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
Mining companies are showcasing new technologies which they say could extract more lithium – a key ingredient for electric vehicle (EV) batteries – from South America’s vast, dry salt flats with lower environmental impacts.
But environmentalists question whether the expensive technology is ready to be rolled out at scale, while scientists warn it could worsen the depletion of scarce freshwater resources in the region and say more research is needed.
The “lithium triangle” – an area spanning Argentina, Bolivia and Chile – holds more than half of the world’s known lithium reserves. Here, lithium is found in salty brine beneath the region’s salt flats, which are among some of the driest places on Earth.
Lithium mining in the region has soared, driven by booming demand to manufacture batteries for EVs and large-scale energy storage.
Mining companies drill into the flats and pump the mineral-rich brine to the surface, where it is left under the sun in giant evaporation pools for 18 months until the lithium is concentrated enough to be extracted.
The technique is relatively cheap but requires vast amounts of land and water. More than 90% of the brine’s original water content is lost to evaporation and freshwater is needed at different stages of the process.
One study suggested that the Atacama Salt Flat in Chile is sinking by up to 2 centimetres a year because lithium-rich brine is being pumped at a faster rate than aquifers are being recharged.
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Lithium extraction in the region has led to repeated conflicts with local communities, who fear the impact of the industry on local water supplies and the region’s fragile ecosystem.
The lithium industry’s answer is direct lithium extraction (DLE), a group of technologies that selectively extracts the silvery metal from brine without the need for vast open-air evaporation ponds. DLE, it argues, can reduce both land and water use.
Direct lithium extraction investment is growing
The technology is gaining considerable attention from mining companies, investors and governments as a way to reduce the industry’s environmental impacts while recovering more lithium from brine.
DLE investment is expected to grow at twice the pace of the lithium market at large, according to research firm IDTechX.
There are around a dozen DLE projects at different stages of development across South America. The Chilean government has made it a central pillar of its latest National Lithium Strategy, mandating its use in new mining projects.
Last year, French company Eramet opened Centenario Ratones in northern Argentina, the first plant in the world to attempt to extract lithium solely using DLE.
Eramet’s lithium extraction plant is widely seen as a major test of the technology. “Everyone is on the edge of their seats to see how this progresses,” said Federico Gay, a lithium analyst at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. “If they prove to be successful, I’m sure more capital will venture into the DLE space,” he said.
More than 70 different technologies are classified as DLE. Brine is still extracted from the salt flats but is separated from the lithium using chemical compounds or sieve-like membranes before being reinjected underground.
DLE techniques have been used commercially since 1996, but only as part of a hybrid model still involving evaporation pools. Of the four plants in production making partial use of DLE, one is in Argentina and three are in China.
Reduced environmental footprint
New-generation DLE technologies have been hailed as “potentially game-changing” for addressing some of the issues of traditional brine extraction.
“DLE could potentially have a transformative impact on lithium production,” the International Lithium Association found in a recent report on the technology.
Firstly, there is no need for evaporation pools – some of which cover an area equivalent to the size of 3,000 football pitches.
“The land impact is minimal, compared to evaporation where it’s huge,” said Gay.
The process is also significantly quicker and increases lithium recovery. Roughly half of the lithium is lost during evaporation, whereas DLE can recover more than 90% of the metal in the brine.
In addition, the brine can be reinjected into the salt flats, although this is a complicated process that needs to be carefully handled to avoid damaging their hydrological balance.
However, Gay said the commissioning of a DLE plant is currently several times more expensive than a traditional lithium brine extraction plant.
“In theory it works, but in practice we only have a few examples,” Gay said. “Most of these companies are promising to break the cost curve and ramp up indefinitely. I think in the next two years it’s time to actually fulfill some of those promises.”
Freshwater concerns
However, concerns over the use of freshwater persist.
Although DLE doesn’t require the evaporation of brine water, it often needs more freshwater to clean or cool equipment.
A 2023 study published in the journal Nature reviewed 57 articles on DLE that analysed freshwater consumption. A quarter of the articles reported significantly higher use of freshwater than conventional lithium brine mining – more than 10 times higher in some cases.
“These volumes of freshwater are not available in the vicinity of [salt flats] and would even pose problems around less-arid geothermal resources,” the study found.
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Dan Corkran, a hydrologist at the University of Massachusetts, recently published research showing that the pumping of freshwater from the salt flats had a much higher impact on local wetland ecosystems than the pumping of salty brine. “The two cannot be considered equivalent in a water footprint calculation,” he said, explaining that doing so would “obscure the true impact” of lithium extraction.
Newer DLE processes are “claiming to require little-to-no freshwater”, he added, but the impact of these technologies is yet to be thoroughly analysed.
Dried-up rivers
Last week, Indigenous communities from across South America held a summit to discuss their concerns over ongoing lithium extraction.
The meeting, organised by the Andean Wetlands Alliance, coincided with the 14th International Lithium Seminar, which brought together industry players and politicians from Argentina and beyond.
Indigenous representatives visited the nearby Hombre Muerto Salt Flat, which has borne the brunt of nearly three decades of lithium extraction. Today, a lithium plant there uses a hybrid approach including DLE and evaporation pools.
Local people say the river “dried up” in the years after the mine opened. Corkran’s study linked a 90% reduction in wetland vegetation to the lithium’s plant freshwater extraction.
Pia Marchegiani, of Argentine environmental NGO FARN, said that while DLE is being promoted by companies as a “better” technique for extraction, freshwater use remained unclear. “There are many open questions,” she said.
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Stronger regulations
Analysts speaking to Climate Home News have also questioned the commercial readiness of the technology.
Eramet was forced to downgrade its production projections at its DLE plant earlier this year, blaming the late commissioning of a crucial component.
Climate Home News asked Eramet for the water footprint of its DLE plant and whether its calculations excluded brine, but it did not respond.
For Eduardo Gigante, an Argentina-based lithium consultant, DLE is a “very promising technology”. But beyond the hype, it is not yet ready for large-scale deployment, he said.
Strong regulations are needed to ensure that the environmental impact of the lithium rush is taken seriously, Gigante added.
In Argentina alone, there are currently 38 proposals for new lithium mines. At least two-thirds are expected to use DLE. “If you extract a lot of water without control, this is a problem,” said Gigante. “You need strong regulations, a strong government in order to control this.”
The post Efforts to green lithium extraction face scrutiny over water use appeared first on Climate Home News.
Efforts to green lithium extraction face scrutiny over water use
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