China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell by 1% in the second quarter of 2024 in the first quarterly fall since the country re-opened from its “zero-Covid” lockdowns in December 2022.
The new analysis for Carbon Brief, based on official figures and commercial data, shows China remains on track for a decline in annual emissions this year.
This annual outlook depends on electricity demand growth easing in the second half of the year, as expected in projections from sector group the China Electricity Council.
However, if the latest trends in energy demand and supply continue – in particular, if demand growth continues to exceed pre-Covid trends – then emissions would stay flat in 2024 overall.
Other key findings from the analysis include:
- China’s energy demand grew by 4.2% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2024. This is slower than the growth seen in 2023 and in the first quarter of this year, but is still much higher than the pre-Covid trend.
- CO2 emissions from energy use and cement production fell by 1% in the second quarter. When combined with a sharp 6.5% increase in January-February and a monthly decline in March, there was a 1.3% rise in CO2 emissions across the first half of the year, compared with the same period in 2023.
- Electricity generation from wind and solar grew by 171 terawatt hours (TWh) in the first half of the year, more than the total power output of the UK in the same period of 2023.
- China’s carbon intensity – its emissions per unit of GDP – only improved by 5.5%, well short of the 7% needed to meet the country’s intensity target for 2025.
- This was despite a one-off boost from China’s hydropower fleet recovering from drought.
- Compared with a year earlier, the increase in the number of electric vehicles (EVs) on China’s roads cut demand for transport fuels by approximately 4%.
- Manufacturing solar panels, EVs and batteries was only responsible for 1.6% of China’s electricity consumption and 2.9% of its emissions in the first half of 2024.
A slew of recent policy developments, summarised below, hint at a renewed focus in Beijing on the country’s energy and climate targets.
Yet the precise timing and height of China’s CO2 emissions peak, as well as the pace of subsequent reductions, remain key uncertainties for global climate action.
First post-Covid fall in CO2
China’s CO2 emissions fell by 1% in the second quarter of 2024, the first quarterly fall since the country re-opened from zero-Covid, as shown in the figure below.
Within the overall total, power sector emissions fell by 3%, cement production fell by 7% and oil consumption by 3%.
The reduction in CO2 emissions was driven by the surge in clean energy additions, which is driving fossil fuel power into reverse. (See: Clean energy additions on track to top 2023 record.)
However, rapid energy demand growth in sectors such as coal-to-chemicals diluted the impact of changes in the electricity sector. (See: Rapid energy demand growth.)
Clean energy additions on track to top 2023 record
The additions of new clean power capacity in China have continued to boom this year.
China added 102 gigawatts (GW) of new solar and 26GW of wind in the first half of 2024, as shown in the figure below. Solar additions were up 31% and wind additions up 12% compared with the first half of last year, so China is on track to beat last year’s record installations.
As a result of the strong capacity growth – and despite poor wind conditions – solar and wind covered 52% of electricity demand growth in the first half of 2024 and 71% since March. (The fall in wind speeds can be seen from NASA MERRA-2 data averaged for all of China.)
Indeed, the increase in power generation from solar and wind reported by the National Energy Administration in the first half of the year, at 171 terawatt hours (TWh), exceeded the UK’s total electricity supply of 160TWh in the first half of 2023.
Rapid demand growth in January–February, at 11%, had outpaced even the clean energy additions. But combined with a rebound in hydropower generation, the increase in non-fossil electricity supply exceeded power demand growth in the March to June period.
These shifts are shown in the figure below, illustrating how clean power expansion started to exceed electricity demand growth in recent months, pushing coal and gas power into reverse.
After stopping the publication of capacity utilisation data by technology in May, the National Energy Administration released data in July on power generation by technology for renewable sources – solar, wind, hydro and biomass.
The NEA’s data shows renewable electricity generation covering 35% of demand in the first half of 2024 and growing 22% year-on-year. This is much higher than the previously-published National Bureau of Statistics numbers – which under-report wind and particularly solar power generation – but is closely aligned with estimates previously published by Carbon Brief.
In terms of other clean energy technologies, the production of electric vehicles, batteries and solar cells – the so-called “new-three” due to their recently acquired economic significance – continued to grow strongly in the first half of the year, at 34%, 18% and 37%, respectively.
This growth in production indicates strong demand from China and overseas. The growth of solar cell production halted in June, however.
Rapid energy demand growth
While clean technologies continue to surge in China, energy consumption has also continued to grow at a fast rate relative to GDP. This indicates that the energy-intensive growth pattern that China followed during zero-Covid is continuing.
In the second quarter of 2024, total energy consumption increased by 4.2%, while GDP grew by 4.7%, marking an energy intensity gain of only 0.5%. This energy demand growth is much faster than the pre-Covid trend.
China’s target is an annual improvement of 2.9%, a rate that was exceeded consistently until Covid-era economic policies shifted the country’s growth pattern. Economic growth during and after zero-Covid has been reliant on energy-intensive manufacturing industries.
The main structural drivers of recent energy consumption growth were the coal-to-chemicals industry, and industrial demand for power and gas.
The coal-to-chemicals industry produces petrochemical products from coal instead of oil, supporting China’s energy security goals but at a great cost to climate goals, as the coal-based production processes have far higher carbon footprints.
China’s energy security drive and falling coal prices relative to oil prices have driven a boom in this industry. When coal supply was tight in 2022–23, the government was controlling coal use by the chemical industry to increase supply to power plants. As the coal supply situation has eased in 2024, this has enabled coal-to-chemicals plants to increase production, with coal consumption in the chemical industry growing 21% in the first half of the year.
Gas consumption increased 8.7% in the first half of the year, with industrial and residential gas consumption rising strongly, even as power generation from gas fell. Residential demand was driven up by extreme cold in the winter, however, rather than by structural factors.
On the flipside, the demand for oil products continued to fall, with a 3% drop in the second quarter that accelerated in the summer.
There are multiple factors driving the reduction: the shift to electric vehicles is contributing to the drop, with the share of EVs in cumulative vehicle sales over the past 10 years – an indicator of the mix of vehicles on the road – reaching 11.5% in June, up from 7.7% a year ago. This means that the increase in EVs cut the demand for transport fuels by approximately 4%.
The ongoing contraction in construction volumes, which is apparent in the fall in cement production, also affects oil demand, as the construction sector is a major source of demand for oil products for freight and machinery.
Another key driver is weak demand for oil as a petrochemical feedstock, which the rapidly increasing coal-to-chemicals production attempts to displace with the use of coal, albeit at a cost of increased CO2 emissions.
The contraction in construction volumes, caused by a slowdown in real estate that began in 2021, is weighing on the demand for cement and steel. Besides the direct effect of less real estate construction, local government revenues are dragged down by a fall in land sales, affecting their ability to spend on infrastructure construction.
These changes in demand for energy can been seen in the figure below, which shows contributions to the change in China’s CO2 emissions in the second quarter of this year.
While CO2 emissions did fall in the second quarter, the rate of CO2 intensity improvements fell short of the level needed to meet China’s 2025 carbon intensity commitment.
The country’s goal is to reduce emissions relative to GDP by 18% from 2020 to 2025, with progress until 2023 falling far short of the target.
As reported GDP growth slowed to 4.7% in the second quarter, and CO2 emissions fell by 1%, CO2 intensity improved by 5.5%, short of the 7% annual improvement needed in 2024-25 to get back on track.
Improvements are also easier to achieve this year than they will be in 2025, as the rebound of hydropower from the low availability in 2022–23 helps reduce emissions. This is a one-off tailwind that is not likely to be present in 2025.
One part of the energy-intensive industry that China has been relying on to drive economic growth is the manufacturing of clean energy technologies. In response, some commentators have exaggerated the CO2 impact of Chinese factories making solar panels, EVs and batteries.
In reality, however, the manufacturing of these goods was responsible for 1.6% of China’s electricity consumption and 2.9% of its emissions in the first half of 2024, based on calculations using publicly available data.
The same calculations show that their CO2 emissions and electricity consumption increased by approximately 27% in the same period, contributing a 0.6% increase in China’s total fossil CO2 emissions and 0.4% increase in electricity consumption.
Looking ahead to the rest of this year, energy consumption growth is expected to cool. The China Electricity Council projects electricity demand growth of 5% in the second half of the year, compared with 8.1% in the first half, and the National Energy Administration expects full-year gas demand growth to moderate to 6.5–7.7%, from 8.7% in the first half.
If these projections are accurate, then the continued growth of clean energy consumption would be sufficient to push China’s CO2 emissions into decline this year.
However, the faster-than-expected energy demand growth in the first half of the year dilutes the emission reductions from the country’s record clean energy additions, and adds uncertainty to whether China’s emissions will indeed fall in 2024 compared with 2023.
If the growth rates of energy demand, by fuel and sector, seen in the second quarter of this year continue into the third and fourth quarter, with similar continuity in the growth rates of non-fossil electricity generation, then China’s emissions would stay flat in 2024 overall.
Recent policy developments
Energy consumption growth could also be moderated by a renewed policy focus on energy and climate targets. In May of this year, the State Council, China’s top administrative body, issued an action plan on energy conservation and CO2 emission reductions in 2024–25.
This plan is notable both for the unusual time period, covering the last two years of the five-year plan period, and for its high-level nature – energy conservation would normally fall under the jurisdiction of the energy and environmental regulators, rather than the State Council.
This suggests that the government recognises the shortfall against the 2025 carbon intensity and energy intensity targets. The action plan calls for meeting both of these targets, and lists numerous measures to be undertaken in response.
Yet the plan did not set numerical targets for 2024 that would be consistent with meeting the 2025 targets, which could be seen as taking a hedged approach of pushing for more action but not guaranteeing that sufficient results will be achieved.
Another State Council plan, released in late July, calls for speeding up the creation of a “dual control system” to control total CO2 emissions and emissions intensity. (Historically, China has never set numerical targets for total CO2 emissions, only aiming to limit CO2 intensity.)
According to the July release, the 15th five-year plan will set a binding carbon intensity target in the 2026-30 period, in line with previous five-year plans. For the first time, there will also be a non-binding, “supplementary” target for China’s absolute emissions level in 2030. Then, for each of the following five-year periods, there will be a binding absolute emissions target.
After the shortfall against the 2025 intensity target, the 15th five-year plan period would need to set a demanding intensity target to fulfil China’s 2030 commitments under the Paris Agreement.
The most important political meeting of the year, the “third plenum” of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, took place in July. The readout of the meeting mentioned carbon emissions reduction for the first time, but did not signal a shift to stimulating consumption. This could have driven less emissions-intensive economic growth, reducing reliance on higher-carbon manufacturing or infrastructure expansion.
The key focus of the meeting was promoting “new quality productive forces”, meaning advanced manufacturing and innovation. In practice, this likely implies a continued emphasis on manufacturing, with the potential for the energy-intensive economic growth pattern to continue.
Another indication that carbon emissions are receiving more policy emphasis is that the government appears to have stopped permitting new coal-based steelmaking projects since the beginning of 2024.
Hundreds of coal-based “replacement” projects were permitted in previous years, preparing to replace up to 40% of China’s existing steelmaking capacity with brand-new furnaces.
The shift away from new coal-based capacity is consistent with China’s target of increasing the use of electric arc furnaces – but progress towards that target had been lagging.
On coal-fired power, the government issued a new policy on “low-carbon transformation” of coal plants, aiming to initiate “low-carbon” retrofitting projects of a batch of coal power plants in 2025, with the target of reducing the CO2 emissions of those plants 20% below the average for similar plants in 2023, and another batch in 2027 aiming for emission levels 50% below 2023 average.
Under this transformation plan, emissions reductions at targeted coal plants are supposed to be achieved by “co-firing” coal with either biomass or “green” ammonia derived from renewables-based hydrogen, or by adding carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS).
However, there are no targets for how many coal plants should be retrofitted, or what the incentives will be to do that, which will obviously determine the direct impact of this policy.
The impact could be small as biomass supply is limited, while the costs of ammonia and CCUS are high. For example, the International Energy Agency – among the more optimistic on power generation from biomass – sees its share rising from 2% in 2022 to 4.5% in 2035, if China meets its pledges on energy and climate IEA’s.
Furthermore, much of China’s coal-fired generation is already unprofitable, with almost half of the firms in the sector operating at a loss – even before taking on costly new measures.
The policy does however constitute Beijing’s first attempt at reconciling the recent permitting spree of new coal-fired power plants with its CO2 peaking goal for 2030, and looking for alternatives to early closure or under-utilisation of at least a part of the coal power fleet.
Prospects for a 2023 emissions peak and beyond
China’s emissions fell year-on-year in March and in the second quarter, as expected in my analysis for Carbon Brief last year.
Faster-than-expected growth in coal demand for the chemical industry, however, as well as industrial demand for power and gas, has diluted the emission reductions from the power sector, making the fall in emissions smaller than expected.
Nevertheless, China is likely still on track to begin a structural decline in emissions in 2024, making 2023 the peak year for CO2 emissions.
In order for this projection to bear out in reality, clean energy growth would need to continue and the expected cooling in energy demand growth in the second half of the year would need to materialise, with the new policy focus on energy savings and carbon emissions proving lasting.
The trends that could upset this projection include the economic policy focus on manufacturing, and the expansion of the coal-to-chemicals industry.
The surge in coal use for coal-to-chemicals is also a demonstration that even if power sector emissions begin to fall, as long as China’s climate commitments allow emissions to increase, there is the potential for developments that increase emissions in other sectors.
China has committed to updating its climate targets for 2030 and releasing new targets for 2035 early next year. These targets will be key in cementing the emissions peak and specifying the targeted rate of emission reductions after the peak – both of which have seismic implications for the global emissions trajectory and the level at which temperatures can be stabilised.
About the data
Data for the analysis was compiled from the National Bureau of Statistics of China, National Energy Administration of China, China Electricity Council and China Customs official data releases, and from WIND Information, an industry data provider.
Wind and solar output, and thermal power breakdown by fuel, was calculated by multiplying power generating capacity at the end of each month by monthly utilisation, using data reported by China Electricity Council through Wind Financial Terminal.
Total generation from thermal power and generation from hydropower and nuclear power was taken from National Bureau of Statistics monthly releases.
Monthly utilisation data was not available for biomass, so the annual average of 52% for 2023 was applied. Power sector coal consumption was estimated based on power generation from coal and the average heat rate of coal-fired power plants during each month, to avoid the issue with official coal consumption numbers affecting recent data.
When data was available from multiple sources, different sources were cross-referenced and official sources used when possible, adjusting total consumption to match the consumption growth and changes in the energy mix reported by the National Bureau of Statistics for the first quarter and the first half of the year. The effect of the adjustments is less than 1% for all energy sources, and the conclusion that emissions fell in the second quarter holds both with and without this adjustment.
CO2 emissions estimates are based on National Bureau of Statistics default calorific values of fuels and emissions factors from China’s latest national greenhouse gas emissions inventory, for the year 2018. Cement CO2 emissions factor is based on annual estimates up to 2023.
For oil consumption, apparent consumption is calculated from refinery throughput, with net exports of oil products subtracted.
The post Analysis: China’s CO2 falls 1% in Q2 2024 in first quarterly drop since Covid-19 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: China’s CO2 falls 1% in Q2 2024 in first quarterly drop since Covid-19
Greenhouse Gases
Analysis: Reform-led councils threaten 6GW of solar and battery schemes across England
Reform UK’s local-election victories in May 2025 could put 6 gigawatts (GW) of new clean-energy capacity at risk, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
The hard-right populist party took control of 10 English councils in last month’s local elections and has said it will use “every lever” to block new wind, solar and battery projects.
Those 10 areas have jurisdiction over 5,076 megawatts (MW) of battery schemes, 786MW of solar and 56MW of wind, according to Carbon Brief’s analysis of industry data.
While Reform has also pledged to “ban” battery systems, councils do not have direct control over these projects, which are determined by local planning authorities.
It could still influence local planning decisions, planning experts tell Carbon Brief.
However, this is likely to prove a “nuisance” with “limited effect” in terms of the government’s targets for clean power overall, according to one planning lawyer.
Opposing net-zero
Reform UK’s leaders are openly sceptical about the causes and consequences of human-caused climate change. The party is also explicitly opposed to the UK’s net-zero target, which, at a global level, is the only way to stop warming from getting worse, according to scientists.
The party has pledged to “scrap net-zero” if it ever takes power at the national level, falsely asserting that this would free up billions of pounds of public money for tax cuts and welfare programmes.
(Its assertions ignore the fact that the large majority of the investments needed to reach net-zero are expected to come from the private sector, rather than government funds. They also do not account for the economic benefits of lower fossil fuel use or avoided climate impacts. The party’s misleading claims have been widely dismissed by economists.)
Reform UK has also said it would “ban” battery storage projects and impose new taxes on solar and wind power installations.
As it stands, the party only has five MPs in parliament. However, its success in the recent English local elections and favourable polling numbers have raised its profile in UK politics and given it new powers in some areas.
To assess the potential impact of these new powers on clean-energy expansion, Carbon Brief looked at data for 10 local councils where Reform UK won overall control, shown in the map below, including Durham, Kent and Derbyshire, as well as two mayoralties.
(The analysis does not include Warwickshire, where no party gained a majority in the elections. However, a subsequent vote saw the party’s local head selected to lead the county council. He has announced plans to “dumb down” net-zero initiatives in the county.)
Following the election, Richard Tice, Reform MP and deputy leader, said the party would use “every lever” available to block new renewable-energy projects in the areas it now controls.
At the heart of this commitment is Lincolnshire, the location of Tice’s own constituency, Boston and Skegness, which now also has a Reform-run council and a Reform mayor.
The rural county is the site of several large-scale solar project proposals, which have faced a strong backlash from some local people.
This mirrors a wider trend of opposition to solar and battery projects by campaigners, who say they are concerned about, what they allege, could be the impact on the local countryside and farmers.
However, such views are not the norm. Survey data shows overwhelming public support for solar and other renewables across the UK, even if projects are built in people’s local areas.
Analysis by thinktank the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit also noted that by rejecting net-zero-related projects, Reform UK could threaten thousands of jobs and millions of pounds of investment in areas such as Lincolnshire.
Capacity at risk
In total, some 5,862MW of solar and storage capacity is currently seeking local planning authority planning approval across the 10 Reform-controlled councils, Carbon Brief’s analysis shows. This is broken down by council area in the figure below.
This includes a series of smaller proposed solar farms, each with a capacity of less than 50MW, meaning they need local planning approval.
(The threshold for local planning approval, currently 50MW, is set to rise to 100MW in 2026.)
Solar farms above this capacity threshold go through the “nationally significant infrastructure planning” (NSIP) process. These large-scale projects are then assessed by energy secretary Ed Miliband, who can grant or deny a development consent order.
Local planning authorities (LPAs) are guided by the national planning policy framework (NPPF), rather than the politics of the county councils under which they sit.
However, the Reform-controlled councils overseeing these authorities will likely attempt to assert influence over approvals.
Gareth Phillips, partner at Pinsent Masons law firm and specialist in renewable energy planning and project development, tells Carbon Brief that, while county councils are not responsible for determining planning applications, they do have influence over the outcome.
He tells Carbon Brief:
“[Councils are an] important consultee, required to respond to statutory consultation…which gives the opportunity for county-council members to influence the planning decision…In the case of Reform, it is possible that its elected members may seek to rally support for opposing planning applications, perhaps leading campaigns against the proposals. The risk here is that it may give the perception of credence to opposing views.”
Phillips says that in addition to influencing planning authority decisions, county councils could issue new strategic planning guidelines for their areas. He explains:
“It will be for the LPA to decide what, if any, weight to place on the county council’s views, when determining the planning application. Over time, it’s possible that Reform-led county councils may propose so-called ‘core strategies’, i.e. planning documents setting out strategic level requirements and policy applicable to development proposals in its jurisdiction. Similarly, that policy would be a matter for the LPA to consider and decide how much weight to apply when determining planning applications.”
This risk is mitigated to some extent by the core strategies within the NPPF and the “national policy statements” for energy, he notes.
As such, while local planning authorities will be required to determine the approval or rejection of an application on the basis of wider policy considerations, Reform-led councils could still affect the decision. “Reform-led county councils would have a voice and opportunity to influence planning decisions,” says Philips.
Stand-alone battery energy-storage projects do not have a capacity cap for being processed by local planning authorities, following changes to the regulations in 2020.
However, a number of storage projects that are co-located with solar will be judged under the NSIP process, meaning councils will be unable to block their construction.
Solar strife
Carbon Brief’s analysis looks at projects that have submitted planning permission requests in the 10 Reform-controlled counties, using Solar Energy UK’s SolarPulse database for solar and storage.
The analysis also covers relevant onshore wind projects, based on data from the government’s renewable energy planning database.
(Solar Energy UK notes that the SolarPulse database does not include solar projects with a capacity of less than 5MW.)
The analysis shows that there is 1,866MW of proposed solar capacity awaiting planning permission in Lincolnshire, by far the largest pipeline, as shown in the chart below.
The majority of this capacity is subject to national-level approval as it is above the NSIP threshold. Nevertheless, the county still has the most solar-power projects awaiting permission from the local planning authority, some 166MW.
(A key reason Lincolnshire dominates this picture for solar power development is due to grid capacity. The county was home to several large-scale coal-fired power plants, such as West Burton, which have shuttered in recent years as part of the UK’s transition away from coal. This means there is more capacity for new generators to connect to the grid in the county than in many others, where the system is currently more constrained.)
Overall, the bulk of the proposed capacity at risk is battery storage, which has seen a surge in applications and installations in recent years.
There was 5,013MW of battery storage capacity in operation as of December 2025 and another 5,115MW under construction, according to trade association RenewableUK. It says an additional 40,223MW had planning approval and a further 77,354MW was under development.
Impact of rejection
Overall, even if local planning authorities under the 10 Reform UK-run councils were to reject all of the nearly 6GW of proposed solar and storage capacity in their areas, it would have a limited impact on the UK’s wider solar, storage and wind targets.
If built, the 786MW of proposed solar would generate 757 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity. On average, a household in the UK uses 2,700 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity each year, meaning these solar farms would be able to power the equivalent of around 280,000 homes – some 1% of the national total.
If all of this proposed solar were rejected and the electricity were generated from gas-fired power stations instead, it would result in an extra 0.3m tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per year. (This is equivalent to less than a tenth of 1% of the UK’s annual total.)
In total, the potential 757GWh of solar power could help displace around £60m of gas per year, based on wholesale prices in 2025 to date.
Private investment could also be impacted. Each 1MW of solar would attract around £1m of investment, meaning the 786MW of capacity would bring roughly £786m into the Reform-led counties. This would have an impact on local supply chains and “community benefit” schemes.
Similarly, battery schemes with four hours of storage capacity also require around £1m of investment per megawatt. This means another £5bn of investment – some 5,076MW of capacity – could be at risk under Reform-led councils.
The total investment at risk for solar and storage is, therefore, close to £6bn.
While a large amount of potential new solar and storage capacity is being proposed in the Reform-led council areas and some could be put at risk as a result, it is also the case that some of these developments could fail for other reasons.
According to research from consultancy Cornwall Insight in February, the current battery storage “connection queue” is double the grid’s requirement for 2030. This means there are many more projects in the queue to gain access to the electricity network than needed.
The government’s plan for reaching its target of “clean power 2030” sets a guideline of 27GW of storage capacity by the end of this decade, whereas some 61GW of battery projects are seeking a grid connection over the same period.
This means the UK would have enough options to meet its 2030 storage requirements even if some proposed battery projects fail due to Reform-led councils, says Ed Porter, global director of industry for battery analysts Modo Energy. He tells Carbon Brief:
“With more than 50GW of battery projects with planning consent, projects could be targeted in Reform areas, but the UK would still have sufficient options to meet clean-power 2030 targets, subject to the achievable build out rate of storage projects.”
The main outcome of Reform-led refusals would be to block profitable projects that could reduce consumer costs and cut CO2 emissions, Porter adds.
Still, there is no guarantee that all of these projects – and the solar proposals – would have received planning permission if Reform UK had not been elected in the relevant areas.
According to figures from Solar Media Market Research, the local authority refusal rate for proposed solar-power projects rose to almost 25% in 2024, the highest on record. This is up from 15% in 2022 and 20% in 2023.
However, the majority of projects that are refused by local authorities still end up being approved. Over the past five years, some 80% of projects that went to appeal were subsequently approved, according to Solar Media. All 12 of the solar projects that have gone to appeal in 2025 to date have been approved.
Battery energy-storage refusals hit a high of 22% in 2024, according to Solar Media. However, in 2025 so far, this has dropped to 9%.
Connections challenge
Even if Reform UK-led councils are unable to block clean-energy developments outright, the party’s pledge to “fight [developers] every step of the way” could still make the process more challenging.
One key way this could hamper the development of renewable energy technologies is by forcing them to go through the appeals process, extending the time it takes to gain planning permission by as much as a year.
Following changes to the grid connections queue, new connection agreements include strict delivery deadlines for obtaining planning permission.
As such, if a project ends up going to appeal – and is, therefore, delayed – it could risk missing deadlines and having its grid connection agreement terminated.
Additionally, with the capacity limit for NSIPs set to change in December, more projects – solar projects between 50MW and 100MW – will go to local planning authorities for approval. This will increase the number that could be threatened by Reform UK’s influence.
Ultimately, though, there is limited renewable-energy capacity seeking planning permission in Reform-controlled counties, more than enough capacity in planning nationally to meet targets, plus the role of the council in what is – or is not – approved is limited.
Planning lawyer Philips concludes that Reform-led councils are only likely to cause a “nuisance”, with “limited effect”. He says:
“In summary, there is the potential for Reform-led county councils to cause a nuisance for renewable energy projects in the planning process, but this will be limited in effect.
“I’m not concerned about this because of the weight of policy support there is for those projects, which should serve to mitigate the influence Reform could otherwise have.”
The post Analysis: Reform-led councils threaten 6GW of solar and battery schemes across England appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Reform-led councils threaten 6GW of solar and battery schemes across England
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 13 June 2025: Trump’s ‘biggest’ climate rollback; UK goes nuclear; How Carbon Brief visualises research
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Trump’s latest climate rollback
RULES REPEALED: The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has begun dismantling Biden-era regulations limiting pollution from power plants, including carbon dioxide emissions, reported the Financial Times. Announcing the repeal, climate-sceptic EPA administrator Lee Zeldin labelled efforts to fight climate change a “cult”, according to the New York Times. Politico said that these actions are the “most important EPA regulatory actions of Donald Trump’s second term to date”.
WEBSITE SHUTDOWN: The Guardian reported that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Climate.gov website “will imminently no longer publish new content” after all production staff were fired. Former employees of the agency interviewed by the Guardian believe the cuts were “specifically aimed at restricting public-facing climate information”.
EVS TARGETED: The Los Angeles Times reported that Trump signed legislation on Thursday “seeking to rescind California’s ambitious auto emission standards, including a landmark rule that eventually would have barred sales of new gas-only cars in California by 2035”.
UK goes nuclear
NEW NUCLEAR: In her first spending review, UK chancellor Rachel Reeves announced £14.2bn for the Sizewell C new nuclear power plant in Suffolk, England – the first new state-backed nuclear power station for decades and the first ever under a Labour government, BBC News reported. The government also announced funding for three small nuclear reactors to be built by Rolls-Royce, said the Times. Carbon Brief has just published a chart showing the “rise, fall and rise” of UK nuclear.
MILIBAND REWARDED: The Times described energy secretary Ed Miliband as one of the “biggest winners” from the review. In spite of relentless negative reporting around him from right-leaning publications, his Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) received the largest relative increase in capital spending. Carbon Brief’s summary has more on all the key climate and energy takeaways from the spending review.
Around the world
- UN OCEAN SUMMIT: In France, a “surge in support” brought the number of countries ratifying the High Seas Treaty to just 10 short of the 60 needed for the agreement to become international law, according to Sky News.
- CALLING TRUMP: Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said he would “call” Trump to “persuade him” to attend COP30, according to Agence France-Presse. Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported that the country’s environmental agency has fast tracked oil and highway projects that threaten the Amazon.
- GERMAN FOSSIL SURGE: Due to “low” wind levels, electricity generation from renewables in Germany fell by 17% in the first quarter of this year, while generation from fossil-fuel sources increased significantly, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
- BATTERY BOOST: The power ministry in India announced 54bn rupees ($631m) in funding to build 30 gigawatt-hours of new battery energy storage systems to “ensure round-the-clock renewable energy capacities”, reported Money Control.
-19.3C
The temperature that one-in-10 London winters could reach in a scenario where a key Atlantic ocean current system “collapses” and global warming continues under “intermediate” emissions, according to new research covered by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- A study in Science Advances found that damage to coral reefs due to climate change will “outpace” reef expansion. It said “severe declines” will take place within 40-80 years, while “large-scale coral reef expansion requires centuries”.
- Climatic Change published research which identified “displacement and violence, caregiving burdens, early marriages of girls, human trafficking and food insecurity” as the main “mental health” stressors exacerbated by climate change for women in lower and middle-income countries.
- The weakening of a major ocean current system has partially offset the drying of the southern Amazon rainforest, research published in Environmental Research has found, demonstrating that climate tipping elements have the potential to moderate each other.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Aerosols – tiny light‑scattering particles produced mainly by burning fossil fuels – absorb or reflect incoming sunlight and influence the formation and brightness of clouds. In this way they have historically “acted as an invisible brake on global warming”. New Carbon Brief analysis by Dr Zeke Hausfather illustrated the extent to which a reduction in aerosol emissions in recent decades, while bringing widespread public health benefits through avoided deaths, has “unmasked” the warming caused by CO2 and other greenhouse gases. The chart above shows the estimated cooling effect of aerosols from the start of the industrial era until 2020.
Spotlight
How Carbon Brief turns complex research into visuals
This week, Carbon Brief’s interactive developer Tom Pearson explains how and why his team creates visuals from research papers.
Carbon Brief’s journalists will often write stories based on new scientific research or policy reports.
These documents will usually contain charts or graphics highlighting something interesting about the story. Sometimes, Carbon Brief’s visuals team will choose to recreate these graphics.
There are many reasons why we choose to spend time and effort doing this, but most often it can be boiled down to some combination of the following things.
Maintaining editorial and visual consistency
We want to, where possible, maintain editorial and visual consistency while matching our graphical and editorial style guides.
In doing this, we are trying to ease our audience’s reading experience. We hope that, by presenting a chart in a way that is consistent with Carbon Brief’s house style, readers will be able to concentrate on the story or the explanation we are trying to communicate and not the way that a chart might have been put together.
Highlighting relevant information
We want to highlight the part of a chart that is most relevant to the story.
Graphics in research papers, especially if they have been designed for a print context, often strive to illustrate many different points with a single figure.
We tend to use charts to answer a single question or provide evidence for a single point.
Paring charts back to their core “message”, removing extraneous elements and framing the chart with a clear editorial title helps with this, as the example below shows.
Ensuring audience understanding
We want to ensure our audience understands the “message” of the chart.
Graphics published in specialist publications, such as scientific journals, might have different expectations regarding a reader’s familiarity with the subject matter and the time they might be expected to spend reading an article.
If we can redraw a chart so that it meets the expectations of a more general audience, we will.
Supporting multiple contexts
We want our graphics to make sense in different contexts.
While we publish our graphics primarily in articles on our website, the nature of the internet means that we cannot guarantee that this is how people will encounter them.
Charts are often shared on social media or copy-pasted into presentations. We want to support these practices by including as much context relevant to understanding within the chart image as possible.
Below illustrates how adding a title and key information can make a chart easier to understand without supporting information.
When we do not recreate charts
When will we not redraw a chart? Most of the time! We are a small team and recreating data graphics requires time, effort, accessible data and often specialist software.
But, despite these constraints, when the conditions are right, the process of redrawing maps and charts allows us to communicate more clearly with our readers, transforming complex research into accessible visual stories.
Watch, read, listen
SPENDING $1BN ON CLIMATE: New Scientist interviewed Greg de Temmerman, former nuclear physicist turned chief science officer at Quadrature Climate Foundation, about the practicalities and ethics of philanthropic climate-science funding.
GENDER HURDLES: Research director Tracy Kajumba has written for Climate Home News about the barriers that women still face in attending and participating in COPs.
OCEAN HEATWAVES: The New York Times presented a richly illustrated look at how marine heatwaves are spreading across the globe and how they affect life in the oceans.
Coming up
- 16-26 June: Bonn climate talks, Bonn, Germany
- 16 June: 79th meeting of the World Meteorological Organization executive council, Geneva, Switzerland
- 17 June: International Energy Agency (IEA) Oil 2025 report launch
Pick of the jobs
- Inside Climate News, California environmental reporter | Salary: Unknown. Location: Southern California
- Natural Resources Wales, lead marine and energy policy advisor | Salary: £45,367-£50,877. Location: Wales
- Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, senior manager, climate | Salary: £82,000. Location: London/hybrid
- Green Party,social media and digital content officer | Salary: £33,211. Location: London/remote
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 13 June 2025: Trump’s ‘biggest’ climate rollback; UK goes nuclear; How Carbon Brief visualises research appeared first on Carbon Brief.
The UK’s chancellor Rachel Reeves gave the green light this week to the Sizewell C new nuclear plant in Suffolk, along with funding for “small modular reactors” (SMRs) and nuclear fusion.
In her spending review of government funding across the rest of this parliament, Reeves pledged £14.2bn for Sizewell C, £2.5bn for Rolls-Royce SMRs and £2.5bn for fusion research.
The UK was a pioneer in civilian nuclear power – opening the world’s first commercial reactor at Calder Hall in Cumbria in 1956 – which, ultimately, helped to squeeze out coal generation.
Over the decades that followed, the UK’s nuclear capacity climbed to a peak of 12.2 gigawatts (GW) in 1995, while electricity output from the fleet of reactors peaked in 1998.
The chart below shows the contribution of each of the UK’s nuclear plants to the country’s overall capacity, according to when they started and stopped operating.
The reactors are dotted around the UK’s coastline, where they can take advantage of cooling seawater, and many sites include multiple units coded with numbers or letters.
Since Sizewell B was completed in 1995, however, no new nuclear plants have been built – and, as the chart above shows, capacity has ebbed away as older reactors have gone out of service.
After a lengthy hiatus, the Hinkley C new nuclear plant in Somerset was signed off in 2016. It is now under construction and expected to start operating by 2030 at the earliest.
(Efforts to secure further new nuclear schemes at Moorside in Cumbria failed in 2017, while projects led by Hitachi at Wylfa on Anglesey and Oldbury in Gloucestershire collapsed in 2019.)
The additional schemes just given the go-ahead in Reeves’s spending review would – if successful – somewhat revive the UK’s nuclear capacity, after decades of decline.
However, with the closure of all but one of the UK’s existing reactors due by 2030, nuclear-power capacity would remain below its 1995 peak, unless further projects are built.
Moreover, with the UK’s electricity demand set to double over the next few decades, as transport, heat and industry are increasingly electrified, nuclear power is unlikely to match the 29% share of generation that it reached during the late 1990s.
There is an aspirational goal – set under former Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson – for nuclear to supply “up to” a quarter of the UK’s electricity in 2050, with “up to” 24GW of capacity.
Assuming Sizewell B continues to operate until 2055 and that Hinkley C, Sizewell C and at least three Rolls-Royce SMRs are all built, this would take UK capacity back up to 9.0GW.
Methodology
The chart is based on data from the World Nuclear Association, with known start dates for operating and retired reactors, as well as planned closure dates announced by operator EDF.
The timeline for new reactors to start operating – and assumed 60-year lifetime – is illustrative, based on published information from EDF, Rolls-Royce, the UK government and media reports.
The post Chart: The rise, fall and rise of UK nuclear power over eight decades appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Chart: The rise, fall and rise of UK nuclear power over eight decades
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