The UK government’s official climate advisers are now “more optimistic” that the country can hit its emissions targets than they were before the Labour government was elected in July 2024.
Speaking ahead of the launch of the Climate Change Committee’s 2025 progress report, Prof Piers Forster, the CCC’s interim chair, told journalists it would be “possible” to meet the UK’s 2030 international climate goal, as well as its 2050 target to cut emissions to net-zero.
Moreover, Forster responded to attacks on climate policy from opposition parties, the Conservatives and Reform UK, by saying that reaching net-zero would, “ultimately, be good for the UK economy”.
The CCC’s report points to progress in areas such as windfarm planning rules, plans for clean power by 2030 and the accelerating adoption of clean-energy technologies for heat and transport.
It says that 38% of the emissions cuts needed to hit the UK’s 2030 target are now backed by “credible” policies, up from 25% two years earlier.
However, it says “significant risks” remain – and its top recommendation is for government action to reduce electricity prices, which would support the electrification of heat, transport and industry.
Carbon Brief has covered the CCC’s annual progress reports in 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021 and 2020.
- Change of tone
- Overall progress
- Policy gaps
- Road transport
- Buildings
- Industry
- Fossil fuels and hydrogen
- Electricity
- Agriculture and land
- Aviation and shipping
- Other sectors
Change of tone
This is the first progress report from the CCC to assess climate policy and action under the new Labour government, which took office in July 2024.
Last year’s edition had said that “urgent action is needed” and that the UK was “not on track” for its 2030 international climate goal, namely, a 68% reduction in emissions relative to 1990 levels.
In contrast, the 2025 report says: “This target is within reach, provided the government stays the course.”
Speaking at a pre-launch press briefing, CCC interim chair Prof Piers Forster said: “[This is] an optimistic report, [showing] that it is possible for the country to meet its climate commitments.”
Moreover, in comments aligned with the shift in language since last year, he said that the report was “more optimistic” than the 2024 edition. Forster explained:
“We are not a political organisation and our job as a committee is just to look at the evidence, but, in terms of looking at the evidence, we are more optimistic than we were this time last year.”
The reasons for this were a mixture of policies from the previous government starting to deliver and the impact of decisions taken by the new administration, he said.
While the tone is relatively optimistic, the latest progress report uses less prescriptive language than previous editions, according to Carbon Brief analysis shown in the figure below.
For example, the word “must” occurs once every 10 pages in this year’s report, down from seven times in 2021. Similarly, the word “should” only occurs four times per 10 pages, down from 13.
This shift in language appears to be a continuation of the approach taken by the committee in its advice on the UK’s seventh “carbon budget”, published in February.
(Under the Climate Change Act 2008, the government has until June 2026 to legislate for this budget, which is a legally binding emissions limit for the five-year period from 2038 to 2042.)
The committee has faced inaccurate criticism from some opponents of climate action, who have argued that it was, in effect, setting government policy.
Pushing back on this, Forster had reiterated in February: “[O]ur core responsibility…is to give…the very best non-partisan advice possible…It’s not up to us to make the policy, it’s up to government.”
Beyond the overall tone of the latest progress report, it also puts a stronger emphasis than last year’s on the need for action to reduce emissions.
It sets out the rationale for the world reaching net-zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to stop global warming, but also asserts the benefits this would bring to the UK in terms of energy security, a more efficient economy and lower bills:
“[C]ontinued reliance on fossil fuels undermines UK energy security…[A] fossil-fuelled future would leave the UK increasingly dependent on imports, and energy bills would remain subject to volatile fossil fuel prices.”
In language that could be interpreted as pushback against the leader of the opposition, the Conservative’s Kemi Badenoch, who recently falsely claimed that reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 was both “impossible” and only possible “by bankrupting us”, the CCC report states:
“The science is unambiguous. Only by achieving net-zero CO2 emissions, with deep reductions in other greenhouse gases, can the UK stop contributing to an ever-warmer climate…The 2050 net-zero target for the UK remains deliverable and affordable, with whole-economy costs estimated at an annual average of 0.2% of GDP.”
Asked directly if he agreed that the net-zero by 2050 target was “impossible” and would come with “catastrophic” costs – as Badenoch has asserted – Forster said that on the contrary, it was “possible” and would, “ultimately, be good for the UK economy”. He told journalists:
“We think that, provided there is further government policy, it is possible both to reach our [2030 target], our carbon budgets and then, ultimately, get to net-zero…[and that] while the benefit doesn’t come instantly…it will, ultimately, be good for the UK economy.”
The report also makes the point that the UK is far from alone in its efforts, with global investments in clean-energy technologies reaching $2tn last year, double the sum going to fossil fuels. It adds:
“Most of the world is investing heavily in low-carbon technologies, driven by falling costs, energy security concerns and a realisation of the need to respond to rising climate impacts.”
(This is despite the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and a “period of uncertainty” in international relations since the US election, the report notes.)
Overall progress
Last year’s report, published just days after Labour’s “landslide” election victory, had set the scene for the new administration, saying that it needed to “make up lost ground” to get back on track.
That report had called on the new government to “limit the damage” from Conservative climate policy rollbacks, which had been implemented ahead of the election.
This year’s report looks at how things have progressed since then, based on three sets of metrics:
- First, it looks at changes to the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions over the past year.
- Second, it looks at indicators of progress on the ground, such as the uptake of electric vehicles (EVs), the rollout of electric heat pumps and the rate of tree-planting.
- Third, it looks at policy changes introduced over the past year by the new government.
The assessment includes policy changes introduced up until 23 May 2025, meaning that it does not consider the June spending review or the industrial strategy published earlier this week.
Greenhouse gas emissions have more than halved since 1990, with a 50.4% reduction, making the UK “one of the leading economies in the world”, Forster said. The report adds:
“The UK should…be proud of its place among a leading group of economies demonstrating consistent and sustained decarbonisation.”
It says that UK emissions fell again during 2024, with a 2.5% reduction marking the tenth year of steady decline, excluding the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent rebound.
Echoing Carbon Brief analysis published in March, the CCC says that the latest drop in emissions was due to the power sector, industry and transport, where EVs are starting to have an impact.
However, the report emphasises once again that progress to date has largely come in the electricity sector, where the UK became the first country in the G7 to phase out coal power in 2024.
Indeed, the CCC says that electricity supply is now only the UK’s sixth-largest source of emissions, after surface transport, buildings, industry, agriculture and aviation, as shown in the figure below.
In order to continue cutting emissions to meet UK climate goals, the CCC says that reductions will be needed across a broader range of sectors, including transport, buildings, industry and land-use.
The pace of emissions cuts outside the power sector – an average of 8m tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) per year since 2008 – is roughly on track for the fourth carbon budget covering 2023-27.
However, the report says this pace will need to “more than double” toward the end of the decade, hitting 19MtCO2e per year, in order to hit the UK’s NDC and sixth carbon budget.
Turning to the indicators of progress on the ground, the CCC says that there are some “clear signs” of such shifts starting to take place, in areas such as transport, buildings and land-use.
For example, the report points to “significant increases” in the rates of heat-pump rollout (up 56% year-on-year in 2024), tree-planting (+59%) and peatland restoration (+47%).
(See the sections below for further detail on policies and progress in each sector.)
Policy gaps
Turning to its assessment of government climate policy, the CCC report says there has also been some “positive progress” since Labour came to office last year.
Specifically, it points to the removal of planning barriers for onshore wind and heat pumps, as well as implementation of the “clean heat market mechanism” to drive heat-pump sales, reinstatement of the 2030 combustion car ban and publication of the 2030 clean-power action plan.
As a result, the CCC says that there are now “credible policies” in place to make 38% of the emissions cuts needed to hit the UK’s 2030 target, up from 25% in 2023 and 32% last year.
At the same time, the share of emissions savings subject to policies facing “some” or “significant risks” has fallen from 53% in 2023 and 50% in 2024, down to 43% in the latest report.
These improvements are illustrated in the figure below, which shows that the credibility of UK climate policies towards the 2030 target has been steadily increasing.
Nevertheless, there are still “insufficient plans” to make 14% of the cuts needed by 2030, the same share as last year. The biggest policy gaps are around heat-pump rollout, the report says.
The CCC says: “With 39% of policies and plans needed to hit the 2030 NDC rated as having significant risks, or insufficient or unquantified plans, the government must act swiftly.”
The figure below illustrates the implications of falling to “act swiftly” more clearly.
If only the most “credible” policies actually deliver emissions savings (solid dark blue line) then the UK would miss its international targets for 2030 and 2035 (black circles) by significant margins.
The UK would get somewhat closer to its goals, if emissions cuts are successfully achieved as a result of policies subject to “some” (light blue) or “significant” delivery risks (grey line).
At the pre-launch briefing, Dr Emily Nurse, head of net-zero at the CCC, told journalists that further action was needed to get on track for the 2030 target. She said:
“Around three-fifths of what’s needed is covered by either credible plans or [those] having some risks…The UK can hit its upcoming emissions reduction targets and remain on track for net-zero, but only with further policy action.”
The government has the chance to fill these policy gaps when it publishes its updated “carbon budget delivery plan”, which has a deadline of 29 October this year.
This plan must set out how the government intends to meet the UK’s legally binding climate goals, after the previous administration’s plan was ruled unlawful by the High Court.
While there has been “good or moderate progress” on 20 of the 35 policy recommendations made last year, the CCC says there has been “no progress” on its top recommendation to make electricity cheaper.
The report says this remains its top recommendation for the second year in a row.
The reason for emphasising this, it says, is that electrification of transport, heat and industry will be the key to making required emissions cuts over the next decade, according to the CCC, with these shifts being facilitated by the expansion and continued decarbonisation of the power sector.
CCC chief executive Emma Pinchbeck told journalists that making progress in lowering electricity prices was “absolutely critical”, particularly relative to the price of gas. She said:
“The reason we keep banging on about [this], very simply, [is] that the evidence from every other country that’s had a successful rollout of electric technologies – particularly for heat – is that you need a three-to-one electricity-to-gas price ratio.”
(At present, domestic electricity prices are roughly four times higher than gas prices.)
Pinchbeck reiterated the committee’s call for the government to remove policy “levies” from electricity bills, adding that failing to do so would mean “slowing down” the transition. She said:
“If you’re effectively taxing your future fuel, you’re slowing down your energy transition, when the economy is going to become more and more dependent on electricity…It is just sensible economic policy to have cheap fuel going into your economy.”
While Pinchbeck welcomed plans in the government’s just-published industrial strategy to cut levies on industrial electricity bills, she said that it should do the same for households.
Road transport
Road-transport emissions fell for a second consecutive year in 2024, says the report.
The number of electric vehicles (EVs) on UK roads is roughly doubling every two years.
If this trend continues, the road-transport sector will produce the emissions savings required for its contribution to the UK’s 2030 climate target, the CCC says (see below).
EVs made up 19.6% of new car sales in 2024, compared to 16.1% the previous year, according to the report. In the first quarter of 2025, this figure rose to 20.7%.
This represents “strong growth”, but is below the headline targets of the zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate, a government regulation that requires car manufacturers to sell an increasing percentage of zero-emission vehicles each year, the CCC says.
The mandate targets a 22% market share for 2024 and a 28% share for 2025, according to the CCC.
The CCC notes that lower-cost EVs are becoming increasingly available. It adds that “price parity with petrol cars has already been reached in parts of the second-hand market”, with this milestone set to arrive for new cars by between 2026 and 2028.
Overall, there has been a “small improvement” in the UK’s policy efforts to decarbonise road transport since last year’s report, it says.
This is largely down to Labour’s decision to reinstate a 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles, which was weakened to 2035 under Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak, explains the report.
The CCC describes the move as a “welcome market signal to accelerate the transition to EVs”.
As well as reinstating the 2030 ban, the government announced changes to the ZEV mandate.
The government essentially weakened the mandate by extending flexibilities and allowing the sale of hybrid vehicles between 2030 and 2035.
Ministers said this move was in response to import tariffs announced by Donald Trump.
The CCC says the changes “risk allowing existing planned plugin hybrid vehicle sales to slightly reduce the emissions savings from EVs”, adding:
“It is also possible that manufacturers could divert investment towards [hybrids], diluting the consumer offer for EVs – we currently think that this risk is minimal due to progress in scaling up the EV market to date, but it is something that we will monitor closely.”
It adds that “for the transition to accelerate, further reductions in the cost of purchasing EVs, as well as improved access to, and reduced costs of, local public charging, are needed”.
Buildings
Heat pump installations increased by 56% in 2024 compared to the year before, the report says. Some 98,000 heat pumps were installed.
A total of 23,000 heat pumps were installed under the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, which allows homeowners to claim grants for replacing fossil-fuel boilers. This is an increase of 83% on 2023 levels, says the CCC.
However, the speed at which heat pumps are rolled out remains one of the “biggest risks” to the UK meeting its 2030 climate target, it adds.
The UK’s heat pump market share is around 4%, much lower than comparable countries, such as Ireland (30%) and the Netherlands (31%), the CCC says.
The government has taken steps to “remove planning barriers” for heat pumps. This includes amending the planning policy in England to remove the requirement for planning permission for heat pumps located less than 1m from a property boundary.
However, the government has “not yet provided clarity on whether [it] will continue with the proposed phase-out of new fossil fuel boiler installations from 2035”, or “make alternative plans to ensure that low-carbon heating reaches the installation rates required”, the CCC says.
The report adds that the ratio of residential electricity to gas prices is “significantly off track”.
The ratio is important because it underpins the “underlying cost savings of switching to electric technologies are reflected in the bills paid by households and businesses”, the CCC says, continuing:
“Action has not been taken to remove policy costs from electricity prices which would address this, despite it being our first recommendation last year…Currently, a typical household with a heat pump is paying around £490 per year in policy costs, which inflate their bills above the underlying cost of the additional electricity used.”
Data from other nations suggests that the “market share of heat pump installations are correlated with more favourable electricity-to-gas price ratios”, says the CCC (see chart below).
Forster told the press briefing that the CCC’s “biggest recommendation” to government remains reducing the price of electricity in relation to gas:
“By far the most important recommendation we have for the government is to reduce the cost of electricity, both for households and for businesses and industry as well…If we want the country to benefit from the transition to electrification, we have to see it reflected in utility bills.”
The report adds that, on efforts to increase the energy efficiency of residential buildings, the “proportion of homes with insulated cavity walls has steadily increased over recent years, but this will need to accelerate later in the decade” to be in line with net-zero.
Industry
Industry emissions decreased by 4.7MtCO2e in 2024, compared to the year before, the CCC says. Emissions are now 48% lower than 2008 levels.
From 2023-24, annual emissions dropped quickly due to the removal of blast furnaces at Port Talbot steelworks in 2024. They are due to be replaced by electric arc furnaces by 2027, with the move leading to 2,500 job losses.
The government should have developed a “more proactive and decisive transition plan” for Port Talbot and the report describes the UK’s upcoming steel strategy as “an opportunity to set out plans for the low-carbon transition at Scunthorpe steelworks and other UK steel production”.
To deliver the emissions savings needed to meet the UK’s 2030 climate goal, companies will “increasingly need to switch to electric alternatives to fossil-fuelled technology”, the report says, adding:
“A high ratio of [industrial] electricity-to-gas prices currently presents a barrier to this.”
It adds that, currently, “there is now no major source of government support for manufacturers to invest in electrification”.
The CCC notes that the government did not launch the latest round of the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund, which was due in December 2024. It has “not clarified whether this or similar funding will continue”.
On 23 June, the UK government announced a 10-year industrial strategy, including measures to slash the price of electricity for energy-intensive businesses from 2027 by exempting them from green levies.
In the press briefing, Pinchbeck described the move as “good”, but urged the government to introduce similar measures for household electricity bills, too. (See: Buildings.)
On efforts to introduce carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies to UK industries, the report says progress “is not on track to be deployed at the pace required” by government plans to reach net-zero.
Fossil fuels and hydrogen
The report says that the UK’s “continued reliance on fossil fuels undermines energy security”, continuing:
“Household energy bills rose sharply following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and have remained high since. It is the price of gas that has driven up both gas and electricity bills.”
(See Carbon Brief’s factcheck on what is causing high electricity bills in the UK.)
The report does not directly address the Labour government’s policies on oil and gas production in the North Sea.
Labour has ruled out new oil and gas licences. However, the government has indicated it might approve new projects that already have a licence, if they can pass a new environmental impact assessment that will consider the emissions from burning the oil and gas produced.
In regards to the North Sea, the report says:
“With North Sea resources largely used up, a fossil-fuelled future would leave the UK increasingly dependent on imports and energy bills would remain subject to volatile fossil fuel prices.”
The CCC adds that the “main progress in the fuel-supply sector in the past year has been around low-carbon hydrogen production”.
In the 2024 autumn budget, the government confirmed support for 11 “electrolytic”
hydrogen production projects, which are expected to start operating by the end of 2026. (These projects use electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.)
Electricity
The UK’s transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy in its electricity supply continued to drive the bulk of emissions reductions in 2024, the CCC says. It accounted for 41% of the total in-year reduction in emissions.
From the 1990s until 2024, the power sector has transformed from the largest source of emissions to only the sixth largest, behind aviation. (See: Overall progress.)
The UK’s last coal-fired power plant, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, closed in October 2024. (See Carbon Brief’s detailed explainer on how the UK became the first G7 nation to phase out coal.)
Coal emissions from electricity generation were 99% lower in 2024 than in 2008 and will reach zero in 2025, the CCC says. It describes this as a “major milestone on the UK’s path to a decarbonised power system”.
Falling gas generation accounted for 72% of emissions reductions in the power sector in 2024, the CCC says.
The electricity supplied by gas fell by 15% in 2024, compared to the previous year. This was “made up with roughly equal proportions of imports and low-carbon generation”.
The rollout of wind and solar capacity in 2024 was larger than in any of the previous six years, the report says.
But to achieve the government’s goal of “clean power” by 2030, total renewable capacity will need to more than double.
Based on projects in the pipeline, both offshore and onshore wind “appear on track” for the government’s goal, according to the CCC.
However, “roll-out of solar is significantly off track and will need to improve to deliver its contribution to a decarbonised electricity system”.
The report says that, overall, “positive policy progress has been made in decarbonising electricity supply over the past year”.
It continues that “concrete steps have been made to remove barriers and support the deployment of low-carbon technology”.
These steps include removing barriers facing onshore wind developments, “streamlin[ing]” the approval of nationally significant infrastructure, including renewable projects and introducing reforms to speed up connecting projects to the grid.
However, the CCC adds that there are “remaining uncertainties on the future electricity market arrangements and further challenges to deploying infrastructure to overcome”.
Agriculture and land
There was a “significant increase” in both tree-planting and peatland restoration in 2024, the report says.
Some 20,700 hectares of new trees were planted, an increase of 59% on the year before and the highest rate in 20 years, it adds, as shown in the chart below.
Over the same period, the restoration of peatlands increased by 47%.
This “demonstrates that a rapid increase in rates is feasible” for the land-use sector, the CCC says.
However, woodland creation remains “slightly off track”. (Carbon Brief reported last year that successive UK governments have fallen so far short of their tree-planting targets since 2020 that they have failed to plant an area of forest nearly equivalent to the size of Birmingham.)
In addition, Scotland accounted for 73% of the total trees planted from 2023-24 and the CCC has “concerns that recent reductions in funding for woodland creation in Scotland could reverse this trend”.
A target to have 35,000 hectares of peat under restoration in England by 2025 is also “expected to be missed”.
Livestock numbers continued to fall in 2024, the report says.
Meat eating has declined steeply over the past couple of years. The average amount of meat eaten per person each week dropped by around 100g from 2020-22, according to CCC data.
Pinchbeck told the press briefing that meat-eating in the UK is now lower than what the CCC had anticipated in its central pathway for meeting net-zero:
“There’s lots of factors behind that, including the cost of living crisis. So we are not necessarily saying that trend will increase. Farming is facing a number of pressures, outside having to deal with a changing climate, reduced crop yields [and] difficulty making farms sustainable.”
Both the reduction in livestock and meat eating are “key to freeing up land required to increase tree-planting and peatland restoration”, the report says.
The government’s progress on addressing land-use sector emissions with policies has been “mixed” over the past year, according to the CCC.
The government is expected to produce a long-awaited land-use framework by the end of this year, but it “remains unclear how this framework will drive change on the ground”, the advisers say.
The government paused the sustainable farming incentive, part of the environmental land management (ELM) schemes, in March 2025.
This was due to all of the funding being allocated, which is “positive”, says the CCC. However, the decision has left a “gap in delivery grants for on-farm actions”.
The Nature for Climate Fund has been extended by one year, but is “unclear” what will happen to this scheme in the long term, it adds.
Aviation and shipping
Emissions in the aviation sector increased by 9% year-on-year in 2024, “marking a return to pre-pandemic levels”, the report says.
In government and CCC scenarios for net-zero, emissions stay flat and start slowly decreasing over the rest of the decade, the report says, adding:
“Aviation emissions will likely exceed the trajectories assumed in all [these] pathways if they continue to increase, posing a risk to the UK’s emissions targets.”
The biggest driver of aviation emissions since 1990 has been “rising demand for international flights, particularly leisure”, it continues.
Aviation now causes more emissions than the UK’s entire power grid. In 1990, aviation emissions were 10 times lower than those from electricity, according to the report.
The CCC “recommends that the government should develop and implement policy that ensures the aviation sector takes responsibility for mitigating its emissions and, ultimately, achieving net-zero”, adding:
“This includes paying for permanent engineered removals to balance out all remaining emissions. Robust contingencies should also be in place to address any delays in decarbonisation, including through managing the forecasted increase in aviation demand.”
The share of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) as a proportion of all jet fuel rose from 0.7% to 2.1% from 2023-24, the CCC says.
It notes that the SAF mandate came into force in January 2025 and the sustainable aviation fuel bill was introduced to parliament in May.
Achieving the government’s target of 10% of jet fuel from SAF by 2030 “remains uncertain as different types of SAF will need to scale up”, it adds.
There are currently no operational UK SAF plants, but some are under construction.
On shipping, the report notes that the UK has set out a maritime decarbonisation strategy, with an aim to reduce the domestic maritime sector’s fuel lifecycle emissions to zero by 2050 and interim goals of cutting pollution by 30% by 2030 and 80% by 2040, compared to 2008.
The targets are “broadly aligned” with government plans for net-zero, the CCC says.
Other sectors
Another sector tracked by the CCC is “engineered removals”, technologies that suck CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Aside from small experiments, there is no deployment of such technologies in the UK. However, the government’s pathway for net-zero expects such methods to remove 6MtCO2e from the atmosphere by 2030, the report says, adding:
“This sector will need to develop and scale up notably over the coming five years.”
One of the CCC’s “top 10” priority actions is for the government to “finalise business models for large-scale deployment of engineered removals”.
On this, the advisers say:
“There has been little progress…This puts the contribution of engineered removals to the UK’s 2030 NDC at increasing risk.”
Another issue assessed by the CCC is waste, which produced 26.7MtCO2e in 2024, making it the eighth most polluting sector.
The report says there has been “some progress” on waste policy, but notes the government is “yet to confirm its intention to prevent biodegradable waste from going to landfill, a key measure to reduce emissions from waste”.
The post CCC: UK climate advisers now ‘more optimistic’ net-zero goals can be met appeared first on Carbon Brief.
CCC: UK climate advisers now ‘more optimistic’ net-zero goals can be met
A “critical assessment” report commissioned by the Trump administration to justify a rollback of US climate regulations contains at least 100 false or misleading statements, according to a Carbon Brief factcheck involving dozens of leading climate scientists.
The report – “A critical review of impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the US climate” – was published by the US Department of Energy (DoE) on 23 July, just days before the government laid out plans to revoke a scientific finding used as the legal basis for emissions regulation.
The executive summary of the controversial report inaccurately claims that “CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed”.
It also states misleadingly that “excessively aggressive [emissions] mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial”.
Compiled in just two months by five “independent” researchers hand-selected by the climate-sceptic US secretary of energy Chris Wright, the document has sparked fierce criticism from climate scientists, who have pointed to factual errors, misrepresentation of research, messy citations and the cherry-picking of data.
Experts have also noted the authors’ track record of promoting views at odds with the mainstream understanding of climate science.
Wright’s department claims the report – which is currently open to public comment as part of a 30-day review – underwent an “internal peer-review period amongst [the] DoE’s scientific research community”.
The report is designed to provide a scientific underpinning to one flank of the Trump administration’s plans to rescind a finding that serves as the legal prerequisite for federal emissions regulation. (The second flank is about legal authority to regulate emissions.)
The “endangerment finding” – enacted by the Obama administration in 2009 – states that six greenhouse gases are contributing to the net-negative impacts of climate change and, thus, put the public in danger.
In a press release on 29 July, the US Environmental Protection Agency said “updated studies and information” set out in the new report would “challenge the assumptions” of the 2009 finding.
Carbon Brief asked a wide range of climate scientists, including those cited in the “critical review” itself, to factcheck the report’s various claims and statements.
The post Factcheck: Trump’s climate report includes more than 100 false or misleading claims appeared first on Carbon Brief.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-trumps-climate-report-includes-more-than-100-false-or-misleading-claims/
Climate Change
Cropped 13 August 2025: Fossil-fuelled bird decline; ‘Deadly’ wildfires; Empty nature fund
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
‘Deadly’ wildfires
WINE BRAKE: France experienced its “largest wildfire in decades”, which scorched more than 16,000 hectares in the country’s southern Aude region, the Associated Press said. “Gusting winds” fanned the flames, Reuters reported, but local winemakers and mayors also “blam[ed] the loss of vineyards”, which can act as a “natural, moisture-filled brake against wildfires”, for the fire’s rapid spread. It added that thousands of hectares of vineyards were removed in Aude over the past year. Meanwhile, thousands of people were evacuated from “deadly” wildfires in Spain, the Guardian said, with blazes ongoing in other parts of Europe.
MAJOR FIRES: Canada is experiencing its second-worst wildfire season on record, CBC News reported. More than 7.3m hectares burned in 2025, “more than double the 10-year average for this time of year”, the broadcaster said. The past three fire seasons were “among the 10 worst on record”, CBC News added. Dr Mike Flannigan from Thompson Rivers University told the Guardian: “This is our new reality…The warmer it gets, the more fires we see.” Elsewhere, the UK is experiencing a record year for wildfires, with more than 40,000 hectares of land burned so far in 2025, according to Carbon Brief.
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WESTERN US: The US state of Colorado has recorded one of its largest wildfires in history in recent days, the Guardian said. The fire “charred” more than 43,300 hectares of land and led to the temporary evacuation of 179 inmates from a prison, the newspaper said. In California, a fire broke out “during a heatwave” and burned more than 2,000 hectares before it was contained, the Los Angeles Times reported. BBC News noted: “Wildfires have become more frequent in California, with experts citing climate change as a key factor. Hotter, drier conditions have made fire seasons longer and more destructive.”
FIRE FUNDING: “Worsening fires” in the Brazilian Amazon threaten new rainforest funding proposals due to be announced at the COP30 climate summit later this year, experts told Climate Home News. The new initiatives include the Tropical Forests Forever Facility, which the outlet said “aims to generate a flow of international investment to pay countries annually in proportion to their preserved tropical forests”. The outlet added: “If fires in the Amazon continue to worsen in the years to come, eligibility for funding could be jeopardised, Brazil’s environment ministry acknowledged.”
Farming impacts
OUT OF ORBIT: US president Donald Trump moved to “shut down” two space missions which monitor carbon dioxide and plant health, the Associated Press reported. Ending these NASA missions would “potentially shu[t] off an important source of data for scientists, policymakers and farmers”, the outlet said. Dr David Crisp, a retired NASA scientist, said the missions can detect the “glow” of plant growth, which the outlet noted “helps monitor drought and predict food shortages that can lead to civil unrest and famine”.
FARM EXTREMES: Elsewhere, Reuters said that some farmers are considering “abandoning” a “drought-hit” agricultural area in Hungary as “climate change cuts crop yields and reduces groundwater levels”. Scientists warned that rising temperatures and low rainfall threaten the region’s “agricultural viability”, the newswire added. Meanwhile, the Premium Times in Nigeria said that some farmers are “harvest[ing] crops prematurely” due to flooding fears. A community in the south-eastern state of Imo “has endured recurrent floods, which wash away crops and incomes alike” over the past decade, the newspaper noted.
SECURITY RISKS: Food supply chains in the UK face “escalating threats from climate impacts and the migration they are triggering”, according to a report covered by Business Green. The outlet said that £3bn worth of UK food imports originated from the 20 countries “with the highest numbers of climate-driven displacements” in 2024, based on analysis from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit. The analysis highlighted that “climate impacts on food imports pose a threat to UK food security”. Elsewhere, an opinion piece in Dialogue Earth explored how the “role of gender equity in food security remains critically unaddressed”.
Spotlight
Fossil-fuelled bird decline
This week, Carbon Brief covers a new study tracing the impact of fossil-fuelled climate change on tropical birds.
Over the past few years, biologists have recorded sharp declines in bird numbers across tropical rainforests – even in areas untouched by humans – with the cause remaining a mystery.
A new study published this week in Nature Ecology and Evolution could help to shed light on this alarming phenomenon.
The research combined ecological and climate attribution techniques for the first time to trace the fingerprint of fossil-fuelled climate change on declining bird populations.
It found that an increase in heat extremes driven by climate change has caused tropical bird populations to decline by 25-38% in the period 1950-2020, when compared to a world without warming.
In their paper, the authors noted that birds in the tropics could be living close to their “thermal limits”.
Study lead author Dr Maximilian Kotz, a climate scientist at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Spain, explained to Carbon Brief:
“High temperature extremes can induce direct mortality in bird populations due to hyperthermia and dehydration. Even when they don’t [kill birds immediately], there’s evidence that this can then affect body condition which, in turn, affects breeding behaviour and success.”
Conservation implications
The findings have “potential ramifications” for commonly proposed conservation strategies, such as increasing the amount of land in the tropics that is protected for nature, the authors said. In their paper, they continued:
“While we do not disagree that these strategies are necessary for abating tropical habitat loss…our research shows there is now an additional urgent need to investigate strategies that can allow for the persistence of tropical species that are vulnerable to heat extremes.”
In some parts of the world, scientists and conservationists are looking into how to protect wildlife from more intense and frequent climate extremes, Kotz said.
He referenced one project in Australia which is working to protect threatened wildlife following periods of extreme heat, drought and bushfires.
Prof Alex Pigot, a biodiversity scientist at University College London (UCL), who was not involved in the research, said the findings reinforced the need to systematically monitor the impact of extreme weather on wildlife. He told Carbon Brief:
“We urgently need to develop early warning systems to be able to anticipate in advance where and when extreme heatwaves and droughts are likely to impact populations – and also rapidly scale up our monitoring of species and ecosystems so that we can reliably detect these effects.”
There is further coverage of this research on Carbon Brief’s website.
News and views
EMPTY CALI FUND: A major voluntary fund for biodiversity remains empty more than five months after its launch, Carbon Brief revealed. The Cali Fund, agreed at the COP16 biodiversity negotiations last year, was set up for companies who rely on nature’s resources to share some of their earnings with the countries where many of these resources originate. Big pharmaceutical companies did not take up on opportunities to commit to contributing to the fund or be involved in its launch in February 2025, emails released to Carbon Brief showed. Just one US biotechnology firm has pledged to contribute to the fund in the future.
LOSING HOPE: Western Australia’s Ningaloo reef – long considered a “hope spot” among the country’s coral reefs for evading major bleaching events – is facing its “worst-ever coral bleaching”, Australia’s ABC News reported. The ocean around Ningaloo has been “abnormally” warm since December, resulting in “unprecedented” bleaching and mortality, a research scientist told the outlet. According to marine ecologist Dr Damian Thomson, “up to 50% of the examined coral was dead in May”, the Sydney Morning Herald said. Thomson told the newspaper: “You realise your children are probably never going to see Ningaloo the way you saw it.”
‘DEVASTATION BILL’: Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, signed a “contentious” environmental bill into law, but “partially vetoed” some of the widely criticised elements, the Financial Times reported. Critics, who dubbed it the “devastation bill”, said it “risked fuelling deforestation and would harm Brazil’s ecological credentials” just months before hosting the COP30 climate summit. The newspaper said: “The leftist leader struck down or altered 63 of 400 provisions in the legislation, which was designed to speed up and modernise environmental licensing for new business and infrastructure developments.” The vetoes need to be approved by congress, “where Lula lacks a majority”, the newspaper noted.
RAINFOREST DRILLING: The EU has advised the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) against allowing oil drilling in a vast stretch of rainforest and peatland that was jointly designated a “green corridor” earlier this year, Climate Home News reported. In May, the DRC announced that it planned to open the conservation area for drilling, the publication said. A spokesperson for the European Commission told Climate Home News that the bloc “fully acknowledges and respects the DRC’s sovereign right to utilise its diverse resources for economic development”, but that it “highlights the fact that green alternatives have facilitated the protection of certain areas”.
NEW PLAN FOR WETLANDS: During the 15th meeting of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, held in Zimbabwe from 23 to 31 July, countries agreed on the adoption of a new 10-year strategic plan for conserving and sustainably using the world’s wetlands. Down to Earth reported that 13 resolutions were adopted, including “enhancing monitoring and reporting, capacity building and mobilisation of resources”. During the talks, Zimbabwe’s environment minister announced plans to restore 250,000 hectares of degraded wetlands by 2030 and Saudi Arabia entered the Convention on Wetlands. Panamá will host the next COP on wetlands in July 2028.
MEAT MADNESS: DeSmog covered the details of a 2021 public relations document that revealed how the meat industry is trying to “make beef seem climate-friendly”. The industry “may have enlisted environmental groups to persuade people to ‘feel better’ about eating beef”, the outlet said, based on this document. The strategy was created by a communications agency, MHP Group, and addressed to the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef. One of the key messages of the plan was to communicate the “growing momentum in the beef industry to protect and nurture the Earth’s natural resources”. MHP Group did not respond to a request for comment, according to DeSmog.
Watch, read, listen
MAKING WAVES: A livestream of deep-sea “crustaceans, sponges and sea cucumbers” has “captivated” people in Argentina, the New York Times outlined.
BAFFLING BIRDS: The Times explored the backstory to the tens of thousands of “exotic-looking” parakeets found in parks across Britain.
PLANT-BASED POWER: In the Conversation, Prof Paul Behrens outlined how switching to a plant-based diet could help the UK meet its climate and health targets.
MARINE DISCRIMINATION: Nature spoke to a US-based graduate student who co-founded Minorities in Shark Science about her experiences of racism and sexism in the research field.
New science
- Applying biochar – a type of charcoal – to soils each year over a long period of time can have “sustained benefits for crop yield and greenhouse gas mitigation”, according to a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study.
- New research, published in PLOS Climate, found that nearly one-third of highly migratory fish species in the US waters of the Atlantic Ocean have “high” or “very high” vulnerability to climate change, but the majority of species have “some level of resilience and adaptability”.
- A study in Communications Earth & Environment found a “notable greening trend” in China’s wetlands over 2000-23, with an increasing amount of carbon being stored in the plants growing there.
In the diary
- 18-29 August: Second meeting of the preparatory commission for the Agreement on Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction | New York
- 24-28 August: World Water Week | Online and Stockholm, Sweden
- 26-29 August: Sixth forum of ministers and environment authorities of Asia Pacific | Nadi, Fiji
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org
The post Cropped 13 August 2025: Fossil-fuelled bird decline; ‘Deadly’ wildfires; Empty nature fund appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 13 August 2025: Fossil-fuelled bird decline; ‘Deadly’ wildfires; Empty nature fund
Last year, China started construction on an estimated 95 gigawatts (GW) of new coal power capacity, enough to power the entire UK twice over.
It accounted for 93% of new global coal-power construction in 2024.
The boom appears to contradict China’s climate commitments and its pledge to “strictly control” new coal power.
The fact that China already has significant underused coal power capacity and is adding enough clean energy to cover rising electricity demand also calls the necessity of the buildout into question.
Furthermore, so much new coal capacity provides an easy counterargument for claims that China is serious about the energy transition.
Did China really need more coal power?
And now that it is here, do all these brand-new power plants mean China’s greenhouse gas emissions will remain elevated for longer?
This article addresses four common talking points surrounding China’s ongoing coal-power expansion, explaining how and why the current wave of new projects might come to an end.
New coal is not needed for energy security
The explanation for China’s recent coal boom lies in a combination of policy priorities, institutional incentives and system-level mismatches, with origins in the widespread power shortages China experienced in the early 2020s.
In 2021, a “mismatch” between the price of coal and the government-set price of coal-fired power incentivised coal-fired power plants to cut generation. Furthermore, power shortages in 2020 and 2022 revealed issues of inflexible grid management and limited availability of power plants, when demand spiked due to extreme weather and elevated energy-intensive economic activity, compounded by coal shortages, reduced hydro output and insufficient imported electricity import.
Following this, energy security became a top priority for the central government. Local governments responded by approving new coal-power projects as a form of insurance against future outages.
Yet, on paper, China had – and still has – more than enough “dispatchable” resources to meet even the highest demand peaks. (Dispatchable sources include coal, gas, nuclear and hydropower.) It also has more than enough underutilised coal-power capacity to meet potential demand growth.
A bigger factor behind the shortages was grid inflexibility. During both the 2020 power crisis in north-east China and the 2022 shortage in Sichuan, affected provinces continued to export electricity while experiencing local shortages.
A lack of coordination between provinces and inflexible market mechanisms governing the “dispatch” of power plants – the instructions to adjust generation up or down – meant that existing resources could not be fully utilised.
Nevertheless, with coal power plants cheap to build and quick to gain approval, many provinces saw them as a reliable way to reassure policymakers, balance local grids and support industry interests, regardless of whether the plants would end up being economically viable or frequently used.
China’s average utilisation rate of coal power plants in 2024 was around 50%, meaning total coal-fired electricity generation could rise substantially without the need for any new capacity.
At the same time as adding new coal, the Chinese government also addressed energy security through improvements to grid operation and market reforms, as well as building more storage.
The country added dozens of gigawatts of battery storage, accelerated pumped hydro projects and improved trading linkages between electricity markets in different provinces.
Though these investments could have gone further, they have already helped avoid blackouts during recent summers – when few of the newly-permitted coal power plants had come online. As such, it is not clear that the new coal plants were needed to guarantee security of supply in the first place.
President Xi Jinping has stated that “energy security depends on developing new energy” – using the Chinese term for renewables excluding hydropower and sometimes including nuclear. According to the International Energy Agency, in the long run, resilience will come not from overbuilding coal, but from modernising China’s power system.
New coal power plants do not mean more coal use and higher emissions
It may seem intuitive to imagine that if a country is building new coal power plants, it will automatically burn more coal and increase its emissions.
But adding capacity does not necessarily translate into higher generation or emissions, particularly while the growth of clean energy is still accelerating.
Coal power generation plays a residual role in China’s power system, filling the gap between the power generated from clean energy sources – such as wind, solar, hydro and nuclear – and total electricity demand. As clean-energy generation is growing rapidly, the space left for coal to fill is shrinking.
From December 2024, coal power generation declined for five straight months before ticking up slightly in May and June, mainly to offset weaker hydropower generation due to drought. Coal power generation was flat overall in the second quarter of 2025.
The chart below shows growth in monthly power generation for coal and gas (grey), solar and wind (dark blue) and other low-carbon power sources (light blue).
This illustrates how the rise in wind and solar growth is squeezing the residual demand left for coal power, resulting in declining coal-power output during much of 2025 to date.
Another way to consider the impact of new coal-fired capacity is to test whether, in reality, it automatically leads to a rise in coal-fired electricity generation.
The top panel in the figure below shows the annual increase in coal power capacity on the horizontal axis, relative to the change in coal-power output on the vertical axis.
For example, in 2023, China added 47GW of new coal capacity and coal power output rose by 3.4TWh. In contrast, only 28GW was added in 2021, yet output still rose by 4.4TWh.
In other words, there is no correlation between the amount of new coal capacity and the change in electricity generation from coal, or the associated emissions, on an annual basis.
Indeed, the lower panel in the figure shows that larger additions of coal capacity are often followed by falling utilisation. This means that adding coal plants tends to mean that the coal fleet overall is simply used less often.
As such, while adding new coal plants might complicate the energy transition and may increase the risk of unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions, an increase in coal use is far from guaranteed.
If instead, clean energy is covering all new demand – as it has been recently – then building new coal plants simply means that the coal fleet will be increasingly underutilised, which poses a threat to plant profitability.
China is not unique in its approach to coal power
The dynamics behind last year’s surge in coal power project construction starts speak to the logic of China’s system, in which cost-efficiency is not always a central concern when ensuring that key problems are solved.
If a combination of three tools – coal power plants, storage and grid flexibility, in this case – can solve a problem more reliably than one alone, then China is likely to deploy all three, even at the risk of overcapacity.
This approach reflects not just a desire for reliability, but also deeper institutional dynamics that help to explain why coal power continues to be built.
But that does not mean that such a pattern is unique to China.
The figure below shows that, across 26 regions, a peak in coal-fired electricity generation (blue lines) almost always comes before coal power capacity (red) starts to decline.
Moreover, the data suggests that once there has been a peak, generation falls much more sharply than capacity, implying that remaining coal plants are kept on the system even as they are used increasingly infrequently.
In most cases, what ultimately stopped new coal power projects in those countries was not a formal ban, but the market reality that they were no longer needed once lower-carbon technologies and efficiency gains began to cover demand growth.
Coal phase-out policies have tended to reinforce these shifts, rather than initiating them. In China, the same market signals are emerging: clean energy is now meeting all incremental demand and coal power generation has, as a result, started to decline.
Coal is not yet playing a flexible ‘supporting’ role
Since 2022, China’s energy policy has stated that new coal-power projects should serve a “supporting” or “regulating” role, helping integrate variable renewables and respond to demand fluctuations, rather than operating as always-on “baseload” generators.
More broadly, China’s energy strategy also calls for coal power to gradually shift away from a dominant baseload role toward a more flexible, supporting function.
These shifts have, however, mostly happened on paper. Coal power overall remains dominant in China’s power mix and largely inflexible in how it is dispatched.
The 2022 policy provided local governments with a new rationale for building coal power, but many of the new plants are still designed and operated as inflexible baseload units. Long-term contracts and guaranteed operating hours often support these plants to run frequently, undermining the idea that they are just backups.
Old coal plants also continue to operate under traditional baseload assumptions. Despite policies promoting retrofits to improve flexibility, coal power remains structurally rigid.
Technical limitations, long-term contracts and economic incentives continue to prevent meaningful change. Coal is unlikely to shift into the flexible supporting role that China says it wants without deeper reform to dispatch rules, pricing mechanisms and contract structures.
Despite all this, China is seeing a clear shift away from coal. Clean-energy installations have surged, while power demand growth has moderated.
As a result, coal power’s share in the electricity mix has steadily declined, dropping from around 73% in 2016 to 51% in June 2025. The chart below shows the monthly power generation share of coal (dark grey), gas (light grey), solar and wind (dark blue), and other low-carbon sources (light blue) from 2016 to the present.
When will the coal boom end?
About a decade ago, the end of China’s coal power expansion also looked near. Coal power plant utilisation declined sharply in the mid-2010s as overcapacity worsened. In response, the government began restricting new project approvals in 2016.
With new construction slowing and power demand rebounding, especially during and after the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, utilisation rates recovered. Not long after, power shortages kicked off the recent coal building spree.
Now, there are new signs that the coal power boom is approaching its end. Permitting is becoming more selective again in some regions, especially in eastern provinces where demand growth is slowing and clean energy is surging. Meanwhile, system flexibility is advancing.
Compared to the late 2010s, the current shift appears more structural. It is driven by the rapid expansion of clean energy, which increasingly eliminates the need for large-scale new coal power projects.
Still, the pace of change will depend on how quickly institutions adapt. If grid operators become confident that peak loads can reliably be met with renewables and flexible backup, the rationale for new coal power plants will weaken.
Equally important, entrenched interests at the provincial and corporate levels continue to push for new plants, not just as insurance, but as sources of investment, employment and revenue. Through long-term contracts and utilisation guarantees, this represents institutional lock-in that may delay the shift away from coal.
The next major turning point will come when coal power utilisation rates begin to fall more sharply and persistently. With large amounts of capacity set to come online in the next two years and clean energy steadily displacing coal in the power mix, a sharp drop in coal power plant utilisation appears likely.
Once this happens, the central government might be expected to step in through administrative capacity cuts – forcing the oldest plants to retire – just as it did during overcapacity campaigns in the steel, cement and coal sectors around 2016 and 2017.
In that sense, China’s coal power phase-out may not begin with a single grand policy declaration, but with a familiar pattern of centralised control and managed retrenchment.
A key question is how quickly institutional incentives and grid operation will catch up with the dawning reality of coal being squeezed by renewable growth, as well as whether they will allow clean energy to lead, or continue to be held back by the legacy of coal.
The upcoming 15th five-year plan presents a crucial test of government priorities in this area. If it wants to bring policy back in line with its long-term climate and energy goals, then it could consider including clear, measurable targets for phasing down coal consumption and limiting new capacity, for example.
While China’s coal power construction boom looks, at first glance, like a resurgence,it currently appears more likely to be the final surge before a long downturn. The expansion has added friction and complexity to China’s energy transition, but it has not reversed it.
The post Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
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