The UK should make an international pledge to cut its greenhouse gas emissions to 81% below 1990 levels by 2035, according to the government’s advisory Climate Change Committee (CCC).
The recommendation for the UK’s next “nationally determined contribution” (NDC) under the Paris Agreement comes just weeks before the government is expected to announce its new target at the COP29 climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan.
It follows a request from secretary of state Ed Miliband for guidance from the CCC, taking into account the levels of ambition set in the 2033-37 period covered by the “sixth carbon budget”.
Miliband also asked for the committee’s views on the impact of including, or not including, international aviation and shipping emissions. This mirrors the approach taken in 2020 for the UK’s previous NDC.
While the government is not obliged to follow the CCC’s advice, it has almost always done so in the past.
Such a target would be “ambitious, deliverable and consistent” with the UK’s legally binding sixth carbon budget, the CCC notes, providing a “credible contribution” towards limiting warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
Existing targets
Under the UK’s Climate Change Act, the government must set a long-term goal for cutting emissions by 2050, as well as five-yearly “carbon budgets” along the way.
The legally binding carbon budgets, detailing allowable levels of economy-wide emissions, are designed to provide “stepping stones” towards the 2050 goal.
When it was passed in 2008, the UK’s target was to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 60% below 1990 levels by 2050, but this was quickly increased to 80%.
The UK’s first five carbon budgets, covering the period from 2008 through to 2032, were set in the context of that 80% by 2050 goal.
However, in 2019, the Conservative prime minister Theresa May raised the UK’s long-term goal to a 100% reduction by 2050, commonly referred to as “net-zero”.
After the UK officially left the European Union in 2020, the increased ambition of the net-zero target provided the context for the UK’s first NDC, which pledges to cut emissions to “at least 68%” below 1990 levels by 2030 – excluding emissions from international aviation and shipping (IAS), in line with UN convention.
(This is more ambitious than the fifth carbon budget target of a 57% reduction between 2028 and 2032, which was set under the lower 80% by 2050 goal.)
Subsequently, in 2021, the Conservative government “enshrined” the UK’s sixth carbon budget in law, targeting a 78% cut in emissions during 2033-2037. This budget was also set in line with the new net-zero target.
In addition, the sixth carbon budget includes the UK’s share of international aviation and shipping for the first time, “in line with the CCC’s long-held view that all UK carbon budgets should account for emissions from both sources”.
The CCC recommends that the budget should be set at 965m tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) for the period 2033 to 2037. This equates to, on average, 193MtCO2e annually. In 2019, annual emissions stood at 522MtCO2e.
It evaluated the potential level of the target under different scopes, including noting that changes to the methods it uses for estimating UK emissions could lead to higher estimates for both historical and future emissions. These “higher inventory changes” were taken into account for the 78% target.
If international aviation and shipping are excluded, but the higher inventory changes remain, the CCC’s recommended emissions reduction by 2035, on the basis of 1990, is 82%.
According to independent research group Climate Action Tracker (CAT), the UK’s NDC pledge to reduce emissions by 68% below 1990 levels is “almost sufficient”. It notes that, while the UK’s current target is not consistent with limiting warming to 1.5C, it could be with “moderate improvements”.
CAT had previously rated the target as compatible with 1.5C in 2022, but it has since updated its modelled pathways “to reflect the latest science”. This resulted in more stringent reductions being needed to get on track.
NDC recommendations
The CCC has recommended that the UK’s next NDC commits to reducing territorial emissions by 81% from 1990 to 2035, as shown in the chart below, based on the committee’s forthcoming advice on the seventh carbon budget.
Such a reduction would be consistent with the UK’s existing net-zero-aligned targets: the 2030 NDC; the sixth carbon budget; and net-zero by 2050.
Meeting the 2035 recommendation and the adopted 2030 NDC will require “rapid, but achievable action with low-carbon technologies becoming mainstream”, the CCC states. It points to the 10 recommendations made in its progress report, released earlier this year.
These include making electricity cheaper, reversing policy rollbacks seen under the previous Conservative government and removing planning barriers for technologies, such as heat pumps, EV chargers and onshore wind.
In a statement accompanying the CCC’s letter, Prof Piers Forster, interim chair of the committee, said:
“The technologies needed to achieve it are available, at a competitive price, today. Investment in low-carbon technologies – electric vehicles, heat pumps and renewables – needs to come now for this target to be achievable. Businesses will start to invest when they have confidence in what the government’s long-term policy plans are. We need to see the government’s commitment to climate reflected in the upcoming budget.”
The CCC has provided its NDC recommendation excluding emissions from international aviation and shipping, “in line with UNFCCC convention”, it notes.
If they were included, the committee’s recommendation would sit at 77-78% – almost the same as the level set in the sixth carbon budget.
Most NDCs historically have not included international aviation and shipping. This is consistent with the Paris Agreement, which excluded emissions from these sectors due to the difficulty in attributing emissions to individual countries.
Instead, emissions from these sections are addressed under the International Civil Aviation Organisation and the International Maritime Organisation.
While international aviation and shipping have, therefore, not been included within the CCC’s recommendation for the UK’s 2035 NDC, it notes that the UK is “well-positioned to drive international aviation and shipping decarbonisation”.
Stronger action is “urgently needed” to address international aviation and shipping emissions, the CCC says, which are expected to be the third largest source of emissions in the UK by 2035 and the second by 2050 (after agriculture).
The CCC notes that there have been some accounting changes since the release of the sixth carbon budget. As such, the UK emissions inventory has been revised to lower some estimates for the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
This means that the amount of emissions reduction required to meet the sixth carbon budget is now “slightly smaller” – falling from 78% to 77% as noted above.
This has led to some small differences between the percentage reduction required to meet the legislated sixth carbon budget target and those recommended by the CCC in its advice in 2020, as shown in the table below.
| 2035 UK emissions reduction excluding IAS (NDC basis) |
2035 UK emissions reduction including IAS |
|
| CCC NDC recommendation (based on forthcoming CB7 pathway) |
81% | 77-78% |
| CCC CB6 advice | 82% | 77-78% |
| CB6 legislated basis (comparing annualised legislated CB6 number with latest inventory estimate of 1990 emissions) | 80% | 77% |
Source: CCC analysis.
As such, the CCC’s NDC recommendation for 2035 is 81%, while the sixth carbon budget advice was 82%. The actual amount of emissions reduction does not change, remaining at 965MtCO2e for the period 2033 to 2037.
The delivery plan for the NDC should be aligned with the UK’s international and domestic goals on nature, the CCC adds. It should also be fully integrated with the forthcoming National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
Additional advice for the UK’s wider contribution to tackling climate change includes strengthening the UK’s national adaptation programme, supporting climate finance and “championing international transparency” by submitting a best practice NDC technical annex.
The UK should “strengthen and contribute to key international initiatives”, such as the global methane pledge. However, the CCC notes that international credits should not be used to achieve any NDC.
What happens next?
All parties within the Paris Agreement are expected to communicate their NDCs at least 9-12 months ahead of the relevant COPs. For the upcoming 2035 NDC, this means parties must submit their targets between November 2024 and February 2025.
Speaking at the UN general assembly in September, prime minister Keir Starmer said the UK would:
“Meet our net-zero target, backed up with an ambitious NDC at COP29, consistent with limiting warming to 1.5C, and we’ll support others to do the same.”
As such, Carbon Brief understands that it is likely Starmer will unveil the UK’s NDC on the first day of COP29 during the leaders summit.
Prof Forster, adds:
“More than any commitment, what we really need is action. I have no doubt that the UK can once again be a leader on the international stage – in both deeds and words.”
Other nations are also likely to publish their NDCs in the coming months, including the US, COP28 host the UAE, COP29 host Azerbaijan and upcoming COP30 host Brazil.
These NDCs will “form the foundation of international climate action”, according to the World Resources Institute. They will be presented and adopted at COP30 in late 2025.
Underlying its NDC advice is the CCC’s work on the seventh carbon budget, its recommendations for which will be published on 26 February 2025. This will cover the period from 2038 to 2042.
The post CCC: UK’s next Paris pledge should commit to ‘81% emissions cut by 2035’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
CCC: UK’s next Paris pledge should commit to ‘81% emissions cut by 2035’
Drought and heatwaves occurring together – known as “compound” events – have “surged” across the world since the early 2000s, a new study shows.
Compound drought and heat events (CDHEs) can have devastating effects, creating the ideal conditions for intense wildfires, such as Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2019-20 where bushfires burned 24m hectares and killed 33 people.
The research, published in Science Advances, finds that the increase in CDHEs is predominantly being driven by events that start with a heatwave.
The global area affected by such “heatwave-led” compound events has more than doubled between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, the study says.
The rapid increase in these events over the last 23 years cannot be explained solely by global warming, the authors note.
Since the late 1990s, feedbacks between the land and the atmosphere have become stronger, making heatwaves more likely to trigger drought conditions, they explain.
One of the study authors tells Carbon Brief that societies must pay greater attention to compound events, which can “cause severe impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and society”.
Compound events
CDHEs are extreme weather events where drought and heatwave conditions occur simultaneously – or shortly after each other – in the same region.
These events are often triggered by large-scale weather patterns, such as “blocking” highs, which can produce “prolonged” hot and dry conditions, according to the study.
Prof Sang-Wook Yeh is one of the study authors and a professor at the Ewha Womans University in South Korea. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When heatwaves and droughts occur together, the two hazards reinforce each other through land-atmosphere interactions. This amplifies surface heating and soil moisture deficits, making compound events more intense and damaging than single hazards.”
CDHEs can begin with either a heatwave or a drought.
The sequence of these extremes is important, the study says, as they have different drivers and impacts.
For example, in a CDHE where the heatwave was the precursor, increased direct sunshine causes more moisture loss from soils and plants, leading to a drought.
Conversely, in an event where the drought was the precursor, the lack of soil moisture means that less of the sun’s energy goes into evaporation and more goes into warming the Earth’s surface. This produces favourable conditions for heatwaves.
The study shows that the majority of CDHEs globally start out as a drought.
In recent years, there has been increasing focus on these events due to the devastating impact they have on agriculture, ecosystems and public health.
In Russia in the summer of 2010, a compound drought-heatwave event – and the associated wildfires – caused the death of nearly 55,000 people, the study notes.
The record-breaking Pacific north-west “heat dome” in 2021 triggered extreme drought conditions that caused “significant declines” in wheat yields, as well as in barley, canola and fruit production in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, says the study.
Increasing events
To assess how CDHEs are changing, the researchers use daily reanalysis data to identify droughts and heatwaves events. (Reanalysis data combines past observations with climate models to create a historical climate record.) Then, using an algorithm, they analyse how these events overlap in both time and space.
The study covers the period from 1980 to 2023 and the world’s land surface, excluding polar regions where CDHEs are rare.
The research finds that the area of land affected by CDHEs has “increased substantially” since the early 2000s.
Heatwave-led events have been the main contributor to this increase, the study says, with their spatial extent rising 110% between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, compared to a 59% increase for drought-led events.
The map below shows the global distribution of CDHEs over 1980-2023. The charts show the percentage of the land surface affected by a heatwave-led CDHE (red) or a drought-led CDHE (yellow) in a given year (left) and relative increase in each CDHE type (right).
The study finds that CDHEs have occurred most frequently in northern South America, the southern US, eastern Europe, central Africa and south Asia.
Threshold passed
The authors explain that the increase in heatwave-led CDHEs is related to rising global temperatures, but that this does not tell the whole story.
In the earlier 22-year period of 1980-2001, the study finds that the spatial extent of heatwave-led CDHEs rises by 1.6% per 1C of global temperature rise. For the more-recent period of 2022-23, this increases “nearly eightfold” to 13.1%.
The change suggests that the rapid increase in the heatwave-led CDHEs occurred after the global average temperature “surpasse[d] a certain temperature threshold”, the paper says.
This threshold is an absolute global average temperature of 14.3C, the authors estimate (based on an 11-year average), which the world passed around the year 2000.
Investigating the recent surge in heatwave-leading CDHEs further, the researchers find a “regime shift” in land-atmosphere dynamics “toward a persistently intensified state after the late 1990s”.
In other words, the way that drier soils drive higher surface temperatures, and vice versa, is becoming stronger, resulting in more heatwave-led compound events.
Daily data
The research has some advantages over other previous studies, Yeh says. For instance, the new work uses daily estimations of CDHEs, compared to monthly data used in past research. This is “important for capturing the detailed occurrence” of these events, says Yeh.
He adds that another advantage of their study is that it distinguishes the sequence of droughts and heatwaves, which allows them to “better understand the differences” in the characteristics of CDHEs.
Dr Meryem Tanarhte is a climate scientist at the University Hassan II in Morocco, and Dr Ruth Cerezo Mota is a climatologist and a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both scientists, who were not involved in the study, agree that the daily estimations give a clearer picture of how CDHEs are changing.
Cerezo-Mota adds that another major contribution of the study is its global focus. She tells Carbon Brief that in some regions, such as Mexico and Africa, there is a lack of studies on CDHEs:
“Not because the events do not occur, but perhaps because [these regions] do not have all the data or the expertise to do so.”
However, she notes that the reanalysis data used by the study does have limitations with how it represents rainfall in some parts of the world.
Compound impacts
The study notes that if CDHEs continue to intensify – particularly events where heatwaves are the precursors – they could drive declining crop productivity, increased wildfire frequency and severe public health crises.
These impacts could be “much more rapid and severe as global warming continues”, Yeh tells Carbon Brief.
Tanarhte notes that these events can be forecasted up to 10 days ahead in many regions. Furthermore, she says, the strongest impacts can be prevented “through preparedness and adaptation”, including through “water management for agriculture, heatwave mitigation measures and wildfire mitigation”.
The study recommends reassessing current risk management strategies for these compound events. It also suggests incorporating the sequences of drought and heatwaves into compound event analysis frameworks “to enhance climate risk management”.
Cerezo-Mota says that it is clear that the world needs to be prepared for the increased occurrence of these events. She tells Carbon Brief:
“These [risk assessments and strategies] need to be carried out at the local level to understand the complexities of each region.”
The post Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 6 March 2026: Iran energy crisis | China climate plan | Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ wind turbine
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Energy crisis
ENERGY SPIKE: US-Israeli attacks on Iran and subsequent counterattacks across the Middle East have sent energy prices “soaring”, according to Reuters. The newswire reported that the region “accounts for just under a third of global oil production and almost a fifth of gas”. The Guardian noted that shipping traffic through the strait of Hormuz, which normally ferries 20% of the world’s oil, “all but ground to a halt”. The Financial Times reported that attacks by Iran on Middle East energy facilities – notably in Qatar – triggered the “biggest rise in gas prices since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine”.
‘RISK’ AND ‘BENEFITS’: Bloomberg reported on increases in diesel prices in Europe and the US, speculating that rising fuel costs could be “a risk for president Donald Trump”. US gas producers are “poised to benefit from the big disruption in global supply”, according to CNBC. Indian government sources told the Economic Times that Russia is prepared to “fulfil India’s energy demands”. China Daily quoted experts who said “China’s energy security remains fundamentally unshaken”, thanks to “emergency stockpiles and a wide array of import channels”.
‘ESSENTIAL’ RENEWABLES: Energy analysts said governments should cut their fossil-fuel reliance by investing in renewables, “rather than just seeking non-Gulf oil and gas suppliers”, reported Climate Home News. This message was echoed by UK business secretary Peter Kyle, who said “doubling down on renewables” was “essential” amid “regional instability”, according to the Daily Telegraph.
China’s climate plan
PEAK COAL?: China has set out its next “five-year plan” at the annual “two sessions” meeting of the National People’s Congress, including its climate strategy out to 2030, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. The plan called for China to cut its carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 17% from 2026 to 2030, which “may allow for continued increase in emissions given the rate of GDP growth”, reported Reuters. The newswire added that the plan also had targets to reach peak coal in the next five years and replace 30m tonnes per year of coal with renewables.
ACTIVE YET PRUDENT: Bloomberg described the new plan as “cautious”, stating that it “frustrat[es] hopes for tighter policy that would drive the nation to peak carbon emissions well before president Xi Jinping’s 2030 deadline”. Carbon Brief has just published an in-depth analysis of the plan. China Daily reported that the strategy “highlights measures to promote the climate targets of peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030”, which China said it would work towards “actively yet prudently”.
Around the world
- EU RULES: The European Commission has proposed new “made in Europe” rules to support domestic low-carbon industries, “against fierce competition from China”, reported Agence France-Presse. Carbon Brief examined what it means for climate efforts.
- RECORD HEAT: The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said there is a 50-60% chance that the El Niño weather pattern could return this year, amplifying the effect of global warming and potentially driving temperatures to “record highs”, according to Euronews.
- FLAGSHIP FUND: The African Development Bank’s “flagship clean energy fund” plans to more than double its financing to $2.5bn for African renewables over the next two years, reported the Associated Press.
- NO WITHDRAWAL: Vanuatu has defied US efforts to force the Pacific-island nation to drop a UN draft resolution calling on the world to implement a landmark International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on climate, according to the Guardian.