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
Seven Pacific island nations say they will demand heftier levies on global shipping emissions if opponents of a green deal for the industry succeed in reopening negotiations on the stalled accord.
The United States and Saudi Arabia persuaded countries not to grant final approval to the International Maritime Organization’s Net-Zero Framework (NZF) in October and they are now leading a drive for changes to the deal.
In a joint submission seen by Climate Home News, the seven climate-vulnerable Pacific countries said the framework was already a “fragile compromise”, and vowed to push for a universal levy on all ship emissions, as well as higher fees . The deal currently stipulates that fees will be charged when a vessel’s emissions exceed a certain level.
“For many countries, the NZF represents the absolute limit of what they can accept,” said the unpublished submission by Fiji, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Nauru, Palau, Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands.
The countries said a universal levy and higher charges on shipping would raise more funds to enable a “just and equitable transition leaving no country behind”. They added, however, that “despite its many shortcomings”, the framework should be adopted later this year.
US allies want exemption for ‘transition fuels’
The previous attempt to adopt the framework failed after governments narrowly voted to postpone it by a year. Ahead of the vote, the US threatened governments and their officials with sanctions, tariffs and visa restrictions – and President Donald Trump called the framework a “Green New Scam Tax on Shipping”.
Since then, Liberia – an African nation with a major low-tax shipping registry headquartered in the US state of Virginia – has proposed a new measure under which, rather than staying fixed under the NZF, ships’ emissions intensity targets change depending on “demonstrated uptake” of both “low-carbon and zero-carbon fuels”.
The proposal places stringent conditions on what fuels are taken into consideration when setting these targets, stressing that the low- and zero-carbon fuels should be “scalable”, not cost more than 15% more than standard marine fuels and should be available at “sufficient ports worldwide”.
This proposal would not “penalise transitional fuels” like natural gas and biofuels, they said. In the last decade, the US has built a host of large liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals, which the Trump administration is lobbying other countries to purchase from.
The draft motion, seen by Climate Home News, was co-sponsored by US ally Argentina and also by Panama, a shipping hub whose canal the US has threatened to annex. Both countries voted with the US to postpone the last vote on adopting the framework.
-
IMO head: Shipping decarbonisation “has started” despite green deal delay
Arsenio Dominguez said the shipping industry’s net zero emissions goal is not in dispute although countries have stalled on adopting a framework to reach it -
US-led alliance wins a year’s delay in adoption of green shipping deal
The IMO’s Net-Zero Framework will be up for approval again in October 2026, after the US and Saudi Arabia persuaded countries not to vote on it as planned
The IMO’s Panamanian head Arsenio Dominguez told reporters in January that changes to the framework were now possible.
“It is clear from what happened last year that we need to look into the concerns that have been expressed [and] … make sure that they are somehow addressed within the framework,” he said.
Patchwork of levies
While the European Union pushed firmly for the framework’s adoption, two of its shipping-reliant member states – Greece and Cyprus – abstained in October’s vote.
After a meeting between the Greek shipping minister and Saudi Arabia’s energy minister in January, Greece said a “common position” united Greece, Saudi Arabia and the US on the framework.
If the NZF or a similar instrument is not adopted, the IMO has warned that there will be a patchwork of differing regional levies on pollution – like the EU’s emissions trading system for ships visiting its ports – which will be complicated and expensive to comply with.
This would mean that only countries with their own levies and with lots of ships visiting their ports would raise funds, making it harder for other nations to fund green investments in their ports, seafarers and shipping companies. In contrast, under the NZF, revenues would be disbursed by the IMO to all nations based on set criteria.
Anais Rios, shipping policy officer from green campaign group Seas At Risk, told Climate Home News the proposal by the Pacific nations for a levy on all shipping emissions – not just those above a certain threshold – was “the most credible way to meet the IMO’s climate goals”.
“With geopolitics reframing climate policy, asking the IMO to reopen the discussion on the universal levy is the only way to decarbonise shipping whilst bringing revenue to manage impacts fairly,” Rios said.
“It is […] far stronger than the Net-Zero Framework that is currently on offer.”
The post Pacific nations want higher emissions charges if shipping talks reopen appeared first on Climate Home News.
Pacific nations want higher emissions charges if shipping talks reopen
Doubts over whether governments will maintain ambitious targets on boosting the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) are a threat to the industry’s growth and play into the hands of fossil fuel companies, investors warned this week.
Several executives from airlines and oil firms have forecast recently that SAF requirements in the European Union, United Kingdom and elsewhere will be eased or scrapped altogether, potentially upending the aviation industry’s main policy to shrink air travel’s growing carbon footprint.
Such speculation poses a “fundamental threat” to the SAF industry, which mainly produces an alternative to traditional kerosene jet fuel using organic feedstocks such as used cooking oil (UCO), Thomas Engelmann, head of energy transition at German investment manager KGAL, told the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Investor conference in London.
He said fossil fuel firms would be the only winners from questions about compulsory SAF blending requirements.
The EU and the UK introduced the world’s first SAF mandates in January 2025, requiring fuel suppliers to blend at least 2% SAF with fossil fuel kerosene. The blending requirement will gradually increase to reach 32% in the EU and 22% in the UK by 2040.
Another case of diluted green rules?
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, CEO of French oil and gas company TotalEnergies Patrick Pouyanné said he would bet “that what happened to the car regulation will happen to the SAF regulation in Europe”.
The EU watered down green rules for car-makers in March 2025 after lobbying from car companies, Germany and Italy.
“You will see. Today all the airline companies are fighting [against the EU’s 2030 SAF target of 6%],” Pouyanne said, even though it’s “easy to reach to be honest”.
While most European airline lobbies publicly support the mandates, Ryanair Group CEO Michael O’Leary said last year that the SAF is “nonsense” and is “gradually dying a death, which is what it deserves to do”.
EU and UK stand by SAF targets
But the EU and the British government have disputed that. EU transport commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas said in November that the EU’s targets are “stable”, warning that “investment decisions and construction must start by 2027, or we will miss the 2030 targets”.
UK aviation minister Keir Mather told this week’s investor event that meeting the country’s SAF blending requirement of 10% by 2030 was “ambitious but, with the right investment, the right innovation and the right outlook, it is absolutely within our reach”.
“We need to go further and we need to go faster,” Mather said.
SAF investors and developers said such certainty on SAF mandates from policymakers was key to drawing the necessary investment to ramp up production of the greener fuel, which needs to scale up in order to bring down high production costs. Currently, SAF is between two and seven times more expensive than traditional jet fuel.
Urbano Perez, global clean molecules lead at Spanish bank Santander, said banks will not invest if there is a perceived regulatory risk.
David Scott, chair of Australian SAF producer Jet Zero Australia, said developing SAF was already challenging due to the risks of “pretty new” technology requiring high capital expenditure.
“That’s a scary model with a volatile political environment, so mandate questioning creates this problem on steroids”, Scott said.
Others played down the risk. Glenn Morgan, partner at investment and advisory firm SkiesFifty, said “policy is always a risk”, adding that traditional oil-based jet fuel could also lose subsidies.
Asian countries join SAF mandate adopters
In Asia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Japan have recently adopted SAF mandates, and Matti Lievonen, CEO of Asia-based SAF producer EcoCeres, predicted that China, Indonesia and Hong Kong would follow suit.
David Fisken, investment director at the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, said the Australian government, which does not have a mandate, was watching to see how the EU and UK’s requirements played out.
The US does not have a SAF mandate and under President Donald Trump the government has slashed tax credits available for SAF producers from $1.75 a gallon to $1.
Is the world’s big idea for greener air travel a flight of fancy?
SAF and energy security
SAF’s potential role in boosting energy security was a major theme of this week’s discussions as geopolitical tensions push the issue to the fore.
Marcella Franchi, chief commercial officer for SAF at France’s Haffner Energy, said the Canadian government, which has “very unsettling neighbours at the moment”, was looking to produce SAF to protect its energy security, especially as it has ample supplies of biomass to use as potential feedstock.
Similarly, German weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall said last year it was working on plans that would enable European armed forces to produce their own synthetic, carbon-neutral fuel “locally and independently of global fossil fuel supply chain”.
Scott said Australia needs SAF to improve its fuel security, as it imports almost 99% of its liquid fuels.
He added that support for Australian SAF production is bipartisan, in part because it appeals to those more concerned about energy security than tackling climate change.
The post Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn appeared first on Climate Home News.
Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn
Climate Change
Southern Right Whales Are Having Fewer Calves; Scientists Say a Warming Ocean Is to Blame
After decades of recovery from commercial whaling, climate change is now threatening the whales’ future.
Southern right whales—once driven to near-extinction by industrial hunting in the 19th and 20th centuries—have long been regarded as a conservation success. After the International Whaling Commission banned commercial whaling in the 1980s, populations began a slow but steady rebound. New research, however, suggests climate change may be undermining that recovery.
Southern Right Whales Are Having Fewer Calves; Scientists Say a Warming Ocean Is to Blame
Pacific nations want higher emissions charges if shipping talks reopen
DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?
Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn
-
Greenhouse Gases7 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Climate Change7 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Spanish-language misinformation on renewable energy spreads online, report shows
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change Videos2 years ago
The toxic gas flares fuelling Nigeria’s climate change – BBC News
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits