The amount of foreign aid the UK spends on climate action reached a record high of around £3bn last year, according to government figures obtained by Carbon Brief.
However, Carbon Brief analysis shows that more than £500m of this sum comes from controversial changes in the way the UK calculates its climate aid for developing countries.
By leaning on private-sector investment and including existing aid projects in the total, the government is able to inflate its figures without providing as much new climate funding.
Including this money puts the UK on track for its five-year goal of providing £11.6bn by 2026 to support climate action in developing countries, even as it cuts the overall aid budget.
Climate aid – which is often referred to as “international climate finance” (ICF) – will likely still need to rise above £3bn in 2025, if the UK is to achieve its target over the next year.
The new data, released to Carbon Brief via freedom-of-information (FOI) requests, covers provisional 2024-25 spending across the three major government departments that fund climate projects overseas.
This analysis is the latest in a series of articles by Carbon Brief documenting the UK’s ICF contributions since 2011.
Key findings from the most recent year include:
- By far the largest payment last year was a £482.3m contribution to boost British International Investment’s (BII) private-sector interests in developing countries.
- Ethiopia was the largest recipient of bilateral climate finance (£92.3m). Other major recipients include Pakistan (£55.8m), Afghanistan (£43.7m) and Sudan (£41.1m).
- The biggest single project to receive funding was a World Bank initiative helping developing countries to sell carbon offsets, which received £153.9m.
- Large portions of climate finance also went to the Green Climate Fund (£227m) and the Global Environment Facility (£64.8m).
- Without the government’s changes, which mimic the looser accounting used by some other countries, climate finance would have needed to increase 78% this year. With the changes, climate finance only has to increase by 2%.
- Around £1.3bn – nearly a sixth of the UK’s ICF over the past four years – can be linked to the government’s accounting changes.
Target achieved?
After it was elected last year, Labour confirmed that it would honour the previous government’s pledge to provide £11.6bn of climate finance over the five-year period ending in 2025-26.
This money is the UK’s contribution, under the Paris Agreement, to help developing countries cut emissions and protect themselves from the threat of climate change.
Since the goal was first announced in 2019, experts have regularly voiced doubts that it can be achieved due to major cuts to the foreign-aid budget by successive governments.
More uncertainty followed the announcement in February that the Labour government would cut aid further – from 0.5% of gross national income to 0.3% – ostensibly to fund defence spending. (The government insisted that the remaining aid would “prioritise” climate.)
Despite these changes and uncertainty, the figures provided to Carbon Brief via FOI reveal that the UK is, in fact, on track to meet its £11.6bn target.
Climate-finance spending reached a record high of just under £3bn in the financial year 2024-25, more than £700m higher than the previous year.
(Note that these figures are “provisional” and subject to revision. Due to methodology changes, the final figures for UK climate finance in 2023-24 were much higher than those provided to Carbon Brief via a previous FOI. See the Methodology for more details.)
Assuming the provisional figures for 2024-25 are accurate, the UK would still need to raise its climate finance to £3.1bn in 2025-26 in order to meet the £11.6bn target, as shown in the figure below.
This level of climate finance would need to be maintained, even as the government scales back its overall aid budget in 2025.
When asked at a recent committee hearing whether there would be any new money for the £11.6bn goal, international development minister Baroness Chapman spoke frankly:
“I think the search for new money at the moment is going to be pretty fruitless…Is there going to be any new money for climate in a world where we have just gone from 0.5% to 0.3%? I think you can probably work that out.”
Instead of new funding, the upward trajectory of climate aid has been largely driven by the UK expanding what it counts towards the total. These changes were initially made under the Conservatives, but Labour has retained them.
By relabelling existing funding for multilateral development banks (MDBs), humanitarian aid and private-sector investments via BII as “climate finance”, the UK has inflated the figures without allocating genuinely new funds, making the £11.6bn goal easier to achieve.
Based on data acquired through successive FOIs, Carbon Brief estimates that £528m, or 18% of climate finance provided in 2024-25, can be linked to these accounting changes.
Since 2021, the running total of climate finance resulting from these changes is more than £1.3bn, Carbon Brief analysis suggests, amounting to nearly a sixth of spending to date.
Experts have pointed out that this amounts to a real-world cut in climate aid, as it means less additional funding than was originally pledged.
Without the accounting changes, UK climate finance would only have reached around £2.5bn last year, as the chart below shows.
To achieve the £11.6bn goal from this position, climate finance would have needed to increase by 78% this year, nearly doubling from a year earlier. In comparison, the accounting changes mean it only has to increase by 2%.
The government says that its accounting changes merely brought it in line with other countries. A Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) spokesperson tells Carbon Brief:
“We will continue to account for all of our international climate finance using internationally agreed OECD guidelines. Meeting our £11.6bn commitment by March 2026 remains our ambition and it is only right that we accurately reflect the funding going to support this aim.”
In response, NGOs and aid experts have argued the UK should have retained its former position as a leader in climate-finance accounting standards, rather than aligning with the looser methodologies used by many others, such as Germany and France.
Moreover, the £11.6bn goal was meant to be a doubling of the government’s previous £5.8bn target, which was based on the original accounting methodology. If the previous target had also been based on a broader definition of climate aid, then the current £11.6bn target would have needed to be higher to represent a doubling.
As the UK nears the end of its third five-year ICF target, it is expected to announce another goal covering the period 2026-27 onwards. This will feed into the $300bn global climate finance target that nations agreed at the COP29 climate summit last year.
Amid the aid cuts, climate NGOs say that the accounting changes should be reversed and the UK should turn to “polluter-pays” measures to generate the required public funds. Catherine Pettengell, executive director of Climate Action Network UK, tells Carbon Brief:
“Our main concern is that we now have the spending review, but there is still no clarity – or vision – on current or future climate finance from the UK.”
Big investments
The UK is now leaning heavily on private-sector investments to achieve its climate-finance goals, according to Carbon Brief’s analysis.
By far the largest climate-finance input last year was a £482m contribution to the UK’s development finance institution, BII.
This is the biggest climate-finance contribution the UK has ever made in a single year, according to the data that Carbon Brief has collected in recent years.
It also amounted to nearly a fifth of the total climate finance last year and almost three times more than the UK has ever channelled into BII before.
BII is a publicly owned, for-profit company that largely supports itself with its £7.3bn portfolio of investments in developing countries, but it also receives regular injections of aid money.
The surge in BII climate finance last year can be attributed to two things.
First, the government now counts more of its BII investments as climate finance than it did previously, following the accounting changes. It argues that this more accurately reflects BII’s expanding focus on investing in clean-energy projects overseas.
The government also decided to invest an extra £400m – largely from underspending on housing asylum seekers in the UK – into BII, bringing its total budget for the year up to £881m.
Prior to these changes, the government expected BII climate finance to be worth £126m in 2024-25, according to forecasts previously obtained by Carbon Brief.
It has, therefore, added an extra £356m to BII’s contribution. Carbon Brief estimates that £218m of this can be attributed to the accounting changes, rather than the increase in funding. (See: Methodology.)
Critics argue that BII, which focuses on loans and equity finance rather than grants, is not capable of supporting climate action in the poorest and most climate-vulnerable nations. (Separately, it has also been criticised for continuing to support fossil-fuel developments.)
Last week’s spending review provided the FCDO with at least £300m annually out to 2029-30 for BII and similar organisations, even as billions are cut from its aid budget. In this context, Ian Mitchell, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, tells Carbon Brief:
“BII looks set to become the government’s main climate-finance vehicle. Though, whether this is compatible with its historic focus on Africa and the poorest countries remains to be seen.”
Meanwhile, the biggest single project to receive funding from the UK last year was the World Bank initiative titled: “Scaling Climate Action by Lowering Emissions (SCALE).” The government provided it with an initial contribution of £154m.
SCALE aims to help around 20 countries generate carbon credits that can be sold by companies on the voluntary offset market or internationally via Article 6 carbon markets.
According to the UK government, one aim is to “maximise the mobilisation of additional finance through the sale of carbon credits”.
Selling carbon offsets has long been touted as a way to channel climate finance into developing countries, but the practice has faced intense scrutiny and accusations of “greenwashing” in recent years.
Accounting changes
Other large portions of funding in the UK’s 2024-25 climate-finance budget can also be attributed to changes in the government’s accounting methodology.
For example, as of 2023, the UK started counting portions of its “core” payments into MDBs as climate finance, significantly inflating its climate-aid total.
This money is used by the banks to issue loans and – to a lesser extent – grants for projects in developing countries. While many of these projects will be climate-related, relabelling some of the UK’s contributions as “climate finance” does not result in any additional funds being distributed.
In 2024-25, this relabelling accounted for at least £103m of the total climate finance, including £84m for the African Development Bank (AfDB), £11m for the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and £8m for the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) Special Development Fund.
In terms of bilateral aid from the UK, several of the projects with the largest share of climate finance last year were in nations facing war, famine and natural disasters.
This can partly be attributed to accounting changes that mean 30% of all humanitarian funding in the most climate-vulnerable countries – including Afghanistan, Sudan and Somalia – is now automatically counted as climate finance within government accounting.
Some of these nations have, therefore, risen to be top recipients of bilateral “climate aid” from the UK – as shown in the figure below – through programmes such as Sudan Humanitarian Preparedness and Response.
(Such programmes tend to involve the UK supporting NGOs rather than providing funds to governments. For example, FCDO has two “flagship” humanitarian programmes in Afghanistan – both with an ICF component – but does not provide funds to the Taliban.)
This accounting change was viewed by the previous Conservative government as a way to avoid a “trade-off” between climate and humanitarian projects, amid aid budget cuts.
As the map above shows, Ethiopia remained the largest recipient of UK climate finance via single-country projects last year, with £92.3m in total. This has been the case for more than a decade.
The finance largely comes from two programmes, which aim to improve climate resilience in regions of Ethiopia that have been afflicted by drought and flooding. The country has faced years of regional conflicts that have been exacerbated by climate shocks.
Rather than directly supporting individual projects in individual countries, most UK climate finance is distributed to international bodies and initiatives that serve many countries.
Some of the biggest payments are to well-established international grant providers. These include £227m for the Green Climate Fund, £64m for the Global Environment Facility and £26m for the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF).
Other large payments went to long-running initiatives to help “build financial markets and institutions” in Africa and “mobilise private investment in infrastructure” in developing countries.
Methodology
This analysis is the latest part of Carbon Brief’s efforts to assess the UK’s ICF contributions by financial year. Detailed data underpinning these contributions is not released publicly, but is required to track progress towards the UK’s ICF targets.
Total ICF figures for the years 2011-12 to 2023-24 are based on summary public statements made by the government. Ministers have quoted different figures on different occasions, but Carbon Brief is using a March statement from FCDO minister Stephen Doughty for the 2011-12 to 2023-24 period, as this is understood to be the most up-to-date.
The figures for 2024-25 are based on FOI responses from the three major departments responsible for the UK’s overseas climate-related aid projects: FCDO, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) and the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Around 80% of climate finance provided by the UK is overseen by the FCDO.
All three of these departments provided the data for 2024-25, stressing that it is provisional. This means it is “subject to year-end accounting and audit adjustments, which are still being processed”. Carbon Brief also received the final (i.e. non-provisional) figures for 2023-24, having been given the provisional figures last year.
(The provisional figures released to Carbon Brief in 2023-24 last year were significantly lower than the final figures – amounting to £1.8bn rather than £2.3bn. This is almost entirely due to the provisional data not factoring in most of the accounting methodology changes described in this article. The provisional figures for 2024-25 appear to have factored in these methodology changes already.)
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) also oversees a small number of ICF projects overseas. Unlike the other departments, DSIT rejected Carbon Brief’s FOI requests. Carbon Brief understands that its projects were worth £42m in 2023-24, roughly 1% of the total. For the sake of this analysis, Carbon Brief assumes that this amount remained the same in 2024-25.
Carbon Brief relied on previous FOI results to calculate how much of the UK’s climate finance derives from accounting changes in recent years:
- BII: According to an internal document, under its old methodology, the government originally forecast 30% of BII core capital to be climate finance in 2024-25, amounting to £126m. The final figure provided to Carbon Brief, which is also based on a higher core capital figure, is £482m. If the government had counted 30% of the higher core capital contribution as ICF, under its old methodology, the total would be £264.3. This suggests the remaining £218m of the £482m could be attributed to the methodology changes.
- MDBs: The FOI results provided to Carbon Brief show contributions to the AfDB, ADB and CDB amounting to £103m.
- Humanitarian projects: Carbon Brief has used the estimates from an internal document showing how much climate finance the government expects humanitarian aid projects to provide, including £69m in 2024-25. This may be an underestimate, as some of the projects listed in this document have higher ICF totals in the new FOI data released to Carbon Brief.
- “Scrubbed” projects: The government also asked civil servants to reappraise the existing aid portfolio in order to identify any extra ICF that could be counted. Carbon Brief has obtained an incomplete list of these projects, which states that £138m was added to the 2024-25 total in this way.
Together, these changes add up to £528m. The actual figure may be higher, as these are provisional figures.
Carbon Brief’s estimate of the cumulative impact of the accounting changes by 2024-25 – some £1.3bn – aligns with an estimate of £1.72bn for the entire five-year period out to 2025-26, made by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI). The final figure may be higher, as ICAI’s calculation was based on government documents that did not, for example, include the increased capital contribution to BII in 2024-25.
The post Analysis: UK climate aid to hit £11.6bn goal – but only due to accounting rule change appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: UK climate aid to hit £11.6bn goal – but only due to accounting rule change
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
- Climate Central, climate data scientist | Salary: $85,000-$92,000. Location: Remote (US)
- UN office to the African Union, environmental affairs officer | Salary: Unknown. Location: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
- Google Deepmind, research scientist in biosphere models | Salary: Unknown. Location: Zurich, Switzerland
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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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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