A Conservative victory over the Liberals in the Canadian election could lead to nearly 800m extra tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
This amounts to the entire annual emissions of the UK and France combined.
These extra emissions would cause around C$233bn ($169bn) in climate damages around the world, based on the Canadian government’s official costings.
The right-leaning Conservative party, led by Pierre Poilievre, has pledged to cut one of the nation’s most significant climate policies – industrial carbon pricing – as well as other key regulations.
If these policies are removed and not replaced, modelling by researchers from Simon Fraser University and University of Victoria shows that Canada’s gradually declining emissions would likely start to creep up again in the coming years.
In contrast, emissions would continue to fall under the policies currently backed by Mark Carney’s centrist Liberal party, which has overseen a modest decrease over the past decade.
However, Carbon Brief analysis of the modelling also suggests that neither of the major parties’ policy platforms would put Canada on track to reach any of its climate targets.
These figures complement analysis by the Canadian government showing that the nation still needs to implement more ambitious measures in order to reach its target to cut emissions to net-zero by 2050.
(For more on Canada’s election, see Carbon Brief’s manifesto tracker, which captures what the major parties have said about climate change, energy and nature.)
Conservatives could raise emissions
Canada is the world’s 10th biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. Significant contributors include its sizeable oil-and-gas sector and high emissions from transport.
The nation has been relatively slow to decarbonise. However, after a decade of rule by the Liberals, led by prime minister Justin Trudeau, there has been a small dip in Canada’s emissions.
With a federal election looming, an unpopular Trudeau resigned and was replaced in March by Carney, an economist with a background in climate finance.
His main rival in the election, which takes place on 28 April, will be the Conservatives, a party that until recently was the clear favourite. Conservative leader Poilievre has accused the Liberal government of pursuing “net-zero environmental extremism” and Carney of being part of the “radical net-zero movement”.
A sudden shift in polling that put the Liberals ahead has been widely attributed to their right-leaning opponents’ alignment with Donald Trump. This alignment has become politically toxic, following the US president’s tariffs and talk of annexing Canada.
Carbon pricing is at the heart of Canadian climate politics. Poilievre has long pledged to “axe the tax”, referring to a consumer levy that is meant to incentivise people to use less fossil fuel.
When Carney took office, his first action was to cut this carbon tax to zero, effectively ending his party’s signature climate policy.
In response, Poilievre pledged to cut the “entire carbon tax”, referring to a federal backstop on carbon pricing applied to major industrial emitters, such as fossil-fuel producers. He has also committed to abandoning other climate regulations.
The impact of these rollbacks is illustrated by the “Conservatives” line in the figure below, based on the party’s climate-related announcements to date. Notably, Canada’s emissions would be expected to start rising again, reversing some of the recent decline.
The “Liberals” line is based on current federal policies, excluding the consumer carbon tax. It would see a continued, steady drop in emissions if the Liberals retain power, even if they fail to implement any new climate policies after the election.
As such, a Conservative victory could mean an additional 771m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) entering the atmosphere by 2035.
Along with the US, Canada has long calculated the “social cost of carbon” and other greenhouse gases, in order to place a value on any emissions changes resulting from new regulations.
Based on Carbon Brief analysis of the government’s own figures for this metric, the extra emissions released under a Conservative government could result in global damages worth C$233bn ($169bn).
The emissions trajectories out to 2035 are based on modelling carried out by climate scientists Emma Starke, a PhD researcher at Simon Fraser University, and Dr Katya Rhodes, an associate professor at the University of Victoria.
Starke and Rhodes simulated the policy platforms of the two major Canadian parties using the CIMS energy-economy model, a well-established tool for understanding the country’s federal climate policies.
The researchers ran the models out to 2035, twice the normal parliamentary term length, to reflect the timespan it can take for policies to significantly affect annual emissions.
Starke tells Carbon Brief the “simple message” of their work is that a federal Liberal government is “likely to continue reducing emissions while a Conservative government would see them rise significantly”.
If the Conservative party were to trigger such a reversal, Canada would be the only G7 nation with rising emissions.
The nation is already something of an outlier, with slower emissions cuts than most major global-north economies and per-capita emissions three times higher than the EU average.
Even in the “Liberals” scenario modelled by Starke and Rhodes, emissions would only fall to 1990 levels in 2035. Meanwhile, nations such as the UK and Germany have already roughly halved their emissions from 1990 levels, even as their economies have expanded.
Canada continues to miss targets
Canada has a net-zero target for 2050. Under the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, it also has interim targets of cutting its emissions to 20% below 2005 levels by 2026, 40-45% by 2030 and 45-50% by 2035.
As the yellow lines in the chart above show, neither of the major Canadian parties has set out a policy programme that is sufficient to achieve the nation’s climate targets.
Emissions cuts from land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF), which count towards these targets, are not captured in the CIMS modelling of the two parties’ climate policies.
However, even when accounting for projected LULUCF emissions reductions, Carbon Brief analysis suggests a potential Liberal government’s annual emissions could be nearly one-third higher than the 2030 target.
Under a Conservative government, this gap could widen to more than 50% higher. (For more information about LULUCF estimates, see the Methodology.)
For context, the Conservatives’ gap in 2030 would be nearly equivalent to the entire annual emissions of Bangladesh. The Liberals’ gap in the same year would be roughly the size of Kuwait’s annual emissions.
This pessimistic outlook is supported by analysis from the Canadian government itself and independent analysts at the Canadian Climate Institute (CCI). Both have repeatedly shown that Canada is not on track to achieve its climate targets. (Analysts at Climate Action Tracker have also described Canada’s policies as “insufficient” to reach the world’’s Paris Agreement targets.)
This is confirmed by the most recent official projections, published by the government in December 2024 alongside Canada’s first “biennial transparency report” (BTR) to the UN.
The chart below shows that neither of the main scenarios modelled by the government would be sufficient for Canada to reach its targets, meaning further policies would be needed to get on track.
Even in the government’s most optimistic scenario, Canada would only achieve an 18% emissions cut by 2026 – rather than the 20% being targeted – and a 34% cut by 2030, rather than 40%.
The “reference” scenario, shown by the upper grey line in the chart above, accounts for all federal, provincial and territorial policies that were in place by August 2024 and assumes no further government action. (This means it does not include more recent actions, such as scrapping consumer carbon pricing.)
The “additional measures” scenario, shown by the lower grey line in the chart above, includes extra measures that were announced, but not yet implemented.
It also includes extra emissions cuts from nature-based solutions, agricultural changes and a small number of international carbon credits purchased from the Western Climate Initiative. (Both scenarios also include accounting contributions from LULUCF.)
As the chart shows, the “Liberals” scenario modelled by Starke and Rhodes broadly aligns with the reference scenario, once LULUCF contributions are included. (This is despite Starke and Rhodes excluding the consumer carbon tax, see below.)
In the introduction to Canada’s 2024 BTR, Liberal climate minister Steven Guilbeault writes:
“We have more work to do to achieve our enhanced 2030 target of 40-45% below 2005 emissions.”
The parties’ climate platforms
In an election dominated by the growing economic threat from the US, climate change has not been seen as a key issue by either politicians or voters. (See Carbon Brief’s election manifesto tracker for more on how climate has featured so far.)
The modelling by Starke and Rhodes captures the impact of the climate policy proposals that have been announced by the Liberals and the Conservatives ahead of election day.
These mainly consist of Conservative commitments to eliminate parts of Canada’s climate strategy, citing high costs. Perhaps most significantly, the party has pledged to scrap industrial carbon pricing.
This policy involves setting limits on emissions from high-polluting businesses such as steel and fossil-fuel companies. Industries pay for emissions above a certain limit and can obtain saleable credits if they reduce their emissions below that limit.
Provinces and territories can set up their own pricing systems, but there is a federal backstop representing the minimum standards that are required.
Oil-producing regions have already moved to abandon industrial carbon pricing, challenging the federal government to enforce the backstop.
Canada’s climate policies overlap and complement each other in various ways, making it difficult to assign shares of emissions cuts to specific policies.
However, the CCI calculated in 2024 that industrial carbon pricing was set to be the “single biggest driver of emissions reductions” by 2030, accounting for 20-48% of emissions cuts expected over the next five years.
Consumer carbon pricing, commonly referred to simply as the “carbon tax”, is paid by households and small businesses on fuels such as petrol and gas. The CCI estimates that it would only have been responsible for 8-14% of emissions cuts by 2030.
Both parties have abandoned consumer carbon pricing and this is captured in the emissions trajectories modelled by Starke and Rhodes.
The Conservative election manifesto confirms earlier pledges to scrap a list of climate policies, which are also captured in the modelling. These include Canada’s electric vehicle sales mandate, clean-fuel regulations and clean-electricity regulations.
The electric-vehicle targets, part of Canada’s objective to phase out petrol and diesel vehicle sales by 2035, have been dismissed by Poilievre as a “tax on the poor” that result in people being “forced to pay” extra for electric cars.
Poilievre has referred to clean-fuel regulations, which are intended to boost hydrogen and other alternative fuels in the transport sector, as another form of “carbon tax”. Government estimates suggest these measures would cut emissions by 26MtCO2s annually by 2030.
Unlike these transport-related measures, the clean-electricity regulations are not set to kick in until 2035, so they make minimal difference to the two parties’ trajectories.
The Conservatives have also pledged to scrap the planned emissions cap on Canada’s oil-and-gas sector. The modellers left this out of their simulations, as it has yet to be legislated and there are still uncertainties about its implementation.
The modelling assumes that the Conservatives remove these climate policies and then do not replace them with anything else.
This may not be how things would play out. While the Conservatives are traditionally more opposed to climate action than the Liberals, they have not confirmed that they would withdraw from their national or international obligations altogether.
Indeed, Poilievre has described “technology, not taxes” as “the best way to fight climate change”, saying clean industries should be encouraged in Canada by expanding tax credits. Such proposals are not captured in this modelling.
Starke and Rhodes write that these would in any case have limited impact:
“We do not analyse the effect of various subsidies such as tax credits and grants because all political parties promise these and they have only a marginal effect on greenhouse gas emissions.”
There is also uncertainty around the impact an escalating trade war might have in Canada – including its fossil-fuel sector – as politicians seek to bolster domestic industries. This makes it harder to predict future emissions trajectories under the two parties.
The Conservatives have been more vocal about backing Canada’s fossil-fuel industry, but the Liberals have also expressed support for the sector, including pipeline projects. However, the lack of clarity on such measures mean they only have a “modest effect” in the CIMS modelling, according to Starke and Rhodes.
Methodology
The “Liberal” and “Conservative” scenarios in this article come from modelling by Emma Starke, a PhD researcher at Simon Fraser University, and Dr Katya Rhodes, an associate professor at the University of Victoria.
They used the CIMS energy-economy model to simulate the impact of removing key climate policies, in cases where parties have been clear about their intention to do so.
They did not account for policies that were deemed to have “only a marginal effect on greenhouse gas emissions” and focused on “key regulatory and pricing policies because these are the most important for reducing greenhouse gas emissions”. Their approach is outlined in an article for Policy Options.
The analysis uses the “medium growth scenario” from Statistics Canada forecasts of population and GDP growth.
In the first chart, Carbon Brief uses historical emissions data from Canada’s official greenhouse gas inventory, which at the time of publication includes figures up to 2023. Note that Canadian historical emissions data has undergone changes between years as the government has shifted its methodology. This results in differences between datasets.
Canada’s emissions targets use the baseline year of 2005, for example a 40-45% reduction from 2005. In the most recent inventory, annual emissions in 2005 were 759MtCO2e. This baseline year does not include emissions from LULUCF.
However, Canada can use “accounting contributions” from the LULUCF sector to meet its emissions targets. This involves using a “reference level approach” for managed forest and associated harvested wood products, meaning the government compares actual emissions and removals to a projected “reference level”. It uses a “net-net approach” for all the other LULUCF sub-sectors, meaning both emissions are removals are accounted for to get a net emissions figure.
For simplicity, Carbon Brief has left LULUCF contributions, which are relatively small, out of the historical emissions figures used in the first chart.
The CIMS modelling does not include emissions from LULUCF, so these are not included in the “Liberal” and “Conservative” emissions trajectories. However, in order to calculate the size of the emissions gap between the trajectories and Canada’s future targets, Carbon Brief simply added figures from government projections to these trajectories. These figures amount to emissions reductions of roughly 28-31MtCO2e annually from 2030 out to 2040.
In the second chart, Carbon Brief has used emissions data from the Canadian government’s most recent emissions projections, which appeared in its BTR, published at the end of 2024. These figures are slightly different from the ones in the most recent inventory, include LULUCF contributions and only go out to 2022.
Besides LULUCF contributions, the government reports separately on the impact of nature-based climate solutions, “agriculture measures” and credits purchased under the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), all of which are considered “additional measures” in its modelling. Nature-based solutions and “agriculture measures” cut another 12MtCO2e annually from 2030 onwards, whereas WCI credits are barely used. These figures are included in the “additional measures” government estimate in the second chart.
The post Analysis: Conservative election win could add 800m tonnes to Canada’s emissions by 2035 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Conservative election win could add 800m tonnes to Canada’s emissions by 2035
Greenhouse Gases
Revealed: UK development body still has $700m invested overseas in fossil-fuel assets
British International Investment (BII), a UK government-owned and aid-funded company, has a portfolio of overseas fossil-fuel assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars, Carbon Brief can reveal.
In 2020, BII committed to “aligning” its “future” investments with the Paris Agreement and since then it has doubled its renewable-energy funding.
But, as of 2023, the last year for which data is available, it also still had a large portfolio of gas-fired power plants across Africa and south Asia.
Multiple freedom of information (FOI) requests by Carbon Brief reveal fossil-fuel energy and related projects worth nearly $700m (£526m) on BII’s books, which represents about 6% of its assets in 2023.
The FOI results also show that, at the end of last year, BII still had $70m (£53m) of unspent funds earmarked for foreign fossil-fuel companies in the coming years.
BII has not breached its own investment guidelines and says its fossil-fuel exposure fell further in 2024 as it aims to “manage and responsibly exit” these assets.
However, MPs and campaigners have criticised BII’s legacy fossil-fuel investments for “conflicting” with UK climate goals and diverting increasingly scarce aid resources.
Climate pledge
BII is the UK’s development finance institution (DFI), a publicly owned, for-profit company that invests in businesses in developing countries.
These investments are meant to promote economic development, especially via projects – including new energy infrastructure – deemed “too risky” for private investors.
BII largely supports itself using financial returns from its existing portfolio, which was worth approximately £7.3bn ($9.2bn) in 2023.
However, the UK government has also provided BII with billions of pounds from its aid budget. This support has grown even amid massive cuts to UK aid, with BII receiving an extra £400m last year due to reduced government spending on housing asylum seekers.
The government has also been leaning more on BII to reach its international climate finance goals.
Despite being wholly owned – and partly funded – by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), BII has an “arm’s length” relationship with the UK government and makes its own investment decisions.
In 2020, the previous Conservative government committed the UK to ending new overseas fossil-fuel funding beyond March 2021.
This came after BII – then known as CDC Group – had pledged in its 2020 climate strategy that it would not make any new investments that were “misaligned with the Paris Agreement”, based on a Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures framework.
Then-chief executive Nick O’Donohoe stated that the climate strategy would “shape every single investment decision we make moving forward”.
This was hailed as an end to fossil-fuel financing by the institution, despite some remaining “loopholes”. Notably, its fossil-fuel policy allowed for new investments in gas projects if they were deemed “consistent with a country’s pathway to net-zero by 2050”.
Since making its pledge, BII has repeatedly come under fire from MPs and campaigners for continuing to hold “active investments” in fossil-fuel companies.
Fossil assets
BII says that its fossil-fuel portfolio, which mainly consists of gas-fired power plants in “power-constrained” African nations, “has been on a steady downward trajectory since 2020”.
However, the company has not released data on the value of its fossil-fuel assets since 2021, citing “commercial sensitivities”.
In September 2024, Carbon Brief filed an FOI request with BII to obtain data on the company’s fossil-fuel and renewable-energy investments, as well as their asset value.
Following more than six months of back-and-forth – including Carbon Brief requesting an internal review of its FOI request – the company provided much of the information that was originally requested at the end of March 2025.
This included annual data on projects that BII has already committed to support, such as the Sirajganj 4 gas plant in Bangladesh and the Amandi Energy gas plant in Ghana.
As the chart below shows, BII’s cumulative commitments to fossil-fuel companies have remained roughly the same since its climate strategy in 2020. This is in line with its pledge to provide no “new commitments” to most fossil-fuel projects.
One exception is an extra $20m (£15m) in 2021 for Globeleq, a company controlled by BII that primarily supports gas power in Africa. An investment in a Mozambique gas project that year by Globeleq was deemed “Paris-aligned” and, therefore, allowed under BII’s rules.
Meanwhile, BII’s total commitments to renewable energy projects have more than doubled, from $894m (£672m) to $2.1bn (£1.6bn), between 2020 and 2024.
Once funds have been “committed”, they can remain “undrawn” for many years. This means that money committed before 2020 can still be distributed without breaching BII’s pledge. Carbon Brief asked BII how much of these “commitments” remained undrawn each year.
This revealed that BII has continued sending money to fossil-fuel projects since its 2020 pledge, disbursing around $57m (£43m) over this period. At the end of 2024, there was still $67m (£50m) of “undrawn” fossil-fuel finance waiting to be spent.
BII tells Carbon Brief that, as “commitments” are legal contracts, it is obliged to provide these funds as and when they are required.
Beyond “direct” investments in energy projects, BII has also made “indirect” commitments to fossil fuels via private financial institutions. The company tells Carbon Brief it does not have details of how much these third-party funds invest in fossil-fuel projects.
Daniel Willis, finance campaign manager at the NGO Recourse, points to examples such as Gigajoule and Ademat, companies that have received new finance injections for fossil-fuel projects beyond the 2020 date, on BII’s behalf. (Again, this is allowed under BII’s guidelines.)
Willis tells Carbon Brief that these investments and the continued payments from existing commitments “clearly go against the spirit of the UK government’s fossil fuel policy”.
BII initially rejected Carbon Brief’s request for the “net asset value” of every fossil-fuel investment in its portfolio. It argued that disclosure could weaken its commercial position.
However, the company eventually agreed to disclose the aggregate value of its fossil-fuel assets for the period 2020-2023.
The data reveals that, as of 2023, BII still owned $591m (£444m) worth of gas-fired power plants and other fossil-fuel energy assets, rising to $676m (£508m) when indirect assets are included. This amounts to around 6% of BII’s assets.
While BII declined to provide Carbon Brief with the 2024 figures, a company spokesperson tells Carbon Brief that they plan to release them “this summer”, adding:
“Our 2024 annual report and accounts…will show that our exposure to fossil-fuels assets has fallen 39% since 2020 and now makes up just 6% of our total portfolio. Over the same period, the value of our climate-finance portfolio has increased by 122% to $2.5bn [£1.9bn] and now accounts for 26% of our total portfolio.”
As the chart below shows, there has already been a gradual drop in the value of BII’s direct fossil-fuel energy investments since 2020. The decline can likely be attributed to investees paying off debts to BII, fossil-fuel assets losing value and – to some extent – BII exiting smaller investments.
With evidence that BII’s fossil-fuel portfolio is declining in value, Sandra Martinsone, policy manager at the international development network Bond, tells Carbon Brief that “sooner or later” these will likely become stranded assets:
“The longer BII holds on to these fossil-fuel investments, the higher the risk of losing the invested aid pounds.”
The drop in the value of BII’s indirect fossil-fuel and “other carbon-related” assets – which includes non-energy companies that serve fossil-fuel companies – has been sharper. This can be largely attributed to BII ending support for fossil-fuel trade and supply chains in 2022.
‘Worrying trajectory’
In its FOI response, BII says that it “seeks to manage and responsibly exit fossil-fuel assets”. However, NGOs and politicians have raised concerns about the pace of change.
Natalie Jones, a policy advisor specialising in fossil-fuel phaseout at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), tells Carbon Brief that while BII has not breached its own climate guidelines:
“The fact that fossil fuel investments remain on BII’s books is not a good look for the organisation, bearing in mind its 2020 commitment to aligning its activities and investments with the Paris Agreement and the UK’s 2021 policy to end all international public support for fossil fuels.”
Civil-society groups have repeatedly called for BII to set a timeline for divesting from fossil fuels. They have even argued that, in the context of “drastic” UK aid cuts, BII should not receive more aid funding and instead reinvest funds from some of its existing assets.
Criticism of BII’s approach to fossil fuels is captured in a 2023 report by the International Development Committee of MPs. It refers to BII legacy investments “conflicting” with UK policies, including the alignment of all aid with the Paris Agreement.
The report also notes that there “does not appear to be a definitive path for BII exiting those fossil-fuel investments or transitioning its existing investment portfolio to green energy”.
Committee chair and Labour MP, Sarah Champion, says that, while the most recent data is not yet publicly available, the figures released to Carbon Brief point to a “worrying trajectory” in BII’s fossil-fuel investments. She tells Carbon Brief:
“It appears that BII has stayed on this worrying trajectory. This must change: as the government proposes a new strategic direction for UK aid spending, focusing on poverty reduction and genuinely responsible investment must be BII’s number one priority.”
In a statement alongside its FOI response, BII says that “forced divestment increases the likelihood that buyers of such assets would be less responsible owners, thereby increasing the future risk of negative climate impact”.
It also says that “being viewed as a forced seller” could reduce the value BII could obtain from those assets. This position was supported by the previous Conservative government.
Jones tells Carbon Brief that concerns about the responsibility of new owners are legitimate:
“However, it would be great to see from BII a plan to responsibly exit or, even better, decommission their fossil fuel assets. There is a case to be made for a responsible exit that would free up funds for much-needed climate finance.”
BII argues that, with around 600 million Africans still lacking access to electricity, gas power remains “essential” for providing “baseload” power to many nations on the continent.
This position has been supported by a number of African governments. However, many civil-society groups, both in Africa and around the world, argue that developed countries should focus financial resources on expanding clean power capacity in developing countries.
Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, which has previously questioned the legality of the BII-controlled Globeleq supporting gas power in Africa, tells Carbon Brief it is “inappropriate” for aid money to be spent this way:
“It’s also trapping the countries that are building this stuff into a type of energy which is on its way out.”
The post Revealed: UK development body still has $700m invested overseas in fossil-fuel assets appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Revealed: UK development body still has $700m invested overseas in fossil-fuel assets
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 16 May 2025: Has China’s CO2 peaked?; US bill ‘would kill IRA’; Poland’s coal collapse
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
US budget bill ‘would kill IRA’
WAYS AND MEANS: The future of Joe Biden’s signature climate policy, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), is in doubt after Republicans on two key Congressional committees passed budget proposals that “would effectively kill” it, reported Heatmap News. The proposals would end clean-energy tax credits and rebates for electric vehicle (EV) purchases, “claw back” climate grants and “slash” related spending, said Reuters.
DEFENCE DOUBTS: While a “small subset” of House Republicans have been trying to defend the IRA, it is unclear if they would block passage of the wider budget bill to get their way, according to E&E News. In the Senate, Politico said “some” Republicans are “pushing back” on the current proposals. A New York Times feature said Republican districts “have the most to lose” if all of the IRA tax credits are repealed. Semafor reported Republicans were “wrestling with possible failure” of the bill, in the face of opposition from Democrats and their own ranks. (Law firm Grant Thornton said policymakers were hoping to pass the bill by 4 July.)
SOCIAL COST: Meanwhile, a new White House memo directed US government agencies to disregard economic damages from climate change, reported E&E News. Under a headline asking, “What’s the cost of pollution? Trump says zero”, the New York Times explained that the “social cost of carbon” had been used for more than two decades to help weigh the costs and benefits of federal policies and regulations. It said the move could face legal challenges.
Around the world
- DOWNPOUR DEATHS: More than 100 people were killed by floods in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Agence-France Presse reported. Extreme rainfall also killed at least seven people in Somalia, the Associated Press said.
- PARIS PERIL: A UK opposition minister falsely attacked climate science and said his party could exit the Paris Agreement if elected, the Guardian said. The Guardian also reported on how Australia’s new opposition leader “could abandon net-zero”.
- GERMAN GAS: New economy minister Katharina Reiche wants more gas-fired power plants, according to Die Zeit. The country’s climate council warned the new government’s plans could breach climate goals, said Clean Energy Wire.
- DENGUE DANGER: Colombia’s El Espectador reported on rising climate-driven risks from dengue fever in Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico and Panama.
- COP30 CREW: The Brazilian COP30 presidency has appointed 30 envoys, including “key liaisons” for strategic regions such as China’s Xie Zhenhua, Jonathan Pershing from the US and former UNFCCC chief Patricia Espinosa, Climate Home News said.
60%
The yearly rise in EV sales in emerging markets in Asia and Latin America in 2024, according to new data from the International Energy Agency.
Latest climate research
- Even passing 1.5C of global warming temporarily would trigger a “significant” risk of Amazon forest “dieback”, said research covered by Carbon Brief.
- Rapidly rising emissions from China’s agricultural machinery could “hinder” the country’s push towards net-zero, according to a study covered by Carbon Brief.
- Findings in Environmental Research Letters found that the benefits of CO2 “fertilisation” on forests are likely to be constrained by warming.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
For the first time on record, China’s CO2 emissions have fallen as a result of clean energy expansion rather than weak growth in electricity demand, according to new analysis for Carbon Brief. The analysis, which has been covered by outlets including AFP, Semafor and the New York Times, found that China’s emissions from fossil fuels and cement fell 1.6% in the first quarter of 2025 and are now 1% below the peak reached in March 2024. The months ahead will be critical for what comes next, as Beijing is working to finalise its next international climate pledge for 2035 and its five-year plan for 2026-2030.
Spotlight
How Poland started speeding away from coal power
This week, Carbon Brief reports on coal falling to barely half of Poland’s power supplies.
The first round of Poland’s presidential election is on Sunday and Rafał Trzaskowski, from prime minister Donald Tusk’s centre-right party Civic Platform, is favoured to win.
Long seen as one of the world’s most coal-reliant countries, Poland’s electricity system is in the midst of dramatic and increasingly rapid change.
When Poland joined the EU in 2004, coal-fired power stations supplied 93% of the country’s electricity. Coal accounted for more than three-quarters of the total as recently as 2018, the year the country hosted COP24 in Katowice.
Since then, a gradual shuffle away from coal has turned to a sprint.
In 2024, coal generated little more than half of Poland’s electricity, according to data from thinktank Ember – and a coal power phaseout by 2035 is now seen as a realistic prospect.
While the topic has not played a big role in the election campaign, there is now broad public acceptance that “coal is over in Poland”, said Joanna Maćkowiak-Pandera, president of Polish thinktank Forum Energii. She told Carbon Brief:
“The extreme rightwing tries to claim that coal is the future and there is coal for [another] 400 years…[But] even the coal-mining sector does not believe it.”
As of 2024, coal contributed just 53.5% of electricity generation in Poland, with wind and solar making up 23.5%, gas power 12.1% and other renewables another 6.3%.
Coal ‘death spiral’
The “death spiral” for coal power is due to the high cost of coal mining in Poland, the old age of coal power plants, pressure from climate policies such as the EU emissions trading system (EUETS) and a loss of market share to renewables, said Maćkowiak-Pandera:
“You can be pro-coal, but you will not change the economics, physics, geology and the reality of the financial market.”
Until 2023, the right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) had held the reins of government, having won the 2015 election after promising to protect the coal industry.
Following power cuts that summer, however, PiS increasingly accepted that renewbles – particularly solar power – could support energy security, explained Maćkowiak-Pandera.
(Renewables enjoy broad public support and are associated with energy security, she said.)
With backing from government policy, Poland’s solar capacity leapt from just 200 megawatts in 2015 to more than 20 gigawatts in 2024 – a 100-fold increase.
Still, PiS strongly resisted calls to phase out coal. In 2020, it struck a deal with unions to subsidise the Polish coal-mining industry until 2049. The subsidies remain in place.
After winning parliamentary elections in 2023, Tusk promised a “much faster energy transition” based on renewables and nuclear power, said Maćkowiak-Pandera.
While utility firms would “really love” to phase out coal plants within as little as three to five years, there is a growing consensus around 2035 as a more achievable end date, she said:
“It’s really not controversial any more…I speak with politicians, with utilities, with [electricity] transmission system operators, even with miners. Everybody is aware of the situation.”
Instead, there is a practical conversation around how best to replace coal at the lowest cost, explained Maćkowiak-Pandera.
This will mean more renewables, but also the flexible capacity needed to manage the grid – including some new gas-fired power plants – as well as energy storage and market reforms, she said.
Poland’s rapid transition may not have made many headlines, but other major coal-burning countries are starting to pay attention.
Maćkowiak-Pandera has welcomed delegations from China, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil, eager to learn about Poland’s experience. She added:
“For Chinese partners, it’s interesting because they like [our] pragmatic approach…they like that Poland [is] sometimes not mentioning climate, [but] is doing it anyhow.”
Watch, read, listen
CHINESE CROWING: A widely shared blog post on nationalist media outlet Guancha said China was taking climate action to “win the future energy revolution” and, among other things, to “save at least $600bn” on imported oil by shifting to EVs.
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The post DeBriefed 16 May 2025: Has China’s CO2 peaked?; US bill ‘would kill IRA’; Poland’s coal collapse appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed 16 May 2025: Has China’s CO2 peaked?; US bill ‘would kill IRA’; Poland’s coal collapse
Even passing 1.5C of global warming temporarily would trigger a “significant” risk of Amazon forest “dieback”, says a new study.
Dieback would see large numbers of trees die, shifting the lush rainforest into a dry savannah.
The research, published in Nature Climate Change, assesses the impact of “overshooting” the aspirational goal of the Paris Agreement on the Amazon and Siberian forests.
Overshoot would see warming surpass 1.5C above pre-industrial levels in the coming decades, before being brought back down before 2100 through large-scale carbon dioxide removal.
Using hundreds of climate-model simulations, the authors assess the influence of the “sensitivity” of the climate – a measure of the planet’s temperature response to a given increase in atmospheric CO2.
Across all simulations where global warming in 2100 surpasses 1.5C, 37% show “some amount of dieback”, the study says.
However, the risk increases further in the long term, with “55% of simulations exhibiting dieback by 2300”.
One author tells Carbon Brief that the study highlights that overshooting 1.5C leaves forest ecosystems “exposed to more risk than [they] need to be”.
The findings show that “we can’t afford complacency”, he warns.
Warming pathways
As the planet warms, there is an increasing risk that parts of the Earth system will cross “tipping points” – critical thresholds that, if exceeded, could push a system into an entirely new state.
For example, a seminal 2022 study warned that five tipping elements – including the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet and abrupt permafrost thaw – are already within reach, while others are becoming increasingly more likely as temperatures rise.
One way to limit warming to 1.5C by the end of the century involves initially overshooting the threshold. However, research published last year warns that the longer the 1.5C threshold is breached – and the higher the peak temperature – the greater the risk of crossing tipping points.
The new study uses modelling to investigate the risks of overshoot for the Amazon and Siberian forests.
The paper considers three illustrative mitigation pathways taken from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) mitigation report from its sixth assessment cycle, which was published in 2022.
Gregory Munday is an applied scientist at the UK Met Office Hadley Centre and lead author on the study. He tells Carbon brief that the authors selected “optimistic” pathways that “each have different relationships to the Paris Agreement goals”.
For each scenario, the authors assess a range of different climate sensitivities – a measure of the planet’s temperature response to a given increase in atmospheric CO2. The average outcome of each pathway is:
- The “renewables” scenario shows a future with reduced emissions and a heavy reliance on renewable energy, which keeps warming below 1.5C by 2100.
- The “negative emissions” pathway shows a world in which warming initially overshoots the 1.5C threshold, but extensive use of carbon removal sees warming drop back below 1.5C before 2100.
- The “gradual strengthening” pathway illustrates a strengthening of climate policies implemented in 2020, with rapid reductions mid-century and a reliance on net-negative emissions by the end of this century. This pathway sees global average temperatures reach 1.8C by 2100.
The authors run the emissions pathways through a simple climate “emulator” model, which calculates the global temperatures associated with each emission pathway.
The charts below show cumulative CO2 emissions (left), atmospheric CO2 concentration (middle) and changes in global average surface temperature compared to the pre-industrial level (right), for the renewables (green), negative emissions (purple) and gradual strengthening (yellow) pathways until the year 2300.
The authors then use a different modelling framework to project the impacts of each emissions scenario.
Study author Dr Chris Jones leads the UK Met Office Hadley Centre’s research into vegetation and carbon cycle modelling and their interactions with climate. He tells Carbon Brief that the new study is the first application of this modelling framework, which he describes as a “rapid response tool”.
He says the tool was developed to “rapidly look at a range of climate outcomes, both global and local, for new scenarios”, adding that it provides a “pretty good approximation” of what traditional global climate models would do.
Munday adds that the framework is able to produce results within days or weeks, rather than taking “months and months”.
Finally, the authors use land surface model JULES to assess forest health under the different scenarios. Overall, the authors produce 918 simulations each of Amazon and Siberian forest health.
Forest health
The authors assess forest health using two metrics. The first is the forest growth metric “net primary productivity”, a measure of the rate that energy is stored as biomass by plants, which can indicate forest productivity. The second metric, forest cover, is a way of measuring the forest’s long-term response.
The models show that rising CO2 levels causes net primary productivity to increase, due to the CO2 fertilisation effect, driving more rapid forest growth. Conversely, many of the impacts of climate change, such as increased heat and changes to rainfall patterns, can be detrimental to forests, damaging or killing trees.
To identify the impacts of overshooting 1.5C on the Amazon and Siberian forests, the authors compare the “renewables” and “negative emissions” pathways. Both of these scenarios reach a similar global average temperature by the year 2100, but the former does so without overshoot, while the latter overshoots 1.5C before temperatures come back down.
The maps below show the difference in net primary productivity in the Amazon (left) and Siberian forests (right) between the two scenarios in the year 2100. Brown shading indicates that net primary productivity was higher in the non-overshoot scenario, while blue indicates that it was higher in the overshoot scenario.
The maps show that “large areas of both Amazonian and Siberian forest show reduced net primary productivity” by 2100 due to overshoot, compared to a scenario with no overshoot, the paper says.
‘High-risk zones’
From the three pathways, the authors generate 918 simulations of future climate and corresponding Amazon forest health.
The authors use these results to identify which future temperature and rainfall conditions result in net forest “dieback”. This is when large numbers of trees die, shifting the rainforest into a dry savannah.
The plots below show which simulations result in Amazon dieback by the year 2100 (left) and 2300 (right), for different amounts of rainfall and temperature levels in the year 2100. Each graph is divided into four sections – hot and wet (top right), hot and dry (bottom right), cold and wet (top right) and cold and dry (bottom right). These sections are based on average regional temperature and rainfall in the year 2100.
Coloured dots indicate scenarios that see forest dieback. These are coloured by pathway, for renewables (green), negative emissions (purple) and gradual strengthening (yellow). Grey dots indicate scenarios without Amazon dieback. The red lines indicate “high-risk climatic zones”, above which there is “a significant risk of dieback”.
The study finds that most Amazon dieback scenarios happen in hot, dry conditions, the authors note.
Across all simulations where warming in 2100 is above 1.5C, 37% show “some amount of dieback” the study says. However, in these model runs, the risk increases further in the long term, the study notes, with “55% of simulations exhibiting dieback by 2300”.
Prof Nico Wunderling is a professor of computational Earth system science at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and was not involved in the new research. He tells Carbon Brief it is significant that, according to this study, the Amazon will face impacts from climate change below the tipping point threshold of 2-6C, as assessed in the landmark 2022 tipping points paper.
The authors also carry out this analysis for Siberian forests. Instead of a drop in tree cover, they find a change in the composition of trees. Munday tells Carbon Brief that the vegetation shifts “from grassy surface types to lots more trees and shrubs” in a process called “woody encroachment”.
Woody encroachment can have significant negative impacts on terrestrial carbon sequestration, the hydrological cycle and local biodiversity.
“The Siberian forest is probably committed to a long-term, and possibly substantial, expansion of tree cover,” the authors write.
High-risk scenarios
The greatest uncertainty in this study comes from the spread of climate sensitivities, Munday tells Carbon Brief.
He elaborates:
“This means that although we simulate the impacts from extremely optimistic mitigation scenarios, there is a chance that the Earth’s climate sensitivity is much higher than we expect, and so, small but significant risks of short- and long-term forest ecosystem impacts exist in spite of the choice of these strong-mitigation scenarios.”
In other words, if climate sensitivity is higher than expected, forests could face harmful impacts even under low emissions scenarios.
Dr David McKay – a lecturer in geography, climate change and society at the University of Sussex – is the lead author of the 2022 study. He tells Carbon Brief that the new paper “shows the value in focusing not just on model averages, but also exploring a wide range of possible futures to capture potential ‘low probability, high impact’ outcomes”. He adds:
“[The study shows] how negative emissions to reduce warming might help restabilise these forests in future if we do overshoot 1.5C, but as such large-scale CO2 removal remains hypothetical, we shouldn’t assume we can rely on this in practice.”
However, McKay also notes some uncertainties in the models used. Mckay tells Carbon Brief that the vegetation model used in this study doesn’t include fire and “has some limitations around soil moisture stress and vegetation in the tundra”. These are “likely important for resolving potential tipping points in these biomes”.
Therefore, he adds, the study “doesn’t show how regional tipping points could potentially further amplify and lock-in these future forest shifts, even with negative emissions”.
Dr David Lapola is researcher at the University of Campinas in Brazil and was not involved in the study. He also warns that vegetation models provide a “poor representation of how CO2 may affect these forests directly”. Lapola argues that scientists must “collect field data to make any new advancement with models”.
Nevertheless, Lapola tells Carbon Brief that studies such as this will be “extremely useful” for the IPCC’s upcoming seventh assessment cycle, which will include a dedicated chapter on tipping points and other “low-likelihood high impact events” for the first time.
Study author Jones tells Carbon Brief that overshooting 1.5C leaves forest ecosystems “exposed to more risk than [they] need to be”. The findings show that “we can’t afford complacency”, he warns.
The post ‘Significant’ risk of Amazon forest dieback if global warming overshoots 1.5C appeared first on Carbon Brief.
‘Significant’ risk of Amazon forest dieback if global warming overshoots 1.5C
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