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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
Steel, aluminium and cement on notice
ETS EXPANSION: China will expand its emissions trading system (ETS) to include the steel, cement and aluminium industries, which will “require an additional 1,500 firms to purchase credits to cover their emissions”, Reuters reported. (The Ministry of Ecology and Environment proposed the expansion in a draft policy last year. Read Carbon Brief’s in-depth Q&A on the ETS.) The newswire added that the system would now cover 8bn tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), or “more than 60% of China’s total emissions”, up from 40% currently. The expansion demonstrates a “strong political will [in China] to achieve the country’s ‘dual-carbon’ goals” despite a tense geopolitical climate and domestic “economic pressures”, the Shanghai-based news outlet Sixth Tone quoted Shen Xinyi, researcher at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), as saying. Finance news outlet Yicai said the expansion will “intensify the [steel] sector’s fragmentation and force outdated production capacity to shut”, but in the long term would encourage “technological innovation and investment” in the “green transition”.
‘CLEAN’ ALUMINIUM: Aluminium producers are expected to increase their use of “clean energy” to 30% of their total energy use by 2027 according to a new industry development plan, energy news outlet International Energy Net reported, adding that China also aims to “raise output of recycled aluminium to more than 15m tonnes”. (This would more than double its 2020 output. China’s production of “primary” aluminium made from metal ore is around 44m tonnes per year.) The plan also urges aluminium producers to “participate in renewables projects, such as solar, wind, hydrogen and energy storage”, as well as “engage in green electricity trading, purchase green electricity certificates (GECs)…and [invest] in clean-power projects to increase clean energy use”, according to industry news outlet BJX News. Bloomberg said that the directive – which “mirrors similar guidance…given to copper smelters” – also tightens rules for building new aluminium plants in a “bid to tackle overcapacity”.
GRID INVESTMENT: Meanwhile, investments in China’s electricity grid “jumped by about 33% in the first two months” of 2025 to around 44bn yuan ($6bn), Bloomberg reported, although it noted this was “still below the pace needed” to meet China’s 2025 spending target of 650bn yuan ($89bn). Separately, China has launched 30 projects in nine cities to pilot the use of electric vehicle batteries in supporting the grid, Reuters reported. Elsewhere, China’s finance ministry pledged to provide more financial support in 2025 for meeting China’s climate goals and the promotion of renewable energy and the low-carbon transition of “key industries”, BJX News reported.
Low-carbon leadership
‘COMMANDING HEIGHTS’: China must “aim for the commanding heights of future science, technology and industrial development” in “new energy” and other technological “frontiers”, Chinese president Xi Jinping said in a speech published by Qiushi, the country’s top ideological journal. The speech focused on key tasks for building China’s strength in science and technology, noting: “Green [and] low-carbon technologies have contributed significantly to…a beautiful China.” Xi also raised the importance of “international” cooperation, such as for “jointly respond[ing] to global challenges such as climate change…[and] energy security”.
ASIA’S DAVOS: Meanwhile, China’s climate envoy Liu Zhenmin said at the 2025 Boao forum – an event also known as Asia’s Davos – that the “political will of member nations, market forces and technology” meant that the global energy transition is “irreversible”, Bloomberg reported. State broadcaster CGTN quoted Liu saying at the event, held in Hainan province last week, that one key “challenge” would be delivering the $300bn climate-finance goal agreed at COP29. It quoted him adding: “We need to continue to push developed country parties to undertake their responsibility for this payment.” Liu also said a “friendly trade environment and a favorable market environment” is needed for low-carbon technologies to “flow freely” around the world, the Communist party-affiliated People’s Daily reported. Executive vice-premier Ding Xuexiang called on countries to “firmly oppose trade and investment protectionism” in his keynote speech at the event, Bloomberg said. (Ding is China’s “top decision-maker” on climate policy.)
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TÊTE-À-TÊTE: Elsewhere, China and France “issued a joint statement on climate change…marking the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement”, the state-run newspaper China Daily said, in which the nations “reaffirmed their shared commitment to enhancing international cooperation to address climate challenges”. CGTN published the full text of the statement, in which China and France pledged “enhanced communication about their respective upcoming new ambitious [nationally determined contributions] which will cover all economic areas and greenhouse gases, and be aligned with the Paris Agreement goals”. The statement also pledged “continuous efforts to transition away from fossil fuels”. The two countries separately agreed to cooperate on “nuclear energy”, “connected vehicles” and “green hydrogen”, the Singapore-based Straits Times said.
GREEN FINANCE: China has launched a 6bn yuan ($825m) green sovereign bond on the London Stock Exchange in “what is expected to be the first in a series of sales that will expand its footprint in the market”, Reuters reported. Bloomberg said it “highlight[ed China’s] ambitions to bolster its environmental credentials to investors”. (The plan to issue the bond was first announced during Rachel Reeves’ visit to Beijing in January).
Record trade tensions
‘LIBERATION DAY’: The US imposed a new total tariff rate of at least 54% on goods from China, in a move that could encourage China to “branch out and find new markets for its clean-energy technology, accelerating their adoption”, the Scientific American said. (Chinese exports of clean-energy technologies to the US were already low due to existing tariffs.) Politico reported that, as “a lot of” the basic materials for electric vehicle (EV) batteries are sourced from China, US EV manufacturers will be “hit” by the tariffs. Ahead of the announcement, a report on “foreign trade barriers” from the US government dedicated almost 50 of its 400-pages to China, criticising China’s aim to “dominat[e]” industries such as “new energy vehicles”, the New York Times reported. China “firmly opposes” the tariffs, Reuters quoted China’s commerce ministry as saying. (Read Carbon Brief’s article for expert views on the climate impacts of Trump’s tariffs)
EU-CHINA TALKS: China and the EU confirmed that they “agreed to restart talks on minimum [import] price[s]” for Chinese EVs “as soon as possible”, according to Reuters. While Chinese battery EV exports to the EU have “slowed” due to EU tariffs, China’s “exports of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles” – which are not subject to tariffs – “surged” in January and February 2025, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post said. Reuters said China “has not shipped any antimony”, a critical mineral used in solar-panel manufacturing, to the EU since it was placed under export controls in October. Meanwhile, Japan placed a 95% anti-dumping duty on imports of Chinese graphite electrodes, which are used in technologies such as electric arc furnace steelmaking and lithium-ion batteries, another Reuters article reported.
TRADE INVESTIGATIONS: China was the subject of a “record number of trade investigations by [World Trade Organization] members last year”, triggered by a boom in exports, the Financial Times reported. It said the 198 trade investigations in 2024 “alleging dumping or illegal subsidies” was double the previous year’s total.
Pricing reform
HIGH-LEVEL OPINIONS: The top offices of the Chinese Communist Party and State Council issued joint opinions on the need to improve pricing mechanisms, which reiterated calls for “market-oriented reform of prices” for energy, reform of feed-in tariffs – which have been used to set prices for coal and renewables – and improving power purchasing systems, Xinhua reported. The document also called for the establishment of “sound” pricing mechanisms for gas, energy storage and other energy flexibility providers, which could indicate plans for “further rolling out capacity mechanisms” to cover further power generation sources in addition to coal, wrote Yan Qin, principal analyst at ClearBlue Markets, on LinkedIn.
OPTIMISING RESOURCES: A representative of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planner, told business newspaper Daily Economic News that improved pricing mechanisms are the foundation of a better market-oriented economy. The outlet also quoted Lin Weibin, director of the energy policy research office of the China Energy Research Society, saying that an important element of improving pricing mechanisms is to “accelerate the construction of the electricity spot market, and promote the construction of a unified national electricity market”. The opinions are a “powerful impetus” to develop systems that make the use of “energy resources” more efficient and optimise China’s energy structure, Xinhua quoted Deng Yusong, a researcher at the government-backed thinktank Development Research Center of the State Council, as saying.
Spotlight
Guest post: China’s surging solar exports to the global south
China’s exports of solar panels to the global south have doubled in the past two years, overtaking global-north sales for the first time since 2018, says a recent Carbon Brief guest post.
The guest post is by Dave Jones and Libby Copsey, respectively global insights programme director and data developer at thinktank Ember. Ember’s China solar PV export explorer tracks shipments to more than 200 countries, showing that global south countries, such as Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and India, were among the top importers of Chinese solar panels in 2024.
In this issue, Carbon Brief highlights the key findings of the guest post. The full article is available on Carbon Brief’s website.
Top importers
China’s solar panel exports rose by 10% in 2024, with imports by global-south countries rising by 32% and those to the global north falling by 6%, according to Ember’s data.
Global-south imports more than doubled from 60 gigawatts (GW) in 2022 to 126GW in 2024. That surpassed global-north imports, which were only 12% more in 2024 than in 2022, as shown on the chart below.
The Netherlands was the biggest importer in 2024 and has been every year since 2019, as a result of Rotterdam serving as an import hub for much of continental Europe. The next four places were all global-south countries.
Brazil was in second place, importing more than 20GW for the second year in a row. However, the imposition of import taxes by the government, the refusal of electricity distributors to connect new solar systems and solar “curtailment” are all causing headwinds in 2025.
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia jumped to third and fourth, respectively. These two countries have had almost identical imports of Chinese solar panels for the past two years. They stood at 8GW in 2023 and then more than doubled to 17GW in 2024, the export explorer shows.
However, Pakistan has mainly imported panels for small-scale “distributed” installations. In contrast, Saudi Arabia’s import growth has been driven almost entirely by desert solar parks, complete with some battery storage and paid for by international energy companies.
India was in fifth place in 2024. Its module imports remained similar to those in 2023, but its installations rose to a record high, enabled by a step up in new domestic solar panel manufacturing capacity.
In January 2025, that helped India hit 100GW of solar installed, according to government figures. India is partly relying on Chinese imports, whilst simultaneously scaling up its own manufacturing industry.
New markets
There were 15 countries that saw a large uptick in imports of Chinese solar panels towards the end of 2024.
In particular, there were large increases in Nigeria, Algeria and Iraq, where there is clear evidence that demand for panels is growing.
Nigeria’s growth was driven by blackouts in 2024 and the removal of fuel subsidies, Iraq is constructing its first large solar plant, while Algeria has a plan for 3GW of solar projects.
For a cluster of a further 12 countries, which includes many small African and Latin American countries, it is less clear if the recent uptick in solar panel imports is a structural change that will continue into 2025 and beyond.
There are large incentives for China’s solar manufacturing companies to meet year-end targets, so it is possible that containers of solar panels were sold to these countries at discounted rates to help meet these goals.
The recent spike in imports are nevertheless quite large in the context of the small electricity systems of many of these countries. As such, these solar panels would provide a relatively meaningful increase in renewable electricity generation if they go on to be installed.
Reducing reliance
China itself – the biggest of all the global-south solar markets – installed more solar panels than it exported for the second year in a row.
It installed 333GW of solar capacity domestically in 2024, some 38% more than the 242GW of solar panels that it exported.
Solar exports rose by 10% year-on-year, which was a significant slowdown from the rate of growth seen in recent years. However, solar installations outside of China grew by 30%.
This demonstrates a step-up in ambitions to reduce reliance on Chinese solar panel imports by a number of countries around the world.
Watch, read, listen
SHIFTING MINDSETS: Business news outlet Jiemian interviewed the owner of a struggling clean-energy technology distributor in Germany about the challenges of importing Chinese energy products to the EU.
PATIENT CAPITAL?: New Security Beat explored how China is using “resource-backed loans” as part of its overseas development finance strategy, recouping loan payments in the form of oil, minerals and other national resources.
NO MORE BF-BOF: A new report by consultancy Global Efficiency Intelligence examined how China can increase uptake of electric arc furnaces in its carbon-intensive steel industry.
PLOTTING THE FUTURE: Kaare Sandholt, chief international advisor at the Energy Research Institute, spoke with Environment China about the thinktank’s modelling of China’s energy transition, which he recently wrote about for Carbon Brief.
26%
The amount by which China’s glacier area has shrunk since 1960, due to rapid global warming, Reuters reported. The newswire added that 7,000 small glaciers have disappeared completely in China during this period.
New science
npj Climate Action
A new study analysing China’s climate policy found that a higher “density”, or number, of climate policies “does not equate to stronger [climate] action”. The authors created a dataset of 358 climate-related policies adopted by China’s central government from 2016-22. They found “significant variation” in how much different sectors were aligned with China’s most recent nationally determined contribution (NDC) – especially among high-emitting sectors.
Communications Earth & Environment
An emissions trading system (ETS) is needed in order for ammonia produced with renewable energy – known as “renewable ammonia” – to achieve “cost parity” with conventional ammonia before 2040, according to new research. The authors used models to project the economic and carbon costs of seven ammonia production technologies, evaluating the impact of China’s ETS on the levelised cost of ammonia over 2018-60. Expanding the ETS to cover the lifecycle of ammonia production could allow “renewable ammonia” to achieve cost parity 6-37 years sooner than if the system was not implemented, it added.
China’s carbon sinks from land-use change underestimated
Nature Climate Change
A new study found that China’s carbon sinks resulting from land-use change over the past four decades have been underestimated. The study analysed carbon fluxes linked to land-use change between 1981-2020, using independent models and a new dataset integrating remote sensing with China’s national forest inventory. It added that, over the past 40 years, China’s net carbon flux from land-use change removed 7.3bn tonnes of CO2, with the annual average sink since 2001 totalling 0.5bn tonnes of CO2.
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 3 April 2025: Solar exports; Carbon market expansion; Leaders’ climate commitments appeared first on Carbon Brief.
China Briefing 3 April 2025: Solar exports; Carbon market expansion; Leaders’ climate commitments
Greenhouse Gases
Revealed: UK development body still has $700m invested overseas in fossil-fuel assets
British International Investment (BII), a UK government-owned and aid-funded company, has a portfolio of overseas fossil-fuel assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars, Carbon Brief can reveal.
In 2020, BII committed to “aligning” its “future” investments with the Paris Agreement and since then it has doubled its renewable-energy funding.
But, as of 2023, the last year for which data is available, it also still had a large portfolio of gas-fired power plants across Africa and south Asia.
Multiple freedom of information (FOI) requests by Carbon Brief reveal fossil-fuel energy and related projects worth nearly $700m (£526m) on BII’s books, which represents about 6% of its assets in 2023.
The FOI results also show that, at the end of last year, BII still had $70m (£53m) of unspent funds earmarked for foreign fossil-fuel companies in the coming years.
BII has not breached its own investment guidelines and says its fossil-fuel exposure fell further in 2024 as it aims to “manage and responsibly exit” these assets.
However, MPs and campaigners have criticised BII’s legacy fossil-fuel investments for “conflicting” with UK climate goals and diverting increasingly scarce aid resources.
Climate pledge
BII is the UK’s development finance institution (DFI), a publicly owned, for-profit company that invests in businesses in developing countries.
These investments are meant to promote economic development, especially via projects – including new energy infrastructure – deemed “too risky” for private investors.
BII largely supports itself using financial returns from its existing portfolio, which was worth approximately £7.3bn ($9.2bn) in 2023.
However, the UK government has also provided BII with billions of pounds from its aid budget. This support has grown even amid massive cuts to UK aid, with BII receiving an extra £400m last year due to reduced government spending on housing asylum seekers.
The government has also been leaning more on BII to reach its international climate finance goals.
Despite being wholly owned – and partly funded – by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), BII has an “arm’s length” relationship with the UK government and makes its own investment decisions.
In 2020, the previous Conservative government committed the UK to ending new overseas fossil-fuel funding beyond March 2021.
This came after BII – then known as CDC Group – had pledged in its 2020 climate strategy that it would not make any new investments that were “misaligned with the Paris Agreement”, based on a Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures framework.
Then-chief executive Nick O’Donohoe stated that the climate strategy would “shape every single investment decision we make moving forward”.
This was hailed as an end to fossil-fuel financing by the institution, despite some remaining “loopholes”. Notably, its fossil-fuel policy allowed for new investments in gas projects if they were deemed “consistent with a country’s pathway to net-zero by 2050”.
Since making its pledge, BII has repeatedly come under fire from MPs and campaigners for continuing to hold “active investments” in fossil-fuel companies.
Fossil assets
BII says that its fossil-fuel portfolio, which mainly consists of gas-fired power plants in “power-constrained” African nations, “has been on a steady downward trajectory since 2020”.
However, the company has not released data on the value of its fossil-fuel assets since 2021, citing “commercial sensitivities”.
In September 2024, Carbon Brief filed an FOI request with BII to obtain data on the company’s fossil-fuel and renewable-energy investments, as well as their asset value.
Following more than six months of back-and-forth – including Carbon Brief requesting an internal review of its FOI request – the company provided much of the information that was originally requested at the end of March 2025.
This included annual data on projects that BII has already committed to support, such as the Sirajganj 4 gas plant in Bangladesh and the Amandi Energy gas plant in Ghana.
As the chart below shows, BII’s cumulative commitments to fossil-fuel companies have remained roughly the same since its climate strategy in 2020. This is in line with its pledge to provide no “new commitments” to most fossil-fuel projects.
One exception is an extra $20m (£15m) in 2021 for Globeleq, a company controlled by BII that primarily supports gas power in Africa. An investment in a Mozambique gas project that year by Globeleq was deemed “Paris-aligned” and, therefore, allowed under BII’s rules.
Meanwhile, BII’s total commitments to renewable energy projects have more than doubled, from $894m (£672m) to $2.1bn (£1.6bn), between 2020 and 2024.
Once funds have been “committed”, they can remain “undrawn” for many years. This means that money committed before 2020 can still be distributed without breaching BII’s pledge. Carbon Brief asked BII how much of these “commitments” remained undrawn each year.
This revealed that BII has continued sending money to fossil-fuel projects since its 2020 pledge, disbursing around $57m (£43m) over this period. At the end of 2024, there was still $67m (£50m) of “undrawn” fossil-fuel finance waiting to be spent.
BII tells Carbon Brief that, as “commitments” are legal contracts, it is obliged to provide these funds as and when they are required.
Beyond “direct” investments in energy projects, BII has also made “indirect” commitments to fossil fuels via private financial institutions. The company tells Carbon Brief it does not have details of how much these third-party funds invest in fossil-fuel projects.
Daniel Willis, finance campaign manager at the NGO Recourse, points to examples such as Gigajoule and Ademat, companies that have received new finance injections for fossil-fuel projects beyond the 2020 date, on BII’s behalf. (Again, this is allowed under BII’s guidelines.)
Willis tells Carbon Brief that these investments and the continued payments from existing commitments “clearly go against the spirit of the UK government’s fossil fuel policy”.
BII initially rejected Carbon Brief’s request for the “net asset value” of every fossil-fuel investment in its portfolio. It argued that disclosure could weaken its commercial position.
However, the company eventually agreed to disclose the aggregate value of its fossil-fuel assets for the period 2020-2023.
The data reveals that, as of 2023, BII still owned $591m (£444m) worth of gas-fired power plants and other fossil-fuel energy assets, rising to $676m (£508m) when indirect assets are included. This amounts to around 6% of BII’s assets.
While BII declined to provide Carbon Brief with the 2024 figures, a company spokesperson tells Carbon Brief that they plan to release them “this summer”, adding:
“Our 2024 annual report and accounts…will show that our exposure to fossil-fuels assets has fallen 39% since 2020 and now makes up just 6% of our total portfolio. Over the same period, the value of our climate-finance portfolio has increased by 122% to $2.5bn [£1.9bn] and now accounts for 26% of our total portfolio.”
As the chart below shows, there has already been a gradual drop in the value of BII’s direct fossil-fuel energy investments since 2020. The decline can likely be attributed to investees paying off debts to BII, fossil-fuel assets losing value and – to some extent – BII exiting smaller investments.
With evidence that BII’s fossil-fuel portfolio is declining in value, Sandra Martinsone, policy manager at the international development network Bond, tells Carbon Brief that “sooner or later” these will likely become stranded assets:
“The longer BII holds on to these fossil-fuel investments, the higher the risk of losing the invested aid pounds.”
The drop in the value of BII’s indirect fossil-fuel and “other carbon-related” assets – which includes non-energy companies that serve fossil-fuel companies – has been sharper. This can be largely attributed to BII ending support for fossil-fuel trade and supply chains in 2022.
‘Worrying trajectory’
In its FOI response, BII says that it “seeks to manage and responsibly exit fossil-fuel assets”. However, NGOs and politicians have raised concerns about the pace of change.
Natalie Jones, a policy advisor specialising in fossil-fuel phaseout at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), tells Carbon Brief that while BII has not breached its own climate guidelines:
“The fact that fossil fuel investments remain on BII’s books is not a good look for the organisation, bearing in mind its 2020 commitment to aligning its activities and investments with the Paris Agreement and the UK’s 2021 policy to end all international public support for fossil fuels.”
Civil-society groups have repeatedly called for BII to set a timeline for divesting from fossil fuels. They have even argued that, in the context of “drastic” UK aid cuts, BII should not receive more aid funding and instead reinvest funds from some of its existing assets.
Criticism of BII’s approach to fossil fuels is captured in a 2023 report by the International Development Committee of MPs. It refers to BII legacy investments “conflicting” with UK policies, including the alignment of all aid with the Paris Agreement.
The report also notes that there “does not appear to be a definitive path for BII exiting those fossil-fuel investments or transitioning its existing investment portfolio to green energy”.
Committee chair and Labour MP, Sarah Champion, says that, while the most recent data is not yet publicly available, the figures released to Carbon Brief point to a “worrying trajectory” in BII’s fossil-fuel investments. She tells Carbon Brief:
“It appears that BII has stayed on this worrying trajectory. This must change: as the government proposes a new strategic direction for UK aid spending, focusing on poverty reduction and genuinely responsible investment must be BII’s number one priority.”
In a statement alongside its FOI response, BII says that “forced divestment increases the likelihood that buyers of such assets would be less responsible owners, thereby increasing the future risk of negative climate impact”.
It also says that “being viewed as a forced seller” could reduce the value BII could obtain from those assets. This position was supported by the previous Conservative government.
Jones tells Carbon Brief that concerns about the responsibility of new owners are legitimate:
“However, it would be great to see from BII a plan to responsibly exit or, even better, decommission their fossil fuel assets. There is a case to be made for a responsible exit that would free up funds for much-needed climate finance.”
BII argues that, with around 600 million Africans still lacking access to electricity, gas power remains “essential” for providing “baseload” power to many nations on the continent.
This position has been supported by a number of African governments. However, many civil-society groups, both in Africa and around the world, argue that developed countries should focus financial resources on expanding clean power capacity in developing countries.
Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, which has previously questioned the legality of the BII-controlled Globeleq supporting gas power in Africa, tells Carbon Brief it is “inappropriate” for aid money to be spent this way:
“It’s also trapping the countries that are building this stuff into a type of energy which is on its way out.”
The post Revealed: UK development body still has $700m invested overseas in fossil-fuel assets appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Revealed: UK development body still has $700m invested overseas in fossil-fuel assets
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 16 May 2025: Has China’s CO2 peaked?; US bill ‘would kill IRA’; Poland’s coal collapse
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
US budget bill ‘would kill IRA’
WAYS AND MEANS: The future of Joe Biden’s signature climate policy, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), is in doubt after Republicans on two key Congressional committees passed budget proposals that “would effectively kill” it, reported Heatmap News. The proposals would end clean-energy tax credits and rebates for electric vehicle (EV) purchases, “claw back” climate grants and “slash” related spending, said Reuters.
DEFENCE DOUBTS: While a “small subset” of House Republicans have been trying to defend the IRA, it is unclear if they would block passage of the wider budget bill to get their way, according to E&E News. In the Senate, Politico said “some” Republicans are “pushing back” on the current proposals. A New York Times feature said Republican districts “have the most to lose” if all of the IRA tax credits are repealed. Semafor reported Republicans were “wrestling with possible failure” of the bill, in the face of opposition from Democrats and their own ranks. (Law firm Grant Thornton said policymakers were hoping to pass the bill by 4 July.)
SOCIAL COST: Meanwhile, a new White House memo directed US government agencies to disregard economic damages from climate change, reported E&E News. Under a headline asking, “What’s the cost of pollution? Trump says zero”, the New York Times explained that the “social cost of carbon” had been used for more than two decades to help weigh the costs and benefits of federal policies and regulations. It said the move could face legal challenges.
Around the world
- DOWNPOUR DEATHS: More than 100 people were killed by floods in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Agence-France Presse reported. Extreme rainfall also killed at least seven people in Somalia, the Associated Press said.
- PARIS PERIL: A UK opposition minister falsely attacked climate science and said his party could exit the Paris Agreement if elected, the Guardian said. The Guardian also reported on how Australia’s new opposition leader “could abandon net-zero”.
- GERMAN GAS: New economy minister Katharina Reiche wants more gas-fired power plants, according to Die Zeit. The country’s climate council warned the new government’s plans could breach climate goals, said Clean Energy Wire.
- DENGUE DANGER: Colombia’s El Espectador reported on rising climate-driven risks from dengue fever in Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico and Panama.
- COP30 CREW: The Brazilian COP30 presidency has appointed 30 envoys, including “key liaisons” for strategic regions such as China’s Xie Zhenhua, Jonathan Pershing from the US and former UNFCCC chief Patricia Espinosa, Climate Home News said.
60%
The yearly rise in EV sales in emerging markets in Asia and Latin America in 2024, according to new data from the International Energy Agency.
Latest climate research
- Even passing 1.5C of global warming temporarily would trigger a “significant” risk of Amazon forest “dieback”, said research covered by Carbon Brief.
- Rapidly rising emissions from China’s agricultural machinery could “hinder” the country’s push towards net-zero, according to a study covered by Carbon Brief.
- Findings in Environmental Research Letters found that the benefits of CO2 “fertilisation” on forests are likely to be constrained by warming.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
For the first time on record, China’s CO2 emissions have fallen as a result of clean energy expansion rather than weak growth in electricity demand, according to new analysis for Carbon Brief. The analysis, which has been covered by outlets including AFP, Semafor and the New York Times, found that China’s emissions from fossil fuels and cement fell 1.6% in the first quarter of 2025 and are now 1% below the peak reached in March 2024. The months ahead will be critical for what comes next, as Beijing is working to finalise its next international climate pledge for 2035 and its five-year plan for 2026-2030.
Spotlight
How Poland started speeding away from coal power
This week, Carbon Brief reports on coal falling to barely half of Poland’s power supplies.
The first round of Poland’s presidential election is on Sunday and Rafał Trzaskowski, from prime minister Donald Tusk’s centre-right party Civic Platform, is favoured to win.
Long seen as one of the world’s most coal-reliant countries, Poland’s electricity system is in the midst of dramatic and increasingly rapid change.
When Poland joined the EU in 2004, coal-fired power stations supplied 93% of the country’s electricity. Coal accounted for more than three-quarters of the total as recently as 2018, the year the country hosted COP24 in Katowice.
Since then, a gradual shuffle away from coal has turned to a sprint.
In 2024, coal generated little more than half of Poland’s electricity, according to data from thinktank Ember – and a coal power phaseout by 2035 is now seen as a realistic prospect.
While the topic has not played a big role in the election campaign, there is now broad public acceptance that “coal is over in Poland”, said Joanna Maćkowiak-Pandera, president of Polish thinktank Forum Energii. She told Carbon Brief:
“The extreme rightwing tries to claim that coal is the future and there is coal for [another] 400 years…[But] even the coal-mining sector does not believe it.”
As of 2024, coal contributed just 53.5% of electricity generation in Poland, with wind and solar making up 23.5%, gas power 12.1% and other renewables another 6.3%.
Coal ‘death spiral’
The “death spiral” for coal power is due to the high cost of coal mining in Poland, the old age of coal power plants, pressure from climate policies such as the EU emissions trading system (EUETS) and a loss of market share to renewables, said Maćkowiak-Pandera:
“You can be pro-coal, but you will not change the economics, physics, geology and the reality of the financial market.”
Until 2023, the right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) had held the reins of government, having won the 2015 election after promising to protect the coal industry.
Following power cuts that summer, however, PiS increasingly accepted that renewbles – particularly solar power – could support energy security, explained Maćkowiak-Pandera.
(Renewables enjoy broad public support and are associated with energy security, she said.)
With backing from government policy, Poland’s solar capacity leapt from just 200 megawatts in 2015 to more than 20 gigawatts in 2024 – a 100-fold increase.
Still, PiS strongly resisted calls to phase out coal. In 2020, it struck a deal with unions to subsidise the Polish coal-mining industry until 2049. The subsidies remain in place.
After winning parliamentary elections in 2023, Tusk promised a “much faster energy transition” based on renewables and nuclear power, said Maćkowiak-Pandera.
While utility firms would “really love” to phase out coal plants within as little as three to five years, there is a growing consensus around 2035 as a more achievable end date, she said:
“It’s really not controversial any more…I speak with politicians, with utilities, with [electricity] transmission system operators, even with miners. Everybody is aware of the situation.”
Instead, there is a practical conversation around how best to replace coal at the lowest cost, explained Maćkowiak-Pandera.
This will mean more renewables, but also the flexible capacity needed to manage the grid – including some new gas-fired power plants – as well as energy storage and market reforms, she said.
Poland’s rapid transition may not have made many headlines, but other major coal-burning countries are starting to pay attention.
Maćkowiak-Pandera has welcomed delegations from China, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil, eager to learn about Poland’s experience. She added:
“For Chinese partners, it’s interesting because they like [our] pragmatic approach…they like that Poland [is] sometimes not mentioning climate, [but] is doing it anyhow.”
Watch, read, listen
CHINESE CROWING: A widely shared blog post on nationalist media outlet Guancha said China was taking climate action to “win the future energy revolution” and, among other things, to “save at least $600bn” on imported oil by shifting to EVs.
‘RUNNING BLIND’: For the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, climate scientist Peter Gleick said the Trump administration’s “purges” of climate research were “threats to national security”.
‘REALISM’ REJECTED: The Wicked Problems podcast discussed the “defeatism” behind a recent initiative calling for “climate realism”, as well as the “abundance agenda”.
Coming up
- 18 May: Poland presidential election
- 19 May: EU-UK summit, London
- 19-23 May: First UN climate week 2025, Panama City, Panama
- 19-27 May: World Health Assembly 2025, Geneva, Switzerland
Pick of the jobs
- European Commission, programme manager (climate change and sustainable energy) | Salary: Unknown. Location: Brussels, Belgium
- Dialogue Earth, southeast Asia editor | Salary: £43,370. Location: London
- Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, postdoctoral research associate in genomics and climate change | Salary: £43,751. Location: London
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 16 May 2025: Has China’s CO2 peaked?; US bill ‘would kill IRA’; Poland’s coal collapse appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed 16 May 2025: Has China’s CO2 peaked?; US bill ‘would kill IRA’; Poland’s coal collapse
Even passing 1.5C of global warming temporarily would trigger a “significant” risk of Amazon forest “dieback”, says a new study.
Dieback would see large numbers of trees die, shifting the lush rainforest into a dry savannah.
The research, published in Nature Climate Change, assesses the impact of “overshooting” the aspirational goal of the Paris Agreement on the Amazon and Siberian forests.
Overshoot would see warming surpass 1.5C above pre-industrial levels in the coming decades, before being brought back down before 2100 through large-scale carbon dioxide removal.
Using hundreds of climate-model simulations, the authors assess the influence of the “sensitivity” of the climate – a measure of the planet’s temperature response to a given increase in atmospheric CO2.
Across all simulations where global warming in 2100 surpasses 1.5C, 37% show “some amount of dieback”, the study says.
However, the risk increases further in the long term, with “55% of simulations exhibiting dieback by 2300”.
One author tells Carbon Brief that the study highlights that overshooting 1.5C leaves forest ecosystems “exposed to more risk than [they] need to be”.
The findings show that “we can’t afford complacency”, he warns.
Warming pathways
As the planet warms, there is an increasing risk that parts of the Earth system will cross “tipping points” – critical thresholds that, if exceeded, could push a system into an entirely new state.
For example, a seminal 2022 study warned that five tipping elements – including the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet and abrupt permafrost thaw – are already within reach, while others are becoming increasingly more likely as temperatures rise.
One way to limit warming to 1.5C by the end of the century involves initially overshooting the threshold. However, research published last year warns that the longer the 1.5C threshold is breached – and the higher the peak temperature – the greater the risk of crossing tipping points.
The new study uses modelling to investigate the risks of overshoot for the Amazon and Siberian forests.
The paper considers three illustrative mitigation pathways taken from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) mitigation report from its sixth assessment cycle, which was published in 2022.
Gregory Munday is an applied scientist at the UK Met Office Hadley Centre and lead author on the study. He tells Carbon brief that the authors selected “optimistic” pathways that “each have different relationships to the Paris Agreement goals”.
For each scenario, the authors assess a range of different climate sensitivities – a measure of the planet’s temperature response to a given increase in atmospheric CO2. The average outcome of each pathway is:
- The “renewables” scenario shows a future with reduced emissions and a heavy reliance on renewable energy, which keeps warming below 1.5C by 2100.
- The “negative emissions” pathway shows a world in which warming initially overshoots the 1.5C threshold, but extensive use of carbon removal sees warming drop back below 1.5C before 2100.
- The “gradual strengthening” pathway illustrates a strengthening of climate policies implemented in 2020, with rapid reductions mid-century and a reliance on net-negative emissions by the end of this century. This pathway sees global average temperatures reach 1.8C by 2100.
The authors run the emissions pathways through a simple climate “emulator” model, which calculates the global temperatures associated with each emission pathway.
The charts below show cumulative CO2 emissions (left), atmospheric CO2 concentration (middle) and changes in global average surface temperature compared to the pre-industrial level (right), for the renewables (green), negative emissions (purple) and gradual strengthening (yellow) pathways until the year 2300.
The authors then use a different modelling framework to project the impacts of each emissions scenario.
Study author Dr Chris Jones leads the UK Met Office Hadley Centre’s research into vegetation and carbon cycle modelling and their interactions with climate. He tells Carbon Brief that the new study is the first application of this modelling framework, which he describes as a “rapid response tool”.
He says the tool was developed to “rapidly look at a range of climate outcomes, both global and local, for new scenarios”, adding that it provides a “pretty good approximation” of what traditional global climate models would do.
Munday adds that the framework is able to produce results within days or weeks, rather than taking “months and months”.
Finally, the authors use land surface model JULES to assess forest health under the different scenarios. Overall, the authors produce 918 simulations each of Amazon and Siberian forest health.
Forest health
The authors assess forest health using two metrics. The first is the forest growth metric “net primary productivity”, a measure of the rate that energy is stored as biomass by plants, which can indicate forest productivity. The second metric, forest cover, is a way of measuring the forest’s long-term response.
The models show that rising CO2 levels causes net primary productivity to increase, due to the CO2 fertilisation effect, driving more rapid forest growth. Conversely, many of the impacts of climate change, such as increased heat and changes to rainfall patterns, can be detrimental to forests, damaging or killing trees.
To identify the impacts of overshooting 1.5C on the Amazon and Siberian forests, the authors compare the “renewables” and “negative emissions” pathways. Both of these scenarios reach a similar global average temperature by the year 2100, but the former does so without overshoot, while the latter overshoots 1.5C before temperatures come back down.
The maps below show the difference in net primary productivity in the Amazon (left) and Siberian forests (right) between the two scenarios in the year 2100. Brown shading indicates that net primary productivity was higher in the non-overshoot scenario, while blue indicates that it was higher in the overshoot scenario.
The maps show that “large areas of both Amazonian and Siberian forest show reduced net primary productivity” by 2100 due to overshoot, compared to a scenario with no overshoot, the paper says.
‘High-risk zones’
From the three pathways, the authors generate 918 simulations of future climate and corresponding Amazon forest health.
The authors use these results to identify which future temperature and rainfall conditions result in net forest “dieback”. This is when large numbers of trees die, shifting the rainforest into a dry savannah.
The plots below show which simulations result in Amazon dieback by the year 2100 (left) and 2300 (right), for different amounts of rainfall and temperature levels in the year 2100. Each graph is divided into four sections – hot and wet (top right), hot and dry (bottom right), cold and wet (top right) and cold and dry (bottom right). These sections are based on average regional temperature and rainfall in the year 2100.
Coloured dots indicate scenarios that see forest dieback. These are coloured by pathway, for renewables (green), negative emissions (purple) and gradual strengthening (yellow). Grey dots indicate scenarios without Amazon dieback. The red lines indicate “high-risk climatic zones”, above which there is “a significant risk of dieback”.
The study finds that most Amazon dieback scenarios happen in hot, dry conditions, the authors note.
Across all simulations where warming in 2100 is above 1.5C, 37% show “some amount of dieback” the study says. However, in these model runs, the risk increases further in the long term, the study notes, with “55% of simulations exhibiting dieback by 2300”.
Prof Nico Wunderling is a professor of computational Earth system science at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and was not involved in the new research. He tells Carbon Brief it is significant that, according to this study, the Amazon will face impacts from climate change below the tipping point threshold of 2-6C, as assessed in the landmark 2022 tipping points paper.
The authors also carry out this analysis for Siberian forests. Instead of a drop in tree cover, they find a change in the composition of trees. Munday tells Carbon Brief that the vegetation shifts “from grassy surface types to lots more trees and shrubs” in a process called “woody encroachment”.
Woody encroachment can have significant negative impacts on terrestrial carbon sequestration, the hydrological cycle and local biodiversity.
“The Siberian forest is probably committed to a long-term, and possibly substantial, expansion of tree cover,” the authors write.
High-risk scenarios
The greatest uncertainty in this study comes from the spread of climate sensitivities, Munday tells Carbon Brief.
He elaborates:
“This means that although we simulate the impacts from extremely optimistic mitigation scenarios, there is a chance that the Earth’s climate sensitivity is much higher than we expect, and so, small but significant risks of short- and long-term forest ecosystem impacts exist in spite of the choice of these strong-mitigation scenarios.”
In other words, if climate sensitivity is higher than expected, forests could face harmful impacts even under low emissions scenarios.
Dr David McKay – a lecturer in geography, climate change and society at the University of Sussex – is the lead author of the 2022 study. He tells Carbon Brief that the new paper “shows the value in focusing not just on model averages, but also exploring a wide range of possible futures to capture potential ‘low probability, high impact’ outcomes”. He adds:
“[The study shows] how negative emissions to reduce warming might help restabilise these forests in future if we do overshoot 1.5C, but as such large-scale CO2 removal remains hypothetical, we shouldn’t assume we can rely on this in practice.”
However, McKay also notes some uncertainties in the models used. Mckay tells Carbon Brief that the vegetation model used in this study doesn’t include fire and “has some limitations around soil moisture stress and vegetation in the tundra”. These are “likely important for resolving potential tipping points in these biomes”.
Therefore, he adds, the study “doesn’t show how regional tipping points could potentially further amplify and lock-in these future forest shifts, even with negative emissions”.
Dr David Lapola is researcher at the University of Campinas in Brazil and was not involved in the study. He also warns that vegetation models provide a “poor representation of how CO2 may affect these forests directly”. Lapola argues that scientists must “collect field data to make any new advancement with models”.
Nevertheless, Lapola tells Carbon Brief that studies such as this will be “extremely useful” for the IPCC’s upcoming seventh assessment cycle, which will include a dedicated chapter on tipping points and other “low-likelihood high impact events” for the first time.
Study author Jones tells Carbon Brief that overshooting 1.5C leaves forest ecosystems “exposed to more risk than [they] need to be”. The findings show that “we can’t afford complacency”, he warns.
The post ‘Significant’ risk of Amazon forest dieback if global warming overshoots 1.5C appeared first on Carbon Brief.
‘Significant’ risk of Amazon forest dieback if global warming overshoots 1.5C
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