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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
Gearing up
PRE-COP COMMITMENTS: China has “become the defender of international cooperation on climate change”, said state-sponsored newspaper Global Times the day before COP30 opened. China’s commitment to “dual carbon” goals will be the “driving force” of building a “beautiful China”, said an article by the Communist party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily under the byline of Wang Huning, chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
WORLD’S EXPECTATIONS: China’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, Geng Shuang, said the country is “globally recognised as the [one] with the strongest determination, the most vigorous actions” on tackling climate issues, reported news agency Xinhua. John Kerry, former US climate envoy, told the Shanghai-based Paper: “The global climate agenda has undergone a fundamental shift, and calls are being made for China to continue playing a leading role in the event of a possible absence of the US.”
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FINANCE PLEA: Meanwhile, Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva “urged” China’s vice premier Ding Xuexiang at a pre-COP30 meeting to “join financing initiatives for climate transition and resilience” and “help fund green technology and investment projects”, said the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP).
‘OUTPERFORM[ING]’ TARGETS: Most experts in a new survey expect China to “outperform” its 2035 emissions-reduction target, reported Bloomberg. About 71% of the surveyed experts believe China’s carbon-emission peak will “happen between 2026 and 2030, with most expecting it in 2028” – ahead of the official timeline of 2030, said Agence France-Presse.
Early moves
‘PROMISES KEPT’: China “keeps its promises and delivers on its commitments” on climate change, Ding said on 6 November, in remarks at COP30’s leaders summit, according to a transcript published by Communist party-affiliated newspaper the People’s Daily. Ding suggested that, to “advance” climate action, the world must “stay on the right track”, balancing “environmental protection, economic development, job creation and poverty eradication”. In addition, Ding said countries must “remove trade barriers” if the world is to meet its targets, said BBC News.
BUILDING COALITIONS: Over the weekend ahead of COP, Brazil, China and the UK co-led a summit on methane, launching initiatives that could “accelerate global action on methane and other non-CO2 greenhouse gases”, said a press release published on the COP30 website. These included “mobilising” at least $150m to support seven developing countries’ efforts, it added. China and the EU also agreed to join a Brazilian-led carbon-market coalition, Bloomberg reported, which “aims to develop common standards for monitoring, reporting and verification”.
TFFF FOREGONE: There are “still no guarantees” that China will contribute to Brazil’s Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), CNN Brasil said, contrary to reporting by Reuters in July that China might invest in the fund. The outlet added that Brazil may be able to push for Chinese participation again at the G20 meeting in late November. SCMP said “Chinese negotiators told their Brazilian counterparts that Beijing supported the fund in principle”, but cited the common but differentiated responsibilities concept as a reason not to commit.
OPENING STATEMENTS: In the face of an “intensifying” climate crisis, China “will not stop supporting” international action, Huang said at the opening of the China pavilion at COP30, attended by Carbon Brief. A number of representatives of major international organisations – including the UNFCCC’s Simon Stiell, the UN climate advisor Selwin Hart, UNEP executive director Inger Andersen – as well as Chinese climate envoy Liu Zhenmin all spoke at the event. Hart captured the mood, saying: “We are certain to count on the leadership of China over the course of the next two weeks, and also over the next decade.”
Trade spats
AGENDA FIGHT: The agenda for COP30 was “adopted on Monday as originally drafted without any amendments”, despite a request by a country group that includes China that the lineup include “provision of finance from rich countries and unilateral trade measures” such as the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism, Climate Home News reported. The topics are instead being discussed in presidency-led consultations, alongside calls from small-island states to push for greater emissions-cutting ambition and from the EU on emissions reporting. Carbon Brief’s Simon Evans set out the issues on Bluesky.
RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW: The Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDCs) group – of which China is a part – together with the Arab Group stated that unilateral trade measures “penalise developing countries and impact their ability to take action to address climate change”, reported Earth Negotiation Bulletin. They pushed back against arguments by Japan, the EU and others that discussions of unilateral trade measures would be “more appropriate under the World Trade Organization”, it added.
PRESIDENCY PAUSE: A “stocktaking plenary” on Wednesday ended abruptly with COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago announcing a further plenary on Saturday. Do Lago said that – despite “more than eight hours” of discussions – further consultations were still needed. Rumours are flying around how Brazil will manage this, with many expecting a COP30 decision responding to these thorny issues. It may be called a “cover decision” or be part of a “mutirão package”, a reference to an Indigenous word for collective efforts.
Cough up the cash
INDIA FOR BASIC: Meanwhile, according to a government press release, India has submitted a statement on behalf of the BASIC group, an institution initiated by China, as well as LMDCs, reaffirming that the “architecture of the Paris Agreement must not be altered, and that [common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR)] remains the cornerstone of the global climate regime”. It added that “developed countries must…fulfil their obligations on finance, technology transfer and capacity-building to developing countries”, in particular by increasing adaptation finance flows by “nearly fifteen times” from current levels.
STATUS QUO: Chinese delegates have repeatedly emphasised China’s status as a developing country and the need for CBDR in early statements at COP. Writing in the Backchannel substack, Asia Society Policy Institute China climate hub and climate diplomacy director Kate Logan and E3G senior policy advisor Lily Hartzell wrote that China’s “high-level delegations have cautiously avoided any wording that might suggest a bid for formal climate leadership, particularly when it comes to climate finance”.
LEADING COMMENT: In his speech at the leaders’ summit, Ding stated that “developed countries should fulfill their obligations to take the lead in reducing emissions, honour their financial commitments and provide developing countries with more technical and capacity-building support”. This contrasts his address at COP29, where Ding highlighted China’s role in “provid[ing] and mobilis[ing]” climate finance – sparking much speculation that the country may soon change its approach to the topic.
COME BACK TO US: Li Gao, the head of China’s delegation at COP30, told Agence France-Presse that China “welcome[d]” the “Baku to Belém roadmap” towards the aspirational target of $1.3tn in climate finance by 2035 from all sources, but that it is “crucial” for the developed countries to fulfil their $300bn commitment made at COP29. Li added that “we hope that some day, and we also believe that some day in the future, the US will come back”, because “addressing climate change needs every country”.
Global south solidarity
KEY THEME: China is working towards “jointly creating a green future” for the global south, Huang said in a session on south-south development held on the first day of COP30, attended by Carbon Brief. He added: “We pay attention to the needs of developing countries.” President of the Belt and Road International Green Development Coalition (BRIGC) Zhao Yingmin said on a separate event at the China pavilion that “construction of the [Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)] is also an important driver for developing countries to advance their green transitions”. A number of initiatives were publicised during the first few days of COP, including an agreement between China, Malawi and Kenya on clean cooking and a project to collate “global case studies on green development” by BRIGC.
BUILDING CAPACITY: The BRIGC programme is “exactly the type of example we want [to see at] the COP – implementation, implementation, implementation”, said COP30 CEO Ana Toni, speaking at the launch event attended by Carbon Brief. Selwin Hart, special adviser to the secretary-general on climate action and just transition at the United Nations, emphasised at a China pavilion event that Brazil and China showed “leadership” in climate action, noting that “you [emerging economies] understand us better” than developed countries – referencing an understanding of the need for capacity building in global south countries.
‘FRANK REMARKS’: Meanwhile, an opinion article in the state-supporting Global Times, bylined simply as “Global Times”, quoted COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago saying “You can’t insist that China has to lower its emissions [and then] complain that China is putting cheap [electric vehicles] all over the world”. It added that these “frank remarks should serve as a wake-up call” against “politicising China’s green efforts”.
STRONG INTEREST: The two events on south-south cooperation, both attended by Carbon Brief, appeared to be the best-attended China pavilion events so far. One audience member, a Brazilian chemical engineer, told Carbon Brief that she was attending the session because she was interested in understanding China’s experience of navigating the energy transition as a developing country.
Views on the energy transition
‘CONCRETE PROGRESS’: “We have made concrete progress in energy transformation”, Li said at the China pavilion, adding it involved a “very hard effort”. Climate envoy Liu noted at the same event that “China, as a major country, reaffirms its confidence in achieving the [Paris Agreement] goals”. He said that China “sees the next 10 years as a critical period for delivering on the commitments made under the Paris Agreement”, adding: “We look forward to all countries delivering their contributions on this goal.”
FOSSIL PHASE-OUT?: In his opening speech at the leaders’ summit, Brazil’s Lula called on world leaders to draw roadmaps to “overcome dependence on fossil fuels”, adding that he was “convinced” that this could be done “despite [countries’] difficulties and contradictions”, Argus Media reported. In the opening session of the China pavilion, attended by Carbon Brief, UNEP’s Andersen said she “encourage[d] China to take even bolder action…[and] explore setting targets on coal”.
PRIORITIES FOR 2030: Lyu Wenbin, director general of China’s Energy Research Institute, stated that a key task in the next five years included “improving the quality of energy supply”, including “boosting non-fossil energy” while “shifting coal power to a supporting role” in the energy mix. He added that in the medium- to long-term, China will build an energy system that has “non-fossil energy as the main supply [of power] and fossil energy as a guarantee [of energy security]”.
FLAT OR FALLING: Meanwhile, analysis for Carbon Brief found that China’s carbon dioxide emissions were “unchanged from a year earlier in the third quarter of 2025, extending a flat or falling trend that started in March 2024”. The analysis has been covered widely in publications including China’s Global Times, the New York Times, Financial Times, Reuters, Bloomberg and on the frontpage of the Guardian.
Captured
Bai Quan, director of the Energy Research Institute of the Academy of Macroeconomic Research – a research institution managed by the National Development and Reform Commission – outlined how China’s energy landscape might evolve between 2024 and 2060, during the launch of the China Energy Transformation Outlook (CETO) 2025 at the China Pavilion, attended by Carbon Brief. Guest posts for Carbon Brief on previous CETO reports can be found here and here.
Watch, read, listen
EV MARKET: Research institute the Centre for Strategic and International Studies published a series of two videos talking about China’s EVs in the global market.
HEALTH AND CLIMATE CHANGE: The “Lancet Countdown” China report led by Tsinghua University found that “climate-related health risks in China reached record levels last year”, according to media outlet China.org.cn.
‘DOCUMENT 136’: China Power Enterprise Management analysed the impact of China’s “document 136” pricing reforms for new renewable energy projects.
CHINA-LAOS: A long article by Sky News talked about China’s “green technology exports” in developing countries, such as Laos.
789
The number of delegates China has sent to Belém, according to analysis by Carbon Brief. This includes more than 100 party delegates and almost 700 “overflow” delegates, including from local government, the private sector, non-government organisations and foreign consulting firms.
New science
Scientific Reports
“Environmental penalties indirectly influence climate-friendly technological innovation through their effects on the digital economy and financial technology”, according to a new study. The paper used data from Chinese cities to model this influence. The authors found that environmental penalties have a “U-shaped” effect, noting a “critical inflection point where environmental penalties shift from promoting to inhibiting these innovations”.
Scientific Reports
New research investigated the “carbon rebound effect”, defined in the paper as “the phenomenon in which, after energy efficiency improvements, carbon emissions rebound due to increased economic activity, thus undermining the reduction in emissions achieved through efficiency gains”. Using machine-learning methods, the authors assessed data from Chinese cities collected over 2010-21. According to the paper, the effect is stronger in the north of China than the south and in the east than the west.
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 November 2025: COP30 special appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Climate Change
DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?
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.
Seven Pacific island nations say they will demand heftier levies on global shipping emissions if opponents of a green deal for the industry succeed in reopening negotiations on the stalled accord.
The United States and Saudi Arabia persuaded countries not to grant final approval to the International Maritime Organization’s Net-Zero Framework (NZF) in October and they are now leading a drive for changes to the deal.
In a joint submission seen by Climate Home News, the seven climate-vulnerable Pacific countries said the framework was already a “fragile compromise”, and vowed to push for a universal levy on all ship emissions, as well as higher fees . The deal currently stipulates that fees will be charged when a vessel’s emissions exceed a certain level.
“For many countries, the NZF represents the absolute limit of what they can accept,” said the unpublished submission by Fiji, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Nauru, Palau, Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands.
The countries said a universal levy and higher charges on shipping would raise more funds to enable a “just and equitable transition leaving no country behind”. They added, however, that “despite its many shortcomings”, the framework should be adopted later this year.
US allies want exemption for ‘transition fuels’
The previous attempt to adopt the framework failed after governments narrowly voted to postpone it by a year. Ahead of the vote, the US threatened governments and their officials with sanctions, tariffs and visa restrictions – and President Donald Trump called the framework a “Green New Scam Tax on Shipping”.
Since then, Liberia – an African nation with a major low-tax shipping registry headquartered in the US state of Virginia – has proposed a new measure under which, rather than staying fixed under the NZF, ships’ emissions intensity targets change depending on “demonstrated uptake” of both “low-carbon and zero-carbon fuels”.
The proposal places stringent conditions on what fuels are taken into consideration when setting these targets, stressing that the low- and zero-carbon fuels should be “scalable”, not cost more than 15% more than standard marine fuels and should be available at “sufficient ports worldwide”.
This proposal would not “penalise transitional fuels” like natural gas and biofuels, they said. In the last decade, the US has built a host of large liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals, which the Trump administration is lobbying other countries to purchase from.
The draft motion, seen by Climate Home News, was co-sponsored by US ally Argentina and also by Panama, a shipping hub whose canal the US has threatened to annex. Both countries voted with the US to postpone the last vote on adopting the framework.
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IMO head: Shipping decarbonisation “has started” despite green deal delay
Arsenio Dominguez said the shipping industry’s net zero emissions goal is not in dispute although countries have stalled on adopting a framework to reach it -
US-led alliance wins a year’s delay in adoption of green shipping deal
The IMO’s Net-Zero Framework will be up for approval again in October 2026, after the US and Saudi Arabia persuaded countries not to vote on it as planned
The IMO’s Panamanian head Arsenio Dominguez told reporters in January that changes to the framework were now possible.
“It is clear from what happened last year that we need to look into the concerns that have been expressed [and] … make sure that they are somehow addressed within the framework,” he said.
Patchwork of levies
While the European Union pushed firmly for the framework’s adoption, two of its shipping-reliant member states – Greece and Cyprus – abstained in October’s vote.
After a meeting between the Greek shipping minister and Saudi Arabia’s energy minister in January, Greece said a “common position” united Greece, Saudi Arabia and the US on the framework.
If the NZF or a similar instrument is not adopted, the IMO has warned that there will be a patchwork of differing regional levies on pollution – like the EU’s emissions trading system for ships visiting its ports – which will be complicated and expensive to comply with.
This would mean that only countries with their own levies and with lots of ships visiting their ports would raise funds, making it harder for other nations to fund green investments in their ports, seafarers and shipping companies. In contrast, under the NZF, revenues would be disbursed by the IMO to all nations based on set criteria.
Anais Rios, shipping policy officer from green campaign group Seas At Risk, told Climate Home News the proposal by the Pacific nations for a levy on all shipping emissions – not just those above a certain threshold – was “the most credible way to meet the IMO’s climate goals”.
“With geopolitics reframing climate policy, asking the IMO to reopen the discussion on the universal levy is the only way to decarbonise shipping whilst bringing revenue to manage impacts fairly,” Rios said.
“It is […] far stronger than the Net-Zero Framework that is currently on offer.”
The post Pacific nations want higher emissions charges if shipping talks reopen appeared first on Climate Home News.
Pacific nations want higher emissions charges if shipping talks reopen
Doubts over whether governments will maintain ambitious targets on boosting the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) are a threat to the industry’s growth and play into the hands of fossil fuel companies, investors warned this week.
Several executives from airlines and oil firms have forecast recently that SAF requirements in the European Union, United Kingdom and elsewhere will be eased or scrapped altogether, potentially upending the aviation industry’s main policy to shrink air travel’s growing carbon footprint.
Such speculation poses a “fundamental threat” to the SAF industry, which mainly produces an alternative to traditional kerosene jet fuel using organic feedstocks such as used cooking oil (UCO), Thomas Engelmann, head of energy transition at German investment manager KGAL, told the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Investor conference in London.
He said fossil fuel firms would be the only winners from questions about compulsory SAF blending requirements.
The EU and the UK introduced the world’s first SAF mandates in January 2025, requiring fuel suppliers to blend at least 2% SAF with fossil fuel kerosene. The blending requirement will gradually increase to reach 32% in the EU and 22% in the UK by 2040.
Another case of diluted green rules?
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, CEO of French oil and gas company TotalEnergies Patrick Pouyanné said he would bet “that what happened to the car regulation will happen to the SAF regulation in Europe”.
The EU watered down green rules for car-makers in March 2025 after lobbying from car companies, Germany and Italy.
“You will see. Today all the airline companies are fighting [against the EU’s 2030 SAF target of 6%],” Pouyanne said, even though it’s “easy to reach to be honest”.
While most European airline lobbies publicly support the mandates, Ryanair Group CEO Michael O’Leary said last year that the SAF is “nonsense” and is “gradually dying a death, which is what it deserves to do”.
EU and UK stand by SAF targets
But the EU and the British government have disputed that. EU transport commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas said in November that the EU’s targets are “stable”, warning that “investment decisions and construction must start by 2027, or we will miss the 2030 targets”.
UK aviation minister Keir Mather told this week’s investor event that meeting the country’s SAF blending requirement of 10% by 2030 was “ambitious but, with the right investment, the right innovation and the right outlook, it is absolutely within our reach”.
“We need to go further and we need to go faster,” Mather said.
SAF investors and developers said such certainty on SAF mandates from policymakers was key to drawing the necessary investment to ramp up production of the greener fuel, which needs to scale up in order to bring down high production costs. Currently, SAF is between two and seven times more expensive than traditional jet fuel.
Urbano Perez, global clean molecules lead at Spanish bank Santander, said banks will not invest if there is a perceived regulatory risk.
David Scott, chair of Australian SAF producer Jet Zero Australia, said developing SAF was already challenging due to the risks of “pretty new” technology requiring high capital expenditure.
“That’s a scary model with a volatile political environment, so mandate questioning creates this problem on steroids”, Scott said.
Others played down the risk. Glenn Morgan, partner at investment and advisory firm SkiesFifty, said “policy is always a risk”, adding that traditional oil-based jet fuel could also lose subsidies.
Asian countries join SAF mandate adopters
In Asia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Japan have recently adopted SAF mandates, and Matti Lievonen, CEO of Asia-based SAF producer EcoCeres, predicted that China, Indonesia and Hong Kong would follow suit.
David Fisken, investment director at the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, said the Australian government, which does not have a mandate, was watching to see how the EU and UK’s requirements played out.
The US does not have a SAF mandate and under President Donald Trump the government has slashed tax credits available for SAF producers from $1.75 a gallon to $1.
Is the world’s big idea for greener air travel a flight of fancy?
SAF and energy security
SAF’s potential role in boosting energy security was a major theme of this week’s discussions as geopolitical tensions push the issue to the fore.
Marcella Franchi, chief commercial officer for SAF at France’s Haffner Energy, said the Canadian government, which has “very unsettling neighbours at the moment”, was looking to produce SAF to protect its energy security, especially as it has ample supplies of biomass to use as potential feedstock.
Similarly, German weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall said last year it was working on plans that would enable European armed forces to produce their own synthetic, carbon-neutral fuel “locally and independently of global fossil fuel supply chain”.
Scott said Australia needs SAF to improve its fuel security, as it imports almost 99% of its liquid fuels.
He added that support for Australian SAF production is bipartisan, in part because it appeals to those more concerned about energy security than tackling climate change.
The post Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn appeared first on Climate Home News.
Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn
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