Published

9 months ago

June 12, 2025

Alice Rush

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing.

China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.

Key developments

Critical mineral ‘deal’

TRANSITION TURMOIL: US president Donald Trump said China and the US reached a “deal” after talks were held in London, reported the BBC News, adding that “he said China had agreed to supply US companies with magnets and rare earth metals”. Shortly after the announcement, a Chinese manufacturer confirmed that it received “export permits” to countries including the US, according to Bloomberg. China’s earlier move to impose export curbs on critical minerals had “hit” the global auto industry, said Reuters. In answering Carbon Brief’s question of how the recent mineral disputes may affect global energy transition, Tian Jietang, director-general of the research department of industrial economy at the Development Research Center of the State Council said that the minerals are a “very important factor” for “new energy” development, but the “reason” behind the turmoil is “not from China”. China is “always open” to cooperate with the world for “faster green transition”, he added at an Asia House event.

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‘FIRM’ CLIMATE ‘ACTIVIST’: Tian emphasised that China has always been a staunch contributor to global “green transition”. A similar line appeared in a comment article in the Communist party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily, which called China a “firm activist and important contributor to the world’s green development”. In another People’s Daily article, the newspaper explained that the “direct reason” behind China’s “insist[ence] on carbon reduction” is that “climate warming threatens human survival and the continuation of civilisation”. It added that such “green and low-carbon transition” is also good for China’s economy and society. China Daily said the US’s tariffs on “clean energy products”, on the contrary, are “negatively affecting both [the] US and global green energy”.

Renewable pricing shift

MARKET PRICE: China entered a ”new stage of market-based pricing” for renewables on 1 June, after a notification was issued earlier this year, reported local newspaper Beijing Daily. The newspaper said projects that started operating before June would be paid prices pegged to the local coal-fired electricity price, in line with the previous policy, whereas electricity prices from projects operating after June will not be “protected”. (See the Carbon Brief explainer on the new policy.) The Shanghai-based Paper said there had been a rush to complete renewable projects before the June deadline – new installations of solar in April alone soared by 215%. As of April, the total capacity of wind and solar reached 1,530 gigawatts (GW) in China, “surpassing” the capacity of thermal power, reported industry news outlet BJX News. However, some wind and solar projects have been halted as a result of the new policy, said financial publication Yicai. The outlet quoted an unnamed source saying the returns for some projects are “no longer economically feasible”.

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‘NEW ELECTRICITY SYSTEM’: Meanwhile, the plans to construct the “first batch of pilot projects” for a “new electricity system” was announced, reported BJX News. It added that according to a notification from the National Energy Administration (NEA), the pilot projects will focus on seven areas, including building “smart microgrids” and “virtual power plants”, better connecting clean energy “bases” to the rest of the country and developing “next-generation coal power”. Quoting experts, China Energy Net said that the success in building such a new system lies in transferring the current system from a “single” network to an “‘adaptability-early warning’ planning paradigm” over the next 15th “five-year plan” period (2026-30). The new system should be dominated by renewable energy and respond to risks, such as extreme weather, added the outlet. The NEA confirmed that “speeding up” plans for renewable energy over the next five-year plan period is one of its work priorities for the second half of the year, according to BJX News.

More plans issued as industry and oil set to drop

NEW SYSTEMS: China is aiming to build a “national standardised system for responding to climate change”, covering mitigation and adaptation, reported state news agency Xinhua. In an official Q&A, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) said that it led the drafting of the new system, issued jointly with 14 other departments. Separately, the Central Committee of the Communist party of China and the State Council said that China’s market-based approach to environmental issues, such as carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions trading, should be “basically complete” by 2027, reported BJX News. This will include stronger links between the national emissions trading system (ETS) and related markets for “CCERs” and “GECs”, the outlet said. (The steel, cement and aluminium industries are being consulted over joining China’s national emissions trading system, ETS, according to a screenshot of a policy document circulating on social media. The document is not public, but its existence has been confirmed to Carbon Brief by multiple sources.)

INDUSTRY EMISSIONS: Meanwhile, the “national standards for product carbon footprints” for nine products, including electrolytic aluminium, chemical fibres and plastic, have been established, said the People’s Daily. It is estimated that the total carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the industry sector could drop to 450m tonnes in 2060, down 95% from 2025, according to a joint report by the Tsinghua University, as well as Energy Foundation China and the Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning – a research institute under the MEE, reported China Science Daily.

FALLING OIL DEMAND: The overall demand for oil is set to decline in China, with the “faster adoption” of “new-energy vehicles” (NEVs) offsetting growth in other areas, reported state-run newspaper China Daily. The outlet added that NEVs and liquefied natural gas (LNG) heavy trucks played a “significant role” in reducing demand for “traditional fuels” in 2024. In addition, strong sales of electric trucks – boosted by government incentives – pushed down demand for diesel, which makes up over a quarter of Chinese oil demand, said Bloomberg. Another article by China Daily said that one incentive – the equipment trade-in policy – motivated more than 4m car trade-in applications between January and May 2025. It said more than half of applications in the first four months of the year were for NEVs. The total production and sales of NEV reached just under 6m units in the first five months of this year, a year-on-year increase of around 45%, reported Xinhua.

Extreme weather events

RAIN AND HEATWAVES: Yunnan province in southeast China was hit by “flash floods and mudslides” triggered by heavy rainfall, affecting around 5,000 residents, reported Reuters. Hunan province in the south also received pouring rain, which “seriously damaged” roads and power facilities, said state broadcaster CCTV. Heatwaves, in the meantime, swept northern China with temperatures in Hebei and Xinjiang province topping 40C, reported China National Emergency Broadcasting Center, a state-run media outlet. People’s Daily reported that the central government had allocated 45m yuan ($6.2m) of “natural disaster relief funds” to support flood control and disaster relief in Yunnan, a landslide in Tibet, and drought relief in Gansu and Ningxia.

11,000,000,000

The capacity of newly approved coal power plants in the first quarter of 2025 in watts – some 11 gigawatts (GW). This is 1GW more than the first six months of last year, according to a report from NGO Greenpeace, covered by Reuters. The newswire added that China had approved 289GW of new coal capacity over 2021-25 and that last year saw the first annual decline in approvals since 2021.

Spotlight

More than 100bn yuan poured into coal via ‘capacity payments’ in 2024

To date, there is no clear evidence that China’s coal “capacity payments” are helping coal-fired power plants to transfer into a “supporting role” with reduced output and emissions, according to a Carbon Brief guest post by Mingxin Zhang, coal researcher at Global Energy Monitor (GEM).

In the first year of the scheme, GEM finds that some 70-100% of China’s coal plants received payments totalling more than 100bn yuan ($14.8bn), boosting their revenues by around 5-8%.

In this issue, Carbon Brief highlights the key findings of the guest post. The full article is available on Carbon Brief’s website.

A ‘supporting’ role for coal

China rolled out a system of “capacity payments” in January 2024, with the aim of maintaining energy security while helping coal-fired power plants shift into a “supporting role”, alongside a growing share of variable renewables.

The mechanism essentially provides a monthly “standby” payment to eligible public coal plants, to help cover fixed operating costs during low production periods and to ensure that they are available to switch on during peak demand periods.

The national framework sets payment levels at either 30% or 50% of a benchmark coal plant’s total fixed costs, which was determined to be 330 yuan ($45.8) per kilowatt (kW).

To illustrate the mechanism’s impact, consider a 600 megawatt (MW) coal plant running at China’s 2024 average rates – operating for 4,628 hours a year and selling electricity at 0.452 yuan ($0.063) per kilowatt-hour (kWh).

If it receives a 30% capacity payment, roughly 59.4m yuan ($8.2m) would be added to its bank account, driving up the revenue by 4.7%. If the rate is at the 50% level, the bump rises to 7.9%.

Project year one

After one year of China’s programme, GEM’s analysis finds that, while the policy has contributed to coal power plant revenue, there is still little definitive evidence to show that it is helping coal plants reduce their operation, as intended.

Only 12 provincial governments – representing 38% of the country’s total operating coal capacity – have released lists of qualifying plants.

Based on the national policy’s payment levels and the 12 provincial recipient lists, the capacity payments in these provinces alone was more than 40bn yuan ($5.5bn).

Combining the total operating capacity and payment numbers from the 12 provinces that have published data with GEM’s most recent national capacity figures, the analysis estimates that the total national payout in 2024 was approximately 107bn yuan ($14.8bn).

(This figure is uncertain. Greater transparency would help clarify how the mechanism is functioning and its role in shaping the future of coal in China’s power system.)

Despite restrictions, most coal capacity is eligible

By cross-referencing provincial recipient lists with GEM’s Global Coal Plant Tracker (GCPT), it is possible to estimate the share of each province’s coal capacity receiving payments.

In almost all of the 12 provinces that published recipient lists, 70-100% of coal capacity is eligible for payments.

The programme said that only “compliant, public operating coal units” are eligible for the capacity payments and excluded three categories:

“Captive” units, which exclusively serve specific industrial or commercial entities and operate independently from the public power grid;
Units failing to meet energy efficiency, environmental performance, or operational flexibility standards;
Units not compliant with the broader “national plan”, a criterion that is not further clarified in the guidelines.

In some cases, the scheme as implemented by individual provinces appears inconsistent with the eligibility criteria. For example, the Mancheng Mill power station in Hebei provides heat and power exclusively to a pulp and paper industrial park. This appears inconsistent with the “captive unit” exclusion.

Some newly built coal power plants and decades-old plants were also included. For example, Beihai Bebuwan power station Unit 4 in Guangxi began operating in March 2024 and was added to the recipient list in September 2024. Shenhua Panshan power station Units 1 and 2 in Tianjin began operating in 1994 and were retrofitted in 2023.

Finally, several provincial lists include smaller units, which may have limited ability to contribute to peak demand management. For example, five 57MW units from Shaoxing Binhai power station in Zhejiang were accredited for capacity payments.

Their actual contribution to evening peak load, when generation from solar and wind is low, is unclear from the list or other available provincial assessments.

Watch, read, listen

MINISTER’S COMMENT: Huang Runqiu, head of China’s MEE, penned an article about biodiversity for Qiushi, the Communist party’s leading magazine on ideology.

US NUCLEAR COMPONENT BAN: The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post published an analysis on China’s nuclear energy against the background of the US’s nuclear power controls.

CARON NEUTRALITY FORUM: A group of prominent Chinese scholars gathered in Shanghai and made speeches about China’s “dual-carbon goals”, according to the official WeChat account of the Research Institute of Carbon Neutrality of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

EV CCOMPETITION: BBC News international business correspondent Theo Leggett recorded a reading of his analysis of the expansion of Chinese cheap electric vehicles (EVs), as well as security concerns over them.

New science

Embracing the future, powering growth: An energy system renewed for China
Springer Nature

A book jointly written by oil major Shell and the Development Research Center of the State Council of China explored energy transition challenges and pathways in China. At the book’s launch event, attended by Carbon Brief, representatives from both organisations introduced the main arguments in the book, including challenges China faces in reaching its “dual-carbon” goals, its high reliance on coal and regional disparities between renewable energy resources and demands, as well as its commitment to reach carbon neutrality in just 30 years – a shorter timeline than most developed countries. The book outlines three “approaches” and five “supports”, including electrification, better carbon and electricity pricing, legal support and investing in energy storage, as well as other resources, such as hydrogen and nuclear.

A machine learning approach to carbon emissions prediction of the top eleven emitters by 2030 and their prospects for meeting Paris Agreement targets
Scientific Reports

China, India, Japan, Canada, South Korea and Indonesia are projected to miss their 2030 emissions reduction targets by “significant margins”, according to new research. The authors used a machine learning approach to analyse data from 1990-2023 from the 11 highest emitting countries. They found that Russia is on track to exceed its reduction targets, while Germany and the US will “fall slightly short”. Iran and Saudi Arabia are expected to increase emissions rather than reduce them, according to the study. The authors say that “emerging economies require international collaboration and investment to support low-carbon transitions”.

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China Briefing is compiled by Wanyuan Song and Anika Patel. It is edited by Wanyuan Song and Dr Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org

The post China Briefing 12 June 2025: Critical mineral exports; Electricity price; Coal ‘capacity payment’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.

China Briefing 12 June 2025: Critical mineral exports; Electricity price; Coal ‘capacity payment’

Greenhouse Gases

DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?

Published

1 day ago

February 27, 2026

Alice Rush

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

This week

Absolute State of the Union

‘DRILL, BABY’: US president Donald Trump “doubled down on his ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda” in his State of the Union (SOTU) address, said the Los Angeles Times. He “tout[ed] his support of the fossil-fuel industry and renew[ed] his focus on electricity affordability”, reported the Financial Times. Trump also attacked the “green new scam”, noted Carbon Brief’s SOTU tracker.

COAL REPRIEVE: Earlier in the week, the Trump administration had watered down limits on mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, reported the Financial Times. It remains “unclear” if this will be enough to prevent the decline of coal power, said Bloomberg, in the face of lower-cost gas and renewables. Reuters noted that US coal plants are “ageing”.

OIL STAY: The US Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments brought by the oil industry in a “major lawsuit”, reported the New York Times. The newspaper said the firms are attempting to head off dozens of other lawsuits at state level, relating to their role in global warming.

SHIP-SHILLING: The Trump administration is working to “kill” a global carbon levy on shipping “permanently”, reported Politico, after succeeding in delaying the measure late last year. The Guardian said US “bullying” could be “paying off”, after Panama signalled it was reversing its support for the levy in a proposal submitted to the UN shipping body.

Around the world

RARE EARTHS: The governments of Brazil and India signed a deal on rare earths, said the Times of India, as well as agreeing to collaborate on renewable energy.
HEAT ROLLBACK: German homes will be allowed to continue installing gas and oil heating, under watered-down government plans covered by Clean Energy Wire.
BRAZIL FLOODS: At least 53 people died in floods in the state of Minas Gerais, after some areas saw 170mm of rain in a few hours, reported CNN Brasil.
ITALY’S ATTACK: Italy is calling for the EU to “suspend” its emissions trading system (ETS) ahead of a review later this year, said Politico.
COOKSTOVE CREDITS: The first-ever carbon credits under the Paris Agreement have been issued to a cookstove project in Myanmar, said Climate Home News.
SAUDI SOLAR: Turkey has signed a “major” solar deal that will see Saudi firm ACWA building 2 gigawatts in the country, according to Agence France-Presse.

$467 billion

The profits made by five major oil firms since prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago, according to a report by Global Witness covered by BusinessGreen.

Latest climate research

Claims about the “fingerprint” of human-caused climate change, made in a recent US Department of Energy report, are “factually incorrect” | AGU Advances
Large lakes in the Congo Basin are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from “immense ancient stores” | Nature Geoscience
Shared Socioeconomic Pathways – scenarios used regularly in climate modelling – underrepresent “narratives explicitly centring on democratic principles such as participation, accountability and justice” | npj Climate Action

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

Captured

The constituency of Richard Tice MP, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of Reform UK, is the second-largest recipient of flood defence spending in England, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Overall, the funding is disproportionately targeted at coastal and urban areas, many of which have Conservative or Liberal Democrat MPs.

Spotlight

Is there really a UK ‘greenlash’?

This week, after a historic Green Party byelection win, Carbon Brief looks at whether there really is a “greenlash” against climate policy in the UK.

Over the past year, the UK’s political consensus on climate change has been shattered.

Yet despite a sharp turn against climate action among right-wing politicians and right-leaning media outlets, UK public support for climate action remains strong.

Prof Federica Genovese, who studies climate politics at the University of Oxford, told Carbon Brief:

“The current ‘war’ on green policy is mostly driven by media and political elites, not by the public.”

Indeed, there is still a greater than two-to-one majority among the UK public in favour of the country’s legally binding target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, as shown below.

Steve Akehurst, director of public-opinion research initiative Persuasion UK, also noted the growing divide between the public and “elites”. He told Carbon Brief:

“The biggest movement is, without doubt, in media and elite opinion. There is a bit more polarisation and opposition [to climate action] among voters, but it’s typically no more than 20-25% and mostly confined within core Reform voters.”

Conservative gear shift

For decades, the UK had enjoyed strong, cross-party political support for climate action.

Lord Deben, the Conservative peer and former chair of the Climate Change Committee, told Carbon Brief that the UK’s landmark 2008 Climate Change Act had been born of this cross-party consensus, saying “all parties supported it”.

Since their landslide loss at the 2024 election, however, the Conservatives have turned against the UK’s target of net-zero emissions by 2050, which they legislated for in 2019.

Curiously, while opposition to net-zero has surged among Conservative MPs, there is majority support for the target among those that plan to vote for the party, as shown below.

Dr Adam Corner, advisor to the Climate Barometer initiative that tracks public opinion on climate change, told Carbon Brief that those who currently plan to vote Reform are the only segment who “tend to be more opposed to net-zero goals”. He said:

“Despite the rise in hostile media coverage and the collapse of the political consensus, we find that public support for the net-zero by 2050 target is plateauing – not plummeting.”

Reform, which rejects the scientific evidence on global warming and campaigns against net-zero, has been leading the polls for a year. (However, it was comfortably beaten by the Greens in yesterday’s Gorton and Denton byelection.)

Corner acknowledged that “some of the anti-net zero noise…[is] showing up in our data”, adding:

“We see rising concerns about the near-term costs of policies and an uptick in people [falsely] attributing high energy bills to climate initiatives.”

But Akehurst said that, rather than a big fall in public support, there had been a drop in the “salience” of climate action:

“So many other issues [are] competing for their attention.”

UK newspapers published more editorials opposing climate action than supporting it for the first time on record in 2025, according to Carbon Brief analysis.

Global ‘greenlash’?

All of this sits against a challenging global backdrop, in which US president Donald Trump has been repeating climate-sceptic talking points and rolling back related policy.

At the same time, prominent figures have been calling for a change in climate strategy, sold variously as a “reset”, a “pivot”, as “realism”, or as “pragmatism”.

Genovese said that “far-right leaders have succeeded in the past 10 years in capturing net-zero as a poster child of things they are ‘fighting against’”.

She added that “much of this is fodder for conservative media and this whole ecosystem is essentially driving what we call the ‘greenlash’”.

Corner said the “disconnect” between elite views and the wider public “can create problems” – for example, “MPs consistently underestimate support for renewables”. He added:

“There is clearly a risk that the public starts to disengage too, if not enough positive voices are countering the negative ones.”

Watch, read, listen

TRUMP’S ‘PETROSTATE’: The US is becoming a “petrostate” that will be “sicker and poorer”, wrote Financial Times associate editor Rana Forohaar.

RHETORIC VS REALITY: Despite a “political mood [that] has darkened”, there is “more green stuff being installed than ever”, said New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells.
CHINA’S ‘REVOLUTION’: The BBC’s Climate Question podcast reported from China on the “green energy revolution” taking place in the country.

Coming up

2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean, Brasília
3 March: UK spring statement
4-11 March: China’s “two sessions”
5 March: Nepal elections

Pick of the jobs

The Guardian, senior reporter, climate justice | Salary: $123,000-$135,000. Location: New York or Washington DC
China-Global South Project, non-resident fellow, climate change | Salary: Up to $1,000 a month. Location: Remote
University of East Anglia, PhD in mobilising community-based climate action through co-designed sports and wellbeing interventions | Salary: Stipend (unknown amount). Location: Norwich, UK
TABLE and the University of São Paulo, Brazil, postdoctoral researcher in food system narratives | Salary: Unknown. Location: Pirassununga, Brazil

DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.

This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

The post DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’? appeared first on Carbon Brief.

DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?

Greenhouse Gases

Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding

Published

1 day ago

February 27, 2026

Alice Rush

The Lincolnshire constituency held by Richard Tice, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of the hard-right Reform party, has been pledged at least £55m in government funding for flood defences since 2024.

This investment in Boston and Skegness is the second-largest sum for a single constituency from a £1.4bn flood-defence fund for England, Carbon Brief analysis shows.

Flooding is becoming more likely and more extreme in the UK due to climate change.

Yet, for years, governments have failed to spend enough on flood defences to protect people, properties and infrastructure.

The £1.4bn fund is part of the current Labour government’s wider pledge to invest a “record” £7.9bn over a decade on protecting hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses from flooding.

As MP for one of England’s most flood-prone regions, Tice has called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.

He is also one of Reform’s most vocal opponents of climate action and what he calls “net stupid zero”. He denies the scientific consensus on climate change and has claimed, falsely and without evidence, that scientists are “lying”.

Flood defences

Last year, the government said it would invest £2.65bn on flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) schemes in England between April 2024 and March 2026.

This money was intended to protect 66,500 properties from flooding. It is part of a decade-long Labour government plan to spend more than £7.9bn on flood defences.

There has been a consistent shortfall in maintaining England’s flood defences, with the Environment Agency expecting to protect fewer properties by 2027 than it had initially planned.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has attributed this to rising costs, backlogs from previous governments and a lack of capacity. It also points to the strain from “more frequent and severe” weather events, such as storms in recent years that have been amplified by climate change.

However, the CCC also said last year that, if the 2024-26 spending programme is delivered, it would be “slightly closer to the track” of the Environment Agency targets out to 2027.

The government has released constituency-level data on which schemes in England it plans to fund, covering £1.4bn of the 2024-26 investment. The other half of the FCERM spending covers additional measures, from repairing existing defences to advising local authorities.

The map below shows the distribution of spending on FCERM schemes in England over the past two years, highlighting the constituency of Richard Tice.

Map of England showing that Richard Tice's Boston and Skegness constituency is set to receive at least £55m for flood defences between 2024 and 2026 — Flood-defence spending on new and replacement schemes in England in 2024-25 and 2025-26. The government notes that, as Environment Agency accounts have not been finalised and approved, the investment data is “provisional and subject to change”. Some schemes cover multiple constituencies and are not included on the map. Source: Environment Agency FCERM data.

By far the largest sum of money – £85.6m in total – has been committed to a tidal barrier and various other defences in the Somerset constituency of Bridgwater, the seat of Conservative MP Ashley Fox.

Over the first months of 2026, the south-west region has faced significant flooding and Fox has called for more support from the government, citing “climate patterns shifting and rainfall intensifying”.

He has also backed his party’s position that “the 2050 net-zero target is impossible” and called for more fossil-fuel extraction in the North Sea.

Tice’s east-coast constituency of Boston and Skegness, which is highly vulnerable to flooding from both rivers and the sea, is set to receive £55m. Among the supported projects are beach defences from Saltfleet to Gibraltar Point and upgrades to pumping stations.

Overall, Boston and Skegness has the second-largest portion of flood-defence funding, as the chart below shows. Constituencies with Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs occupied the other top positions.

Chart showing that Conservative, Reform and Liberal Democrat constituencies are the top recipients of flood defence spending — Top 10 English constituencies by FCERM funding in 2024-25 and 2025-26. Source: Environment Agency FCERM data.

Overall, despite Labour MPs occupying 347 out of England’s 543 constituencies – nearly two-thirds of the total – more than half of the flood-defence funding was distributed to constituencies with non-Labour MPs. This reflects the flood risk in coastal and rural areas that are not traditional Labour strongholds.

Reform funding

While Reform has just eight MPs, representing 1% of the population, its constituencies have been assigned 4% of the flood-defence funding for England.

Nearly all of this money was for Tice’s constituency, although party leader Nigel Farage’s coastal Clacton seat in Kent received £2m.

Reform UK is committed to “scrapping net-zero” and its leadership has expressed firmly climate-sceptic views.

Much has been made of the disconnect between the party’s climate policies and the threat climate change poses to its voters. Various analyses have shown the flood risk in Reform-dominated areas, particularly Lincolnshire.

Tice has rejected climate science, advocated for fossil-fuel production and criticised Environment Agency flood-defence activities. Yet, he has also called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.

This may reflect Tice’s broader approach to climate change. In a 2024 interview with LBC, he said:

“Where you’ve got concerns about sea level defences and sea level rise, guess what? A bit of steel, a bit of cement, some aggregate…and you build some concrete sea level defences. That’s how you deal with rising sea levels.”

While climate adaptation is viewed as vital in a warming world, there are limits on how much societies can adapt and adaptation costs will continue to increase as emissions rise.

The post Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding

Greenhouse Gases

Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate

Published

3 days ago

February 25, 2026

Alice Rush

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

Food inflation on the rise

DELUGE STRIKES FOOD: Extreme rainfall and flooding across the Mediterranean and north Africa has “battered the winter growing regions that feed Europe…threatening food price rises”, reported the Financial Times. Western France has “endured more than 36 days of continuous rain”, while farmers’ associations in Spain’s Andalusia estimate that “20% of all production has been lost”, it added. Policy expert David Barmes told the paper that the “latest storms were part of a wider pattern of climate shocks feeding into food price inflation”.

Sign up to Carbon Brief’s free “Cropped” email newsletter. A fortnightly digest of food, land and nature news and views. Sent to your inbox every other Wednesday.

NO BEEF: The UK’s beef farmers, meanwhile, “face a double blow” from climate change as “relentless rain forces them to keep cows indoors”, while last summer’s drought hit hay supplies, said another Financial Times article. At the same time, indoor growers in south England described a 60% increase in electricity standing charges as a “ticking timebomb” that could “force them to raise their prices or stop production, which will further fuel food price inflation”, wrote the Guardian.

‘TINDERBOX’ AND TARIFFS: A study, covered by the Guardian, warned that major extreme weather and other “shocks” could “spark social unrest and even food riots in the UK”. Experts cited “chronic” vulnerabilities, including climate change, low incomes, poor farming policy and “fragile” supply chains that have made the UK’s food system a “tinderbox”. A New York Times explainer noted that while trade could once guard against food supply shocks, barriers such as tariffs and export controls – which are being “increasingly” used by politicians – “can shut off that safety valve”.

El Niño looms

NEW ENSO INDEX: Researchers have developed a new index for calculating El Niño, the large-scale climate pattern that influences global weather and causes “billions in damages by bringing floods to some regions and drought to others”, reported CNN. It added that climate change is making it more difficult for scientists to observe El Niño patterns by warming up the entire ocean. The outlet said that with the new metric, “scientists can now see it earlier and our long-range weather forecasts will be improved for it.”

WARMING WARNING: Meanwhile, the US Climate Prediction Center announced that there is a 60% chance of the current La Niña conditions shifting towards a neutral state over the next few months, with an El Niño likely to follow in late spring, according to Reuters. The Vibes, a Malaysian news outlet, quoted a climate scientist saying: “If the El Niño does materialise, it could possibly push 2026 or 2027 as the warmest year on record, replacing 2024.”

CROP IMPACTS: Reuters noted that neutral conditions lead to “more stable weather and potentially better crop yields”. However, the newswire added, an El Niño state would mean “worsening drought conditions and issues for the next growing season” to Australia. El Niño also “typically brings a poor south-west monsoon to India, including droughts”, reported the Hindu’s Business Line. A 2024 guest post for Carbon Brief explained that El Niño is linked to crop failure in south-eastern Africa and south-east Asia.

News and views

DAM-AG-ES: Several South Korean farmers filed a lawsuit against the country’s state-owned utility company, “seek[ing] financial compensation for climate-related agricultural damages”, reported United Press International. Meanwhile, a national climate change assessment for the Philippines found that the country “lost up to $219bn in agricultural damages from typhoons, floods and droughts” over 2000-10, according to Eco-Business.
SCORCHED GRASS: South Africa’s Western Cape province is experiencing “one of the worst droughts in living memory”, which is “scorching grass and killing livestock”, said Reuters. The newswire wrote: “In 2015, a drought almost dried up the taps in the city; farmers say this one has been even more brutal than a decade ago.”
NOUVELLE VEG: New guidelines published under France’s national food, nutrition and climate strategy “urged” citizens to “limit” their meat consumption, reported Euronews. The delayed strategy comes a month after the US government “upended decades of recommendations by touting consumption of red meat and full-fat dairy”, it noted.
COURTING DISASTER: India’s top green court accepted the findings of a committee that “found no flaws” in greenlighting the Great Nicobar project that “will lead to the felling of a million trees” and translocating corals, reported Mongabay. The court found “no good ground to interfere”, despite “threats to a globally unique biodiversity hotspot” and Indigenous tribes at risk of displacement by the project, wrote Frontline.
FISH FALLING: A new study found that fish biomass is “falling by 7.2% from as little as 0.1C of warming per decade”, noted the Guardian. While experts also pointed to the role of overfishing in marine life loss, marine ecologist and study lead author Dr Shahar Chaikin told the outlet: “Our research proves exactly what that biological cost [of warming] looks like underwater.”
TOO HOT FOR COFFEE: According to new analysis by Climate Central, countries where coffee beans are grown “are becoming too hot to cultivate them”, reported the Guardian. The world’s top five coffee-growing countries faced “57 additional days of coffee-harming heat” annually because of climate change, it added.

Spotlight

Nature talks inch forward

This week, Carbon Brief covers the latest round of negotiations under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which occurred in Rome over 16-19 February.

The penultimate set of biodiversity negotiations before October’s Conference of the Parties ended in Rome last week, leaving plenty of unfinished business.

The CBD’s subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) met in the Italian capital for four days to discuss a range of issues, including biodiversity finance and reviewing progress towards the nature targets agreed under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).

However, many of the major sticking points – particularly around finance – will have to wait until later this summer, leaving some observers worried about the capacity for delegates to get through a packed agenda at COP17.

The SBI, along with the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA) will both meet in Nairobi, Kenya, later this summer for a final round of talks before COP17 kicks off in Yerevan, Armenia, on 19 October.

Money talks

Finance for nature has long been a sticking point at negotiations under the CBD.

Discussions on a new fund for biodiversity derailed biodiversity talks in Cali, Colombia, in autumn 2024, requiring resumed talks a few months later.

Despite this, finance was barely on the agenda at the SBI meetings in Rome. Delegates discussed three studies on the relationship between debt sustainability and implementation of nature plans, but the more substantive talks are set to take place at the next SBI meeting in Nairobi.

Several parties “highlighted concerns with the imbalance of work” on finance between these SBI talks and the next ones, reported Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB).

Lim Li Ching, senior researcher at Third World Network, noted that tensions around finance permeated every aspect of the talks. She told Carbon Brief:

“If you’re talking about the gender plan of action – if there’s little or no financial resources provided to actually put it into practice and implement it, then it’s [just] paper, right? Same with the reporting requirements and obligations.”

Monitoring and reporting

Closely linked to the issue of finance is the obligations of parties to report on their progress towards the goals and targets of the GBF.

Parties do so through the submission of national reports.

Several parties at the talks pointed to a lack of timely funding for driving delays in their reporting, according to ENB.

A note released by the CBD Secretariat in December said that no parties had submitted their national reports yet; by the time of the SBI meetings, only the EU had. It further noted that just 58 parties had submitted their national biodiversity plans, which were initially meant to be published by COP16, in October 2024.

Linda Krueger, director of biodiversity and infrastructure policy at the environmental not-for-profit Nature Conservancy, told Carbon Brief that despite the sparse submissions, parties are “very focused on the national report preparation”. She added:

“Everybody wants to be able to show that we’re on the path and that there still is a pathway to getting to 2030 that’s positive and largely in the right direction.”

Watch, read, listen

NET LOSS: Nigeria’s marine life is being “threatened” by “ghost gear” – nets and other fishing equipment discarded in the ocean – said Dialogue Earth.

COMEBACK CAUSALITY: A Vox long-read looked at whether Costa Rica’s “payments for ecosystem services” programme helped the country turn a corner on deforestation.

HOMEGROWN GOALS: A Straits Times podcast discussed whether import-dependent Singapore can afford to shelve its goal to produce 30% of its food locally by 2030.

‘RUSTING’ RIVERS: The Financial Times took a closer look at a “strange new force blighting the [Arctic] landscape”: rivers turning rust-orange due to global warming.

New science

Lakes in the Congo Basin’s peatlands are releasing carbon that is thousands of years old | Nature Geoscience
Natural non-forest ecosystems – such as grasslands and marshlands – were converted for agriculture at four times the rate of land with tree cover between 2005 and 2020 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Around one-quarter of global tree-cover loss over 2001-22 was driven by cropland expansion, pastures and forest plantations for commodity production | Nature Food