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
‘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.
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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.
Climate Change
DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Absolute State of the Union
‘DRILL, BABY’: US president Donald Trump “doubled down on his ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda” in his State of the Union (SOTU) address, said the Los Angeles Times. He “tout[ed] his support of the fossil-fuel industry and renew[ed] his focus on electricity affordability”, reported the Financial Times. Trump also attacked the “green new scam”, noted Carbon Brief’s SOTU tracker.
COAL REPRIEVE: Earlier in the week, the Trump administration had watered down limits on mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, reported the Financial Times. It remains “unclear” if this will be enough to prevent the decline of coal power, said Bloomberg, in the face of lower-cost gas and renewables. Reuters noted that US coal plants are “ageing”.
OIL STAY: The US Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments brought by the oil industry in a “major lawsuit”, reported the New York Times. The newspaper said the firms are attempting to head off dozens of other lawsuits at state level, relating to their role in global warming.
SHIP-SHILLING: The Trump administration is working to “kill” a global carbon levy on shipping “permanently”, reported Politico, after succeeding in delaying the measure late last year. The Guardian said US “bullying” could be “paying off”, after Panama signalled it was reversing its support for the levy in a proposal submitted to the UN shipping body.
Around the world
- RARE EARTHS: The governments of Brazil and India signed a deal on rare earths, said the Times of India, as well as agreeing to collaborate on renewable energy.
- HEAT ROLLBACK: German homes will be allowed to continue installing gas and oil heating, under watered-down government plans covered by Clean Energy Wire.
- BRAZIL FLOODS: At least 53 people died in floods in the state of Minas Gerais, after some areas saw 170mm of rain in a few hours, reported CNN Brasil.
- ITALY’S ATTACK: Italy is calling for the EU to “suspend” its emissions trading system (ETS) ahead of a review later this year, said Politico.
- COOKSTOVE CREDITS: The first-ever carbon credits under the Paris Agreement have been issued to a cookstove project in Myanmar, said Climate Home News.
- SAUDI SOLAR: Turkey has signed a “major” solar deal that will see Saudi firm ACWA building 2 gigawatts in the country, according to Agence France-Presse.
$467 billion
The profits made by five major oil firms since prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago, according to a report by Global Witness covered by BusinessGreen.
Latest climate research
- Claims about the “fingerprint” of human-caused climate change, made in a recent US Department of Energy report, are “factually incorrect” | AGU Advances
- Large lakes in the Congo Basin are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from “immense ancient stores” | Nature Geoscience
- Shared Socioeconomic Pathways – scenarios used regularly in climate modelling – underrepresent “narratives explicitly centring on democratic principles such as participation, accountability and justice” | npj Climate Action
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
The constituency of Richard Tice MP, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of Reform UK, is the second-largest recipient of flood defence spending in England, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Overall, the funding is disproportionately targeted at coastal and urban areas, many of which have Conservative or Liberal Democrat MPs.
Spotlight
Is there really a UK ‘greenlash’?
This week, after a historic Green Party byelection win, Carbon Brief looks at whether there really is a “greenlash” against climate policy in the UK.
Over the past year, the UK’s political consensus on climate change has been shattered.
Yet despite a sharp turn against climate action among right-wing politicians and right-leaning media outlets, UK public support for climate action remains strong.
Prof Federica Genovese, who studies climate politics at the University of Oxford, told Carbon Brief:
“The current ‘war’ on green policy is mostly driven by media and political elites, not by the public.”
Indeed, there is still a greater than two-to-one majority among the UK public in favour of the country’s legally binding target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, as shown below.
Steve Akehurst, director of public-opinion research initiative Persuasion UK, also noted the growing divide between the public and “elites”. He told Carbon Brief:
“The biggest movement is, without doubt, in media and elite opinion. There is a bit more polarisation and opposition [to climate action] among voters, but it’s typically no more than 20-25% and mostly confined within core Reform voters.”
Conservative gear shift
For decades, the UK had enjoyed strong, cross-party political support for climate action.
Lord Deben, the Conservative peer and former chair of the Climate Change Committee, told Carbon Brief that the UK’s landmark 2008 Climate Change Act had been born of this cross-party consensus, saying “all parties supported it”.
Since their landslide loss at the 2024 election, however, the Conservatives have turned against the UK’s target of net-zero emissions by 2050, which they legislated for in 2019.
Curiously, while opposition to net-zero has surged among Conservative MPs, there is majority support for the target among those that plan to vote for the party, as shown below.
Dr Adam Corner, advisor to the Climate Barometer initiative that tracks public opinion on climate change, told Carbon Brief that those who currently plan to vote Reform are the only segment who “tend to be more opposed to net-zero goals”. He said:
“Despite the rise in hostile media coverage and the collapse of the political consensus, we find that public support for the net-zero by 2050 target is plateauing – not plummeting.”
Reform, which rejects the scientific evidence on global warming and campaigns against net-zero, has been leading the polls for a year. (However, it was comfortably beaten by the Greens in yesterday’s Gorton and Denton byelection.)
Corner acknowledged that “some of the anti-net zero noise…[is] showing up in our data”, adding:
“We see rising concerns about the near-term costs of policies and an uptick in people [falsely] attributing high energy bills to climate initiatives.”
But Akehurst said that, rather than a big fall in public support, there had been a drop in the “salience” of climate action:
“So many other issues [are] competing for their attention.”
UK newspapers published more editorials opposing climate action than supporting it for the first time on record in 2025, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Global ‘greenlash’?
All of this sits against a challenging global backdrop, in which US president Donald Trump has been repeating climate-sceptic talking points and rolling back related policy.
At the same time, prominent figures have been calling for a change in climate strategy, sold variously as a “reset”, a “pivot”, as “realism”, or as “pragmatism”.
Genovese said that “far-right leaders have succeeded in the past 10 years in capturing net-zero as a poster child of things they are ‘fighting against’”.
She added that “much of this is fodder for conservative media and this whole ecosystem is essentially driving what we call the ‘greenlash’”.
Corner said the “disconnect” between elite views and the wider public “can create problems” – for example, “MPs consistently underestimate support for renewables”. He added:
“There is clearly a risk that the public starts to disengage too, if not enough positive voices are countering the negative ones.”
Watch, read, listen
TRUMP’S ‘PETROSTATE’: The US is becoming a “petrostate” that will be “sicker and poorer”, wrote Financial Times associate editor Rana Forohaar.
RHETORIC VS REALITY: Despite a “political mood [that] has darkened”, there is “more green stuff being installed than ever”, said New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells.
CHINA’S ‘REVOLUTION’: The BBC’s Climate Question podcast reported from China on the “green energy revolution” taking place in the country.
Coming up
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean, Brasília
- 3 March: UK spring statement
- 4-11 March: China’s “two sessions”
- 5 March: Nepal elections
Pick of the jobs
- The Guardian, senior reporter, climate justice | Salary: $123,000-$135,000. Location: New York or Washington DC
- China-Global South Project, non-resident fellow, climate change | Salary: Up to $1,000 a month. Location: Remote
- University of East Anglia, PhD in mobilising community-based climate action through co-designed sports and wellbeing interventions | Salary: Stipend (unknown amount). Location: Norwich, UK
- TABLE and the University of São Paulo, Brazil, postdoctoral researcher in food system narratives | Salary: Unknown. Location: Pirassununga, Brazil
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Seven Pacific island nations say they will demand heftier levies on global shipping emissions if opponents of a green deal for the industry succeed in reopening negotiations on the stalled accord.
The United States and Saudi Arabia persuaded countries not to grant final approval to the International Maritime Organization’s Net-Zero Framework (NZF) in October and they are now leading a drive for changes to the deal.
In a joint submission seen by Climate Home News, the seven climate-vulnerable Pacific countries said the framework was already a “fragile compromise”, and vowed to push for a universal levy on all ship emissions, as well as higher fees . The deal currently stipulates that fees will be charged when a vessel’s emissions exceed a certain level.
“For many countries, the NZF represents the absolute limit of what they can accept,” said the unpublished submission by Fiji, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Nauru, Palau, Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands.
The countries said a universal levy and higher charges on shipping would raise more funds to enable a “just and equitable transition leaving no country behind”. They added, however, that “despite its many shortcomings”, the framework should be adopted later this year.
US allies want exemption for ‘transition fuels’
The previous attempt to adopt the framework failed after governments narrowly voted to postpone it by a year. Ahead of the vote, the US threatened governments and their officials with sanctions, tariffs and visa restrictions – and President Donald Trump called the framework a “Green New Scam Tax on Shipping”.
Since then, Liberia – an African nation with a major low-tax shipping registry headquartered in the US state of Virginia – has proposed a new measure under which, rather than staying fixed under the NZF, ships’ emissions intensity targets change depending on “demonstrated uptake” of both “low-carbon and zero-carbon fuels”.
The proposal places stringent conditions on what fuels are taken into consideration when setting these targets, stressing that the low- and zero-carbon fuels should be “scalable”, not cost more than 15% more than standard marine fuels and should be available at “sufficient ports worldwide”.
This proposal would not “penalise transitional fuels” like natural gas and biofuels, they said. In the last decade, the US has built a host of large liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals, which the Trump administration is lobbying other countries to purchase from.
The draft motion, seen by Climate Home News, was co-sponsored by US ally Argentina and also by Panama, a shipping hub whose canal the US has threatened to annex. Both countries voted with the US to postpone the last vote on adopting the framework.
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IMO head: Shipping decarbonisation “has started” despite green deal delay
Arsenio Dominguez said the shipping industry’s net zero emissions goal is not in dispute although countries have stalled on adopting a framework to reach it -
US-led alliance wins a year’s delay in adoption of green shipping deal
The IMO’s Net-Zero Framework will be up for approval again in October 2026, after the US and Saudi Arabia persuaded countries not to vote on it as planned
The IMO’s Panamanian head Arsenio Dominguez told reporters in January that changes to the framework were now possible.
“It is clear from what happened last year that we need to look into the concerns that have been expressed [and] … make sure that they are somehow addressed within the framework,” he said.
Patchwork of levies
While the European Union pushed firmly for the framework’s adoption, two of its shipping-reliant member states – Greece and Cyprus – abstained in October’s vote.
After a meeting between the Greek shipping minister and Saudi Arabia’s energy minister in January, Greece said a “common position” united Greece, Saudi Arabia and the US on the framework.
If the NZF or a similar instrument is not adopted, the IMO has warned that there will be a patchwork of differing regional levies on pollution – like the EU’s emissions trading system for ships visiting its ports – which will be complicated and expensive to comply with.
This would mean that only countries with their own levies and with lots of ships visiting their ports would raise funds, making it harder for other nations to fund green investments in their ports, seafarers and shipping companies. In contrast, under the NZF, revenues would be disbursed by the IMO to all nations based on set criteria.
Anais Rios, shipping policy officer from green campaign group Seas At Risk, told Climate Home News the proposal by the Pacific nations for a levy on all shipping emissions – not just those above a certain threshold – was “the most credible way to meet the IMO’s climate goals”.
“With geopolitics reframing climate policy, asking the IMO to reopen the discussion on the universal levy is the only way to decarbonise shipping whilst bringing revenue to manage impacts fairly,” Rios said.
“It is […] far stronger than the Net-Zero Framework that is currently on offer.”
The post Pacific nations want higher emissions charges if shipping talks reopen appeared first on Climate Home News.
Pacific nations want higher emissions charges if shipping talks reopen
Doubts over whether governments will maintain ambitious targets on boosting the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) are a threat to the industry’s growth and play into the hands of fossil fuel companies, investors warned this week.
Several executives from airlines and oil firms have forecast recently that SAF requirements in the European Union, United Kingdom and elsewhere will be eased or scrapped altogether, potentially upending the aviation industry’s main policy to shrink air travel’s growing carbon footprint.
Such speculation poses a “fundamental threat” to the SAF industry, which mainly produces an alternative to traditional kerosene jet fuel using organic feedstocks such as used cooking oil (UCO), Thomas Engelmann, head of energy transition at German investment manager KGAL, told the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Investor conference in London.
He said fossil fuel firms would be the only winners from questions about compulsory SAF blending requirements.
The EU and the UK introduced the world’s first SAF mandates in January 2025, requiring fuel suppliers to blend at least 2% SAF with fossil fuel kerosene. The blending requirement will gradually increase to reach 32% in the EU and 22% in the UK by 2040.
Another case of diluted green rules?
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, CEO of French oil and gas company TotalEnergies Patrick Pouyanné said he would bet “that what happened to the car regulation will happen to the SAF regulation in Europe”.
The EU watered down green rules for car-makers in March 2025 after lobbying from car companies, Germany and Italy.
“You will see. Today all the airline companies are fighting [against the EU’s 2030 SAF target of 6%],” Pouyanne said, even though it’s “easy to reach to be honest”.
While most European airline lobbies publicly support the mandates, Ryanair Group CEO Michael O’Leary said last year that the SAF is “nonsense” and is “gradually dying a death, which is what it deserves to do”.
EU and UK stand by SAF targets
But the EU and the British government have disputed that. EU transport commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas said in November that the EU’s targets are “stable”, warning that “investment decisions and construction must start by 2027, or we will miss the 2030 targets”.
UK aviation minister Keir Mather told this week’s investor event that meeting the country’s SAF blending requirement of 10% by 2030 was “ambitious but, with the right investment, the right innovation and the right outlook, it is absolutely within our reach”.
“We need to go further and we need to go faster,” Mather said.
SAF investors and developers said such certainty on SAF mandates from policymakers was key to drawing the necessary investment to ramp up production of the greener fuel, which needs to scale up in order to bring down high production costs. Currently, SAF is between two and seven times more expensive than traditional jet fuel.
Urbano Perez, global clean molecules lead at Spanish bank Santander, said banks will not invest if there is a perceived regulatory risk.
David Scott, chair of Australian SAF producer Jet Zero Australia, said developing SAF was already challenging due to the risks of “pretty new” technology requiring high capital expenditure.
“That’s a scary model with a volatile political environment, so mandate questioning creates this problem on steroids”, Scott said.
Others played down the risk. Glenn Morgan, partner at investment and advisory firm SkiesFifty, said “policy is always a risk”, adding that traditional oil-based jet fuel could also lose subsidies.
Asian countries join SAF mandate adopters
In Asia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Japan have recently adopted SAF mandates, and Matti Lievonen, CEO of Asia-based SAF producer EcoCeres, predicted that China, Indonesia and Hong Kong would follow suit.
David Fisken, investment director at the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, said the Australian government, which does not have a mandate, was watching to see how the EU and UK’s requirements played out.
The US does not have a SAF mandate and under President Donald Trump the government has slashed tax credits available for SAF producers from $1.75 a gallon to $1.
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SAF and energy security
SAF’s potential role in boosting energy security was a major theme of this week’s discussions as geopolitical tensions push the issue to the fore.
Marcella Franchi, chief commercial officer for SAF at France’s Haffner Energy, said the Canadian government, which has “very unsettling neighbours at the moment”, was looking to produce SAF to protect its energy security, especially as it has ample supplies of biomass to use as potential feedstock.
Similarly, German weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall said last year it was working on plans that would enable European armed forces to produce their own synthetic, carbon-neutral fuel “locally and independently of global fossil fuel supply chain”.
Scott said Australia needs SAF to improve its fuel security, as it imports almost 99% of its liquid fuels.
He added that support for Australian SAF production is bipartisan, in part because it appeals to those more concerned about energy security than tackling climate change.
The post Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn appeared first on Climate Home News.
Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn
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