The UK has fallen nearly 40% behind on its pledge to rapidly scale up climate finance for developing countries, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
A freedom-of-information (FOI) request reveals that, rather than rising steadily to meet a target of £11.6bn over five years, UK climate spending overseas has fallen for two years in a row.
It is now around £2bn off track – assuming there should have been even progress towards the goal.
Boris Johnson’s government, with current prime minister Rishi Sunak as chancellor, committed in 2019 to ramping up its international climate finance (ICF) in order to reach a target of £11.6bn between the financial years 2021/22 and 2025/26.
The figures obtained by Carbon Brief show that UK spending has dipped from £1.56bn in 2020/21 to £1.47bn in 2021/22 – and around £1.36bn in 2022/23.
The numbers for 2022/23 are described in the FOI release as “provisional”, but the total sum is similar to one recently reported by the Guardian, based on leaked civil service documents.
Carbon Brief understands that the government’s figures for that period could be revised upwards when the final numbers are released, but are still likely to fall short of the £11.6bn trajectory.
The government would now have to roughly double its recent annual spending over the next three years, on average, if it is to stand any chance of delivering its pledge.
The UK is facing mounting pressure to provide more money to help vulnerable nations deal with climate change. Yet the government has slashed its overall budget for foreign aid, citing economic pressures at home. It has also redirected some of its foreign-aid spending towards the domestic processing of asylum-seekers.
Climate-finance experts tell Carbon Brief that the current shortfall is “troubling”, adding that it will now be “highly challenging” for the UK to achieve its goals without strong political will.
£11.6bn pledge
Former prime minister Boris Johnson announced in 2019 that the UK would spend £11.6bn on ICF between the financial years 2021/22 and 2025/26.
This has since been reinforced by his successor, Rishi Sunak, who told leaders at the COP27 climate summit in 2022 that he “profoundly believe[s] it is the right thing to do”.
The target doubled the government’s previous five-year pledge to spend “at least £5.8bn” on tackling climate change between 2016/17 and 2020/21 – a goal that has been achieved.
Both targets make up the UK’s contribution to a wider promise by all developed countries, as part of the Paris Agreement, to ramp up climate finance for developing countries to $100bn a year by 2020. Three years on, these nations are still yet to reach this target.
Without significantly increased climate finance, developing nations say they will not be able to transition to low-carbon economies and protect their people from climate hazards.
The UK’s climate finance spending has been under intense scrutiny in recent years.
First, the government slashed its overall development aid spending from the UN-backed benchmark of 0.7% to 0.5% of gross national income (GNI), citing the economic shock of Covid-19. Climate projects are among the many under threat from cuts.
Since then, the expansion of military aid to Ukraine and diversion of foreign aid to support refugees arriving in the UK have sucked up more of the shrinking resource pool.
In July, the Guardian reported on a leaked civil service briefing for ministers, explaining why the combination of these factors would justify dropping the £11.6bn goal altogether. The government has denied that it intends to drop the pledge.
Responding to a written question on 17 July, development minister Andrew Mitchell confirmed that the UK had spent “over £1.4bn” on ICF in 2021/22. However, he did not share data for 2022/23 or plans for spending out to 2025/26.
FOI requests
Carbon Brief submitted FOI requests to the three government departments responsible for running climate-related development projects: the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO); the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra); and the now-defunct Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
They provided data on ICF spending between 2011/12 and 2022/23, although Defra withheld its 2022/23 data, stating it was “yet to finalise” it. Both the other departments provided this data, with the caveat that the figures were “provisional”.
(For in-depth analysis of more than a decade of climate finance spending, see Carbon Brief’s full analysis.)
The annual totals, broken down by financial year, can be seen in the chart below. (Spending by Defra, which makes up roughly 3% of total climate finance, has been estimated for 2022/23 based on the average spend over the previous five years.)
Annual ICF spending has more than tripled since the UK started officially providing it in 2011. However, as the data obtained by Carbon Brief shows, for the past two years it has been in decline, pushing the £11.6bn goal further out of reach.
If the £11.6bn target had been split evenly over the five years covered by the pledge, the UK would have spent £2.32bn annually on climate finance between 2021/22 and 2025/26.
So far, however, the government has fallen far short of this, spending £1.46bn in 2021/22 and just £1.36bn in 2022/23. This amounts to a £1.81bn – or 39% – shortfall over the two-year period, relative to even progress towards the £11.6bn goal.
If the government is still to meet its £11.6bn target, climate finance would have to more than double to £2.92bn in 2023/24 and stay that high until 2025/26 – an unprecedented increase.
The 2022/23 figure obtained by Carbon Brief aligns with the Guardian’s reporting on a leaked civil service document, which “confirmed” that ICF spend for 2022/23 was £1.35bn – and expected to rise to around £1.59bn in 2023/24.
Despite this confirmation, Carbon Brief understands that, when the final spending total for 2022/23 is released, it could be higher.
Jonathan Beynon, a senior policy associate at the Center for Global Development who, until 2022, worked for FCDO on climate finance and other issues, tells Carbon Brief this could be achieved in part by reclassifying more funds within existing foreign aid projects as climate-related. Again, this was mentioned in the leaked document.
A government spokesperson tells Carbon Brief that “the government remains committed to spending £11.6bn on international climate finance and we are delivering on that pledge”, adding that “we will publish the latest annual figures in due course”.
‘Shockingly low’
All of this means that the £11.6bn target is slipping out of reach, according to former Conservative FCDO minister Zac Goldsmith, who resigned from government in June, citing its “apathy” towards climate change and the environment. He tells Carbon Brief:
“Technically, [the target] does remain government policy, but the shockingly low levels of expenditure make it a mathematical impossibility that the promise can be kept. Among beleaguered and hard-working civil servants this is an open secret and well understood. Indeed, the only way the promise can be kept is if the next government in its first year spends well over 80% of all its bilateral spending on climate, which clearly cannot happen with all the other important commitments we have.”
Clare Shakya, a climate finance expert at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), tells Carbon Brief it would be “highly challenging” for the government to “double the level of spending in a year and still ensure the projects and programmes it was supporting were of good quality”.
Faten Aggad, a climate diplomacy expert and adjunct professor at the University of Cape Town, agrees that it is “doubtful” the UK government would prioritise climate spending with its current economic outlook and a general election looming. She tells Carbon Brief:
“Engagements of the current government also show that the commitment to the climate agenda is not as strong as one might have hoped. So I would be surprised to see the spending doubled.”
However, Beynon tells Carbon Brief a “backloaded trajectory” – where spending started off relatively low and then increased more towards the end – was always envisaged for the five-year £11.6bn target period. (This is confirmed in the Guardian’s reporting, which says the government’s internal target for ICF spending in 2022/23 had been £1.77bn.)
He notes that the same pattern can be seen in the previous five-year target period, which still resulted in the goal being successfully met. A slow start can reflect the time taken for new climate projects to be set up and developed.
That said, Beynon adds that he would have expected an “uplift” by 2022/23, so the trend continuing downwards would be “troubling”. As for whether the target can still be achieved, he says:
“The short answer is: it’s possible, but it’s challenging…Primarily because of the wider context – the cuts in ODA [official development assistance] and the decision to choose to spend a good chunk of that ODA on hosting refugees.”
While developed countries are technically allowed to spend some of their aid budget on housing refugees, the UK spent an unusually high amount – around 30% – on this in 2022, to accommodate people arriving from Ukraine and Afghanistan. Only three nations, none of them major aid providers, spent higher proportions of their development aid in this way.
Experts tell Carbon Brief that, depending on the government in charge and how much they prioritise international development, the target could still be achieved.
“The goal is certainly within reach if the political will is there to achieve it,” Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) in Bangladesh, tells Carbon Brief.
The Treasury has confirmed that foreign-aid spending will likely not be restored to 0.7% of GNI until at least beyond 2027/28, if the Conservative government remains in power – two years after the £11.6bn deadline. The opposition Labour party has said it will examine a “pathway back to 0.7%” over the course of the next parliament, if it wins the upcoming general election.
Beynon says that, with such widely publicised targets in place, climate-related development spending has, in his view, been “relatively protected”, compared to other areas of development aid that have felt the impact of cuts.
At the recent G20 summit in India, Sunak announced a pledge of £1.62bn in climate finance to the Green Climate Fund (GCF), described by the government as a “major contribution” towards its £11.6bn commitment.
Yet given the wider state of UK climate finance, Goldsmith says the prime minister, or chancellor Jeremy Hunt, would need to “personally intervene” to bring the UK back on track for the goal. Goldsmith criticises Sunak for “pretending we are on course when [he knows] we simply are not”.
Experts warn that a failure to scale up climate finance would seriously threaten the UK’s international reputation. Shakya says:
“If the UK does not meet its own promised contributions, this will not only impact the UK’s standing, but also whether any rich countries can be trusted.”
In less than two months, Sunak will travel to COP28 in Dubai where there will once again be significant pressure placed on developed countries to meet their existing climate-finance pledges – as well as raise the bar higher in the coming years.
The post Analysis: How the UK has fallen 40% behind on its £11.6bn climate-finance pledge appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: How the UK has fallen 40% behind on its £11.6bn climate-finance pledge
Climate Change
DeBriefed 20 March 2026: Energy crisis deepens | Brazil’s new climate plan | New Zealand climate case
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Iran war fallout continues
WORK FROM HOME: The International Energy Agency has advised its member countries to take 10 steps in response to the ongoing energy crisis fuelled by the Iran war, including reducing highway speeds and encouraging people to work from home, said the Guardian. It came after retaliatory attacks between Israel and Iran continued to destroy energy infrastructure in the Middle East, causing energy prices to soar further, said Reuters.
SUPPLY DISRUPTED: The IEA also said it is prepared to make more of its member nations’ 1.4bn-barrel oil reserves available to help ease the impacts of what it called the “biggest supply disruption in the history of the oil market”, reported Bloomberg. The outlet noted that Asian countries have been hit hardest by the shortages, caused by a “near-halt” of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
EU SUMMIT: The energy crisis dominated talks at an EU leaders summit on Thursday, said Politico. Arriving at the summit, Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez attacked other European leaders for using the energy crisis as an excuse to “gut climate policies”, according to the EU Observer. The Financial Times said that some European leaders have asked the European Commission to overhaul its flagship emissions trading system (ETS) by summer in response to the energy crisis.
COAL BOOST: In response to the conflict, utility companies in Asia are “boosting coal-fired power generation to cut costs and safeguard energy supply”, said Reuters. UN climate change executive secretary Simon Stiell told Reuters: “If there was ever a moment to accelerate that energy transition, breaking dependencies which have shackled economies, this is the time.”
Around the world
- WINDFARM WINDFALL: The Trump administration in the US is considering a nearly $1bn settlement with TotalEnergies to cancel the French energy company’s two planned windfarms off the US east coast and have it instead invest in fossil-gas infrastructure in Texas, according to documents seen by the New York Times.
- BUSINESS CLASH: Following “clashes” with the agribusiness sector, Brazil launched its new climate plan, which calls for a 49-58% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2022 levels by 2025 and includes “specific guidelines for different sectors”, reported Folha de Sao Paolo.
- SALES SLUMP: Sales of liquified petroleum gas from India’s state-run oil companies have fallen by 17% this month due to cuts in deliveries to commercial and industrial consumers “amid the widespread logistical bottlenecks triggered by the Iran war”, said the Economic Times.
- CUBAN ENERGY CRISIS: The US imposed an “effective oil blockade” on Cuba, leaving the country facing its “worst energy crisis in decades”, reported the Washington Post. Meanwhile, Chinese exports of solar panels to the island have “skyrocketed” since 2023, it added.
- RECORD HIGHS: An “unprecedented” heatwave in the western and south-western US is “shattering dozens of temperature records” and could lead to drought in California in the coming months, reported the Los Angeles Times.
- VULNERABILITY CONCERNS: Landslides that killed more than 100 people in southern Ethiopia have “renewed concerns about Ethiopia’s vulnerability to climate-related disasters”, said the Addis Standard.
1%
The percentage of England’s land surface that could be devoted to renewables by 2050, according to the long-awaited “land-use framework” released by the UK government this week and covered by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- Approaching international climate action by shifting the burden of mitigation onto higher-income countries could avoid 13.5 million premature deaths from air pollution in middle- and lower-income countries by 2050 | The Lancet Global Health
- Beavers can turn the ecosystems surrounding streams into “persistent” sinks of carbon that can sequester an order of magnitude more than non-beaver-modified ecosystems can store | Communications Earth & Environment
- Mobile-phone data from seven diverse countries during the summer heatwaves of 2022-23 showed a “widespread tendency to withdraw into homes” and an increase in out-of-home activities that can offer cooling, such as indoor retail | Environmental Research: Climate
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Carbon Brief this week published a significant update to its map of how climate change is affecting extreme weather events around the world. The map now includes 232 new extreme weather events from studies published in 2024 and 2025. Of these events, 196 were made more severe or more likely to occur by human-driven climate change, 12 were made less severe or less likely to occur and 10 had no discernible human influence. (The remaining 14 studies were inconclusive.)
Spotlight
New Zealand breaks new ground on climate litigation
This week, Carbon Brief speaks to experts about a first-of-its-kind climate lawsuit in New Zealand.
Earlier this week, representatives from two environmentally focused legal advocacy groups challenged the New Zealand government’s climate-action plan in court.
The plaintiffs argued that the measures laid out in the plan are insufficient to achieve the country’s legal obligation to hold global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures.
The case could be “influential” in shaping lawsuits and rulings around the world, one legal expert not involved in the case told Carbon Brief.
Reductions vs removals
The new case contends that there are several issues regarding the New Zealand government’s response to climate change.
One of the key arguments the plaintiffs make is that New Zealand’s second emissions reduction plan, which covers the period from 2026-30, is overreliant on the use of tree-planting to achieve its targets.
When the plan was released in December 2024, it was “immediately clear that it was a pretty lacklustre plan”, Eliza Prestidge Oldfield, senior legal researcher at the Environmental Law Initiative, one of the groups behind the legal case, told Carbon Brief.
The plan called for large-scale planting of pine tree plantations, which are not native to New Zealand and have a high risk of burning. Because of this, there are concerns about how permanent any carbon removal provided by these plantations actually can be, experts told Carbon Brief.
Catherine Higham, senior policy fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment who was not involved in the case, said:
“The lawyers are arguing that there are real challenges with equating the emissions that you may be able to remove from the atmosphere through afforestation with actual emissions reductions, which are much more certain.”
‘Global dialogue’
While other climate lawsuits elsewhere in the world have also focused on the inadequacy of a government’s plan to meet its stated emissions-reduction targets, this is the first such case that addresses the role of removals head-on.
Lucy Maxwell, co-director of the Climate Litigation Network, told Carbon Brief that the lawsuit “builds on a decade of climate litigation” in national, regional and international courts.
Maxwell, who was not involved in the New Zealand case, added that there is a “real global dialogue” between, not just plaintiffs, but national courts as well. She said:
“[National courts] look to common issues that have been decided in other countries. They’re not binding on that court if it’s at the national level, but they are influential.”
Given that many other countries have legal frameworks requiring their governments to create plans outlining the pathway to their long-term climate targets, Prestidge Oldfield told Carbon Brief that other jurisdictions “should be interested in these questions around the level of certainty”.
Higham noted that, even if the case is successful, addressing the plan’s shortfalls will face its own set of challenges. She told Carbon Brief:
“A lot of these decisions are political and they can be politically contentious…Those [measures] have to be put into action through legislation and that is then subject to the usual political process. So that’s where the challenge comes in.”
While she could not speculate on the outcome of the case, Prestidge Oldfield said it was “very heartening” to see that both the judge and the opposing counsel “appreciated how much of a concern climate change is globally”.
She added:
“It’s not a given that the judge would even be interested in climate change.”
Watch, read, listen
COMMON APPROACH: The Heated podcast analysed fossil-fuel advertisements and highlighted the most common deception tactics they employed.
THREAT ASSESSMENT: Mongabay mapped the potential threat that oil extraction poses to Venezuela’s ecosystems, including the Amazon rainforest and its coral reefs.
SALT LAKES? GREAT!: High Country News interviewed journalist Dr Caroline Tracey about her new book on saline lakes – such as Utah’s Great Salt Lake – the threats that face them and what they can teach us.
Coming up
- 23 March-2 April: Third meeting of the preparatory commission for the High Seas Treaty, New York
- 24-27 March: 64th session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Bangkok
- 26-29 March: 14th ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization, Yaoundé, Cameroon
Pick of the jobs
- International Centre of Research for the Environment and Development (CIRAD), IPCC chapter scientist | Salary: €3,200-3,750 per month. Location: Nogent-sur-Marne, France
- Avaaz, chief of staff | Salary: Dependent on location. Location: Remote, with preferred time zones
- Green Party, social media officer | Salary: £31,592-£32,192. Location: Remote or Westminster, UK
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 20 March 2026: Energy crisis deepens | Brazil’s new climate plan | New Zealand climate case appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Around 300 scientists, civil servants, journalists and climate experts took part in the 11th annual Carbon Brief quiz on Wednesday 18 March 2026.
For the second time, this year’s quiz was hosted by Octopus Energy at its headquarters in central London.
In total, 39 teams participated – 25 teams in person and 14 teams joining via Zoom.
Competing teams reflected a wide range of climate change and energy professionals. The list included journalists, civil servants, climate campaigners, policy advisers, energy experts and scientists.
Organisations represented included: Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) in India; New Scientist; the Times; Business Green; the Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources (BSEER), UCL; Verisk Maplecroft; BBC; World Weather Attribution; Grantham Institute at Imperial; DESNZ; WWF; European Climate Foundation (ECF); the ENDS Report; C40 Cities; Ricardo; Met Office; Meliore; E3G; Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI); Energy Transitions Commission; Carbon Tracker; Ember; Royal Meteorological Society; Civil Service Climate and Environment Network (CSCEN); Changing Markets Foundation; Cerulogy; Oxford Sustainable Law Programme; Université de Lausanne; University of Exeter; Centre for Environment and Sustainability, University of Surrey; UK Parliament; Skeptical Science; ECIU (Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit); Octopus Energy; DeSmog; Department for Transport and Royal School of Mines.
Teams were tested with five rounds of questions – general knowledge, policy, science and two picture rounds. (See the slideshow of the questions and answers below).
After two hours of playing, this year’s winners were announced.
Comprised of players from the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) in India, last time’s second place team, “Emissions Impossible” won the coveted Carbon Brief trophy with a total score of 76 out of 100 available points.
In joint second place, with 59 points, were the “Potato-sized nodules”, a mixed team of journalists from New Scientist, the Times and Business Green.
Sharing second place, after leading at the half-way point, were “You cannot BSEERious” from the Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources at UCL.
In fourth place, with 57 points, were “Risky Quizness”, from Verisk Maplecroft.
A certificate was awarded to the BBC for the best team name, as voted for by Carbon Brief staff: “High hopes [low confidence]”.
See the full leaderboard:
All the questions and answers from this year’s quiz can be found in this PDF document.
This year’s trickiest round was picture round two, which asked teams to match the quote to the author, with an average score of 5.9 out of 20 available points.
No team correctly guessed that “Chris Funk: Drought, Flood, Fire” was the source of the quote: “How greenhouse gases warm the atmosphere is pretty straightforward. It is really important that we understand this. But almost nobody does, because it is not something that we are taught in school.”
Science was the second hardest round, earning an average score of 6.1 points out of 20.
No team correctly guessed “religious leaders” as the least trustworthy source of climate information, according to a 2025 study using public polling from seven global south countries.
The highest-scoring round was general knowledge, with an average of 13.8 out of 20 questions answered correctly.
Carbon Brief would like to thank all the teams who took part and we look forward to hosting the quiz again in the spring of 2027.
If you would like to participate in next year’s quiz, please contact us in advance at quiz AT carbonbrief DOT org.
Photos by Kerry Cleaver
The post The Carbon Brief Quiz 2026 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Just 1% of England’s land will be needed for renewables to help meet the UK’s climate goals by 2050, according to a first-of-its-kind framework.
There is enough land in England to meet climate and nature goals, while also producing more food and building new homes, according to the UK government’s new “land-use framework”.
Speaking at the framework’s launch on Wednesday, environment secretary Emma Reynolds said she hoped it would put an end to the idea that England faces “false choices” over “solar panels versus farmland”, or “growth versus environment”.
The policy was first planned by the Conservative government in 2022, but has been delayed many times.
It has been broadly welcomed by environmental groups, with Tony Juniper, the chair of Natural England, calling it a “vital step forward” towards “more joined-up approaches” to land use.
Below, Carbon Brief outlines the main points of the framework relating to climate change, nature restoration, food production, renewable energy and housing.
- What is the land-use framework?
- What does the plan say about how land in England should be used?
- What does the framework mean for different sectors?
What is the land-use framework?
The government’s land-use framework for England aims to set out a “coherent national vision” for using land.
The 56-page report is the first of its kind in England.
It focuses solely on England, but notes that the government will “work closely” with the devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to share best practice and “collaborate on cross-border issues”.
It is a “blueprint” to inform better decisions on optimising land use to produce food, host renewable energy, restore nature and build more homes, says environment secretary Emma Reynolds in the foreword of the framework.
The plan hopes to end the “fragmented approach” to tackling these issues, which has led to a “confused picture and missed opportunities for land to deliver multiple benefits”, Reynolds says in the foreword. She adds:
“We can plant trees to reduce flood risk to homes and farmland, locate energy infrastructure alongside nature-rich food production and ensure nature recovery is at the heart of resilient growth and development.”
The report says it will play a “critical role” in helping to deliver national and global commitments, such as carbon budgets and national biodiversity and climate plans.
The framework commits to creating a long-term assessment of climate change impacts on land use at 2C and 4C of global warming.
It also commits to setting up a “land-use unit” in the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs to produce a map of “national spatial priorities” in England for, among other things, food production, nature and housing.
The government says it will update the framework every five years, outlining progress and next steps on implementation.
Currently, about 70% of land in the UK is used for agriculture – primarily livestock.
The chart below highlights how land is currently allocated in the UK (left) and how much overseas land is used to produce food for the UK (right).
The government’s land-use framework for England has been long-awaited and much-delayed.
The recommendation for the report first came in the 2021 National Food Strategy, an independent report led by businessman Henry Dimbleby.
It recommended creating a rural land-use framework to give “detailed assessments” of the best ways to use land in England.
The former Conservative government committed to produce such a report in a June 2022 food strategy.
This strategy said that a land-use framework for England would be released in 2023 “to ensure we meet our net-zero and biodiversity targets”, among other aims.
The publication was, however, delayed many times.
The Labour government launched a consultation on the framework in January 2025 and the final report was eventually released on 18 March 2026.
The framework is a “long-awaited opportunity for real change”, says Roger Mortlock, chief executive of the environmental charity Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), in a statement.
Mortlock welcomes its “ambition”, but says that the way in which land tradeoffs are considered locally and nationally “will be key to its success”.
A report released by CPRE earlier this week, however, said that the framework is “unlikely to be the silver bullet many are hoping for”.
What does the plan say about how land in England should be used?
The framework uses high-resolution modelling – what it calls the “most sophisticated analysis” of its kind – to examine how England can use land to meet climate, nature, food and housing needs.
One key finding is that England has enough land to meet all of its objectives, if land is used efficiently.
This means that England has “enough land to deliver our objectives for nature restoration and development without reducing domestic food production or compromising on these objectives”, according to the framework.
It adds that efficient land use means “playing to the strengths” of England’s varied landscape. This involves, for example, prioritising the restoration of peatlands in north-west England and temperate rainforests in the south-west.
The chart below shows the percentage of land in England currently used for different purposes, as well as how this distribution will need to change by 2030 and 2050, if the UK is to meet its goals, according to the framework.
According to the framework, just 1% of England’s land will need to be taken up by renewables, such as solar and onshore wind, by 2050.
However, the framework does note that there is “inherent uncertainty” in projecting energy use by 2050 and says that the amount of land required for renewables may be nearer to “more than 2%”, depending on how quickly solar and wind is deployed in the future.
A further 6% of England’s land should be used for achieving climate and nature goals, according to the framework.
(A Defra official tells Carbon Brief that the framework’s projections for renewable energy and tree-planting were not as ambitious as those in the Climate Change Committee’s central pathway to net-zero, but are in line with the government’s carbon budget delivery plan for 2035.)
Speaking at the launch of the framework, environment secretary Emma Reynolds said that the framework shows that there are no “false choices” between “solar panels versus farmland” or “growth versus environment”, adding:
“The problem has never been scarcity of land. It has been a shortage of clarity.”
What does the framework mean for different sectors?
The framework sets out a “vision” for land use in several areas, such as housing, energy, food and nature by 2030 and 2050.
It also details what the government is currently doing to achieve these aims and makes pledges for more action down the line.
Below, Carbon Brief has detailed the key points around renewable energy, tree-planting and nature restoration, food production and housing.
Renewable energy
The report notes that the need to produce extra electricity to meet growing demand from, among other things, electric vehicles, heat pumps and data centres is “changing the way land is used across England”.
The UK plans to produce at least 95% of electricity from low-carbon sources, such as wind, solar and nuclear, by 2030.
Despite this, the report says that solar and wind will continue to make up a “small proportion of land use”. It says that, by 2030, much of this land will be “managed sustainably” for dual purposes, such as placing solar panels on the same land as growing crops.
Currently, around 21,000 hectares of land in the UK is covered by solar panels – which, as Carbon Brief has previously noted, is much less than the land used for golf courses.
By 2035, an additional 129,000 hectares of land is estimated to be used for solar and wind energy in England, with some of this land also used to produce food at the same time.
If achieved, this will account for 1% of land in England and 2% of the UK’s agricultural area.
This estimate is based on the assumption that all extra solar will be installed on the ground, which the report says is a “highly conservative and unlikely scenario” given that many panels are anticipated to be placed on rooftops.
This makes the 2035 figure an “upper-bound” estimate, says the report.
By 2050, around 155,000 hectares – roughly equal to the size of Greater London – will be used for renewables, the report estimates, adding that this is based on trends from historical data and not future scenarios.
The report adds that it is possible that more land than this will be needed to meet energy goals past 2035, however, citing the “inherent uncertainty” in figuring out what the mix of electricity sources will look like by 2050.
By 2030, coordinated planning of electricity networks will encourage rural investment, “such as through new data centres”, the report claims.
By 2050, the report says that better land-use planning will lead to a “fairer and more efficient distribution of solar and wind infrastructure across England”.
There will also be better electricity connections to renewables, much of which will be delivered alongside “productive agriculture”, such as by installing solar panels above crops – known as agrivoltaic farming.
The report says that any land-use change decisions should be made based on a number of factors, drawing from “local knowledge, values, data and priorities”.
It notes that development of wind and solar infrastructure in rural areas should give local communities the “opportunity to benefit from local clean energy”.
Tree-planting and nature restoration
According to the framework, 6% of England’s land will need to be used for achieving climate and nature goals by 2050.
This kind of land use includes restoring England’s carbon-dense peatlands, planting new woodlands and restoring heathland habitats.
As part of the analysis, the framework takes a detailed look at what parts of England would be best suited for nature restoration. It says:
“Habitat creation and restoration should be directed to the places where it can have the greatest ecological impact, help to reconnect fragmented landscapes, support priority species and deliver the greatest contribution to nature recovery.”
The chart below, taken from the framework, shows where in England has the greatest potential for nature restoration in dark green.
The analysis finds that north-west England has high potential for nature restoration, largely because it is home to the vast majority of the country’s carbon-rich, but degraded, peatlands.
Other areas identified include the south-west, which could be suitable for “grassland restoration and broadleaf woodland creation” and the south-east, where new grasslands could be planted, according to the framework.
The framework adds that the UK government remains committed to protecting 30% of land for nature by 2030, an international goal set under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
However, it notes that, at present, just 7% of England’s land is protected for nature – with just four years to go until the deadline.
Speaking at the launch of the framework, nature minister Mary Creagh acknowledged that meeting the target remains a large challenge.
She added that her department was currently on a “data sprint” to try to account for all kinds of land that may not currently be classified as being protected for nature, despite serving this purpose.
Food production
The new framework extensively discusses how to balance food production with other uses for land, such as producing renewable energy and building homes.
The government says it is generally not suggesting land-use change on the country’s “best agricultural land”.
The framework focuses instead on using farmland to fulfil dual purposes, “rather than taking land out of production entirely”.
The goals outlined in the framework include increasing domestic food production in England, which the report says is “feasible according to our projections”.
Currently, the UK produces around 60% of its own food, importing the rest from abroad.
By 2030, the “vision” outlined in the framework says that farmers and other land managers will have better long-term clarity and more information on improved ways to use their land.
By 2050, meanwhile, farmlands will be managed to prioritise “sustainable food production and environmental benefits”, it says.
At this stage, the framework estimates that 480,000 hectares of farmland could be used primarily for food production, while also bringing environmental and climate benefits such as planting trees or restoring grassland habitats.
Agricultural land will be used to balance food production and other outcomes. A footnote in the report says that this will broadly lead to a “mosaic of different landscapes” – semi-natural land, low-intensity farmland and higher-intensity farmland.
It also says that, by 2050, farmland will be more resilient to climate change impacts through actions such as planting trees for flood and drought resilience.
All projected scenarios in the analysis behind the framework focus on producing food “more sustainably from less land”, the report notes.
The agricultural land-use change recommendations in the framework differ across the country. If focusing on improvements to water quality and biodiversity, for example, it recommends looking at areas with intensive agricultural production in the east of England.
This is due to these areas using high quantities of fertilisers, which can wash off fields and run into rivers and other waterways. This lowers water quality and harms plants and animals.
The government commits to developing sectoral growth plans, starting with horticulture and poultry, to provide a framework to boost production and “maintain food security”.
The government also promises to support making “under-used land” available for communities to grow food and recover nature, “where appropriate”. This refers to inactive land that is not suitable for other developments.
The report is a “step in the right direction”, says Tom Bradshaw, president of the National Farmers’ Union. He adds that it is “positive” to have “explicit recognition” of using land for multiple purposes and a government commitment to maintain food production.
Bradshaw notes that “challenges remain about delivering against the ambitious objectives as the first 2030 milestone approaches”.
Housing
Reynolds says that this framework can help to “speed up house-building and infrastructure delivery”.
The report says that, by 2030, improved planning will enable areas to facilitate housing and development “whilst protecting and enhancing the environment”.
It adds that, where appropriate, developments will be higher-density to “make the best use of land within our towns and cities”.
By 2030, biodiversity net gain – a planning requirement to improve habitats while building developments – and nature-based solutions will also be used to ensure development “leaves the natural environment in a measurably better state than it was in beforehand”, the report says.
It adds that timber production will be expanded to provide “low-carbon building materials”.
By 2050, meanwhile, the framework says planners will be able to more easily assess how suitable areas are for development “using a streamlined digital planning service and decision support tools”.
These tools – built on a range of data sources – are intended to reduce the number of homes built in areas at risk of flooding, the report says.
One in four homes in England are projected to be at risk of flooding by 2050, under a high-emissions scenario, the report outlines.
The report notes that the government is proposing a “default yes” to some planning applications for developments near well-connected transport stations.
High-demand areas “need to be powered locally and sustainably”, it notes, and using technologies such as rooftop solar to “make use of existing built land for electricity generation” can reduce land pressures elsewhere.
The post Q&A: What England’s new ‘land-use framework’ means for climate, nature and food appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: What England’s new ‘land-use framework’ means for climate, nature and food
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