Sunsets are like blazing bonfires guiding us towards darkness – whether we’re ready or not.
Dodging chaotic shade thrown jaggedly like daggers, I constantly rebuilt myself like a phoenix in the midst of smoldering midnight melancholy. The swirling backroads of Virginia’s majestic mountains both tore apart and transformed my identity, teaching me early on that transformation is unavoidable. Essentially, my climate has always been changing.
Despite its magnificent beauty, Forge Road (also known as Route 608) has always been quilted with lies, broken promises, and deception. Isolated and forgotten, older generations have sometimes referred to it as God’s landscape. It’s more like a concrete pathway to hell. In the past few decades, steadfast gentrification has blanketed the hillside, forcing farmers whose livelihoods depended on the land to completely rebuild from the bottom again. For miles, pastures were emptied and fields were plowed for the last time to make way for cumbersome suburban castles, their gates still spiking up into the sun’s raging horizon like needles in my eyes. The whittling away of those gorgeous hills once spotted with grazing cattle has covered hundreds of acres in gaudy communities. As a result, this manifested a cataclysmic split that echoed my perpetual pain. Forced tranquility seamlessly manipulated thru-travelers from denser populations as they searched for a paradise less paved.
But at five years old, I couldn’t yet tell the difference. I would have still called it an oasis.
Commonly known by locals as a racetrack for rednecks and rebels in southern Rockbridge County, Virginia, commuters typically travel Forge Road as an alternative route between Buena Vista (BV) and Glasgow. Until I was four years old, we lived in a trailer park in BV, but my mom feared my sister and I would be labeled as “trailer trash” when we started kindergarten. So, we left our well-insulated bedrooms for a drafty and cramped two-bedroom cottage at least 20 minutes from any of the neighboring towns: Buena Vista (population: 6k), Glasgow (population: 1k), and Lexington (population: 7k). My dad grew up in Lexington and Granny Elsie, his mother, maintained their family homeplace for decades. Despite the distance, Granny visited us as often as she could and helped us settle into our new home.
My mom was raised in Roanoke, the largest city in our part of Virginia. She would often tell us stories about how she’d watched farmland get sold and paved over to build a mall, parking lots, and other buildings. Joni Mitchell said it best: they’d paved paradise. But I never imagined anything like that would happen to us.
It was the summer of 1995. I had just moved into the tucked-away countryside with my mom, dad, and younger sister Sarah. Our new house, a 1930s farmette, was being freshly painted in a coat of ivory by my mom and Granny.
“Come quick!” I shrieked as the majestic fireball fiercely burned in the distance. Terrified, my Granny Elsie came running.
“What’s wrong, my dear?” she inquired, convinced of danger.
“Look,” I whispered and pointed at the screaming sky. After a moment, Granny’s face softened into a gentle smile. Wrapping our arms around each other, we fixed our gaze on the vibrant neon pink and burnt orange horizon.
I may not have been in any physical harm at that moment, but Granny saved me that day.
From that day on, it became vital for me to not only admire the world’s natural beauty, but to advocate for its existence. Years down the road, we’d sip her freshly brewed Southernly sweet tea and reflect on that evening while playing cards. Granny taught me that life is full of challenges, but she also showed me how to embrace the internalized rhythm of the natural world that pulses through my heart, spirit, and soul. For years to come, we spent countless hours celebrating our joyful adoration of the outdoors no matter the season.
Later on, Dad mirrored this sentiment. He had reluctantly left our family in 1997, but we reconnected when I was an adult. “No matter how you say it, it’s going to be a song,” he told me as we improvised a myriad of funky tunes (me on piano and vocals and him on bass or drums). And he was right.
My parents met in a rock band. Mom taught music, and Dad was a self-employed rockstar, so music was a non-negotiable part of our life. I often felt out of place around my peers. “Most likely to dig through the trash and recycle” was my so-called unofficial superlative, but it was true. In my bright stripes and funky hair, I punked my way through school, focusing more on how to save the planet than myself. I realize now those two go hand in hand.
When I was younger, I spent hours reading under the willow tree, swimming in Buffalo Creek, or writing furiously in a composition notebook. I’d wave and grin from the backseat in my mom’s car at old farmers on their rusty tractors. But, sheltered from modern culture, my sister and I also became socially awkward and immensely lonely. We spent most of our time exploring the natural world and I perfected hopping barbed wire fences and walking past grazing cows. Avoiding patties and thorny vines with finesse, we frequently hiked to Buffalo Creek to wade into the gently flowing water.
For my sister and I, our daily life over the years was a performance, and we were not allowed to opt out of that mindset under our mom’s watch. We were constantly putting on a show, from parades and summer theater performances to those infamous beauty pageants. Traveling to these much more densely populated locations allowed us spotty exposure to blissful modern culture, only to return reluctantly (and often begrudgingly) to our isolated home.
We had no well or city water, only an outdated cistern. It wasn’t potable, so we refilled jugs from Food Lion. When it was time to shower, we stood in tubs to collect gray water, then used it to flush (otherwise, we left the yellow to mellow). Mom would not let us keep the heat over 65 degrees in winter because of the price of propane, so I learned at a young age that fossil fuels were not sustainable. Our household’s avid reusing, reducing, and recycling led me to being intensely mindful of my habits and routines.
Our house was built on top of what used to be Mount Lydia Church. Formerly a place of worship for slaves, it transformed in later years into our homeplace. Located just down the road was Bunker Hill Mill, a plantation built on Buffalo Creek over 200 years before I learned to swim in it. And in our front yard, down the hill, is an overgrown cemetery. I would spend hours there quietly reflecting amidst the sunken, unlabeled graves. It often felt like more of a refuge than my dysfunctional home life.
Warning: this paragraph contains mention of abuse. If you find this content upsetting or disturbing, please skip ahead to the following paragraph. Like a frog in boiling water, the abuse began slowly. No one could hear the desperate screams as the cruelty intensified, nor did anyone seem to care. Like melting ice caps, I barely recognized what was happening until it was a prevalent part of who I had become: damaged. After multiple failed attempts to advocate for myself, I became overwhelmed with hopelessness. I wanted to experience what I naively believed was real: a safe world where I mattered. Stress and screams preoccupied my mind. As the violence continued to escalate, I became extremely anxious. Wandering into the woods became the only way for me to process the horrendous intensity at home. Whenever it was finally over or I found a way out, I exited however I could. Often it was through my bedroom window.
Countless nights, I slinked into the plutonium night where the ebony sky would sparkle above me. In school, I learned about constellations like Orion, Casseopoia, and the North Star from local Native American tribes such as the Monacans. I would lay outside for hours letting my imagination run away with ideas about what else existed outside of my painful reality. As I ventured down to Bunker Hill, tiptoeing carefully along fragile riparian buffers of the shimmering creek, I burrowed deeper into my mind looking for solace from the trauma and poverty that engulfed my life. In these moments, the dense shadows of piney woodland allowed me to gradually tap back into the present. I didn’t realize it then, but I had discovered a way to heal myself.
It was around this time that I first noticed the farmland shrinking away. Before long, several beloved pastures and fields were replaced with endless rows of suburban mansions. It was a stark contrast to my life in poverty. Agricultural fatigue had infected my neighborhood, and I stopped seeing as many tractors puckering down Forge Road. The myriad of rolling hills eroded into posh cul-de-sacs. New classmates on our bus made fun of my sister and I constantly for our secondhand clothing. As a result, I developed a problem with stealing in a desperate effort to fit in and feel normal.
Eventually, I began to accept my identity by embracing my passion for nature. I had been one of the first to attend a field trip to Boxerwood Nature Center, a local nonprofit that ran environmental education opportunities for young students. For the first time, I learned about the impacts of water pollution on the Chesapeake Bay. Boxerwood created an opportunity that changed my life forever, one that led me to discovering what my purpose was: to help make the planet a better place.
Ultimately, school became my safe zone. In high school, I started significantly investigating climate change. At 16, I completed a governor’s school summer program about issues affecting the Chesapeake Bay. My senior independent project “Conservation for a Better World” included organizing a solo litter pickup along Buffalo Creek. I even proudly sang a recycle rap on Earth Day with my sister to advocate for waste conservation.
Basically, I set my eyes on a career path that related to helping the environment and climate change. In the process, I slowly started learning how to take better care of myself, too. It wasn’t until decades later during adulthood that I finally learned that I didn’t have to always perform. On the contrary, I could advocate authentically for both myself and my world.
My Granny understood more than anyone else. She helped when she could. “You don’t like to let grass grow under your feet,” she later remarked with a chuckle about my road-runner lifestyle. As I matured, I spent incalculable numbers of miles driving all over tarnation, as she likes to say. Meanwhile, my mom and sister faded out of my world.
Eventually I started to live with Granny in Lexington. So many times rather than staying home with her, I’d say, “Granny, I need to get out.” I’d drive down to the Maury River to spend a few hours basking in the sun or wading away from the world. But what was I darting away from, anyway? Why didn’t I stay in one place more often? I later figured it out: my untreated mental health struggles (CPTSD, depression, anxiety, ADHD) were slowly poisoning me inside, so the whole time I was trying to run away from myself. Perhaps it wasn’t about letting the grass grow under my feet after all, but planting a garden to pollinate my future.
Granny’s incessant loyalty is and will always be as rare as a hopeful blue jewel. With her soft, calming eyes, she would watch me with the most honest admiration I have ever seen. From an observant young girl to a reckless teenager, I was a rose that grew from the cracked backroads of my broken childhood. Granny never stopped being my hero, showing up when I needed rides to appointments more times than I can count. Later, she would arrive with barely an inquisition when I needed to be picked up at night in dubious neighborhoods after a slew of poor choices. I grappled with my mental health for decades and it took a long time to get help that worked. Years of complex trauma eventually led to severe impulsivity and self-induced escapism.
Agricultural fatigue is a lot like compassion fatigue. I cared so much, so deeply, for so long, about the world around me as I simultaneously watched it crumble. Disheartened, I wanted someone to care about me like that too. In a way, my battles with not ever seeming to be able to get away from putting out fires in my life’s conveyor belt of relentlessly abrasive friction were a lot like the world today in perpetual crisis with the climate. Just like Greta, I sometimes felt like I was drowning in stress. I tiptoed around others and stopped advocating for myself for too long. But, my experiences also taught me grit.
Once I found the strength to get up again, my survival instincts brought me to develop a sense of agency for compassionate activism.
In this way, justice became a rainbow of healing in the warm sky that wrapped around me like a blanket. By focusing on who I can and have become rather than the obstacles that hindered me, I found a way to genuinely improve the sustainability of my own life and my impact on the global community. With newfound hope, I now know that I will survive if I choose love and peace.
Eventually, I moved away and started college. I studied Sociology and English (ELA), served my country as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Moldova, then established my career as an educator. I returned to academia a few years later and got my Master’s in Education (M.Ed.) with a focus in nature-based learning (NBL) in order to amplify my global impact. To this day, my pedagogy revolves around advocating and communicating for evidence-based practices and environmental education (EE). Not only that, but I have embraced my musicianship by performing on various instruments at local venues and composing albums with my father.
Ultimately, my experiences healing my trauma through nature have revealed that if I don’t share what’s important and how I need help, people won’t care or know why it matters to be supportive. Especially in rural areas like mine where mental health resources are often scarce, I have had to play an active role that took more than resilience; it took determination and self-control alongside pain, grief, and despair.
As I have watched my climate change around me, I see now that I too am the damaged wilderness on a mountain of chaos.
Like a tree branching out towards sunlight, I am continuing to reach towards brighter moments despite my twisted roots. It’s as if those pathways of agony and revolution are symbolically identical. As if without struggle, I could not have grown, nor healed alongside the transformations happening across the globe without repairing the damages present in my own environments.
In this way, my crisis and rebirth are the same. Like a phoenix, I’ve learned how to release and revitalize, then let go and fly, reaching up to rip down the barriers that have kept me apart from my needs and goals ahead. Despite being stigmatized, I’ve transformed and am taking back control, adding back what I wish to gain so I can find fresh clarity. May I continue to evolve. May my optimized self forgive my former selves who didn’t have the skills or knowledge to do so. And, may my past selves be forever proud of who I’ve become today. Growing up on chaos mountain taught me to sing my heart out. Like my dad once said, “It doesn’t matter how you say it. To me, it’s going to be a song.” And I will not be silenced.
As I move into my 33rd year on this planet, I see clearly how interconnected my mental health is with the natural world. This interconnection has taught me both why and how to actively stop climate change, as well as how to be more mindful of what I already have rather than be wasteful or inefficient. My dedication to global justice is an essential part of my wild, incorrigible spirit. Returning to Buffalo Creek whenever I can is a necessity for my mental health due to its deeply embedded sacrality in my soul. An essential part of my spirituality is optimized every time I lead myself down the hidden metal stairs with the loosely tied rope to keep me stable.
As I dip my toes in the clear fresh water, I am reminded of how brief our lives really are. Like the water, I keep moving forward, rejuvenated and empowered by the ecosystem to protect nature. Although depression and trauma still penetrate elements of my world, I’ve allowed my transformation to fuel my fire to fight for the future of our planet. My childhood escapism, which once led to a myriad of crises, eventually allowed me to find myself. I am just visiting this planet briefly, a small speck in time, but I’m still here. And the creek still flows.
Namaste.
Katrina Broughman (pronounced “Bruff-man”), a rural native from Rockbridge County, Virginia (VA), has a background in nonprofit leadership, networking/outreach, fundraising, and both English language Arts and environmental education and is an active changemaker in her communities. Katrina currently teaches in Amherst County, holds a B.A. ‘13 in English and Sociology with an emphasis in the environment from Mary Baldwin College (MBU), received her M.Ed.-EBL from MBU with additional M.A. (Sociology) coursework from Morehead State University (KY) in 2021, and has been a certified Virginia Master Naturalist with the Central Blue Ridge Chapter in Lovingston since 2018.
The post Chaos Mountain appeared first on Climate Generation.
Climate Change
DeBriefed 30 January 2026: Fire and ice; US formally exits Paris; Climate image faux pas
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Fire and ice
OZ HEAT: The ongoing heatwave in Australia reached record-high temperatures of almost 50C earlier this week, while authorities “urged caution as three forest fires burned out of control”, reported the Associated Press. Bloomberg said the Australian Open tennis tournament “rescheduled matches and activated extreme-heat protocols”. The Guardian reported that “the climate crisis has increased the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, including heatwaves and bushfires”.
WINTER STORM: Meanwhile, a severe winter storm swept across the south and east of the US and parts of Canada, causing “mass power outages and the cancellation of thousands of flights”, reported the Financial Times. More than 870,000 people across the country were without power and at least seven people died, according to BBC News.
COLD QUESTIONED: As the storm approached, climate-sceptic US president Donald Trump took to social media to ask facetiously: “Whatever happened to global warming???”, according to the Associated Press. There is currently significant debate among scientists about whether human-caused climate change is driving record cold extremes, as Carbon Brief has previously explained.
Around the world
- US EXIT: The US has formally left the Paris Agreement for the second time, one year after Trump announced the intention to exit, according to the Guardian. The New York Times reported that the US is “the only country in the world to abandon the international commitment to slow global warming”.
- WEAK PROPOSAL: Trump officials have delayed the repeal of the “endangerment finding” – a legal opinion that underpins federal climate rules in the US – due to “concerns the proposal is too weak to withstand a court challenge”, according to the Washington Post.
- DISCRIMINATION: A court in the Hague has ruled that the Dutch government “discriminated against people in one of its most vulnerable territories” by not helping them to adapt to climate change, reported the Guardian. The court ordered the Dutch government to set binding targets within 18 months to cut greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Agreement, according to the Associated Press.
- WIND PACT: 10 European countries have agreed a “landmark pact” to “accelerate the rollout of offshore windfarms in the 2030s and build a power grid in the North Sea”, according to the Guardian.
- TRADE DEAL: India and the EU have agreed on the “mother of all trade deals”, which will save up to €4bn in import duty, reported the Hindustan Times. Reuters quoted EU officials saying that the landmark trade deal “will not trigger any changes” to the bloc’s carbon border adjustment mechanism.
- ‘TWO-TIER SYSTEM’: COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago believes that global cooperation should move to a “two-speed system, where new coalitions lead fast, practical action alongside the slower, consensus-based decision-making of the UN process”, according to a letter published on Tuesday, reported Climate Home News.
$2.3tn
The amount invested in “green tech” globally in 2025, marking a new record high, according to Bloomberg.
Latest climate research
- Including carbon emissions from permafrost thaw and fires reduces the remaining carbon budget for limiting warming to 1.5C by 25% | Communications Earth & Environment
- The global population exposed to extreme heat conditions is projected to nearly double if temperatures reach 2C | Nature Sustainability
- Polar bears in Svalbard – the fastest-warming region on Earth – are in better condition than they were a generation ago, as melting sea ice makes seal pups easier to reach | Scientific Reports
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Sales of electric vehicles (EVs) overtook standard petrol cars in the EU for the first time in December 2025, according to new figures released by the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) and covered by Carbon Brief. Registrations of “pure” battery EVs reached 217,898 – up 51% year-on-year from December 2024. Meanwhile, sales of standard petrol cars in the bloc fell 19% year-on-year, from 267,834 in December 2024 to 216,492 in December 2025, according to the analysis.
Spotlight
Looking at climate visuals
Carbon Brief’s Ayesha Tandon recently chaired a panel discussion at the launch of a new book focused on the impact of images used by the media to depict climate change.
When asked to describe an image that represents climate change, many people think of polar bears on melting ice or devastating droughts.
But do these common images – often repeated in the media – risk making climate change feel like a far-away problem from people in the global north? And could they perpetuate harmful stereotypes?
These are some of the questions addressed in a new book by Prof Saffron O’Neill, who researches the visual communication of climate change at the University of Exeter.
“The Visual Life of Climate Change” examines the impact of common images used to depict climate change – and how the use of different visuals might help to effect change.
At a launch event for her book in London, a panel of experts – moderated by Carbon Brief’s Ayesha Tandon – discussed some of the takeaways from the book and the “dos and don’ts” of climate imagery.
Power of an image
“This book is about what kind of work images are doing in the world, who has the power and whose voices are being marginalised,” O’Neill told the gathering of journalists and scientists assembled at the Frontline Club in central London for the launch event.
O’Neill opened by presenting a series of climate imagery case studies from her book. This included several examples of images that could be viewed as “disempowering”.
For example, to visualise climate change in small island nations, such as Tuvalu or Fiji, O’Neill said that photographers often “fly in” to capture images of “small children being vulnerable”. She lamented that this narrative “misses the stories about countries like Tuvalu that are really international leaders in climate policy”.
Similarly, images of power-plant smoke stacks, often used in online climate media articles, almost always omit the people that live alongside them, “breathing their pollution”, she said.
During the panel discussion that followed, panellist Dr James Painter – a research associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and senior teaching associate at the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute – highlighted his work on heatwave imagery in the media.
Painter said that “the UK was egregious for its ‘fun in the sun’ imagery” during dangerous heatwaves.
He highlighted a series of images in the Daily Mail in July 2019 depicting people enjoying themselves on beaches or in fountains during an intense heatwave – even as the text of the piece spoke to the negative health impacts of the heatwave.
In contrast, he said his analysis of Indian media revealed “not one single image of ‘fun in the sun’”.
Meanwhile, climate journalist Katherine Dunn asked: “Are we still using and abusing the polar bear?”. O’Neill suggested that polar bear images “are distant in time and space to many people”, but can still be “super engaging” to others – for example, younger audiences.
Panellist Dr Rebecca Swift – senior vice president of creative at Getty images – identified AI-generated images as “the biggest threat that we, in this space, are all having to fight against now”. She expressed concern that we may need to “prove” that images are “actually real”.
However, she argued that AI will not “win” because, “in the end, authentic images, real stories and real people are what we react to”.
When asked if we expect too much from images, O’Neill argued “we can never pin down a social change to one image, but what we can say is that images both shape and reflect the societies that we live in”. She added:
“I don’t think we can ask photos to do the work that we need to do as a society, but they certainly both shape and show us where the future may lie.”
Watch, read, listen
UNSTOPPABLE WILDFIRES: “Funding cuts, conspiracy theories and ‘powder keg’ pine plantations” are making Patagonia’s wildfires “almost impossible to stop”, said the Guardian.
AUDIO SURVEY: Sverige Radio has published “the world’s, probably, longest audio survey” – a six-hour podcast featuring more than 200 people sharing their questions around climate change.
UNDERSTAND CBAM: European thinktank Bruegel released a podcast “all about” the EU’s carbon adjustment border mechanism, which came into force on 1 January.
Coming up
- 1 February: Costa Rican general election
- 3 February: UN Environment Programme Adaptation Fund Climate Innovation Accelerator report launch, Online
- 2-8 February: Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) 12th plenary, Manchester, UK
Pick of the jobs
- Climate Central, climate data scientist | Salary: $85,000-$92,000. Location: Remote (US)
- UN office to the African Union, environmental affairs officer | Salary: Unknown. Location: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
- Google Deepmind, research scientist in biosphere models | Salary: Unknown. Location: Zurich, Switzerland
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 30 January 2026: Fire and ice; US formally exits Paris; Climate image faux pas appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed 30 January 2026: Fire and ice; US formally exits Paris; Climate image faux pas
Electric heat pumps are set to play a key role in the UK’s climate strategy, as well as cutting the nation’s reliance on imported fossil fuels.
Heat pumps took centre-stage in the UK government’s recent “warm homes plan”, which said that they could also help cut household energy bills by “hundreds of pounds” a year.
Similarly, innovation agency Nesta estimates that typical households could cut their annual energy bills nearly £300 a year, by switching from a gas boiler to a heat pump.
Yet there has been widespread media coverage in the Times, Sunday Times, Daily Express, Daily Telegraph and elsewhere of a report claiming that heat pumps are “more expensive” to run.
The report is from the Green Britain Foundation set up by Dale Vince, owner of energy firm Ecotricity, who campaigns against heat pumps and invests in “green gas” as an alternative.
One expert tells Carbon Brief that Vince’s report is based on “flimsy data”, while another says that it “combines a series of worst-case assumptions to present an unduly pessimistic picture”.
This factcheck explains how heat pumps can cut bills, what the latest data shows about potential savings and how this information was left out of the report from Vince’s foundation.
How heat pumps can cut bills
Heat pumps use electricity to move heat – most commonly from outside air – to the inside of a building, in a process that is similar to the way that a fridge keeps its contents cold.
This means that they are highly efficient, adding three or four units of heat to the house for each unit of electricity used. In contrast, a gas boiler will always supply less than one unit of heat from each unit of gas that it burns, because some of the energy is lost during combustion.
This means that heat pumps can keep buildings warm while using three, four or even five times less energy than a gas boiler. This cuts fossil-fuel imports, reducing demand for gas by at least two-fifths, even in the unlikely scenario that all of the electricity they need is gas-fired.
Since UK electricity supplies are now the cleanest they have ever been, heat pumps also cut the carbon emissions associated with staying warm by around 85%, relative to a gas boiler.
Heat pumps are, therefore, the “central” technology for cutting carbon emissions from buildings.
While heat pumps cost more to install than gas boilers, the UK government’s recent “warm homes plan” says that they can help cut energy bills by “hundreds of pounds” per year.
Similarly, Nesta published analysis showing that a typical home could cut its annual energy bill by £280, if it replaces a gas boiler with a heat pump, as shown in the figure below.
Nesta and the government plan say that significantly larger savings are possible if heat pumps are combined with other clean-energy technologies, such as solar and batteries.
Both the government and Nesta’s estimates of bill savings from switching to a heat pump rely on relatively conservative assumptions.
Specifically, the government assumes that a heat pump will deliver 2.8 units of heat for each unit of electricity, on average. This is known as the “seasonal coefficient of performance” (SCoP).
This figure is taken from the government-backed “electrification of heat” trial, which ran during 2020-2022 and showed that heat pumps are suitable for all building types in the UK.
(The Green Britain Foundation report and Vince’s quotes in related coverage repeat a number of heat pump myths, such as the idea that they do not perform well in older properties and require high levels of insulation.)
Nesta assumes a slightly higher SCoP of 3.0, says Madeleine Gabriel, the organisation’s director of sustainable future. (See below for more on what the latest data says about SCoP in recent installations.)
Both the government and Nesta assume that a home with a heat pump would disconnect from the gas grid, meaning that it would no longer need to pay the daily “standing charge” for gas. This currently amounts to a saving of around £130 per year.
Finally, they both consider the impact of a home with a heat pump using a “smart tariff”, where the price of electricity varies according to the time of day.
Such tariffs are now widely available from a variety of energy suppliers and many have been designed specifically for homes that have a heat pump.
Such tariffs significantly reduce the average price for a unit of electricity. Government survey data suggests that around half of heat-pump owners already use such tariffs.
This is important because on the standard rates under the price cap set by energy regulator Ofgem, each unit of electricity costs more than four times as much as a unit of gas.
The ratio between electricity and gas prices is a key determinant of the size and potential for running-cost savings with a heat pump. Countries with a lower electricity-to-gas price ratio consistently see much higher rates of heat-pump adoption.
(Decisions taken by the UK government in its 2025 budget mean that the electricity-to-gas ratio will fall from April, but current forecasts suggest it will remain above four-to-one.)
In contrast, Vince’s report assumes that gas boilers are 90% efficient, whereas data from real homes suggests 85% is more typical. It also assumes that homes with heat pumps remain on the gas grid, paying the standing charge, as well as using only a standard electricity tariff.
Prof Jan Rosenow, energy programme leader at the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute, tells Carbon Brief that Vince’s report uses “worst-case assumptions”. He says:
“This report cherry-picks assumptions to reach a predetermined conclusion. Most notably, it assumes a gas boiler efficiency of 90%, which is significantly higher than real-world performance…Taken together, the analysis combines a series of worst-case assumptions to present an unduly pessimistic picture.”
Similarly, Gabriel tells Carbon Brief that Vince’s report is based on “flimsy data”. She explains:
“Dale Vince has drawn some very strong conclusions about heat pumps from quite flimsy data. Like Dale, we’d also like to see electricity prices come down relative to gas, but we estimate that, from April, even a moderately efficient heat pump on a standard tariff will be cheaper to run than a gas boiler. Paired with a time-of-use tariff, a heat pump could save £280 versus a boiler and adding solar panels and a battery could triple those savings.”
What the latest data shows about bill savings
The efficiency of heat-pump installations is another key factor in the potential bill savings they can deliver and, here, both the government and Vince’s report take a conservative approach.
They rely on the “electrification of heat” trial data to use an efficiency (SCoP) of 2.8 for heat pumps. However, Rosenow says that recent evidence shows that “substantially higher efficiencies are routinely available”, as shown in the figure below.
Detailed, real-time data on hundreds of heat pump systems around the UK is available via the website Heat Pump Monitor, where the average efficiency – a SCoP of 3.9 – is much higher.
Homes with such efficient heat-pump installations would see even larger bill savings than suggested by the government and Nesta estimates.
Academic research suggests that there are simple and easy-to-implement reasons why these systems achieve much higher efficiency levels than in the electrification of heat trial.
Specifically, it shows that many of the systems in the trial have poor software settings, which means they do not operate as efficiently as their heat pump hardware is capable of doing.
The research suggests that heat pump installations in the UK have been getting more and more efficient over time, as engineers become increasingly familiar with the technology.
It indicates that recently installed heat pumps are 64% more efficient than those in early trials.
Notably, the Green Britain Foundation report only refers to the trial data from the electrification of heat study carried out in 2020-22 and the even earlier “renewable heat premium package” (RHPP). This makes a huge difference to the estimated running costs of a heat pump.
Carbon Brief analysis suggests that a typical household could cut its annual energy bills by nearly £200 with a heat pump – even on a standard electricity tariff – if the system has a SCoP of 3.9.
The savings would be even larger on a smart heat-pump tariff.
In contrast, based on the oldest efficiency figures mentioned in the Green Britain Foundation report, a heat pump could increase annual household bills by as much as £200 on a standard tariff.
To support its conclusions, the report also includes the results of a survey of 1,001 heat pump owners, which, among other things, is at odds with government survey data. The report says “66% of respondents report that their homes are more expensive to heat than the previous system”.
There are several reasons to treat these findings with caution. The survey was carried out in July 2025 and some 45% of the heat pumps involved were installed between 2021-23.
This is a period during which energy prices surged as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting global energy crisis. Energy bills remain elevated as a result of high gas prices.
The wording of the survey question asks if homes are “more or less expensive to heat than with your previous system” – but makes no mention of these price rises.
The question does not ask homeowners if their bills are higher today, with a heat pump, than they would have been with the household’s previous heating system.
If respondents interpreted the question as asking whether their bills have gone up or down since their heat pump was installed, then their answers will be confounded by the rise in prices overall.
There are a number of other seemingly contradictory aspects of the survey that raise questions about its findings and the strong conclusions in the media coverage of the report.
For example, while only 15% of respondents say it is cheaper to heat their home with a heat pump, 49% say that one of the top three advantages of the system is saving money on energy bills.
In addition, 57% of respondents say they still have a boiler, even though 67% say they received government subsidies for their heat-pump installation. It is a requirement of the government’s boiler upgrade scheme (BUS) grants that homeowners completely remove their boiler.
The government’s own survey of BUS recipients finds that only 13% of respondents say their bills have gone up, whereas 37% say their bills have gone down, another 13% say they have stayed the same and 8% thought that it was too early to say.
The post Factcheck: What it really costs to heat a home in the UK with a heat pump appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Factcheck: What it really costs to heat a home in the UK with a heat pump
The European Union and the UK are not on track to meet their 2030 offshore wind targets.
At the same time, Chinese wind-turbine manufacturers – who account for more than half of global wind-turbine capacity – are looking to grow their footprint in the European market, where their presence is currently tiny.
To some, the solution seems clear: allowing Chinese manufacturers to invest in Europe could boost competition, alleviate supply chain bottlenecks and lower costs – not to mention bring climate targets within reach.
But the possibility of a growing role for Chinese wind-turbine manufacturers in the European market has sparked heated debate among European policymakers and industry participants.
In 2024, three of China’s top wind-turbine companies accounted for less than 1% of Europe’s installed wind capacity.
But their focus is increasingly shifting to the continent, which some are concerned could hollow out the one clean-energy industry in which Europe is still competitive.
Competition between European and Chinese manufacturers would be “unfair”, according to critics, because the discounts Chinese firms are offering seem to be at least in part due to state subsidies.
In a recent report published by the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, we explore whether Chinese wind turbine companies are competitive in Europe and the real risks and benefits of Chinese participation in European offshore wind markets.
Our findings build on interviews with policymakers and industry experts, who have been granted anonymity to allow for candid discussion.
Cost advantages are less clear-cut than they appear
China ranks first for many of the global statistics for offshore wind. It has been by far the largest offshore wind market in the world for several years running.
China had 47 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind installed, as of September 2025, more than all other countries combined. Furthermore, China also dominates several key fields critical to offshore wind globally, ranging from permanent magnets to offshore installation vessels.
This stands in firm contrast to Europe – where offshore development has experienced several years of slow growth – and the US, which faces an almost complete halt in new development under the Trump administration.
As happened before in solar and batteries, China’s offshore wind industry scale-up has brought about stunning declines in installation costs.
However, this cost advantage is not as straightforward as these headline numbers would suggest. Despite the vast difference in capacity cost, the electricity produced by Chinese offshore wind farms is only 30% cheaper.
A key reason for this is the lower overall capacity factor of China’s offshore wind sector, referring to the actual output of windfarms in China, compared to their maximum possible output. This can be partly explained by lower wind speeds at China’s offshore sites, but could also relate to lower performance of Chinese turbines, as well as power transmission issues.
Lower production costs in China also would not necessarily translate to the European market, as Chinese cost advantages would be partly offset by transport costs, as well as higher insurance and financing premiums.
Greater localisation of turbine production could mitigate against some of these premiums, but would be offset by higher input costs in Europe.
Nonetheless, as more European governments add local content requirements, Chinese manufacturers have announced plans to set up European factories for turbine blades and towers, with core components shipped from China.
These factories could also be costlier to finance than those back home if financing for investments also comes from Europe, further reducing the cost advantage enjoyed by China’s domestic offshore-energy infrastructure.
Issues beyond costs and bottlenecks
European offshore wind development plans have faced a number of hurdles, including rising costs, slow permitting processes, inefficient auction designs, lengthy grid connection times and limited availability of parts, port capacity and installation vessels.
The small number of players in Europe’s offshore wind sector is seen as part of the problem, according to our interviews.
Currently, there are only three major wind turbine manufacturers in the European offshore wind market: Vestas, Siemens Gamesa and GE Vernova.
The latter announced in 2024 that it is downsizing its offshore wind business and has not taken new offshore orders, although it remains active in onshore wind projects. This reduces competition and could hinder efforts to bring down the cost of offshore wind projects.
Bottlenecks, inadequate industry capacity and lack of competition cannot in themselves explain the current European predicament. Developers we interviewed also note that offshore wind auctions with price caps and stringent contractual terms, designed with an expectation of falling costs, have also been part of the problem.
When these auctions have failed – as in the UK in 2023 and Germany in 2025 – this led to capacity contraction, higher costs and industry consolidation, which have only made it more difficult to reach policy targets, according to a report by European offshore wind company Ørsted.
Even with improved European auction design, it may take years for Europe’s offshore wind installation numbers to recover. With or without Chinese participation, it will also take time to build domestic manufacturing bases and installation vessels.
Pathways to Chinese involvement
Meanwhile, Chinese developers benefit from a large and growing domestic market in China. At the same time, however, intense competition on price and quality is spurring them to seek opportunities overseas.
Throughout Europe’s supply chain, Chinese components and services are already helping alleviate shortages and bottlenecks.
Still, our report found there are divergent views on whether a greater Chinese presence in Europe’s wind markets represents a threat or an opportunity – or both.
Policymakers are expected to continue to emphasise concerns about technology dependence and cybersecurity risks, leading to more domestic content requirements and increased scrutiny of Chinese deals.
The case of the 300 megawatt (MW) Luxcara project in Germany highlights the difficulties for Chinese market entry. Chinese manufacturer Mingyang was initially selected by the project owner in 2024, but was later replaced by Siemens-Gamesa, reportedly due to concerns about security and political risks.
The recent announcement of a deal between the UK’s Octopus Energy and Mingyang may illustrate an emerging model. According to Octopus, Mingyang will supply the physical equipment, while Octopus will supply the software and manage the turbines.
Mingyang will still need access to operational data to support ongoing maintenance, but this can be provided periodically by Octopus without compromising security, the energy company told us.
Meanwhile, following policy signals such as the EU’s new pricing mechanism for electric vehicle imports from China, it seems likely that policymakers will continue to encourage Chinese players to establish production bases in Europe and to require technology licensing or technology transfer in exchange for market access. This would amount to applying the Chinese industrial development model in Europe.
This could allow for technological learning in Europe. In China, the largest players have deployed advanced automated manufacturing lines, including robotic blade bonding, modular stator assembly and real-time quality monitoring – although this may have implications for job creation, a stated aim in Europe’s clean-energy policy.
Despite pointing to some advantages, our interviews suggest that Chinese participation in Europe’s offshore wind market is not a panacea.
Its low costs are unlikely to be transferrable to the European context. But greater Chinese participation in auctions and in manufacturing, with local content requirements and other guardrails, could help spur competition in Europe.
At the same time, our report suggests that the focus on China distracts from deeper issues. Without a growing domestic market, it may be difficult for European players to reduce manufacturing costs and upgrade production, with or without Chinese partners.
Ultimately, industry participants tell us that the greatest determinant of success in Europe’s offshore wind market will be consistent policy support, rather than a decision to allow – or to block – Chinese participation.
The post Experts: Will Chinese wind power help or hinder Europe’s climate goals? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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