UK governments have fallen so far short of their tree-planting targets since 2020 that they have failed to plant an area of forest nearly equivalent to the size of Birmingham, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
During the 2019 election campaign, the Conservatives committed to a UK-wide goal of creating 30,000 hectares of new woodland a year by 2025.
This pledge became part of the government’s net-zero strategy, which relies on “significant” tree-planting to make up for emissions from polluting sectors, such as aviation and farming.
Authorities in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have all set out their own tree-planting ambitions, including annual goals between 2020 and 2025.
Every nation in the UK has repeatedly failed to meet these goals. This means that, despite the latest figures showing an increase in woodland creation over the past year, thousands of hectares of trees have gone unplanted across the UK since the original target was set.
By 2050, the unplanted trees would have removed some 8.5m tonnes of carbon dioxide (MtCO2) from the atmosphere, Carbon Brief analysis shows – roughly 2% of the UK’s annual emissions in 2023. This will need to be made up for with stronger efforts elsewhere, if the UK’s net-zero by 2050 target is to be met.
‘Abandoned’ target
Centuries of deforestation have left the UK one of the least forested nations in Europe.
Tree-planting can help the country meet its climate targets by removing CO2, as well as improving biodiversity and providing protection from flooding.
In this context, tree-planting enjoyed cross-party support in the run up to the 2019 general election, with parties vying to release the most ambitious targets.
Ultimately, the Conservatives emerged victorious from the election and pledged to raise tree-planting levels from around 13,000 hectares per year in 2018-19 to 30,000 hectares by the end of parliament, which was pegged for 2024-25. (Annual tree-planting figures are reported for the period between 1 April in one year and 31 March in the following year.)
This goal was roughly in line with guidance from government advisers the Climate Change Committee (CCC). The committee concluded that achieving 30,000 hectares a year by 2025 and then gradually raising it to 50,000 hectares a year by 2035, could increase forest cover from 13% to 18% by 2050, while removing more than 10MtCO2 from the atmosphere each year by 2050.
However, tree-planting is a devolved matter in the UK. England and the governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each had to develop their own policies to drive afforestation following the 2019 election.
It soon became clear that the 2025 UK-wide target was slipping out of reach. Each year, data released by government body Forest Research showed nationwide tree-planting rates flatlining, rather than rising to meet the 30,000 hectares target.
The most recent dataset, released on 20 June – two weeks before another general election – shows that only 20,660 hectares of new woodlands were planted in 2023-24.
While this is a significant jump from the previous three years, it is still far short of the 30,000 hectares target for 2025, as the chart below shows.

As early as 2021, a report by the Institute for Government thinktank declared that the government’s overall tree-planting target had been “abandoned”.
A highly critical report released by MPs on the Environmental Audit Committee in 2023 concluded that it was “extremely unlikely” the goal would be met. It stated:
“We are extremely concerned by the consistently poor progress made in increasing tree-planting rates across all four of the nations in the UK.”
None of the major parties have included significant tree-planting targets in their manifestos for the upcoming election. Labour includes a vague pledge to plant “millions of trees” and “create new woodlands”, while the Conservatives say they will deliver existing commitments.
Birmingham-sized forest
The Conservatives’ ultimate goal of 30,000 hectares is only part of the story. Each nation has its own interim targets for scaling up tree-planting and each annual target missed means areas of forest that have not been planted.
The gaps between the nations’ combined annual targets and the actual area of trees planted across the UK can be seen in the chart below.
According to Carbon Brief calculations, these missed targets amount to 22,129 hectares of forest that has not been planted between 2020-21 and 2023-24. This is an area nearly the size of Birmingham, the nation’s second most populous city.

Scotland, which is home to around half the UK’s forests and most of its timber industry, set out its tree-planting goals in a 2020 update to its 2018-2032 climate change plan. This included a target of planting 12,000 hectares of woodland in 2020/21, rising gradually to 18,000 hectares in 2024-25.
England also set out a “planned trajectory” for tree-planting under its Nature for Climate Fund tree programme, which is also meant to contribute to the government’s legally binding goal of reaching 16.5% tree cover in England by 2050.
This trajectory covered government schemes pushing up English tree-planting from 673 hectares in 2020-21 to 7,500 hectares in 2024/25. (The 2020-21 target appears to be a significant underestimate, considering that in 2019-20 the rate was 2,340 hectares.)
In Wales and Northern Ireland, the devolved governments both committed to planting rates roughly in line with CCC recommendations.
For Wales, that meant “at least” 2,000 hectares a year from 2020, with a non-specific pledge that this would increase “over time”, as set out in its Woodlands for Wales strategy.
Northern Ireland set out plans to plant 9,000 hectares of new forest between 2020 and 2030, under the Forests for Future scheme. Annual goals up to 2023-24 are set out in the country’s forest service business plans, and a spokesperson from the Northern Ireland Executive says future plans will appear in an upcoming climate action plan.
(Together, the devolved administration targets add up to just 27,500 hectares in 2024-25. However, the flexibility in future targets for Wales and Northern Ireland could make up the remaining 2,500 hectares.)
The charts below show how afforestation in UK nations has compared to their targets since 2020-21.

Tree-planting rates have increased in England – boosted by schemes such as the Woodland Creation Offer, which pays farmers and landowners to plant forests on their land. Nevertheless, the government did not achieve its targets for the country.
In Scotland, tree-planting rates had been falling until last year – a trend that was attributed to cuts in its woodland creation budget, as well as labour and skills shortages. Scotland’s repeated failure to hit its afforestation targets was cited by the CCC in March as one of the reasons the Scottish National Party-led government’s climate plan was “no longer credible”.
A failure to allocate enough funds to tree-planting, expand the nation’s tree nurseries and drive demand for domestic timber have all been highlighted as barriers to the UK’s afforestation programme by MPs on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.
A spokesperson for the Scottish government tells Carbon Brief that Scotland has “consistently created the lion’s share of UK new planting and this year is no exception”. They say that changes to the country’s forestry grant scheme and a sped-up applications process helped them to reach the highest level of planting in 34 years in 2023-24.
A Welsh government spokesperson tells Carbon Brief that while they see last year’s tree-planting as “a significant achievement, we recognise we need to continue building on this success”.
The UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) declined to comment on the figures.
Stuart Goodall, the chief executive at the Confederation of Forest Industries (Confor), tells Carbon Brief the trade association is “extremely disappointed” that all four nations failed to meet what he calls “achievable planting targets”. He adds:
“Tree-planting is heavily regulated and grant-aided…It is vital that adequate public funds are made available and that the process of approving applications to plant is improved, especially for larger woodland creation projects.”
The UK government’s carbon budget delivery plan, published in 2023 to flesh out the strategy for achieving its upcoming climate targets, includes some pessimistic estimates for tree-planting. It sees UK-wide afforestation falling between 2021 and 2025 and continuing to remain relatively low out to 2035.
Despite these estimates, Carbon Brief understands that, on paper at least, 30,000 hectares per year by 2025 has remained the official target within government.
Extra carbon
A nationwide shortfall in tree-planting has implications for the UK’s climate targets. The government’s net-zero strategy relies on “significant afforestation” to “balance” the UK’s so-called “residual emissions” in 2050.
These are emissions for which affordable or scalable low-carbon alternatives are not expected to be available by mid-century, meaning CO2 has to be removed from the atmosphere in order to achieve “net-zero”. Examples include some of the emissions from aviation, livestock farming and the waste sector.
Trees absorb more CO2 as they grow larger. This means that while the short-term emissions saving from newly planted trees is small, it increases as the years pass.
In the CCC’s “balanced pathway” to net-zero, it estimates that afforestation over the next few decades would be removing more than 10m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) per year by 2050.
However, the CO2 savings from the trees planted over the past four years alone are not expected to be large.
If the devolved governments had met their tree-planting targets in full up to 2023-24, 32MtCO2 would have been removed cumulatively by 2050, according to Carbon Brief analysis. Trees planted in line with these goals would remove around 1.2MtCO2 per year by 2050.
Due to the tree-planting shortfall, some 8.5MtCO2 of removals have been lost over this period – equivalent to around 2% of the UK’s economy-wide emissions in 2023. These trees would have removed 0.23MtCO2 per year by 2050.

The shortfall in tree-planting could leave the UK more reliant on CO2 removal technologies, which are still in the early stages of deployment. (The net-zero strategy already assumes that 75-81MtCO2 will need to be removed using these technologies in 2050.)
Alternatively, the UK could make up for the shortfall by making deeper emissions cuts elsewhere – for example, by reducing demand for flights or meat-based diets.
Lydia Collas, a senior policy analyst at Green Alliance, tells Carbon Brief that a new land-use framework in England would help to link up landowners and farmers prime tree-planting areas with money and resources:
“The UK must start to take its commitments to restore nature seriously, including targets to create woodlands. To avoid missing our 2030 target to cut emissions under the Paris Agreement, we need to get back on track.”
The post Analysis: UK misses tree-planting targets by forest the ‘size of Birmingham’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: UK misses tree-planting targets by forest the ‘size of Birmingham’
Climate Change
Analysis: ‘Super El Niño’ reaches ‘remarkable’ all-time record
This year’s so-called “super El Niño” is entering into record-breaking territory.
Sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific now equal the previous daily record set in 2015 and will likely keep rising in the days ahead.
El Niño is a naturally occurring climate phenomenon in the Pacific that reshapes weather patterns around the world and temporarily boosts global temperatures.
The current El Niño event – which has been underway since June and is expected to last until next year – has been developing faster than any previous event on record.
The strength of an event is tracked using the “Niño 3.4 anomaly”, which measures how much warmer sea surface temperatures in a section of the central Pacific are than average.
As of 19 September, the daily anomaly in the Niño 3.4 region stands at 3.07C, putting it in a statistical tie with the previous record of 3.08C.
Some scientists, using a different baseline for calculating the anomaly, have already called the new record.
Either way, this is remarkable, in part because of how early in the calendar year it is occurring. El Niño typically peaks in the winter months, most commonly in November or December.
Every strong El Niño on record has continued to strengthen after mid-September – and there is every reason to think that this one will as well.
(For more on El Niño, see Carbon Brief’s recent interactive explainer.)
Record territory
El Niño events are typically classed as “weak” when the Niño 3.4 anomaly reaches 0.5C, “moderate” above 1C, “strong” above 1.5C and “very strong” above 2.0C.
For this year’s event, the Niño 3.4 anomaly has now reached 3.07C, which puts it in a statistical tie with the record set on 18 November 2015, set during a “very strong” El Nino event.
The chart below shows how the strength of the current El Niño (red line) is dramatically outpacing both 2015-16 (blue) and another “very strong” event in 1997-98 (light blue).

To analyse the developing El Niño, Carbon Brief followed the convention of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Oceanic Niño index (ONI).
ONI is calculated by subtracting the latest 30-year average temperature in the Nino 3.4 region from daily sea surface temperatures. This approach allows for the most recent years to be compared against the most recent 30-year period. It removes much of the influence of longer-term, human-driven warming from the index.
(While meteorological organisations typically track changes to ONI on a three-month rolling average basis, Carbon Brief’s analysis looked at how the metric is changing on a daily basis.)
If ONI is calculated using a baseline of 1991-2020 then the current El Niño has already set a new record.
Since the start of June, El Niño’s strength has been greater than any other year. In early September in both 1997 and 2015, anomalies were around 1.9C – more than one degree below where they are this year.
An alternative index
There is another commonly used metric – the relative Oceanic Niño index (RONI) – used to study El Niño.
Introduced by NOAA in 2024, the RONI index adjusts for tropical ocean warming linked to human-caused climate change. To do this, it takes sea surface averages in the Nino 3.4 region and subtracts out temperature anomalies observed across the tropical oceans (between the latitudes of 20 degrees north and south).
This approach may better remove the influence of climate change in this specific region, but can also diminish the apparent strength of strong El Niño events, such as the current one, which extend well outside the Niño 3.4 region.
The chart below shows daily RONI values, which are record setting for this time of year, but remain below an all-time daily record set during the 1982-83 El Niño event.

RONI stood at around 2.5C in mid-September, some 0.7C below the 1982 record.
However, that record was set in late December, at the peak of the event.
The 1982-83, 1997-98 and 2015-16 events added between 0.5C and 1.9C to their RONI values between mid-September and their peaks.
On track to smash monthly and seasonal records
Because daily El Niño values are noisy, scientists typically turn to monthly or seasonal averages to compare El Niño events.
The latest full calendar month for which data is available – August 2026 – had a Niño 3.4 anomaly of around 2.45C. This is higher than the peak of every prior El Niño event on record except 2015-16 – where the anomaly reached 2.75C – and 1877-78, when the anomaly sat at around 2.7C, based on a reconstruction of sea surface temperatures using sparse ship data.
The figure below shows the monthly evolution of the five strongest El Niño events on record alongside 2026, as well the current forecast from 14 seasonal forecast models.

Taken together, the models project a peak monthly anomaly later this year of around 4.1C, with 80% of the 674 individual model runs falling between 3.4C and 4.6C.
Every single model run peaks above the 2015-16 record. The projected margin over that record, some 1.3C, is larger than the entire gap between the strongest and fifth-strongest El Niño of the past 150 years.
Some caution here is warranted, however. No seasonal forecast system has ever been verified against an event of this size, because none has ever occurred. The models also predicted temperatures slightly warmer than observed this summer, with real-world observations for August coming in around 0.3C below forecasts.
However, all strong El Niño events on record have continued to strengthen well into the winter – and the models are in near-unanimous agreement that this one will, too. If the forecast holds, the current event will peak between November and January at a level far beyond any event previously observed in the instrumental record.
El Nino’s effect on global temperatures typically lags rising ocean temperatures in the Pacific by several months, so most of the impact will be felt in 2027 rather than 2026.
Carbon Brief’s most recent “state of the climate” quarterly analysis found 2026 on track to be the warmest or second-warmest year on record. The next update in early October will examine what a record El Niño means for 2027.
The post Analysis: ‘Super El Niño’ reaches ‘remarkable’ all-time record appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: ‘Super El Niño’ reaches ‘remarkable’ all-time record
Climate Change
COP31 presidency announces AI pledge as UN climate chief says Big Tech ‘on thin ice’
Artificial intelligence (AI) is set for a bigger role at this year’s UN climate summit, as Türkiye’s COP31 presidency seeks backing for a new pledge on the technology’s energy use.
In a statement on Monday, the COP31 hosts said they will launch the Antalya Pledge on AI, which they billed as a “political” commitment on how AI is “designed, procured, powered, deployed, measured and managed” in support of climate action.
“We must openly discuss AI’s growing energy consumption and it is time for governments to start setting the terms,” COP31 president Murat Kurum said in an emailed statement. “We expect companies to be transparent about their energy use and to power their operations with clean energy”.
No further details about the pledge have been made available so far, including whether it will include a clean energy commitment or whether governments and companies will be invited to sign on. The COP31 presidency said it would share a draft before the summit opens in Antalya in early November.
UN climate chief Simon Stiell went further in a New York speech on Monday, warning that AI leaders are “on thin ice when it comes to license to operate, and sinking deep underwater when it comes to public support”.
“Energy-guzzling artificial intelligence is driving up planet-heating pollution from coal, oil and gas, while ratcheting up energy costs for households and businesses,” he said, adding that data centre projects are being put on hold due to public opposition from New York to Texas.
Growing energy use and emissions
Concerns about the environmental impacts of AI infrastructure and its impact on rising electricity prices have led to a growing backlash in some communities, especially in the US.
Big Tech’s breakneck race to develop new AI models and build out the energy-hungry infrastructure supporting them has stoked fears over the technology’s growing climate impact.
Greenhouse gas emissions generated by data centres through their electricity use are set to more than double between 2024 and 2030, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Data centres, which underpin various technologies including AI, are expected to consume more power than all but five countries by the end of the decade.
The AI race is also driving a surge in new fossil gas investment in the United States, where Big Tech giants including Microsoft, OpenAI and Meta have struck up major deals with fossil fuel operators to power their infrastructure.
In China, the other major global AI force, coal provides around 70% of the electricity powering the country’s data centers, according to an IEA report published last year.
More space for AI at COPs?
Despite AI’s rapidly growing relevance for the world’s ability to limit global warming, high-level discussions on the climate impact of the technology have been largely absent at UN climate summits.
While the pledge is still being developed and scarce details have been made public so far, the Antalya initiative, alongside sharper rhetoric from Stiell, suggests that might be changing.
Climate Home News understands that the UN climate change body is encouraging AI companies to be present at COPs as the climate summits set the global direction for energy policy and tech firms now have a major stake in it.
Earlier this year, UN Secretary-General António Guterres launched an initiative aimed at holding AI companies accountable for their environmental impacts and repeated a call for all big AI companies to commit to powering every data centre with renewable energy by 2030.
Align AI with science
Stiell said that tech titans need to start showing why the benefits of AI outweigh its “skyrocketing costs”, by setting credible climate targets, coming clean about their energy use and powering data centres with renewable energy.
AI proponents claim that, despite its growing energy use, the technology’s widespread application would bring net benefits in the fight against climate change by driving massive energy efficiency gains and optimising renewable energy integration. The IEA estimates that existing AI applications could cut emissions by more than data centres add.
Fossil fuel expansion threatens COP31 hosts’ credibility, experts warn
But critics argue that it is wrong to compare theoretical gains with real-world emission growth and any gains are outweighed by the widespread adoption of AI tools by fossil fuel companies to extract planet-heating oil and gas faster and more cheaply.
Stiell said the tech industry needs to “respect science and start aligning with global climate efforts – urgently”.
Alongside the AI pledge, the COP31 presidency has also announced it will launch an ‘AI for Clean Technologies’ Initiative, which will develop a portfolio of AI-enabled clean-technology pilots in priority sectors, including smart energy and green industry.
This programme aims to demonstrate the responsible use of AI in practice, the COP31 presidency promised.
The post COP31 presidency announces AI pledge as UN climate chief says Big Tech ‘on thin ice’ appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP31 presidency announces AI pledge as UN climate chief says Big Tech ‘on thin ice’
Climate Change
Why the global electrification agenda misses the point on Africa’s energy crisis
Dola Oluteye, PhD, is a senior fellow in energy and transport policy at the UCL Energy Institute and founder of The Professional African Network Advisory Initiative.
At the June 2026 UN Climate Meetings in Bonn, the incoming Turkish COP31 Presidency introduced a headline target for the Action Agenda: raising electricity’s share of global final energy consumption from around 20% today to 35% by 2035.
Backed by the international Electrify Now campaign – also launched in June by the European Commission and governments across five continents, including Ethiopia – the aim is to replace fossil fuels with clean energy by shifting the way we travel and transport goods and commodities, cook and warm our homes and offices, and power our industries.
On paper, this is a welcome signal. Yet, as world leaders line up behind global goals in the lead-up to COP31, African nations face a fundamental question: whose energy transition are we talking about? For the roughly 600 million people living without electricity on the continent, international climate targets often sound less like a lifeline and more like a conversation happening on another planet.
For developed countries, electrification is largely a replacement exercise – swapping petrol and diesel vehicles for electric ones, and gas boilers for heat pumps powered by existing, stable grids.
But across sub-Saharan Africa, the challenge is vastly different. The region accounts for 85% of the global population without electricity, up from 50% in 2010. Here, electrification is not a technology swap; it is the foundational building block of human dignity, economic sovereignty, energy access and modern development.
Electricity connections must deliver real development
Half of the number of people without electricity access in Africa live in three countries – Nigeria, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo – while 900 million other Africans lack clean cooking solutions.
The proposed global electrification goal must not treat a continent with nearly half of its population without electricity the same way it treats mature Western economies.
To regard electrification merely as a tool for decarbonisation misses the core reality of our continent. Africa is not just transitioning an existing energy system; we are building one from the ground up in many places.
If a global electrification target of 35% by 2035 is to mean anything for Africa, it must be rooted in African realities. That begins with acknowledging that expanding power connections alone is insufficient.
China’s industrial engine starts to break its fossil fuel habit
Energy poverty does not end when a power line crosses a village; it ends when electricity is reliable, affordable and powered by clean sources that spur productive economic activities. Connecting households to a micro-grid they cannot pay to use does not deliver development.
Electrification can also help solve the critical issue of super pollutants in countries like Nigeria, notably the production of methane and black carbon, by replacing combustion-based systems with cleaner, electric alternatives.
Breaking from past extractive models
Equally critical is how the electricity is generated. Within some African policy circles, electrification has occasionally been viewed with scepticism – seen as a possible Trojan Horse to justify expensive nuclear projects or to expand long-term fossil gas lock-ins.
We must be clear: expanding electricity demand while increasing reliance on volatile fossil fuels or unviable, high-cost infrastructure is a false solution.
True electrification must be paired directly with the massive development of Africa’s unparalleled renewable energy resources.
Africa holds 60% of the world’s best solar resources, alongside immense hydro, wind and geothermal potential. Tying the global electrification push to renewable energy capacity and local battery storage is the only pathway that protects African economies from international fuel price shocks while keeping our climate commitments intact.
Global climate negotiations such as those ongoing at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) offer another building block for Africa’s green energy future.
International trade linked to 20% of global emissions – but imports ignored
Adopting a shipping carbon price at the IMO this year, through the Net-Zero Framework, would create a climate fund worth $12 billion a year. This finance could be used not only towards the electrification of Africa’s ships and ports, but also for building broader renewable energy production on the continent.
Furthermore, global initiatives must break from past extractive models. Africa cannot remain merely a site for extracting critical minerals – such as lithium, cobalt, and copper – to feed green supply chains elsewhere, only to import expensive finished technologies.
An authentic, inclusive campaign must support the development of local industry, mineral value addition and job creation on the continent.
Africa’s COP31 agenda should centre clean electrification
To achieve this, international campaigns like Electrify Now must deepen their partnership with Global South institutions. Western-centric messaging encouraging people to buy electric vehicles and install heat pumps at home must be paired with calls for robust transmission grids, decentralised mini-grids, industrial energy security and affordable clean cooking.
For this to happen, it would be great to see more African governments, businesses and civil society organisations join the Electrify Now campaign, where they can advocate for the challenges and opportunities on our continent.
Ethiopia is a great example, where a government policy to ban the importation of petrol and diesel cars has led to the country becoming a continental leader in the uptake of electric vehicles. Meanwhile, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has seen the cost of electricity come down significantly and accounts for more than half of Ethiopia’s renewable energy generation capacity.
Türkiye says it has “final decision” at COP31 despite Australia running negotiations
The road to COP31 offers Africa a pivotal opportunity to place clean electrification at the very centre of its economic and climate agenda.
By taking ownership of this narrative, African leaders can insist that global targets deliver capital, technology sharing and infrastructure investments tailored to local needs.
Electrification is not a luxury or a secondary climate goal. Powered by renewable energy – the African sun and wind – it can be the engine of our green industrial transition. It is important for global climate architecture and Western governments to be aligned with that reality.
The post Why the global electrification agenda misses the point on Africa’s energy crisis appeared first on Climate Home News.
Why the global electrification agenda misses the point on Africa’s energy crisis
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