For years, fisherman Sami Uddin lived and worked on a small patch of coastal land in southeastern Bangladesh – until the site was earmarked for development including a new cyclone-resistant deep-sea port, funded by Japan in the name of climate change adaptation.
“The development is [meant to help us] all, but the reality is that it takes our homes, professions, and they are forcing us to be evicted from our village,” Uddin, 51, said close to the port site in Matarbari, adding that new fishing restrictions nearby have fuelled local people’s anger.
The deep-sea port – being built next door to a new coal-fired power plant, also financed by Japan – is a centrepiece of Bangladesh’s ambitions to develop a “Singapore-style” economic hub on its climate-vulnerable Bay of Bengal coastline, a low-lying belt of densely populated land, prone to deadly tropical cyclones and flooding.
Funded with a $726-million concessional loan, half of which was counted by Japan as climate adaptation finance, the port marks the biggest single climate adaptation project being funded by a wealthy country in 2023, according to an analysis by Climate Home News of the latest data compiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
But like other foreign-funded projects classed as “climate adaptation”, Climate Home’s reporting raises questions about whether the port investment will help climate-vulnerable local communities cope with the effects of more extreme weather and rising seas.
Japan’s development agency said the resilience measures to protect the port are crucial to preventing economic shocks and the disruption of essential services in case of disasters, while some interventions could also keep local people safer when storms hit.
COP30 president warns of ‘dystopian scenario’
Climate adaptation is set to be a key theme at next month’s COP30 UN climate summit in Brazil, and calls are growing for rich nations to increase their support for projects to help developing countries that are bearing the brunt of worsening climate impacts.
COP30 president André Aranha Corrêa do Lago said last week that the UN talks should take concrete steps to help vulnerable people adapt to a warming world and avoid a “dystopian scenario” in which only the rich can afford to protect themselves from climate threats.
But with just a fraction of needs for adaptation funding currently being met, according to the latest UN estimates, climate campaigners told Climate Home News that mega-projects like Matarbari are not the best way to protect the world’s poorest people from climate change.
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They are also sounding the alarm about how a lack of uniform reporting rules and poor transparency in the data give countries free rein over what they label as adaptation finance.
Some donors “cheat” by focusing more on inflating numbers than on delivering real impact, said John Nordbo, senior climate advisor at NGO CARE Denmark and co-author of the annual “Climate Finance Shadow Report”.
“They label large projects with little or no adaptation component as ‘climate finance’,” he told Climate Home News. “It’s misleading – and when exposed, it undermines trust in the entire global climate regime.”
The $363 million provided by Japan for the Matarbari port was counted as adaptation finance under official data used to measure whether donors are meeting their promises on climate finance made at UN talks. It accounted for an estimated 15% of Japan’s total contributions to climate adaptation in 2023 – the latest year for which data is available.
“No one must be left behind”
When, at COP26, Japan committed to doubling its assistance for adaptation to $14.8 billion in public and private finance by 2025, its then Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told fellow world leaders “no one must be left behind as we confront the issue of climate change”. He added that investments would focus on disaster risk reduction.
Japan said the delivery of that pledge was “on track” in its latest assessment report for the UN earlier this year.
But Climate Home’s analysis of the data from the OECD – the main body tracking global climate finance flows from industrialised nations – found that in 2023 Tokyo channelled at least a third of its bilateral adaptation finance into large-scale infrastructure projects and broad health programmes that lacked clear climate adaptation objectives.
It counted loans worth hundreds of millions of dollars for the construction of mass rapid transit in Jakarta and the rollout of universal health coverage in Egypt as adaptation finance, for example. It offered no explanation in project documents of how either initiative would strengthen resilience to climate impacts.
It also reported a $200-million grant to the global vaccine alliance, Gavi, to support its COVID-19 response as having “significant” relevance for climate adaptation. In an assessment of Gavi in 2024, the Multilateral Performance Network described as a “serious challenge” the fact that addressing climate change was not yet a core objective within the alliance’s strategy.
Md Shamsuddoha, a former climate negotiator for Bangladesh who now leads the Center for Participatory Research and Development, said Japan repackages “pure investment projects” for infrastructure development as climate finance to show it is meeting its commitments made under the UN climate regime.
“Japan should not do this, because that is no climate finance at all,” Shamsuddoha added.
Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its overseas aid arm, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), were approached for comment on the adaptation relevance of these projects, but had not responded by the time of publication.
Roadbuilding and energy projects
Climate Home’s analysis found Japan was not alone among major donors in labelling funds for large transport and energy infrastructure projects, or broad health programmes, as bilateral climate adaptation finance, which tends to be provided in grant form or as highly concessional lending to the poorest nations.
France and South Korea have used a similar approach, according to our analysis of the data from the OECD.
The three countries’ bilateral funding for those projects totalled at least $4 billion in 2023, but South Korea and France do not disclose the exact portion they have counted as climate adaptation finance.
According to the OECD data, France described loans provided for energy projects in developing countries as having a primary objective of adaptation, without giving a clear explanation of how they would boost climate resilience. They include strengthening electricity grids in Pakistan and Argentina, a hydropower plant in Tanzania and work to develop decarbonisation plans in Uzbekistan.
South Korea is not part of the group of developed countries under the UN climate regime and is therefore not obliged to provide climate finance to poor nations. But, in recent years, the country – one of the world’s largest economies – has hailed its “significant” support to the Global South for climate adaptation interventions.
Transport projects made up a significant portion of South Korea’s adaptation spending in developing countries in 2023. It counted the construction of a railway bridge in Bangladesh, a major highway in Vietnam and road networks in Cambodia and the Philippines among its top adaptation projects.
Hanna Hakko, a senior policy advisor at think-tank E3G, said developing countries have a critical need to build new resilient infrastructure and climate-proof what they already have.
“However, there is a need for clarity and guardrails around what counts as resilient infrastructure and to ensure impacted communities benefit from these projects and environmental impacts are minimised,” she added.
The climate ministries of South Korea and France had not responded to Climate Home’s request for clarifications on their adaptation finance at the time of publication.
Limited transparency in reporting system
Other donor governments such as Denmark, Switzerland and Finland take a more conservative approach, only counting pure climate adaptation activities or funding donated as grants in their spending.
But limited transparency in the reporting system makes it difficult to tell how much money overall is directed at efforts that truly help the most vulnerable communities to better cope with the escalating impacts of climate change.
Countries disclose brief and vague descriptions of the projects, often failing to offer details on their relevance for climate adaptation, Climate Home found.
Foreign aid cuts put adaptation finance pledge at risk, NGOs warn
Some European countries, including Germany, France and Italy, did not even identify a specific project or recipient nation for non-concessional funding worth hundreds of millions of dollars that was tagged as adaptation finance.
Ian Mitchell, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, said the problem lies with setting international goals to provide a certain amount of finance without a broadly agreed definition of what that finance can consist of.
“It is a pretty damaging state of affairs because these agreements are reached to motivate other countries to undertake climate action,” he added.
Focus on plugging adaptation gap
At the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow four years ago, developed countries committed to doubling adaptation funding for developing nations from 2019 levels to reach at least $40 billion by 2025.
That promise now looks set to be broken. According to the latest UN Environment Programme Adaptation Gap Report, international public adaptation funding from wealthy governments stood at only $26 billion in 2023 – falling slightly from the previous year.
UNEP’s report, released on Wednesday, warns that this year’s target “will be missed if current trends continue”.
Since 2023, widespread cuts to aid budgets amid geopolitical tensions and fiscal pressures have likely put the Glasgow goal further out of reach. Least-developed countries (LDCs), meanwhile, are pushing for a new goal to be set at COP30 to boost adaptation finance to about $100 billion a year by 2030.
Brazil’s COP presidency also wants to elevate climate adaptation, which has long missed out on political attention and funding directed instead to efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The renewed focus on adaptation in Belém could also increase scrutiny of how donor countries are allocating climate finance in countries like Bangladesh, and whose interests they are serving.
Climate-friendly coal plant?
Japan’s investments in Matarbari, for example, come as the country seeks to develop its economic ties with Bangladesh and counter China’s growing influence in the region.
Even the 1,200-megawatt coal-fired power plant, which JICA has financed with loans worth more than $2 billion, was counted by Japan as climate finance. It said the technology installed by Japanese firms made the plant more efficient, leading to a reduction in emissions compared to a conventional station.
The plant is expected to spew into the atmosphere nearly 7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year – equivalent to the total annual emissions generated by a small country like Mauritius.
As ships needed to deliver coal to fuel the plant, the developers built a port and a navigation channel connecting it to the ocean. Those facilities are now being expanded with the construction of the neighbouring deep-sea commercial port, which Japan agreed to fund in 2023 with a $726-million concessional loan.
Expected to be completed in 2029 by Japanese companies, the project aims to increase Bangladesh’s ability to handle cargo and spur economic activity in the area.
Takahiro Okamoto, who oversees the project at JICA’s Bangladesh office, said the inclusion of protections, like breakwaters, retaining walls and raised embankments, will shield the port and its access road from the impact of storm surges and cyclones.
“By allowing larger, more efficient ships to dock directly, the project reduces the country’s reliance on smaller, vulnerable ports and trans-shipment hubs in other countries, which might be more susceptible to disruptions from climate change and other factors,” Okamoto added.
Loss of salt and shrimp farms
Amid the bustle of construction activity, local residents in the area were sceptical about whether the development will make them better prepared for tidal surges or more frequent and severe storms.
Even if it does, they said the cost to their communities has been too high.
Over a third of the salt and shrimp farms in the area would be lost as a result of the construction, an impact assessment carried out by JICA found, adding that the mega-project would affect an area inhabited by almost 800,000 people.
Habibur Rahman, an unemployed 24-year-old man, said the development was not offering stable job opportunities for locals, while the coal power plant was causing growing pollution and damaging fishing activities.
“The [port] authority did not take a single project to develop our lives,” Rahman said.
Chittagong Port Authority and the Shipping Ministry did not reply to requests for comment.
JICA’s Okamoto said contractors are encouraged to employ local residents “as much as possible”, while 500 people have so far been trained under a programme that supports alternative income-generating activities.
He added that embankments built along the access road to the port to protect it would also serve as evacuation routes in disasters and that further protective measures may be considered as part of a separate plan being worked on by the Bangladesh government.
In the meantime, rising sea levels and stronger tidal flooding continue to chip away at the coast and swallow homes in the area, local media have reported.
“In no way [is] this an adaptation or resilience project,” Shamsuddoha said of the Matarbari development, saying it did not represent “resilient livelihoods” that would support coastal communities.
While developed countries pour their money into headline climate investment projects, the human dimension of adaptation is “completely missing”, he added.
The post Business-as-usual: Donors pour climate adaptation finance into big infrastructure, neglecting local needs appeared first on Climate Home News.
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After a tough 2025 dominated by the US opposing climate action at home and abroad, 2026 looks set to be shaped by coalitions of countries willing to bypass the COP’s need for consensus and take voluntary action as a group.
While troubled multilateral talks on cleaning up plastics and shipping limp on, smaller groups of governments will gather to discuss taxing luxury air travel and planning a fair phase-out of fossil fuels. Australia and the Pacific’s initiatives for COP31 – which could continue discussions on the fossil fuel transition – will be crucial too.
As always, elections will shape the year too, particularly in the Americas. Presidential elections in Brazil and Colombia will determine whether Lula and Petro’s climate progress is reversed and Congressional elections in the USA will shape whether Trump’s climate vandalism can be checked.
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January
From January 10-12, the International Renewable Energy Agency will gather ministers and officials at its Abu Dhabi headquarters for its annual assembly and related side events. The organisation will announce new insights into whether the world is on track to meet the COP28 goal of tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030, and our editor Megan Rowling will be there to cover the summit.
The next week (January 19-23) is the World Economic Forum, where the global elite gather in the Swiss mountain town of Davos. With the Trump administration trying to push climate change down the agenda in return for his participation, we’ll be looking to see if he has got his way.
February
On February 7, government representatives will gather in Geneva to elect a new chair of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution. The previous chair – Ecuadorian Luis Vayas Valdivieso – stepped down in October after failing to get governments to agree to a plastics treaty.
The new chair will face a tough task reviving those talks, with governments whose economies rely on oil and gas opposing any measures to reduce plastic production.
March
At a still undecided date in March, the Danish government will gather a representative group of climate ministers in their capital for the Copenhagen Climate Ministerial. Expect topics to include next steps in transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems.
Meanwhile, on March 23-27, the oil and gas industry, energy ministers and other high-flyers in business and politics will travel to the Texan oil town of Houston for the CERAWeek conference. The annual gathering offers signals of what’s happening in the real economy.
Around the same time, on March 26-29, trade ministers will head to Cameroon for the World Trade Organisation’s ministerial meeting. With trade issues increasingly overlapping with the climate space, especially with the European Union’s carbon border tax coming into force at the start of 2026, the statements and discussions here will shed light on climate policy around the world.
April
On April 13-18, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund will hold their annual spring meetings in Washington DC. Over the last few years, both institutions have tried to get more money to climate action. But, with the head of the World Bank effectively chosen by the US president, will this push survive Donald Trump’s presence in the Oval Office?
On April 28-29, the governments of Colombia and the Netherlands will co-host the first “International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels” in the Colombian port city of Santa Marta. With 24 countries signing a related voluntary declaration at COP30, the conference could launch a coalition against fossil fuels that grows outside of the notoriously slow COP process.
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May
On May 11-12, the France-Africa summit will be held in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. With Kenya and France both key backers of a coalition of countries seeking to tax luxury air travel to fund climate action, we will be looking out for progress on those proposals.
The Colombian government of Gustavo Petro has inspired many climate campaigners with plans to phase out fossil fuel production. But Petro can’t run for another term and the first round of elections to replace him will take place on May 31. Who will replace him is currently highly uncertain.
June
On June 8-18, climate negotiators, campaigners and a select group of journalists – including Climate Home News – will travel to the German city of Bonn for the annual mid-year climate talks. Discussions on the Global Goal on Adaptation – unresolved at COP30 – will continue and the first trade-climate dialogue will be held.
Overlapping this gathering will be the G7 leaders summit on the French shores of Lake Geneva (June 14) and the following week’s London Climate Week (June 21-29). The men’s football/soccer World Cup will begin in North America (June 14), with high temperatures expected.
July
On July 8-10, the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage will have a board meeting in the Philippines, at which it is expected to approve its first set of projects, three and a half years after the fund’s creation grabbed headlines at COP27 in Egypt.
August
Dates are unconfirmed but there may be the next round of plastics treaty negotiations at some point in August or September and – with Australia and the Pacific involved in COP31 – Pacific leaders will gather for the annual Pacific Island Forum summit around this time.
September
Throughout September, diplomats will gather in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. Coinciding with that will be New York Climate Week (September 20-27), where power brokers in the climate world hold meetings, strike deals and make speeches.
October
Brazil’s president Lula has reversed the rising rainforest destruction of his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, hosted COP30 and pushed for a roadmap towards fossil fuel phase-out. Whether he will be able to continue in that vein depends on the two rounds of presidential elections, scheduled for October 4 and 26. Polls suggest he is the clear favourite to win.
On October 13-18, the World Bank and IMF host their annual autumn meetings and on October 19-30, the biodiversity COP comes to the Armenian capital city of Yerevan, where countries will produce the first global stocktake of the landmark Global Biodiversity Framework. Research suggests some of its goals, including a target to protect 30% of land and sea ecosystems, are highly off track.
November
An important month starts with US midterm elections for both branches of its Congress on November 3. The Democrats are currently expected to regain control of the House but not regain the Senate, where fewer seats are up for grabs. Losing either would limit Trump’s power in the world’s second-biggest emitter.
Around the same time, the annual pre-COP meeting will be held in a still-undetermined Pacific Island nation. Pacific governments hope to attract world leaders to come and see firsthand how climate change is threatening their islands.
Then on November 9-20, the climate COP will take place in the Turkish seaside city of Antalya, at its Expo Center. Australia is presiding over the talks – as part of a deal with Turkiye. Expect fossil fuel phase out and adaptation to be key themes.
Overlapping with COP31 will be the Marine Environment Protection Committee of the International Maritime Organisation in London (November 16-20). In 2025, the US and Saudi Arabia won a year’s delay to green shipping measures. This meeting will determine if that delay becomes permanent.
December
On December 14-15, the leaders of the G20 (except South Africa) have been invited for a summit in Miami. The US, which is barring South Africa partly because of its green policies, has indicated it will use the G20 to promote fossil fuels.
The post What’s on the climate calendar for 2026? appeared first on Climate Home News.
The UK’s fleet of wind, solar and biomass power plants all set new records in 2025, Carbon Brief analysis shows, but electricity generation from gas still went up.
The rise in gas power was due to the end of UK coal generation in late 2024 and nuclear power hitting its lowest level in half a century, while electricity exports grew and imports fell.
In addition, there was a 1% rise in UK electricity demand – after years of decline – as electric vehicles (EVs), heat pumps and data centres connected to the grid in larger numbers.
Other key insights from the data include:
- Electricity demand grew for the second year in a row to 322 terawatt hours (TWh), rising by 4TWh (1%) and hinting at a shift towards steady increases, as the UK electrifies.
- Renewables supplied more of the UK’s electricity than any other source, making up 47% of the total, followed by gas (28%), nuclear (11%) and net imports (10%).
- The UK set new records for electricity generation from wind (87TWh, +5%), solar (19TWh, +31%) and biomass (41TWh, +2%), as well as for renewables overall (152TWh, +6%).
- The UK had its first full year without any coal power, compared with 2TWh of generation in 2024, ahead of the closure of the nation’s last coal plant in September of that year.
- Nuclear power was at its lowest level in half a century, generating just 36TWh (-12%), as most of the remaining fleet paused for refuelling or outages.
Overall, UK electricity became slightly more polluting in 2025, with each kilowatt hour linked to 126g of carbon dioxide (gCO2/kWh), up 2% from the record low of 124gCO2/kWh, set last year.
The National Energy System Operator (NESO) set a new record for the use of low-carbon sources – known as “zero-carbon operation” – reaching 97.7% for half an hour on 1 April 2025.
However, NESO missed its target of running the electricity network for at least 30 minutes in 2025 without any fossil fuels.
The UK inched towards separate targets set by the government, for 95% of electricity generation to come from low-carbon sources by 2030 and for this to cover 100% of domestic demand.
However, much more rapid progress will be needed to meet these goals.
Carbon Brief has published an annual analysis of the UK’s electricity generation in 2024, 2023, 2021, 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2016.
Record renewables
The UK’s fleet of renewable power plants enjoyed a record year in 2025, with their combined electricity generation reaching 152TWh, a 6% rise from a year earlier.
Renewables made up 47% of UK electricity supplies, another record high. The rise of renewables is shown in the figure below, which also highlights the end of UK coal power.
While the chart makes clear that gas-fired electricity generation has also declined over the past 15 years, there was a small rise in 2025, with output from the fuel reaching 91TWh. This was an increase of 5TWh (5%) and means gas made up 28% of electricity supplies overall.
The rise in gas-fired generation was the result of rising demand and another fall in nuclear power output, which reached the lowest level in half a century, while net imports and coal also declined.
The year began with the UK’s sunniest spring and by mid-December had already become the sunniest year on record. This contributed to a 5TWh (31%) surge in electricity generation from solar power, helped by a jump of roughly one-fifth in installed generating capacity.
The new record for solar power generation of 19TWh in 2025 comes after years of stagnation, with electricity output from the technology having climbed just 15% in five years.
The UK’s solar capacity reached 21GW in the third quarter of 2025. This is a substantial increase of 3 gigawatts (GW) or 18% year-on-year.
These are the latest figures available from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ). The DESNZ timeseries has been revised to reflect previously missing data.
UK wind power also set a new record in 2025, reaching 87TWh, up 4TWh (5%). Wind conditions in 2025 were broadly similar to those in 2024, with the uptick in generation due to additional capacity.
The UK’s wind capacity reached 33GW in the third quarter of 2025, up 1GW (4%) from a year earlier. The 1.2GW Dogger Bank A in the North Sea has been ramping up since autumn 2025 and will be joined by the 1.2GW Dogger Bank B in 2026, as well as the 1.4GW Sofia project.
These sites were all awarded contracts during the government’s third “contracts for difference” (CfD) auction round and will be paid around £53 per megawatt hour (MWh) for the electricity they generate. This is well below current market prices, which currently sit at around £80/MWh.
Results from the seventh auction round, which is currently underway, will be announced in January and February 2026. Prices are expected to be significantly higher than in the third round, as a result of cost inflation.
Nevertheless, new offshore wind capacity is expected to be deliverable at “no additional cost to the billpayer”, according to consultancy Aurora Energy Research.
The UK’s biomass energy sites also had a record year in 2025, with output nudging up by 1TWh (2%) to 41TWh. Approximately two-thirds (roughly 27TWh) of this total is from wood-fired power plants, most notably the Drax former coal plant in Yorkshire, which generated 15TWh in 2024.
The government recently awarded new contracts to Drax that will apply from 2027 onwards and will see the amount of electricity it generates each year roughly halve, to around 6TWh. The government is also consulting on how to tighten sustainability rules for biomass sourcing.
Rising demand
The UK’s electricity demand has been falling for decades due to a combination of more efficient appliances and lightbulbs, as well as ongoing structural shifts in the economy.
Experts have been saying for years that at some point this trend would be reversed, as the UK shifts to electrified heat and transport supplies using EVs and heat pumps.
Indeed, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) has said that demand would more than double by 2050, with electrification forming a key plank of the UK’s efforts to reach net-zero.
Yet there has been little sign of this effect to date, with electricity demand continuing to fall outside single-year rebounds after economic shocks, such as the 2020 Covid lockdowns.
The data for 2025 shows hints that this turning point for electricity demand may finally be taking place. UK demand increased by 4TWh (1%) to 322TWh in 2025, after a 1TWh rise in 2024.
After declining for more than two decades since a peak in 2005, this is the first time in 20 years that UK demand has gone up for two years in a row, as shown in the figure below.
While detailed data on underlying electricity demand is not available, it is clear that the shift to EVs and heat pumps is playing an important role in the recent uptick.
There are now around 1.8m EVs on the UK’s roads and another 1m plug-in hybrids. Of this total, some 0.6m new EVs and plug-in hybrids were bought in 2025 alone. In addition, around 100,000 heat pumps are being installed each year. Sales of both technologies are rising fast.
Estimates from the NESO “future energy scenarios” point to an additional 2.0TWh of demand from new EVs in 2025, compared with 2024. They also suggest that newly installed heat pumps added around 0.2TWh of additional demand, while data centres added 0.4TWh.
By 2030, NESO’s scenarios suggest that electricity use for these three sources alone will rise by around 30TWh, equivalent to around 10% of total demand in 2025.
EVs would have the biggest impact, adding 17TWh to demand by 2030, NESO says, with heat pumps adding another 3TWh. Data-centre growth is highly uncertain, but could add 12TWh.
Gas growth
At the same time as UK electricity demand was growing by 4TWh in 2025, the country also lost a total of 10TWh of supply as a result of a series of small changes.
First, 2025 was the UK’s first full year without coal power since 1881, resulting in the loss of 2TWh of generation. Second, the UK’s nuclear fleet saw output falling to the lowest level in half a century, after a series of refuelling breaks and outages, which cut generation by 5TWh.
Third, after a big jump in imports in 2024, the UK saw a small decline in 2025, as well as a more notable increase in the amount of electricity exported to other countries. This pushed the country’s net imports down by 1TWh (4%).
The scale of cross-border trade in electricity is expected to increase as the UK has significantly expanded the number of interconnections with other markets.
However, the government’s clean-power targets for 2030 imply that the UK would become a net exporter, sending more electricity overseas than it receives from other countries. At present, it remains a significant net importer, with these contributions accounting for 109% of supplies.
Finally, other sources of generation – including oil – also declined in 2025, reducing UK supplies by another 2TWh, as shown in the figure below.
These losses in UK electricity supply were met by the already-mentioned increases in generation from gas, solar, wind and biomass, as shown in the figure above.
The government’s targets for decarbonising the UK’s electricity supplies will face similar challenges in the years to come as electrification – and, potentially, data centres – continue to push up demand.
All but one of the UK’s existing nuclear power plants are set to retire by 2030, meaning the loss of another 27TWh of nuclear generation.
This will be replaced by new nuclear capacity, but only slowly. The 3.2GW Hinkley Point C plant in Somerset is set to start operating in 2030 at the earliest and its sister plant, Sizewell C in Suffolk, not until at least another five years later.
Despite backing from ministers for small modular reactors, the timeline for any buildout is uncertain, with the latest government release referring to the “mid-2030s”.
Meanwhile, biomass generation is likely to decline as the output of Drax is scaled back from 2027.
Stalling progress
Taken together, the various changes in the UK’s electricity supplies in 2025 mean that efforts to decarbonise the grid stalled, with a small increase in emissions per unit of generation.
The 2% increase in carbon intensity to 126gCO2/kWh is illustrated in the figure below and comes after electricity was the “cleanest ever” in 2024, at 124gCO2/kWh.
The stalling progress on cleaning up the UK’s grid reflects the balance of record renewables, rising demand and rising gas generation, along with poor output from nuclear power.
Nevertheless, a series of other new records were set during 2025.
NESO ran the transmission grid on the island of Great Britain (GB; namely, England, Wales and Scotland) with a record 97.7% “zero-carbon operation” (ZCO) on 1 April 2025.
Note that this measure excludes gas plants that also generate heat – known as combined heat and power, or CHP – as well as waste incinerators and all other generators that do not connect to the transmission network, which means that it does not include most solar or onshore wind.
NESO was unable to meet its target – first set in 2019 – for 100% ZCO during 2025, meaning it did not succeed in running the transmission grid without any fossil fuels for half an hour.
Other records set in 2025 include:
- GB ran on 100% clean power, after accounting for exports, for a record 87 hours in 2025, up from 64.5 hours in 2024.
- Total GB renewable generation from wind, solar, biomass and hydro reached a record 31.3GW from 13:30-14:00 on 4 July 2025, meeting 84% of demand.
- GB wind generation reached a record 23.8GW for half an hour on 5 December 2025, when it met 52% of GB demand.
- GB solar reached a record 14.0GW at 13:00 on 8 July 2025, when it met 40% of demand.
The government has separate targets for at least 95% of electricity generation and 100% of demand on the island of Great Britain to come from low-carbon sources by 2030.
These goals, similar to the NESO target, exclude Northern Ireland, CHP and waste incinerators. However, they include distributed renewables, such as solar and onshore wind.
These definitions mean it is hard to measure progress independently. The most recent government figures show that 74% of qualifying generation in GB was from low-carbon sources in 2024.
Carbon Brief’s figures for the whole UK show that low-carbon sources made up a record 58% of electricity supplies overall in 2025, up marginally from a year earlier.
Similarly, low-carbon sources made up 65% of electricity generation in the UK overall. This was unchanged from a year earlier.
Methodology
The figures in the article are from Carbon Brief analysis of data from DESNZ Energy Trends, chapter 5 and chapter 6, as well as from NESO. The figures from NESO are for electricity supplied to the grid in Great Britain only and are adjusted here to include Northern Ireland.
In Carbon Brief’s analysis, the NESO numbers are also adjusted to account for electricity used by power plants on site and for generation by plants not connected to the high-voltage national grid.
NESO already includes estimates for onshore windfarms, but does not cover industrial gas combined heat and power plants and those burning landfill gas, waste or sewage gas.
Carbon intensity figures from 2009 onwards are taken directly from NESO. Pre-2009 estimates are based on the NESO methodology, taking account of fuel use efficiency for earlier years.
The carbon intensity methodology accounts for lifecycle emissions from biomass. It includes emissions for imported electricity, based on the daily electricity mix in the country of origin.
DESNZ historical electricity data, including years before 2009, is adjusted to align with other figures and combined with data on imports from a separate DESNZ dataset. Note that the data prior to 1951 only includes “major” power producers.
The post Analysis: UK renewables enjoy record year in 2025 – but gas power still rises appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: UK renewables enjoy record year in 2025 – but gas power still rises
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