Climate negotiators have wrapped up another two weeks of technical talks in the German city of Bonn, seeking to make breakthroughs on critical issues before COP30 in Brazil.
Once again, the UN negotiations were marked by protracted “agenda fights” and calls for developed countries to provide more funding for climate action in developing countries.
This year, the meetings came in the wake of a UN climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, which disappointed many and, combined with the election of Donald Trump as US president, left some questioning the future of multilateral climate negotiations.
The Brazilian COP30 presidency had hoped to see progress in measuring climate adaptation, ensuring a “just transition” for workers and taking forward the “global stocktake” – including its pledge to “transition away” from fossil fuels.
The just-transition talks saw some progress, but there was little convergence on the stocktake and deadlock on adaptation pushed the talks into overtime.
Here, Carbon Brief gives an overview of the key outcomes and disputes at the 62nd biannual sessions of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) subsidiary bodies (SB62).
- ‘Future of the process’
- Adaptation
- Climate finance
- Just transition
- Loss and damage
- Mitigation
- Road to COP30
‘Future of the process’
Much of the narrative around the COP29 climate summit in Baku focused on threats to multilateralism. Seven months later, the geopolitical situation has deteriorated further.
Escalating conflict, cuts to foreign aid and efforts by major powers to undermine global institutions all have a bearing on climate politics.
The US, which has withdrawn from the international climate process and did not send any negotiators to Bonn, has loomed large in all of these issues.
In this context – and with 2025 marking a decade since the Paris Agreement – many have started to consider how UN climate talks can be reformed.
This was recognised by the Brazilian COP30 presidency in a letter ahead of the conference, which stated:
“Recognising growing calls for change at COPs, the COP30 presidency invites all parties to reflect on the future of the process itself.”
One strand of the SB62 negotiations dealt with this directly. A note by the UNFCCC secretariat acknowledged the “growing scale and complexity” in climate talks, “particularly with regard to the increasing number of agenda items and mandated events”.
With this in mind, countries used sessions on “arrangements for intergovernmental meetings” (AIM) to discuss how the process could be made more efficient.
Ideas on the table included capping the size of national delegations at 200, “sunsetting” some agenda items and limiting the number of items that could be added to agendas.
Nevertheless, as the talks drew to a close after two weeks in Bonn, Erika Lennon, a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) told Carbon Brief:
“It seems as though parties wanted to keep discussing ways to increase efficiency as they could not reach agreement on many concrete proposals here.”
Notably, while AIM discussions are normally restricted to SB sessions in Bonn, parties decided that this year they would continue at COP30.
Shreeshan Venkatesh, global policy lead at Climate Action Network International, told Carbon Brief that these AIM discussions were just one part of the wider calls for reform.
“There are deeper questions as well at the UNFCCC that all the parties here need to be a part of…Questions of what it is that is stopping us from making the leap towards transformational progress.”
These ideas were exemplified by a “united call for urgent reform of UN climate talks”, backed by more than 200 civil society groups and released during the SB talks.
One eye-catching proposal from the “united call” is “majority-based decision making” – or voting – if talks fail to reach consensus, which would stop single nations blocking progress. Another idea – following a series of “petrostates” hosting the COP in recent years – is described as “ensuring integrity” of COP presidencies.
In the meantime, existing negotiating tracks continued as normal at SB62. The chairs of the two SBs, Adonia Ayebare from Uganda and Julia Gardiner from Australia, released a joint note ahead of the talks calling for “swiftly advancing” technical work, stating:
“With over 50 agenda items and over 30 mandated events, focused and efficient work at SB62 will be essential.”
Despite this plea, talks did not get off to a good start, as an “agenda fight” delayed them by two days. This followed an attempt by Bolivia, on behalf of the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDCs) – a group that includes China, India and Saudi Arabia – to introduce two additional agenda items.
One, which was backed by the developing-country coalition of the G77 and China, focused on encouraging developed countries to provide more climate finance from their public coffers. The other raised the issue of “unilateral trade measures”, such as the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM).
(This is far from the first time agenda disputes have delayed UN climate talks. At the Bonn sessions in 2023, the agenda was only agreed the day before the event ended.)
In the end, a compromise was reached where both proposals were not added to the agenda, instead being reflected elsewhere in the negotiations. (See: Climate finance and Just transition.)
With all the elements of the Paris Agreement finally operational, the COP process is now meant to be geared towards action, as Alden Meyer, a senior associate at E3G, told journalists on the final day:
“There’s no real central negotiating issue, the way there was in Baku [or Dubai]…So it’s really going to be these real-world impacts that people will measure in Belem.”
The COP30 presidency spoke to this need with another letter, released during the first week of Bonn, which set out an “action agenda” consisting of 30 “key objectives” for the summit.
These objectives are very broad, including some that nations have already agreed at previous summits – such as “tripling renewables” and “transitioning away” from fossil fuels – as well as everything from “water management” to “promoting resilient health systems”.
Adaptation
Global goal on adaptation
Adaptation came to the fore at the Bonn negotiations, with the decision on the “indicators” within the global goal on adaptation (GGA) of particular significance.
Unlike for mitigation, where there are clear metrics of progress relating to national and global greenhouse gas emissions, there have never been any concrete and measurable indicators to track countries’ collective efforts to adapt to a warming climate.
In 2023, parties in Dubai agreed to an overarching framework for the GGA, which defined targets to guide action in key areas, such as food, water and health.
Parties also launched work to define the indicators that can be used to measure progress on adaptation, with 2025 as the deadline for these quantifiable targets.
At one point, there were as many as 9,000 potential indicators on the list.
Going into Bonn, these had been “miraculously” refined down to a list of 490 potential indicators. Still, this was a long way from the aim of agreeing 100 indicators at COP30.
A mandated event took place on the first day of Bonn, despite the agenda fight, within which eight experts ran through the work they had done on the indicators.
While parties broadly welcomed this work, according to the Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB), time-consuming problems quickly emerged.
Parties had only been provided with consolidated reports of the experts’ work on the indicators. As such, questions emerged over aspects that were covered in the full reports, slowing the process, one observer told Carbon Brief.
Following the event presentations, negotiations got underway. Debates covered the inclusion of “means of implementation” (MoI) – meaning climate finance – as well as whether the consolidated list of 100 indicators being aimed for should include a headline and subhead structure. Parties also discussed the timeframe of events that would follow Bonn.
MoI has long been a challenge for the GGA, as it broadly refers to financial support from developed countries to support introducing adaptation measures in developing countries.
However, Prof Lisa Schipper, a professor of development geography at the University of Bonn and IPCC author, told Carbon Brief that MoI was core to the GGA:
“It has always been a very challenging agenda item, because…it’s essentially about making sure that there’s finance for adaptation. The idea of the goal is to set a kind of a marker, so that you can say, ‘Okay, this is how much adaptation we need, this is how much we have, this is where the gap is and therefore this is how much money is needed’, right? So that’s kind of the main purpose of it.”
In particular, following on from COP29 as the “finance COP”, which saw a “new collective qualified goal” (NCQG) for international climate finance receive mixed views, questions around funding for adaptation filtered through all of the negotiations within this workstream.
Bethan Laughlin, senior policy specialist at the Zoological Society of London, told Carbon Brief as negotiations in the second week of Bonn got underway:
“In general, what we’re seeing this week is the real legacy of the NCQG coming up everywhere. It has come to a head in every negotiating room. It is clear this is what happens when you don’t make adequate financing decisions at COP29. It leads to a week of moderately successful negotiations in week one, followed by stalling and deadlock over finance decisions going up to the wire.”
The divisions over whether to include MoI within the indicators for the GGA followed familiar patterns. Broadly, developed country parties expressed “dislike” for such indicators, while developing countries emphasised their importance.
Other financial elements within the potential list of indicators were also points of division, including those tracking domestic budget allocations.
Prof Schipper told Carbon Brief that there is a “really serious” issue in these discussions on the question of sovereignty. She said that developed countries are asking developing countries to disclose how much of their own budgets they are spending on climate action, including adaptation. This information could then be used against developing countries when they ask for assistance, she explained. Schipper added:
“I think this is really a colonial practice…Countries create climate change and then make the countries that are most affected jump through these hoops, just to get access to funding.”
G77 and China highlighted what they said was a widening adaptation “finance gap”, according to TWN.
At the 2021 COP26 summit in Glasgow, countries had agreed a goal to double the provision of climate finance for adaptation between 2019 and 2025.
A UN Environment Programme report from 2024 found that public adaptation finance flows to developing countries had increased from $22bn in 2021 to $28bn in 2022 – the largest absolute increase and relative year-on-year increase since the Paris Agreement. Yet it noted that even if this trend continued and the doubling goal were achieved by 2025, this would still only meet about 5% of the adaptation finance needed.
With that doubling goal coming to an end in November – and developed countries set to fail to meet it – there were calls for a new goal to triple adaptation finance that filtered through GGA and other adaptation negotiations, as well as actions from civil society groups that took place in the corridors.
A first draft text was published on 19 June, which included a number of options on key points, including the structure of the indicators, MoI and access to and the quality of finance.
Agreement did emerge on having a globally applicable list of headline indicators, which will be complemented by a more context-specific set of sub-indicators to choose from.
However, it remained unclear whether – and if so when – further workshops would take place ahead of COP30, to continue work on these indicators, noted ENB.
As talks continued to progress, discussions also turned to other key elements of the GGA: the Baku Adaptation Roadmap (BAR) and the inclusion of “transformational” adaptation. (This is the idea that fundamental change to the socio-ecological systems that currently exist is required, to truly adapt to global warming.)
There were diverging views on what the BAR should do, what its mandate is and even what evidence there is for needing to create it, as well as its relationship with other agenda items such as the “global stocktake”. Some called for a synthesis report on party submissions on the roadmap, while others pushed for postponing it until COP30.
Similarly, with transformational adaptation, it seemed little agreement could be found. Grupo Sur, for example, stated that the understanding of the concept and what it would entail was not yet sufficiently mature to allow for informed discussion.
Prof Schipper explained that there are wider problems with the concept of transformational adaptation, adding:
“We don’t know how to implement it. [Transformational adaptation] would be the kind of adaptation that really changes the systems and really questions power structures and so on. Of course, no government wants to have those kinds of things coming up. So they got sidetracked by this.”
As the first week’s negotiations came to a close, there were significant disagreements within the GGA discussions in particular on the timelines for work on the GGA indicators, the inclusion of MoI or other financial referencing and both BAR and transformational adaptation.
The ECO newsletter, produced by Climate Action Network, criticised negotiators for “dawdl[ing] over timelines and quibbl[ing] over technicalities”.
Speaking to Carbon Brief at the beginning of the second week of Bonn, Emilie Beauchamp, lead for monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) for adaptation at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), said that given time constraints, there were just “too many” aspects to discuss under the GGA. She added:
“We haven’t had time to discuss fully [the BAR, transformational adaptation and the other aspects of the GGA], so there are many divergences still. Cutting corners on process could risk tricky issues exploding at COP – and issues linked to MoI and finance will definitely still show up in Belém.”
A second draft text was produced on 24 June, as time began to run short at Bonn. This contained many elements that were still bracketed – showing points that are yet to be agreed – or listed as options.
Talks on this draft ran late into the night, with co-facilitators noting that progress was being made. However, haggling over MoI resurfaced on the penultimate day.
This to-and-fro mirrors the GGA negotiations in Baku, when there was a push to soften language from “means for implementation” to “enablers of implementation” or other terms.
Paries eventually agreed to task co-facilitators with streamlining the text further on the indicator guidance, while leaving other sections unchanged.
Throughout the final day of Bonn, negotiations continued. The official end time of SB62 came and went without an agreement on the GGA.
A text outlining draft conclusions on the GGA did not get uploaded until mid-way through the final plenary, causing complaints from parties about their ability to review the contents before it was gavelled through.
Sections on the BAR and transformational adaptation were removed from the draft conclusions, with a final paragraph noting that instead they will be captured in an informal note, which will be used as the basis of negotiations at COP30.
The text in the informal note is identical to that from paragraph 21 down of the previous draft text, meaning there are many outstanding elements in brackets or listed as options – there are still eight separate options for the text on the BAR, for example.
Observers told Carbon Brief that it was unsurprising that the text got split, with BAR and transformational adaptation only captured as an informal note. These elements are not time sensitive and there was a general agreement that the GGA indicators were the priority.
On MoI, the draft conclusions replaced multiple options that had been in paragraph 15 of the previous version with language stating that “indicators for means of implementation and other factors that enable the implementation of adaptation action are to be included, and those that are not relevant to the Paris Agreement are to be removed”.
Lina Yassin, a researcher at IIED who provides support to the LDC Group, told Carbon Brief that paragraph 15 remained a sticking point throughout 25 June, but was “crucial” for developing countries.
Developing countries want MoI to be “grounded” in the Paris Agreement, Yassin explained, whereas developed nations prefer what she called “weaker language from the Baku decision that frames MoI as merely one type of ‘enabler of adaptation’”.
Yassin added that the text adopted in Bonn was a “compromise” but still contained “important gains for developing countries, especially in moving away from the ambiguous Baku language”.
Importantly, the text invites experts to continue working on the indicators, to submit a final technical report and list of potential indicators to the secretariat in August 2025.
This will allow further negotiations at COP30 to further whittle down the list of indicators under the GGA, towards the 100-indicator goal.
NAPs
At COP29, despite some progress within negotiations, discussions on national adaptation plans (NAPs) ultimately ended without agreement and were pushed to Bonn.
Talks got underway with the co-facilitators inviting views on the final draft negotiating text from the talks in Baku.
However, discussions quickly ground to a halt when the G77 and China asked for the text to be projected onto the board, a move opposed by the EU and the UK.
Jeffrey Qi, policy advisor with IISD’s resilience program, told Carbon Brief, the text that came out of Baku was “unmanageable”. The first few sessions were therefore dominated by debates as to how to get the text to a position that could truly be negotiated. Qi explained:
“The text from Baku is so unstructured. So I guess the question is, do you open it up for line-by-line negotiation? Like, do you go into drafting mode right away, or do you take general reflections on specific paragraphs?”
The Baku text included 159 brackets and 18 options, highlighting the lack of clarity within it.
After a huddle, the G77 and China submitted a conference room paper (CRP), based closely on the Baku text, but clustered into sections under different headings, according to TWN.
The EU requested additional time to engage with the CRP before proceeding to substantive decisions, but on 21 June, parties returned to negotiations using this new text as the basis.
However, “stark differences” quickly appeared between developed and developing countries, according to TWN.
The ECO newsletter of 23 June called for further action on the NAPs, stating:
“Can someone shake the National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) negotiations out of its slumber?…No more excuses for delaying the much-needed support from developed countries for the formulation and implementation of NAPs in developing countries. Any NAPs decision text not backed by accessible public finance will remain without substance.”
Further informal consultations took place on 24 June and on 25 June, a draft negotiation text was published. However, it was riddled with brackets.
Issues around the inclusion of MoI remained in the text, in particular its role as a key enabler of adaptation.
Ultimately, no further agreement could be reached and Bonn ended without draft conclusions for NAPs.
Qi told Carbon Brief that this was a “disappointing” outcome. He said:
“I think it’s quite disappointing that we are leaving Bonn with essentially the same messy, unbalanced draft texts from Baku. Both developing and developed countries have shared legitimate concerns over the MoI section in the texts and the only way forward is to seek common ground and make a compromise on both sides, so we could move on to the many other substantive elements in the NAP assessment, like gender responsive approaches and adaptation mainstreaming.
Qi added that he expected “the same jujitsu over the texts in Belém”.
Other adaptation negotiations
There were numerous other adaptation-focused negotiation tracks at Bonn, after a series of matters had been pushed from COP29. These included discussions on the adaptation fund, the adaptation committee and adaptation communications.
Discussions took place on numerous elements of the adaptation fund, with parties focusing on the fund’s board membership, its fifth review and arrangements for it to exclusively serve the Paris Agreement, according to ENB.
Ultimately, it was only procedural conclusions that could be agreed upon by parties.
During negotiations on adaptation communications, parties discussed the need for further support for developing countries, the limitations of drafting a universal template for adaptation communications and the need for further training courses, according to ENB.
Numerous texts were produced over the two weeks of intersessionals, with the main takeaway being the need to extend the deadline for parties to make submissions to help inform a synthesis report on adaptation communications.
Draft conclusions on the matter with an invitation for parties to submit further views, but with no firm timelines for this to happen.
On the review of the adaptation committee, disagreements centre on complicated issues of governance relating to whether it serves the Paris Agreement or the overarching UN climate convention.
Ultimately, negotiators could only agree an informal note stating that the issue will be postponed.
There was minimal disagreement over the Nairobi work programme and draft conclusions were published on 23 June. Their main focus was recognition of the importance of the work programme and a call for strengthened collaboration with “diverse knowledge holders”, amongst other points
Finally, negotiations took place on matters related to Least Developed Countries (LDCs) within the adaptation workstream, with parties focusing on a report prepared by the LDC Expert Group (LEG).
The LDCs expressed “profound disappointment” about the barriers they still face to adaptation finance, in particular for NAPs, noting that the lack of resources is “not just frustrating but demoralising”, according to ENB.
Draft conclusions published on the penultimate day of SB62 mostly recognised the findings within the LEG report and invited continued work.
Climate finance
At COP29 last year, nations agreed on a landmark target of at least $300bn a year in “climate finance” by 2035, coming primarily from developed countries.
This money is meant to help developing countries curb their emissions and prepare for worsening climate hazards.
There was broad agreement among global-south nations and NGOs that the $300bn “new collective quantified goal” (NCQG) was insufficient to address these challenges.
This is nothing new. Climate finance is a highly contested issue in UN climate talks and developing countries have long argued that they need far more help to take climate action.
Yet the SB talks in Bonn took place against a particularly negative backdrop.
The US, previously one of the biggest contributors, has cancelled virtually all of its climate aid. Major European donors, including Germany, France and the UK, have also announced aid cuts, meaning less support for climate projects overseas.
Negotiators in Bonn were keenly aware of this context. The talks saw developing-country diplomats remind developed countries of their obligations to provide this climate finance, while developed countries highlighted alternative ways to raise money.
As is often the case, finance was a pivotal issue in many of the negotiating strands, from the global stocktake to adaptation. However, there was little time carved out to focus solely on the topic, with just two formally mandated “workshops”.
One of these events gave delegates opportunities to discuss their understanding of Article 2.1c of the Paris Agreement, which focuses on “making finance flows consistent” with emissions cuts and climate-resilience.
The other workshop allowed parties to discuss the information provided by developed countries in their “biennial communications” of climate-finance pledges, including a new report capturing these commitments.
The most contentious climate-finance discussions took place beyond these mandated events, with the topic at the centre of the “agenda fight” that delayed talks by two days (See: “Future of the process”).
The LMDCs, with support from other developing countries, proposed a new agenda item specifically focusing on the “implementation of Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement” two weeks ahead of the Bonn meeting.
Article 9.1 says developed countries “shall provide” finance to developing countries. This is often interpreted as a legal obligation to provide public, grant-based funding rather than loans or private investments.
Only a fraction of climate finance is currently distributed in this way, but developing countries argue that hundreds of billions of dollars per year should come from such sources.
Developed countries in Bonn pushed back against the proposal, arguing for a broader focus that included contributions from wealthy developing countries and a wider range of sources.
In the end, the new agenda item was dropped, with a compromise of “substantive consultations” on Article 9.1, which would be led by the SB chairs and, ultimately, feed into COP30.
These consultations involved “fiery” exchanges, with developing countries highlighting – among other things – a need for developed countries to triple adaptation finance and provide loss-and-damage finance with public money (See: Loss and damage and Adaptation).
The LMDCs described Article 9.1 as the “weakest link” in finance talks and accused developed countries of “diluting” it across all relevant agenda items.
Notably, the influential group led various middle-income nations in calling for a “work programme” on the topic. They said this could focus partly on overcoming barriers that prevent developed countries from scaling up public finance.
Developed countries argued that they were not averse to providing such funds. Outi Honkatukia, lead EU climate-finance negotiator, told a side event attended by Carbon Brief:
“We’ve heard so much about the 9.1 here over the week-and-a-half so far. I just want to assure [you] that in terms of going forward and priorities for the EU, we honour and abide by our legal commitments on 9.1.”
From the EU’s perspective, Honkatukia said provision of public finance is an “essential part” of the $300bn goal. However, the bloc – and other developed-country parties – also argued for a broader focus that included the “mobilisation” of funds from private finance.
A counter-proposal in the Article 9.1 discussion was made by the Environmental Integrity Group (EIG), fronted by Switzerland, with support from several other developed countries.
It involved a new package of three agenda items, with one that covered the whole of Article 9, including parts relating to mobilisation from private sources and other providers. The group suggested this could replace almost all other existing finance agenda items.
Meena Raman, head of programmes of the Third World Network (TWN) – which is closely aligned with the LMDCs – told Carbon Brief the idea was opposed by South Africa and Saudi Arabia. She said the expansion of focus echoed a compromise seen in COP29 NCQG talks:
“[Developed countries] didn’t want 9.1, so the compromise was an Article 9 reference, but, having followed the negotiations, they were very clear this is about mobilisation.”
Both the LMDCs and LMDC member India had already stated plainly in the opening plenary that they intended to continue pushing this issue. The group’s Bolivian spokesperson, Diego Pacheco, told delegates:
“We have been denied this starting point, but rest assured the LMDCs will [go] back to these items at COP30.”
Perhaps the most high-profile finance-related events in Bonn were two consultations on the Baku to Belém roadmap to $1.3tn.
Besides the core $300bn target that emerged from COP29, there was a looser, aspirational call for “all actors” to scale up climate funds to “at least $1.3tn” by 2035.
This reflected the demands of developing countries, based on various needs assessments, for trillions of dollars to meet their climate targets. However, unlike the $300bn – which is expected to mainly come from developed countries – this NCQG element is vague, with the possibility of “all public and private sources” contributing.
The Baku to Belém roadmap was launched in a bid to appease those who were unhappy with the NCQG outcome. It will draw on nations and civil society groups communicating their views on how climate finance can and should be scaled up to reach the $1.3tn target.
The process is coordinated by the Azerbaijani and Brazilian COP presidencies, which will work together to produce a final roadmap document by the end of October.
Going into Bonn, 116 submissions, including 18 from countries or country groups, had been filed, laying out a variety of views on this matter. The SB62 consultations saw a similar diversity of views being offered up, albeit with nations sticking to long-held positions.
For example, the G77 and China argued that the burden of climate finance provision should not be shifted onto developing countries, while the EU encouraged “all with the capacity to do so” to contribute climate finance – implying there ought to be inputs from wealthier developing nations.
The consultations also saw some discussion of the “circle of finance ministers” organised by Brazil, which is also expected to feed into the roadmap discussions.
Ultimately, the roadmap is not yet a formal part of the negotiations. Given this, observers noted that its impact will depend on how it is integrated into the COP30 process in Belém.
When asked about what Brazil’s expectations are for the roadmap report, COP30 executive director Ana Toni told Carbon Brief:
“It’s up to the parties…Many decisions related to finance are not taken by the UNFCCC, like the reform of the multilateral banks is nothing that can be decided here. So, it depends on what comes in the report. Some things, perhaps, will be talking to the negotiation – I would imagine that most to mobilise the $1.3tn won’t.”
Just transition
In Baku in 2024, there was consistent frustration with the management of the just transition work programme (JTWP), which ultimately ended without agreement.
Coming into Bonn, however, the Brazilian presidency made the matter one of its three priorities for COP30, alongside the GGA and implementing the first global stocktake.
Speaking to Carbon Brief, Anabella Rosemberg, senior advisor on just transition at NGO umbrella group CAN International, welcomed the priority given to the work programme by the presidency and the secretariat, including “silly things” such as longer time slots for negotiation and a good room during the intersessionals. She added:
“It’s showing that this is being prioritised and that helps. We are not anymore the sort of black sheep at the end, negotiating at 9pm when no one is paying attention, which is where we were last year. So…I’m optimistic, because I feel like the soil is a bit more fertile.”
Additionally, the JTWP ended up absorbing discussions on “unilateral trade measures”, which had been part of the agenda fight at the start of the meeting.
Within the negotiations, old divides quickly emerged between global-north parties that wanted a focus on a workers’ transition and global-south parties that wanted the JTWP to be more holistic, observers told Carbon Brief.
Areas of disagreement included the language around the how to reflect means of implementation (MoI), trade measures, 1.5C pathways, human rights and Indigenous Peoples in the JTWP process, noted the ENB newsletter.
Antonio Hill, advisor at the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) told Carbon Brief that overall, negotiations on the JTWP had been more “amenable” than other tracks, adding:
“But I think it’s also true that right throughout, the finance issue keeps cropping up, left, right and centre., And so it’s clear that, as usual, even if things kind of were looking decent, things could get held up because of bigger forces.”
Additionally, there were ongoing debates about the next steps for the JTWP, which is set to come to an end in November 2026.
Parties, including the UK, said it was “premature” to be discussing the next steps, wishing to focus instead on the knowledge sharing dialogues that take place within the JTWP, Dr Leon Sealey-Huggins, a senior campaigner at the charity War on Want told Carbon Brief.
The issue of whether and how to continue the JTWP beyond 2026 was the only significant disagreement remaining, in an informal note published on 23 June.
This included options for a new institutional arrangement, which could set up a mechanism to follow on from the current work programme.
The inclusion of an option for an institutional arrangement is a “big win” for civil society groups, Rosemberg told Carbon Brief.
Similarly, the ECO newsletter also welcomed this option, writing that “the establishment of the Belém Action Mechanism for Just Transition would allow for holistic just transition pathways across the whole economy, covering contexts both within and between countries”.
There were additional points welcomed by civil society groups and parties in the text of the informal note, as Rosemberg told Carbon Brief.
“The idea that a just transition needs to be added in climate plans, it’s the first time that this is stated a bit more formally, directly and with the principles [outlined in the text] in mind. So there is a bit more flesh to how they are brought to the NDC. The idea that climate finance needs to also be made available for covering some of the social justice aspects of the transition, that’s also a very positive message.
However, he acknowledged that the text was far from final agreement, saying “we have to try to keep [these positive elements] for as long as possible”.
Following on from this, a subsequent informal note was published on 25 June, which was nearly identical to the previous version.
The only significant change was the inclusion of options under paragraph 25 on recognising the impact on trade.
The informal note was broadly welcomed, reported ENB. It said that parties, including the UK, AOSIS, the EIG, LDCs, the EU, the Philippines and others, wanted the text to be sent on to COP30 without further changes.
The text was ultimately passed to Belém for further negotiations, despite calls from the LMDCs and the Arab Group to include alternatives to a paragraph on clean energy, an objection from Paraguay to language on gender-based approaches, as well as a Russian call for a reference to unilateral trade measures.
Dr Sealey-Huggins told Carbon Brief that the text was a “good basis” for negotiations in Brazil that could provide an “anchor for our movements on the outside”.
Loss and damage
For years, small islands and other at-risk states fought to raise the status of “loss and damage” at UN talks, securing a new fund in 2023 to support those struck by climate disasters.
Yet, as it stands, the fund has only received $768m in pledges from primarily developed countries, of which just $339m has actually been paid. This is less than 0.2% of developing countries’ estimated needs in a single year.
There was disappointment among climate-vulnerable nations at COP29 when
talks failed to produce a new finance target that centres loss and damage.
However, Raju Pandit Chhetri, a climate-finance expert who works with the LDCs, told Carbon Brief in Bonn that “it’s our understanding that the NCQG decision also includes loss and damage”.
He said that while the agreement does not include a specific sub-goal, as hoped, broader references to “climate action” and the “evolving needs” of developing countries encompassed the need for loss-and-damage finance.
Developing countries, therefore, continue to push for a loss and damage focus in finance talks, including consultations on the Baku to Belém roadmap to $1.3tn. (See: Climate Finance.)
Beyond the fund, there is a broader UN loss-and-damage architecture that requires countries’ attention at climate negotiations. This can also provide opportunities for developing countries to push for more loss-and-damage finance.
One key component is the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) for loss and damage, a work programme that has a goal – among other things – of “enhancing action and support, including finance”.
At COP29, parties were meant to finish discussing a review of the WIM, which takes place every five years. They were also meant to finalise a joint annual report of the WIM executive committee (ExCom) and the Santiago network, another component that is meant to help countries in need gain technical assistance.
Nations failed to reach a conclusion on either of these issues in Baku. Both were simply pushed onto the agenda for the talks in Bonn.
Progress there was limited, despite many hours spent in closed-door discussions.
Negotiators settled on “draft conclusions” for the joint annual report, which will be passed on to COP30. But as the talks reached their final stages, they had failed to agree on a WIM review text.
In the end, an emergency half-hour session was convened on the penultimate day of SB62 that saw negotiators agree to forward an “informal note” to COP30. While the text is less official and full of brackets – indicating areas of indecision – this meant their work had not been wasted.
Hafij Khan, a co-chair of the WIM Executive Committee (ExCom) from Bangladesh, told Carbon Brief:
“We made some progress, even though there is no conclusion – but all the views of the different parties are captured here with bracket, bracket, bracket.”
“Placeholders” in the final text indicate some of the more contentious discussion points, including “scaling up finance”. Text added to the final note, lifted from the NCQG itself, mentions “significant gaps” in loss-and-damage finance and the need to fill them.
Broadly, observers told Carbon Brief that developed countries felt the WIM review was not the venue in which to discuss loss-and-damage finance. Developing countries noted that this is one of the WIM’s functions.
Another function that developing countries wanted to see included in the WIM review was a mandate to launch a global, scientific assessment of loss and damage.
Speaking at a side event in the first week, Vicente Paolo Yu, who leads on loss and damage for the G77 and China, explained that this was one of the group’s priorities. He said that this did not mean nations were unhappy with similar reports produced by NGOs and insurers:
“What we are saying is that many of these kinds of global assessments of disaster risk or whatever are produced by these organisations based on their institutional perspectives.”
Observers have noted that such a report, under the WIM, could be used to map out the scale of the problem and gaps – including finance gaps – in countries’ responses.
Other items left undecided included guidance on the creation of national loss-and-damage plans and discussing the cost-effectiveness of the Santiago network.
These items will continue to be debated when negotiators reconvene at COP30.
Mitigation
Over the two weeks of Bonn, negotiations took place within the “mitigation work programme” (MWP) over how to ensure it was a “safe space” and on the development of a digital platform.
Consultations began with “heated” discussions on 18 June, according to ENB.
This included AOSIS arguing that the programme was not delivering on its mandate to scale up mitigation ambition and implementation, while AILAC “lamented” the lack of substantial outcomes from the first five dialogues under the MWP, according to ENB.
As part of the discussions on how to ensure that the MWP offers “safe space for overcoming barriers and tak[ing] actionable solutions”, parties including LMDCs, African Group, Arab Group, India, China and others noted that it would remain a safe space as long as its mandate was respected, according to TWN.
As discussions on the MWP moved into their second day, the programme’s purpose and function were called into question. Some want it to remain a space for sharing knowledge, while others want a clearer focus on accelerating action.
One observer told ENB that there was growing frustration as the MWP became “toothless and deadlocked”.
Teppo Säkkinen, advisor on climate, energy and industries at the Finland Chamber of Commerce, told Carbon Brief:
“The main problem in the dynamic with the MWP has stayed the same: for the EU and others with high ambition, it was supposed to be the place to drive the mitigation work; on the other side, some feel that any language on the content of mitigation is prescriptive and top-down.”
Discussions moved onto the establishment of a digital platform and took a “strange turn toward the architecture of IT-infrastructure”, noted ECO.
AOSIS and AILAC cautioned that this should not divert focus from the MWP’s core purpose of scaling up mitigation ambition, noted ENB, a thought shared by wider observers.
Lola Vallejo, diplomacy and partnerships director at the European Climate Foundation (which funds Carbon Brief) and former co-chair of the MWP said that much of the disagreement is on whether the development of a digital platform truly falls under its mandate. She told Carbon Brief:
“There’s disagreement because the idea [of developing a digital platform] didn’t convince everyone – somehow surprisingly maybe some developed countries could give it a try, but others are dead against it on the basis that i) the UNFCCC wasn’t set up for this and doesn’t have the capacity for matchmaking projects to financiers and it’d be veering too far from its skillset ii) see it as a distraction that would scupper the MWP’s ability to be the only space to tackle mitigation head-on.”
Disagreements around what exactly this digital platform would consist of stalled negotiations in the second week.
Informal notes published during the second week mostly consisted of placeholders, outlining the structure of conclusions to be adopted at COP30, with minimal substantive contents. They also made clear that parties disagreed on whether the MWP should continue.
Despite the brevity of the second note, the text is still welcome, Vallejo told Carbon Brief:
“Bonn is about preparing the text of the decisions adopted at COP. Even if ‘just’ headlines are adopted, it’s progress. And no one would expect full decisions to be adopted during SBs.”
As negotiations on the final day of Bonn got underway, the MWP remained one of the streams without draft conclusions.
A final informal note was produced at 2pm, but there was little that was different to the previous version, beyond an additional reference to “global dialogues” and “investment-focused events”.
Fernanda de Carvalho, head of policy for climate and energy at WWF International, told Carbon Brief that it was “unfortunate that after three years, the MWP is far from delivering its mandate of scaling up mitigation ambition and implementation this decade”. She added:
“While developed countries are correctly pushing for mitigation outcomes, we can’t see a single funded partnership on any of the global dialogues’ themes coming out of the MWP, which could build trust among significantly diverging views. Other countries are doing their best to avoid the mitigation work programme to discuss…mitigation, with GST and NDCs becoming forbidden acronyms.”
On the virtual platform, de Carvalho said that it “started as a good idea” but “got trapped in a very visible delaying tactic”. She concluded that despite these challenges, civil society groups “still believe this track can become a ‘safe space’ in Brazil, as part of a political response to the ambition gap”.
Road to COP30
With Bonn coming to a close, attention is turning to COP30 in Belém, Brazil, in November.
Once again, discussion around the host country’s oil and gas industry has drawn criticism from observers and environmental campaigners.
In June, Brazil’s oil sector regulator, ANP, announced that the country would auction the exploration rights for 172 oil and gas blocks spanning 56,000 square miles, mostly offshore.
Despite opposition from environmental campaigners and Indigenous communities, the auction is still set to go ahead, just months before the country hosts the climate summit.
Throughout the Bonn intersessionals, the challenges of finding accommodation in Belém were highlighted in a number of forums. Over recent months, there have been reports of people paying more than $15,000 for a hotel room and more than $400,000 for an apartment, for the two weeks of the summit.
After the Brazilian presidency attempted to alleviate concerns by suggesting delegates could dock boats near the venue, one observer joked to ENB, “now I just need to get my yacht to Brazil”.
Beyond logistics, civil society groups have been setting out their hopes for the Brazilian presidency’s focus areas of measuring adaptation, just transition and the stocktake.
But the underlying issue of finance remains “unresolved”, meaning “we have only seen baby steps when what we need is a giant leap”, said Cosima Cassel, programme lead on climate diplomacy and geopolitics at thinktank E3G, in a statement. She added:
“COP30 must mark a decisive step change in delivery. Brazil has shown energy and creativity in shaping its presidency vision, but this alone is not enough. In the coming months, it must get specific and transparent about what the COP30 package – both negotiated and non-negotiated – will include.”
Cassel said this package would need to “credibly close the ambition gap” that was likely to remain, even after countries submit their new climate pledges, due by September 2025.
David Waskow, director of the international climate initiative at the World Resources Institute, said in a statement that national leaders “need to start delivering”:
“With the 1.5C window closing fast, every fraction of a degree – and every decision – matters.
Beyond Brazil, there is yet to be a decision as to who will host COP31 in 2026. There are competing bids from Australia, with the Pacific Islands, and Turkey.
In the closing plenary, both reaffirmed their commitment to working with the presidency to resolve this decision – and to upholding multilateralism more broadly.
| 30 June to 3 July 2025 | Fourth finance for development summit, Spain |
| 14-23 July 2023 | High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development |
| 9-29 September 2025 | UN general assembly, New York |
| 10-21 November 2025 | COP30, Belém, Brazil |
| 22-23 November 2025 | G20 summit, South Africa |
The post Bonn climate talks: Key outcomes from the June 2025 UN climate conference appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Bonn climate talks: Key outcomes from the June 2025 UN climate conference
Drought and heatwaves occurring together – known as “compound” events – have “surged” across the world since the early 2000s, a new study shows.
Compound drought and heat events (CDHEs) can have devastating effects, creating the ideal conditions for intense wildfires, such as Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2019-20 where bushfires burned 24m hectares and killed 33 people.
The research, published in Science Advances, finds that the increase in CDHEs is predominantly being driven by events that start with a heatwave.
The global area affected by such “heatwave-led” compound events has more than doubled between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, the study says.
The rapid increase in these events over the last 23 years cannot be explained solely by global warming, the authors note.
Since the late 1990s, feedbacks between the land and the atmosphere have become stronger, making heatwaves more likely to trigger drought conditions, they explain.
One of the study authors tells Carbon Brief that societies must pay greater attention to compound events, which can “cause severe impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and society”.
Compound events
CDHEs are extreme weather events where drought and heatwave conditions occur simultaneously – or shortly after each other – in the same region.
These events are often triggered by large-scale weather patterns, such as “blocking” highs, which can produce “prolonged” hot and dry conditions, according to the study.
Prof Sang-Wook Yeh is one of the study authors and a professor at the Ewha Womans University in South Korea. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When heatwaves and droughts occur together, the two hazards reinforce each other through land-atmosphere interactions. This amplifies surface heating and soil moisture deficits, making compound events more intense and damaging than single hazards.”
CDHEs can begin with either a heatwave or a drought.
The sequence of these extremes is important, the study says, as they have different drivers and impacts.
For example, in a CDHE where the heatwave was the precursor, increased direct sunshine causes more moisture loss from soils and plants, leading to a drought.
Conversely, in an event where the drought was the precursor, the lack of soil moisture means that less of the sun’s energy goes into evaporation and more goes into warming the Earth’s surface. This produces favourable conditions for heatwaves.
The study shows that the majority of CDHEs globally start out as a drought.
In recent years, there has been increasing focus on these events due to the devastating impact they have on agriculture, ecosystems and public health.
In Russia in the summer of 2010, a compound drought-heatwave event – and the associated wildfires – caused the death of nearly 55,000 people, the study notes.
The record-breaking Pacific north-west “heat dome” in 2021 triggered extreme drought conditions that caused “significant declines” in wheat yields, as well as in barley, canola and fruit production in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, says the study.
Increasing events
To assess how CDHEs are changing, the researchers use daily reanalysis data to identify droughts and heatwaves events. (Reanalysis data combines past observations with climate models to create a historical climate record.) Then, using an algorithm, they analyse how these events overlap in both time and space.
The study covers the period from 1980 to 2023 and the world’s land surface, excluding polar regions where CDHEs are rare.
The research finds that the area of land affected by CDHEs has “increased substantially” since the early 2000s.
Heatwave-led events have been the main contributor to this increase, the study says, with their spatial extent rising 110% between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, compared to a 59% increase for drought-led events.
The map below shows the global distribution of CDHEs over 1980-2023. The charts show the percentage of the land surface affected by a heatwave-led CDHE (red) or a drought-led CDHE (yellow) in a given year (left) and relative increase in each CDHE type (right).
The study finds that CDHEs have occurred most frequently in northern South America, the southern US, eastern Europe, central Africa and south Asia.
Threshold passed
The authors explain that the increase in heatwave-led CDHEs is related to rising global temperatures, but that this does not tell the whole story.
In the earlier 22-year period of 1980-2001, the study finds that the spatial extent of heatwave-led CDHEs rises by 1.6% per 1C of global temperature rise. For the more-recent period of 2022-23, this increases “nearly eightfold” to 13.1%.
The change suggests that the rapid increase in the heatwave-led CDHEs occurred after the global average temperature “surpasse[d] a certain temperature threshold”, the paper says.
This threshold is an absolute global average temperature of 14.3C, the authors estimate (based on an 11-year average), which the world passed around the year 2000.
Investigating the recent surge in heatwave-leading CDHEs further, the researchers find a “regime shift” in land-atmosphere dynamics “toward a persistently intensified state after the late 1990s”.
In other words, the way that drier soils drive higher surface temperatures, and vice versa, is becoming stronger, resulting in more heatwave-led compound events.
Daily data
The research has some advantages over other previous studies, Yeh says. For instance, the new work uses daily estimations of CDHEs, compared to monthly data used in past research. This is “important for capturing the detailed occurrence” of these events, says Yeh.
He adds that another advantage of their study is that it distinguishes the sequence of droughts and heatwaves, which allows them to “better understand the differences” in the characteristics of CDHEs.
Dr Meryem Tanarhte is a climate scientist at the University Hassan II in Morocco, and Dr Ruth Cerezo Mota is a climatologist and a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both scientists, who were not involved in the study, agree that the daily estimations give a clearer picture of how CDHEs are changing.
Cerezo-Mota adds that another major contribution of the study is its global focus. She tells Carbon Brief that in some regions, such as Mexico and Africa, there is a lack of studies on CDHEs:
“Not because the events do not occur, but perhaps because [these regions] do not have all the data or the expertise to do so.”
However, she notes that the reanalysis data used by the study does have limitations with how it represents rainfall in some parts of the world.
Compound impacts
The study notes that if CDHEs continue to intensify – particularly events where heatwaves are the precursors – they could drive declining crop productivity, increased wildfire frequency and severe public health crises.
These impacts could be “much more rapid and severe as global warming continues”, Yeh tells Carbon Brief.
Tanarhte notes that these events can be forecasted up to 10 days ahead in many regions. Furthermore, she says, the strongest impacts can be prevented “through preparedness and adaptation”, including through “water management for agriculture, heatwave mitigation measures and wildfire mitigation”.
The study recommends reassessing current risk management strategies for these compound events. It also suggests incorporating the sequences of drought and heatwaves into compound event analysis frameworks “to enhance climate risk management”.
Cerezo-Mota says that it is clear that the world needs to be prepared for the increased occurrence of these events. She tells Carbon Brief:
“These [risk assessments and strategies] need to be carried out at the local level to understand the complexities of each region.”
The post Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 6 March 2026: Iran energy crisis | China climate plan | Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ wind turbine
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Energy crisis
ENERGY SPIKE: US-Israeli attacks on Iran and subsequent counterattacks across the Middle East have sent energy prices “soaring”, according to Reuters. The newswire reported that the region “accounts for just under a third of global oil production and almost a fifth of gas”. The Guardian noted that shipping traffic through the strait of Hormuz, which normally ferries 20% of the world’s oil, “all but ground to a halt”. The Financial Times reported that attacks by Iran on Middle East energy facilities – notably in Qatar – triggered the “biggest rise in gas prices since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine”.
‘RISK’ AND ‘BENEFITS’: Bloomberg reported on increases in diesel prices in Europe and the US, speculating that rising fuel costs could be “a risk for president Donald Trump”. US gas producers are “poised to benefit from the big disruption in global supply”, according to CNBC. Indian government sources told the Economic Times that Russia is prepared to “fulfil India’s energy demands”. China Daily quoted experts who said “China’s energy security remains fundamentally unshaken”, thanks to “emergency stockpiles and a wide array of import channels”.
‘ESSENTIAL’ RENEWABLES: Energy analysts said governments should cut their fossil-fuel reliance by investing in renewables, “rather than just seeking non-Gulf oil and gas suppliers”, reported Climate Home News. This message was echoed by UK business secretary Peter Kyle, who said “doubling down on renewables” was “essential” amid “regional instability”, according to the Daily Telegraph.
China’s climate plan
PEAK COAL?: China has set out its next “five-year plan” at the annual “two sessions” meeting of the National People’s Congress, including its climate strategy out to 2030, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. The plan called for China to cut its carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 17% from 2026 to 2030, which “may allow for continued increase in emissions given the rate of GDP growth”, reported Reuters. The newswire added that the plan also had targets to reach peak coal in the next five years and replace 30m tonnes per year of coal with renewables.
ACTIVE YET PRUDENT: Bloomberg described the new plan as “cautious”, stating that it “frustrat[es] hopes for tighter policy that would drive the nation to peak carbon emissions well before president Xi Jinping’s 2030 deadline”. Carbon Brief has just published an in-depth analysis of the plan. China Daily reported that the strategy “highlights measures to promote the climate targets of peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030”, which China said it would work towards “actively yet prudently”.
Around the world
- EU RULES: The European Commission has proposed new “made in Europe” rules to support domestic low-carbon industries, “against fierce competition from China”, reported Agence France-Presse. Carbon Brief examined what it means for climate efforts.
- RECORD HEAT: The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said there is a 50-60% chance that the El Niño weather pattern could return this year, amplifying the effect of global warming and potentially driving temperatures to “record highs”, according to Euronews.
- FLAGSHIP FUND: The African Development Bank’s “flagship clean energy fund” plans to more than double its financing to $2.5bn for African renewables over the next two years, reported the Associated Press.
- NO WITHDRAWAL: Vanuatu has defied US efforts to force the Pacific-island nation to drop a UN draft resolution calling on the world to implement a landmark International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on climate, according to the Guardian.
98
The number of nations that submitted their national reports on tackling nature loss to the UN on time – just half of the 196 countries that are part of the UN biodiversity treaty – according to analysis by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- Sea levels are already “much higher than assumed” in most assessments of the threat posed by sea-level rise, due to “inadequate” modelling assumptions | Nature
- Accelerating human-caused global warming could see the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C limit crossed before 2030 | Geophysical Research Letters covered by Carbon Brief
- Future “super El Niño events” could “significantly lower” solar power generation due to a reduction in solar irradiance in key regions, such as California and east China | Communications Earth & Environment
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
UK greenhouse gas emissions in 2025 fell to 54% below 1990 levels, the baseline year for its legally binding climate goals, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Over the same period, data from the World Bank shows that the UK’s economy has expanded by 95%, meaning that emissions have been decoupling from growth.
Spotlight
Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ community wind turbine
Following the recent launch of the UK government’s local power plan, Carbon Brief visits one of the country’s community-energy success stories.
The Lawrence Weston housing estate is set apart from the main city of Bristol, wedged between the tree-lined grounds of a stately home and a sprawl of warehouses and waste incinerators. It is one of the most deprived areas in the city.
Yet, just across the M5 motorway stands a structure that has brought the spoils of the energy transition directly to this historically forgotten estate – a 4.2 megawatt (MW) wind turbine.
The turbine is owned by local charity Ambition Lawrence Weston and all the profits from its electricity sales – around £100,000 a year – go to the community. In the UK’s local power plan, it was singled out by energy secretary Ed Miliband as a “pioneering” project.
‘Sustainable income’
On a recent visit to the estate by Carbon Brief, Ambition Lawrence Weston’s development manager, Mark Pepper, rattled off the story behind the wind turbine.
In 2012, Pepper and his team were approached by the Bristol Energy Cooperative with a chance to get a slice of the income from a new solar farm. They jumped at the opportunity.
“Austerity measures were kicking in at the time,” Pepper told Carbon Brief. “We needed to generate an income. Our own, sustainable income.”
With the solar farm proving to be a success, the team started to explore other opportunities. This began a decade-long process that saw them navigate the Conservative government’s “ban” on onshore wind, raise £5.5m in funding and, ultimately, erect the turbine in 2023.
Today, the turbine generates electricity equivalent to Lawrence Weston’s 3,000 households and will save 87,600 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) over its lifetime.
‘Climate by stealth’
Ambition Lawrence Weston’s hub is at the heart of the estate and the list of activities on offer is seemingly endless: birthday parties, kickboxing, a library, woodworking, help with employment and even a pop-up veterinary clinic. All supported, Pepper said, with the help of a steady income from community-owned energy.
The centre itself is kitted out with solar panels, heat pumps and electric-vehicle charging points, making it a living advertisement for the net-zero transition. Pepper noted that the organisation has also helped people with energy costs amid surging global gas prices.
Gesturing to the England flags dangling limply on lamp posts visible from the kitchen window, he said:
“There’s a bit of resentment around immigration and scarcity of materials and provision, so we’re trying to do our bit around community cohesion.”
This includes supper clubs and an interfaith grand iftar during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Anti-immigration sentiment in the UK has often gone hand-in-hand with opposition to climate action. Right-wing politicians and media outlets promote the idea that net-zero policies will cost people a lot of money – and these ideas have cut through with the public.
Pepper told Carbon Brief he is sympathetic to people’s worries about costs and stressed that community energy is the perfect way to win people over:
“I think the only way you can change that is if, instead of being passive consumers…communities are like us and they’re generating an income to offset that.”
From the outset, Pepper stressed that “we weren’t that concerned about climate because we had other, bigger pressures”, adding:
“But, in time, we’ve delivered climate by stealth.”
Watch, read, listen
OIL WATCH: The Guardian has published a “visual guide” with charts and videos showing how the “escalating Iran conflict is driving up oil and gas prices”.
MURDER IN HONDURAS: Ten years on from the murder of Indigenous environmental justice advocate Berta Cáceres, Drilled asked why Honduras is still so dangerous for environmental activists.
TALKING WEATHER: A new film, narrated by actor Michael Sheen and titled You Told Us To Talk About the Weather, aimed to promote conversation about climate change with a blend of “poetry, folk horror and climate storytelling”.
Coming up
- 8 March: Colombia parliamentary election
- 9-19 March: 31st Annual Session of the International Seabed Authority, Kingston, Jamaica
- 11 March: UN Environment Programme state of finance for nature 2026 report launch
Pick of the jobs
- London School of Economics and Political Science, fellow in the social science of sustainability | Salary: £43,277-£51,714. Location: London
- NORCAP, innovative climate finance expert | Salary: Unknown. Location: Kyiv, Ukraine
- WBHM, environmental reporter | Salary: $50,050-$81,330. Location: Birmingham, Alabama, US
- Climate Cabinet, data engineer | Salary: hourly rate of $60-$120 per hour. Location: Remote anywhere in the US
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 6 March 2026: Iran energy crisis | China climate plan | Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ wind turbine appeared first on Carbon Brief.
China’s leadership has published a draft of its 15th five-year plan setting the strategic direction for the nation out to 2030, including support for clean energy and energy security.
The plan sets a target to cut China’s “carbon intensity” by 17% over the five years from 2026-30, but also changes the basis for calculating this key climate metric.
The plan continues to signal support for China’s clean-energy buildout and, in general, contains no major departures from the country’s current approach to the energy transition.
The government reaffirms support for several clean-energy industries, ranging from solar and electric vehicles (EVs) through to hydrogen and “new-energy” storage.
The plan also emphasises China’s willingness to steer climate governance and be seen as a provider of “global public goods”, in the form of affordable clean-energy technologies.
However, while the document says it will “promote the peaking” of coal and oil use, it does not set out a timeline and continues to call for the “clean and efficient” use of coal.
This shows that tensions remain between China’s climate goals and its focus on energy security, leading some analysts to raise concerns about its carbon-cutting ambition.
Below, Carbon Brief outlines the key climate change and energy aspects of the plan, including targets for carbon intensity, non-fossil energy and forestry.
Note: this article is based on a draft published on 5 March and will be updated if any significant changes are made in the final version of the plan, due to be released at the close next week of the “two sessions” meeting taking place in Beijing.
- What is China’s 15th five-year plan?
- What does the plan say about China’s climate action?
- What is China’s new CO2 intensity target?
- Does the plan encourage further clean-energy additions?
- What does the plan signal about coal?
- How will China approach global climate governance in the next five years?
- What else does the plan cover?
What is China’s 15th five-year plan?
Five-year plans are one of the most important documents in China’s political system.
Addressing everything from economic strategy to climate policy, they outline the planned direction for China’s socio-economic development in a five-year period. The 15th five-year plan covers 2026-30.
These plans include several “main goals”. These are largely quantitative indicators that are seen as particularly important to achieve and which provide a foundation for subsequent policies during the five-year period.
The table below outlines some of the key “main goals” from the draft 15th five-year plan.
| Category | Indicator | Indicator in 2025 | Target by 2030 | Cumulative target over 2026-2030 | Characteristic |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Economic development | Gross domestic product (GDP) growth (%) | 5 | Maintained within a reasonable range and proposed annually as appropriate. | Anticipatory | |
| ‘Green and low-carbon | Reduction in CO2 emissions per unit of GDP (%) | 17.7 | 17 | Binding | |
| Share of non-fossil energy in total energy consumption (%) | 21.7 | 25 | Binding | ||
| Security guarantee | Comprehensive energy production capacity (100m tonnes of standard coal equivalent) |
51.3 | 58 | Binding |
Select list of targets highlighted in the “main goals” section of the draft 15th five-year plan. Source: Draft 15th five-year plan.
Since the 12th five-year plan, covering 2011-2015, these “main goals” have included energy intensity and carbon intensity as two of five key indicators for “green ecology”.
The previous five-year plan, which ran from 2021-2025, introduced the idea of an absolute “cap” on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, although it did not provide an explicit figure in the document. This has been subsequently addressed by a policy on the “dual-control of carbon” issued in 2024.
The latest plan removes the energy-intensity goal and elevates the carbon-intensity goal, but does not set an absolute cap on emissions (see below).
It covers the years until 2030, before which China has pledged to peak its carbon emissions. (Analysis for Carbon Brief found that emissions have been “flat or falling” since March 2024.)
The plans are released at the two sessions, an annual gathering of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). This year, it runs from 4-12 March.
The plans are often relatively high-level, with subsequent topic-specific five-year plans providing more concrete policy guidance.
Policymakers at the National Energy Agency (NEA) have indicated that in the coming years they will release five sector-specific plans for 2026-2030, covering topics such as the “new energy system”, electricity and renewable energy.
There may also be specific five-year plans covering carbon emissions and environmental protection, as well as the coal and nuclear sectors, according to analysts.
Other documents published during the two sessions include an annual government work report, which outlines key targets and policies for the year ahead.
The gathering is attended by thousands of deputies – delegates from across central and local governments, as well as Chinese Communist party members, members of other political parties, academics, industry leaders and other prominent figures.
What does the plan say about China’s climate action?
Achieving China’s climate targets will remain a key driver of the country’s policies in the next five years, according to the draft 15th five-year plan.
It lists the “acceleration” of China’s energy transition as a “major achievement” in the 14th five-year plan period (2021-2025), noting especially how clean-power capacity had overtaken fossil fuels.
The draft says China will “actively and steadily advance and achieve carbon peaking”, with policymakers continuing to strike a balance between building a “green economy” and ensuring stability.
Climate and environment continues to receive its own chapter in the plan. However, the framing and content of this chapter has shifted subtly compared with previous editions, as shown in the table below. For example, unlike previous plans, the first section of this chapter focuses on China’s goal to peak emissions.
| 11th five-year plan (2006-2010) | 12th five-year plan (2011-2015) | 13th five-year plan (2016-2020) | 14th five-year plan (2021-2025) | 15th five-year plan (2026-2030) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chapter title | Part 6: Build a resource-efficient and environmentally-friendly society | Part 6: Green development, building a resource-efficient and environmentally friendly society | Part 10: Ecosystems and the environment | Part 11: Promote green development and facilitate the harmonious coexistence of people and nature | Part 13: Accelerating the comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development to build a beautiful China |
| Sections | Developing a circular economy | Actively respond to global climate change | Accelerate the development of functional zones | Improve the quality and stability of ecosystems | Actively and steadily advancing and achieving carbon peaking |
| Protecting and restoring natural ecosystems | Strengthen resource conservation and management | Promote economical and intensive resource use | Continue to improve environmental quality | Continuously improving environmental quality | |
| Strengthening environmental protection | Vigorously develop the circular economy | Step up comprehensive environmental governance | Accelerate the green transformation of the development model | Enhancing the diversity, stability, and sustainability of ecosystems | |
| Enhancing resource management | Strengthen environmental protection efforts | Intensify ecological conservation and restoration | Accelerating the formation of green production and lifestyles | ||
| Rational utilisation of marine and climate resources | Promoting ecological conservation and restoration | Respond to global climate change | |||
| Strengthen the development of water conservancy and disaster prevention and mitigation systems | Improve mechanisms for ensuring ecological security | ||||
| Develop green and environmentally-friendly industries |
Title and main sections of the climate and environment-focused chapters in the last five five-year plans. Source: China’s 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th five-year plans.
The climate and environment chapter in the latest plan calls for China to “balance [economic] development and emission reduction” and “ensure the timely achievement of carbon peak targets”.
Under the plan, China will “continue to pursue” its established direction and objectives on climate, Prof Li Zheng, dean of the Tsinghua University Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development (ICCSD), tells Carbon Brief.
What is China’s new CO2 intensity target?
In the lead-up to the release of the plan, analysts were keenly watching for signals around China’s adoption of a system for the “dual-control of carbon”.
This would combine the existing targets for carbon intensity – the CO2 emissions per unit of GDP – with a new cap on China’s total carbon emissions. This would mark a dramatic step for the country, which has never before set itself a binding cap on total emissions.
Policymakers had said last year that this framework would come into effect during the 15th five-year plan period, replacing the previous system for the “dual-control of energy”.
However, the draft 15th five-year plan does not offer further details on when or how both parts of the dual-control of carbon system will be implemented. Instead, it continues to focus on carbon intensity targets alone.
Looking back at the previous five-year plan period, the latest document says China had achieved a carbon-intensity reduction of 17.7%, just shy of its 18% goal.
This is in contrast with calculations by Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), which had suggested that China had only cut its carbon intensity by 12% over the past five years.
At the time it was set in 2021, the 18% target had been seen as achievable, with analysts telling Carbon Brief that they expected China to realise reductions of 20% or more.
However, the government had fallen behind on meeting the target.
Last year, ecology and environment minister Huang Runqiu attributed this to the Covid-19 pandemic, extreme weather and trade tensions. He said that China, nevertheless, remained “broadly” on track to meet its 2030 international climate pledge of reducing carbon intensity by more than 65% from 2005 levels.
Myllyvirta tells Carbon Brief that the newly reported figure showing a carbon-intensity reduction of 17.7% is likely due to an “opportunistic” methodological revision. The new methodology now includes industrial process emissions – such as cement and chemicals – as well as the energy sector.
(This is not the first time China has redefined a target, with regulators changing the methodology for energy intensity in 2023.)
For the next five years, the plan sets a target to reduce carbon intensity by 17%, slightly below the previous goal.
However, the change in methodology means that this leaves space for China’s overall emissions to rise by “3-6% over the next five years”, says Myllyvirta. In contrast, he adds that the original methodology would have required a 2% fall in absolute carbon emissions by 2030.
The dashed lines in the chart below show China’s targets for reducing carbon intensity during the 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th five-year periods, while the bars show what was achieved under the old (dark blue) and new (light blue) methodology.
The carbon-intensity target is the “clearest signal of Beijing’s climate ambition”, says Li Shuo, director at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s (ASPI) China climate hub.
It also links directly to China’s international pledge – made in 2021 – to cut its carbon intensity to more than 65% below 2005 levels by 2030.
To meet this pledge under the original carbon-intensity methodology, China would have needed to set a target of a 23% reduction within the 15th five-year plan period. However, the country’s more recent 2035 international climate pledge, released last year, did not include a carbon-intensity target.
As such, ASPI’s Li interprets the carbon-intensity target in the draft 15th five-year plan as a “quiet recalibration” that signals “how difficult the original 2030 goal has become”.
Furthermore, the 15th five-year plan does not set an absolute emissions cap.
This leaves “significant ambiguity” over China’s climate plans, says campaign group 350 in a press statement reacting to the draft plan. It explains:
“The plan was widely expected to mark a clearer transition from carbon-intensity targets toward absolute emissions reductions…[but instead] leaves significant ambiguity about how China will translate record renewable deployment into sustained emissions cuts.”
Myllyvirta tells Carbon Brief that this represents a “continuation” of the government’s focus on scaling up clean-energy supply while avoiding setting “strong measurable emission targets”.
He says that he would still expect to see absolute caps being set for power and industrial sectors covered by China’s emissions trading scheme (ETS). In addition, he thinks that an overall absolute emissions cap may still be published later in the five-year period.
Despite the fact that it has yet to be fully implemented, the switch from dual-control of energy to dual-control of carbon represents a “major policy evolution”, Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE), tells Carbon Brief. He says that it will allow China to “provide more flexibility for renewable energy expansion while tightening the net on fossil-fuel reliance”.
Does the plan encourage further clean-energy additions?
“How quickly carbon intensity is reduced largely depends on how much renewable energy can be supplied,” says Yao Zhe, global policy advisor at Greenpeace East Asia, in a statement.
The five-year plan continues to call for China’s development of a “new energy system that is clean, low-carbon, safe and efficient” by 2030, with continued additions of “wind, solar, hydro and nuclear power”.
In line with China’s international pledge, it sets a target for raising the share of non-fossil energy in total energy consumption to 25% by 2030, up from just under 21.7% in 2025.
The development of “green factories” and “zero-carbon [industrial] parks” has been central to many local governments’ strategies for meeting the non-fossil energy target, according to industry news outlet BJX News. A call to build more of these zero-carbon industrial parks is listed in the five-year plan.
Prof Pan Jiahua, dean of Beijing University of Technology’s Institute of Ecological Civilization, tells Carbon Brief that expanding demand for clean energy through mechanisms such as “green factories” represents an increasingly “bottom-up” and “market-oriented” approach to the energy transition, which will leave “no place for fossil fuels”.
He adds that he is “very much sure that China’s zero-carbon process is being accelerated and fossil fuels are being driven out of the market”, pointing to the rapid adoption of EVs.
The plan says that China will aim to double “non-fossil energy” in 10 years – although it does not clarify whether this means their installed capacity or electricity generation, or what the exact starting year would be.
Research has shown that doubling wind and solar capacity in China between 2025-2035 would be “consistent” with aims to limit global warming to 2C.
While the language “certainly” pushes for greater additions of renewable energy, Yao tells Carbon Brief, it is too “opaque” to be a “direct indication” of the government’s plans for renewable additions.
She adds that “grid stability and healthy, orderly competition” is a higher priority for policymakers than guaranteeing a certain level of capacity additions.
China continues to place emphasis on the need for large-scale clean-energy “bases” and cross-regional power transmission.
The plan says China must develop “clean-energy bases…in the three northern regions” and “integrated hydro-wind-solar complexes” in south-west China.
It specifically encourages construction of “large-scale wind and solar” power bases in desert regions “primarily” for cross-regional power transmission, as well as “major hydropower” projects, including the Yarlung Tsangpo dam in Tibet.
As such, the country should construct “power-transmission corridors” with the capacity to send 420 gigawatts (GW) of electricity from clean-energy bases in western provinces to energy-hungry eastern provinces by 2030, the plan says.
State Grid, China’s largest grid operator, plans to install “another 15 ultra-high voltage [UHV] transmission lines” by 2030, reports Reuters, up from the 45 UHV lines built by last year.
Below are two maps illustrating the interlinkages between clean-energy bases in China in the 15th (top) and 14th (bottom) five-year plan periods.
The yellow dotted areas represent clean energy bases, while the arrows represent cross-regional power transmission. The blue wind-turbine icons represent offshore windfarms and the red cooling tower icons represent coastal nuclear plants.
The 15th five-year plan map shows a consistent approach to the 2021-2025 period. As well as power being transmitted from west to east, China plans for more power to be sent to southern provinces from clean-energy bases in the north-west, while clean-energy bases in the north-east supply China’s eastern coast.
It also maps out “mutual assistance” schemes for power grids in neighbouring provinces.
Offshore wind power should reach 100GW by 2030, while nuclear power should rise to 110GW, according to the plan.
What does the plan signal about coal?
The increased emphasis on grid infrastructure in the draft 15th five-year plan reflects growing concerns from energy planning officials around ensuring China’s energy supply.
Ren Yuzhi, director of the NEA’s development and planning department, wrote ahead of the plan’s release that the “continuous expansion” of China’s energy system has “dramatically increased its complexity”.
He said the NEA felt there was an “urgent need” to enhance the “secure and reliable” replacement of fossil-fuel power with new energy sources, as well as to ensure the system’s “ability to absorb them”.
Meanwhile, broader concerns around energy security have heightened calls for coal capacity to remain in the system as a “ballast stone”.
The plan continues to support the “clean and efficient utilisation of fossil fuels” and does not mention either a cap or peaking timeline for coal consumption.
Xi had previously told fellow world leaders that China would “strictly control” coal-fired power and phase down coal consumption in the 15th five-year plan period.
The “geopolitical situation is increasing energy security concerns” at all levels of government, said the Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress in a note responding to the draft plan, adding that this was creating “uncertainty over coal reduction”.
Ahead of its publication, there were questions around whether the plan would set a peaking deadline for oil and coal. An article posted by state news agency Xinhua last month, examining recommendations for the plan from top policymakers, stated that coal consumption would plateau from “around 2027”, while oil would peak “around 2026”.
However, the plan does not lay out exact years by which the two fossil fuels should peak, only saying that China will “promote the peaking of coal and oil consumption”.
There are similarly no mentions of phasing out coal in general, in line with existing policy.
Nevertheless, there is a heavy emphasis on retrofitting coal-fired power plants. The plan calls for the establishment of “demonstration projects” for coal-plant retrofitting, such as through co-firing with biomass or “green ammonia”.
Such retrofitting could incentivise lower utilisation of coal plants – and thus lower emissions – if they are used to flexibly meet peaks in demand and to cover gaps in clean-energy output, instead of providing a steady and significant share of generation.
The plan also calls for officials to “fully implement low-carbon retrofitting projects for coal-chemical industries”, which have been a notable source of emissions growth in the past year.
However, the coal-chemicals sector will likely remain a key source of demand for China’s coal mining industry, with coal-to-oil and coal-to-gas bases listed as a “key area” for enhancing the country’s “security capabilities”.
Meanwhile, coal-fired boilers and industrial kilns in the paper industry, food processing and textiles should be replaced with “clean” alternatives to the equivalent of 30m tonnes of coal consumption per year, it says.
“China continues to scale up clean energy at an extraordinary pace, but the plan still avoids committing to strong measurable constraints on emissions or fossil fuel use”, says Joseph Dellatte, head of energy and climate studies at the Institut Montaigne. He adds:
“The logic remains supply-driven: deploy massive amounts of clean energy and assume emissions will eventually decline.”
How will China approach global climate governance in the next five years?
Meanwhile, clean-energy technologies continue to play a role in upgrading China’s economy, with several “new energy” sectors listed as key to its industrial policy.
Named sectors include smart EVs, “new solar cells”, new-energy storage, hydrogen and nuclear fusion energy.
“China’s clean-technology development – rather than traditional administrative climate controls – is increasingly becoming the primary driver of emissions reduction,” says ASPI’s Li. He adds that strengthening China’s clean-energy sectors means “more closely aligning Beijing’s economic ambitions with its climate objectives”.
Analysis for Carbon Brief shows that clean energy drove more than a third of China’s GDP growth in 2025, representing around 11% of China’s whole economy.
The continued support for these sectors in the draft five-year plan comes as the EU outlined its own measures intended to limit China’s hold on clean-energy industries, driven by accusations of “unfair competition” from Chinese firms.
China is unlikely to crack down on clean-tech production capacity, Dr Rebecca Nadin, director of the Centre for Geopolitics of Change at ODI Global, tells Carbon Brief. She says:
“Beijing is treating overcapacity in solar and smart EVs as a strategic choice, not a policy error…and is prepared to pour investment into these sectors to cement global market share, jobs and technological leverage.”
Dellatte echoes these comments, noting that it is “striking” that the plan “barely addresses the issue of industrial overcapacity in clean technologies”, with the focus firmly on “scaling production and deployment”.
At the same time, China is actively positioning itself to be a prominent voice in climate diplomacy and a champion of proactive climate action.
This is clear from the first line in a section on providing “global public goods”. It says:
“As a responsible major country, China will play a more active role in addressing global challenges such as climate change.”
The plan notes that China will “actively participate in and steer [引领] global climate governance”, in line with the principle of “common,but differentiated responsibilities”.
This echoes similar language from last year’s government work report, Yao tells Carbon Brief, demonstrating a “clear willingness” to guide global negotiations. But she notes that this “remains an aspiration that’s yet to be made concrete”. She adds:
“China has always favored collective leadership, so its vision of leadership is never a lone one.”
The country will “deepen south-south cooperation on climate change”, the plan says. In an earlier section on “opening up”, it also notes that China will explore “new avenues for collaboration in green development” with global partners as part of its “Belt and Road Initiative”.
China is “doubling down” on a narrative that it is a “responsible major power” and “champion of south-south climate cooperation”, Nadin says, such as by “presenting its clean‑tech exports and finance as global public goods”. She says:
“China will arrive at future COPs casting itself as the indispensable climate leader for the global south…even though its new five‑year plan still puts growth, energy security and coal ahead of faster emissions cuts at home.”
What else does the plan cover?
The impact of extreme weather – particularly floods – remains a key concern in the plan.
China must “refine” its climate adaptation framework and “enhance its resilience to climate change, particularly extreme-weather events”, it says.
China also aims to “strengthen construction of a national water network” over the next five years in order to help prevent floods and droughts.
An article published a few days before the plan in the state-run newspaper China Daily noted that, “as global warming intensifies, extreme weather events – including torrential rains, severe convective storms, and typhoons – have become more frequent, widespread and severe”.
The plan also touches on critical minerals used for low-carbon technologies. These will likely remain a geopolitical flashpoint, with China saying it will focus during the next five years on “intensifying” exploration and “establishing” a reserve for critical minerals. This reserve will focus on “scarce” energy minerals and critical minerals, as well as other “advantageous mineral resources”.
Dellatte says that this could mean the “competition in the energy transition will increasingly be about control over mineral supply chains”.
Other low-carbon policies listed in the five-year plan include expanding coverage of China’s mandatory carbon market and further developing its voluntary carbon market.
China will “strengthen monitoring and control” of non-CO2 greenhouse gases, the plan says, as well as implementing projects “targeting methane, nitrous oxide and hydrofluorocarbons” in sectors such as coal mining, agriculture and chemicals.
This will create “capacity” for reducing emissions by 30m tonnes of CO2 equivalent, it adds.
Meanwhile, China will develop rules for carbon footprint accounting and push for internationally recognised accounting standards.
It will enhance reform of power markets over the next five years and improve the trading mechanism for green electricity certificates.
It will also “promote” adoption of low-carbon lifestyles and decarbonisation of transport, as well as working to advance electrification of freight and shipping.
The post Q&A: What does China’s 15th ‘five-year plan’ mean for climate change? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: What does China’s 15th ‘five-year plan’ mean for climate change?
When Trump Will Leave
Climate Impact Partners Unveils High-Quality Carbon Credits from Sabah Rainforest in Malaysia
DeBriefed 20 March 2026: Energy crisis deepens | Brazil’s new climate plan | New Zealand climate case
-
Greenhouse Gases7 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Climate Change7 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change Videos2 years ago
The toxic gas flares fuelling Nigeria’s climate change – BBC News
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits
-
Renewable Energy2 years ago
GAF Energy Completes Construction of Second Manufacturing Facility