Clean-energy growth helped China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fall by 1% year-on-year in the first half of 2025, extending a declining trend that started in March 2024.
The CO2 output of the nation’s power sector – its dominant source of emissions – fell by 3% in the first half of the year, as growth in solar power alone matched the rise in electricity demand.
The new analysis for Carbon Brief shows that record solar capacity additions are putting China’s CO2 emissions on track to fall across 2025 as a whole.
Other key findings include:
- The growth in clean power generation, some 270 terawatt hours (TWh) excluding hydro, significantly outpaced demand growth of 170TWh in the first half of the year.
- Solar capacity additions set new records due to a rush before a June policy change, with 212 gigawatts (GW) added in the first half of the year.
- This rush means solar is likely to set an annual record for growth in 2025, becoming China’s single-largest source of clean power generation in the process.
- Coal-power capacity could surge by as much as 80-100GW this year, potentially setting a new annual record, even as coal-fired electricity generation declines.
- The use of coal to make synthetic fuels and and chemicals is growing rapidly, climbing 20% in the first half of the year and helping add 3% to China’s CO2 since 2020.
- The coal-chemical industry is planning further expansion, which could add another 2% to China’s CO2 by 2029, making the 2030 deadline for peaking harder to meet.
Even if its emissions fall in 2025 as expected, however, China is bound to miss multiple important climate targets this year.
This includes targets to reduce its carbon intensity – the emissions per unit of GDP – to strictly control coal consumption growth and new coal-power capacity, as well as to increase the share of cleaner electric-arc steelmaking in total steel output.
If policymakers want to make up for these shortfalls, then there will be additional pressure on China’s next “nationally determined contribution” (NDC, its international climate pledge for 2035) and its 15th five-year plan for 2026-30, both due to be finalised in the coming months.
The falling trend in CO2 emissions – and the clean-energy growth that is driving it – could give policymakers greater confidence that more ambitious targets are achievable.
Falling emissions from power, cement and steel
The reduction in emissions in the first half of 2025 was predominantly driven by the power sector, aided by the building materials, steel and heating industries.
Coal use in the power industry fell by 3.4% compared with the same period a year earlier, while gas use increased by 6%, resulting in a 3.2% drop in emissions for the sector overall.
The reduction in CO2 emissions from coal use in the power sector is shown at the bottom of the figure below, along with the small rise due to higher gas-fired electricity generation.
Other changes in CO2 emissions in the first half of 2025, compared with the same period in 2024, are broken down by source and sector in the rest of the figure.
Emissions from the building materials sector fell by 3% and from the metals industry by 1%, with cement falling 4% and steel output 3%. The reason for these reductions is the ongoing contraction in the construction sector, with real estate investment falling 11% and the floor area of new construction starts by 20%. Traditional targets of government infrastructure investment, such as transportation, also showed relatively slow growth.
CO2 reductions resulting from the drop in steel output were limited by a fall in the share of electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmaking, a much less emissions- and energy-intensive process than the coal-based production of primary steel.
The share of electric-arc output in total production fell from 10.2% in 2024 to 9.8% in the first half of 2025, despite a government target of 15% for this year.
Excess coal-based capacity and a lack of incentives for shifting production mean that electric arc steelmakers, rather than coal-based steel mills, tend to absorb reductions in output, as their operating costs are higher and costs of shutting down and starting up production lines are lower.
Shifting to EAF steel is one of the largest emission reduction opportunities in China over the next decade, according to an analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
Elsewhere, consumption of oil products increased by 1%. However, this growth did not come from transport fuel demand. The production of petrol, diesel and jet fuel all continued to fall, with electric vehicles eating into road-fuel demand. Instead, growth was driven by demand for naphtha from petrochemicals producers, including newly commissioned plants.
Gas use outside the power sector – mainly heating – dropped by 1%, after a fall in the first quarter due to mild winter temperatures and a smaller increase in the second quarter.
Solar boom covers power demand growth
The first half of 2025 saw a new record for the growth of clean power generation excluding hydro, made up of solar, wind, nuclear and biomass.
Clean power generation from solar, wind and nuclear power grew by 270 terawatt hours (TWh), substantially exceeding the 170TWh (3.7%) increase in electricity consumption. Hydropower generation fell by 3% (16TWh), moderating the fall in fossil fuel-fired power generation.
The rise in power generation from solar panels, on its own, covered all of the growth in electricity demand, increasing by 170TWh – equivalent to the national power output of Mexico or Turkey over the same period. Wind power output grew by 80TWh and nuclear by 20TWh.
As a result, the share of low-carbon sources reached 40% of the nation’s electricity generation overall in the first half of the year, up from 36% in the same period of 2024.
The figure below shows how clean-energy sources excluding hydro (columns) have started matching the recent increases in China’s electricity demand (solid line), as well as the average amount of growth in recent years (dashed line).
Strikingly, the record growth of solar and continued expansion of wind mean that both sources of electricity generation overtook hydropower for the first time in the first half of 2025, as shown in the figure below. Despite steady growth, nuclear power is a relatively distant fourth, at less than half of the power generation from each of the other three major non-fossil technologies.
The growth in solar power generation was driven by record capacity growth. China added 212GW of new solar capacity in the first half of the year, double the amount installed in the first half of 2024, which itself had been a new record.
For comparison, the world’s second-largest nation for solar capacity – the US – had only installed 178GW, in total, by the end of 2024, while third-ranked India had 98GW.
Some 93GW of new solar capacity was added to China’s grid in May alone, as the rush to install before a change in pricing policy culminated. This rate of installations translates to approximately 100 solar panels installed every second of the month.
The acceleration was due to a change in the policy on tariffs paid to new wind and solar generators, which started in June. Previously, new plants were guaranteed to receive the benchmark price for coal-fired power output in each province, for each unit of electricity they generate. Under the new policy, new generators have to secure contracts directly with electricity buyers, causing uncertainty and likely putting downward pressure on revenue.
The resulting surge in new capacity means that solar is poised to overtake wind this year – and hydro this year or next – to become the largest source of clean power generation in China.
This is despite solar capacity additions slowing down in June and projections diverging widely on how much growth to expect for the remainder of 2025 and into 2026, under the new policy.
The consensus among forecasters has been one of a sharp slowdown in installations.
After the new pricing policy was announced, the China Electricity Council (CEC) and China Photovoltaic Industry Association (CPIA) projected 210GW and 215-235GW for 2025 as a whole, respectively, implying plummeting additions in the second half of the year. In contrast, the State Grid Energy Research Institute expects 380GW to be added to the grid this year.
After data for May installations became available, the CEC upgraded its forecast for the whole year to 310GW and the CPIA to 270-300GW, implying that 60-100GW would be added in the second half of the year. This would still be a sharp deceleration compared with the second half of 2024, when 173GW was added.
For wind, the State Grid researchers expect 140GW and CEC 110GW, while 51GW was added in the first half of the year. Both numbers indicate larger capacity additions in the second half of 2025 and an increase for the full year compared with 2024.
The State Grid should have detailed knowledge of projects seeking to connect to the electricity grid, so its projections carry extra weight compared with others. If its expectations for wind and solar growth are realised, this would result in around 850TWh of annual clean power generation being added to the grid in 2025, as shown in the figure below.
This new clean power capacity would be more than enough to meet the entire electricity demand of Brazil (760TWh), or Germany and the UK combined (817TWh).
With the State Grid also projecting demand to grow by 400-640TWh (4.0-6.5%), clean-energy growth should push down CO2 from China’s power sector this year – and well into next year.
China’s top economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), is also taking steps to spur demand for contracts with solar and wind producers.
A new policy – published in July – requires for the first time that steel, cement and polysilicon factories, as well as some new data centres, meet a certain percentage of their demand using renewable electricity.
Previously, such requirements were only applied to provinces, power distribution companies and the aluminum industry. Their mandated renewable energy shares have also now increased.
These changes boost demand for contracts with renewable electricity suppliers, just as new solar and wind plants are having to secure contracts directly with buyers, under their new pricing policy.
The increase in demand for renewable power resulting from these measures broadly matches the low end of the growth projected in solar and wind this year. The renewable quotas therefore offer a backstop of support for the continued growth of clean power, which will be required to meet China’s wider climate and energy targets.
The increase in solar power generation from rising installations could be even larger, but is being limited by issues around grid management and capacity.
The share of potential solar power output that was not utilised rose to 5.7% in the first half of 2025, from 3.2% a year earlier. While technical issues such as uncompleted grid connections could play a role amid the boom, this also implies a significant increase in curtailment.
The average utilisation rate of solar panels fell by 12% in the first quarter of this year, compared with the 2020–2023 average, according to China Electricity Council data accessed through Wind Information. This is a much larger reduction than indicated by the reported curtailment rates. The flipside of this dip in utilisation is that improvements to grid operation and infrastructure will unlock even more generation from existing solar capacity.
Coal power capacity is expected to surge this year, even as demand for power generation from coal contracts. The State Grid predicts 127GW of thermal power added. Some of this will be gas, but based on non-coal thermal power additions expected by the CEC, around 90-100GW is coal, while the CEC projects 80GW of coal power added.
Data from Global Energy Monitor shows 93-109GW of coal-power projects under construction that could be completed this year, assuming a 2.5 to 3-year lead time from issuance of permits to grid connection. The largest amount of coal-fired capacity China has ever connected to the grid in one year is 63GW in 2008, so 2025 seems likely to set a new record by a large margin.
A former senior official at one of China’s largest power firms stated in an interview in June 2025 that companies are building coal power capacity due to central government pressure.
There is little enthusiasm to invest and the target to expand coal-power capacity to 1,360GW in this five-year plan period, covering 2021-2025, is unlikely to be met. Operating coal-power capacity was 1,210GW at the end of June, up from 1,080GW at the end of 2020.
The influx of coal-fired capacity will result in falling utilisation and profitability.
However, oversupply of coal power could also weaken demand for contracts with solar and wind producers, undermining clean-energy growth. This makes measures that offer a backstop of demand for clean power, such as the sector quotas, all the more significant.
Coal chemicals shooting up
The only major sector that saw growth in emissions in the first half of the year was the chemicals sector. Coal use in the sector, both as a fuel and a feedstock, increased by a dramatic 20% year-on-year, on top of a 10% increase in 2024.
Oil use in the chemicals sector increased as well, as reflected in a 9% increase in total consumption of naptha – a key petrochemicals feedstock – estimated from OPEC data.
The growth is driven by the coal-to-chemicals industry, which turns coal into synthetic liquid and gaseous fuels, as well as petrochemical products. This is a sector that China has developed aggressively, to reduce reliance on imported oil and gas, as well as to promote the exploitation of coal resources in the country’s far west – particularly Xinjiang – where coal and coal power exports to the rest of China are limited by transportation capacity and costs.
The sector consumed approximately 390m tonnes of coal in 2024, resulting in an estimated 690m tonnes CO2 emissions (MtCO2), making it responsible for 6% of China’s fossil CO2 emissions and 9% of the country’s coal use in 2024.
Coal use and emissions increased 10% from 2023 while total coal conversion capacity increased only 5%, implying that the utilisation of existing capacity increased as well.
The coal-to-chemicals industry used 155m tonnes of standard coal in 2020 and CO2 emissions were estimated at 320MtCO2. The coal-to-chemicals industry therefore added around 3% to China’s total CO2 emissions from 2020 to 2024, making it one of the sectors responsible for the recent acceleration in the country’s CO2 emissions growth and its shortfall against targets to control increases in CO2 emissions and coal use.
Output from the sector reportedly replaced 100m tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe) of oil and gas in 2024, which implies 250-280MtCO2 emissions avoided from oil and gas use, depending on how the avoided demand breaks down between oil and gas.
The net effect of the industry on CO2 emissions was therefore an increase of around 410-440MtCO2, or 4% of China’s total CO2, highlighting that coal-based chemical production is much more carbon-intensive than its already carbon-intensive oil- and gas-based equivalent.
The sector’s growth in coal use and emissions reflects drastically improved profitability in most segments in recent years. Its profitability depends heavily on the oil price, so the sharp increase in oil prices from the 2015-2020 level in 2021-24 supported output growth, whereas the recent fall in oil prices could temper it.
The chemical industry association still expects the sector to expand capacity for another decade, until 2035, even under China’s CO2 peaking target.
Analysis by Tianfeng Securities touts the years 2025-2030 as the “peak period” for investment in coal to chemicals, claiming that potential annual investment over the next five years could reach three times the 2021-23 level and that half of this potential investment is in Xinjiang province.
Sinolink Securities projects that an average of at least 37m tonnes of coal conversion capacity will be added in the coal-to-chemicals industry each year from 2025 to 2029, with coal-to-oil-and-gas and coal-to-methanol dominating these capacity additions.
This would mean a 40% increase in the industry’s capacity from 2024 to 2029, with the potential to add over 250MtCO2 per year of emissions, increasing total CO2 emissions by over 2%.
The figure below illustrates this potential increase, which would continue recent trends.
If this further expansion takes place – and assuming new chemicals plants are used at the same rate as the existing fleet is being used today – then it would complicate China’s carbon peaking target and make the CO2 intensity target for 2030 even more challenging to meet.
However, this is not the first time that the industry has been predicted to boom. In 2014, the China Coal Association issued a prediction that the coal-to-chemicals industry would be using 750Mt of coal per year by 2020, converting to about 540Mt of “standard” coal.
In reality, less than a third of this demand was realised – in large part due to low oil prices – and the sector was still only using half of this amount by the end of 2024.
New targets on the horizon
Given the major increase in solar capacity in the first half, as well as expected additions of wind and nuclear throughout the year, China is on track for a fall in emissions in 2025.
This would continue a declining trend that began in early 2024 and leaves open the possibility that China’s emissions could have peaked already, years ahead of its “before 2030” target.
The recent slide in China’s total CO2 emissions is shown in the figure below, with the shallow decline illustrating the potential that this trend could be reversed.
Even if China’s emissions fall by a few percent this year, however, this is unlikely to be sufficient to meet the carbon intensity target for 2025 in the current five-year plan. Still, it would make the country’s 2030 carbon intensity commitment under the Paris Agreement easier to meet.
A continuing fall in emissions, extending the fall that began in early 2024, could also affect target-setting for the next five-year plan – which is being prepared for release in early 2026 – by showing that China could peak and reduce its emissions well ahead of the 2030 deadline.
Yet, despite rapid progress in 2024 and 2025, China is bound to miss multiple emissions-related targets in the 2021-2025 period, due to rapid CO2 rises during and after the Covid pandemic.
These targets include improvements in carbon intensity, “strict” controls of the growth in coal consumption and new coal-fired power plants, as well as the share of cleaner electric arc steelmaking in total steel output.
If China’s policymakers want to make up the shortfall against these 2025 targets and get on track for their 2030 goals, then they would need to set out higher ambitions in the 15th five-year plan, covering 2026-2030. For example, this could include reducing the carbon intensity of China’s economy by more than 20% over the next five years.
China’s new pledge (NDC) under the Paris Agreement, with targets for 2035, is due to be published in the next few months and will provide important indications of their intentions.
The new pricing policy for wind and solar has also increased the importance of target-setting, by making “contracts for difference” available for the amount of capacity needed to meet the central government’s clean-energy targets. An ambitious clean-energy target for 2035 would be a significant new backstop for clean-energy growth, with both climate and economic relevance.
Another major question is how the government will react to the influx of coal-fired capacity, even as power generation from coal recedes. It could either move to close down older coal plants – or to limit clean-energy additions.
With respect to coal power plants, the key point remains, however, that as long as clean power generation keeps growing faster than electricity demand, then increases in coal and gas fired capacity will result in falling utilisation, rather than increased CO2 emissions.
About the data
Data for the analysis was compiled from the National Bureau of Statistics of China, National Energy Administration of China, China Electricity Council and China Customs official data releases, and from WIND Information, an industry data provider.
Wind and solar output, and thermal power breakdown by fuel, was calculated by multiplying power generating capacity at the end of each month by monthly utilisation, using data reported by China Electricity Council through Wind Financial Terminal.
Total generation from thermal power and generation from hydropower and nuclear power was taken from National Bureau of Statistics monthly releases.
Monthly utilisation data was not available for biomass, so the annual average of 52% for 2023 was applied. Power sector coal consumption was estimated based on power generation from coal and the average heat rate of coal-fired power plants during each month, to avoid the issue with official coal consumption numbers affecting recent data.
CO2 emissions estimates are based on National Bureau of Statistics default calorific values of fuels and emissions factors from China’s latest national greenhouse gas emissions inventory, for the year 2021. Cement CO2 emissions factor is based on annual estimates up to 2024.
For oil consumption, apparent consumption is calculated from refinery throughput, with net exports of oil products subtracted.
The post Analysis: Record solar growth keeps China’s CO2 falling in first half of 2025 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Record solar growth keeps China’s CO2 falling in first half of 2025
Permitting reform: A major key to cutting climate pollution
By Dana Nuccitelli, CCL Research Coordinator
Permitting reform has emerged as the biggest and most important clean energy and climate policy area in the 119th Congress (2025-2026).
To make sure every CCL volunteer understands the opportunities and challenges ahead, CCL Vice President of Government Affairs Jennifer Tyler and I recently provided two trainings about the basics of permitting reform and understanding the permitting reform landscape.
These first introductory trainings set the stage for the rest of an ongoing series, which will delve into the details of several key permitting reform topics that CCL is engaging on. Read on for a recap of the first two trainings and a preview of coming attractions.
Permitting reform basics
Before diving into the permitting reform deep end, we need to first understand the fundamentals of the topic: what is “permitting”? What problems are we trying to solve with permitting reform? Why is it a key climate solution?
In short, a permit is a legal authorization issued by a government agency (federal and/or state and/or local) that allows a specific activity or project to proceed under certain defined conditions. The permitting process ensures that public health, safety, and the environment are protected during the construction and operation of the project.
But the permitting process can take a long time, and in some cases it’s taking so long that it’s unduly slowing down the clean energy transition. “Permitting reform” seeks to make the process more efficient while still ensuring that public health, safety, and the environment are protected.
There are a lot of factors involved in the permitting reform process, including environmental laws, limitations on lawsuits, and measures to expedite the building of electrical transmission lines that are key for expanding the capacity of America’s aging electrical grid in order to allow us to connect more clean energy and meet our energy affordability and security and climate needs.
But if we can succeed in passing a good, comprehensive permitting reform package through Congress, it could unlock enough climate pollution reductions to offset what we lost from this year’s rollback of the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean energy investments. Permitting reform is the big climate policy in the current session of Congress.
Understanding the permitting reform landscape
In the second training of this series, we sought to understand the players and the politics in the permitting reform space, learn about the challenges involved, and explore CCL’s framework and approach for weighing in on this policy topic.
Permitting reform has split some traditional alliances along two differing theories about how to best address climate change. Some groups with a theory of change relying on using permitting and lawsuits to slow and stop fossil fuel infrastructure are least likely to be supportive of a permitting reform effort. Groups like CCL that recognize the importance of quickly building lots of clean, affordable energy infrastructure are more supportive of permitting reform measures.
The subject has created some strange bedfellows, because clean energy and fossil fuel companies and organizations all want efficient permitting for their projects, and hence all tend to support permitting reform. For CCL, the key question is whether a comprehensive permitting reform package will be a net benefit to clean energy or the climate — and that’s what we’re working toward.
The two major political parties also have different priorities when it comes to permitting reform. Republicans tend to view it through a lens of reducing government red tape, ensuring that laws and regulations are only used for their intended purpose, and achieving energy affordability and security. Democrats prioritize building clean energy faster to slow climate change, addressing energy affordability, and protecting legacy environmental laws and community engagement.
As we discussed in the training, there are a number of key concepts that will require compromise from both sides of the aisle in order to reach a durable bipartisan permitting reform agreement. We’ll delve into the details of these in these upcoming trainings:
The Challenge of Energy Affordability and Security
First, with support from CCL’s Electrification Action Team, on February 5 I’ll examine what’s behind rising electricity rates and energy insecurity in the U.S. and how we can solve these problems. Electrification is a key climate solution in the transition to clean energy sources. But electricity rates are rising fast and face surging demand from artificial intelligence data centers. Permitting reform can play a key role in addressing these challenges.
Transmission Reform and Key Messages
Insufficient electrical transmission capacity is acting as a bottleneck slowing down the deployment of new clean energy sources in the U.S. Reforming cumbersome transmission permitting processes could unlock billions of tons of avoided climate pollution while improving America’s energy security and affordability. In this training on March 5, Jenn and I will dive into the details of the key clean energy and climate solution that is transmission reform, and the key messages to use when lobbying our members of Congress.
Clean energy projects often encounter long, complex permitting steps that slow construction and raise costs. Practical permitting reforms can help ensure that good projects move forward faster while upholding environmental and community protections. In this training on March 19, Jenn and I will examine permitting reforms to build energy infrastructure faster, some associated tensions and compromises that they may involve, and key messages for congressional offices.
Presidents from both political parties have taken steps to interfere with the permitting of certain types of energy infrastructure that they oppose. These executive actions create uncertainty that inhibits the development of new energy sources in the United States. For this reason, ensuring fair permitting certainty is a key aspect of permitting reform that enjoys bipartisan support. In this training on April 2, Jenn and I will discuss how Congress can ensure certainty in a permitting reform package, and key messages for congressional offices.
Community Engagement and Key Messages
It’s important for energy project developers to engage local communities in order to address any local concerns and adverse impacts that may arise from new infrastructure projects. But it’s also important to strike a careful balance such that community input can be heard and addressed in a timely manner without excessively slowing new clean energy project timelines. In this training on May 7, Jenn and I will examine how community engagement may be addressed in the permitting reform process, and key messages for congressional offices.
We look forward to nerding out with you in these upcoming advanced and important permitting reform trainings! 
Want to take action now? Use our online action tool to call Congress and encourage them to work together on comprehensive permitting reform.
The post Permitting reform: A major key to cutting climate pollution appeared first on Citizens' Climate Lobby.
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 30 January 2026: Fire and ice; US formally exits Paris; Climate image faux pas
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Fire and ice
OZ HEAT: The ongoing heatwave in Australia reached record-high temperatures of almost 50C earlier this week, while authorities “urged caution as three forest fires burned out of control”, reported the Associated Press. Bloomberg said the Australian Open tennis tournament “rescheduled matches and activated extreme-heat protocols”. The Guardian reported that “the climate crisis has increased the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, including heatwaves and bushfires”.
WINTER STORM: Meanwhile, a severe winter storm swept across the south and east of the US and parts of Canada, causing “mass power outages and the cancellation of thousands of flights”, reported the Financial Times. More than 870,000 people across the country were without power and at least seven people died, according to BBC News.
COLD QUESTIONED: As the storm approached, climate-sceptic US president Donald Trump took to social media to ask facetiously: “Whatever happened to global warming???”, according to the Associated Press. There is currently significant debate among scientists about whether human-caused climate change is driving record cold extremes, as Carbon Brief has previously explained.
Around the world
- US EXIT: The US has formally left the Paris Agreement for the second time, one year after Trump announced the intention to exit, according to the Guardian. The New York Times reported that the US is “the only country in the world to abandon the international commitment to slow global warming”.
- WEAK PROPOSAL: Trump officials have delayed the repeal of the “endangerment finding” – a legal opinion that underpins federal climate rules in the US – due to “concerns the proposal is too weak to withstand a court challenge”, according to the Washington Post.
- DISCRIMINATION: A court in the Hague has ruled that the Dutch government “discriminated against people in one of its most vulnerable territories” by not helping them to adapt to climate change, reported the Guardian. The court ordered the Dutch government to set binding targets within 18 months to cut greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Agreement, according to the Associated Press.
- WIND PACT: 10 European countries have agreed a “landmark pact” to “accelerate the rollout of offshore windfarms in the 2030s and build a power grid in the North Sea”, according to the Guardian.
- TRADE DEAL: India and the EU have agreed on the “mother of all trade deals”, which will save up to €4bn in import duty, reported the Hindustan Times. Reuters quoted EU officials saying that the landmark trade deal “will not trigger any changes” to the bloc’s carbon border adjustment mechanism.
- ‘TWO-TIER SYSTEM’: COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago believes that global cooperation should move to a “two-speed system, where new coalitions lead fast, practical action alongside the slower, consensus-based decision-making of the UN process”, according to a letter published on Tuesday, reported Climate Home News.
$2.3tn
The amount invested in “green tech” globally in 2025, marking a new record high, according to Bloomberg.
Latest climate research
- Including carbon emissions from permafrost thaw and fires reduces the remaining carbon budget for limiting warming to 1.5C by 25% | Communications Earth & Environment
- The global population exposed to extreme heat conditions is projected to nearly double if temperatures reach 2C | Nature Sustainability
- Polar bears in Svalbard – the fastest-warming region on Earth – are in better condition than they were a generation ago, as melting sea ice makes seal pups easier to reach | Scientific Reports
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Sales of electric vehicles (EVs) overtook standard petrol cars in the EU for the first time in December 2025, according to new figures released by the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) and covered by Carbon Brief. Registrations of “pure” battery EVs reached 217,898 – up 51% year-on-year from December 2024. Meanwhile, sales of standard petrol cars in the bloc fell 19% year-on-year, from 267,834 in December 2024 to 216,492 in December 2025, according to the analysis.
Spotlight
Looking at climate visuals
Carbon Brief’s Ayesha Tandon recently chaired a panel discussion at the launch of a new book focused on the impact of images used by the media to depict climate change.
When asked to describe an image that represents climate change, many people think of polar bears on melting ice or devastating droughts.
But do these common images – often repeated in the media – risk making climate change feel like a far-away problem from people in the global north? And could they perpetuate harmful stereotypes?
These are some of the questions addressed in a new book by Prof Saffron O’Neill, who researches the visual communication of climate change at the University of Exeter.
“The Visual Life of Climate Change” examines the impact of common images used to depict climate change – and how the use of different visuals might help to effect change.
At a launch event for her book in London, a panel of experts – moderated by Carbon Brief’s Ayesha Tandon – discussed some of the takeaways from the book and the “dos and don’ts” of climate imagery.
Power of an image
“This book is about what kind of work images are doing in the world, who has the power and whose voices are being marginalised,” O’Neill told the gathering of journalists and scientists assembled at the Frontline Club in central London for the launch event.
O’Neill opened by presenting a series of climate imagery case studies from her book. This included several examples of images that could be viewed as “disempowering”.
For example, to visualise climate change in small island nations, such as Tuvalu or Fiji, O’Neill said that photographers often “fly in” to capture images of “small children being vulnerable”. She lamented that this narrative “misses the stories about countries like Tuvalu that are really international leaders in climate policy”.
Similarly, images of power-plant smoke stacks, often used in online climate media articles, almost always omit the people that live alongside them, “breathing their pollution”, she said.
During the panel discussion that followed, panellist Dr James Painter – a research associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and senior teaching associate at the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute – highlighted his work on heatwave imagery in the media.
Painter said that “the UK was egregious for its ‘fun in the sun’ imagery” during dangerous heatwaves.
He highlighted a series of images in the Daily Mail in July 2019 depicting people enjoying themselves on beaches or in fountains during an intense heatwave – even as the text of the piece spoke to the negative health impacts of the heatwave.
In contrast, he said his analysis of Indian media revealed “not one single image of ‘fun in the sun’”.
Meanwhile, climate journalist Katherine Dunn asked: “Are we still using and abusing the polar bear?”. O’Neill suggested that polar bear images “are distant in time and space to many people”, but can still be “super engaging” to others – for example, younger audiences.
Panellist Dr Rebecca Swift – senior vice president of creative at Getty images – identified AI-generated images as “the biggest threat that we, in this space, are all having to fight against now”. She expressed concern that we may need to “prove” that images are “actually real”.
However, she argued that AI will not “win” because, “in the end, authentic images, real stories and real people are what we react to”.
When asked if we expect too much from images, O’Neill argued “we can never pin down a social change to one image, but what we can say is that images both shape and reflect the societies that we live in”. She added:
“I don’t think we can ask photos to do the work that we need to do as a society, but they certainly both shape and show us where the future may lie.”
Watch, read, listen
UNSTOPPABLE WILDFIRES: “Funding cuts, conspiracy theories and ‘powder keg’ pine plantations” are making Patagonia’s wildfires “almost impossible to stop”, said the Guardian.
AUDIO SURVEY: Sverige Radio has published “the world’s, probably, longest audio survey” – a six-hour podcast featuring more than 200 people sharing their questions around climate change.
UNDERSTAND CBAM: European thinktank Bruegel released a podcast “all about” the EU’s carbon adjustment border mechanism, which came into force on 1 January.
Coming up
- 1 February: Costa Rican general election
- 3 February: UN Environment Programme Adaptation Fund Climate Innovation Accelerator report launch, Online
- 2-8 February: Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) 12th plenary, Manchester, UK
Pick of the jobs
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The post DeBriefed 30 January 2026: Fire and ice; US formally exits Paris; Climate image faux pas appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed 30 January 2026: Fire and ice; US formally exits Paris; Climate image faux pas
Electric heat pumps are set to play a key role in the UK’s climate strategy, as well as cutting the nation’s reliance on imported fossil fuels.
Heat pumps took centre-stage in the UK government’s recent “warm homes plan”, which said that they could also help cut household energy bills by “hundreds of pounds” a year.
Similarly, innovation agency Nesta estimates that typical households could cut their annual energy bills nearly £300 a year, by switching from a gas boiler to a heat pump.
Yet there has been widespread media coverage in the Times, Sunday Times, Daily Express, Daily Telegraph and elsewhere of a report claiming that heat pumps are “more expensive” to run.
The report is from the Green Britain Foundation set up by Dale Vince, owner of energy firm Ecotricity, who campaigns against heat pumps and invests in “green gas” as an alternative.
One expert tells Carbon Brief that Vince’s report is based on “flimsy data”, while another says that it “combines a series of worst-case assumptions to present an unduly pessimistic picture”.
This factcheck explains how heat pumps can cut bills, what the latest data shows about potential savings and how this information was left out of the report from Vince’s foundation.
How heat pumps can cut bills
Heat pumps use electricity to move heat – most commonly from outside air – to the inside of a building, in a process that is similar to the way that a fridge keeps its contents cold.
This means that they are highly efficient, adding three or four units of heat to the house for each unit of electricity used. In contrast, a gas boiler will always supply less than one unit of heat from each unit of gas that it burns, because some of the energy is lost during combustion.
This means that heat pumps can keep buildings warm while using three, four or even five times less energy than a gas boiler. This cuts fossil-fuel imports, reducing demand for gas by at least two-fifths, even in the unlikely scenario that all of the electricity they need is gas-fired.
Since UK electricity supplies are now the cleanest they have ever been, heat pumps also cut the carbon emissions associated with staying warm by around 85%, relative to a gas boiler.
Heat pumps are, therefore, the “central” technology for cutting carbon emissions from buildings.
While heat pumps cost more to install than gas boilers, the UK government’s recent “warm homes plan” says that they can help cut energy bills by “hundreds of pounds” per year.
Similarly, Nesta published analysis showing that a typical home could cut its annual energy bill by £280, if it replaces a gas boiler with a heat pump, as shown in the figure below.
Nesta and the government plan say that significantly larger savings are possible if heat pumps are combined with other clean-energy technologies, such as solar and batteries.
Both the government and Nesta’s estimates of bill savings from switching to a heat pump rely on relatively conservative assumptions.
Specifically, the government assumes that a heat pump will deliver 2.8 units of heat for each unit of electricity, on average. This is known as the “seasonal coefficient of performance” (SCoP).
This figure is taken from the government-backed “electrification of heat” trial, which ran during 2020-2022 and showed that heat pumps are suitable for all building types in the UK.
(The Green Britain Foundation report and Vince’s quotes in related coverage repeat a number of heat pump myths, such as the idea that they do not perform well in older properties and require high levels of insulation.)
Nesta assumes a slightly higher SCoP of 3.0, says Madeleine Gabriel, the organisation’s director of sustainable future. (See below for more on what the latest data says about SCoP in recent installations.)
Both the government and Nesta assume that a home with a heat pump would disconnect from the gas grid, meaning that it would no longer need to pay the daily “standing charge” for gas. This currently amounts to a saving of around £130 per year.
Finally, they both consider the impact of a home with a heat pump using a “smart tariff”, where the price of electricity varies according to the time of day.
Such tariffs are now widely available from a variety of energy suppliers and many have been designed specifically for homes that have a heat pump.
Such tariffs significantly reduce the average price for a unit of electricity. Government survey data suggests that around half of heat-pump owners already use such tariffs.
This is important because on the standard rates under the price cap set by energy regulator Ofgem, each unit of electricity costs more than four times as much as a unit of gas.
The ratio between electricity and gas prices is a key determinant of the size and potential for running-cost savings with a heat pump. Countries with a lower electricity-to-gas price ratio consistently see much higher rates of heat-pump adoption.
(Decisions taken by the UK government in its 2025 budget mean that the electricity-to-gas ratio will fall from April, but current forecasts suggest it will remain above four-to-one.)
In contrast, Vince’s report assumes that gas boilers are 90% efficient, whereas data from real homes suggests 85% is more typical. It also assumes that homes with heat pumps remain on the gas grid, paying the standing charge, as well as using only a standard electricity tariff.
Prof Jan Rosenow, energy programme leader at the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute, tells Carbon Brief that Vince’s report uses “worst-case assumptions”. He says:
“This report cherry-picks assumptions to reach a predetermined conclusion. Most notably, it assumes a gas boiler efficiency of 90%, which is significantly higher than real-world performance…Taken together, the analysis combines a series of worst-case assumptions to present an unduly pessimistic picture.”
Similarly, Gabriel tells Carbon Brief that Vince’s report is based on “flimsy data”. She explains:
“Dale Vince has drawn some very strong conclusions about heat pumps from quite flimsy data. Like Dale, we’d also like to see electricity prices come down relative to gas, but we estimate that, from April, even a moderately efficient heat pump on a standard tariff will be cheaper to run than a gas boiler. Paired with a time-of-use tariff, a heat pump could save £280 versus a boiler and adding solar panels and a battery could triple those savings.”
What the latest data shows about bill savings
The efficiency of heat-pump installations is another key factor in the potential bill savings they can deliver and, here, both the government and Vince’s report take a conservative approach.
They rely on the “electrification of heat” trial data to use an efficiency (SCoP) of 2.8 for heat pumps. However, Rosenow says that recent evidence shows that “substantially higher efficiencies are routinely available”, as shown in the figure below.
Detailed, real-time data on hundreds of heat pump systems around the UK is available via the website Heat Pump Monitor, where the average efficiency – a SCoP of 3.9 – is much higher.
Homes with such efficient heat-pump installations would see even larger bill savings than suggested by the government and Nesta estimates.
Academic research suggests that there are simple and easy-to-implement reasons why these systems achieve much higher efficiency levels than in the electrification of heat trial.
Specifically, it shows that many of the systems in the trial have poor software settings, which means they do not operate as efficiently as their heat pump hardware is capable of doing.
The research suggests that heat pump installations in the UK have been getting more and more efficient over time, as engineers become increasingly familiar with the technology.
It indicates that recently installed heat pumps are 64% more efficient than those in early trials.
Notably, the Green Britain Foundation report only refers to the trial data from the electrification of heat study carried out in 2020-22 and the even earlier “renewable heat premium package” (RHPP). This makes a huge difference to the estimated running costs of a heat pump.
Carbon Brief analysis suggests that a typical household could cut its annual energy bills by nearly £200 with a heat pump – even on a standard electricity tariff – if the system has a SCoP of 3.9.
The savings would be even larger on a smart heat-pump tariff.
In contrast, based on the oldest efficiency figures mentioned in the Green Britain Foundation report, a heat pump could increase annual household bills by as much as £200 on a standard tariff.
To support its conclusions, the report also includes the results of a survey of 1,001 heat pump owners, which, among other things, is at odds with government survey data. The report says “66% of respondents report that their homes are more expensive to heat than the previous system”.
There are several reasons to treat these findings with caution. The survey was carried out in July 2025 and some 45% of the heat pumps involved were installed between 2021-23.
This is a period during which energy prices surged as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting global energy crisis. Energy bills remain elevated as a result of high gas prices.
The wording of the survey question asks if homes are “more or less expensive to heat than with your previous system” – but makes no mention of these price rises.
The question does not ask homeowners if their bills are higher today, with a heat pump, than they would have been with the household’s previous heating system.
If respondents interpreted the question as asking whether their bills have gone up or down since their heat pump was installed, then their answers will be confounded by the rise in prices overall.
There are a number of other seemingly contradictory aspects of the survey that raise questions about its findings and the strong conclusions in the media coverage of the report.
For example, while only 15% of respondents say it is cheaper to heat their home with a heat pump, 49% say that one of the top three advantages of the system is saving money on energy bills.
In addition, 57% of respondents say they still have a boiler, even though 67% say they received government subsidies for their heat-pump installation. It is a requirement of the government’s boiler upgrade scheme (BUS) grants that homeowners completely remove their boiler.
The government’s own survey of BUS recipients finds that only 13% of respondents say their bills have gone up, whereas 37% say their bills have gone down, another 13% say they have stayed the same and 8% thought that it was too early to say.
The post Factcheck: What it really costs to heat a home in the UK with a heat pump appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Factcheck: What it really costs to heat a home in the UK with a heat pump
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