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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
Floods in the south, drought in the north
EXTREME WEATHER: China has been hit by extreme weather over the past two weeks. About 35% of its corn production was affected by severe drought in north China where some rivers had “dried up a month ago”, reported Reuters. In the south, torrential rain and flooding killed at least 38 people in Guangdong province – China’s most populated – as well as eight people in Hunan province and two in Anhui province. Local newspaper Guangxi Daily reported that this week’s floods in Guilin, capital city of Guangxi province, were the largest in the area since 1998. Chinese president Xi Jinping “has urged all-out efforts to fight floods and droughts, and to ensure solid work in disaster relief”, said state agency Xinhua. Some 33 rivers in China “exceeded warning levels”, according to Xinhua.
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GLOBAL WARNING: Yang Pingjian, director of the environmental sociology department at the Chinese Academy of Environmental Sciences, wrote in China Environment News that “the adverse effects of climate change have become more and more obvious: heavy rainfall, typhoons, hail and other extreme weather occur” in China. The National Climate Center said that China is “experiencing more frequent and intense heatwaves due to global warming”, reported China Daily. The “average onset of high temperatures (those exceeding 35C) has advanced by 2.5 days per decade” and the average heatwave starting date has moved from 24 June in 1981-1990 to 7 June in 2011-2020, the outlet added. New research covered by the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post found that “widespread heat stress will be felt by most of China’s population by the end of the century due to climate change, with the north of the country expected to be hit hardest”.
SUMMER PRESSURE: These high temperatures may cause peak electricity consumption to grow by more than 100 gigawatts (GW) year-on-year during this summer’s peak period, putting pressure on “ensuring power supply”, China Securities Journal reported. Writing in financial newspaper Caixin, Qin Qi, China analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) noted that this expected 100GW increase is “similar to 2022’s growth, which saw power shortages and blackouts”, adding that this “highlighted the need for a more flexible inter-provincial electricity trading mechanism”. She also pointed to the need for flexible grid operations and demand-side measures to help China “effectively manage peak demand pressures without compromising its climate commitments”.
Renewable energy pushed thermal power into decline
THERMAL DECLINE: A surge in solar power and hydropower in China in May led to a 4.3% decline in thermal power – mainly coal – that month, Bloomberg reported, adding that this supported earlier Carbon Brief analysis finding China’s emissions may fall this year. The drop in thermal power was the largest since 2022 and could continue as long as China does not “reprioritise carbon-heavy investment to revive growth”, the outlet added. Hydropower generation rose 38.6% year-on-year in May 2024 and solar by 29.1%, state-run industry newspaper China Energy Net said.
SOLAR CAPACITY: China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) pledged in a press conference to “guide production capacity expansion” and “prevent unnecessary investments” in the country’s solar manufacturing sector, following a call for help from industry participants “grappl[ing] with a surge in capacity”, according to finance newswire Yicai. Economic news outlet Jiemian quoted Li Chuangjun, director of the NEA’s new energy and renewable energy department, saying at the press conference that the industry should “avoid repetitive construction of low-end solar capacity”.
NO OVERCAPACITY?: NEA head Zhang Jianhua said at the same press conference that “whether from the perspective of comparative advantage or of global market demand, China’s new energy industry does not have a so-called ‘overcapacity’ problem”, state-run newspaper Science and Technology Daily reported. Zhang added that “supply moderately exceeding demand is helpful for achieving technological progress and reducing product costs”, and that the solar industry specifically is characterised by a strong private sector, “sufficient” competition and companies “choosing to expand production” due to “optimistic outlooks towards future markets”, according to the newspaper.
EU and China to discuss electric vehicle tariffs
NEW TALKS: After expressing opposition to the EU’s additional tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) and announcing an anti-dumping investigation into pork products from the EU, China agreed to a new discussion over the tariffs this week, the Financial Times reported. Bloomberg said the talks “may buy time” for China to “sow enough opposition” between EU member states, as Beijing suggested German luxury automakers “could benefit if Berlin convinces the EU to drop tariffs”.
MIDDLEMAN GERMANY?: Germany’s economy minister Robert Habeck, who visited China last weekend, showed there was an “open attitude of China and some politicians in the EU in seeking dialogue and cooperation amid trade friction”, said a Global Times’ editorial. Habeck said the EU’s tariffs measures were “not a punishment” and its “doors are open for discussions”, Reuters reported. The German Chamber of Commerce in East China, a business advocacy group, also argued that the EU tariffs “cannot offer protection to German carmakers or increase their competitiveness”, SCMP reported. Reuters said that China’s share of Germany’s EV imports rose to 40.9% in the first quarter of this year.
CHINA COMPROMISE?: China’s state-controlled Global Times newspaper wrote “observers said the best outcome the Chinese side wants is that the EC, the executive body of the EU, scrap its tariff decision before 4 July and abide by WTO rules”. Another state-run newspaper China Daily said in an editorial that Beijing is “willing…to try and resolve the reasonable concerns of the EU” and hopes that Brussels will avoid escalating frictions “by meeting China halfway”. In an interview with the Financial Times, Zhu Min, a member of China’s “five-year plan” committee, argued there was no “overcapacity” or “dumping” of cheap EVs on the European market. He said the price of EVs is higher overseas than in the domestic market and that China’s domestic buyer rebate also applied to foreign EV brands, such as Tesla in China, added the outlet.
EU-China climate dialogue and Li’s new commitment
CHINA-EU TALKS: Amid their ongoing tariff dispute, China and the EU held the fifth “high-level environment and climate dialogue” on 18 June, said Xinhua. The Chinese vice premier Ding Xuexiang and the European Commission’s Maroš Šefčovič agreed there were “common interests” and discussed “climate change and protecting the ecological environment”, the state news agency continued. Ding also said the EU’s tariff plan was “typical protectionism” which is “not conducive to the EU’s green transformation”, added the agency. China’s minister of ecology and environment, Huang Runqiu, and the EU’s commissioner for climate action, Wopke Hoekstra, signed “an updated memorandum of understanding to enhance cooperation on emissions trading”, the Chinese International Environment Net reported.
PREMIER’S REMARKS: The Chinese premier Li Qiang announced yesterday that “China is committed to addressing climate change and has been proactively developing green industries such as new energy” at the World Economic Forum’s “summer Davos” meetings in Dalian, China, Xinhua reported. Li said “the green transition itself holds immense potential for development” and that all nations should “create more growth drivers for the green economy”, added Xinhua. Reuters said Li also “hit back” at overcapacity accusations from the US and EU, arguing that China’s production of clean energy technologies “first met our domestic demand, but also enrich[es] global supply”. At a domestic conference, president Xi encouraged technology innovation and said Chinese EVs “add[ed] new momentum to the global automotive industry”, according to Xinhua.
Spotlight
How is China adapting to increasingly frequent flooding?
In recent years, China has seen more frequent floods caused by heavy rains. Dozens of people have died in south China this month due to torrential rain and flooding. In April, floods caused damage worth 12bn yuan ($1.65bn) – “the worst [losses] in 10 years”.
In this issue, Carbon Brief looks at the reasons for China’s recent floods and how the country is trying to adapt. A full version of this article will be published on Carbon Brief’s website.
Rising floods
There are various factors behind the frequent heavy rain and flooding in China in recent years.
In a press briefing covered by China Daily, Zheng Zhihai, chief forecaster at the National Climate Centre of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), said that “higher than normal temperatures” were behind frequent heavy rainfall in southern provinces since April.
China Daily noted: “This temperature increase has elevated the atmospheric moisture levels, intensified convective processes, and led to more frequent occurrences of heavy rainfall.”
Sea level rise has also been cited as a primary factor behind China’s coastal floods, as it increases the intensity and frequency of storm surges and raises baseline water levels.
The El Niño-Southern Oscillation, a natural climate cycle that entered its warmer El Niño phase in mid 2023, was partly to blame as it raised sea surface temperatures and directed vast amounts of water vapour from the South China Sea and the Bay of Bengal towards southern China, found one analysis.
Dr Faith Chan, head of the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China, told Carbon Brief that the rainfall pattern in Guangdong during this April was quite similar to the intensive rainstorm on 6-8 September in 2023 after Typhoon Haikui.
In addition to the natural causes, human activity also played a role. Chan said:
“Of course, the El Niño effect enhanced the wet and low-pressure moist current in the east coast of China and the west Pacific. But human-induced climate change led to the greenhouse effect and caused sea temperature to rise, which caused more storms and low-pressure rain belts. That is a fact.”
Indeed, Prof Yang Chen of the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences told Carbon Brief that human-caused intensification of heavy rainfall over China had been even larger than expected.
Adaptation measures
China has built a number of large water projects to prevent flooding, such as the south-north water transfer projects in the Yangtze river that was launched in 2002.
In the most recent “national water network construction planning outline” published by the State Council – China’s top administrative authority – constructing “national water networks” by 2035 is labelled as the “backbones” of future flood prevention.
China also launched the “sponge city programme (SCP)” in 2015.
Sponge cities cost the government 1.5–1.8bn yuan ($210-250m) between 2015 and 2018. They are designed to collect, purify and re-use at least 70% of the floodwaters through “green-blue facilities”, such as green roofs, permeable pavements and stormwater parks, in urban areas. The overall system was meant to resolve the issues of urban heating, freshwater scarcity and flooding all at once.
But the 2021 floods in Zhengzhou, a showcase sponge city, laid bare the inadequacy of the SCP in the face of climate change.
A paper suggested the SCP, which is designed to withstand one-in-30-year rain events, has limited effectiveness against more intense downpours.
Additionally, SCP can create a false sense of security, which encourages more people to move to high-risk areas, leading to an increase in population and assets in exposed areas that require ever-increasing protection in a cycle referred to as a “levee effect”, said Chen.
Meanwhile, a lack of coordination added another layer of difficulties. Zheng Yan, researcher at China Academy of Social Sciences, noted in the aftermath of the 2023 Beijing flood that government bodies often looked after their own jurisdiction and aimed only to move the problem and divert the floods quickly, which piled pressure on cities in downstream areas.
Looking abroad
As flooding is a challenge faced by cities across the world, there is a plethora of ideas and technologies that China can draw on.
Rotterdam, a Dutch delta city of 600,000 people that is surrounded by water on four sides, has built water storage facilities, such as an underground parking garage with a basin the size of four Olympic swimming pools. It has also installed green roofs and facades to absorb rainwater.
Japan has built an intricate network of concrete tunnels and vaults about 14 storeys beneath the Saitama prefecture in the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan’s capital city, that could hold more than 1,000 Olympic pools of rainwater.
Both cities’ underground flood diversion facilities are often used as a prime example of a viable flood defence system for urban cities on the frontline of climate change.
Hong Kong has a similar underground stormwater storage system beneath the sport pitches of the Happy Valley Racecourse, designed to withstand one-in-50-years flood events.
Chan said it is difficult to compare flood mitigation measures as each city is very different in terms of geography, demographic, densities and topography.
Nevertheless, he told Carbon Brief:
“In my opinion, China’s megacities should think about using underground spaces to store the sudden extreme discharge from super intensive rainstorms…Tokyo and Rotterdam are quite wise in that regard for using their underground spaces.”
This Spotlight is written by freelance climate journalist Jia Ning Tan for Carbon Brief.
Watch, read, listen
CHINA IN SPACE: The Economist’s “The Intelligence” podcast aired an episode about China becoming a “superpower” in the physical sciences.
RUSSIA-CHINA PIPELINE: A Financial Times podcast said Russia and China are “deadlocked” over a gas pipeline deal.
FARMING LAND: The Chinese communist party’s magazine Qiu Shi published an article by Hunan province’s communist theory study group on protecting arable land and the “political responsibilities” related to it.
CARBON FOOTPRINT: Finance outlet Southern Finance Omnimedia’s social media account 21 Low Carbon published an explanation of China’s new “national unified carbon footprint management system”.
$940m
The total value of an international “sustainability bond” issued by the Bank of China for investment in “renewable energy, sustainable water resources and wastewater management infrastructure projects” in the countries that joined China’s Belt and Road Initiatives (BRI). (The total value of loans for BRI countries reached $87bn in 2016 and $3.7bn in 2021.)
New science
Climate Policy
China and the US – two of the world’s biggest methane emitters – should make their methane policies more “climate-centric”, according to a new study. Existing policies relating to methane are concentrated in the energy sector and are “largely driven” by safety, pollution concerns and use of resources, rather than reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the study said. The researchers suggested that both countries should focus on methane mitigation and “consider more climate-centric policies”.
Energy Policy
The Chinese government has employed economic incentives to offset the financial impact of the clean energy transition, but “these measures may not fully address the underlying issue of climate apathy, wherein individuals prioritise immediate interests over long-term climate concerns”, a new study said. Surveying 4,700 Chinese adults each year for three years, the study found that those on low incomes were less likely to support climate policy, with “climate apathy” explaining a much larger share of this effect – some 38% – than “economic burden”, which only explained 8% of the effect on policy support. The authors concluded: “Addressing climate apathy is a cost-effective strategy to boost policy support.”
Investigating the impact of weather on stroke in summer
International Journal of Biometeorology
A new study collected data of stroke hospitalisation in the city of Tianjin, China, from 2016 to summer 2022. The study found a direct link between temperature extremes and hospitalisation: “83% of the Inpatient-heavy events within the study period were caused by a combination of dramatic temperature changes and continuous high temperatures.” The authors concluded: “More attention should be paid to the combined effects of continuous high temperature and sudden temperature changes in summer stroke prevention.”
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 27 June 2024: Extreme weather; New talks on EV tariffs; Coal power decline appeared first on Carbon Brief.
China Briefing 27 June 2024: Extreme weather; New talks on EV tariffs; Coal power decline
Starting on Monday, about 10,000 government negotiators, scientists, journalists and campaigners will gather at a purpose-built venue in a national park in Mongolia’s capital Ulaanbaatar to discuss how to stop land turning into desert as the world warms.
Drought is currently sweeping much of the Northern hemisphere, leaving normally green urban parks looking like dry savannah, causing crops to fail, food prices to rise and billions to be shaved off economic output.
On Wednesday, Britain’s prime minister chaired an emergency meeting of the government’s Cobra committee. These are usually reserved for wars, terrorist attacks, riots and pandemics – but this one was on the extreme heat and drought the UK has been suffering since May.
With many countries facing far worse with fewer resources than the UK, the issues to be discussed at the UN’s COP17 summit in Mongolia – often overlooked – should be nearer the top of policy-makers minds.
But what is COP17? What will be decided and announced there over the next two weeks? How does it relate to climate change and how will it help restore the lands on which we all rely for our food, water and other essential resources? Climate Home News explains all below.
What is COP17?
It is the conference of parties (COP) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). The parties are 196 governments, which includes all of the countries recognised by the UN.
The convention was conceived at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, at the same time as the other two larger “Rio trio” conventions on climate and biodiversity.
While the climate convention’s COP takes place every year, the UNCCD COP happens only once every two years. COP17 will be its seventeenth gathering.
What is desertification?
It is the process by which land degrades and becomes more like a desert, making it harder – and sometimes impossible – to grow crops or graze livestock there.
Climate change and other human activities – like excessive irrigation which depletes ground water – are making this process worse, causing poverty, hunger, health problems, forced migration and loss of species.
It’s a widespread problem. The UN estimates that half a billion people live within areas that have experienced desertification since the 1980s and that two-fifths of the world’s land is degraded.
What has it got to do with climate change?
The planet’s climate is heating up, mainly due to humans burning fossil fuels, and drying out its land. This kills plants and exposes the soil which can then be blown away by wind and washed away by water.
Without a top layer of soil, plants struggle to grow again and the land gets closer to being a desert. So combating desertification is a way of adapting to climate change.
It is also a way of lessening the pace of climate change, as land degradation releases carbon dioxide previously stored in healthy soils and plants.
What will be negotiated at COP17?
The main issue is what form a new initiative to tackle drought could take. The last COP saw Africa push hard for this to be a protocol – a kind of binding sub-treaty to the UNCCD.
But the US, Europe, Argentina and others argued that would take too long to set up, cost too much and take money away from what can be spent on the ground. They prefer a legally weaker alternative – a framework instead of a protocol.
Negotiations went late into the last night of talks in Riyadh, with the Saudis hosting informal consultations, but eventually governments had to agree to disagree and pick up talks again in Ulaanbaatar.
As Earth dries out, countries fail to reach drought agreement
Governments will also negotiate a new policy on protecting rangelands and pastoralists from degradation. Rangelands are areas where animals graze. They cover around half the Earth’s land and include almost everything other than forest, deserts, farms, glaciers and cities. Pastoralists are people who herd animals on these rangelands, often moving from place to place to find fresh pasture.
COP17 host country Mongolia has a lot of both – and pushed successfully for the UN to declare 2026 the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists. It is keen to agree a decision at COP17 bringing those issues more to the forefront of the UNCCD.
Negotiators will also debate the UNCCD’s post-2030 strategic framework, which they hope to adopt at COP18 in 2028. Campaign groups like the World Wildlife Fund want a stronger focus on biodiversity and nature-positive food systems.
What will happen when?
The COP will formally open with a ceremony on Monday August 17, followed by opening statements by governments and the adoption of the agenda.
Negotiations will begin, mostly behind closed doors for two weeks until the closing plenaries on Friday August 28.
While talks rumble on in the background, the second week will see senior government representatives including ministers get involved, with a “high-level segment” running from August 24-26.
They will discuss issues like drought resilience, finance and pastoralist communities. This is likely to be when any announcements – of new funding, for instance – are made.
On Monday August 24, there will also be an open dialogue between government officials and civil society members. Here, local practitioners are likely to share stories of how they are helping their communities reverse land degradation. UNCCD prides itself on being a bottom-up convention.
Unlike climate COPs, which often end a day or two over time, UNCCD COPs usually finish on the evening of their last day and – while they have gone late into the night – have never run into the next day.
What else should we watch out for?
At the last COP two years ago, host Saudi Arabia led the creation of an initiative called the Riyadh Global Drought Resilience Partnership to help 80 of the poorest nations deal with drought.
It received $12 billion in pledges, mainly from Gulf-based development finance institutions. Saudi Arabia is expected to report back on whether these pledges have been delivered and how the money will reach those in need now.
There are also hopes that governments will announce financial support for Mongolia’s Rangelands Flagship Initiative, which aims to mobilise investment in projects to fight land degradation.
Who will preside over COP17?
While the last five and the next two climate COPs have been or will be presided over by men, COP17 will be woman-led with Mongolia’s foreign minister, Battsetseg Batmunkh, as president.
This will also be the first COP for the UNCCD’s new executive director Yasmin Fouad. Before being appointed environment minister in her native Egypt, Fouad was a scientist and lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s special report on desertification. She played a key role at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt in 2022.
Although Saudi Arabia’s UNCCD COP presidency is ending, the Gulf power house will likely continue to be influential. It has supported the COP financially as part of the Riyadh-Ulaanbaatar action agenda and will be following up on initiatives announced two years ago.
While Saudi Arabia is often blamed for obstructing progress at climate talks, as a desert nation it is generally thought to have played a constructive role at UNCCD COPs.
What are the negotiating dynamics?
The UNCCD has six main negotiating groups: Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Northern Mediterranean, Central and Eastern Europe, and developed donor countries. Governments can also speak in their own capacities.
While divisions between the Global North and Global South do exist at UNCCD COPs, they are not as stark as at climate COPs. The Global South’s umbrella group – the G77 and China – usually only speaks on finance issues, on which developing countries tend to be united.
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Civil society groups are present but not as vocal or as confrontational as at climate COPs. There are generally no protests and campaigners tend to try to hold governments accountable more quietly. There are likely to be far fewer journalists than at climate COPs too.
What role will the US play?
While the US has left the UN’s climate convention, it remains in the UNCCD and is expected to bring a delegation of officials from its departments of agriculture and state. It is likely to resist any renewed push from Africa for a drought protocol.
The post Will the world’s drying lands get relief from COP17 in Mongolia? appeared first on Climate Home News.
Will the world’s drying lands get relief from COP17 in Mongolia?
Helen Phillips’ book, ‘Hum’, is set in a dystopian near future, in a city suffering the effects of climate breakdown and with dire air quality. Robots (the Hums) press advertising messages during conversations, meetings and even as they carry out medical procedures.
The Hums are vehicles for these ad messages, which are often for products like cosmetics, sweets or anything that might be relevant during interactions with humans. This advertising is poorly disguised, and merges with sentiments that lean towards concerns of well-being, convincing people how much better off they’ll be if they make a purchase.
While the novel is futuristic, the insidious way advertising permeates daily life is resonant of how adverts show up in our world today. And these ads are directly contributing to the worsening future climate Phillips describes in her book.
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Already by the summer of 2026, Europe had seen a 57% increase in wildfires in just four years with western Europe recording the hottest ever June and July on record. We’re facing droughts and floods, as well as predicted hikes in food costs or even chronic food shortages – and that’s before the expected additional effects of a strong El Niño later this year.
Frequent flying and bigger burgers
A portion of this climate breakdown is fuelled by over-consumption in richer countries, particularly of products that are high carbon – for which advertising can take some of the blame. Research shows that adverts drive citizens to consume about a third more goods and services in general, over and above what they might have purchased.
Yet despite a clear link between promoting high-carbon behaviours and climate breakdown, little advertising regulation exists in the UK. Take frequent flying for instance, one of the most carbon-intensive activities we can partake in.
EasyJet’s latest ad campaign is called “Drop Everything”. It encourages consumers to book cheap flights departing within the next 48 hours for presumably short or weekend getaways. Rather than promoting a specific destination, “Drop Everything” promotes a mindset that encourages indiscriminate consumption of flying. The ads were shown on billboards with clever creative slogans, as well as on digital media and through influencer campaigns.
Overall, flight numbers are increasing. The UK Civil Aviation Authority reported the highest number of UK passengers in the first quarter of 2026 (more than 61 million, breaking previous records for travel between January and March). It seems we’re still not joining the dots between flying and a worsening climate.
And how about meat consumption? Scientists advocate for less meat-eating, especially beef which has the highest carbon footprint of nearly all foods. Yet adverts from McDonald’s proliferate, helping make it one of the highest-volume sellers of fast-food chain beef burgers. In 2024, the outdoor advertising budget for McDonald’s UK rose to £86 million, an increase of 71% on previous years.
Small share for sustainability
While over half of UK ad professionals feel increasingly queasy about their profession and its effects on the climate crisis, the people running the show – the UK trade bodies – prefer to focus on the growth advertising brings.
In the first three months of 2026, they stated that UK advertising spend increased by 9.3%, reaching a total of £11.7 billion for that quarter, fuelling consumption and market growth.
But how many of those adverts actually promote low carbon goods and services? Kantar’s Sustainable Ads Tracker shows the percentage of ads featuring sustainability messaging in 2026 is around 4.3%. That’s woefully low, and much of this is made up of messaging that promotes recycling.
Additionally, the ad industry continues to happily produce adverts for the large oil and gas corporations that are fuelling climate breakdown. These adverts only narrowly pass the Advertising Standards Authorities’ advertising codes, allowing the continued greenwashing of the world’s most polluting brands.
There is essentially no leadership from the UK trade bodies, likely because they are directly funded by the brands and advertisers themselves. They are essentially ‘ad shushing’ – pushing for indiscriminate growth and directing attention to their sustainability awards, while confusingly denying that adverts drive higher consumption overall.
Let’s ‘un-shush’
Where does this leave us as we are subjected to hundreds, if not thousands, of persuasive advertising messages every day that support high-carbon lifestyles? Most ad professionals are unable to push back against this agenda at work, often due to the threat of job loss. The advertising trade bodies won’t take the lead as they work in service to big brands and advertisers.
NGOs urge Brazil to prevent fossil fuel capture of COP30 climate summit
So, who can push for the changes we need? Members of the public.
Through pressuring our city officials and governments, we can force through restrictions, such as the watershed bans on unhealthy foods on TV before 9pm in the UK. Through supporting the efforts of organisations such as Ad Free Cities and others, we can help achieve bans on outdoor advertising for fossil fuels, aviation, meat and even single-use plastics in cities and regions such as Amsterdam, The Hague, Edinburgh, Florence, Uppsala and many more.
If we’re serious about climate change and stopping big global brands pushing their high-carbon products onto us, then advertising restrictions are one of the best ways to achieve this. If we don’t want a world like the one Phillips describes in her book, we need to make our voices heard above the advertising noise.
The post Pushing the climate crisis: How advertising fuels high-carbon lifestyles appeared first on Climate Home News.
Pushing the climate crisis: How advertising fuels high-carbon lifestyles
An upcoming UK government consultation on weakening targets for electric vehicles (EVs) could cost consumers as much as £3bn a year by 2030, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
It could require the UK to import an extra 17m barrels of oil in 2030, raising expected net imports by 8%, as well as adding 2.5% to national emissions that year, the analysis shows.
After years of fierce lobbying by parts of the car industry – and despite the significant savings on offer for EV drivers – media reports suggest that EV targets could be “watered down”.
Under current rules, battery EVs – BEVs, those which run only on electricity – must make up a rising share of new car sales in the UK.
This policy, known as the “zero-emission vehicles” (ZEV) mandate, was introduced by the previous Conservative government and sets a goal for 33% BEV sales in 2026, rising to 80% in 2030.
(Carmakers are able to use “flexibilities” to help meet their targets, which reduces the effective target under the ZEV mandate to an estimated 25% of sales in 2026.)
Now, the government under new Labour prime minister Andy Burnham is reported to be considering a cut in the BEV target for 2030 to just 50% of new car sales, alongside options for 60% or 70%.
Carbon Brief understands that a consultation on weakening the ZEV mandate is being reviewed by the prime minister’s office in Number 10, ahead of being formally released.
If the mandate is weakened to 50% by 2030 – and if carmakers make more use of “flexibilities” – there could be up to 3m fewer BEVs on UK roads by 2030, according to the NGO T&E.
Previous Carbon Brief analysis found that BEVs are around £1,100 cheaper to run per year than a petrol car, thanks to far lower fuel costs.
Overall, BEVs are more than £1,000 per year cheaper to own than either petrol cars or plug-in hybrids (PHEVs, which can run on petrol or electricity).
This is according to analysis of the “total cost of ownership” by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), including purchase price, fuel costs, insurance and proposed pay-per-mile charges.
In total, Carbon Brief analysis shows that UK drivers could be hit with an extra £3bn in annual ownership costs by 2030, if the ZEV mandate is weakened, as shown below.
A weaker ZEV mandate could “put billions of pounds of committed investments at risk”, reports BusinessGreen, including in the EV charging network and battery supply chains.
Industry group Energy UK says that the mandate is “working in the way it was designed to work” and that it is the “single biggest driver of emissions reductions” in government climate plans.
However, Carbon Brief analysis shows that a weaker ZEV mandate could result in an extra 7.4m tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions (MtCO2) in 2030. This would add the equivalent of 2.5% to national emissions in 2030, under the UK’s international climate goal for that year.
In addition, a weaker ZEV mandate could result in the UK needing to import an extra 17m barrels of oil in 2030, equivalent to 8% of projected net imports that year.
Energy UK says that shifting to EVs will help to reduce household energy bills “for everyone”. This is not only through direct cost-of-ownership savings for EV drivers, but also by spreading the costs of upgrading the electricity system across a wider user base.
Car industry group the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders claims that its members are spending “blilions…on discounts, finance incentives and marketing support” and that “natural” EV demand is below the level required to meet the current ZEV mandate. Its claims are disputed.
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The post Analysis: Weaker EV targets could cost UK consumers £3bn a year by 2030 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Weaker EV targets could cost UK consumers £3bn a year by 2030
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Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
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Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
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Renewable Energy10 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
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Greenhouse Gases1 year ago
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Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits