Despite taking place just days after a major UN biodiversity summit, the COP29 climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan produced few new commitments on food, forests, land and nature.
Countries did finalise the text on the remaining sections setting out the rules for international carbon markets under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.
They also considered a text “reaffirming” the “importance of conserving, protecting and restoring nature”.
However, countries failed to adopt this document during COP29’s chaotic final plenary session.
During the summit, three countries came forward with their new UN climate plans, which included limited information on how these nations plan to harness nature to meet their emissions targets.
Elsewhere, a flurry of new declarations and initiatives – including on climate action for farmers, water and reducing methane emissions from organic waste – made up the presidency’s “action agenda”.
Some observers lamented the apparent lack of progress on food and nature topics, with one telling Carbon Brief that the two featured “pretty weakly” in the final outcomes.
Others were more sanguine, with another observer saying that “momentum was neither gained nor lost, just maintained” and giving it, “overall, a passing grade”.
Below, Carbon Brief explains how food, forests, land and nature featured inside and outside the negotiations at COP29.
- Article 6
- Sharm el-Sheikh joint work on agriculture and food security
- Global Goal on Adaptation
- UAE Dialogue and the global stocktake
- Response measures
- Nature
- Food and nature in new NDCs
- Methane
- Food systems and water
- Deforestation
- Indigenous representation
- Greenwashing and ‘big ag’ influence
- Ecosystem restoration
Article 6
At COP29, countries reached a final agreement on the rules for carbon trading under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.
The deal struck in Baku on Sunday brings a decade of negotiations to a close, but there are some key tools for “nature-based” removals and rights safeguards still to be developed.
Rules governing country-to-country carbon trading under Article 6.2, as well as a new international carbon market under Article 6.4 called the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM), are now more or less complete.
The COP29 presidency hailed the agreement as a “breakthrough” that “achieves full operationalisation of Article 6”, a COP “win” that it pushed from day one of the two-week talks.
The outcome was “warmly welcome[d]” by the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA). In an emailed statement, IETA said:
“We now call on all governments to make use of Article 6 and to implement policies that spur international market-based cooperation. By mobilising private investment where emission reductions and removals are more cost-effective, Article 6 has the potential to enhance climate ambition, transfer technology and deliver finance flows where most needed.”
Activist groups that are part of the Climate Land Ambition and Rights Alliance (CLARA), however, slammed what they said was a decision to “outsource” responsibilities to ensure human rights and environmental integrity to “a handful of people” comprising the supervisory body (SBM) for Article 6.4, which is tasked with drawing up guidance and approving methodologies.
In a statement responding to the overall outcome on Article 6, CLARA coordinator Kelly Stone from ActionAid USA said:
“Nothing in the rules developed here will prevent carbon markets from repeating their history of harming communities and failing to deliver meaningful climate action.
“It is not a coincidence that carbon markets were delivered at what was supposed to be the climate finance COP. When you talk to developed countries about climate finance, they throw up their hands and point to carbon markets and anything other than what’s needed and owed: public finance.”
Talks on Article 6 – which are highly technical – have repeatedly fallen short, with countries failing to reach any agreement at all during COP25 in Madrid and COP28 in Dubai.
In Baku, carbon markets were given high priority, with the presidency pushing through a day-one deal endorsing Article 6.4 documents on methodologies and removals. These documents had been “adopted” by the SBM rather than being negotiated line by line by countries.
The SBM had also drawn up a mandatory “sustainable development tool” with environmental and human-rights safeguards.
The guidelines on methodologies set out requirements for the downward adjustment of the “baselines” against which carbon credits can be issued – a process intended to align baselines with the Paris Agreement’s long-term goals. They also set out “additionality” checks to avoid projects “locking-in” high emissions.
Nevertheless, the manner in which these documents had been “adopted” by the SBM before the presidency pushed through formal endorsement on day one in Baku caused disquiet among some parties.
At the plenary on the first day of the summit, Tuvalu voiced its objection to this process, saying:
“We also recognise your interest in signalling progress. We have accepted this decision with some reluctance. Unfortunately, the manner in which we have adopted this decision at the start of the [COP] does not respect [a] party-driven process. We are very uncomfortable with this trend.”
Another COP29 decision, adopted at the closing plenary, “encourages” the supervisory body to “expedite” its work on baselines, additionality and the risk of removals being reversed. This is a particular concern for “nature-based solutions”, such as reforestation, given that increasingly frequent wildfires around the world could reverse these emission gains.
This decision also allows afforestation and reforestation projects created under the older “clean development mechanism” (CDM) to enter the new carbon market, subject to meeting rules on removals.
Effectively, afforestation and reforestation plantations from a pre-Paris era will be among the first projects allowed on the new market, without extra checks for additionality, or whether they actually achieved emissions reductions between 2021 to 2025.
While these projects form only a small percentage of CDM projects, experts told Carbon Brief that bringing them into Article 6.4 could “pave the way” for monoculture tree plantations to be considered removals.
At the same time, COP29 also reached a decision on country-to-country carbon trading under Article 6.2.
The lack of official rules to this point has not deterred countries from striking their own deals. Many of these have been flagged by observers for their “glaring lack of transparency”.
The COP29 decision, however, “requests” more upfront disclosure from countries reporting on their activities, a key ask of countries and observers who fear this mechanism could become a secretive “wild west”, where trading can take place with limited transparency.
At the same time, the decision has lax consequences for “persistent” and “significant” inconsistencies in Article 6.2 projects, although countries will need to disclose these inconsistencies to the public.
Isa Mulder from Carbon Market Watch told Carbon Brief:
“The option was on the table for much stronger language [that] made it through several iterations. So I think it was not impossible to get some teeth in there: just very difficult and it clearly didn’t succeed.”
Responding to the negotiations, UN special rapporteurs on human rights and climate change, as well as foreign debt, drew attention to transparency and rights concerns that linger in Article 6 carbon markets. In a statement on 19 November, they said:
“It is imperative to keep in mind that the public has a right to access information on carbon markets with regard to credible and verifiable evidence of emission reductions; expected impacts on land, waters, nature and human rights; as well as who is benefitting economically from carbon markets; and whether credits are being used to offset preventable emissions.
“This is even more important in a global context of widespread misinformation and disinformation on climate change and its impacts on human rights.”
Countries, however, were much more positive about the outcome. Blocs including the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), the Environmental Integrity Group, the African Group and Australia welcomed the decision on carbon markets in the closing COP plenary.
During his final intervention, the EU’s commissioner for climate action Wopke Hoekstra said:
“We did deliver on Article 6 and this is a leap forward. We have witnessed a historic conclusion of the rule book for carbon markets. We now have standards that have a UN seal of approval on it, and this will drive investment, raise ambition and bring transparency and higher standards. This COP delivered on climate finance, it also delivered on trust…trusted rules on carbon markets.”
Finally, the talks in Baku agreed a deal on Article 6.8, spanning cooperation that does not involve markets.
Sharm el-Sheikh joint work on agriculture and food security
Despite having held more importance at previous COPs and featuring in the global stocktake last year, actual outcomes on agriculture were constructive but relatively muted in Baku.
There is only one formal negotiation track for agriculture and food systems at the UNFCCC, known as the Sharm el-Sheikh Joint Work on the Implementation of Climate Action on Agriculture and Food Security (SJWA).
At COP29, the debates on the SJWA were largely around the functions and structure of the Sharm el-Sheikh online portal, where countries and observers can submit information on how climate action can support agriculture and food security.
On the very first day of negotiations, Egypt sought to clarify “how small farmers can make submissions” and called for the website to be more accessible.
Later, the G77 group, led by the Dominican Republic and Kenya, proposed “enhancing” the portal to make it more usable, searchable by region and theme and to allow projects, initiatives and policies to seek collaboration and finance, such as from the Adaptation Fund.
Carbon Brief understands that, while this was initially resisted by Australia, Canada and the US, countries eventually agreed to consider a submission template developed by the G77, led by the Dominican Republic and Kenya and, later, Australia.
On 15 November, a clean four-page text with no brackets was approved at the mid-week plenary of the subsidiary bodies, wrapping up the negotiating track.
It includes a draft template for submissions and “request[s]” the UNFCCC secretariat to make the portal more accessible and functional, while developing further elements, such as how projects can link to financial or practical support.
ActionAid’s global climate justice lead, Teresa Anderson, told Carbon Brief:
“In all, agriculture served a meagre salad this year. There was a low-key online portal discussion fight and an attempt to get the indicators on agriculture under adaptation to make sense.”
Global Goal on Adaptation
At COP28, countries agreed to ambitious but largely qualitative adaptation targets for food, water and ecosystems as part of the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA).
The global goal on adaptation “urges” parties to increase their ambition on a series of targets. Source: UNFCCC (2023)
Indicators to translate these targets into achievable, but “globally comparable” actions and measure progress are still being developed by technical experts under the two-year UAE-Belem Work Programme.
Indicators “relevant to specific ecosystems” – such as marine, mountain and inland water ecosystems – were added to that list at COP29.
Crucially, experts will also have to draw up indicators for “enabling factors” that track – but are not limited to – “means of implementation (MOI)”, or how these adaptation actions are being financed, as well as progress towards “transformational” adaptation.
MOI indicators – widely understood to mean finance – were at the heart of the adaptation fight between developed and developing countries at COP29.
Observers told Carbon Brief that the EU, in particular, did not want MOI included, “as it was trying to balance expectations with regards to finance across the GGA and other tracks”.
The inclusion of “transformational adaptation”, such as “shifting entire farming systems to regenerative agricultural practices”, was also a subject of resistance from the like-minded developing (LMDCs) and least-developed countries (LDCs), as well as the African group and Arab group.
In a nine-hour meeting convened by the presidency to iron out differences, called the “Qurultay”, countries including Australia and the US opposed the establishment of MOI indicators for adaptation and emphasised the importance of “transformational” adaptation.
Meanwhile, developing countries – such as Pakistan and Zambia – pushed to include “means of implementation”. (See: Global Goal on Adaptation in Carbon Brief’s main COP29 summary.)
A “compromise” GGA text that went through nine iterations was published on 22 November, the scheduled last day of COP29, to the disappointment of many developing countries.
It encases MOI within “enabling factors”, which experts say could include other factors, such as transparency, governance or corruption.
This text was finally adopted, without intervention, in the closing plenary as the Baku Adaptation Roadmap.
Technical experts must now submit a consolidated list of all adaptation indicators to the subsidiary bodies four weeks before they meet in June next year. Parties will then have to pare that list down to “a manageable set of no more than 100 indicators” before they are adopted in COP30 in Brazil.
UAE Dialogue and the global stocktake
The UAE dialogue was established to follow up on the outcomes of the global stocktake (GST), a five-yearly “temperature check” for the Paris Agreement.
While some countries argued that the dialogue’s scope should be restricted to finance in order to support ambitious NDCs, many wanted it to cover “all outcomes” of the GST – particularly elements on mitigation.
(See where countries stood on the key issues in Carbon Brief’s interactive table of who wanted what from COP29.)
Much of the focus was on the fate of last year’s deal on transitioning away from fossil fuels, in the dialogue’s draft. However, discussions also included paragraph 33 of the global stocktake, which deals with biodiversity, terrestrial and ocean “sinks”.
For the first time, it had linked a zero-deforestation by 2030 target – a voluntary, non-negotiated pledge signed by 145 countries at COP26 – to the achievement of the Paris Agreement.
This paragraph was included in earlier iterations of text, but as an option and in brackets.
At a special single-sitting meeting called the “Qurultay”, Germany’s climate envoy, Jennifer Morgan, remarked that there was “no guarantee of a space to discuss the collective progress” on fossil fuel and forestry provisions in the stocktake. She added:
“This cannot, and must not be, our response to the suffering of millions of people around the world.”
In a press conference on 21 November, Bolivia’s lead negotiator, Diego Pacheco, clarified the stance of the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDCs), describing the inclusion of the targets as “a continued attempt by developed countries – which started in Glasgow – to “say 1.5C is within reach and transfer all responsibility” to developing countries. Pacheco added:
“At Baku, they are moving to having top-down targets for developing countries. If I don’t have the finance, how can I accept specific and intrusive targets?
“If we achieve sectoral targets [such as zero-deforestation by 2030], Bolivia will reach net-zero 20 years before developed countries. And that is really the best example of climate injustice. Is there any logic? This is real madness. They will say at the end ‘you have the Article 6 carbon markets’ [to deliver their financial obligations].”
(Bolivia is not among the 145 countries that signed the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use at COP26.)
A bracket-free draft decision for the UAE dialogue, published just before the closing plenary, “reaffirms the importance of conserving, protecting and restoring nature and ecosystems…in line with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework”, the landmark nature deal agreed in 2022.
However, the COP29 presidency failed to find consensus to approve this text, meaning a decision on this has now been shunted to COP30 next year.
Response measures
At UN climate talks, “response measures” are a forum for discussing the effects of carbon-cutting policies on countries themselves. They are particularly relevant to nations where controls on emissions or deforestation pose a risk to their people and economy.
At COP29 in Baku, countries agreed on establishing a four-year work plan to discuss response measures for 2026-30.
Importantly, the work plan includes an item on the “cross-border impacts” of “measures taken to combat” climate change.
This means that trade-related climate measures – such as the EU’s deforestation regulation – now have a formal space to be discussed and their impacts assessed in UN climate talks.
Nature
COP29 started just over a week after the COP16 biodiversity summit wrapped up in Cali, Colombia.
Despite that, COP29 saw few new country initiatives on tackling nature loss or references to the need to tackle biodiversity loss and climate change together.
Ahead of the Baku summit, Azerbaijan, Colombia and Saudi Arabia – the presidencies of the climate COP29, biodiversity COP16 and desertification COP16, respectively – launched a “Rio trio” initiative at the UN general assembly meeting in New York in September.
The initiative is aimed at “enhancing synergies” between the three Rio conventions: the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC); the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD); and the Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
The presidency partially dedicated its last “thematic” day to nature on 21 November. This included a “high level” event on the Rio trio initiative.
However, the day coincided with the start of the endgame in the negotiations, meaning many of the event’s speakers failed to show up, including COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev, biodiversity COP16 president Susana Muhamad and desertification COP16 president Abdulrahman Abdulmohsen Alfadley.
At a side event attended by Carbon Brief, several speakers noted the lack of new initiatives on biodiversity at COP29 and urged delegates to look forward to COP30 next year, which is being held in the rainforest city of Belém, Brazil.
Speaking at the side event, Hugo Mendes, a representative from the Brazilian environment ministry working on synergies between climate and nature, said that his government was working closely with the COP16 biodiversity presidency to make sure nature “will be at the heart” of COP30.
He added that Brazil was working hard in negotiating rooms at COP29 to ensure tacking biodiversity loss was included in UAE dialogue, a text outlining how to take forward the outcomes of last year’s “global stocktake”.
A bracket-free draft decision for the UAE dialogue “reaffirms the importance of conserving, protecting and restoring nature and ecosystems…in line with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework”, the landmark nature deal agreed in 2022.
However, as described above, the COP29 presidency failed to find consensus to approve this text, meaning a decision on this has now been shunted to COP30 next year. (See: UAE Dialogue and the global stocktake.)
Food and nature in new NDCs
Countries have until February 2025 to submit new national climate pledges, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
NDCs are updated every five years under the Paris Agreement, with countries outlining how they intend to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as part of global efforts to limit warming.
Brazil, the UAE and UK were the early-bird countries who submitted their plans at COP29.
The UK’s full NDC has not yet been published, so it remains to be seen what that plan will outline for nature. But the country has pledged to cut emissions by 81% by 2035, compared to 1990 levels.
Below are some of the highlights from Brazil and the UAE’s climate plans relating to food, land and nature.
Brazil
Under its new climate pledge, Brazil plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 59-67% by 2035, compared to 2005 levels.
While setting a “band” of targets is not unheard of in NDCs, there is typically a much smaller disparity between the two targets.
These dual targets are “confirmation that [Brazil] could do much more” when it comes to its ambition, according to Claudio Angelo from Brazilian climate NGO group Observatório do Clima.
Deforestation was a major topic in the NDC for the world’s most biodiverse country, which is home to almost 60% of the Amazon Rainforest.
It outlined efforts to “achieve zero deforestation, by eliminating illegal deforestation” and making up for the emissions from the remaining “legal suppression of native vegetation”.
Observatório do Clima warned that this “still allows high levels of deforestation by 2035”. The pledge does not explicitly commit to reaching zero deforestation by 2030 – something the country’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has promised in the past.
But the Brazilian government has “done a very good job” to reduce deforestation levels in recent years, Dr Ane Alencar, the director of science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, told Carbon Brief.
On agriculture, an important sector for Brazil’s economy and a significant source of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, Brazil is planning to encourage and incentivise more “sustainable” agriculture as part of its emissions-cutting efforts.
(Read Carbon Brief’s article on five key takeaways from Brazil’s NDC for more details, including on renewable energy, carbon markets and sustainable development.)
UAE
The UAE’s new climate pledge outlined plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 47% by 2035, compared to 2019 levels.
The plan received criticism from policy experts and NGOs for “failing to include any measures to restrain the production of oil and gas”, said the Cable, a Nigerian news outlet, with one expert describing it as a “greenwashing exercise”.
The country committed to cutting emissions from agriculture by 39% by 2035, compared to levels in 2019. This reduction will largely come from reduced energy emissions in the sector, the NDC said, noting that “emissions from the rising numbers of livestock [will] remai[n]”. The plan added:
“The implementation of advanced technologies, best practices and supportive policies are crucial in managing emissions from agriculture and ensuring the long-term sustainability of the UAE’s agricultural sector.”
Nature-based solutions, which are methods of using nature to mitigate and adapt to climate change, are one of the main ways in which the UAE said it plans to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. It will also rely on “engineering-based solutions”, the NDC added, such as carbon capture and storage.
It intends to plant an additional 160m mangroves by 2030, the NDC noted.
The pledge also referenced the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the nature deal signed off by almost every country in the world in 2022.
Methane
Methane featured in several events and pledges at COP29.
Agriculture is a major source of the potent, but short-lived, greenhouse gas – accounting for around 40% of human-caused methane emissions.
Speaking at a methane event in Baku, COP29 president Mukhtar Bubayev said that “action on non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions is critical” to limit global warming. He noted that methane from organic waste, such as wasted food, is a “growing problem that demands urgent action”.
More than 30 countries signed up to the Reducing Methane from Organic Waste Declaration, a new pledge focused on setting sectoral targets in future NDCs to cut methane emissions from waste.
Brazil, the US, UK and the other signatories are responsible for almost half of global methane emissions from organic waste, according to the COP29 presidency.
The move will boost ambition “in the prevention, separate collection and improved management of organic waste…helping us keep food out of landfills”, Martina Otto, the head of the UN’s Climate and Clean Air Coalition, said in a statement.
The initiative is intended to support the Global Methane Pledge, which aims to slash overall methane emissions by 30% by 2030.
This pledge, first launched at COP26 in 2021, now has the backing of 159 countries. But experts are sceptical that its ambition will be met, as methane emissions are still rising.
Azerbaijan joined the pledge earlier this year, which COP29 president Babayev said “further strengthens” the country’s “reputation as a reliable green-energy partner to the world”. Tajikistan, Guatemala and Madagascar also joined this year.
On 12 November, the US, China and Azerbaijan held a summit on methane and other non-CO2 greenhouse gases in Baku.
Additional funding was also put towards methane reduction at COP29.
Governments and philanthropic organisations pledged almost $500m in new global grant funds for methane abatement, meaning more than $2bn has been raised for this issue in recent years, a Global Methane Pledge statement said.
The statement added that a funding initiative focused on enteric fermentation, launched at COP28 in Dubai, has so far raised more than $60m for research into “cost-effective breakthrough technologies to reduce livestock emissions”. These include ongoing projects into feed additives aimed at reducing methane from cattle.
The International Fund for Agricultural Development launched a guidebook intended to help developing countries weave ways of reducing methane from agriculture in their national climate plans. It particularly focused on emissions from livestock, rice production and organic waste.
Meanwhile, a new report launched during COP29 by the Changing Markets Foundation, a campaign group, identified “methane greenwashing tactics” in the climate commitments and initiatives from 22 “big meat and dairy” companies. (See: Greenwashing and ‘big ag’ influence.)
Food systems and water
During a high-level event in the first week of the summit, ministers and heads of state took stock of their progress towards the Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Food and Agriculture, announced at COP28 last year.
Participants at the event discussed integrating food systems into both NDCs and national adaptation plans, as well as increasing finance flows for food-systems transformation.
(A report from Climate Focus, released during COP29, found that only 14% of international public climate finance for agriculture was directed at small-scale farmers.)
Accompanying the Emirates Declaration at COP28 was the Alliance of Champions for Food Systems Transformation (ACF), which was also updated at this year’s summit.
The ACF is a group of five countries that have committed to taking stronger action and setting an example for food-systems transformation. The countries that initially made up the ACF are Brazil, Cambodia, Norway, Sierra Leone and Rwanda.
One of the key asks of the ACF countries is to integrate food systems into their updated NDCs, due in February 2025. (See: Nature in new NDCs.)
The ACF released a “progress snapshot” detailing actions that each country has taken – as well as priorities for future work – towards transforming food systems within their borders.
Tanzania and Vietnam both expressed their intent to, or interest in, joining the ACF during the summit.
Food systems were also both directly and indirectly included across several of the COP29 presidency’s action agenda items.
The Baku Harmoniya Climate Initiative for Farmers, hosted at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, was officially launched on Tuesday 19 November, after having been announced earlier this year.
The Harmoniya initiative is focused on combining and streamlining the flows of information around climate action for farmers.
Its other stated objectives are increasing public and private investment in food systems by making it more attractive to investors and empowering farmers – especially women and youth – to adapt to climate change.
However, the Harmoniya initiative was not accompanied by any new pledges or commitments.
Clement Metivier, senior advisor for international advocacy at WWF-UK, said that the initiative “helps in maintaining much-needed momentum around food-systems transformation in the international climate process”. He told Carbon Brief:
“But to really make a difference on the ground, new initiatives and coalitions must mobilize finance for healthy, equitable and resilient food systems, and push governments to better integrate food in their national climate plans.”
Food systems or food-related items were also mentioned in the Multisectoral Actions Pathways Declaration for Resilient and Healthy Cities, the Declaration on Enhanced Action in Tourism and the Declaration on Reducing Methane from Organic Waste. (See: Methane.)
The COP presidency also launched the Baku Declaration on Water for Climate Action, which was endorsed by nearly 50 countries, and the Baku Dialogue on Water for Climate Action. Going forward, the Dialogue will ensure formal discussions on water are on the agenda at subsequent COPs.
On the overall presence of food systems at COP29, Oliver Camp, environment and food systems advocacy advisor at the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, told Carbon Brief:
“Momentum was neither gained nor lost, just maintained – which, after the euphoria of Dubai and with the anticipation for Belem, may be all we needed…Overall, a passing grade: few exciting new launches and commitments, but we keep moving forward.”
Deforestation
Tropical deforestation, which accounts for around 20% of human-caused CO2 emissions, was scarcely mentioned at COP29.
The COP29 presidency’s action agenda did not mention deforestation or land-use change, meaning there were no new country pacts spearheaded by Azerbaijan.
The presidency did partially dedicate its last “thematic” day to nature on 21 November.
On this day, there was a “high-level” event on forests, which saw COP30 host Brazil’s environment minister, Marina Silva, emphasise the role of trees in tackling both environmental and social challenges.
However, the day coincided with the start of the endgame in the negotiations, meaning many of the event’s speakers failed to show up, including COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev and UK energy secretary Ed Miliband.
During the first week of the summit, UK foreign secretary David Lammy appeared at an event to announce new programmes under the Indigenous peoples and local communities’ forest tenure pledge, which was first launched at COP26 in Glasgow.
He told delegates that the UK will spearhead a 10-year, £50m programme “to reduce illegal logging and benefit forest people”, as well as a £94m programme “to strengthen forest communities’ voices in governance processes, particularly for the Amazon”. He also announced a “project to train local scientists in the Congo Basin”.
Separately at the summit, the UK announced a £239m package “to support forest-rich countries in protecting nature and tackling deforestation”.
Carbon Brief understands that all of these new programmes will be financed from existing money and do not represent new spending. The UK is currently far behind on meeting a promise to spend £1.5bn on protecting forests globally as part of its climate finance commitments between 2021 and 2026, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
Elsewhere at the summit, a new report launched by a coalition of environmental NGOs found that less than half of nations with more than 100,000 hectares of forest include a specific target to reduce emissions from deforestation in their UN climate pledges.
Indigenous representation
Indigenous peoples and local communities had less “momentum” at COP29 compared to the biodiversity COP, held just a few weeks earlier in Cali, Colombia, Clement Metivier, senior advisor for international advocacy at WWF-UK, told Carbon Brief.
Fany Kuiru Castro, leader of the Uitoto people in the Colombian Amazon and general coordinator of the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organisations of the Amazon Basin (COICA), noted in a video interview with the environmental non-profit organisation Sachamama that, in Baku, “there [was] not much presence of Indigenous peoples from Latin America, especially from Amazon countries”.
Despite the limited representation of Indigenous participation at this climate summit, the main body representing them within the UNFCCC negotiations, the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC), was very clear in its position, highlighting that countries have failed to phase out fossil fuels and implement a just energy transition.
Among the IIPFCC’s chief demands was the creation of financial mechanisms for Indigenous peoples worldwide, including targeted funding under the new collective quantified goal on climate finance (NCQG) to support their conservation and restoration actions.
In fact, the main demand of Indigenous peoples at this COP was direct access to climate finance, Kuiru told Sachamama.
Following the COP’s conclusion, the IIFPCC condemned that the new collective funding goal did not explicitly mention human rights and Indigenous peoples’ rights, according to a statement released at the close of the negotiations.
Metivier told Carbon Brief that this was “an opportunity that has been missed” since “[those] communities are doing critical work to tackle climate change and protect ecosystems”.
The IIFPCC also opposed carbon markets and the provision of loan finance, which increases the debt burden on developing countries. (See: Article 6.)
Elsewhere, COP29 adopted the Baku work plan to “bring the voice of Indigenous peoples and local communities to climate action”. This plan will seek to promote knowledge sharing, mainstream these knowledge systems into climate policies and actions, plus boost capacity building among Indigenous peoples and local communities.
The work plan will be implemented from 2025 to 2027 by the Facilitative Working Group (FWG) of the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform (LCIPP), which was established at COP24 in Katowice, Poland.
During the second week of COP29, the Global Forest Coalition, along with more than 30 civil society organisations, released the Baku Forest Declaration. This declaration seeks to push for the protection of forests and Indigenous rights in the negotiations, as well as the recognition of traditional knowledge in forest conservation.
The declaration says that forests should not be viewed solely as carbon sinks and recommends moving away from market mechanisms and carbon trading. Instead, the signatories call for climate policies to focus on community-based solutions, human rights and gender equality.
Greenwashing and ‘big ag’ influence
Concerns about greenwashing and lobbying are often raised at UN climate summits. COP29, held in the “petrostate” of Azerbaijan, was no different.
Before the summit took place, COP29 chief executive Elnur Soltanov was secretly recorded “discussing ‘investment opportunities’ in the state oil and gas company with a man posing as a potential investor”, BBC News reported, based on an investigation by Global Witness.
A separate Global Witness investigation found that more than 1,700 fossil-fuel lobbyists registered to attend COP29, lower than the record at COP28 but still larger than most party delegations. (See the Azerbaijani leadership section of Carbon Brief’s main COP29 summary for more.)
On the agriculture side, hundreds of “lobbyists for industrial farming” attended COP29, according to analysis from DeSmog and the Guardian. More than 200 delegates from agriculture companies and trade groups registered for the talks.
Nearly 40% of these travelled with delegations of countries, “giving them privileged access to diplomatic negotiations”, the Guardian noted.
DeSmog said that 52 delegates from the meat and dairy sector attended the talks, with 20 travelling alongside Brazil’s government. The delegates came from major organisations including JBS, the world’s largest meat processor, and Nestle, the largest food company in the world, the outlet found.
However, the number of “big meat and dairy” delegates at COP29 did not reach the record-high levels identified by DeSmog and the Guardian at last year’s summit.
Ahead of the Baku talks, Greenpeace Aotearoa (New Zealand) called for world leaders to “hold agri-business to account for its climate pollution”. Spokesperson Amanda Larsson said in a statement:
“The livestock industry is a major driver of climate pollution, but has largely flown under the radar at previous UN climate conferences.”
Elsewhere, almost 500 “carbon capture advocates” registered to attend COP29, according to analysis from non-profit organisation the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL).
These include lobbyists from companies and groups advocating for carbon capture and storage, a method of removing CO2 from the atmosphere using technology. Almost half of the attendees were on national delegation badges, CIEL found, and the COP29 presidency invited 55 as guests.
The overall numbers are a slight increase compared to last year’s summit.
Ecosystem restoration
Overall, nature – and ecosystems and restoration, in particular – featured “pretty weakly” in the final COP29 texts, Metivier, from WWF-UK, told Carbon Brief.
According to a recent report published by WWF and other conservation organisations, 52% of forest countries have a quantified restoration target in their NDCs and 28% have a quantified deforestation target. (See: Nature in new NDCs.)
For William Baldwin-Cantello, director for nature-based solutions at WWF-UK, these differences could be explained by the greater ease of setting a restoration target in terms of hectares. However, he added:
“What’s more important than restoring ecosystems is preventing their loss.”
He noted that there was “no significant improvement in NDCs at COP with respect to existing restoration”, but said he hopes that this will change before the February 2025 deadline for the delivery of new NDCs and in the run-up to COP30 in Brazil.
The Climate Finance Group for Latin America and the Caribbean (GFLAC) noted in a statement that the text of the new collective quantifiable climate finance goal (NCQG) does not include a specific adaptation finance target. (See: Carbon Brief’s main summary of COP29 for more on the NCQG.)
In the closing days of COP29, the NGO Nature4Climate urged that the collective finance goal include funding specifically for the restoration and sustainable use of nature.
Baldwin-Cantello said that the absence of funding for adaptation and restoration could be due to donor governments’ fear of double counting biodiversity funding under the CBD and climate finance under the UNFCCC.
Some countries did announce new investments for restoring forests and ecosystems during COP29. El Salvador, for example, said it will invest $350m in the conservation and restoration of its largest river and watershed, while Canada announced that it will join the Freshwater Challenge to restore its freshwater ecosystems.
The post COP29: Key outcomes for food, forests, land and nature at the UN climate talks in Baku appeared first on Carbon Brief.
COP29: Key outcomes for food, forests, land and nature at the UN climate talks in Baku
A fifth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions are linked to international trade in goods and services, a new tracker shows, spotlighting a little-studied issue that researchers say should be tackled by the UN climate process.
Currently, as part of the Paris Agreement, every country is responsible for counting and reducing the planet-heating emissions that are produced within its territory. Manufacturing countries, for example, may have high emissions even if what they make is exported for consumption elsewhere.
But new analysis from the European Climate Foundation (ECF) and climate consultancy Matière, based on the tracker’s data, shows that some countries have a high footprint of “imported emissions” from goods and services they ship in. These emissions are often ignored in the places where the products are consumed because they are not formally counted under greenhouse gas inventories.
In the European Union, for example, while domestic emissions have declined since 2015, imported emissions have remained unchanged, the analysis shows. In some countries, like Austria or Sweden, they are as high as the country’s entire annual carbon footprint.
-
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Former EU lead climate negotiator Jacob Werksman said that under the Paris Agreement, these traded emissions are accounted for in the countries where they are originally produced, but importing countries can also take responsibility for their consumption.
“It starts with a wide recognition by many jurisdictions around the world that we need to know the carbon content of these products, and we then need to agree what is a fair, effective, transparent and relatively easy-to-implement way of measuring that carbon in traded products,” he told a launch event for the trade emissions tracker, which contains data for different countries, sectors and gases.
Trade and its role in addressing climate change has become a higher priority at UN climate talks after a push led by emerging economies including China, India and South Africa led to the first trade and climate change dialogue held this year at the mid-year session in Bonn.
At the upcoming COP31 UN summit in Antalya, some voluntary initiatives like the Brazil-led Integrated Forum on Climate Change and Trade are expected to continue, but the issue does not feature in Türkiye’s Action Agenda of climate initiatives and formal negotiations are not scheduled on the topic.
China: the world’s top emissions exporter
As a manufacturing powerhouse, China ranks first in the new tracker as the world’s top-emitting country, but the data shows that a large chunk of the country’s carbon emissions – an amount larger than Brazil’s entire annual carbon footprint – are linked to products that are exported and consumed abroad.
Russia, Brazil, the US and the EU rank as the top destinations for Chinese trade-related emissions, which are mostly linked to components for power generation, basic metals like copper and lead, and non-metallic minerals like graphite and phosphorus.
Yet China is also the world’s top emissions importer, related mostly to agricultural products, fossil fuels and minerals brought from the US, the EU, Japan and India, among others. The US ranks second by a close margin, with both countries importing about 1.6 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent.
China’s industrial engine starts to break its fossil fuel habit
Richard Baron, ECF’s industrial policy and trade director, said Chinese clean energy products are key for reducing emissions around the world, adding that Europe is “not able to do without those technologies” for its energy transition.
“China has an emissions trading system that counts CO2 differently there. But if China and the EU were to agree on some kind of translation mechanism to say ‘this is how we measure it’, and companies can understand the protocol to navigate both markets, that would set the tone for a lot of other conversations,” he said at the platform’s launch event last week.
The analysis suggests that if the EU and China aligned their climate requirements for products, the resulting standards could influence trade flows representing about 7% of global emissions.
Baron said there’s “a plethora” of multilateral spaces to hold these discussions, including the climate and trade dialogue at the UN climate talks or the Climate Club at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which seeks to cut industrial emissions.
Trade breaks into agenda of UN climate talks – but will it have teeth?
Controversial trade measures
Instruments like the Europe’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) – a recent piece of legislation that penalises emissions-heavy imported products – are one tool that could be used to address trade-related emissions, said Antoine Oger, executive director at the Institute for European Environmental Policy.
He said a significant portion of imported emissions in Europe are already covered by CBAM, as it includes sectors like cement, iron and steel, fertilisers and aluminium. This then allows the EU “to engage in constructive dialogue with our trade partners”, he added.
But across diplomatic summits, including at UN climate talks, emerging economies have pushed back heavily against the CBAM and other trade measures. The most recent BRICS declaration adopted on Saturday by 11 such countries – including China, India and Russia – condemns “protectionism under the guise of environmental objectives”.
The declaration calls for the “elimination of such unlawful measures”, which they argue have “far-reaching negative implications for the human rights, including the rights to development, health and food security” of vulnerable communities.
“The question of responsibility is a political question,” Oger said. “These emissions exist – they are emitted somewhere to make a product that will be consumed elsewhere. So you can debate responsibility but the idea is for the two parts to recognise there’s a problem.”
The aim, he added “is not to point fingers, but to accept this is a reality of our emissions profiles and ask what we can do about it”.
The post International trade linked to 20% of global emissions – but imports ignored appeared first on Climate Home News.
International trade linked to 20% of global emissions – but imports ignored
All the ambulance services in England experienced some of their busiest-ever days during this summer’s record-breaking June heatwave, according to data obtained by Carbon Brief.
In June, temperatures climbed past 37C in parts of the country as authorities declared only the second ever “red” extreme heat warning.
Four out of 10 NHS ambulance services, including London’s, responded to unprecedented numbers of life-threatening emergencies on at least one day from 23-27 June.
Another two services – in the south-west and east of the country – received their highest volume of 999 calls on record.
Ambulance services provided data on their busiest days since records began, in response to freedom-of-information (FOI) requests from Carbon Brief.
The results show how demand during the June heatwave exceeded levels seen during the traditionally busy winter season in other years – and even the height of the Covid-19 pandemic – for many services.
Heat demand
Extreme heat ramps up the risk of numerous life-threatening conditions, including heart disease and respiratory problems.
England experienced record-breaking temperatures at the end of June, with the whole country covered by amber or red “heat health alerts” from the government.
A red alert, which was issued for the entire Midlands and south of England, indicates “significant risk to life for even the healthy population”. This was only the second time such an alert has been triggered.
Researchers calculated that there were nearly 3,000 heat-related deaths in the UK this summer. There has also been unprecedented demand for A&E departments and some ambulance services.
To investigate the strain facing ambulances, Carbon Brief sent FOI requests to the 10 NHS ambulance trusts in England, asking for lists of their busiest days.
This covered both the total volume of 999 calls and “category 1” responses – referring to incidents involving “life-threatening injuries and illnesses”, such as heart attacks.
The chart below shows the busiest days on record for England’s ambulances, including both total calls and category 1 responses. Most services were able to provide records back to the 2010s. (See: Methodology.)
The five-day period from 23-27 June is overrepresented in these results, with at least two heatwave days ranking in the top 20 for every service in the country.
This trend is especially pronounced in the south and east of England, where June temperatures exceeded 36C and even approached 38C in some regions.
London, South East Coast, South Central and North East ambulance services all reported daily records for responding to life-threatening emergencies during the heatwave.
For the South East Coast and South Central services – which cover a region stretching from Oxfordshire to Kent – 25, 26 and 27 June all saw unprecedented numbers of category 1 callouts.
South Western and East of England services both saw record numbers of 999 calls on 26 June, the same day the highest-ever June UK temperature was reported in Norfolk.
It is worth noting that demand for ambulance services – including category 1 calls – has been growing for many years, driven by factors such as an ageing population, more complex health conditions and growing mental-health pressures.
This helps to explain why dates from before the 2020s are rare in the top rankings provided to Carbon Brief.
Beyond the heatwave, 2026 as a whole is on track to be a record year for ambulance demand.
‘Stifling heat’
On 26 June, the busiest day of the heatwave, ambulances across England responded to 4,084 life-threatening emergencies.
The average daily volume of such incidents is normally around 2,500 during the summer months.
Stu Holliday, head of emergency preparedness, resilience and response at North East Ambulance Service, tells Carbon Brief:
“During periods of hot weather, we typically see an increase in calls from people affected by dehydration, heat exhaustion and heatstroke, as well as those whose existing health conditions, particularly heart and respiratory illnesses, can be made worse by prolonged high temperatures.
“Older people, young children and pregnant people can be especially vulnerable.”
Ambulance teams are generally busier in the winter because cold weather and seasonal illnesses drive up the number of severe medical emergencies.
However, the data from June shows that extremely hot days are starting to match or even edge out cold ones as the busiest days. This is a trend seen across the healthcare system.
While not every service provided records back to 2019, the data broadly shows that ambulances were busier during the heatwave than at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
As well as patients, heatwaves put pressure on ambulance workers. The UNISON union has warned of crews facing “stifling heat with faulty or no air conditioning” and “back-to-back callouts” due to increased demand.
Methodology
Carbon Brief requested data on the top 50 busiest days for England’s 10 main ambulance services.
These are: London; South East Coast; South Central; South Western; West Midlands; East Midlands; East of England; North East; Yorkshire; and North West.
Data was requested for as far back as service records go. Most were able to provide records going back to some point in the 2010s, with the exception of North East and South Central, which only had records from 2021 and 2022 onwards, respectively.
Rising annual demand for ambulance services means that most of the busiest days for ambulances have been in the 2020s. For example, all but four of the busiest days for category 1 emergencies reported to Carbon Brief were in the 2020s.
Carbon Brief requested data on ambulance demand for all the UK nations. In Scotland and Northern Ireland – where temperatures are cooler – services did not see call volumes reach the top 50 rankings during the June heatwave. The Welsh Ambulance Service did not respond to Carbon Brief’s request.
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The post Revealed: England’s June 2026 heatwave sparked record demand for ambulances appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Revealed: England’s June 2026 heatwave sparked record demand for ambulances
Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, has emerged as a major force in UK politics in recent years – pushing anti-net-zero policies, alongside vehement opposition to immigration.
The hard-right populist party is currently mired in a funding controversy and only has a handful of MPs, yet, until recently, it had been leading in national polls for more than a year.
As seen with many similar parties across Europe and beyond, a rejection of climate science is central to Reform’s ideological outlook.
Richard Tice, the party’s deputy leader, is a vocal critic of what he calls “net stupid zero” and has incorrectly blamed “the sun or volcanoes” for human-caused global warming.
As Reform’s energy spokesperson, Tice has also been clear that, if the party were ever to form a national government, it would scrap the UK’s net-zero target, support fossil-fuel expansion and tear up existing contracts for renewable energy.
While less vocal on the subject, Farage has, nevertheless, expressed climate-sceptic views and falsely blamed net-zero policies for the “deindustrialisation of Britain”.
These views draw on long-standing, inaccurate climate-sceptic narratives and are reflected in Reform’s election manifestos, its actions in local government and the opinions of many of its supporters.
Here, Carbon Brief gathers together by topic and factchecks 45 false or misleading claims made by the party’s leadership relating to climate change, renewables and net-zero.
Climate science
FALSE
Tice: “There’s no evidence that man-made CO2 is going to change climate change…The Norwegian government’s own equivalent of our ONS [Office of National Statistics] has recently produced a report along the lines of what I’m saying.”
Sky News, February 2025
The world’s authority on climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says it is “unequivocal” that humans have warmed the planet, primarily through releasing greenhouse gases.
The IPCC says that, due to human activities, concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) “have increased at rates that have no precedent on centennial timescales in at least the past 800,000 years”.
It adds that concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are now higher than they have been for at least the past two million years.
The report that Tice is referring to is by two independent authors, with Statistics Norway clarifying in 2024 that their views are “not the official stance” of the statistics bureau. (It has also not been formally peer reviewed.)
A factcheck of the Norwegian report by a climate scientist for RealClimate describes it as “misguided” and a “distraction due to errors”.
Another factcheck published by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found it “contains standard talking-points of climate denial”.
MISLEADING
Tice: “Look, the climate’s always changed for millions of years. And it goes through cycles, long, medium and short.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Global temperatures are currently around 1.4C hotter than when the industrial era first began in 1850-1900, as shown in the figure below.
The IPCC says that this amount of warming is likely to have made Earth hotter than at any time in about 125,000 years.
Scientists overwhelmingly agree that approximately 100% of this warming has been caused by humans.
There are also natural influences that can affect Earth’s climate on shorter timescales, such as El Niño events, volcanic eruptions and small variations in the output of the sun. However, scientists have found that these have only a limited effect on the underlying trend of long-term global warming.
When looking at longer timescales of millions of years or more, Earth has experienced multiple ice ages interspersed with warmer periods.
These changes in climate were triggered by variations in Earth’s orbit around the sun, in combination with subtle fluctuations in the tilt and rotation of the planet, over tens of thousands of years. However, the resulting changes to CO2 levels in the atmosphere also played a role.
This should serve as a “cautionary example”, according to Dr Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist and Carbon Brief contributor, “because human emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases push the Earth further out of the range of climate conditions that have characterised the past few million years”.
FALSE
Tice: “The idea that you can stop the power of the sun or volcanoes is simply ludicrous.”
BBC Breakfast, June 2024
Scientists overwhelmingly agree that humans have caused 100% of recent climate change.
Tice’s suggestion that the sun or volcanic eruptions are behind current warming is false.
As the video below explains, the sun and volcanic eruptions have little bearing on the long-term trend of global temperature rise since the Industrial Revolution.
MISLEADING
Farage: “All I do know is that man produces about 3% of the CO2 produced in the world every year and that it is nuts to call CO2 a poison.”
BBC Radio 5 Live, June 2024
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is now higher than it has been for at least two million years, having spiked dramatically since the Industrial Revolution.
This surge in CO2 levels is entirely due to human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels. While Farage is correct that, on an annual basis, humans only account for a few percent of all the CO2 that is released into the atmosphere, this is irrelevant.
The world’s land and ocean naturally release hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 each year. However, the land and ocean also absorb hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 each year, meaning that – before the start of the fossil-fuel era – these flows were broadly in balance.
The recycling of CO2 through Earth’s natural systems is known as the “global carbon cycle”.
Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, humans have disrupted Earth’s natural balance by releasing vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
The IPCC says that, because of humans, concentrations of CO2 “have increased at rates that have no precedent…in at least the past 800,000 years”.
It adds that concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are now higher than they have been for at least the past two million years.
FALSE
Tice: “Many thousands of scientists fundamentally disagree about the need to [reach net-zero], or the pace to [achieve net-zero]…But they have been smeared and labelled. They can’t get any research grant funding.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Contrary to Tice’s claim, there are not “thousands” of scientists that disagree on the need for net-zero.
Tice is likely referring to a “world climate declaration” that was circulated on social media by climate sceptics in 2022, supposedly signed by “1,200 climate experts”. A closer look at the list of signatories revealed that less than 1% described themselves as climate scientists – and six of the people on the list were dead.
Reaching net-zero emissions globally is the “only way” to stop climate change, according to the IPCC. The IPCC’s most recent set of reports involved 721 scientists in 90 countries.
All modelled pathways for limiting global warming to 1.5C by 2100, the ambition of the Paris Agreement, involve reaching net-zero emissions around the middle of the century.
This is reflected in the text of the Paris Agreement, which aims to “achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century”.
FALSE
Tice: “The proof of my argument is one of the IPCC reports a few years ago that said even if you get to net-zero effectively tomorrow, it’ll make no difference to one of the key things people are most worried about, which is sea level rise, for somewhere between 200 years on the one hand and 1,000 years on the other hand.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Although it is true that sea level rise is set to worsen, even if countries reach net-zero, it is certainly not the case that making efforts to cut emissions will make “no difference”.
Tice is likely referring to the IPCC’s special report on 1.5C released in 2018.
It said with “high confidence” that human-caused global warming to date will “persist for centuries to millennia and will continue to cause further long-term changes in the climate system, such as sea level rise”.
A more recent study, published in Nature Climate Change in 2025, found that following current climate policies would cause an extra 79cm of sea level rise by the year 2300.
However, reducing emissions in line with 1.5C would cut this additional sea level rise to 15cm.
Moreover, the best-available evidence shows that warming will more or less stop when the world reaches net-zero emissions. Even if some sea level rise continues, net-zero would still prevent a long list of other increasingly severe climate impacts from taking place.
FALSE
Tice: “The IPCC has just resiled from one of its core assumptions, which was the [RCP]8.5 scenario…One of the foundations of the IPCC’s very ethos in the last 20-30 years, they’ve just abandoned.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
The “foundations” of the evidence on climate change, as well as the risk of “catastrophic” warming without stronger action, are unchanged by the recent shift on “RCP8.5”.
“RCP8.5” is one of a range of emissions scenarios that climate scientists have used when making projections about future climate change. It is a scenario of very high global emissions, imagining a future with large increases in coal use and no climate policies.
In May 2026, a new set of emissions scenarios were published, no longer including a scenario with emissions as high as those in RCP8.5 (or its successor, SSP5-8.5).
This moment was seized upon by a range of climate-sceptic and rightwing figures – including US president Donald Trump – who falsely claimed it as evidence that the IPCC had to “admit” that it was “wrong” about future climate change.
This is incorrect because it both misrepresents the meaning of the shift on RCP8.5 and because the set of emissions scenarios in question were not developed by the IPCC in the first place. Instead, they were put together by a group of climate modelling experts. (See Carbon Brief’s factcheck for more information.)
While the new scenarios no longer include such high emissions as in RCP8.5 – partly as a result of limited climate policy success – they also show it is now “not possible” to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels without significant “overshoot”.
Moreover, projections suggest that the world is still on course for between 2.5C and 3C of warming. This level of warming was previously described as “catastrophic” by the UN.
MISLEADING
Tice: “Cleaner air equals higher temperatures, not CO2.”
According to the IPCC, 100% of warming since the Industrial Revolution is due to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, particularly CO2.
Tice cites a Daily Telegraph article with the incorrect headline: “Heatwaves caused by fall in pollution.” He erroneously claims this as evidence that “we have been gaslit and lied to” about the causes of climate change.
In fact, as a Carbon Brief factcheck of that article notes, scientists say that the framing of heatwaves being “caused” by declining air pollution is simply “wrong”.
The claim is based on a paper in Geophysical Research Letters, which looks at how air pollution affects circulation patterns in the atmosphere and influences summer temperatures in Europe.
Scientists have long known that human-caused emissions of aerosols “mask” global warming, partly because they reflect or absorb sunlight. Curbing air pollution, therefore, removes some of this cooling effect.
Nevertheless, the lead author of the study in question is clear that greenhouse gas emissions remain the “most important factor” driving Europe’s extreme heat events, due to their role in global warming.
A recent attribution study by the World Weather Attribution service concluded that the June heatwave in Europe would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change.
Net-zero target
FALSE
Tice: “Net-zero will make zero difference to climate change.”
BBC Breakfast, June 2024
In fact, reaching net-zero emissions globally is the “only way” to stop climate change, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
At that point, when carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have been cut substantially and any remaining emissions are balanced out by CO2-removal technology or tree-planting, then warming is expected to essentially stop.
FALSE
Tice: “It’s incredibly stupid for the UK to almost unilaterally say, we’re going to lead the way in the world.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
It is completely false to argue that the UK is acting “unilaterally” to tackle climate change.
The UK has indeed been a leader in climate legislation. When the then-Conservative government set the UK a legally binding “net-zero by 2050” target in 2019, it was the first major economy to do so.
However, 140 of the world’s 198 countries now have net-zero targets, covering 74% of the world’s emissions. Some have set more ambitious goals, such as Germany’s target of reaching net-zero by 2045, while others are even aiming for “net-negative” emissions.
The UK is, therefore, not pursuing net-zero “unilaterally”. Indeed, if the UK abandoned its net-zero target, it would join the US and Iran as the only major emitters without one.
MISLEADING
Tice: “We’re responsible for 0.7, 0.8% of CO2 emissions.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
The UK’s annual emissions, including emissions from fossil fuels and land-use changes, were roughly 0.7% of the global total in 2024, the most recent year for which data is available. When only considering fossil-fuel combustion, the figure is 0.8%.
Yet, while the numbers Tice quotes are accurate, it is misleading to use them as a justification for abandoning climate policies.
Only six nations each produce more than 2% of the world’s annual emissions. In 1990, the UK was one of those rare countries, but it has roughly halved its share since then, largely due to renewable-energy expansion. Even today, it remains the world’s 22nd largest emitter.
As the chart below shows, more than a third of all greenhouse gases come from the roughly 180 nations that produce 1% or less of the world’s emissions. If none of them acted, the world would never stop climate change.
Finally, some analysts point out the UK’s “moral responsibility” to act on climate change, given its large historical contribution to current levels of global warming.
The UK, through its historical CO2 emissions, is responsible for around 3% of current warming. When emissions in other countries under the UK’s colonial rule are counted as well, its share grows to more than 5% of the global total.
FALSE
Tice: “[Net-zero is] killing our economy.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Efforts to cut the UK’s emissions are not “killing the economy”. In fact, there is plenty of evidence that they are boosting the economy.
UK emissions in 2025 were 54% below 1990 levels, the baseline year for the nation’s climate goals. The UK economy has nearly doubled in size over the same period, as the chart below shows.
GDP has also continued to grow since the net-zero target was introduced in 2019.
A 2026 report from the CBI Economics – the consultancy arm of the Confederation for British Industry (CBI) – concluded:
“Net-zero is already one of the UK’s most productive and geographically distributed industrial sectors, generating high-value employment, driving supply chain activity, and anchoring the UK within one of the defining economic transformations of our era.”
The report concludes that the net-zero economy generated around £105bn in gross value added in 2025. It also supported 1.1m jobs across the country, with considerably higher wages than the UK average.
FALSE
Tice: “The cost of net-zero, which the Climate Change Committee admits is in the trillions of pounds, we don’t know how many trillions, who’s paying that? The British people.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) estimates that it would cost the UK a total of £108bn to reach net-zero by 2050, equivalent to 0.2% of GDP, while the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) says this would be far cheaper than failing to act.
The idea that net-zero will cost the UK trillions of pounds is false. Such claims invariably rely on analysis that exaggerates the capital cost of net-zero, while excluding both the benefits of cutting emissions and the costs of a system without net-zero policies.
One prominent recent example, promoted by Reform UK, relied on the assumption that gas boilers and petrol cars, for example, would cost nothing to buy and would have free fuel.
The idea that the CCC has “admitted” that net-zero will cost “trillions” may stem from a misinterpretation of CCC analysis from 2019, which estimated a net cost of £321bn.
Alternatively, Tice may be conflating this with another misinterpretation in the 2024 Reform UK manifesto, which falsely claimed that the cost of net-zero would be “£2tn or more”, according to the National Energy System Operator (Neso).
In fact, Neso had estimated that the cost of a net-zero energy system would be “broadly the same” as a high-carbon alternative.
Since then, the CCC has calculated that the net cost of investments needed to reach economy-wide net-zero will be around £108bn out to 2050, or less than 0.2% of GDP. Not only are the up-front investment costs lower than originally thought, but, by the 2040s, there will likely be large operational savings, due to clean technologies being cheaper to run.
There are also benefits from reaching net-zero, such as avoiding climate damages from cutting emissions and shielding the UK from fossil fuel-driven energy price spikes.
The government, therefore, expects net-zero to deliver substantial economic value to the UK, when weighing both the costs and benefits of meeting the target. The government says meeting its climate target for 2040 would yield net benefits worth £865bn.
Similarly, other bodies, such as Neso and the OBR, find that net-zero is the “cheapest” option for the UK, when compared with failing to cut emissions.
Finally, contrary to Tice’s comments, the vast majority of the capital costs of reaching net-zero will not be borne by public funding from the “British people”. The CCC estimates that 65-90% of the capital required will come from the private sector.
FALSE
Tice: “Labour’s reckless net-zero fantasies are destroying hundreds of thousands of industrial jobs.”
Press Association, July 2025
The transition to a net-zero economy is expected to boost the UK economy and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.
In a “landmark moment”, as of 2024, there were more people employed in the UK clean-energy sector than the oil and gas industry for the first time, according to the Renewable Energy Association.
While jobs in some sectors are expected to decline in the coming years, there is currently no evidence that “hundreds of thousands” of jobs have been “destroyed” by the net-zero target.
The CCC says that there is a lack of “robust data” on whether UK climate policies have already driven job losses, but notes that “this is unlikely to be the case, as most decarbonisation has occurred in sectors where employment declined for other reasons”.
This can be seen in the employment figures for coal mining, steelmaking and oil and gas production, three industries that were mainstays of the UK economy.
As the chart below shows, all of these sectors employ fewer people today than they did in the past. But their major declines happened long before the net-zero target was set, resulting from a wide range of factors including coal being replaced by cheaper fuels, cyclical downturns in oil prices and competition with steel production overseas.
(The chart above only includes jobs in oil and gas extraction, but figures for UK fossil-fuel jobs vary considerably between sources, depending on the sectors classed as relevant. Industry body Offshore Energies UK cites a much broader figure of 180,000 jobs in 2024, which includes “supply chains and regional economies”.)
This does not mean that there will be no impact on the UK workforce in the future.
A literature review by the CCC concluded that the “phase-down of high-emitting sectors and redirection of sectors” could threaten 8,000-75,000 jobs. This could include roughly 15,000 oil-and-gas workers and around 1,000 people working in coal mines.
One of the sectors that could see big changes is livestock farming, as UK diets shift away from emissions-intensive animal products. Notably, this shift is already taking place without any intervention from the government, let alone net-zero policies.
The CCC also expects there to be “extensive job creation” as the country transitions to a net-zero economy. Job gains in low-carbon sectors, such as renewable energy and clean heating, are set to far surpass losses in other sectors, as the chart below shows.
Overall, the committee says 135,000 to 725,000 “net” new jobs are set to be “created by net-zero”.
Rather than opposing net-zero targets, some trade unions have stressed the need to support a “just transition” for workers in fossil fuel-intensive sectors.
Industry groups have also pointed to the significant employment opportunities that a “net-zero economy” will bring.
FALSE
Farage: “We view the net-zero targets as being the prime reason for the deindustrialisation of Britain.”
Reform UK press conference, February 2025
Net-zero is at the heart of the UK’s industrial strategy and it has frequently been described as the “economic opportunity of the century”.
CBI chief economist Louise Hellem has described the net-zero economy as “a major part of the national industrial base”, while the Aldersgate Group says net-zero has the potential to be “the UK’s growth engine”.
Moreover, net-zero targets – set in 2019 – are clearly not the “prime reason” for the UK’s “deindustrialisation”, which has been underway for decades.
Since around the 1960s, major industries such as steel and mining have declined in the UK. There are various reasons for this, including globalisation, but the timeline does not match up with the creation of climate legislation.
Around 30% of the nation’s workers were employed in manufacturing after the second world war. By 2000-2016, the period in which the UK introduced its first major climate policies, this had already dropped to 10%, according to the ONS.
In recent years, businesses have warned that the UK’s relatively high industrial electricity prices are driving further “deindustrialisation”. This has been a talking point for those seeking to blame the nation’s net-zero strategy for driving high prices.
However, these arguments tend to omit the UK’s high exposure to expensive gas, which sets the nation’s wholesale electricity prices most of the time.
The UK steel industry itself says that this exposure to gas is the key reason why it faces much higher electricity prices than counterparts in countries such as France and Germany.
Energy costs
FALSE
Farage: “If we had carbon-free electricity it would cost over a trillion – and maybe nearer two – to upgrade the entirety of our grid.”
Press conference, August 2025
Cutting the UK’s emissions by using clean power to run an electrified economy is expected to significantly reduce consumer bills.
This is because electrified technologies, such as EVs and heat pumps, are significantly more efficient than fossil-fuel alternatives.
Moreover, the UK would be consolidating three separate energy systems – electricity, gas and transport fuel – into a unified, more efficient and electrified whole.
It would cost £108bn to reach the UK’s net-zero target – including a “carbon-free” electricity grid – according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC).
This includes the investment needed to build a low-carbon energy system, instead of maintaining one built on fossil fuels.
Crucially, it also takes into account the running costs of the two systems, such as the much higher cost of fuel needed for petrol cars, as shown below.
Investing in a net-zero economy would bring benefits worth around £865bn, according to the government. Unlike the CCC figures, this includes avoided climate damages.
It is not clear where Farage’s false claim comes from.
The 2024 Reform UK manifesto included a similar false claim that the “cost of net-zero has been estimated by the National Grid and others at some £2tn or more”.
In reality, the then-National Grid Electricity System Operator – now Neso – had said in 2020 that the cost of building and operating the UK energy system would be “broadly the same”, with or without net-zero.
It is true that the UK will need to invest heavily in upgrading its electricity grid. This will cost some £64bn out to 2030 and another £89bn in the following decade, according to Neso.
This is around 10 times lower than Farage’s claim. But, crucially, it does not include the savings this investment will unlock, such as cheaper travel with electric vehicles.
FALSE
Tice: “There was a direct link between the growth in renewable generating capacity and the growth in electricity prices in the UK.”
Bloomberg interview, May 2026
It is expensive gas that has largely driven up electricity prices in the UK.
High gas prices caused two-thirds of the rise in electricity bills over recent years, according to the UK Energy Research Centre – and this was before the Iran crisis.
The UK has high electricity prices principally because its electricity system remains heavily reliant on gas-fired power plants. This means gas usually sets the price of UK power.
Moreover, the growth in renewable capacity has helped to protect UK billpayers during the latest fossil-fuel price shock, after the US and Israel attacked Iran.
This is an “early sign” that the government’s clean-power plan “may be working”, according to thinktank NESTA. It says “electricity [prices are] beginning to decouple from gas“.
Electricity systems that have high shares of renewable energy tend to have lower wholesale power prices, according to evidence from US states and from European countries.
As the University of Oxford’s Prof Jan Rosenow explains in a recent post on his Bright Spots substack, the “‘renewables make electricity expensive’ claim doesn’t survive contact with the wholesale data”. He adds:
“The countries with the most expensive wholesale electricity are the ones still dependent on gas to set their prices.”
Rosenow notes that the relationship between renewables and consumer bills is less clear, because these also include network charges, policy costs and taxes. He argues for reforms to ensure that “lower wholesale prices [from clean power] feed through into lower bills”.
The CCC also argues for reforms to make electricity cheaper. Still, it concludes that clean power coupled to faster electrification is the clearest route to lower energy bills for the UK.
FALSE
Farage: “Perhaps the real unfairness of net-zero policies…has been the impact on domestic bills, something about which there has been an absolute wall of silence.”
Press conference, February 2025
By far the biggest driver of increases in domestic energy bills in recent years has been the rising cost of gas, not “net-zero policies”.
Gas prices have been trending upwards since the mid-2000s, long before the UK even had a net-zero target. Initially, this was due to dwindling supplies in Europe – including the North Sea – as well as more global competition for gas.
Gas prices then surged in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine and cut off supplies to Europe. This year, war in the Middle East has once again sent gas prices soaring.
Most of the energy bill increases in recent years have been the result of wholesale gas costs rising due to these successive global crises.
There are some parts of domestic energy bills that could be described as “net-zero policies” – notably, the subsidies or “green levies” to support both old and new renewable energy.
However, these are not the drivers of recent price rises and are a much smaller component of a domestic energy bill than wholesale gas costs. (In addition, a chunk of policy costs have recently been moved off bills into general taxation.)
Moreover, the renewables they support have helped to curb the UK’s reliance on imported gas, saving the nation money.
Finally, the idea that this issue has faced a “wall of silence” is simply not true.
Energy bills and net-zero have been endlessly debated by politicians, commentators and the media. A pledge to cut energy bills was one of the central pillars of the Labour government’s election manifesto in 2024.
FALSE
Tice: “The cost of renewables plus backup, literally by definition, must cost more than backup because there is a cost of capital and a cost of retention of all of the backup…Don’t build it in the first place. We don’t need batteries.”
Bloomberg interview, May 2026
The UK is building a clean-energy system that will cost more to build – and much less to operate – than the current fossil-fuel economy.
Tice is ignoring half of this equation and – by definition – this means he is not giving a full picture.
For example, wind and solar do not need fuel to operate, whereas “backup” plants cannot generate power without gas or fuel oil.
It is highly misleading to look only at the capital investments needed to build wind, solar or gas plants, while ignoring the cost of operating them.
Electricity generation from wind and solar helped the UK avoid gas imports worth £1.7bn in the first two months of the Hormuz crisis alone, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
The CCC says that households could cut their bills by an average of £1,200 per year – even after higher upfront costs – by adopting solar, heat pumps and electric vehicles, as shown below.
Ultimately, an electrified economy built on renewables and other sources of clean power will reduce energy waste and cut bills, according to the CCC and others.
FALSE
Tice: “It is as cost-effective or indeed cheaper to put the cables underground.”
Press conference, February 2025
Contrary to repeated claims by Tice, there is clear evidence that it is significantly cheaper to build overhead electricity pylons than it is to “put cables underground”.
It is 3.5-5 times more expensive to bury cables than to run overhead wires, according to research published in May 2026 and shown in the figure below, with other similar studies.
The latest study, by consultancy Ramboll, shows that underground cables remain far more expensive, even where techniques such as “cable ploughing” are used to bury them.
The findings are in line with previous research published by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) in April 2025.
This found that “underground cables are, on average, 4.5 times more expensive than overhead lines”. It said that undersea cables “can be up to 11 times more costly”.
Another consultancy, DNV, reached very similar conclusions in 2024. The IET said the same back in 2012, when it estimated underground cables to be five times more costly.
All of these reports directly contradict claims made by Tice in a 2025 press conference:
“We are serving notice on National Grid…put the cables underground…It is as cost-effective, or indeed cheaper, to put the cables underground.”
Tice’s claim is based on a highly misleading interpretation of the East Anglia network study, published by Neso in 2024.
This study put a price on various options to reinforce the electricity network in the east of England, including a planned overhead route from Norwich to Tilbury.
Contrary to Tice’s claims, figures from project developer National Grid suggest that using underground cables for this route would be 6.5 times more expensive than overhead wires.
If all of the country’s planned new electricity cables were put underground, it could cost up to an extra £22bn, according to Sam Dumitriu, head of policy at thinktank Britain Remade.
FALSE
Tice: “[A ‘windfall tax’ on renewables] is the best way that we can help get the bills down and lower the cost of living.”
Press conference, February 2025
Expensive gas has been the main driver of UK energy bill increases in recent years, particularly as successive global crises have sent global gas prices spiralling.
As such, reducing the UK’s exposure to international gas prices – as well as cutting its reliance on imported fuels for cars and boilers – is key to reducing bills.
Yet, Tice has claimed that the “best way” to cut bills would be through a so-called “windfall tax” on wind and solar power generators.
It is unclear how it would be possible to cut bills – by even a small amount – through an additional tax on renewables, which generate around half of the nation’s electricity.
With “windfall”, Tice borrowed a term that is often used for new taxes on the fossil-fuel companies making billions in additional profits due to war in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Renewables have helped to shield the UK from the impact of these conflicts, by curbing its reliance on gas and saving billions that would otherwise have been spent on costly imports.
Tice suggested that a new tax on renewable energy firms could help “recover” the money previously paid to them in subsidies. However, he has not offered any detail on how the proposed tax would work, how much money it would raise or what impact it might have.
A retrospective change to the tax treatment of existing energy infrastructure would hamper future investment in the system, whether that is for clean power or Tice’s own preferred energy sources.
Blocking renewables through a windfall tax and other changes could stop investments worth tens of billions of pounds, according to the New Economics Foundation thinktank.
MISLEADING
Farage: “Our electricity prices for industry are between five and six times higher than those in America.”
Press conference, February 2025
The UK primarily has high industrial electricity prices due to its exposure to high gas prices.
In turn, the UK and other European countries face much higher gas prices than the US.
This is particularly true since Russia cut off pipeline gas supplies to the continent amid its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – a shift that has been reinforced by EU sanctions.
This means Europe is reliant on internationally traded liquified natural gas (LNG), for which it competes with Japan and other countries.
In contrast, gas prices are low in the US because supplies are often a by-product of more valuable oil extraction, which comes out of the ground with “associated” gas. The demand for US gas is also limited by the amount that can be exported overseas as LNG.
As such, while it is true that UK industrial electricity prices are high compared to other countries, the reasons are different to what Farage implies.
In addition, his claim that costs are “five to six times higher” than the US is overstated.
The most widely cited figures, based on International Energy Agency (IEA) data, suggest industrial prices are four times higher in the UK than those in the US.
Despite claims made by right-leaning commentators, it would not be possible for the UK to recreate the US gas market dynamics by fracking for shale gas, or by ramping up North Sea gas extraction.
Oil and gas
MISLEADING
Tice: “Let me remind you, in the 80s and 90s…we were growing at between 2.5% and 4% a year. We had deep, plentiful energy driven by oil and gas from the North Sea, right? No one was worried about the price of electricity. No one was worried about the quantity of supply. No one was worried about the reliability of supply.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
The UK extracted a significant proportion of its oil and gas resources from the 1980s onwards, after privatising the industry and using the revenue to cut income taxes.
Now, as anticipated at the time, there is very little fuel left to drill.
The UK went through a “dash for gas” in the 1990s, with North Sea gas production levels steadily increasing from the 1980s until the 2000s.
However, gas production in the North Sea fell by 74% between 2000 and 2025, while oil output fell by 75%.
This is not because policies favouring new oil and gas production ended, but rather because of competition from cheaper sources of the fuels and because the amount of fossil fuels left in the North Sea basin started to run out.
According to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) thinktank, around 90% of the oil and gas that is likely to be produced from the North Sea has already been burned.
It is also true that electricity prices were much lower in the 1990s than they are today. This is largely explained by rising gas prices – and increasing exposure to imports.
The UK dash for gas power was driven by cheap gas prices, which favoured a shift away from coal and nuclear. This included cancelling a planned fleet of new nuclear reactors.
When gas subsequently became expensive, electricity prices went up, because the UK was heavily exposed to the fuel. This dynamic continues today, although the rise of renewables is starting to break the link between gas and power prices..
FALSE
Tice: “We [would] allow licences to drill…If you increase the supply of anything, it’s basic economics, the price of that good will come down, as it does in America, where their gas price, their wholesale gas price, is give or take 30% of ours.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Gas is cheap in the US because it is widely extracted as a byproduct of more valuable oil and because demand is limited by export capacity.
These dynamics – and the abundant, easily accessible shale resources in the US – are a function of geography and cannot be replicated in the UK.
North Sea production is in long-term decline and this cannot be reversed by new licenses, because most of the oil and gas that was under the ground has already been burned.
In addition, the production of oil and gas in the North Sea has very limited effects on global energy prices, which determine the cost of UK energy bills.
This is because the country is a relatively small producer, accounting for around 1% of global output. By contrast, the US is the world’s largest oil-and-gas producer.
FALSE
Tice: “If we’d had this common sense not to abandon our North Sea, we wouldn’t have been in that pickle [referring to importing LNG from the US].”
Bloomberg, May 2026
The UK is increasingly reliant on imported fossil fuels, because it has already used up most of the oil and gas that was once under the North Sea.
The country was a net energy exporter in 2000, but, by 2010, was dependent on imports for 30% of its energy supplies. On the same metric, the UK’s net import dependency reached 44% in 2024.
This is not because policies favouring new oil and gas production ended, but rather because the amount of fossil fuels left in the North Sea basin started to run out.
Gas production in the North Sea fell by 74% between 2000 and 2025, while oil output fell by 75%.
This decline has occurred despite the previous Conservative government, which was in power from 2010-24, holding six new licensing rounds and issuing hundreds of new oil and gas licences.
FALSE
Tice: “Why are the Norwegians drilling 49 new wells last year? Because they think there’s plenty more to go that’s worth going for. So, why are we so stupid that, on our side of the line, we think it’s a good idea to drill zero new wells?”
Bloomberg, May 2026
The UK has already used up most of the oil and gas that was under its part of the North Sea, whereas the state-run Norwegian system has taken a different approach.
Nevertheless, even the most optimistic of Norway’s official forecasts sees a steady decline in production over the coming decades, as their oil and gas also starts to run out.
UK fossil-fuel production is lower than Norway’s because of geology and the decisions that were taken in the past, neither of which can be changed by the current or any future UK government.
Specifically, the UK has already used up the large majority of its North Sea resources, having extracted around 90% of the oil and gas that is available.
In contrast, Norway has only used up 57% of the “expected recoverable resource” from its part of the North Sea, according to official estimates published by Norwegian Petroleum.
FALSE
Tice: “We’ve got lots of [oil and gas] reserves, but if you just say it’s not viable because you make the regulations and everything too expensive, then don’t be surprised if people say, well, there’s not much to go for.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Projections of the amount of oil and gas that will be recovered from the North Sea have barely changed since the Labour government took office in 2024.
Tice’s suggestion that official estimates of North Sea reserves have been revised down as a result of the Labour government’s policies is, therefore, provably untrue.
For gas, there is little difference between official projections published before and after the government’s 2024 election win and its decision to ban new licensing, as shown below.
While the NSTA projections for oil have shifted more noticeably between 2023 and 2026, this largely relates to output from existing fields, rather than the potential from new drilling.
FALSE
Tice: “I go to Aberdeen and they’re literally losing a thousand jobs a month in and around Aberdeen and the oil and gas industry because of this mad policy.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Jobs in North Sea oil and gas have been declining rapidly for decades, having fallen by a third between 2014 and 2023 – well before the current government took office.
However, the major driver of job losses has been the irreversible decline of the North Sea basin. Gas production in the North Sea fell by 74% between 2000 and 2025, while oil output fell by 75%.
This decline has occurred despite the previous Conservative government, which was in power from 2010-24, holding six new licensing rounds and issuing hundreds of new licences.
MISLEADING
Tice: “All of the nations who’ve got energy treasure, who are extracting it, they are growing, whether it’s America, whether it’s the Middle East, whether it’s in Asia.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Fossil-fuel producers have received windfall profits as a result of price spikes in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the effective closure of the strait of Hormuz.
On the flip side of this, countries that rely on fossil-fuel imports – particularly in Europe and China – have been hit with an extra $330bn in costs since the Iran crisis began.
For the UK, the most effective way to cut the need for costly fossil-fuel imports is to continue expanding clean-energy supplies and the electrified technologies that use them.
It is true that the US economy is growing at a faster rate than Europe’s. This is down to a range of reasons, experts say, including the nation’s rapid uptake of AI.
Another factor is that import dependency has left the UK and others particularly exposed to the economic impacts of the recent fossil-fuel price spikes.
Meanwhile, there is also plenty of evidence to show that investing in clean energy is driving economic growth in countries around the world.
The International Energy Agency (IEA), the world’s energy watchdog, estimated that clean energy accounted for 10% of global GDP growth in 2023. The figure was 30% for the EU, according to the IEA.
Analysis published by Carbon Brief shows that clean energy drove more than a third of China’s GDP growth in 2025. And the International Monetary Fund (IMF) says that climate action will provide a long-term boost to China’s economy and energy security.
In the UK, emissions have “decoupled” from economic growth, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
The analysis found that UK emissions fell to 54% below 1990 levels in 2024, while GDP was up 84%.
FALSE
Farage: “Countries that frack get rich. Countries that don’t frack get poor.”
Edinburgh press conference, August 2025
The availability and accessibility of shale resources – and, therefore, the potential economic return from extracting oil and gas via fracking – is a function of geography and geology.
The UK’s shale gas resources are hard to extract and roughly 10-times smaller than initially thought. As a result, their potential to boost the UK economy is extremely limited.
While fracking has boosted economic growth in the US, there is little evidence to suggest this could be replicated by countries in Europe.
Only four countries frack for oil and gas at a large-scale commercial level: the US, Canada, China and Argentina.
Across much of Europe, fracking faces legal bans over concerns that the practice can contaminate water supplies and impact public health.
There are also practical and economic hurdles to fracking in Europe.
US oil majors abandoned efforts to establish a shale gas industry in Poland more than a decade ago. As the Economist noted in 2014: “There is no getting around geology.”
In the UK, fracking is unpopular with the public, with just 17% of people supporting it and 45% opposing it.
Any attempt to produce oil and gas via fracking would likely face protests and lengthy legal battles. Even if projects were able to go ahead, it would likely take years to produce a meaningful amount of gas .(See Carbon Brief’s fracking factcheck.)
Impacts and adaptation
MISLEADING
Tice: “Actually, what we need to do with climate change…we need to adapt to it.”
BBC Breakfast, June 2024
Climate change will keep getting worse until the world cuts emissions to net-zero.
Moreover, there are hard limits to adaptation, which can be overwhelmed by higher warming.
The longer emissions continue, the higher global temperatures will rise and the more nations such as the UK will have to adapt. It is, therefore, misleading to present adaptation as an alternative to cutting emissions.
The IPCC says that risks “will become increasingly complex and more difficult to manage” as climate change worsens. It also stresses that there are limits to adaptation, some of which have already been reached.
In response to the latest IPCC assessment report, Dr Aditi Mukherji told Carbon Brief:
“Effectiveness of most adaptation responses decreases drastically at global warming levels of 1.5C to 2C, showing that mitigation and adaptation efforts have to go hand in hand.”
In its latest advice to the UK government, the CCC set out the need to prepare for extreme heat, drought and flooding and states: “Without global emissions reductions, these risks may go past the point where the UK can protect itself with adaptation measures.”
FALSE
Tice: “It’s much cheaper to adapt to climate change than to think you can stop it.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Cutting emissions to net-zero will be much cheaper for the UK than dealing with the economic damages of unmitigated climate change, according to the OBR.
In addition, adapting to unavoidable warming will be far cheaper than “facing the damages”, according to the CCC.
While Tice frequently presents a false dichotomy between cutting emissions and adapting to climate impacts, they are not either/or alternatives. In fact, both are required to reduce the dangers of climate change – and both will require substantial investment.
Climate-related damages are already costing the UK, with one recent estimate concluding that the June 2026 heatwave alone led to a £1.15bn hit to the economy.
These costs will spiral if global emissions are not reduced. It is well established that the cost of inaction on climate change is considerably higher than the cost of cutting emissions.
The CCC estimates that climate change is already costing the UK economy £60bn a year in damages and this could rise to around £260bn by 2050, under around 2C of global warming.
The committee says a comprehensive climate-adaptation programme in the coming decades will reduce these costs.
As the chart below shows, CCC analysis has concluded that an adaptation package covering heat and health, urban heat and water scarcity could avoid up to £12bn a year in climate-damage costs across the UK by the 2050s.
In total, climate-adaptation actions are expected to cost at least £11bn per year out to the 2050s – a considerable sum, but one that the CCC says is “manageable” and will largely come from private-sector investment.
At the same time, the CCC says there is a risk of “catastrophic damages”, especially if warming continues to rise above 2C. Given this, it stresses that “reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions remain essential” to minimise such risks.
FALSE
Tice: “The issue [with drought] is not the quantity of water in the UK. The issue is how the water companies do or don’t capture it.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Climate change is making drought more frequent and severe in the UK, even as it makes winters wetter than they were in the past.
This is increasing the need for new reservoirs and other measures to manage the quantity of water available in the UK throughout the year.
The summer of 2026 saw record-low levels of rainfall across much of the south of England and Wales, as shown in the map below.
July 2026 was the driest month on record in England and Wales, according to the Met Office. This coincided with the two nations recording their sunniest July on record as well.
These “remarkable conditions” in 2026 come as part of a summer “marked by multiple heat records, which have contributed to drought conditions”, the Met Office notes.
The Environment Agency says that, due to climate change, “we are experiencing longer, hotter summers…leading to an increased likelihood of drought”.
FALSE
Tice: “I’m old enough to remember 1976. This feels a bit the same. That was 50 years ago.”
Press conference, August 2026
Since 1976, global warming has made heatwaves “more frequent, long-lasting and intense”.
As a result, summer 2026 was the UK’s hottest on record, with the Met Office finding that this was made around 130-times more likely by human-induced climate change.
Moreover, this year’s record means that summer 1976 is now only the seventh-warmest for the UK, with the top five all having occurred since 2003.
In the summer of 1976, there were 15 consecutive days when somewhere in the UK was above 32C. This led to water shortages and frequent wildfires, followed by flash floods.
There has been a lot of comparison to this “historic event” amid the record-breaking temperatures seen in 2026.
However, climate change means that a 1976-style weather pattern would be 3-4C hotter today than it was at the time.
There were just three days in which UK temperatures breached 36C in the entire 20th century, including 1976. Yet there were three days above 36C in 2026 alone.
Summer 2026 also saw 10 separate days with temperatures above 35C, breaking the previous record of five days, which had been set in 1976.
Additionally, the humidity was much higher in 2026 than in 1976. According to the Met Office, this meant that “even where peak air temperatures were comparable, the perceived heat and associated health risks were often greater in 2026”.
Clean energy
MISLEADING
Tice: “80% of the offshore renewables is overseas owned. So the British consumer is being shafted to help overseas investors.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Around the world, more than 90% of new renewable power projects are cheaper than new fossil-fueled generation.
An energy system built around renewable power and electrified technologies such as EVs is also the lowest-cost option in the UK.
While it is true that more than 80% of UK offshore windfarms are owned by foreign companies, this is just a feature of the country’s privatised energy sector.
For example, 40% of North Sea oil and gas licences are also owned by foreign investors.
Additionally, regardless of the windfarms’ owners, their presence on the electricity grid is helping to protect consumers from high fossil-fuel prices.
In 2025, windfarms cut wholesale power prices by a third, according to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank.
MISLEADING
Tice: “Why are we so stupid that we spent £700m on Hinkley Point C, £700m of taxpayers’ cash, to protect a bunch of salmon? About 70 salmon, for God’s sake.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant will include a system designed to protect millions of fish.
However, the cost of this system amounts to just 1.5% of the overall £46bn cost of building the new reactors in Somerset.
The £700m system is expected to stop more than 2.6m fish a year from being sucked into the cooling pipes at the site on the Severn estuary.
Additionally, the use of the system is replacing plans to flood 900 acres (364 hectares) of farmland in neighbouring Gloucestershire, originally proposed by the site’s main developer, EDF.
The construction of Hinkley Point C is being financed by EDF and the China General Nuclear Power Group, not the taxpayer. When it begins generation, it will benefit from a “contracts for difference”, which is funded via electricity bills.
MISLEADING
Tice: “A hell of a lot more people have died building wind turbines than have died in the nuclear power industry. Little stated fact by the renewable industry.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Both wind and nuclear power are considered to be among the safest forms of energy generation in the world.
There are occasional fatalities among workers at windfarm construction sites, but these are very rare, particularly when compared with accidents in the fossil-fuel industry.
This is before taking into account that fossil-fuel pollution is responsible for one in five deaths globally, according to research by University College London.
Analysis from 2020 suggests that solar power was the safest source of energy, followed by nuclear and then wind. All three clean-energy sources are orders of magnitude safer than fossil fuels, as shown in the figure below.
For example, each unit of electricity generation from coal is associated with more than 600 times as many deaths as the same amount of power from wind.
Our World in Data, a non-profit collaboration between the University of Oxford and the Global Change Data Lab, which did the analysis, explains:
“People often focus on the marginal differences at the bottom of the chart – between nuclear, solar and wind. This comparison is misguided: the uncertainties around these values mean they are likely to overlap.
“The key insight is that they are all much, much safer than fossil fuels.”
MISLEADING
Tice: “[Solar is a] good use of rooftops, there’s no subsidy on those.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Solar power is the cheapest electricity in history and keeps getting cheaper.
It is expected to play a key role in the energy transition, including in the UK.
While the government’s subsidy scheme for domestic solar – the “feed-in tariff” (FiT) – closed to new applicants in 2019, several other incentives have subsequently been introduced.
It was directly replaced by the “smart export guarantee”, wherein utilities pay households for any excess power they generate from their solar installations. This – together with the savings from using self-generated power – helps to offset the cost of the installation of solar panels.
Additionally, the government’s warm homes plan offers grants and loans designed to triple the number of homes with rooftop solar by 2030.
Ultimately, Tice’s focus on rooftop solar (which his firm uses) positions it in opposition to ground-mounted solar farms – creating a false dichotomy between a “good use” and a “bad use”.
Ground-mount solar is set to play a significant role in decarbonising the UK. It is much cheaper than rooftop solar and is not limited by the availability of rooftops.
FALSE
Tice: “All the renewables, all the wind turbines and the solar farms, they want a fat subsidy for very long-term contracts.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Renewables are the cheapest source of new electricity in the UK, where recent surges in energy bills have been predominantly due to the role of gas in setting electricity prices.
The first subsidy-free solar farm in the UK was opened in 2017 near Flitwick in Bedfordshire.
Across the UK, there are now a number of subsidy-free solar and windfarms, which either rely on selling power into the market or private power purchase agreements.
The majority of solar and windfarms hold government contracts, but these are fixed-price deals rather than subsidies.
The new wind and solar projects secured at the latest government auction of “contracts for difference” will be significantly cheaper than new gas, according to the government.
No new gas plants have been built in the UK without long-term subsidy contracts through the government’s capacity market. In addition, the price of fuel for gas-fired generation continues to spike in response to the latest global energy crisis in the Middle East.
The most recent large new gas plant was Keadby 2, which opened in 2023 and would now cost 3.5-times as much to build, according to its owner.
FALSE
Tice: “There is nothing environmentally friendly about covering 100 square miles of Lincolnshire, agricultural, productive farmland, with solar panels, surrounding whole villages, decimating property prices in those villages or making them unsaleable, and thinking that’s going to end well.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Even if solar farms expand in line with net-zero targets, they would cover just 0.7% of land in the UK – less than golf courses do currently.
Solar farms are very rarely built on productive agricultural land in the UK – with the majority built on low-grade land – and pose “no threat to national food security”, according to the National Farmers Union.
There is limited evidence that property prices are impacted by solar farms, with some studies suggesting that well-screened solar farms have no impact.
A London School of Economics study from 2021 did “not find any statistically significant effects [of solar on house prices], even at relatively small distances of 1km”.
Other studies have found very small negative impacts – on the order of 1-3% – while one study of 70 solar farms in the US identified a small boost to house prices.
As such, there is nothing to suggest that solar farms either “decimate” property prices or make homes “unsaleable”.
FALSE
Tice: “I drive a Tesla. Do I think it’s going to change the climate? No.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
As an electric vehicle (EV), driving a Tesla is far better for the environment than a petrol or diesel car, as it produces fewer greenhouse gases, air pollutants and noise.
Typically, an EV driven in Europe emits around two-thirds fewer greenhouse gas emissions than an equivalent petrol car, even accounting for battery production and disposal.
Carbon Brief analysis found that a Tesla Model Y, for example, will emit about 68% less CO2 over its lifetime than the average petrol car.
In addition to cutting costs for drivers, EVs are a key part of decarbonising road transport.
In the UK, transitioning away from petrol and diesel vehicles to EVs is expected to account for 23% of the total reduction in emissions being targeted by 2050. Net-zero is the “only way” to halt global warming.
MISLEADING
Tice: “The government says that the cost of renewable subsidies in the last 15 years is £100bn.”
Press conference, February 2025
Upfront renewable subsidies – in the UK and elsewhere – have helped deliver dramatic reductions in the cost of wind and solar power.
Since 2010, the cost of solar power has fallen by 89%, onshore wind by 71% and offshore wind by 63% – and these declines are set to continue.
As a result, 90% of new wind and solar installed in 2025 was cheaper than new fossil-fuel power, according to the International Renewable Energy Association (IRENA).
In the UK, wind power saved consumers more than £100bn between 2010-2023, after accounting for renewable subsidies, according to researchers at University College London.
In contrast, high fossil-fuel prices since the global energy crisis in 2022 had already cost the UK more than £180bn by the end of 2025, according to ECIU, with the first six months of the Iran crisis adding another £10bn in extra costs.
FALSE
Tice: “Those farmers who want to sell out to the renewable industry for solar farms – you can’t have it both ways, folks. Either you’re part of food production, part of food security for our nation, or you’re part of the renewables industry.”
Press conference, February 2025
Contrary to Tice’s claims, farmers can – and indeed often already do – “have it both ways”. Government statistics for 2023/24 suggest that 32% of farm businesses make use of renewable energy, mostly solar power.
Furthermore, some 37% of farmers, landowners and tenant farmers say the revenue from solar power helps secure their farms for future generations, according to interviews carried out by trade association Solar Energy UK.
Finally, solar can also be combined directly with food production through the use of “agrivoltaic” systems. This concept combines farming – including livestock grazing and shade-tolerant crops – with solar panels and has been gaining momentum as a solution to land-use conflicts.
FALSE
Tice: “The British people are not being told that these battery energy systems are dangerous – and until they can be proven to be absolutely safe, they should be banned.”
Press conference, February 2025
Battery energy storage systems are safe and getting safer all the time.
In the UK, there are over 1,659 large-scale battery storage projects and there have been only two reported fires in the past five years – neither of which had any injuries or fatalities.
Home battery storage systems are also safe. A recent study that looked at installations in Germany found the probability of a fire is 0.005% – this is around the same level as a tumble-dryer fire, 50 times lower than a general house fire and 18 times lower than a petrol or diesel engine fire.
(In contrast, there has been a spate of fires at UK waste facilities caused by the inappropriate disposal of lithium batteries in consumer devices, usually vapes.)
FALSE
Farage: “The argument that wind power makes us less reliant on other sources of energy from around the world just is not true. The national grid is not fit to deal with intermittent renewable energy.”
Press conference, August 2025
Wind power is already making the UK less reliant on imported fuels.
Moreover, expanding clean-energy supplies will be a much more effective route to reducing the UK’s reliance on energy imports than efforts to increase North Sea drilling.
ECIU found that the growth of offshore wind had reduced the nation’s spending on imported fuels by at least £30bn by the end of 2025.
Separately, Carbon Brief analysis found that wind and solar saved the UK from gas imports worth £1.7bn in March and April 2026 alone, amid the pressures of the Iran war.
The UK’s electricity grid does require upgrades as part of the transition to an energy system dominated by renewables, EVs and heat pumps. This transition will enable the UK to cut its imports of not only gas for heat and power, but also oil for transport.
Regardless of net-zero targets, higher spending on the electricity network is partly making up for decades of “under-investment”.The grid needs upgrades to connect new nuclear plants and data centres, as well as to meet growing electricity demand from homes and businesses.
Despite the need for investment, there is nothing to suggest that the grid is “not fit to deal” with renewables.
Power cuts for the average UK household are now happening 43% less often than they did in 2011. During that time, renewables have grown from 9.5% to 47% of electricity supplies.
The post Factcheck: Reform UK’s 45 false or misleading claims about climate and energy appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Factcheck: Reform UK’s 45 false or misleading claims about climate and energy
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