Published

8 months ago

June 26, 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

First ministerial China-UK ‘climate dialogue’

UK-CHINA CATCH UP: On 16 June, Huang Runqiu, head of China’s Ministry of Economy and Environment (MEE), met Ed Miliband, the UK’s secretary of state for energy and climate change, as well as Rachel Kyte, UK’s special representative for climate, in London, reported Chinese media outlet Jiemian News. The meeting was the first of a “new annual UK-China climate dialogue” announced during Miliband’s trip to China in March. The meeting has not been widely reported by major Chinese state media or English-language outlets. A short report from the MEE said the ministers discussed multilateral climate governance and “next steps” for climate cooperation. The MEE also said they had agreed to cooperate in areas such as adaptation, carbon markets, climate “investment and [private] financing” (气候投融资) and methane emissions controls.

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‘NEW CLIMATE AGREEMENT’: While there was no public announcement on the event from the UK side, a government spokesperson told Carbon Brief via email: “There is no route to energy security for today’s generation without our clean energy mission, and there is no climate security and no route to keeping future generations safe without engaging global climate action. It is negligent not to engage with China on their important role in reducing global emissions.” The government email said that at the meeting, the UK had “secured a new climate agreement with China”, explaining that the two ministers “signed a new climate memorandum of understanding [MoU], setting out where both countries can work together to reduce global emissions, such as climate change mitigation and emissions reduction targets”.

‘FRANK CONVERSATIONS’: According to the UK government email, Miliband had “frank conversations” with his counterpart. It added that the new MoU offered a “forum to encourage greater action from China”, including “more ambitious targets”. It also “allows the UK and China to collaborate on…measuring and controlling methane emissions…[and] climate finance”. The inclusion of methane in the MoU “suggests the UK is looking to work with China in areas that the US previously did”, according to an individual who participated in the talks.

CHINA-EU: A few days earlier on 13 June, Huang had attended the 10th China-EU ministerial dialogue in Belgium, meeting Jessika Roswall, EU commissioner for environment, water resilience and a competitive circular economy, reported China Environment News. Huang said facing “multiple challenges in environmental and climate governance”, there is a “greater need” to strengthen cooperation between EU and China, added the outlet. The Chinese state news agency Xinhua published two articles praising the EU and China’s “green-energy” partnership as well as “green cooperation”. Meanwhile, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen “accused Beijing of deliberately creating a near-monopoly” in the global rare-earth supply at the G7 summit in Canada on 16 June, adding that “no single country” should control 80-90% of the “raw materials and downstream products like magnets”, reported the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

China’s oil demand to ‘peak in 2027’

PEAK IN 2027: Following the ongoing debate on whether China’s oil demand has already peaked, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said that it would “top out in 2027” – two years earlier than previously forecasted – “reinforcing the outlook for a global peak and prolonged supply surplus this decade”, reported Bloomberg. Japanese media outlet Nikkei Asia said “slowing demand” in China, which had accounted for 60% of oil demand growth in the world in the past decade, marked what the IEA called a “fundamental transformation” of the global energy market. However, according to Reuters, the IEA “stuck to its prediction that global [oil] demand will peak by 2029”, despite China’s more rapid transition. The news agency added that the IEA’s view “sharply contrasts with that of producer group OPEC, which says [global oil] consumption will keep growing for much longer”. In its coverage of the IEA report, the Times said China’s early peak was due to the “unexpectedly ‘breakneck’ switch to electric vehicle[s] (EVs)”. The sale of EVs surpassed more than one million in May, up 24% from a year ago, reported Reuters. China’s “trade-in” subsidies that boosted sales of EVs, however, were suspended in some cities as “funds run short and officials scrutinise the prevalence of zero-mileage used cars”, according to Bloomberg.

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ENERGY TRENDS: China’s demand for imported liquified natural gas (LNG) is expected to fall by 6-11% this year, said Reuters. This “unusual downturn” would be the first fall in three years due to “weak industrial demand and strong domestic and piped gas supply”, added the newswire. Separately, China’s thermal power output – mostly coal – grew 1.2% from a year earlier in May – the first rise since November – reported Bloomberg, attributing the rise to heatwave-induced demand and weak hydro output. Covering heavy rain that also caused floods (see below), Bloomberg reported that the “filling up” of rivers and reservoirs in central and southern China that “feed the country’s mighty dams” posed a “threat to the coal market that competes with hydropower in electricity generation”. Meanwhile, the Chinese government said that China’s overall energy intensity decreased by a cumulative 11.6% over 2021-24, reported state broadcaster CCTV. The outlet added: “This is equivalent to saving 1.4bn tonnes of standard coal and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by about 3bn tonnes.”

‘Worst flood’ and record-breaking rain

FLOODS AND HEATWAVES: The government issued its most severe “red” flood alerts for the first time this year after heavy rains in central and southern China, reported Reuters. State broadcaster CCTV said that floods “exceeding the warning level” occurred in 27 rivers across the country. Huaiji, a county in southern Guangdong province, was “hit with [the] worst flood in a century”, said state broadcaster China Global Television Network (CGTN). Record-breaking rain also fell in Hunan province in central China, affecting more than 400,000 people, reported Xinhua. About 400 ninth-grade students and 30 teachers were evacuated in Guangxi, in the south, the day before the senior high school entrance examination, said Xinhua. Meanwhile, ahead of the arrival of the first typhoon of the year, named Wutip, more than 16,000 people were transferred to safer places from “construction sites, low-lying flood-prone areas and regions at risk of flash floods” in Hainan province in south China, said Xinhua. At the same time, parts of China were hit by a “brutal heatwave”, with Xinjiang province in the northwest experiencing temperatures of up to 46.8C, according to the Guardian.

FLOOD RELIEF: About 60m yuan ($8m) were issued “to bolster flood relief efforts in Guangdong Province”, said Xinhua. In addition, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), “urgently” allocated 100m yuan ($14m) to support “disaster relief work” in Guizhou, with an additional 100m yuan to Guangdong and Hunan, according to China News.

China ‘will cap’ carbon market emissions by 2030

WIDER COVERAGE: China is planning to expand the coverage of its national emissions trading scheme (ETS) to “ALL industry sectors and aviation by 2027”, according to a LinkedIn post by Yan Qin, principal analyst at consultancy firm Clearblue Markets, citing a new “high-level policy (Opinions)” document dated 24 May. The document – not seen by Carbon Brief – has been named publicly and, while its contents have not been put into the public domain, they have been “confirmed…by analysts with access to the draft”, reported Table.Briefings. In his own LinkedIn post, Lauri Myllyvirta, co-founder of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) said it was not yet clear if the expansion would only cover “main emitting sectors” – likely including the chemicals industry at a minimum, said Myllyvirta – or all industry and aviation, as Qin suggested.

CARBON CAP: According to Qin’s post, the plan would also “introduce absolute [emissions] allowance caps for sectors with stabilised emissions, starting in 2027, and [an] absolute cap for the ETS by 2030”. To date, the ETS has only covered the power sector and has lacked an absolute cap on emissions. New sectoral caps would be conditional, according to Table.Briefings, which described this flexibility as an “escape hatch”. In his post, Myllyvirta said: “The introduction of a national [ETS] cap by 2030 is in line with expectations – that’s when China’s emissions are supposed to have peaked, at the latest, and when the focus shifts from reducing carbon intensity to absolute emission cuts, in the current policy roadmap.” He added that while past slippage on ETS implementation gave “reason to be skeptical about any new timelines”, the document did “imply to me that there is a push from the top to make the ETS…relevant in China’s decarbonisation effort”.

1,084,450,000

The capacity of China’s solar-power installations – some 1.08 terawatts (TW), up 57% year-on-year – as of May 2025, according to China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) and reported by PV magazine. China added 198 gigawatts (GW) of new solar capacity in the first five months of the year, reported the Guardian, including 93GW in May alone.

Spotlight

China and the world’s climate cooperation in dilemma

A group of prominent experts of climate policy from academia, thinktanks and civil society shared their thoughts about China and climate change at the 2025 Bath Conference on China & Global Sustainability Transition earlier this week, organised by the SGAIN project at the University of Bath.

A wide range of topics – including the potential for China to show climate leadership – were discussed under the Chatham House rule. Carbon Brief outlines some of the key messages from the conference.

In an on-the-record opening keynote, Erik Solheim, former minister of climate and the environment of Norway and former executive director of the UN environment programme, said that, while European leaders currently appear to have “no time for long-term environmental problems”, China’s president Xi Jinping has been speaking a “lot more about the environment”.

Xi’s attitude was illustrated by his “two mountains” theory, said Solheim. He added that this theory – showing that “going green is not just for the environment, going green is also good for the economy” – was the “primary driver” of China’s “green transition”.

In a second on-the-record keynote, Kate Logan, director of the China climate hub and climate diplomacy at the Asia Society, said that other than the “new three” – solar panels, EVs and batteries – being a new engine of China’s economic growth, its exports of clean-energy technology have also surpassed that of “traditional energy”.

China has made major overseas climate-related investments, said Max Schmidt, a researcher from the Perspectives Climate Group, who agreed to be named despite the Chatham House rule.

Other speakers said that China’s overseas investments – both from the state and private capital – have largely shifted from infrastructure to renewable energy projects, while largely phasing out money going towards foreign coal plants.

Asked by Carbon Brief about ongoing Chinese investments in overseas coal-fired power, despite its pledge to end such activity, another speaker said that this commitment had been “by [and] large…diplomatic”. They added: “As we understood, it does not apply to what has already been in the pipeline.”

China’s role in the new international climate-finance goal agreed at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan last year. One speaker said:

“Strategically, we promote cooperation…[and] multilateralism…[But] if [the developed countries] say China needs to provide public [climate] funds, fill[ing] the gap left by the US, these prominent [Chinese climate] negotiators will definitely say no.”

Another speaker said that talks on climate finance between the UK and China have not been “very productive”.

The person said China urged developed countries, including the UK, to increase their climate finance, while the UK urged China to “count their south-south climate support towards the [international] climate finance goal”.

“Neither side wants to budge, so there has been little progress and it is unclear how the gap left by the US will be filled,” added the person.

In answering Carbon Brief’s question on how to move things forward, one speaker said:

“Stop trying to set any formal obligations for China…Instead, set an open-ended opportunity…Keep China happy and you will see…a lot of donations…That’s my understanding of dealing with the government for so many years.”

Addressing recent security concerns over China’s clean-energy exports, a speaker suggested that in an ideal world, the UK would have a “list” of products that it “welcomes” from China.

However, complex clean-energy products containing many components, such as EVs, present “huge grey areas”, which are “in the middle” and are likely to have to be decided on a “case-by-case basis” due to the uncertainty involved, added the speaker.

In the US, meanwhile, “climate conversations” were being “disrupted” by another factor – the supply of critical minerals amid geopolitical concerns – according to a different speaker, who said this was intensified by China “leapfrogg[ing]” in the EV industry.

Another speaker said that critical minerals were being “politicalised”, in part because of the different ways they are used in each country.

The speaker said that critical minerals had a wide range of uses. For the US they were mainly used in semiconductors, petrochemicals and defence, whereas China also used them in EVs and wind turbines, they explained.

Speaking to Carbon Brief on the sidelines of the event, Dr Yixian Sun, who leads the SGAIN project, said that the rest of the world could take “useful lessons” from China’s efforts towards sustainable development. He added:

“To keep the 1.5C goal alive, stronger international cooperation is urgently needed – to help China deepen its own transition and [to] develop inclusive partnerships with the rest of the world.”

Watch, read, listen

EMISSIONS PEAKED?: Bloomberg’s “Zero” podcast interviewed CREA’s Myllyvirta, about whether China’s emissions have “finally peaked”, citing his analysis for Carbon Brief.

‘GREEN DEVELOPMENT’: Prof Bai Quan, from the Academy of Macroeconomic Research (AMR) under China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), who Carbon Brief interviewed last year, published an article about “green development” at state-run media outlet Economic Daily.

INDUSTRY MITIGATION: Prof He Kebin, dean of the Institute for Carbon Neutrality at Tsinghua University, gave a talk about “industrial decarbonisation”, reported China Energy Net.
‘NATIONAL LOW-CARBON DAY’: A short video promoting combating climate change for China’s “national low-carbon day” (25 June) was produced and published by the MEE.

New science

Persistent emissions of ozone-depleting carbon tetrachloride from China during 2011–2021

Nature Geoscience

China was responsible for half of the world’s emissions of the ozone-depleting greenhouse gas carbon tetrachloride over 2011-20, according to new research. The paper used both long-term atmospheric observations from a network of sites from across China and a “top-down approach” to estimate the country’s carbon tetrachloride emissions. The authors noted that “substantial” carbon tetrachloride emissions are permitted for feedstock use in China, but still found thousands of tonnes of “unexplained” carbon tetrachloride emissions from the country per year.

Impact of the 2022/2023 extreme heatwave-drought on forests in North China: assessing canopy dieback and its driving factors

Agricultural and Forest Meteorology

The extreme heatwave and drought in North China in 2022-23 caused more than 80,000 hectares of forest canopy dieback, a new study found. The researchers used remote sensing forest monitoring algorithms and drone-captured images to identify forest canopy dieback during this period. The most severe dieback occurred in May 2023, they found. Areas with high forest cover were hardest hit in the early stages of the extreme weather, which suggests that “afforestation efforts may have inadvertently increased forest vulnerability”, the study authors wrote. They added that this extreme weather event was “highly severe, widespread, and prolonged, causing historically low anomalies in regional greenness and productivity”.

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 26 June 2025: First UK-China climate dialogue; China-climate conference summary; Oil peak ‘in 2027’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.

China Briefing 26 June 2025: First UK-China climate dialogue; China-climate conference summary; Oil peak ‘in 2027’

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”.

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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