Reform UK’s local-election victories in May 2025 could put 6 gigawatts (GW) of new clean-energy capacity at risk, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
The hard-right populist party took control of 10 English councils in last month’s local elections and has said it will use “every lever” to block new wind, solar and battery projects.
Those 10 areas have jurisdiction over 5,076 megawatts (MW) of battery schemes, 786MW of solar and 56MW of wind, according to Carbon Brief’s analysis of industry data.
While Reform has also pledged to “ban” battery systems, councils do not have direct control over these projects, which are determined by local planning authorities.
It could still influence local planning decisions, planning experts tell Carbon Brief.
However, this is likely to prove a “nuisance” with “limited effect” in terms of the government’s targets for clean power overall, according to one planning lawyer.
Opposing net-zero
Reform UK’s leaders are openly sceptical about the causes and consequences of human-caused climate change. The party is also explicitly opposed to the UK’s net-zero target, which, at a global level, is the only way to stop warming from getting worse, according to scientists.
The party has pledged to “scrap net-zero” if it ever takes power at the national level, falsely asserting that this would free up billions of pounds of public money for tax cuts and welfare programmes.
(Its assertions ignore the fact that the large majority of the investments needed to reach net-zero are expected to come from the private sector, rather than government funds. They also do not account for the economic benefits of lower fossil fuel use or avoided climate impacts. The party’s misleading claims have been widely dismissed by economists.)
Reform UK has also said it would “ban” battery storage projects and impose new taxes on solar and wind power installations.
As it stands, the party only has five MPs in parliament. However, its success in the recent English local elections and favourable polling numbers have raised its profile in UK politics and given it new powers in some areas.
To assess the potential impact of these new powers on clean-energy expansion, Carbon Brief looked at data for 10 local councils where Reform UK won overall control, shown in the map below, including Durham, Kent and Derbyshire, as well as two mayoralties.
(The analysis does not include Warwickshire, where no party gained a majority in the elections. However, a subsequent vote saw the party’s local head selected to lead the county council. He has announced plans to “dumb down” net-zero initiatives in the county.)
Following the election, Richard Tice, Reform MP and deputy leader, said the party would use “every lever” available to block new renewable-energy projects in the areas it now controls.
At the heart of this commitment is Lincolnshire, the location of Tice’s own constituency, Boston and Skegness, which now also has a Reform-run council and a Reform mayor.
The rural county is the site of several large-scale solar project proposals, which have faced a strong backlash from some local people.
This mirrors a wider trend of opposition to solar and battery projects by campaigners, who say they are concerned about, what they allege, could be the impact on the local countryside and farmers.
However, such views are not the norm. Survey data shows overwhelming public support for solar and other renewables across the UK, even if projects are built in people’s local areas.
Analysis by thinktank the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit also noted that by rejecting net-zero-related projects, Reform UK could threaten thousands of jobs and millions of pounds of investment in areas such as Lincolnshire.
Capacity at risk
In total, some 5,862MW of solar and storage capacity is currently seeking local planning authority planning approval across the 10 Reform-controlled councils, Carbon Brief’s analysis shows. This is broken down by council area in the figure below.
This includes a series of smaller proposed solar farms, each with a capacity of less than 50MW, meaning they need local planning approval.
(The threshold for local planning approval, currently 50MW, is set to rise to 100MW in 2026.)
Solar farms above this capacity threshold go through the “nationally significant infrastructure planning” (NSIP) process. These large-scale projects are then assessed by energy secretary Ed Miliband, who can grant or deny a development consent order.
Local planning authorities (LPAs) are guided by the national planning policy framework (NPPF), rather than the politics of the county councils under which they sit.
However, the Reform-controlled councils overseeing these authorities will likely attempt to assert influence over approvals.
Gareth Phillips, partner at Pinsent Masons law firm and specialist in renewable energy planning and project development, tells Carbon Brief that, while county councils are not responsible for determining planning applications, they do have influence over the outcome.
He tells Carbon Brief:
“[Councils are an] important consultee, required to respond to statutory consultation…which gives the opportunity for county-council members to influence the planning decision…In the case of Reform, it is possible that its elected members may seek to rally support for opposing planning applications, perhaps leading campaigns against the proposals. The risk here is that it may give the perception of credence to opposing views.”
Phillips says that in addition to influencing planning authority decisions, county councils could issue new strategic planning guidelines for their areas. He explains:
“It will be for the LPA to decide what, if any, weight to place on the county council’s views, when determining the planning application. Over time, it’s possible that Reform-led county councils may propose so-called ‘core strategies’, i.e. planning documents setting out strategic level requirements and policy applicable to development proposals in its jurisdiction. Similarly, that policy would be a matter for the LPA to consider and decide how much weight to apply when determining planning applications.”
This risk is mitigated to some extent by the core strategies within the NPPF and the “national policy statements” for energy, he notes.
As such, while local planning authorities will be required to determine the approval or rejection of an application on the basis of wider policy considerations, Reform-led councils could still affect the decision. “Reform-led county councils would have a voice and opportunity to influence planning decisions,” says Philips.
Stand-alone battery energy-storage projects do not have a capacity cap for being processed by local planning authorities, following changes to the regulations in 2020.
However, a number of storage projects that are co-located with solar will be judged under the NSIP process, meaning councils will be unable to block their construction.
Solar strife
Carbon Brief’s analysis looks at projects that have submitted planning permission requests in the 10 Reform-controlled counties, using Solar Energy UK’s SolarPulse database for solar and storage.
The analysis also covers relevant onshore wind projects, based on data from the government’s renewable energy planning database.
(Solar Energy UK notes that the SolarPulse database does not include solar projects with a capacity of less than 5MW.)
The analysis shows that there is 1,866MW of proposed solar capacity awaiting planning permission in Lincolnshire, by far the largest pipeline, as shown in the chart below.
The majority of this capacity is subject to national-level approval as it is above the NSIP threshold. Nevertheless, the county still has the most solar-power projects awaiting permission from the local planning authority, some 166MW.
(A key reason Lincolnshire dominates this picture for solar power development is due to grid capacity. The county was home to several large-scale coal-fired power plants, such as West Burton, which have shuttered in recent years as part of the UK’s transition away from coal. This means there is more capacity for new generators to connect to the grid in the county than in many others, where the system is currently more constrained.)
Overall, the bulk of the proposed capacity at risk is battery storage, which has seen a surge in applications and installations in recent years.
There was 5,013MW of battery storage capacity in operation as of December 2025 and another 5,115MW under construction, according to trade association RenewableUK. It says an additional 40,223MW had planning approval and a further 77,354MW was under development.
Impact of rejection
Overall, even if local planning authorities under the 10 Reform UK-run councils were to reject all of the nearly 6GW of proposed solar and storage capacity in their areas, it would have a limited impact on the UK’s wider solar, storage and wind targets.
If built, the 786MW of proposed solar would generate 757 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity. On average, a household in the UK uses 2,700 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity each year, meaning these solar farms would be able to power the equivalent of around 280,000 homes – some 1% of the national total.
If all of this proposed solar were rejected and the electricity were generated from gas-fired power stations instead, it would result in an extra 0.3m tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per year. (This is equivalent to less than a tenth of 1% of the UK’s annual total.)
In total, the potential 757GWh of solar power could help displace around £60m of gas per year, based on wholesale prices in 2025 to date.
Private investment could also be impacted. Each 1MW of solar would attract around £1m of investment, meaning the 786MW of capacity would bring roughly £786m into the Reform-led counties. This would have an impact on local supply chains and “community benefit” schemes.
Similarly, battery schemes with four hours of storage capacity also require around £1m of investment per megawatt. This means another £5bn of investment – some 5,076MW of capacity – could be at risk under Reform-led councils.
The total investment at risk for solar and storage is, therefore, close to £6bn.
While a large amount of potential new solar and storage capacity is being proposed in the Reform-led council areas and some could be put at risk as a result, it is also the case that some of these developments could fail for other reasons.
According to research from consultancy Cornwall Insight in February, the current battery storage “connection queue” is double the grid’s requirement for 2030. This means there are many more projects in the queue to gain access to the electricity network than needed.
The government’s plan for reaching its target of “clean power 2030” sets a guideline of 27GW of storage capacity by the end of this decade, whereas some 61GW of battery projects are seeking a grid connection over the same period.
This means the UK would have enough options to meet its 2030 storage requirements even if some proposed battery projects fail due to Reform-led councils, says Ed Porter, global director of industry for battery analysts Modo Energy. He tells Carbon Brief:
“With more than 50GW of battery projects with planning consent, projects could be targeted in Reform areas, but the UK would still have sufficient options to meet clean-power 2030 targets, subject to the achievable build out rate of storage projects.”
The main outcome of Reform-led refusals would be to block profitable projects that could reduce consumer costs and cut CO2 emissions, Porter adds.
Still, there is no guarantee that all of these projects – and the solar proposals – would have received planning permission if Reform UK had not been elected in the relevant areas.
According to figures from Solar Media Market Research, the local authority refusal rate for proposed solar-power projects rose to almost 25% in 2024, the highest on record. This is up from 15% in 2022 and 20% in 2023.
However, the majority of projects that are refused by local authorities still end up being approved. Over the past five years, some 80% of projects that went to appeal were subsequently approved, according to Solar Media. All 12 of the solar projects that have gone to appeal in 2025 to date have been approved.
Battery energy-storage refusals hit a high of 22% in 2024, according to Solar Media. However, in 2025 so far, this has dropped to 9%.
Connections challenge
Even if Reform UK-led councils are unable to block clean-energy developments outright, the party’s pledge to “fight [developers] every step of the way” could still make the process more challenging.
One key way this could hamper the development of renewable energy technologies is by forcing them to go through the appeals process, extending the time it takes to gain planning permission by as much as a year.
Following changes to the grid connections queue, new connection agreements include strict delivery deadlines for obtaining planning permission.
As such, if a project ends up going to appeal – and is, therefore, delayed – it could risk missing deadlines and having its grid connection agreement terminated.
Additionally, with the capacity limit for NSIPs set to change in December, more projects – solar projects between 50MW and 100MW – will go to local planning authorities for approval. This will increase the number that could be threatened by Reform UK’s influence.
Ultimately, though, there is limited renewable-energy capacity seeking planning permission in Reform-controlled counties, more than enough capacity in planning nationally to meet targets, plus the role of the council in what is – or is not – approved is limited.
Planning lawyer Philips concludes that Reform-led councils are only likely to cause a “nuisance”, with “limited effect”. He says:
“In summary, there is the potential for Reform-led county councils to cause a nuisance for renewable energy projects in the planning process, but this will be limited in effect.
“I’m not concerned about this because of the weight of policy support there is for those projects, which should serve to mitigate the influence Reform could otherwise have.”
The post Analysis: Reform-led councils threaten 6GW of solar and battery schemes across England appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Reform-led councils threaten 6GW of solar and battery schemes across England
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Absolute State of the Union
‘DRILL, BABY’: US president Donald Trump “doubled down on his ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda” in his State of the Union (SOTU) address, said the Los Angeles Times. He “tout[ed] his support of the fossil-fuel industry and renew[ed] his focus on electricity affordability”, reported the Financial Times. Trump also attacked the “green new scam”, noted Carbon Brief’s SOTU tracker.
COAL REPRIEVE: Earlier in the week, the Trump administration had watered down limits on mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, reported the Financial Times. It remains “unclear” if this will be enough to prevent the decline of coal power, said Bloomberg, in the face of lower-cost gas and renewables. Reuters noted that US coal plants are “ageing”.
OIL STAY: The US Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments brought by the oil industry in a “major lawsuit”, reported the New York Times. The newspaper said the firms are attempting to head off dozens of other lawsuits at state level, relating to their role in global warming.
SHIP-SHILLING: The Trump administration is working to “kill” a global carbon levy on shipping “permanently”, reported Politico, after succeeding in delaying the measure late last year. The Guardian said US “bullying” could be “paying off”, after Panama signalled it was reversing its support for the levy in a proposal submitted to the UN shipping body.
Around the world
- RARE EARTHS: The governments of Brazil and India signed a deal on rare earths, said the Times of India, as well as agreeing to collaborate on renewable energy.
- HEAT ROLLBACK: German homes will be allowed to continue installing gas and oil heating, under watered-down government plans covered by Clean Energy Wire.
- BRAZIL FLOODS: At least 53 people died in floods in the state of Minas Gerais, after some areas saw 170mm of rain in a few hours, reported CNN Brasil.
- ITALY’S ATTACK: Italy is calling for the EU to “suspend” its emissions trading system (ETS) ahead of a review later this year, said Politico.
- COOKSTOVE CREDITS: The first-ever carbon credits under the Paris Agreement have been issued to a cookstove project in Myanmar, said Climate Home News.
- SAUDI SOLAR: Turkey has signed a “major” solar deal that will see Saudi firm ACWA building 2 gigawatts in the country, according to Agence France-Presse.
$467 billion
The profits made by five major oil firms since prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago, according to a report by Global Witness covered by BusinessGreen.
Latest climate research
- Claims about the “fingerprint” of human-caused climate change, made in a recent US Department of Energy report, are “factually incorrect” | AGU Advances
- Large lakes in the Congo Basin are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from “immense ancient stores” | Nature Geoscience
- Shared Socioeconomic Pathways – scenarios used regularly in climate modelling – underrepresent “narratives explicitly centring on democratic principles such as participation, accountability and justice” | npj Climate Action
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
The constituency of Richard Tice MP, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of Reform UK, is the second-largest recipient of flood defence spending in England, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Overall, the funding is disproportionately targeted at coastal and urban areas, many of which have Conservative or Liberal Democrat MPs.
Spotlight
Is there really a UK ‘greenlash’?
This week, after a historic Green Party byelection win, Carbon Brief looks at whether there really is a “greenlash” against climate policy in the UK.
Over the past year, the UK’s political consensus on climate change has been shattered.
Yet despite a sharp turn against climate action among right-wing politicians and right-leaning media outlets, UK public support for climate action remains strong.
Prof Federica Genovese, who studies climate politics at the University of Oxford, told Carbon Brief:
“The current ‘war’ on green policy is mostly driven by media and political elites, not by the public.”
Indeed, there is still a greater than two-to-one majority among the UK public in favour of the country’s legally binding target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, as shown below.
Steve Akehurst, director of public-opinion research initiative Persuasion UK, also noted the growing divide between the public and “elites”. He told Carbon Brief:
“The biggest movement is, without doubt, in media and elite opinion. There is a bit more polarisation and opposition [to climate action] among voters, but it’s typically no more than 20-25% and mostly confined within core Reform voters.”
Conservative gear shift
For decades, the UK had enjoyed strong, cross-party political support for climate action.
Lord Deben, the Conservative peer and former chair of the Climate Change Committee, told Carbon Brief that the UK’s landmark 2008 Climate Change Act had been born of this cross-party consensus, saying “all parties supported it”.
Since their landslide loss at the 2024 election, however, the Conservatives have turned against the UK’s target of net-zero emissions by 2050, which they legislated for in 2019.
Curiously, while opposition to net-zero has surged among Conservative MPs, there is majority support for the target among those that plan to vote for the party, as shown below.
Dr Adam Corner, advisor to the Climate Barometer initiative that tracks public opinion on climate change, told Carbon Brief that those who currently plan to vote Reform are the only segment who “tend to be more opposed to net-zero goals”. He said:
“Despite the rise in hostile media coverage and the collapse of the political consensus, we find that public support for the net-zero by 2050 target is plateauing – not plummeting.”
Reform, which rejects the scientific evidence on global warming and campaigns against net-zero, has been leading the polls for a year. (However, it was comfortably beaten by the Greens in yesterday’s Gorton and Denton byelection.)
Corner acknowledged that “some of the anti-net zero noise…[is] showing up in our data”, adding:
“We see rising concerns about the near-term costs of policies and an uptick in people [falsely] attributing high energy bills to climate initiatives.”
But Akehurst said that, rather than a big fall in public support, there had been a drop in the “salience” of climate action:
“So many other issues [are] competing for their attention.”
UK newspapers published more editorials opposing climate action than supporting it for the first time on record in 2025, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Global ‘greenlash’?
All of this sits against a challenging global backdrop, in which US president Donald Trump has been repeating climate-sceptic talking points and rolling back related policy.
At the same time, prominent figures have been calling for a change in climate strategy, sold variously as a “reset”, a “pivot”, as “realism”, or as “pragmatism”.
Genovese said that “far-right leaders have succeeded in the past 10 years in capturing net-zero as a poster child of things they are ‘fighting against’”.
She added that “much of this is fodder for conservative media and this whole ecosystem is essentially driving what we call the ‘greenlash’”.
Corner said the “disconnect” between elite views and the wider public “can create problems” – for example, “MPs consistently underestimate support for renewables”. He added:
“There is clearly a risk that the public starts to disengage too, if not enough positive voices are countering the negative ones.”
Watch, read, listen
TRUMP’S ‘PETROSTATE’: The US is becoming a “petrostate” that will be “sicker and poorer”, wrote Financial Times associate editor Rana Forohaar.
RHETORIC VS REALITY: Despite a “political mood [that] has darkened”, there is “more green stuff being installed than ever”, said New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells.
CHINA’S ‘REVOLUTION’: The BBC’s Climate Question podcast reported from China on the “green energy revolution” taking place in the country.
Coming up
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean, Brasília
- 3 March: UK spring statement
- 4-11 March: China’s “two sessions”
- 5 March: Nepal elections
Pick of the jobs
- The Guardian, senior reporter, climate justice | Salary: $123,000-$135,000. Location: New York or Washington DC
- China-Global South Project, non-resident fellow, climate change | Salary: Up to $1,000 a month. Location: Remote
- University of East Anglia, PhD in mobilising community-based climate action through co-designed sports and wellbeing interventions | Salary: Stipend (unknown amount). Location: Norwich, UK
- TABLE and the University of São Paulo, Brazil, postdoctoral researcher in food system narratives | Salary: Unknown. Location: Pirassununga, Brazil
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Greenhouse Gases
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
The Lincolnshire constituency held by Richard Tice, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of the hard-right Reform party, has been pledged at least £55m in government funding for flood defences since 2024.
This investment in Boston and Skegness is the second-largest sum for a single constituency from a £1.4bn flood-defence fund for England, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
Flooding is becoming more likely and more extreme in the UK due to climate change.
Yet, for years, governments have failed to spend enough on flood defences to protect people, properties and infrastructure.
The £1.4bn fund is part of the current Labour government’s wider pledge to invest a “record” £7.9bn over a decade on protecting hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses from flooding.
As MP for one of England’s most flood-prone regions, Tice has called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
He is also one of Reform’s most vocal opponents of climate action and what he calls “net stupid zero”. He denies the scientific consensus on climate change and has claimed, falsely and without evidence, that scientists are “lying”.
Flood defences
Last year, the government said it would invest £2.65bn on flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) schemes in England between April 2024 and March 2026.
This money was intended to protect 66,500 properties from flooding. It is part of a decade-long Labour government plan to spend more than £7.9bn on flood defences.
There has been a consistent shortfall in maintaining England’s flood defences, with the Environment Agency expecting to protect fewer properties by 2027 than it had initially planned.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has attributed this to rising costs, backlogs from previous governments and a lack of capacity. It also points to the strain from “more frequent and severe” weather events, such as storms in recent years that have been amplified by climate change.
However, the CCC also said last year that, if the 2024-26 spending programme is delivered, it would be “slightly closer to the track” of the Environment Agency targets out to 2027.
The government has released constituency-level data on which schemes in England it plans to fund, covering £1.4bn of the 2024-26 investment. The other half of the FCERM spending covers additional measures, from repairing existing defences to advising local authorities.
The map below shows the distribution of spending on FCERM schemes in England over the past two years, highlighting the constituency of Richard Tice.
By far the largest sum of money – £85.6m in total – has been committed to a tidal barrier and various other defences in the Somerset constituency of Bridgwater, the seat of Conservative MP Ashley Fox.
Over the first months of 2026, the south-west region has faced significant flooding and Fox has called for more support from the government, citing “climate patterns shifting and rainfall intensifying”.
He has also backed his party’s position that “the 2050 net-zero target is impossible” and called for more fossil-fuel extraction in the North Sea.
Tice’s east-coast constituency of Boston and Skegness, which is highly vulnerable to flooding from both rivers and the sea, is set to receive £55m. Among the supported projects are beach defences from Saltfleet to Gibraltar Point and upgrades to pumping stations.
Overall, Boston and Skegness has the second-largest portion of flood-defence funding, as the chart below shows. Constituencies with Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs occupied the other top positions.
Overall, despite Labour MPs occupying 347 out of England’s 543 constituencies – nearly two-thirds of the total – more than half of the flood-defence funding was distributed to constituencies with non-Labour MPs. This reflects the flood risk in coastal and rural areas that are not traditional Labour strongholds.
Reform funding
While Reform has just eight MPs, representing 1% of the population, its constituencies have been assigned 4% of the flood-defence funding for England.
Nearly all of this money was for Tice’s constituency, although party leader Nigel Farage’s coastal Clacton seat in Kent received £2m.
Reform UK is committed to “scrapping net-zero” and its leadership has expressed firmly climate-sceptic views.
Much has been made of the disconnect between the party’s climate policies and the threat climate change poses to its voters. Various analyses have shown the flood risk in Reform-dominated areas, particularly Lincolnshire.
Tice has rejected climate science, advocated for fossil-fuel production and criticised Environment Agency flood-defence activities. Yet, he has also called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
This may reflect Tice’s broader approach to climate change. In a 2024 interview with LBC, he said:
“Where you’ve got concerns about sea level defences and sea level rise, guess what? A bit of steel, a bit of cement, some aggregate…and you build some concrete sea level defences. That’s how you deal with rising sea levels.”
While climate adaptation is viewed as vital in a warming world, there are limits on how much societies can adapt and adaptation costs will continue to increase as emissions rise.
The post Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
Greenhouse Gases
Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter.
Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Food inflation on the rise
DELUGE STRIKES FOOD: Extreme rainfall and flooding across the Mediterranean and north Africa has “battered the winter growing regions that feed Europe…threatening food price rises”, reported the Financial Times. Western France has “endured more than 36 days of continuous rain”, while farmers’ associations in Spain’s Andalusia estimate that “20% of all production has been lost”, it added. Policy expert David Barmes told the paper that the “latest storms were part of a wider pattern of climate shocks feeding into food price inflation”.
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NO BEEF: The UK’s beef farmers, meanwhile, “face a double blow” from climate change as “relentless rain forces them to keep cows indoors”, while last summer’s drought hit hay supplies, said another Financial Times article. At the same time, indoor growers in south England described a 60% increase in electricity standing charges as a “ticking timebomb” that could “force them to raise their prices or stop production, which will further fuel food price inflation”, wrote the Guardian.
‘TINDERBOX’ AND TARIFFS: A study, covered by the Guardian, warned that major extreme weather and other “shocks” could “spark social unrest and even food riots in the UK”. Experts cited “chronic” vulnerabilities, including climate change, low incomes, poor farming policy and “fragile” supply chains that have made the UK’s food system a “tinderbox”. A New York Times explainer noted that while trade could once guard against food supply shocks, barriers such as tariffs and export controls – which are being “increasingly” used by politicians – “can shut off that safety valve”.
El Niño looms
NEW ENSO INDEX: Researchers have developed a new index for calculating El Niño, the large-scale climate pattern that influences global weather and causes “billions in damages by bringing floods to some regions and drought to others”, reported CNN. It added that climate change is making it more difficult for scientists to observe El Niño patterns by warming up the entire ocean. The outlet said that with the new metric, “scientists can now see it earlier and our long-range weather forecasts will be improved for it.”
WARMING WARNING: Meanwhile, the US Climate Prediction Center announced that there is a 60% chance of the current La Niña conditions shifting towards a neutral state over the next few months, with an El Niño likely to follow in late spring, according to Reuters. The Vibes, a Malaysian news outlet, quoted a climate scientist saying: “If the El Niño does materialise, it could possibly push 2026 or 2027 as the warmest year on record, replacing 2024.”
CROP IMPACTS: Reuters noted that neutral conditions lead to “more stable weather and potentially better crop yields”. However, the newswire added, an El Niño state would mean “worsening drought conditions and issues for the next growing season” to Australia. El Niño also “typically brings a poor south-west monsoon to India, including droughts”, reported the Hindu’s Business Line. A 2024 guest post for Carbon Brief explained that El Niño is linked to crop failure in south-eastern Africa and south-east Asia.
News and views
- DAM-AG-ES: Several South Korean farmers filed a lawsuit against the country’s state-owned utility company, “seek[ing] financial compensation for climate-related agricultural damages”, reported United Press International. Meanwhile, a national climate change assessment for the Philippines found that the country “lost up to $219bn in agricultural damages from typhoons, floods and droughts” over 2000-10, according to Eco-Business.
- SCORCHED GRASS: South Africa’s Western Cape province is experiencing “one of the worst droughts in living memory”, which is “scorching grass and killing livestock”, said Reuters. The newswire wrote: “In 2015, a drought almost dried up the taps in the city; farmers say this one has been even more brutal than a decade ago.”
- NOUVELLE VEG: New guidelines published under France’s national food, nutrition and climate strategy “urged” citizens to “limit” their meat consumption, reported Euronews. The delayed strategy comes a month after the US government “upended decades of recommendations by touting consumption of red meat and full-fat dairy”, it noted.
- COURTING DISASTER: India’s top green court accepted the findings of a committee that “found no flaws” in greenlighting the Great Nicobar project that “will lead to the felling of a million trees” and translocating corals, reported Mongabay. The court found “no good ground to interfere”, despite “threats to a globally unique biodiversity hotspot” and Indigenous tribes at risk of displacement by the project, wrote Frontline.
- FISH FALLING: A new study found that fish biomass is “falling by 7.2% from as little as 0.1C of warming per decade”, noted the Guardian. While experts also pointed to the role of overfishing in marine life loss, marine ecologist and study lead author Dr Shahar Chaikin told the outlet: “Our research proves exactly what that biological cost [of warming] looks like underwater.”
- TOO HOT FOR COFFEE: According to new analysis by Climate Central, countries where coffee beans are grown “are becoming too hot to cultivate them”, reported the Guardian. The world’s top five coffee-growing countries faced “57 additional days of coffee-harming heat” annually because of climate change, it added.
Spotlight
Nature talks inch forward
This week, Carbon Brief covers the latest round of negotiations under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which occurred in Rome over 16-19 February.
The penultimate set of biodiversity negotiations before October’s Conference of the Parties ended in Rome last week, leaving plenty of unfinished business.
The CBD’s subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) met in the Italian capital for four days to discuss a range of issues, including biodiversity finance and reviewing progress towards the nature targets agreed under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
However, many of the major sticking points – particularly around finance – will have to wait until later this summer, leaving some observers worried about the capacity for delegates to get through a packed agenda at COP17.
The SBI, along with the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA) will both meet in Nairobi, Kenya, later this summer for a final round of talks before COP17 kicks off in Yerevan, Armenia, on 19 October.
Money talks
Finance for nature has long been a sticking point at negotiations under the CBD.
Discussions on a new fund for biodiversity derailed biodiversity talks in Cali, Colombia, in autumn 2024, requiring resumed talks a few months later.
Despite this, finance was barely on the agenda at the SBI meetings in Rome. Delegates discussed three studies on the relationship between debt sustainability and implementation of nature plans, but the more substantive talks are set to take place at the next SBI meeting in Nairobi.
Several parties “highlighted concerns with the imbalance of work” on finance between these SBI talks and the next ones, reported Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB).
Lim Li Ching, senior researcher at Third World Network, noted that tensions around finance permeated every aspect of the talks. She told Carbon Brief:
“If you’re talking about the gender plan of action – if there’s little or no financial resources provided to actually put it into practice and implement it, then it’s [just] paper, right? Same with the reporting requirements and obligations.”
Monitoring and reporting
Closely linked to the issue of finance is the obligations of parties to report on their progress towards the goals and targets of the GBF.
Parties do so through the submission of national reports.
Several parties at the talks pointed to a lack of timely funding for driving delays in their reporting, according to ENB.
A note released by the CBD Secretariat in December said that no parties had submitted their national reports yet; by the time of the SBI meetings, only the EU had. It further noted that just 58 parties had submitted their national biodiversity plans, which were initially meant to be published by COP16, in October 2024.
Linda Krueger, director of biodiversity and infrastructure policy at the environmental not-for-profit Nature Conservancy, told Carbon Brief that despite the sparse submissions, parties are “very focused on the national report preparation”. She added:
“Everybody wants to be able to show that we’re on the path and that there still is a pathway to getting to 2030 that’s positive and largely in the right direction.”
Watch, read, listen
NET LOSS: Nigeria’s marine life is being “threatened” by “ghost gear” – nets and other fishing equipment discarded in the ocean – said Dialogue Earth.
COMEBACK CAUSALITY: A Vox long-read looked at whether Costa Rica’s “payments for ecosystem services” programme helped the country turn a corner on deforestation.
HOMEGROWN GOALS: A Straits Times podcast discussed whether import-dependent Singapore can afford to shelve its goal to produce 30% of its food locally by 2030.
‘RUSTING’ RIVERS: The Financial Times took a closer look at a “strange new force blighting the [Arctic] landscape”: rivers turning rust-orange due to global warming.
New science
- Lakes in the Congo Basin’s peatlands are releasing carbon that is thousands of years old | Nature Geoscience
- Natural non-forest ecosystems – such as grasslands and marshlands – were converted for agriculture at four times the rate of land with tree cover between 2005 and 2020 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Around one-quarter of global tree-cover loss over 2001-22 was driven by cropland expansion, pastures and forest plantations for commodity production | Nature Food
In the diary
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean | Brasília
- 5 March: Nepal general elections
- 9-20 March: First part of the thirty-first session of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) | Kingston, Jamaica
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz.
Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org
The post Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate
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