would trigger the gradual transition of vast swathes of the lush rainforest into dry savannah.

On the sidelines of the European Geosciences Uniongeneral assemblyin Vienna, Carbon Brief speaks to lead author Prof Nico Wunderlingfrom Goethe University Frankfurt and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Carbon Brief: Why does the Amazon rainforest have a tipping point?

Prof Nico Wunderling: All tipping elements have important feedback mechanisms that once a threshold – the tipping point – is crossed, kick in and a change in the system is self-amplified. For the Amazon rainforest, this important feedback mechanism is the atmospheric moisture recycling – meaning that the rainforest generates much of its own rainfall.

For eastern parts of the rainforest, moisture mostly comes from the Atlantic. The rainfall it receives then evaporates and is transported towards the west. And, just to give you a sense of how large this feedback can be, for parts of the rainforest, more than 50% of its rainfall is generated by the forest itself.

Prof Nico Wunderling. Credit: Supplied
Prof Nico Wunderling. Credit: Supplied

CB: How do global warming and deforestation both play a role in a potential tipping point?

NW: Both global warming and deforestation undermine this atmospheric moisture recycling. The direct way is deforestation – we cut down the forest, we lose major parts of the evapotranspiration, so you have less rainfall for the downwind forest. Also, global warming impacts the rainforest – it increases the number and intensity of droughts, which decreases the overall available rainfall and, therefore, can decrease the stability of the rainforest, which also leads to an undermining of the atmospheric moisture recycling.

Around 17% of the Amazon rainforest has already been lost. The critical threshold in our study is in the order of 22-28% of deforestation.

CB: Would such a transition be Amazon-wide? Or would it happen in pockets or regions?

NW: That actually depends on the other pressures that we expose the rainforest to. What we found is that, under climate change only [with no deforestation], the threshold kicks in at around 3.7-4C of warming. If that is crossed, then we find that around one-third of the Amazon rainforest is at risk of transitioning to a degraded ecosystem.

Then, if deforestation is also included [at 22-28%], this threshold comes down to well within the Paris Agreement limits – 1.5-1.9C of global warming. At the same time, the area at risk of transition increases from around one-third to around two-thirds to three-quarters.

CB: In your paper, you say that crossing a tipping point is “not inevitable” – can you elaborate?

NW: In a way, for the Amazon rainforest, we’re in a better situation than with other tipping elements, because we have multiple options for improving our situation. One is we can stop global warming – we can stop emitting and curb emissions before we reach the 2C target. That’s important for the Amazon rainforest. But crucial for the Amazon rainforest is that deforestation levels are halted below 22-28%.

And, indeed, current trends across the Amazon rainforest show that efforts to decrease deforestation are in place and they seem to work. If these trends continue, then I’m mildly optimistic that we will not reach 22-28%. But, if you would have asked me the same question five years ago, I might have said that, well, by mid-century, these values could be reached.

Watch, read, listen

AFRICA RENEWABLES: A CNBC Africa TV report examined the continent’s “renewables rise” and the “shift from climate policy to energy security”.

‘CLIMATE MONSTER’: New York Times writer David Wallace-Wells has a long read on the approach of “perhaps the most fearsome El Niño since before scientists even began modeling them”.

SANTA MARTA SUMMIT: For the Conversation, two political researchers lay out “four dynamics to watch” to determine whether the first conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia “becomes more than rhetoric”.

Coming up

  • 8-9 May: Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders summit, Cebu, Philippines
  • 10-14 May: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group III second lead author meeting for the seventh assessment report, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
  • 11-12 May: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ministerial council meeting, Paris
  • 11-15 May: 21st session of the UN forum on forests, New York
  • 12 May: Bahamas election

Pick of the jobs

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 8 May 2026: EU eyes fossil-fuel exemptions | Wind and solar save UK ‘£1.7bn’ | Amazon ‘tipping point’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.

DeBriefed 8 May 2026: EU eyes fossil-fuel exemptions | Wind and solar save UK ‘£1.7bn’ | Amazon ‘tipping point’

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Cropped 6 May 2026: Forest loss falls | Deforestation regulations | Saving ‘India’s Galapagos’

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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

Forest loss falls

DRIVER DECLINE: Tropical primary forest loss fell by more than one-third from 2024-25, according to the latest edition of the Global Forest Review. (Primary forests are those that are intact or relatively undisturbed by humans.) The World Resources Institute, which co-produced the report, noted that the loss of these forests is “still 46% higher than [it was] a decade ago”. It attributed much of this year’s decline to a decrease from last year’s “record-breaking year of extreme fires”.

WIDESPREAD COLLABS: Although Brazil had the largest loss in terms of area, deforestation in the country fell by 42% compared to the previous year, reported Agência Brasil. It noted that this was made possible by a governmental task force, “with the participation of civil society, academia, local communities and the private sector”. In Indonesia, Malaysia and Colombia, progress “reflected improved governance, recognition of Indigenous land rights and corporate commitments to deforestation-free production”, said EnviroNews Nigeria.

EXCEEDING THE LIMIT: Despite the decline, the amount of deforestation “still remains ‘far above’ the level required to put the world on track to meet international targets to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030”, said BusinessGreen. It added that “fires present a growing threat that could reverse recent gains”, despite the declines from 2024. Reuters noted: “Agricultural expansion continued to be the biggest driver of forest loss around the world.”

EU deforestation law watered down

UNDER PRESSURE: Following industry pressure, the European Commission decided to “exclude imports of leather from its anti-deforestation law”, according to Reuters. The newswire said: “Leather industry ​groups have argued that as a by-product of the meat industry, with a relatively low value, leather’s production does not incentivise the cattle farming that drives deforestation.” It added that imported beef is still covered by the law.

‘LONG-OVERDUE’: Meanwhile, a group of UK Parliament members released an open letter calling for “long-overdue regulations to end UK imports linked to illegal deforestation”. Although the forest-risk regulation was introduced in 2021 as part of the Environment Act, “lawmakers have spent the last four years delaying the implementation” of the anti-deforestation rules, according to a Mongabay report from last year.

PROVISIONAL DEAL: The EU-Mercosur deal – a trade agreement between the European bloc and four South American countries – provisionally came into force on 1 May “after 25 years of negotiations”, said Euractiv. The application of the agreement is provisional because members of the European Parliament “referred the deal to the European Court of Justice for a legal review” in January, it added.

News and views

  • PACKAGING PLANTATION: Asia Symbol, a China-based pulp and paper company, cleared “vast tracts of Indonesian rainforest home to endangered orangutans…for plantations supplying a maker of ‘carbon-neutral’ packaging”, according to an investigation by Agence France-Presse and the Gecko Project. The company told AFP that it is “committed to its no-deforestation policy”, while the newswire noted that the plantations supplying the paper mill have permits from the Indonesian government.
  • SODA MOUNTAIN SOLAR: The California Energy Commission approved a proposed $700m solar power plant in the Mojave Desert after “nearly 20 years” of challenges, reported the San Bernardino Sun. Last month, climate journalist Sammy Roth dove into the history of – and current debate over – the Soda Mountain project on his Substack, Climate Colored Goggles.
  • POSITIVE TIPPING POINTS: In a Nature Sustainability perspective piece, Prof Tim Lenton at the University of Exeter argued for the existence of “positive tipping points” – ecological, social or socio-ecological states where feedback loops that “suppor[t] self-propelling nature-positive change can help” achieve nature-recovery goals.
  • ‘ACUTE HUNGER’: Nearly eight million people in South Sudan are at risk of “acute food insecurity” in coming months, “fuelled by ethnic conflict, climate change and the spillover of fighting from neighbouring Sudan”, according to Al Jazeera coverage of a new Integrated Food Security Phase Classification analysis. Meanwhile, a UN-produced global food crises report showed that “acute hunger” has doubled over the past decade, with two famines declared last year for the first time since the reports began a decade ago.
  • SUMMERTIME SADNESS: Production of India’s prized Devgad Alphonso mango “has dropped by 70-90%” this summer, due to both “climate shock” and “ineffective pesticides”, reported the Print. Rich mango farmers in western India staged a “rare protest” demanding compensation for their losses, the outlet added, while a Print comment called for a “shift from compensation to climate-adaptation policies”. 
  • SEED SUIT: A judge at the Kenyan High Court “declared unconstitutional parts of a law that prohibited farmers from sharing and selling Indigenous seeds” – although the government has appealed the decision, reported Devex. The lawyer who represented the farmers in the suit “said that the ruling could have ripple effects worldwide”, it added.

Spotlight

Saving ‘India’s Galapagos’

Tree fern forest of Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve. Credit: Prasun Goswami / Wikimedia Commons
Tree fern forest of Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve. Credit: Prasun Goswami / Wikimedia Commons

This week, Carbon Brief follows the uproar around the Great Nicobar project, after India’s opposition leader visited the biodiversity hotspot, which is at imminent risk of deforestation.

On 30 April, Rahul Gandhi – the head of India’s opposition and grandson of former prime minister Indira Gandhi – posted an Instagram video from the evergreen rainforest on Great Nicobar island, the southernmost point of India’s territory.

The island is the site of a proposed $10bn infrastructure project called the Great Nicobar Island Project, which includes a transhipment port in Galathea Bay, an international airport, a township and a gas and solar-based power plant.

Completion of the project would require the felling of more than a million trees – nearly 130 square kilometres of forest.

Speaking to the camera and dwarfed by gigantic tree trunks, Gandhi said:

“I’m in the middle of what is easily the most beautiful forest I’ve seen in my life.”

As drone footage showed viewers the lush forest canopy, Gandhi told viewers that the primary forest here is so dense, there was simply no way through. He continued by claiming:

“Now I understand why the government did not want me to come…because this is the largest theft of Indian ecological property in history.”

(In February, India’s National Green Tribunal upheld environmental clearances for the project, stating that the government had “considered all possible damage to the ecology and had taken efforts to compensate it”, according to the Hindu. A challenge is pending in the Calcutta High Court. In March, India announced it was raising its forest carbon target in its 2035 climate pledge.)

The provocative video calling for a halt to large-scale deforestation on “India’s Galapagos” has garnered more than 1.4m views and has sparked media debate, smear campaigns and government pushback, defending its strategic importance.

Paradise almost lost?

Barely hours after Gandhi’s video was posted, the Indian government published a press release detailing how environmental and tribal welfare safeguards have been met, despite more evidence to the contrary emerging this week.

Several media outlets – particularly print and independent outlets – have gone to Great Nicobar since 2024 to investigate the project’s impacts on biodiversity, assess its economic viability and corroborate the government’s claims of receiving Indigenous consent.

However, many of the project’s details have been shrouded in secrecy and restrictive conditions, including “gag orders” on scientists, rebuffed right to information requests and missing maps of tribal lands and coral colonies, media investigations have alleged.

For many mainland Indians, Gandhi’s video was a first glimpse of the Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve and its 1,800 species, many of them endemic to the islands.

Turtle walker

Among the most charismatic and vulnerable are Great Nicobar’s sea turtles: leatherbacks, hawksbills and Olive Ridleys. 

In an era before Instagram, biologist Satish Bhaskar surveyed over 4,000km of India’s coastline on foot from 1977-96 to document sea turtle nesting sites. Bhaskar laid the groundwork – and established the baseline – for Great Nicobar’s biodiversity and turtle conservation in India.

With only a transistor radio for company, Bhaskar would “maroon himself” on these islands for months at a time to measure tracks in the sand, count eggs and nests and wait for sightings of leatherback sea turtles, which can grow up to 2.7 metres long and weigh up to half a tonne.

From 1991-92, Bhaskar recorded more than 800 leatherback turtle nests on Great Nicobar Island alone. He identified Port Campbell Bay – where Gandhi met Nicobarese leaders last week – as a critical, irreplaceable turtle-nesting beach during his surveys.

“I’m glad I did what I did,” said the soft-spoken biologist in the 2025 documentary Turtle Walker, which recreates his early years on the island. Sadly, this new footage of Nicobar’s coastal reefs, mangroves and evergreen forests – is still only accessible to film festival audiences in India.

Can more visual, vocal and felt evidence shift the debate on deforestation in India? Experts told Carbon Brief that remains to be seen, but Gandhi’s video has brought “tremendous attention” back to the project, and brought in unlikely allies asking important questions.

Watch, read, listen

GO FISH: BBC News explored how climate change is “threaten[ing] the economic backbone” of the Pacific island nation of Kiribati – its tuna fisheries.

LIFE AFTER COWS: The New York Times profiled Butter Ridge’s dairy farmers selling their generations-old Pennsylvania farm in the face of looming tariffs and “surging” input costs.

C FOR COMMODITY: On the Wilder podcast, Sue Pritchard – chief executive of the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission – explored the “invisible forces” shaping modern food systems.

WAR FALLOUT: From oil spills to contaminated soil, Wired took a closer look at how the war on Iran is impacting the environment in “unseen ways”.

New science

  • Commercial bottom-trawling fishing costs Europe nearly €16bn per year, mainly due to the release of carbon from ocean sediments | Ocean & Coastal Management
  • A combination of global warming of 1.5-1.9C and deforestation of 22-28% could drive the Amazon to “system-wide changes” | Nature
  • By 2050, 74% of the current habitats of all land mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians could be exposed to heatwaves under a high-emissions scenario | Nature Ecology & Evolution

In the diary

Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyerand Yanine Quiroz.  Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org

The post Cropped 6 May 2026: Forest loss falls | Deforestation regulations | Saving ‘India’s Galapagos’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Cropped 6 May 2026: Forest loss falls | Deforestation regulations | Saving ‘India’s Galapagos’

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Analysis: Wind and solar have saved UK from gas imports worth £1.7bn since Iran war began

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The UK has avoided the need for gas imports worth £1.7bn since the start of the Iran war, as a result of record electricity generation from wind and solar, reveals Carbon Brief analysis.

The surge in wind and solar output is cutting the need for gas-fired generation, which has been nearly a third lower than last year and fell to record lows in both March and April 2026.

The figure below shows that wind and solar have generated a record 21 terawatt hours (TWh) on the island of Great Britain since the end of February 2026, when the US and Israel first attacked Iran.

Chart showing that wind and solar have saved UK from gas imports worth £1.7bn since Iran war began
Monthly generation from wind and solar in terawatt hours on the island of Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales), which has a separate electricity system from the island of Ireland, including Northern Ireland. Source: National Energy System Operator (NESO) and Carbon Brief analysis.

Amid another fossil-fuel price crisis, the record wind and solar output since the start of the Iran war avoided the need to import 41TWh of gas – roughly 34 tankers of liquified natural gas (LNG).

Importing those 34 tankers of LNG would have cost around £1.7bn, given the high gas prices triggered by the conflict.

At the same time, record wind and solar helped to cut electricity generation from gas by around a third year-on-year to the lowest levels ever recorded for the months of March and April, as shown in the figure below.

Chart showing that gas generation has hit record lows since Iran war began
Monthly generation from gas in terawatt hours on the island of Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales), which has a separate electricity system from the island of Ireland, includingNorthern Ireland. Source: National Energy System Operator (NESO) and Carbon Brief analysis.

Together, wind and solar have generated more than twice as much electricity as fossil fuels over the period since the Iran war began. The country’s electricity mix has now flipped: a decade ago, fossil fuels were generating more than four times as much electricity as wind and solar.

Indeed, wind and solar have generated more electricity than fossil fuels for a record 15 months in a row. As shown in the figure below, this included a full winter season for the first time in 2025-26.

Chart showing that wind and solar have beaten fossil fuels for a record 15 months in a row
Monthly generation from fossil fuels (red) vs wind and solar (blue) in terawatt hours on the island of Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales), which has a separate electricity system from the island of Ireland, includingNorthern Ireland. Source: National Energy System Operator (NESO) and Carbon Brief analysis.

This meant that gas was setting the price of electricity roughly 25% less often in both March 2026 and April 2026 than in the same month in 2022, when fossil-fuel prices spiked after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

April 2026 also marked a series of other records for the GB electricity system.

For half an hour between 15.30 and 16:00 on 22 April, a record 98.8% of the electricity feeding into the country’s main “transmission” grid came from zero-carbon sources, according to the National Energy System Operator (NESO).

In addition, solar generation hit a series of new record-highs, ultimately reaching 15.4 gigawatts (GW) on the afternoon of 23 April. Wind set a new record of 23.9GW on 25 March.

The post Analysis: Wind and solar have saved UK from gas imports worth £1.7bn since Iran war began appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Analysis: Wind and solar have saved UK from gas imports worth £1.7bn since Iran war began

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Factcheck: What the UK car industry is not saying about EV targets

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For several years, the UK car industry has been claiming that demand is not high enough to meet the government’s targets for sales of “zero emissions vehicles” (ZEVs).

To date, however, the car industry has actually beaten the targets under the government’s “ZEV mandate”.

This pattern of claiming demand is not high enough is being repeated in a regular cycle, following the publication of monthly statistics on new UK car sales by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).

Each month, this messaging is amplified by large sections of the media, which have published dozens of articles stating – incorrectly – that car companies are missing their ZEV targets.

Meanwhile, the car industry is lobbying for an “urgent review” of the targets, on the basis that “natural demand is still well below the level demanded by the [ZEV] mandate”.

UK car market has ‘over-complied’ with its targets

In 2021, the UK’s then Conservative government developed the idea of a “ZEV mandate” as a way to drive sales of electric vehicles (EVs).

The idea, inspired by a similar scheme in California, is to set a rising target for the share of new car and van sales that must be “zero-emissions vehicles” (ZEVs) each year.

For cars, these targets started at 22% of sales 2024, increasing gradually each year to 80% by 2030.

Towards the end of the first year of the scheme, in November 2024, the SMMT warned that the industry was “likely to fall short”, with EVs making up “just…18.7%” of sales. It said:

“The industry looks likely to fall short of the 22% EV market share demanded, potentially creating a £1.8bn bill for compliance.”

(If manufacturers fall short of their target, they can still avoid having to pay a “bill for compliance” by trading “credits” with other firms, or “borrowing” allowances from future years.)

But, contrary to the industry messaging on the headline 22% goal, the car market actually “over-complied” in 2024, according to official figures published in early 2026.

As such, all carmakers in the UK avoided fines for failing to meet their ZEV-mandate targets.

This was despite only 19.8% of new sales being EVs in 2024 – a final tally that was notably more than one percentage point higher than the industry estimate from November of that year.

The industry was able to “over-comply” with the ZEV mandate because the regime has a series of “flexibilities”, which have been created and added to after lobbying by carmakers.

These “flexibilities” allow individual firms to reduce their targets for ZEV sales by selling combustion-engine cars with lower emissions, such as hybrids or plug-in EVs.

When these “flexibilities” are considered, the car market met the equivalent of a 24.5% target, according to the government, with the surplus of 2.5% being “banked” for use in future years. This is shown in the figure below.

The required (left) and achieved (right) share of ZEVs in total UK car sales in 2024
The required (left) and achieved (right) share of ZEVs in total UK car sales in 2024, %. “Flexibilities” include the sale of lower-emission petrol cars. Source: Department for Transport.

In May 2026, the SMMT again told Carbon Brief that EV sales in 2024 had been below the headline target.

When asked by Carbon Brief to confirm that – per the official figures – the UK car market had, nevertheless, “over-complied” with the ZEV mandate in 2024, it did not respond.

Car industry continues to lobby for weaker rules

In a January 2026 release on car sales for the previous year, the SMMT said the “gap between demand [for EVs] and ambition [in the ZEV mandate] is increasing rather than diminishing”.

At the time, Carbon Brief asked the SMMT if it recognised independent estimates from thinktanks and NGOs, showing that – on the contrary – the car industry had also met its ZEV-mandate targets for 2025.

In response, the SMMT sent Carbon Brief a quote from SMMT chief executive Mike Hawes saying that “no one will know” if the industry complied with the 2025 target until official figures come out in 2027.

While this is technically true, the official figures for 2024 showed that the thinktanks and NGOs behind the independent estimates for 2025 had been accurate with their previous forecasts of compliance.

The car industry continues to repeat similar messaging.

The SMMT stated in May 2026 that there is a “persistent gap of around six percentage points against the mandate target” of 33% in 2026 and 38% in 2027. Chief executive Mike Hawes said in the statement that “natural demand is still well below the level demanded by the mandate”.

The gap that the SMMT is referring to is between the headline ZEV targets and the expected level of EV sales, which the body says will reach 27% of all new cars this year and 33% in 2027.

The car industry continues to use these figures to call for a review of the ZEV mandate.

In its latest news release, it says the UK “needs an urgent review” and quotes Hawes saying this should be used to “align policy with market realities”.

These comments are reflected in media coverage, with the Independent, for example, running a misleading headline that says the car market is “still missing government EV targets”. The article adds:

“[T]he industry is still warning that EV demand is not growing quickly enough to meet government targets.”

What neither the SMMT press release nor much of the media coverage mentions is the existing “flexibilities” under the ZEV mandate, which were already expanded last year.

This means the headline 33% goal for 2026 can be met, even if EVs only make up around 25% of sales, according to an estimate of the “real” target published by thinktank New Automotive.

Again, the SMMT expects EVs to make up around 27% of sales this year, which would be comfortably ahead of the “real” target once flexibilities are taken into account.

The government has already pledged to review the ZEV mandate, with the results due to be published in “early 2027”.

In April, car sales platform Autotrader announced that new EVs are now cheaper to buy than petrol cars on average, “for the first time”. EVs were already significantly cheaper to own.

The post Factcheck: What the UK car industry is not saying about EV targets appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Factcheck: What the UK car industry is not saying about EV targets

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