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China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Higher EU tariffs on China-made EVs
TARIFFS DECIDED: The EU has announced additional tariffs of up to 38.1% on electric vehicles (EVs) manufactured in China, with “individual duties” on BYD, Geely and SAIC of 17.4%, 20% and 38.1%, according to Bloomberg. The outlet added that “while the probe targeted Chinese automakers, the higher rates…will hit a range of Western carmakers too”. The Financial Times reported that, given an existing 10% blanket tariff, companies could face total tariffs of “up to almost 50%”. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, an economic thinktank, “an extra 20% tariff on Chinese electric cars would reduce imports by a quarter”, or approximately 125,000 units worth a total of $4bn, based on 2023 figures. Politico quoted Elvire Fabry, senior research fellow at the Jacques Delors Institute, saying “something around 20-30% would give European manufacturers some breathing space to accelerate their investments in the sector and maintain their market share”.
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‘STRONGLY DISSATISFIED’: China said that it “is strongly dissatisfied” by the tariffs, which have “ignored facts and WTO rules”, state news agency Xinhua reported. Foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said China will take “all necessary measures to firmly safeguard its lawful rights and interests”, in comments published by Reuters. Will Roberts, head of automotive research at Rho Motion, wrote in an email that: “European drivers are crying out for affordable EVs and with the news today of sales plateauing in Europe, lower-priced cars will be critical to achieving the transition as planned. Having said that, Chinese manufacturers should be able to absorb some of these lower tariff levels into their padded profit margins.”
EXEMPTIONS EXPIRE: Meanwhile, an exemption on US tariffs for solar products imported from southeast Asia has expired, economic newspaper Caixin reported, causing Chinese solar manufacturer Longi Green Energy Technology to begin preparing to “suspend some production lines at its factories in Malaysia and Vietnam”. Bloomberg added that another Chinese firm, Trina Solar, was “shutting down capacity” in Thailand and Vietnam. Chinese finance newspaper Yicai reported that Trina denied it was permanently ending production, but the outlet also said Chinese-owned production in the region has been heavily impacted.
LOSING PARTNERS?: Chinese EVs in Turkey will also be subject to additional tariffs of 40%, as the Turkish government aims “to halt a possible deterioration of its current account balance and protect domestic automakers”, Reuters said. Elsewhere, the Brazilian government “reiterated [its] aspiration for increased Chinese investments in energy, agriculture and infrastructure sectors, and highlighted the remarkable growth in bilateral trade with China”, the state-run newspaper China Daily reported.
China’s new regulation on ‘new energy integration’
NEW CONSTRUCTION: The NEA issued a notice on new energy integration – the process of accommodating, distributing and balancing renewable energy fed into the grid – on 5 June, state news agency Xinhua reported. It said that the NEA will grant a “green channel” for development of grid infrastructure above 500 kilovolts (kV) to better integrate large solar, hydropower and wind projects, while provincial-level energy departments will be responsible for lower-voltage projects and creating better, more advanced “plans” for integration. Bloomberg said the new document also set a goal of “completing 37 major power lines and starting construction on another 33 by the end of the year”, as well as supporting broader goals to “increase the national target for battery storage capacity by 2025”.
POLICY BACKGROUND: The NEA’s own “interpretation” of the document said the policy is a response to China’s installed capacity of wind power and solar exceeding 1,100 gigawatts by the end of April, creating a “need” to better “adapt [grid development] to the rapid growth of new energy”. An article by Zhang Jianhua, the head of the NEA, published by China Electric Power News the day before the notification was released, also emphasised the “urgent need” to construct a “new electricity system” for “energy security” that includes the utilisation of both fossil fuels and new energy.
IMPROVE UTILISATION: An analysis by International Energy Net (IEN) said another factor behind the new policy is that a number of local governments have cancelled energy storage programs, hampering integration and “forcing” the central government to “intervene”. In addition, the wind and solar integration rate of big projects, such as those in Inner Mongolia, dropped to between 92-94% from January to April 2024, lower than the national average of 96.1%, added IEN. (An analysis by Shanghai-based The Paper said the utilisation rate of solar energy should be above 95%, according to a regulation in 2018, although this target has since been loosened for some regions.) The analysis concluded that establishing a “green channel” and requiring better planning can improve utilisation and allow the construction of China’s “ultra-high voltage” power infrastructure to become “more targeted”.
China announced more policies on industry emissions
STEEL EMISSIONS: China published an action plan for energy conservation and carbon reduction in the steel industry, aiming to cut emissions by 53m tonnes of carbon dioxide (MtCO2) by 2025, Jiemian reported. The plan added that “by the end of 2030…the industry will have “achieve[ing]d significant results in the development of green, low-carbon and high-quality development”. It was one of several industry-specific documents that followed the National Energy Administration (NEA)’s announcement of an industry-wide action plan on the topic at the end of May. China Environment News interviewed a representative of the China Iron and Steel Association, who stated that the steel industry is “expected to be included” in China’s carbon market this year. Dialogue Earth said that the “likely inclusion of the steel, cement and aluminium industries is expected to add 2,000-3,000MtCO2 coverage”. (The market currently covers the power sector’s roughly 5000MtCO2.)
CARBON FOOTPRINT: The government also announced a plan to establish a “carbon footprint management system”, which “will go into effect in 2027, setting standards for measuring carbon emissions for about 100 key products throughout the Chinese economy” that year and may include 200 products by 2030, according to Reuters. The plan was a response to the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), which “has set clear rules on the measuring and disclosure of product carbon footprints”, the newswire added. International Energy Net interviewed an official from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, who said the plan “improves domestic rules, promotes convergence with international [efforts], and establishes a unified and standardised carbon footprint management system”.
Spotlight
US-China subnational climate cooperation
The US and China are the world’s two leading CO2 emitters and their cooperation on climate change has often pressaged progress on the international stage. However, climate cooperation could be hit by geopolitical disagreements, such as the ongoing debate over China’s electric vehicles (EV) exports.
In this issue, Carbon Brief looks at recently concluded US-China climate talks and explores the possibilities for continued subnational climate cooperation.
When the US and China signed the Sunnylands statement in late 2023, the two countries agreed to continue the climate conversations this decade.
Last month, the US-China high-level event on subnational climate action was held by the China-California Climate Institute (CCCI) in Berkeley, California.
The event covered various climate-related topics. For example, China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the economic planning body under the central government, and the US Department of Energy agreed to cooperate on a carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) project, according to a CCCI announcement.
At the regional level, the state of California furthered cooperation with Chinese local governments in the areas of transport, joint climate research, carbon markets and agricultural methane, the CCCI announcement added.
Much of this cooperation started before the Sunnylands statement.
Continued cooperation
In 2022, California and Shanghai jointly established a “green shipping corridor”.
Under the project, two ports – the port of Los Angeles and the port of Shanghai – along with other industry partners, including shipping lines and cargo owners, are aiming to demonstrate the feasibility of deploying “the world’s first zero lifecycle carbon emission container ship” by 2030
“We’re hoping to do something in late summer with the green shipping corridors,” Giles Giovinazzi, senior advisor to the California State Transportation Agency, told Carbon Brief.
He added that “there’s a structured conversation that’s been going on at the local government level” and the state wants more cooperation with China.
Another project being eyed by the California authority is Hainan’s battery-swapping facility for heavy-duty trucks, which are responsible for 20% of transport emissions in the state.
“Regardless of geopolitical issues and ideological issues…we want to be fact based and learn from each other,” Giovinazzi said.
The debate over engagement
Jerry Brown, former governor of California and CCCI chair, echoed this message at the CCCI event. “We are here not because of our differences, but because of the common ground we share and the common threat we face in confronting the climate crisis,” he told attendees.
The event was part of an effort “to build an exchange platform or partnership for the future, no matter what happens to the government’s official conversations,” Hu Min, director and co-founder of the Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress, a Beijing-based thinktank, told Carbon Brief.
However, some of the delegates in Berkeley were less optimistic. Speaking anonymously to offer frank reflections on the event, a number of participants told Carbon Brief they were concerned about trade protectionism raising the cost of renewable energy products and the impact of this on climate action, as well as escalating geopolitical tensions stalling climate cooperation.
Outside the talks, Chinese corporations are contending with rising criticism in the US.
Several Republican members of Congress, including Colorado representative Lauren Boebert, expressed in a letter to US president Joe Biden that they are “concerned that [a meeting in May] between [US climate envoy] John Podesta and Chinese counterparts will further leverage American energy security for empty promises from China’s government”.
Chinese companies have also faced direct opposition to their investments in the US. Battery manufacturer Gotion received protests against its planned factory in Michigan, with residents worrying over “communist influences”. Microvast, a Texas-based battery manufacturer with a Chinese subsidiary, faced similar criticism from Republican lawmakers.
Ford’s use of battery technology from Chinese manufacturer CATL in its Michigan battery plant saw residents lodge concerns about the “plant’s effect on the environment”, as well as concerns about communist influence in the state.
‘California Effect’
Continued US-China climate cooperation is likely to hinge on the outcome of the upcoming presidential election.
Republican candidate and former president Donald Trump mentioned that he would establish at least a 60% tariff on all products imported from China.
(Joe Biden’s Democratic administration recently has announced a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs.)
“We have a possibility of a second Trump administration, [where] presumably bilateral climate talks with China would more or less cease, as they did during his first term,” Scott Moore, director of China programs and strategic initiatives at Penn Global, told Carbon Brief.
But California seems to have been able to avoid such disruption in the past. Despite the Trump administration pulling out of climate action, California maintained climate cooperation with China. The state is viewed as an alternate channel for climate dialogue.
Scott added:
“There is a term: the California Effect, which refers to the state’s emissions standards [being] set higher than the national average for several decades, [thereby] forcing car manufacturers and the federal government to adopt more stringent regulations because the state was such a big market that it wasn’t practical to make cars or set standards that applied just in California.”
Nevertheless, any state could be limited in the actions it could take to tackle emissions under a second Trump term.
As such, California-China subnational climate action is “not a substitute” for national-level cooperation, Scott added.
This Spotlight is by freelance climate journalist Alok Gupta for Carbon Brief.
Watch, read, listen
LIU’S LETTER: China’s climate envoy Liu Zhenmin wrote in the Communist party-affiliated People’s Daily that “China and other developing countries hope that the US will…respect the law of the market and freedom of trade, and join hands with other countries…to address climate change”.
NDC TARGET: The Asia Society Policy Institute’s Lauri Myllyvirta in Dialogue Earth argued that, when China submits its 2035 climate targets next year, it should “commit to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of at least 30%” from their peak level, to remain aligned with the Paris Agreement.
BIGGER PICTURE: Speaking on the Redefining Energy podcast, the Lantau Group’s David Fishman summarised how China’s energy system and energy transition works.
CLIMATE FINANCE: Thinktank the Lowy Institute mapped China’s climate finance to the Pacific and Southeast Asia, finding that it averaged $1.2bn per year between 2015-2021, or 13% of all climate finance to the two regions.
Captured
China’s investment in clean energy is estimated to reach $676bn in 2024, or one-third of such investments worldwide, according to the IEA’s World Energy Investment 2024. This would account for 78.5% of China’s energy investment this year, with fossil fuel investment continuing to remain flat, at $185bn.
New science
Environmental Research Letters
A new study found that the fraction of short-duration extreme precipitation episodes that are compound events “preconditioned” by heatwaves (“CHEPs”) has risen by nearly a fifth between 1979-2021. It concluded: “As short-duration storms may trigger severe flash floods, ample attention should be paid to the escalating risks of CHEPs under climate change.”
Global and Planetary Change
New research quantified the contributions of China’s terrestrial carbon sinks to offsetting CO2 emissions between 2001 and 2060 under different “shared socioeconomic pathways”. It found that, under a low emissions scenario, approximately 50%-80% of China’s emissions could be offset by the terrestrial carbon sink by 2060, while, under high and very high emissions scenarios, only approximately 10% of emissions could be offset. The study “underscores the critical role of terrestrial carbon sink in achieving carbon neutrality in China”, the authors wrote.
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 13 June: EU EV tariffs; Grid buildout; US-China subnational climate cooperation appeared first on Carbon Brief.
China Briefing 13 June: EU EV tariffs; Grid buildout; US-China subnational climate cooperation
Mariana Paoli, from Brazil, is the Global Advocacy Lead at Christian Aid and Iskander Erzini Vernoit, from Morocco, is the Executive Director at the IMAL Initiative for Climate and Development.
Government negotiators in Bonn will discuss in the coming two weeks how to put into practice an idea that emerged from the corridors of the COP29 climate talks: “the Baku to Belém Roadmap to $1.3 Trillion”.
This exercise, that aims to propose approaches for scaling climate finance flows for developing countries to over a trillion dollars per year by 2035, is due to be presented at COP30 in Brazil this November. The origins of its mandate offer insights into its perils – as well as its promise.
Brazil seeks early deals on two stalled issues at Bonn climate talks
Initially, negotiators from the G77+China countries united behind Africa’s call for $1.3 trillion as the replacement for the $100-billion goal for annual mobilisation of climate finance by developed countries for developing nations, set 15 years ago. Faithful to this, some G77 countries originally called for a roadmap to indicate actions that developed countries might take to raise public finance resources for this provision and mobilisation for the Global South.
There were, however, those in the Global North who pushed for a broader, less well-defined $1.3 trillion target that would include other sources and types of finance. These forces ultimately won the day, resulting in a final decision on $1.3 trillion that calls for “all finance” from “all … sources”, establishing a “roadmap” process toward this.
Exceedingly disappointing for the Global South, this new formulation obfuscates the responsibility of wealthy historical emitters to pay their fair share of public finance to tackle a proble they have caused and risks shifting the burden to developing countries.
Loss and damage threat
In this context, the Roadmap to 1.3T has the potential to be a milestone in the global governance of climate finance. Yet it faces risks and opportunities, being essentially at the discretion of Azerbaijan and Brazil as the COP29 and COP 30 presidencies.
There is a very real risk that the Roadmap will fall short of sending a strong signal of what level of ambition is required, in terms of public finance from contributor countries. If that happens, the Roadmap could entrench injustice, increase debt burdens, and delay urgent action on climate change.
In terms of injustice, poorer countries, while largely not responsible for climate change, could face loss and damage of $450 billion-$900 billion per year before 2030, not including the costs of reducing emissions and adapting to global warming.
Loss and damage fund to hand out $250 million in initial phase
Within this, Africa’s nomadic pastoral communities are one real-life example of those whose livelihoods and way of life are being destroyed by the choices of others. The COP29 decision on the new climate finance goal disregarded their needs by not including a target for loss and damage funding, but the Roadmap need not.
Heavy debt burden
The Roadmap must not ignore that external debts are at record highs, with repayment costs now higher than capacities for repayment in two-thirds of developing countries, according to UNCTAD.
In 2023, African governments paid around 17% of their revenues on servicing debts, the highest levels in decades, equalling 15% of African export earnings. By comparison, after the Second World War, inspired by the work of Keynes and others, it was decided to cap Germany’s debt repayments at 3% of its exports earnings, to allow recovery.
In this context, Global South countries may lack the fiscal space to invest in essential climate action – or may prioritise other areas, such as healthcare or education.
COP30 President-designate Andrea Corrêa do Lago is correct in his assertion that there is too often a denial of the economic benefits of climate action – yet Global South countries are not always able to pursue economically beneficial investments. Markets are not always efficient, economic benefits do not always equal revenues for investors , and the cost of capital is higher in Global South countries, heightening the need for support, especially with upfront costs.
Framework to scale up finance
Of course, in addition to underscoring the necessity of rich countries increasing their provision of grant-equivalent public funds for poorer countries, for the reasons cited above, the Roadmap can point to opportunities to build the architecture for scaling finance.
Reforming the international financial architecture is important, but, to achieve this, wealthy countries must relinquish their current hegemony and drop their resistance to reform in the negotiations for a UN tax convention and in those around the potential UN sovereign debt workout mechanism that could be agreed at the upcoming Financing for Development (FFD) Conference in Seville.
Climate shocks and volatile currencies hike debt burden for poor countries
Further additions to the financial architecture could include country platforms, aimed at unlocking finance, particularly private investment – but these require resourcing to administer and will only reaffirm the need for catalytic public resources, whether for technical assistance, project preparation, or making finance more affordable.
Of course, current politics are not conducive to increasing international provision of grant-equivalent finance, with recent short-sighted decisions taking overseas aid even further away from the global target for countries to provide assistance equal to 0.7% of their gross national income, established over fifty years ago, despite public support.
Naturally, Global South countries should not hold their breath waiting for others to come to their senses, but should do what they can, including South-South cooperation.
Bold signal needed
And yet, if global temperature goals are not to slip out of reach, if climate action is to be enhanced and injustice and indebtedness curtailed, richer countries must step up on finance. Will the Roadmap affirm this? The COP presidencies have yet to give a firm indication, though have called for inputs from finance ministers and other key groupings through ongoing consultations.
To be successful, there must be a willingness to depart from the status quo — just as was demonstrated with the Paris Agreement and the UAE Consensus, which set ambitious goals to limit global temperature rise and accelerate energy transition, respectively. Even amid uncertainty, these agreements raised the standard for ambition instead of passively allowing low expectations to go unchallenged.
A comparable approach is now needed for international public finance – the Baku-to-Belem Roadmap must send a bold signal of what is required, lest a key opportunity be lost.
The post A COP30 roadmap to inaction or ambition on climate finance? appeared first on Climate Home News.
Climate Change
DeBriefed 13 June 2025: Trump’s ‘biggest’ climate rollback; UK goes nuclear; How Carbon Brief visualises research
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Trump’s latest climate rollback
RULES REPEALED: The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has begun dismantling Biden-era regulations limiting pollution from power plants, including carbon dioxide emissions, reported the Financial Times. Announcing the repeal, climate-sceptic EPA administrator Lee Zeldin labelled efforts to fight climate change a “cult”, according to the New York Times. Politico said that these actions are the “most important EPA regulatory actions of Donald Trump’s second term to date”.
WEBSITE SHUTDOWN: The Guardian reported that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Climate.gov website “will imminently no longer publish new content” after all production staff were fired. Former employees of the agency interviewed by the Guardian believe the cuts were “specifically aimed at restricting public-facing climate information”.
EVS TARGETED: The Los Angeles Times reported that Trump signed legislation on Thursday “seeking to rescind California’s ambitious auto emission standards, including a landmark rule that eventually would have barred sales of new gas-only cars in California by 2035”.
UK goes nuclear
NEW NUCLEAR: In her first spending review, UK chancellor Rachel Reeves announced £14.2bn for the Sizewell C new nuclear power plant in Suffolk, England – the first new state-backed nuclear power station for decades and the first ever under a Labour government, BBC News reported. The government also announced funding for three small nuclear reactors to be built by Rolls-Royce, said the Times. Carbon Brief has just published a chart showing the “rise, fall and rise” of UK nuclear.
MILIBAND REWARDED: The Times described energy secretary Ed Miliband as one of the “biggest winners” from the review. In spite of relentless negative reporting around him from right-leaning publications, his Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) received the largest relative increase in capital spending. Carbon Brief’s summary has more on all the key climate and energy takeaways from the spending review.
Around the world
- UN OCEAN SUMMIT: In France, a “surge in support” brought the number of countries ratifying the High Seas Treaty to just 10 short of the 60 needed for the agreement to become international law, according to Sky News.
- CALLING TRUMP: Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said he would “call” Trump to “persuade him” to attend COP30, according to Agence France-Presse. Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported that the country’s environmental agency has fast tracked oil and highway projects that threaten the Amazon.
- GERMAN FOSSIL SURGE: Due to “low” wind levels, electricity generation from renewables in Germany fell by 17% in the first quarter of this year, while generation from fossil-fuel sources increased significantly, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
- BATTERY BOOST: The power ministry in India announced 54bn rupees ($631m) in funding to build 30 gigawatt-hours of new battery energy storage systems to “ensure round-the-clock renewable energy capacities”, reported Money Control.
-19.3C
The temperature that one-in-10 London winters could reach in a scenario where a key Atlantic ocean current system “collapses” and global warming continues under “intermediate” emissions, according to new research covered by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- A study in Science Advances found that damage to coral reefs due to climate change will “outpace” reef expansion. It said “severe declines” will take place within 40-80 years, while “large-scale coral reef expansion requires centuries”.
- Climatic Change published research which identified “displacement and violence, caregiving burdens, early marriages of girls, human trafficking and food insecurity” as the main “mental health” stressors exacerbated by climate change for women in lower and middle-income countries.
- The weakening of a major ocean current system has partially offset the drying of the southern Amazon rainforest, research published in Environmental Research has found, demonstrating that climate tipping elements have the potential to moderate each other.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Aerosols – tiny light‑scattering particles produced mainly by burning fossil fuels – absorb or reflect incoming sunlight and influence the formation and brightness of clouds. In this way they have historically “acted as an invisible brake on global warming”. New Carbon Brief analysis by Dr Zeke Hausfather illustrated the extent to which a reduction in aerosol emissions in recent decades, while bringing widespread public health benefits through avoided deaths, has “unmasked” the warming caused by CO2 and other greenhouse gases. The chart above shows the estimated cooling effect of aerosols from the start of the industrial era until 2020.
Spotlight
How Carbon Brief turns complex research into visuals
This week, Carbon Brief’s interactive developer Tom Pearson explains how and why his team creates visuals from research papers.
Carbon Brief’s journalists will often write stories based on new scientific research or policy reports.
These documents will usually contain charts or graphics highlighting something interesting about the story. Sometimes, Carbon Brief’s visuals team will choose to recreate these graphics.
There are many reasons why we choose to spend time and effort doing this, but most often it can be boiled down to some combination of the following things.
Maintaining editorial and visual consistency
We want to, where possible, maintain editorial and visual consistency while matching our graphical and editorial style guides.
In doing this, we are trying to ease our audience’s reading experience. We hope that, by presenting a chart in a way that is consistent with Carbon Brief’s house style, readers will be able to concentrate on the story or the explanation we are trying to communicate and not the way that a chart might have been put together.
Highlighting relevant information
We want to highlight the part of a chart that is most relevant to the story.
Graphics in research papers, especially if they have been designed for a print context, often strive to illustrate many different points with a single figure.
We tend to use charts to answer a single question or provide evidence for a single point.
Paring charts back to their core “message”, removing extraneous elements and framing the chart with a clear editorial title helps with this, as the example below shows.
Ensuring audience understanding
We want to ensure our audience understands the “message” of the chart.
Graphics published in specialist publications, such as scientific journals, might have different expectations regarding a reader’s familiarity with the subject matter and the time they might be expected to spend reading an article.
If we can redraw a chart so that it meets the expectations of a more general audience, we will.
Supporting multiple contexts
We want our graphics to make sense in different contexts.
While we publish our graphics primarily in articles on our website, the nature of the internet means that we cannot guarantee that this is how people will encounter them.
Charts are often shared on social media or copy-pasted into presentations. We want to support these practices by including as much context relevant to understanding within the chart image as possible.
Below illustrates how adding a title and key information can make a chart easier to understand without supporting information.
When we do not recreate charts
When will we not redraw a chart? Most of the time! We are a small team and recreating data graphics requires time, effort, accessible data and often specialist software.
But, despite these constraints, when the conditions are right, the process of redrawing maps and charts allows us to communicate more clearly with our readers, transforming complex research into accessible visual stories.
Watch, read, listen
SPENDING $1BN ON CLIMATE: New Scientist interviewed Greg de Temmerman, former nuclear physicist turned chief science officer at Quadrature Climate Foundation, about the practicalities and ethics of philanthropic climate-science funding.
GENDER HURDLES: Research director Tracy Kajumba has written for Climate Home News about the barriers that women still face in attending and participating in COPs.
OCEAN HEATWAVES: The New York Times presented a richly illustrated look at how marine heatwaves are spreading across the globe and how they affect life in the oceans.
Coming up
- 16-26 June: Bonn climate talks, Bonn, Germany
- 16 June: 79th meeting of the World Meteorological Organization executive council, Geneva, Switzerland
- 17 June: International Energy Agency (IEA) Oil 2025 report launch
Pick of the jobs
- Inside Climate News, California environmental reporter | Salary: Unknown. Location: Southern California
- Natural Resources Wales, lead marine and energy policy advisor | Salary: £45,367-£50,877. Location: Wales
- Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, senior manager, climate | Salary: £82,000. Location: London/hybrid
- Green Party,social media and digital content officer | Salary: £33,211. Location: London/remote
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 13 June 2025: Trump’s ‘biggest’ climate rollback; UK goes nuclear; How Carbon Brief visualises research appeared first on Carbon Brief.
The UK’s chancellor Rachel Reeves gave the green light this week to the Sizewell C new nuclear plant in Suffolk, along with funding for “small modular reactors” (SMRs) and nuclear fusion.
In her spending review of government funding across the rest of this parliament, Reeves pledged £14.2bn for Sizewell C, £2.5bn for Rolls-Royce SMRs and £2.5bn for fusion research.
The UK was a pioneer in civilian nuclear power – opening the world’s first commercial reactor at Calder Hall in Cumbria in 1956 – which, ultimately, helped to squeeze out coal generation.
Over the decades that followed, the UK’s nuclear capacity climbed to a peak of 12.2 gigawatts (GW) in 1995, while electricity output from the fleet of reactors peaked in 1998.
The chart below shows the contribution of each of the UK’s nuclear plants to the country’s overall capacity, according to when they started and stopped operating.
The reactors are dotted around the UK’s coastline, where they can take advantage of cooling seawater, and many sites include multiple units coded with numbers or letters.
Since Sizewell B was completed in 1995, however, no new nuclear plants have been built – and, as the chart above shows, capacity has ebbed away as older reactors have gone out of service.
After a lengthy hiatus, the Hinkley C new nuclear plant in Somerset was signed off in 2016. It is now under construction and expected to start operating by 2030 at the earliest.
(Efforts to secure further new nuclear schemes at Moorside in Cumbria failed in 2017, while projects led by Hitachi at Wylfa on Anglesey and Oldbury in Gloucestershire collapsed in 2019.)
The additional schemes just given the go-ahead in Reeves’s spending review would – if successful – somewhat revive the UK’s nuclear capacity, after decades of decline.
However, with the closure of all but one of the UK’s existing reactors due by 2030, nuclear-power capacity would remain below its 1995 peak, unless further projects are built.
Moreover, with the UK’s electricity demand set to double over the next few decades, as transport, heat and industry are increasingly electrified, nuclear power is unlikely to match the 29% share of generation that it reached during the late 1990s.
There is an aspirational goal – set under former Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson – for nuclear to supply “up to” a quarter of the UK’s electricity in 2050, with “up to” 24GW of capacity.
Assuming Sizewell B continues to operate until 2055 and that Hinkley C, Sizewell C and at least three Rolls-Royce SMRs are all built, this would take UK capacity back up to 9.0GW.
Methodology
The chart is based on data from the World Nuclear Association, with known start dates for operating and retired reactors, as well as planned closure dates announced by operator EDF.
The timeline for new reactors to start operating – and assumed 60-year lifetime – is illustrative, based on published information from EDF, Rolls-Royce, the UK government and media reports.
The post Chart: The rise, fall and rise of UK nuclear power over eight decades appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Chart: The rise, fall and rise of UK nuclear power over eight decades
DeBriefed 13 June 2025: Trump’s ‘biggest’ climate rollback; UK goes nuclear; How Carbon Brief visualises research
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