In an extraordinary year for the Earth’s climate – which is now virtually certain to be hottest on record – global warming has combined with the El Niño weather phenomenon and other factors to cause “crazy” weather across the globe, including in Africa.
The continent has faced a run of deadly and, in many cases, unprecedented extreme weather events this year.
By far the most lethal was Libya’s “medicane”-fuelled floods, which killed more than 11,300 people in September.
But while Libya’s floods made global headlines, many other deadly extreme events in Africa failed to make international news.
Carbon Brief has combined disaster data, humanitarian reports and local news stories to create a more complete picture of the scale of extreme weather impacts in Africa in 2023 to date.
The investigation shows that at least 15,700 people have so far been killed in extreme weather disasters in Africa in 2023. A further 34 million people have been affected by extremes.
It also shows that:
- More than 3,000 people were killed in flash floods in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda in May. Scientists were unable to assess the role of climate change in the disaster because of a lack of functioning weather stations recording data in the region.
- At least 860 people were killed in floods and mudslides in February during Tropical Cyclone Freddy, the longest lasting cyclone on record affecting Madagascar, Mozambique, Mauritius, Malawi, Réunion and Zimbabwe.
- More than 29 million people continue to face unrelenting drought conditions across Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti, Mauritania and Niger.
- Southern African countries have sweltered in a months-long winter heatwave, leaving many facing summer-like conditions for a continuous year.
Carbon Brief also spoke to scientists about how these events could be linked to climate change and other factors, including high vulnerability and a lack of preparedness – and why so many of Africa’s extreme weather events go unrecorded and unreported.
In addition, Carbon Brief analysis shows that Africa has the lowest density of weather stations out of any continent – making it difficult to know the extent to which extreme weather is happening and how it might be shifting because of climate change. A climate scientist from Kenya describes this as “extremely worrying”.
She adds that the toll of extreme weather on Africa’s people in 2023 is a stark reminder of why the developed world must take responsibility for the “loss and damage” caused by climate change.
- Extremes mapped
- Floods
- Cyclones
- Heatwaves
- Wildfires
- Drought and famine
- Why do African extremes go unreported?
Extremes mapped
Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents in the world to climate change, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Seven of the 10 countries most vulnerable to climate disasters are in Africa, according to an analysis from the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the World Resources Institute (WRI).
According to this analysis, the countries most vulnerable to climate disasters are those that have low “climate readiness” – measured by examining the threats that climate change poses to a country and that country’s ability to protect its citizens – and high levels of “fragility” – the likelihood that a country will experience societal collapse in the event of a disaster.
The threats posed by climate change are rising with greenhouse gas emissions, of which Africa is responsible for just 2-3%.
In 2023, every part of the continent was affected by extreme weather disasters, ranging from catastrophic flooding in Libya to intense heat in Malawi.
To study these events, Carbon Brief has combined UN humanitarian reports and local news stories with data from the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT), which was launched in 1988 by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) in Belgium.
The map below shows extreme weather disasters affecting Africa in 2023 to date, according to the EM-DAT database and further analysis by Carbon Brief. On the map, the size of the circles correspond to the number of people affected by the event, while a colour key indicates the event type.
For an extreme event to be featured on the EM-DAT database, it must fulfil one of the following criteria:
- 10 or more people killed.
- 100 or more people affected.
- The declaration of a state of emergency.
- A call for international assistance.
(It is worth noting that the EM-DAT is the largest disaster database available, but is still not exhaustive, particularly for African nations.)
Carbon Brief’s analysis of EM-DAT data, humanitarian reports and local news reports shows that at least 15,700 people have been killed in extreme weather disasters in Africa in 2023 to date.
This is a major jump from the 4,000 people killed by extreme weather disasters in 2022 – but it is worth noting the vast majority of deaths (11,300) occurred during Libya’s record floods.
The analysis also shows that at least 34 million people were affected by extreme weather disasters in 2023. This compares to 19 million people in 2022.
Overall, weather events in Africa this year fit into a global picture of record and, in some cases, uncharted extremes, climate scientists tell Carbon Brief.
The reasons why 2023 has seen such extreme heat and unusual weather events are still being debated by scientists. However, known contributors include the 1.3C of temperature rise already caused by humans and El Niño, a natural phenomenon that tends to drive up global temperatures and affect weather in many parts of the world, including Africa.
Dr Izidine Pinto, a climate scientist from Mozambique currently working at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, tells Carbon Brief:
“This year is very unusual worldwide. In Africa, almost every month, there were record monthly temperatures. And we know that El Niño is associated with below average rainfall in many parts of Africa, especially in southern Africa.”
Some of the weather events in Africa this year have left scientists scratching their heads, adds Dr Joyce Kimutai, a climate scientist from Kenya currently working at the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London. She tells Carbon Brief:
“Climate change is really disrupting the climate system. To me, I think it’s challenging, it’s difficult and it’s also dangerous in a way because as climate scientists we don’t know exactly what’s happening. Every time we think we’ve understood the system, things keep changing. So we would think that we can inform the public about the risks that they can anticipate and how they need to prepare, but then the system is also playing games with us.”
Kimutai adds that the toll of extreme weather events on African lives in 2023 is a stark example of “loss and damage” – a term to describe how climate change is already harming people, especially the world’s most vulnerable. She says:
“We are not on track to limiting warming to 1.5C. That means we will continue to experience these extreme events and that is going to cause more damage to communities. At the same time, people in these countries will have to continually dig deeper into their pockets to deal with these recurring events. What that means is the loss and damages that we know will continue to grow.”
Loss and damage is expected to be a major talking point at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai starting in late November, after a historic fund for such damages was agreed at COP27 in Egypt.
Floods
Floods affected every corner of the African continent in 2023.
Carbon Brief analysis shows at least 23 flood disasters occurred, with countries affected including Angola, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Guinea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Libya, Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
By far the most deadly were Libya’s floods. In September, a highly unusual cyclone called Storm Daniel dropped a torrent of rainfall over the coast of Libya.
The water quickly overwhelmed two old and damaged dams in the coastal city of Derna, resulting in tsunami-like waves that swept people and houses out to sea. The disaster killed more than 11,300 people.
A rapid analysis released in the storm’s wake found the extreme rainfall was made up to 50 times more likely and 50% more intense by climate change.
Storm Daniel was a “medicane”, the name given to a storm originating in the Mediterranean Sea that has the physical features of a hurricane.
Scientists told Carbon Brief that medicanes are currently rare, but there is evidence that they are becoming more intense because of climate change.
One reason for this is when sea surface temperatures are extremely high, it allows storms to gather up more “fuel” as they travel over the ocean – making them stronger when they eventually make landfall.
We have a #medicane in the making. Storm #Daniel in the Mediterranean now has tropical characteristics heading south and will make landfall tonight near Benghazi, Libya. The dark shades of purple are winds 50 mph+ pic.twitter.com/3J3ZTnCEDU
— Jeff Berardelli (@WeatherProf) September 9, 2023
As well as climate change, the disaster in Libya was worsened by other factors, such as the age of the dams that became overwhelmed with water and an incoherent system for warning the public of the dangers posed by the storms, experts told Carbon Brief.
Another deadly flood to strike Africa in 2023 took place in May, when severe flooding around Lake Kivu devastated communities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda.
According to Carbon Brief analysis, these flash floods killed 2,970 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 131 people in Rwanda.
Many families living in the region had escaped conflict and were living in temporary accommodation, leaving them extremely vulnerable.
Kimutai led a team of scientists who tried to understand how climate change influenced the likelihood and severity of these floods.
However, the researchers were unable to carry out their analysis because they were not able to find reliable rainfall data from weather stations in the region, she explains:
“From the DRC side, we couldn’t find any observational data to use. There have been issues with conflict for a long time and when a country’s at war, almost everything is dysfunctional. What you find with instability is that government employees are not likely to be able to constantly man weather stations and ensure their day-to-day running.”
She adds that the researchers also tried to use satellite information in the place of weather station data. However, data obtained from different satellites did not match up, making it impossible to tell exactly how much rainfall fell during the deadly flash floods.
More on the impact of low weather station coverage in Africa is included in: Why do African extremes go ‘unreported’?
Cyclones
Southern Africa was on the receiving end of a record-breaking – and highly unusual – storm this year called Tropical Cyclone Freddy.
Tropical Cyclone Freddy began as a disturbance near Australia in February and crossed the entire Indian Ocean to make landfall on Madagascar.
The storm then crossed the Mozambican channel to hit Mozambique and surrounding countries. It then returned to the Mozambican channel for several days, before striking Mozambique for a second time. It then proceeded inland towards Malawi.
Overall, the storm persisted for 34 days – making it the longest-lasting tropical cyclone on record. (This record is awaiting verification from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).)
It also covered a distance exceeding 8,000km. Pinto, who is originally from Mozambique, tells Carbon Brief:
“It made landfall in Mozambique twice, which is very unusual for a tropical cyclone in my living experience. I have never seen a tropical cyclone make landfall and then go back to the ocean before returning again. And this one travelled northwards, which is also unusual because tropical cyclones usually travel from north to south.”
The remarkable path of Tropical Cyclone Freddy is outlined in the diagram below, which was produced by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
(The diagram also uses blue shading to show what areas experienced the most flooding and bubbles indicating where the most people were affected.)
According to Carbon Brief analysis, at least 860 people were killed in floods and landslides associated with the storm across Madagascar, Mozambique, Mauritius, Malawi, Réunion and Zimbabwe.
The storm also destroyed 408,000 houses and 6,600 square kilometres (km2) of cropland across Malawi, Mozambique and Madagascar, according to OCHA. Floodwaters from the storm also assisted several outbreaks of the deadly waterborne disease cholera (indicated with hazard signs on the diagram above).
There has been no analysis into the role of climate change in intensifying Tropical Cyclone Freddy.
However, according to Pinto – who, along with Kimutai, works to analyse the role of climate change in Africa’s extremes with the World Weather Attribution group of scientists – it can be assumed that warming did have an impact on the storm. He explains:
“We did not do a study because previously we’ve done two studies on Tropical Cyclone Batsirai and storm Ana [which affected southern Africa in 2022], and we found that climate change played a role in the amount of rainfall caused by these two tropical cyclones. If we analysed Tropical Cyclone Freddy we would probably find the same answer.”
He adds that the latest findings from the world’s authority on climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), show that eastern southern Africa is likely to see an increase in average tropical cyclone wind speeds and rainfall, as well as a higher proportion of category 4 and 5 (the most severe) storms, as climate change worsens.
“From the scientific literature, it is clear that climate change played a role,” he says.
Heatwaves
Many parts of Africa faced extreme heat this year.
The north of the continent saw record temperatures during an extreme summer heatwave that affected each of Earth’s seven continents in July.
During this heatwave, Algeria hit 48C, while Morocco faced 47.5C heat.
Adrar in Algeria also experienced Africa’s hottest night on record in July, when night-time temperatures did not fall below 39.6C.
Al Jazeera reported that the extreme temperatures particularly affected migrant workers in Tunisia, who typically sleep rough in tents in the nation’s capital, Tunis.
All Africa reported that 47C heat had a “profound impact” on humans and livestock in Niger.
An analysis by the World Weather Attribution team found that the heat observed across the northern hemisphere in July would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change.
The south of the continent, meanwhile, endured prolonged high temperatures in what were meant to be the winter months.
In August, the Washington Post reported that Southern Africa was in “the midst of a major heatwave” delivering temperatures close to 40C to Botswana, South Africa, Namibia and Mozambique.
In October, the Guardian reported that Malawi was experiencing temperatures 20C above the seasonal average. (Malawi’s cool season typically runs from May to October.)
The prolonged winter heat meant that many southern African countries effectively faced a 12-month long summer, Kimutai says:
“We witnessed for the first time a winter heatwave in southern Africa. People say it didn’t get cold at all this time. It was just like one long back-to-back summer.”
Despite these record events, the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) did not register any heatwave disasters in Africa this year (see map above). More explanation of why Africa’s heatwaves often go untracked is included in: Why do African extremes go ‘unreported’?
Wildfires
The extreme heat in northern Africa this year fuelled deadly wildfires.
Reuters reported that wildfires swept across Algeria in July, requiring a response from 8,000 firefighters. The flames killed 34 people, including 10 soldiers.
The newswire added that blazes also ripped across Tunisia, forcing hundreds of households to flee.
Drought and famine
Numerous African countries continued to be gripped by severe drought this year. Many of these droughts have spanned several years.
According to Carbon Brief analysis, more than 29 million people faced unrelenting drought conditions across countries including Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mauritania, Niger and Somalia in 2023.
According to a report from the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in July, drought in the Horn of Africa has left more than 23 million people facing food insecurity and more than five million children facing acute malnutrition.
The report says:
“The drought affected livestock body conditions and decimated herds, which, in turn, curbed livestock production. Successive below-average harvests, coupled with high production and transport costs, reduced local agricultural produce. All this led to food price spikes that still persist, which reduced household purchasing power and access to nutrient-rich foods.”
An analysis released by the World Weather Attribution service in April found that persistent drought in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia “would not have [happened] at all” without human-caused climate change.
A “conservative estimate” from the scientists said that the drought conditions seen in the Horn of Africa over 2020-22 were made at least 100 times more likely by climate change.
In July, the WFP said the impacts of drought conditions in this period are “likely to persist for a long time” despite some improvements in rains in recent months.
Reacting to the analysis in April, Mohamed Adow, director of the Power Shift Africa thinktank in Kenya, said the findings reinforce why climate change is “the world’s biggest and gravest injustice issue”. He told Carbon Brief:
“As someone from East Africa it’s painful to see the impact of climate change wreaking so much suffering on people that have done nothing to cause this.”
Why do African extremes go unreported?
African activists, scientists and policymakers have warned for years that African extreme weather events often go “unreported” when compared to those in North America and Europe.
Understanding the extent to which African extreme weather events are unreported is complicated.
One way to do this is to consider all the ways that extreme weather events are recorded and reported.
Primarily, extreme heat, rainfall and wind speeds – the ingredients of most extreme weather events – are monitored by weather stations.
Carbon Brief’s analysis of WMO weather stations reveals that Africa has the lowest density of operational stations out of any continent.
Pinto tells Carbon Brief that a lack of weather stations in Africa has limited the tracking of extreme weather events for decades:
“The low density of weather stations is something that limits research and also monitoring of extreme events.”
Without adequate data from weather stations, scientists are not only struggling to track when extreme weather events happen, but they are also left without the historical records needed to understand how events have shifted over time because of climate change, he says.
Kimutai – who was prevented from assessing the role of climate change in deadly floods in the DRC this year by a lack of weather station data – tells Carbon Brief that the lack of weather station data from Africa is “extremely worrying”:
“The reason why I’m extremely worried is because we’ve seen the planet continuing to warm with increasing magnitudes of extreme events – this means the continent is likely to be battered more by these extremes. Without observations, we have a minimal understanding of the climate system so we can’t anticipate how the risks are changing. This means that we can’t adequately prepare.”
As well as having the lowest density of meteorological weather stations, the African continent also has by far the fewest radar weather stations. These kind of stations are needed to warn people about upcoming rainfall, Pinto says:
“If you have a radar, you can see rain coming into the region – and then you can tell people that rain is coming and you can plan. In many parts of Africa, that’s not available because radars are very expensive.”
Even when weather data is recorded, there are other ways that extreme weather disasters can be missed.
In Africa, the most potent example of this occurs with heatwaves.
Human-caused climate change has led to an increase in the intensity and frequency of heatwaves in every region of the world, according to the IPCC.
However, according to the EM-DAT database (see map above), there were no recorded heatwave disasters anywhere in Africa this year. (In fact, EM-DAT lists no more than two heatwaves in sub-Saharan Africa since the beginning of the 20th century.)
This is despite the fact that many parts of Africa did experience record-breaking heat in 2023 (see: Heatwaves). So, why did these events go unrecorded in the EM-DAT database?
The reason is that, for EM-DAT to record a “disaster”, it requires there to be some record of an impact on people.
In Africa, the impacts of extreme heat on people are not routinely recorded as they are in other continents. For example, there are few reliable records of how heatwaves drive up hospital admissions or lead to cropland being destroyed in Africa, Pinto says:
“Some people call heatwaves the ‘silent killer’ because we can’t see the impacts. It is easy to see flooding and people drowning and to record their deaths. But when it’s a heatwave and we don’t see the impact with our eyes, it’s difficult to record.
“So, if a heatwave happens in, say, October and kills 10 people. We don’t know what caused the death of those people. Probably, it was the increase in temperature, which caused them to go to the hospital and suffer heart failures or strokes, but the people responsible for recording the deaths do not make the association with high temperatures.”
Even when observational data and the impacts on people are recorded for an extreme weather event in Africa, there is a good chance that people living outside of the region or country affected will never hear about it.
This is because there is generally less media reporting on African extreme weather events when compared to events in North America or Europe. (Libya’s deadly floods in September were a noticeable exception to this.)
Understanding the reasons behind this are extremely complex.
One survey of 38 African editors by the nonprofit Africa No Filter in 2021 found that shrinking newsrooms and lack of funds prevented deeper reporting and the positioning of correspondents across multiple countries.
Western media has been criticised by young climate activists for giving more priority to extreme weather events in the global north than in Africa.
The post Analysis: Africa’s extreme weather has killed at least 15,000 people in 2023 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Africa’s extreme weather has killed at least 15,000 people in 2023
Climate Change
“Sustainable fuels” pose high risks to Lula’s promised roadmap away from fossil fuels
President Lula opened COP30 with his boldest call yet for climate action and a clean-energy future. In his address, the Brazilian President declared that the world must “accelerate the energy transition” and “get rid of fossil fuels.” What drew the loudest applause from climate and energy experts in Belém, however, were his calls for COP30 to deliver tangible roadmaps to “overcome dependence on fossil fuels,” “reverse deforestation,” and secure equitable climate finance in a “fair and planned manner.”
Yet the day after, Lula’s promotion of so-called “sustainable fuels” cast a shadow of concern. A Roadmap away from oil, gas and coal will only succeed if negotiators and the Brazilian presidency resist the dangerous distractions of biofuels and other false solutions and stay focused on the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
The rationale for a roadmap
The case for a global roadmap could not be clearer. The latest round of national climate targets falls dramatically short of the Paris Agreement’s ambition. If the race to decarbonisation at the pace required to limit warming to 1.5°C were a 42-kilometre marathon, by 2035 we should have already covered half the distance. Instead, current pledges take us barely two kilometres forward.
As Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) miss the mark, they must become the floor, not the ceiling, of global ambition. A roadmap – if not hijacked as a Trojan horse for false solutions like “sustainable fuels” – could help accelerate the phase out of fossil fuels, the source of nearly three quarters of global emissions. Clearly, a roadmap on its own will not solve these challenges, but it can be a critical step further.
What a roadmap could entail and what’s the process for it?
A full roadmap may not be finalized at COP30, but the mandate to begin accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels could well emerge in Belém – whether through a declaration, the UAE Dialogue, a new agenda item, or an omnibus decision.
To give such an outcome real weight, it should be formally anchored under the CMA and Paris Agreement, not left as an optional declaration. This would transform it into a stronger, coordinated Mutirão, a collective effort embedded within a broader ministerial dialogue on the transition away from fossil fuels.
Such a process should explore transition scenarios and produce global pathways aligned with International Energy Agency (IEA) and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) benchmarks, providing structured guidance ahead of the next Global Stocktake, with milestones for 2035 and 2040 and links to long term strategies.
It could also involve developing country-tailored roadmaps that identify enabling conditions, barriers, cooperation mechanisms, and international support needs, consistent with national capacities and equity. Such a process should include a political segment, bringing together ministers and high-level representatives to assess progress and report to COP31 with concrete recommendations for adoption.
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Lula’s ‘Sustainable Fuels’ Mirage
On the second day of the Leaders Summit, President Lula, leader of the world’s second-largest biofuels producer, after the United States again spoke of a roadmap to ‘end dependency on fossil fuels’. But this time, he tried to slip in a twist: positioning “sustainable fuels” as a third pillar of the energy transition, alongside renewables and efficiency, and even launching a pledge to quadruple their production. It’s hard not to suspect that Brazil envisions the roadmap as a vehicle to advance its biofuels agenda.
That would be a serious mistake. Ironically, this proposal came alongside Lula’s call for a roadmap to halt deforestation. Yet, biofuels remain a leading driver of forest loss. If both roadmaps emerge from COP30, they must be interlinked to ensure one doesn’t undermine the other. Emission savings from biofuels are wildly overstated; some studies even find they emit more than the fossil fuels they replace. And let’s be honest: it’s impossible to imagine a world that quadruples “sustainable fuels” without devastating consequences for food security.
The pledge to quadruple so-called “sustainable fuels” rests on more shaky ground than one might realize: It conveniently draws from a recent IEA study “prepared in support of Brazil’s COP30 Presidency”. But this study refers to the IEA scenario of an “accelerated case”, which assumes existing policies are implemented, not that these policies align with net-zero pathways or the goals of the Paris Agreement. In fact, this pledge risks slowing down electrification across multiple sectors, contradicting what the IEA itself identifies as essential for a credible net-zero pathway.
Not another COP-out: We must rewrite the rules of the UN climate talks
If COP30 succeeds in establishing a roadmap – and it should – as part of the broader response to the global climate ambition gap, it must not be hijacked by Brazil’s biofuels agenda. Other countries should push back – or at the very least, insist on strong safeguards.
The lack of support speaks for itself: beyond Brazil, only 18 others have backed the pledge, hardly a groundswell compared to the 133 nations that endorsed the tripling renewables target at COP28. What’s more, countries such as Japan and Italy appear to be backing this pledge not to advance decarbonization, but to justify extending the life of combustion-engine vehicles and even coal plants through co-firing under the guise of biofuels.
Brazil’s biofuels push is not a breakthrough. It’s a dangerous distraction. A roadmap for a fast, fair and funded energy transition is urgently needed but it must be science-aligned, electrification-focused, and firmly aimed at phasing out fossil fuels, not replacing one problem with another.
The post “Sustainable fuels” pose high risks to Lula’s promised roadmap away from fossil fuels appeared first on Climate Home News.
“Sustainable fuels” pose high risks to Lula’s promised roadmap away from fossil fuels
Kate Cell is senior climate campaign manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and a Climate Action Against Disinformation steering committee member and Kathy Mulvey is corporate accountability campaign director at UCS
For years, fossil fuel lobbyists have swarmed the international climate summits outnumbering most national delegations and drowning out the voices of climate-vulnerable nations. Their mission is clear: derail progress, spread disinformation, and dodge accountability for fueling the climate crisis.
This overwhelming influence raises urgent questions – how do we prevent industry obstruction of science-based policy, and what would a climate summit look like if fossil fuel interests were finally shut out?
Climate policy must be guided by science, evidence, and justice – not fossil fuel industry influence. Yet the industry relies on disinformation to undermine science and delay action. This tactic is neither new nor surprising: for decades, fossil fuel companies have funded climate denial, obstructed progress, and profited from confusion.
At the Union of Concerned Scientists, our team’s latest report documents the ongoing role of Big Oil corporations as key drivers and beneficiaries of climate disinformation.
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Tools now exist to confront this threat. The Climate Action Against Disinformation coalition seeks to classify climate disinformation as a serious risk under laws regulating search engines and social media. Meanwhile, advocates pursue litigation against fossil fuel companies for “greenwashing,” exposing misleading ads that conceal their role in driving the crisis and holding them accountable.
An international commitment to information integrity (accurate, consistent and reliable information) at COP30 can help remove barriers to strong national climate solutions.
This week, a coalition of civil society groups, local leaders, businesses, and individuals is urging participants to “UNEQUIVOCALLY RECOGNIZE that upholding information integrity on climate change is a prerequisite for effective climate action, democratic principles, public health, and human rights.”
Acknowledging both the importance of information integrity and the dangers of disinformation is vital to advancing robust, verifiable measures that curb greenwashing and manipulative content undermining climate progress.
Limiting the influence of fossil fuel companies
CEOs and lobbyists from BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and others should not shape climate goals or clean energy plans; the fossil fuel industry has an irreconcilable conflict of interest with policies to curb climate change and advance renewable energy.
Yet, year after year, their representatives flood international negotiations, undermining progress and protecting profits while obstructing the urgent transition away from fossil fuels toward a sustainable, science-based future.
2023 marked the first COP where delegates were required to disclose affiliations with fossil fuel companies. These disclosures exposed the thousands of lobbyists granted access to negotiations. New research from the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition found that over the last four years, 5,350 oil, gas, and coal lobbyists were given access to COPs. At last year’s summit in Azerbaijan alone, 1,773 fossil fuel lobbyists registered—70% more than the combined 1,033 delegates from the ten mostclimate vulnerable nations.
This staggering imbalance reveals how polluters dominate climate talks and weaken policy. Amid this lobbying blitz, nations’ fossil fuel production plans are set to double what’s compatible with a 1.5°C pathway by 2030. Major fossil fuel corporations continue to prioritise profits over people and planet. Research shows the 250 largest oil and gas companies invest almost nothing in clean energy compared to their vast fossil fuel extraction, disregarding climate goals; and their role in deepening the crisis.
COP30 PR firm found to be “uniquely reliant” on fossil fuel clients
Requiring delegates to disclose affiliations and funding is a vital step in exposing fossil fuel influence. Yet with the 1.5°C target slipping away, disclosure alone is insufficient. World leaders must advance to disqualification, barring fossil fuel companies from shaping COP negotiations. Future COP hosts must also refuse to retain PR firms tied to fossil fuel companies. This blatant conflict of interest shields industry culpability, distorts public understanding of the demand for climate action, and undermines trust in global climate negotiations.
A summit free from such conflicts of interest would empower nations most affected by extreme heat, rising seas, and other escalating climate impacts, ensuring their voices are not drowned out by lobbyists and spin doctors for the very industry primarily driving destructive, deadly climate change.
Advancing accountability at COP30
The challenge extends beyond the fossil fuel industry. Big Tech’s richest leaders are actively fueling climate denial, deception, and delay when they amplify lies to increase ad revenue—just like fossil fuel corporations and their trade groups. COP30 must confront this corruption head-on: advancing bold policies to hasten a just transition away from fossil fuels, protect a truthful information ecosystem, and hold corporate actors accountable for the lies they spread and the deadly damage they inflict on our planet.
By resisting disinformation and other fossil fuel industry influence at COP30, world leaders can propel a people-centered transition toward a clean energy future grounded in rights, fairness, equity, and solidarity. A summit safeguarded against conflicts of interest would finally prioritize those most affected by the climate crisis, ensuring that science, justice, and integrity—not corporate deception—guide the path forward.
The post Bad COP to good COP: Blocking fossil-fueled disinformation in Belém and beyond appeared first on Climate Home News.
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2025/11/12/bad-cop-to-good-cop-blocking-fossil-fueled-disinformation-in-belem-and-beyond/
The world’s fossil-fuel use is still on track to peak before 2030, despite a surge in political support for coal, oil and gas, according to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The IEA’s latest World Energy Outlook 2025, published during the opening days of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil, shows coal at or close to a peak, with oil set to follow around 2030 and gas by 2035, based on the stated policy intentions of the world’s governments.
Under the same assumptions, the IEA says that clean-energy use will surge, as nuclear power rises 39% by 2035, solar by 344% and wind by 178%.
Still, the outlook has some notable shifts since last year, with coal use revised up by around 6% in the near term, oil seeing a shallower post-peak decline and gas plateauing at higher levels.
This means that the IEA expects global warming to reach 2.5C this century if “stated policies” are implemented as planned, up marginally from 2.4C in last year’s outlook.
In addition, after pressure from the Trump administration in the US, the IEA has resurrected its “current policies scenario”, which – effectively – assumes that governments around the world abandon their stated intentions and only policies already set in legislation are continued.
If this were to happen, the IEA warns, global warming would reach 2.9C by 2100, as oil and gas demand would continue to rise and the decline in coal use would proceed at a slower rate.
This year’s outlook also includes a pathway that limits warming to 1.5C in 2100, but says that this would only be possible after a period of “overshoot”, where temperature rise peaks at 1.65C.
The IEA will publish its “announced pledges scenario” at a later date, to illustrate the impact of new national climate pledges being implemented on time and in full.
(See Carbon Brief’s coverage of previous IEA world energy outlooks from 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 and 2015.)
World energy outlook
The IEA’s annual World Energy Outlook (WEO) is published every autumn. It is regarded as one of the most influential annual contributions to the understanding of energy and emissions trends.
The outlook explores a range of scenarios, representing different possible futures for the global energy system. These are developed using the IEA’s “global energy and climate model”.
The latest report stresses that “none of [these scenarios] should be regarded as a forecast”.
However, this year’s outlook marks a major shift in emphasis between the scenarios – and it reintroduces a pathway where oil and gas demand continues to rise for many decades.
This pathway is named the “current policies scenario” (CPS), which assumes that governments abandon their planned policies, leaving only those that are already set in legislation.
If the world followed this path, then global temperatures would reach 2.9C above pre-industrial levels by 2100 and would be “set to keep rising from there”, the IEA says.
The CPS was part of the annual outlook until 2020, when the IEA said that it was “difficult to imagine” such a pathway “prevailing in today’s circumstances”.
It has been resurrected following heavy pressure from the US, which is a major funder of the IEA that accounts for 14% of the agency’s budget.
For example, in July Politico reported “a ratcheted-up US pressure campaign” and “months of public frustrations with the IEA from top Trump administration officials”. It noted:
“Some Republicans say the IEA has discouraged investment in fossil fuels by publishing analyses that show near-term peaks in global demand for oil and gas.”
The CPS is the first scenario to be discussed in detail in the report, appearing in chapter three. The CPS similarly appears first in Annex A, the data tables for the report.
The second scenario is the “stated policies scenario” (STEPS), featured in chapter four of this year’s outlook. Here, the outlook also includes policies that governments say they intend to bring forward and that the IEA judges as likely to be implemented in practice.
In this world, global warming would reach 2.5C by 2100 – up marginally from the 2.4C expected in the 2024 edition of the outlook.
Beyond the STEPS and the CPS, the outlook includes two further scenarios.
One is the “net-zero emissions by 2050” (NZE) scenario, which illustrates how the world’s energy system would need to change in order to limit warming in 2100 to 1.5C.
The NZE was first floated in the 2020 edition of the report and was then formally featured in 2021.
The report notes that, unlike in previous editions, this scenario would see warming peak at more than 1.6C above pre-industrial temperatures, before returning to 1.5C by the end of the century.
This means it would include a high level of temporary “overshoot” of the 1.5C target. The IEA explains that this results from the “reality of persistently high emissions in recent years”. It adds:
“In addition to very rapid progress with the transformation of the energy sector, bringing the temperature rise back down below 1.5C by 2100 also requires widespread deployment of CO2 removal technologies that are currently unproven at large scale.”
Finally, the outlook includes a new scenario where everyone in the world is able to gain access to electricity by 2035 and to clean cooking by 2040, named “ACCESS”.
While the STEPS appears second in the running order of the report, it is mentioned slightly more frequently than the CPS, as shown in the figure below. The CPS is a close second, however, whereas the IEA’s 1.5C pathway (NZE) receives a declining level of attention.
US critics of the IEA have presented its stated policies scenario as “disconnected from reality”, in contrast to what they describe as the “likely scenario” of “business as usual”.
Yet the current policies scenario is far from a “business-as-usual” pathway. The IEA says this explicitly in an article published ahead of the outlook:
“The CPS might seem like a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario, but this terminology can be misleading in an energy system where new technologies are already being deployed at scale, underpinned by robust economics and mature, existing policy frameworks. In these areas, ‘business as usual’ would imply continuing the current process of change and, in some cases, accelerating it.”
In order to create the current policies scenario, where oil and gas use continues to surge into the future, the IEA therefore has to make more pessimistic assumptions about barriers to the uptake of new technologies and about the willingness of governments to row back on their plans. It says:
“The CPS…builds on a narrow reading of today’s policy settings…assuming no change, even where governments have indicated their intention to do so.”
This is not a scenario of “business as usual”. Instead, it is a scenario where countries around the world follow US president Donald Trump in dismantling their plans to shift away from fossil fuels.
More specifically, the current policies scenario assumes that countries around the world renege on their policy commitments and fail to honour their climate pledges.
For example, it assumes that Japan and South Korea fail to implement their latest national electricity plans, that China fails to continue its power-market reforms and abandons its provincial targets for clean power, that EU countries fail to meet their coal phase-out pledges and that US states such as California fail to extend their clean-energy targets.
Similarly, it assumes that Brazil, Turkey and India fail to implement their greenhouse gas emissions trading schemes (ETS) as planned and that China fails to expand its ETS to other industries.
The scenario also assumes that the EU, China, India, Australia, Japan and many others fail to extend or continue strengthening regulations on the energy efficiency of buildings and appliances, as well as those relating to the fuel-economy standards for new vehicles.
In contrast to the portrayal of the stated policies scenario as blindly assuming that all pledges will be met, the IEA notes that it does not give a free pass to aspirational targets. It says:
“[T]argets are not automatically assumed to be met; the prospects and timing for their realisation are subject to an assessment of relevant market, infrastructure and financial constraints…[L]ike the CPS, the STEPS does not assume that aspirational goals, such as those included in the Paris Agreement, are achieved.”
Only in the “announced pledges scenario” (APS) does the IEA assume that countries meet all of their climate pledges on time and full – regardless of how credible they are.
The APS does not appear in this year’s report, presumably because many countries missed the deadlines to publish new climate pledges ahead of COP30.
The IEA says it will publish its APS, assessing the impact of the new pledges, “once there is a more complete picture of these commitments”.
Fossil-fuel peak
In recent years, there has been a significant shift in the IEA’s outlook for fossil fuels under the stated policies scenario, which it has described as “a mirror to the plans of today’s policymakers”.
In 2020, the agency said that prevailing policy conditions pointed towards a “structural” decline in global coal demand, but that it was too soon to declare a peak in oil or gas demand.
By 2021, it said global fossil-fuel use could peak as soon as 2025, but only if all countries got on track to meet their climate goals. Under stated policies, it expected fossil-fuel use to hit a plateau from the late 2020s onwards, declining only marginally by 2050.
There was a dramatic change in 2022, when it said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting global energy crisis had “turbo-charged” the shift away from fossil fuels.
As a result, it said at the time that it expected a peak in demand for each of the fossil fuels. Coal “within a few years”, oil “in the mid-2030s” and gas ”by the end of the decade”.
This outlook sharpened further in 2023 and, by 2024, it was saying that each of the fossil fuels would see a peak in global demand before 2030.
This year’s report notes that “some formal country-level [climate] commitments have waned”, pointing to the withdrawal of the US from the Paris Agreement.
The report says the “new direction” in the US is among “major new policies” in 48 countries. The other changes it lists include Brazil’s “energy transition acceleration programme”, Japan’s new plan for 2040 and the EU’s recently adopted 2040 climate target.
Overall, the IEA data still points to peaks in demand for coal, oil and gas under the stated policies scenario, as shown in the figure below.
Alongside this there is a surge in clean technologies, with renewables overtaking oil to become the world’s largest source of energy – not just electricity – by the early 2040s.
In this year’s outlook under stated policies, the IEA sees global coal demand as already being at – or very close to – a definitive peak, as the chart above shows.
Coal then enters a structural decline, where demand for the fuel is displaced by cheaper alternatives, particularly renewable sources of electricity.
The IEA reiterates that the cost of solar, wind and batteries has respectively fallen by 90%, 70% and 90% since 2010, with further declines of 10-40% expected by 2035.
(The report notes that household energy spending would be lower under the more ambitious NZE scenario than under stated policies, despite the need for greater investment.)
However, this year’s outlook has coal use in 2030 coming in some 6% higher than expected last year, although it ultimately declines to similar levels by 2050.
For oil, the agency’s data still points to a peak in demand this decade, as electric vehicles (EVs) and more efficient combustion engines erode the need for the fuel in road transport.
While this sees oil demand in 2030 reaching similar levels to what the IEA expected last year, the post-peak decline is slightly less marked in the latest outlook, ending some 5% higher in 2050.
The biggest shift compared with last year is for gas, where the IEA suggests that global demand will keep rising until 2035, rather than peaking by 2030.
Still, the outlook has gas demand in 2030 being only 7% higher than expected last year. It notes:
“Long-term natural gas demand growth is kept lower than in recent decades by the expanding deployment of renewables, efficiency gains and electrification of end-uses.”
In terms of clean energy, the outlook sees nuclear power output growing to 39% above 2024 levels by 2035 and doubling by 2050. Solar grows nearly four-fold by 2035 and nearly nine-fold by 2050, while wind power nearly triples and quadruples over the same periods.
Notably, the IEA sees strong growth of clean-energy technologies, even in the current policies scenario. Here, renewables would still become the world’s largest energy source before 2050.
This is despite the severe headwinds assumed in this scenario, including EVs never increasing from their current low share of sales in India or the US.
The CPS would see oil and gas use continuing to rise, with demand for oil reaching 11% above current levels by 2050 and gas climbing 31%, even as renewables nearly triple.
This means that coal use would still decline, falling to a fifth below current levels by 2050.
Finally, while the IEA considers the prospect of global coal demand continuing to rise rather than falling as expected, it gives this idea short shrift. It explains:
“A growth story for coal over the coming decades cannot entirely be ruled out but it would fly in the face of two crucial structural trends witnessed in recent years: the rise of renewable sources of power generation, and the shift in China away from an especially coal-intensive model of growth and infrastructure development. As such, sustained growth for coal demand appears highly unlikely.”
The post IEA: Fossil-fuel use will peak before 2030 – unless ‘stated policies’ are abandoned appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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