Published

9 months ago

May 29, 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

Climate leadership and cooperation

ENVOY REMARKS: Xinhua published an exclusive interview with Chinese climate envoy Liu Zhenmin, in which he spoke about how China-Europe cooperation could make a “positive contribution” to combating climate change. In the interview, Liu said that developed countries were “generally worried about who will share the responsibilities that the US should bear” after its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, adding that China “deeply regretted” the “shrinking space” for US-China climate cooperation. The outlet quoted Liu saying: “However, we must see that China and the US do not have fundamental differences in the field of climate change, but rather have broad space for cooperation.”

EU AMBIVELANCE: Meanwhile, the EU’s ambassador to China, Jorge Toledo, warned that the EU may not hold an expected “high-level economic [and] trade dialogue” with China in July, due to current negotiations over Chinese EV tariffs and supply chains “not making progress”, reported the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP). European countries, such as the Netherlands, France and Germany, on the other hand, have expressed interest in more collaboration in areas such as climate and the low-carbon transition, said state-supporting media the Global Times. Belinda Schäpe, China policy analyst at Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), nevertheless wrote on LinkedIn that while both China and Germany “expressed support” for tackling climate change, it is “unclear how this will translate into Germany’s position on cooperation in areas like energy transition or climate diplomacy”.

EARLY PEAK?: China’s emissions will “likely peak a few years ahead of its self-set deadline of 2030”, Bloomberg said, reporting comments by Zhu Guangyao, who was the country’s vice minister of finance from 2010-2018 and who cited analysis recently published by Carbon Brief. The outlet quoted Zhu saying: “It’s most likely China will realise the peak of carbon emissions a few years before 2030…That’s good news for China, also good news for Asia, for the whole world.” Meanwhile, the SCMP published a comment article by former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon on China’s “green energy leadership”. In the article, Ban called on China to target a 30% reduction in emissions below 2023 levels by 2035 in its next international climate pledge (nationally determined contribution, NDC).

New plan for ‘green’ manufacturing

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‘GREEN TRANSFORMATION’: China’s central government approved an action plan for “advancing the green and low-carbon development” of the manufacturing sector between 2025 and 2027 at a State Council executive meeting, reported state news agency Xinhua. The full text of the action plan is not yet public. The meeting called for “deep[ening the] green transformation of traditional industries” while “accelerat[ing] innovation in green technologies”, added the outlet. The state-owned newspaper Securities Daily said that the policy extends “intensive” regulatory support and will affect a range of industries, including steel, metals and construction. About 20% of the “total output of China’s manufacturing industry” in 2024 had already come from “national-level green [factory] plants”, added the newspaper. (According to the “general principals” outlined by the Chinese government, such plants have tighter requirements on their emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants.)

RECTIFY THE ‘RAT RACE’: Meanwhile, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) commented on “neijuan” (内卷) – officially translated as “rat race competition” that leads to oversupply in affected industries, including clean energy, steel and oil refining, reported Xinhua. According to the newswire, the NDRC said at its May press conference that this “rat race” had “disrupted” fair competition and “must be rectified”. According to the NDRC transcript, government officials called for eliminating “inefficient and backward production capacity” in the oil refining and steel industries, “preventing blind new construction” in the coal chemical and aluminium industries, and “guiding” “new-energy vehicle” (NEV) and solar companies to “focus on technology research and development”. Nevertheless, the officials stated that the majority of the investments the NDRC had approved from January to April this year were still in the “energy” and “advanced technology” sectors, among others, reported Chinese media outlet Dazhong News. The NDRC also said its “two new” policy “stimulated green consumption” of products such as NEVs, according to the transcript. Separately, the production of NEVs rose by 39% in April, said the Communist party-affiliated People’s Daily, adding that China’s “shift toward intelligent and green development is gaining momentum”.

‘Record’ solar added as policy deadline looms

SOLAR RUSH: China installed a “record” 105 gigawatts (GW) of solar capacity between January and April 2025, industry outlet PV Tech said, citing a recent data release by the National Energy Administration (NEA). It added that “April alone” accounted for 45GW of new additions – compared to a total of 46GW solar installations in China between January and March 2024 – as a deadline set by a new renewable pricing policy “triggered a project installation rush”. [Outside China, the US is the only country in the world to have more than 105GW of solar capacity in total. The UK has 18GW.]

THERMAL FALL: Analysis by thinktank Climate Energy Finance found that the amount of new solar installations between January and April was eight times larger than that of new thermal capacity (13GW, mainly coal). It added that China’s coal plants were only running 46% of the time on average in the first four months of 2025, saying that this was a “record low”. Similarly, Reuters reported that “thermal power generation in China, fuelled mainly by coal, fell 2% in April and 4% from January to April amid slower overall power output growth”. New data from energy thinktank Ember found that wind and solar power generated 26% of the country’s electricity in April 2025, the “highest monthly share on record”.

ROOFTOP ‘BOOM’: Meanwhile, separate data from consultancy Rystad Energy found that, of the 60GW of solar installed between January and March 2025, rooftop solar installations accounted for 36GW, marking the “highest quarterly total for distributed solar in [China’s] history”, solar news outlet PV Magazine reported. Industry news outlet SolarQuarter said that, according to Rystad Energy’s forecasts, the rooftop solar installation “boom” will continue through to June 2025, “potentially pushing total distributed solar capacity additions for the year to 130GW”.

SOLAR CYBER SCARE: Reuters reported that the US government is “reassessing the risk posed by Chinese-made” renewable energy components after “rogue communication devices not listed in product documents ha[d] been found in some Chinese solar power inverters by US experts”. The newswire added that it “was unable to determine how many solar power inverters and batteries they have looked at”. Following this, the Japanese government also “launched an investigation into Chinese-made solar panels”, reported SCMP. Tom Nunlist, associate director at consultancy firm Trivium China, wrote on LinkedIn that while “an industrial-scale plot to disrupt the US power grid” cannot be ruled out, it is “far more likely that we’re dealing with commonplace bill of materials errors”. He added that “given the atmosphere, I think there’s a good chance this will get blown way out of proportion”. Meanwhile, the industry association SolarPower Europe called for stronger cybersecurity rules for Europe’s clean-energy installations, following the discovery of “unexplained electronic components in imported circuit boards from an unnamed country destined for [Denmark’s] energy infrastructure”, PV Magazine said. It added that the “suspicious elements were not solar components”.

Extreme weather sweeping across China

RAIN AND FLOODING: Four people were killed by “torrential rain” in Guizhou province in southwest China and 17 people remained missing, reported Reuters on 23 May. China is facing “hotter and longer heatwaves and more frequent and unpredictable heavy rain as a result of climate change” and its “huge population” made the country “especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change, authorities have said”, added the outlet.

Sign up to Carbon Brief’s free “China Briefing” email newsletter. All you need to know about the latest developments relating to China and climate change. Sent to your inbox every Thursday.

EXTREME HEAT: Temperatures in north China reached as high as 43C in May, according to China Qixiang Aihaozhe, a popular scientific blog. State broadcaster CGTN reported that many places in the provinces of Henan and Hebei broke local temperature records for May and that ground temperatures in “multiple places” broke 70C on 20 May. The outlet noted that May is a “critical” period for maximising wheat harvest yields. Reuters reported that China disbursed 1.4bn yuan ($194m) for “agricultural production disaster prevention and relief”. Meanwhile, cooling demand from air conditioners could drive electricity demand to be about 100GW higher than last year, Bloomberg cited the NEA as saying. Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at CREA, posted on Bluesky that, even if this demand does disrupts the recent plateau in China’s emissions, the “structural trend” of clean-energy additions pushing overall emissions down will continue to drive reductions in the long-term.

68%

The share of China’s overseas energy investments that went to solar and wind projects between 2022-2023, reported Inside Climate News citing data from Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center. Only 13% of investments had gone into solar and wind from 2000-2021, added the outlet, noting that 2021 was the year that China pledged to stop funding overseas coal projects.

Spotlight

What is China’s ‘Shenzhen model’ for city-level low-carbon transition?

Shenzhen, a city bordering Hong Kong that is known for pioneering China’s economic reforms, is leading the country in several carbon mitigation measures and is seen as a “pilot” for the construction of “low-carbon cities”.

Carbon Brief looks back at Shenzhen’s efforts to date and assesses its progress on carbon mitigation. The full article will be available on Carbon Brief’s website.

Electric transportation

Since the 2000s, Shenzhen has developed strategies for “low-carbon development”. Part of this included nourishing the growth of a number of “strategic emerging industries”, such as “new-energy vehicles” (NEVs).

According to a government work report, Shenzhen – whose population makes up 1% of the country’s total – produced 22% of China’s NEVs in 2024. NEV also comprised 77% of the new car sales in Shenzhen last year, significantly higher than the national share of 48%.

The city has also replaced all of its buses, taxis and ride-hailing cars with electric versions – the first city to have done so in China.

Heran Zheng, lecturer in sustainable infrastructure economics and finance at University College London (UCL), told Carbon Brief that a city’s green transition mainly requires two focuses: “transport transition” and “industry decarbonisation”.

With no major heavy industries, Shenzhen has an “advantage” in industry low-carbon transition, said Zheng, which allows it to set “more ambitious” emissions targets.

Carbon control

Shenzhen was China’s “first city to explicitly state its commitment to the ‘dual control [of carbon]’ system”, according to Dialogue Earth. It issued two “implementation plans” towards this effort and developed a city-level carbon emissions cap.

Shenzhen plans to reduce its energy intensity by 14.5% before the end of 2025, compared to 2020 levels. The national energy intensity target is 13.5% during the same period.

Zheng said that Shenzhen’s commitment “should be within its capacity”, adding:

“There are three major carbon mitigation areas – steel, cement and electricity. Shenzhen has no major steel and cement industries, so it only needs to largely focus on electricity…In addition, the city is a technology hub. A lot of high-emission manufacturers have moved out of Shenzhen to its neighbouring cities.”

Another “big difference” between Shenzhen and other cities is that “Shenzhen has its own nuclear power”, said Zheng, which is “important” for the city’s electricity transition – the remaining sector that Shenzhen needs to put efforts on towards green transition.

Low-carbon energy

According to a 2021 report, nuclear power is Shenzhen’s “largest local power source”. It contributed 35% of the city’s total power generation in 2021.

Nuclear dwarfs all the other clean energy sources feeding into the city’s grid. The Shenzhen local authority’s 2025 government work report says current solar power capacity stands at about 1GW – and it does not mention wind capacity.

Its “14th five-year plan for climate change response” says that Shenzhen’s renewable energy capacity has “little room” for future growth due to “scarce” energy resources and “limited” land for wind and solar power.

In 2024, China approved the construction of more nuclear reactors in Shenzhen’s neighbouring city of Huizhou.

The Shenzhen government also aims to “raise the combined share of natural gas, nuclear and renewable energy to 90% in 2025, up from the current figure of 77%, which is noticeably ahead of the nationwide figure of 52%”, according to research published in 2022.

‘Green finance’

Shenzhen was one of the first seven cities and provinces in China that established a local “pilot” emissions trading system (ETS) in 2013, ahead of the national rollout in 2021.

Yan Qin, carbon analyst at consultancy firm ClearBlue Markets, told Carbon Brief that despite Shenzhen’s plans to expand the coverage of its ETS, most pilot ETSs are seeing their coverage “shrinking” due to enterprises leaving to join the national ETS.

In the meantime, Shenzhen issued China’s first overseas sales of “green government bonds” in 2021 in Hong Kong. In contrast, China’s national sovereign bonds were only available to international buyers from April 2025.

Zheng said that the impact of the green bonds is “hard to evaluate”. He added that projects, such as sewage treatment, can “also fall into the category of ‘green bonds’”. Although linked to energy efficiency improvement, they nonetheless make only “limited contributions” to cutting carbon emissions, he added.

‘Shenzhen model’

The local government and media outlets have touted the city’s achievements on climate as the “Shenzhen model”.

But Shenzhen’s journey is not all “replicable”, said Shen Xinyi, analyst and China team lead at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), adding that “Shenzhen capitalised on the opportunities of its era”.

Zheng said Shenzhen can “only represent a [certain] type of city in China, the ‘top tier’, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou”. He added:

“There are more than 300 cities in China, all facing unique transition situations. It is meaningless for coal-heavy industrial cities to learn from Shenzhen.”

Other cities must “adapt strategies according to their unique conditions”, Shen added.

This report is by freelancing climate journalist Henry Zhang and Carbon Brief’s China section editor Wanyuan Song.

Watch, read, listen

CRITICAL MINERALS: An episode of consulting firm Trivium China’s podcast discussed China’s critical mineral export controls.

‘MARSHALL PLAN’?: Sam Geall, Dialogue Earth’s outgoing chief executive officer, published a comment on China’s new role amidst shifting “climate politics”.

US-CHINA DECOUPLING: In an exclusive interview with Chinese financial media Caixin, Huang Hanquan, dean of the Chinese Academy of Macroeconomic Research – a thinktank under the direct management of NDRC – said there are still “risks” in US-China decoupling.

‘ZERO-CARBON’ PARKS: The 21st Century Business Herald, a Chinese media outlet, published an interview with Chai Qimin, director of the International Cooperation Department at the National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation, a thinktank under the China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment, talking about “zero-carbon industrial parks”.

New science

Peer effects on rural household carbon emissions in China

Scientific Reports

New research found that the “peer effect” – a phenomenon where an individual’s behavior and attitudes are influenced by their peers – has a “significant positive impact” on carbon emissions in rural China. The paper quantified emissions from rural Chinese households over 2012-20 using data from “China family panel studies” and “carbon emission accounts and datasets”. The authors found that carbon emissions from “low social status families” are influenced by those of “high social status families”. They added that the “peer effect has a relatively greater impact on the carbon emissions of farmers in the eastern region”.

The impact of carbon news coverage on corporate green transformation

Scientific Reports

A new study of Chinese companies found that “carbon news coverage significantly enhances the corporate green transformation”. The authors examined the effect of “carbon news coverage” on the green transformation of “Chinese A-share listed enterprises” over 2013-21. They found that “carbon news coverage” can help enterprises with their “green transition” by “alleviating financing constraints, strengthening environmental information disclosure and increasing R&D investment”. They added that “carbon emissions trading market and carbon news coverage serve as multiple co-regulations of formal and informal environmental regulation, synergistically advancing enterprises’ green transformation”.

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 29 May 2025: The ‘Shenzen model’; Record solar growth; NDRC rejected industrial ‘rat race’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.

China Briefing 29 May 2025: The ‘Shenzen model’; Record solar growth; NDRC rejected industrial ‘rat race’

Greenhouse Gases

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

Published

2 days 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

2 days 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

4 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