China’s energy sector carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions increased 5.2% in 2023, meaning a record fall of 4-6% is needed by 2025 to meet the government’s “carbon intensity” target.
The new analysis for Carbon Brief, based on official figures and commercial data, shows rapid electricity demand growth and weak rains boosted demand for coal power in 2023, while the rebound from zero-Covid boosted demand for oil.
Other key findings from the analysis include:
- China’s CO2 emissions have now increased by 12% between 2020 and 2023, after a highly energy- and carbon-intensive response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
- This means CO2 emissions would need to fall by 4-6% by 2025, in order to meet the target of cutting China’s carbon intensity – its CO2 emissions per unit of economic output – by 18% during the 14th five-year plan period.
- China is also at risk of missing all of its other key climate targets for 2025, including pledges to “strictly limit” coal demand growth and “strictly control” new coal power capacity, as well as targets for energy intensity, the share of low-carbon energy in overall demand and the share of renewables in energy demand growth.
- Government pressure to hit the targets, most of which are in China’s updated international climate pledge under the Paris Agreement, makes it more likely that China’s CO2 emissions will peak before 2025 – far earlier than its target of peaking “before 2030”.
The deadline for peaking CO2 emissions has led officials and industries to pursue rapid emissions growth and carbon-intensive projects, while a window to do so remains open.
The government recently recognised and responded to the gap to meeting its targets, by calling for stronger controls on such projects, as well as faster renewables deployment.
Most of China’s climate targets can be met if the acceleration of clean energy deployment during 2023 is maintained – and if energy demand growth returns to pre-Covid levels.
- China’s CO2 emissions continued to increase in 2023
- China is off track to all of its 2025 climate targets
- Official energy data is over-reporting coal consumption growth
- Government response
- The clean energy boom can allow most targets to be met
- About the data
China’s CO2 emissions continued to increase in 2023
According to preliminary official data, China’s total energy consumption increased by 5.7% in 2023, the first time since at least 2005 that energy demand has grown faster than GDP.
With coal consumption growing by 4.4%, our analysis shows CO2 emissions increasing by 5.2% – at the same rate as GDP – highlighting energy-intensive recent growth patterns.
China’s economic growth during and after the Covid-19 pandemic has been highly energy- and carbon-intensive. CO2 emissions grew at an average of 3.8% per year in 2021-23, up from 0.9% a year in 2016-20, while GDP growth slowed from an average of 5.7% to 5.4%.
Another year of rapidly rising emissions in 2023 leaves China way off track against its target of cutting carbon intensity by 18% during the 14th five-year plan (2021-25).
As a result, CO2 emissions would now need to fall by 4-6% by 2025 to hit the goal. This is illustrated in the figure below, showing historical emissions (black line) and the reductions needed by 2025 to hit the carbon intensity target, depending on the rate of GDP growth.
Even if China’s GDP growth is high and averages 6% per year in 2024-25, the intensity target requires CO2 emissions to fall by 4%.
The main drivers of the emissions increase in 2023 were coal-fired power and oil consumption, which increased by 6% and 8%, respectively.
A major reason for the growth in power generation from coal was that hydropower operating rates reached the lowest level in more than two decades due to a series of droughts. These operating rates are likely to recover towards average levels in 2024.
The increase in oil consumption represents a rebound from the slow demand growth during zero-Covid and an outright drop in 2022. Gas consumption rebounded as prices came down from 2022 highs, while still remaining elevated.
The clean energy manufacturing boom also has a role in driving emissions, due to energy-intensive processes involved in the production of solar PV and batteries, in particular.
Approximately one percentage-point of CO2 emission growth can be attributed to these sectors, based on output data and emission intensities estimated for solar PV, electric vehicles and batteries.
This means that, without the clean technology manufacturing boom, China’s CO2 emissions would have grown by around 4.2%, instead of the 5.2% estimated in our analysis.
Nevertheless, the increase in manufacturing will result in a significant reduction in emissions in net terms, once the products are in use. About half of this reduction will be realised outside of China, as the products are exported.
China is off track to all of its 2025 climate targets
China’s climate pledge under the Paris Agreement (nationally determined contribution, NDC) was updated in 2021, following commitments made by President Xi Jinping earlier that year and incorporating targets set under the 14th five-year plan.
The updated NDC makes commitments to strictly limit coal consumption growth; strictly control new coal power; reduce energy and carbon intensity by 2025; and increase the share of non-fossil energy sources to 25% by 2030.
In addition, the country’s five-year plans set targets of increasing the share of non-fossil energy sources to 20% by 2025 and deriving more than 50% of the increase in energy use from 2020 to 2025 overall from renewable sources.
All of these targets are severely off track after 2023.
The table below lists the various climate- and energy-related targets, the progress seen from 2020-23 and what would be needed during 2024-25 to achieve each of the goals. (See below for further details on each indicator and what is needed by 2025.)
China’s 2025 climate commitments and targets in the energy sector
| Indicator | Target | Progress in 2020-23 | Change needed in 2024-25 |
| Carbon intensity | -18% | -4.6% (-1.5%/year) | -7%/year; reduce emissions in absolute terms |
| Energy intensity | -13.5% | -2% (-0.6%/year) | -6%/year; reduce energy use in absolute terms |
| Coal consumption growth | “strictly limit” | Annual growth increased eightfold from 0.5% in 2016-20 to 3.8% | Negative growth to limit increase to the same rate as previous five-year period |
| New coal power projects | “strictly control” | Permits increased fourfold, from 25GW per year in 2016-20 to 110GW per year | Restrict new permits and review permits already granted |
| Non-fossil share of energy overall | Increase by 4.1 percentage points | Increased by 1.8 percentage points (0.6 points per year) | Rate of increase has to double to 1.2 points per year |
| Share of energy consumption growth met by renewables | Above 50% | 30%, down from 42% in 2016-20 | Renewable energy growth needs to double and energy consumption growth needs to slow to pre-Covid rate; total consumption of fossil fuels needs to fall.Renewable energy growth needs to double and energy consumption growth needs to slow to pre-Covid rate; total consumption of fossil fuels needs to fall. |
The centrepiece of China’s 2020 and 2025 climate commitments has been reducing carbon intensity, or CO2 emissions from energy use per unit of GDP.
The country’s carbon intensity reportedly fell 48% from 2005 to 2020. China committed to an 18% fall from 2020 to 2025 – and to reducing carbon intensity by more than 65% from 2005 levels by 2030, which requires a further reduction of at least 17% from 2025 to 2030.
However, as of the end of 2023, China’s carbon intensity has only fallen 5% in the 14th five-year plan period, lagging far behind the target of 18% from 2020 to 2025. If this target is to be met, CO2 emissions will have to come down in absolute terms from 2023 to 2025.
The figure below shows how China overachieved against its carbon intensity target for 2015-2020 but is veering increasingly off track against the goal for 2020-2025.
China’s energy intensity increased by 0.5% in 2023, the first annual rise since at least 2005. From 2020 to 2023, energy intensity only fell 2%.
The figure below shows that China narrowly missed its energy intensity target during the 13th five-year plan period, spanning 2016 to 2020, as progress halted in 2020. The country is now far off track for its 14th five-year plan target.
Indeed, to meet the target of a 13.5% reduction over 2020-25 – given the lack of progress as of the end of 2023 – energy consumption would have to fall in absolute terms over the next two years, while the rate of GDP growth is maintained or accelerated. This makes the goal all but unachievable.
The share of China’s energy demand met by non-fossil sources has increased by 1.8 percentage points from 2020 to 2023, against a target of 4.1 points by 2025.
This is shown in the figure below, illustrating the targeted 15% share for non-fossil energy by 2020 and 20% by 2025, as well as progress to date.
Meeting the 2025 target would mean that the rate of increase needs to double for the next two years. Moreover, if energy demand growth continues at the exceptionally high rate of 2020 to 2023, then energy production from non-fossil sources would need to grow at 11.3% per year to meet the target, up from 8.5% in the past three years.
Alternatively, the growth of renewables and nuclear could be maintained – but energy consumption growth would have to slow down to its pre-Covid average.
Only 30% of energy consumption growth has been met by renewable energy in 2020 to 2023, against a target of more than 50% during 2020-25.
This is illustrated in the figure below, showing contributions to annual energy demand growth from fossil fuels (grey bars), nuclear (blue) and renewables (red).
The 50% target is now highly unlikely to be met without a slowdown in energy consumption growth. Without a slowdown, renewables would have to grow by 20% per year to meet the target, up from 8.9% in the past three years.
Both growth in coal consumption and new coal power projects accelerated sharply in 2021-23, despite Xi’s pledges to “strictly control” them.
This is illustrated in the figure below, with annual coal consumption growth on the left and the amount of new coal capacity added each year on the right.
Indeed, the average growth rate of coal consumption increased 8-fold from 0.5% per year in 2016-20 to 3.8% per year in 2021-23.
Similarly, new coal power approvals increased fourfold in 2022-23, compared with the five years before the “strictly control” pledge, based on analysis of Global Energy Monitor data.
Since the beginning of 2022, a total of 218 gigawatts (GW) of new coal power plants have been permitted. By the end of 2023, some 89GW of this capacity had already started construction, while 128GW had yet to break ground.
Furthermore, the government’s official policy has shifted to strongly encouraging new coal power. An assessment of the projects permitted in 2022-23 shows that requirements, set for approving new coal power plants in August 2021, have not been enforced.
Statements from developers and government officials – see below – confirm that the 14th five-year plan period until 2025 is being seen as a “window of opportunity” for new coal power plants, rather than a period when new projects are strictly controlled.
This is causing a rush to secure permits for new projects. China Shenhua called the period until 2025 “an opportune time for thermal power construction”. The provincial state-owned enterprise supervisor boasts of Inner Mongolia Energy Group “achieving a flying start” to 2023 and “seizing the policy window” for coal power projects.
The Zhejiang province energy regulator emphasised the importance of seizing the time window for thermal power construction during the 14th five-year period.
Power China called for joint efforts with local government officials to exploit the coal power development window effectively, citing a plan known as “three times 80GW”. This refers to a proposal promoted by the thermal power construction industry to permit and commission 80GW of coal power plants each year, from 2022 to 2024.
The meaning of the pledges to “strictly control” growth in coal consumption and new coal power projects lacks a precise definition. However, a sharp acceleration of coal consumption growth and coal power plant approvals, along with active government promotion of new projects, is hard to reconcile with the pledge to exert strict control.
By this logic, meeting the pledge on coal consumption growth would require, at the very least, reducing coal use from 2023 to 2025 to bring the growth rate during the 2021 to 2025 period closer to the rate during the preceding five-year period.
Similarly, meeting the commitment to control new coal power projects would require enforcing existing policy to limit new schemes, restricting new permits and reviewing permits already granted, to limit the acceleration compared with the preceding five-year period.
Official energy data is over-reporting coal consumption growth
In 2022, government policies seeking to increase coal mine output and push down coal prices led to a sharp deterioration in the quality and calorific value of coal produced.
This fall in quality meant that the weight of coal being consumed increased by far more than the amount of energy supplied or CO2 emitted from that coal.
China’s official statistics failed to capture the change and consequently over-reported the growth in coal consumption and under-reported the improvement in CO2 intensity in 2022. This 2022 data could be expected to be revised once more complete energy statistics are released later.
Unlike in 2022, the officially-reported coal consumption growth rate for 2023 is more closely aligned with growth in coal power generation and output in key heavy industry sectors. The data indicates that coal use grew 4.4% in 2023, while power generation from coal rose 6%.
However, the conclusion that CO2 emissions need to fall from 2023 to 2025 to meet the carbon intensity target holds, even if a correction to 2022 data is made.
Calculating with current official data, CO2 emissions need to fall by 3.8-6.5% in the next two years, depending on the growth rate of GDP.
Based on my previous estimate that the growth in CO2 emissions in 2022 was inflated by 2.3 percentage points, a correction for 2022 would put the required reduction at 1.6-4.3%.
Government response
Energy intensity and carbon intensity reduction are among the 20 “main indicators” specified in China’s overarching five-year plan for 2021-25.
The mid-term evaluation of progress, published by China’s top economic planner the national development and reform commission (NDRC) in December 2023, identified these indicators as two of the four that were off track, along with a key air quality target.
(Air pollution concentrations also rose in 2023 due to increased industrial and transportation emissions, along with unfavourable weather conditions.)
In late 2023, the NDRC reprimanded the provinces of Hubei, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Zhejiang, Anhui, Guangdong and Chongqing for lagging behind on the targets to control energy intensity and total energy consumption.
Zhou Dadi, a member of the national climate change expert advisory committee, pointed to the weak growth in service industries as the reason for the lack of progress on the intensity targets.
Service sectors have relatively low energy demand and carbon emissions relative to economic output, so the decline in their share of economic activity tends to increase the energy and carbon intensity of the economy.
The NDRC’s evaluation report also identified measures to achieve the targets, including improving policies to control energy use and carbon emissions, curbing the initiation of projects with high energy consumption and high emissions, strictly limiting total coal consumption, promoting a shift to cleaner industry and transportation, promoting energy conservation and, importantly, accelerating the deployment of renewable energy.
The clean energy boom can allow most targets to be met
While China fell severely behind on its 2025 climate targets for the energy sector, the past two years saw a veritable boom in clean energy installations – particularly solar power.
This boom puts most of the targets still in reach, especially if energy demand growth returns to the pre-Covid rates.
My earlier analysis showed that China’s CO2 emissions could fall this year and then stabilise, if additions of low-carbon power generation continue at 2023 rates and electricity demand returns to trend.
Under this projection, CO2 emissions fall by approximately 1.5% from 2023 to 2025. Therefore, achieving the 4-6% reduction in CO2 emissions needed to meet the CO2 intensity target from 2023 to 2025 would require further acceleration in clean energy deployment, or a sharp slowdown in energy demand growth.
The increase in the share of non-fossil energy should be possible to achieve given the sharp increase in solar and wind installations in 2023. To start with, slow progress was partially caused by the record-low hydropower operating rates in 2023, linked to record droughts.
Even if energy demand continued to grow at the 2020-23 rate, continued low-carbon energy additions at the 2023 level should suffice to raise the share of non-fossil energy to 21%, comfortably ahead of the target.
The target of renewable energy contributing half of the growth in total energy demand is significantly more challenging.
If energy consumption growth rate slows down to its pre-Covid average and clean energy capacity additions continue at the 2023 rate, enabling the growth rate of renewable energy production to almost double to 16%, then the target would likely be reached.
This would also mean a reduction in the total consumption of fossil fuels and a reduction in energy sector CO2 emissions. This scenario would arguably also meet the commitment to “strictly limit the growth in coal consumption”.
Meeting the pledge to “strictly control” new coal power projects would mean thoroughly assessing the justification for permits granted in the past two years and restricting the issuance of new permits.
The large amount of electricity storage being deployed – especially pumped hydro, but increasingly also grid-connected batteries – reduces the need for thermal power plants.
For a significant restriction of new coal power to be possible while ensuring electricity supply security, progress would also be needed on power system reforms that increase flexibility and make more efficient use of existing capacity.
China’s clean energy boom has been happening much faster than official targets for wind and solar installations would require, driven by enthusiasm from local governments, state-owned enterprises and investors.
However, due to the rapid increase in energy consumption, meeting China’s headline climate targets now requires that the momentum of clean energy installations is maintained.
About the data
Total energy consumption and energy mix were taken from national bureau of statistics annual data. Improvements in energy intensity and carbon intensity were compiled from the bureau’s annual statistical communiques and changes in carbon emissions were calculated based on reported GDP growth and carbon intensity improvement.
Growth in total energy consumption and changes in the energy mix were taken from preliminary information released by the national bureau of statistics. Growth in CO2 emissions in 2023 was calculated using Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change default emission factors based on changes in the consumption of coal, oil and gas.
The post Analysis: Record drop in China’s CO2 emissions needed to meet 2025 target appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Record drop in China’s CO2 emissions needed to meet 2025 target
The United Nations Secretary-General and foreign ministers from the UK, France and Spain have blamed the deadly wildfires engulfing Europe on climate change, using the disaster to renew calls for faster cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.
António Guterres told journalists on Friday that the “climate crisis is in overdrive”, adding that global heat seen so far is just a “warm up act” as a phenomenon known as El Niño intensifies “adding fuel to a planet already on fire”.
A new World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) report published on Friday predicts that the weather pattern will grow into a “strong event” between now and October, increasing the risk of higher than normal temperatures across much of the world and disrupted rainfalls.
“That risks shattering every seasonal record – and driving even more severe effects worldwide,” Guterres said.
El Niño builds on top of an already warming world, driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels. A WMO scientist, who did not want to be named, told journalists that all the heatwaves and other climate impacts seen so far this year are “before the effects of El Niño are really kicking in at a global scale”.
Fossil fuellling the fires
Fires have broken out across much of Europe but are threatening the most people in the south-west of France near Bordeaux and in Central Spain near Madrid. Nearly a quarter of a million people have been evacuated in France with hundreds of homes destroyed while in Spain 80,000 people have had to leave their homes and at least 13 died in one village.
A scientific study published on Friday by the World Weather Attribution group found that man-made climate change made deadly fires in France twice as likely and those in Spain twenty times more likely. Smaller fires in the UK were not analysed by the study.
UN Climate Change leader Simon Stiell blamed fossil fuels for the fires, as well as storms in Chile and heatwaves in North America and Japan in recent weeks. “The climate alarm is blaring”, he said on Wednesday.
Guterres criticised new fossil fuel production projects and fossil fuel subsidies for causing hardship across the world. Discussing his speech, a senior UN official – who did not want to be named – said the subsidies amounted to trillions of US dollars a year and criticised pension funds and institutional investors, including insurance companies, for continuing to invest in fossil fuel projects.
Asked why world leaders and the public are not prioritising climate action, Guterres said they are distracted by wars in Ukraine, the Middle East, Sudan and elsewhere and sometimes forget “other aspects that are a sometimes even more dangerous threat”.
Also the fossil fuel industry and “some countries” are campaigning to pretend that climate change does not exist, he said, adding that the UN should be more active in “naming the situations as they are and the responsibilties as they are and mobilising the public opinion”.
After meetings in Paris and Madrid earlier in the week, the UK’s new foreign minister Ed Miliband issued joint statements with his French and Spanish counterparts – Jean-Noël Barrot and José Manuel Albares Bueno – calling on the world to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels.
They promised to do more to reduce emissions and protect their people and encouraged other governments to do the same.
The UK-French statement called on governments to publish UN climate plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), which are aligned with the Paris Agreement’s goal to limit global average temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
According to Climate Action Tracker, only three countries – the UK, Nigeria and Norway – have submitted NDCs with 2035 emissions reduction targets which are compatible with 1.5C. Fifty-two countries – including Egypt, Vietnam and Argentina – have yet to submit an NDC at all.
Defending science
Beyond action on emissions, the ministers also intervened in an ongoing dispute over the timing of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC)’s next flagship assessment.
Miliband and Barrot’s statement said they “underline the importance” of scientific report feeding into governments’ next global stocktake of progress on climate action in two years’ time, calling it a “critical input” to that process.
The timing of this report has been a contentious issue in government negotiations at the IPCC and at June’s climate talks in Bonn. While a group of nations calling themselves the “friends of science” want the report before the stocktake, others like Saudi Arabia and India have argued that this would make the report of a worse quality and less inclusive of developing countries’ scientists.
Science ‘under attack’ from fossil fuel interests at UN climate talks
The UK-Spanish statement weighed in less explicitly on this issue but said that they “recall the importance of scientific evidence and acknowledge the work of the IPCC in this respect.”
The British and French ministers said they would seek to accelerate reductions of emissions in methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas, at COP31 in November. They encouraged governments “to work jointly to develop a marketplace for fossil fuels with near-zero methane intensity.”
Methane leaks from oil, gas and coal production are a major contributor to global warming. Over a 20-year period, methane traps around 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide.
The UK and Spanish statement emphasised the importance of supporting the Global South and underlined the need to mobilise sustainable financing “at scale with the challenge we face”. The previous UK government, in which Miliband was energy minister, cut climate finance to developing countries to pay for increases in military spending.
The UK government led by new Prime Minister Andy Burnham has yet to outline any major changes to climate finance in its two weeks in power but has announced it will convert some finance from grants to loans in order to free up money to subsidise bus travel in England.
More adaptation needed
Guterres said that “it is time to stop treating each disaster as an isolated tragedy and recognise the systemic risk that is unfolding before our eyes.” A recent study found that three-quarters of UK media reports about the British June heatwave did not mention climate change.
As well as reducing emissions, the UN Secretary-General called for measures to adapt vulnerable people to extreme heat. Specifically, he said that buildings should be built and retrofitted for extreme heat and that every city and country should have heat-health action plans and early warning systems. Over 250 cities have joined the UN’s ‘beat the heat’ initiative, he said.
The Portuguese diplomat called for governments and employers to do more to protect their workers from heat, criticising global fashion brands for not setting heat standards for the factories that supply them. “No one should have to risk their life to earn a living,” he said.
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UN chief warns climate crisis “in overdrive” as El Niño threatens to fuel the fire
Climate Change
‘Ride the wave of momentum’: Australia announces once-in-a-decade Marine Parks Network review
In response to the federal government announcing its once-in-a-decade review of Australia’s Marine Parks Network, the following lines can be attributed to Elle Lawless, Senior Campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific:
“Greenpeace Australia Pacific welcomes today’s announcement that the Albanese Government will review Australia’s Commonwealth Marine Parks Network. This is a rare, once-in-a-decade opportunity to strengthen our marine parks and ban industrial fishing in Australia’s marine protected areas.
“Australians would be appalled to know that more than half of Australia’s Marine Parks Network currently allows for extractive industries, like longlining, bottom trawling and oil and gas mining. These so-called ‘protected’ areas were designed to safeguard our beloved ocean wildlife and underwater ecosystems – that is what Australians expect. Damaging industrial industries should not be given a free pass to trawl, fish, drill or extract from our marine parks.”
“With the first Ocean COP just around the corner, and off the back of Australia’s move to ratify the Global Ocean Treaty earlier this year, the Australian government has a unique opportunity to ride the wave of this momentum and solidify itself as a true global ocean leader.
“Greenpeace Australia Pacific is calling for industrial activities to be banned from our protected waters and for at least 30% of Australia’s ocean to be protected as ocean sanctuaries. This review presents a rare opportunity to create more ocean sanctuaries, true blue havens where ocean life can recover, thrive and repopulate the surrounding waters.”
—ENDS—
‘Ride the wave of momentum’: Australia announces once-in-a-decade Marine Parks Network review
In recent days, prominent climate sceptics and rightwing commentators have shared charts on social media incorrectly implying that Europe is having its “quietest” year for wildfires in 2026.
These include Dr Matthew Wielicki, a former University of Alabama geochemist and self-described “professor in exile”, who was recently appointed by the Trump administration to lead the US Global Change Research Program.
However, these charts paint a misleading picture as they are skewed by encompassing the entirety of Russia in the data – including the vast plains of Siberia.
These charts also use data that include fires that are deliberately lit to manage cropland, which is a declining practice across much of Europe.
In this factcheck, Carbon Brief shows that the area burned by wildfires across the European Union in 2026 is second only to 2022 for this time of year.
The latest data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) also shows that France has set a new modern record for area burned and Spain’s wildfire season is among the worst on record.
The fires have displaced more than a third of a million people across south-western Europe, while an impending heatwave has also raised fears of the fires worsening in the coming days.
‘Quietest year’
On 27 July, as wildfires raged across multiple European countries, former Conservative peer and climate-sceptic commentator Matt Ridley posted on Twitter that “2026 is the quietest year for wildfires in Europe by some distance”.
Ridley, who sits on the academic advisory council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a UK-based climate-sceptic lobby group that refuses to reveal the sources of its funding, was responding to an article by Daily Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley.
Stanley’s column, headlined: “Climate change is real – and the right needs to get serious about it”, warned:
“This is no longer a matter of speculation: the wildfires of Europe, pitiless and persistent, are the way we live now.”
Ridley included a chart from Our World In Data, showing the cumulative area burned by wildfires by week for Europe. The chart puts 2026 as having the smallest area for this time of year in a dataset going back to 2012.
Ridley’s post was widely shared by prominent rightwing figures – including Richard Tice, deputy leader of the hard-right, climate-sceptic Reform UK party, former Conservative cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg and multiple commentators.
Separately, Wielicki also shared a chart on Twitter to imply that wildfires in Europe are declining. Wielicki has previously claimed that the “science is not settled on climate change”.
The charts posted by Ridley and Wielicki both use data from the Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS). The GWIS category for “Europe” encompasses all the countries on the continent and includes the whole of Russia.
As a result, Russia accounts for about 74% of the area included in the GWIS definition of “Europe”.
Wildfires in Russia typically account for 80-90% of the burned area in the GWIS Europe dataset. In 2026, fires in Russia are substantially below average. Therefore, including Russia in this comparison creates the false impression that wildfire activity across Europe is unusually low.
Dr Calum Cunningham, a research fellow at the University of Tasmania’s Fire Centre, says that such claims are “highly misleading”, noting that “they rely on aggregating fire activity across an enormous and climatically diverse region”. He tells Carbon Brief:
“A relatively quiet season in Russia can easily mask an exceptionally active season in France or Spain. If the analysis is focused on the regions actually experiencing the current fires, the picture is very different.
“The reality is that western Europe has experienced an extraordinary sequence of climate conditions this year.”
In contrast, the EFFIS provides a subset of wildfire data specifically for the area covered by the 27 nations of the EU, which, therefore, excludes Russia.
Another difference between the two datasets is that GWIS monitors all fires – including those on agricultural land that are intentionally set alight. The burned area as measured by GWIS contains significant cropland area.
By contrast, EFFIS uses land-cover data and other information to filter specifically for forest fires.
Looking at the EU-only data from EFFIS reveals that Europe is far from having its “quietest” year. The bloc’s burned area, as of 29 July, is almost 435,000 hectares (ha) – second only to 2022 for this time of year.
Notably, Wielicki has actually continued to post charts based on GWIS data, even after acknowledging that “includ[ing] all of Russia, including vast areas of Siberia…isn’t a good proxy for Europe”.
French fires
Even looking at EU-wide data misses the scale of this year’s wildfires for some individual countries.
The chart below shows the surge in burned area in France since mid-July.
For much of the first half of the year, the country was having a wildfire season that was only slightly above average in terms of total burned area. However, a notable uptick began in the first week of July.
The third week of the month saw France break its previous cumulative annual record by more than 19,000ha. That gap has widened as the fires continue to burn; as of 29 July, the cumulative burned area in France during 2026 was nearly 24,700ha above the previous record.
The fires in France follow a record-breaking June heatwave that “dried out vegetation across the region, allowing fires to spread quickly”, wrote the New York Times.
On 27 July, French president Emmanuel Macron called a “crisis cabinet meeting” in order to address the fires “ravaging several areas of south-west France”, said France 24.
More than 220,000 people have been evacuated due to the Gironde fire, west of Bordeaux, in “what may be France’s largest peacetime evacuation”, reported the Associated Press.
In the Conversation, Cunningham and two other University of Tasmania researchers write that evacuation orders “protec[t] human lives, but makes it more likely houses and other structures will burn if there’s no one to defend them”. They add:
“There is little doubt climate change has made France and Spain’s wildfires worse. They represent yet another reason to redouble our efforts to tackle climate change and stabilise our climate.”
Central Spain scorched
While Spain’s fire season has not broken records in the same way that France’s has, it is on track to be among the worst since EFFIS began reporting data in 2006.
The chart below shows the rapid increase in burned area in Spain since 8 July. The latest data from EFFIS reveal that, as of 29 July, Spain has almost matched its previous record at this point in the year. It is also nearly five times the average area burned for this time of year.
In Spain, the wildfires have been concentrated in the central part of the country, near Madrid.
BBC News reported that the fires outside the capital have burned “an area more than twice as large as the city itself”.
Nearly 90,000 people were forced from their homes in central Spain by the fires, said the Associated Press.
Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, called the fires a “painful expression” of climate change.
Meanwhile, the UK, French and Spanish governments have issued joint statements this week in response to the fires. The UK/Spain statement begins:
“This summer’s wildfires demonstrated that climate change was now a national security emergency facing Europe and threatening our way of life.”
Related
The post Factcheck: No, Europe is not having its ‘quietest’ year for wildfires appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Factcheck: No, Europe is not having its ‘quietest’ year for wildfires
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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”
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Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
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Renewable Energy9 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
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Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits
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Greenhouse Gases1 year ago
嘉宾来稿：探究火山喷发如何影响气候预测