As nations assemble at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, one issue is expected to dominate the summit: climate finance.
In total, countries need to invest trillions of dollars to build clean-energy systems, prepare for an increasingly hotter world and deal with the aftermath of climate change-fuelled disasters.
The UN climate convention also specifically requires developed nations to provide financial resources – usually referred to as “climate finance” – to help developing countries do this.
Under the Paris Agreement, governments agreed to set a new climate finance target by 2025 that would channel money into these nations and help them tackle climate change.
But negotiations over this “new collective quantified goal” (NCQG) for climate finance in recent months have exposed deep divides in the UN climate process.
Nations disagree on virtually every element of the NCQG, including the amount of money that needs to be raised, who should contribute, what types of finance should feed into it, what it should fund and what period of time it should cover.
Developing countries are looking to high-income parties, such as the US and the EU, to provide the money. Meanwhile, developed countries want an all-encompassing goal that includes input from private companies and large, emerging economies, such as China.
In this article, Carbon Brief explores the issues countries have been clashing over, which will have to be resolved to secure an outcome in Baku.
- Why are countries discussing a new climate finance goal?
- What number will replace $100bn in the new target?
- Which countries will contribute to the new target?
- What sources of money should be included in the NCQG?
- What kind of activities will the NCQG support?
- How long will countries have to meet the NCQG?
- How will progress towards the target be reported and tracked?
Why are countries discussing a new climate finance goal?
Climate finance is at the heart of international climate politics. It is widely understood that developing countries need to invest large sums of money if they are to cut their emissions and prepare for a hotter world, in line with their climate plans.
The nature of climate finance is disputed, but, currently, it largely comes from developed countries’ aid budgets and contributions from multilateral funds and development banks (MDBs), such as the World Bank. Smaller amounts come from the private sector.
When nations negotiated the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992, the treaty said that developed countries “shall provide” financial resources to help developing countries tackle climate change.
In 2009, developed countries agreed to “mobilise” $100bn of climate finance a year by 2020 – an annual target that was meant to run through to 2025. This became a fraught topic, as developed nations missed the 2020 deadline and only reached it two years later in 2022.
In the Paris Agreement of 2015, Article 9 reaffirms that “developed country parties shall provide financial resources to assist developing country parties”. Nations also decided that, before 2025, they:
“Shall set a new collective quantified goal from a floor of $100bn per year, taking into account the needs and priorities of developing countries.”
This “new collective quantified goal” (NCQG) is the focus of negotiations at COP29. With the 2025 deadline approaching, this will be the final opportunity to settle on the new target.
Negotiators have been gathering for months to discuss the issue, in an effort to find a landing ground. However, the NCQG is both very technical and highly politicised, leaving them deadlocked on most issues.
Following several rounds of negotiations, the co-chairs (from Australia and the United Arab Emirates) overseeing the talks were tasked with producing a “substantive framework for a draft negotiating text”, which would form the basis of COP29 deliberations.
The resulting document offers the outlines of the new climate finance target and crystallises the key areas of remaining disagreement. It is nine pages long and contains 173 elements that are still in square brackets, meaning they are undecided.
What number will replace $100bn in the new target?
Unlike the $100bn, which was an arbitrary number put forward by global-north leaders, the NCQG must take into account the “needs and priorities of developing countries”. Many assessments have shown that these nations’ investment needs will run to trillions of dollars for tackling climate change in the coming years.
However, setting a numerical climate finance target – or “quantum” – is not straightforward. Many of the future demands of dealing with climate change are difficult to quantify and there has been no officially mandated effort to work out what these needs are under the NCQG.
The closest attempt is the “needs determination report” from the UN Standing Committee on Finance, based on combining various reports in which developing countries have self-assessed their own requirements. However, the committee stresses that its estimate of $5-6.9tn over the next five years contains “significant gaps” and, therefore, is not a true reflection of needs.
An analysis by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) points out that this leaves NCQG negotiators relying on various calculations by NGOs, management consultancies and research groups “undertaken under different contexts, for possibly different objectives and with different mandates”.
Despite this lack of clarity, negotiators have converged around the need for trillions of dollars to deal with climate change. But arriving at a more precise figure for the NCQG has proved difficult, in part because countries do not agree on what it is supposed to include.
Developing countries prefer a target made up largely of public funds from developed countries. Meanwhile, developed countries have proposed targets covering a much larger range of sources and including “global investment flows”, rather than public money given by developed countries to developing ones alone. (See: What sources of money should be included in the NCQG?)
As a result, Iskander Erzini Vernoit, director of the Imal Initiative for Climate and Development, tells Carbon Brief that, “while all parties are talking about trillions, they are doing so in entirely different ways”.
Developing country groups, including the Like-Minded Developing Countries, the Arab Group and the African Group, have proposed a few ideas for climate finance targets, all in the region of $1-1.3tn a year, as the chart below shows. Pakistan has proposed the highest figure so far – “a minimum of $2tn” – but it has not specified the timeframe.
Meeting such a target would require an unprecedented tenfold boost in climate finance by 2025. (However, it is difficult to compare like-for-like, as countries have different expectations about the sources that will make up the NCQG target.)
After years of developed countries struggling to hit the relatively modest $100bn goal, these new demands raise the issue of plausibility.
Major contributors including the UK, France and Sweden have all slashed their aid budgets in recent years, reducing the pool of public finance available.
Meanwhile, the US has consistently underperformed in providing climate finance. This is despite most analyses indicating that it should be by far the largest contributor, as it is the world’s richest country and the biggest historic contributor to climate change.
Jonathan Beynon, a senior policy associate at the Center for Global Development, tells Carbon Brief:
“Public budgets are under pressure in most developed countries, prospects for such massive increases in climate finance look limited, however justified they might seem.”
Developed countries stress the need for a “realistic” NCQG target. In one statement, the US mentions the annual needs of developing countries exceeding $1tn a year, but says “it is clear that public international finance alone cannot reach such levels”. It adds:
“There is a fine line between a support goal that stretches contributing parties and one that is so unrealistic that it actually diminishes incentives and potentially undermines the Paris Agreement process.”
Furthermore, the US argues that developed countries do not have to meet the “totality of needs” in developing countries, noting that the NCQG mandate only requires parties to “tak[e] into account” these needs.
Developed countries have largely resisted suggesting a numerical target for the NCQG. They argue that a specific amount cannot be agreed upon until a decision is made on who will contribute towards it. The US has only gone so far as to restate that the goal should be “from a floor of” $100bn per year – as already set out by the Paris text.
(Experts have noted that the $100bn goal should be corrected for inflation, at the very least, which would add many billions of dollars. Beynon says “inflation and economic growth alone” would allow “perhaps a doubling by 2035”.)
Another developed-country proposal from the EU mentions a goal of $2.4tn annually by 2030, a number identified by the Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance – a group of economists tasked with working out the “investment” needs in developing countries.
In the expert group’s proposal, just $150-200bn per year would come directly from other countries, with $1.4tn from the domestic resources of developing countries themselves.
Alex Scott, a senior associate in climate diplomacy at the thinktank ECCO, noted in a recent briefing that progress outside negotiations, such as mobilising more climate finance from the World Bank, could “build a bit more confidence amongst developed countries that…there are other sources of finance that are going to complement what they can put on the table”.
One recent assessment by a team of NGO climate-finance analysts concluded that a “business-as-usual” scenario could result in $173bn of climate finance being provided and mobilised by 2030 – a 50% increase from 2022 levels. This is based on existing pledges by developed countries and planned reforms to multilateral institutions.
Others in civil society point to the trillions spent on Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine, and the trillions that could be raised by taxing fossil fuels and billionaires. Meena Raman, head of programmes at the Third World Network, tells Carbon Brief that the unwillingness of developed countries to commit to more funding is a failure of “political will”:
“It’s very dubious when you say you have not got enough money for climate, but you see that there is a lot of money for bombs and wars.”
Which countries will contribute to the new target?
One of the most contested topics in NCQG negotiations is whether to expand the list of countries that must provide climate finance.
Global-north nations broadly want relatively wealthy, emerging economies, such as China and the Gulf states, to start contributing officially under the UN climate regime. Developing countries argue that, after failing to meet their climate-finance targets, developed countries are trying to shift their responsibilities.
As it stands, only 23 countries are obliged to provide climate finance, including western Europe, the US, Japan, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The EU must also provide climate finance, independently from the funds provided by its member states.
This group, listed in “Annex II” of the UNFCCC, is based on the membership of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1992. (OECD member Turkey secured removal from Annex II in 2001, on the basis that it was an emerging economy.)
The world has changed a lot in the three decades since the contributor list was agreed.
As the chart below shows, emissions from non-Annex II countries, particularly China, have increased significantly since 1992. Many of these nations are also wealthier, and both of these factors are frequently cited as reasons for such countries to start paying climate finance.
There have been consistent efforts by donor countries to broaden the pool of climate finance providers. Indeed, the language in the Paris Agreement reflects this, saying that “other parties” are “encouraged to provide” climate finance “voluntarily”.
However, the division between countries “obliged” versus “encouraged” to contribute has remained. Only Annex II countries were responsible for delivering the $100bn goal.
Developed countries are clear that bringing more donors on board for the NCQG is a priority for them. In a submission ahead of negotiations, the EU refers to “evolving” responsibilities and abilities to pay. It states that:
“The collective goal can only be reached if parties with high greenhouse gas emissions and economic capabilities join the effort.”
The US says that, in its view, agreeing to renegotiate the climate-finance target from 2025 was done on the basis of considering new contributors, making this topic “entirely legitimate, indeed appropriate”.
Developing countries, on the other hand, are firmly opposed to any changes. They argue that it is beyond the legal mandate of the NCQG.
The G77 and China group of 134 developing countries stresses that the NCQG falls under the Paris Agreements and the UNFCCC. Therefore, it includes the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” (CBDR-RC).
In this case, CBDR-RC refers to developed countries’ obligation and capacity to provide climate finance to developing countries. This principle is “not negotiable” and the NCQG mandate “does not include any discussions on modifications” to climate treaties, the G77 and China group says.
There is no agreed-upon way to determine how responsible countries are for causing climate change, and how much they should be helping to prevent it. This makes determining who could or should contribute to an expanded donor base complicated.
The table below, which draws on a recent paper led by Dr Pieter Pauw of Eindhoven University of Technology, shows various metrics that have been considered to identify new donors for the NCQG.
These include how countries are identified under various international treaties, measures of emissions and wealth, membership of powerful institutions and willingness to contribute to global development funds.
There are 50 non-contributor countries that tick two or more of these boxes, with a handful of relatively wealthy or large nations scoring the highest. (As with any attempt to identify new contributors, this ranking relies on subjective criteria. It scores all of these factors equally without making a judgement of how important they are, and countries are ranked in the order they appear in the study).
Non-contributor countries that meet a selection of potential criteria for contributing to the NCQG. Criteria include how countries are defined under various international treaties, including the UNFCCC, the Montreal Protocol and the Convention on Biological Diversity. Other criteria include different measures of higher CO2 emissions or gross national income (GNI) than the median Annex II country; membership of powerful institutions (EU, OECD, G20); and “significant” (greater than $5m) contributions to global climate, environment and development funds. Source: Adapted from Pauw et al. (2024).
Most proposals for identifying new contributors consider a country’s ability to pay – measured using gross national income (GNI) – and its responsibility for climate change, often based on historical emissions. Nations such as Canada and Switzerland have proposed a new system for determining climate-finance donors, based on this kind of data.
Yet different versions and combinations of these metrics can yield very different results. Focusing on total emissions and economic status generally throws up a selection of large, emerging economies, including China, India, Russia and Brazil.
However, many analyses include some variation of per-capita emissions and income, to ensure a “fairer” representation that does not penalise countries with large populations.
Such calculations suggest that small, wealthy fossil-fuel producers, including the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait, and small, high-income nations, such as Israel, South Korea and Singapore, should contribute to climate finance.
But outcomes can vary significantly, even when accounting for per-capita measures. The best example of this is China, which is the consistent focus of developed-country efforts to expand the contributor list.
Some assessments identify China as an obvious candidate for future contributions – and one that could make a big difference to total spending. Analysis by the Centre for Global Development (CGD) suggests, based on methods that take per-capita metrics into account alongside other factors such as aggregate GNI, that China should contribute up to around 7% of climate finance.
However, if comparability with Annex II countries is considered important when measuring per-capita historical emissions and income, as in analysis by the thinktank ODI, the results are very different. China still ranks far below any of the current developed countries that provide climate finance on these measures.
In fact, the charts below, based on WRI figures, show that major climate finance contributors still largely surpass emerging economies on both per-capita historical emissions from fossil fuels and industry, and per-capita GNI. (These rankings remain roughly the same if land-use emissions are included, although Russia rises higher in the list.)
Given this, the ODI concludes in its analysis that demands for China to become a contributor have “dubious” scientific basis and are “based on geopolitics, particularly China’s status as global power and international financier”.
All of this is further complicated by the fact that many relatively wealthy countries that are not obliged to provide climate finance, including China and South Korea, already contribute climate-related aid and other funding that could be classified as climate finance.
Yet there is resistance from nations such as China to formally classifying their activities as “climate finance” under the UN. Doing so could result in them facing more scrutiny and accountability.
It could also have great political significance given the long-standing division between “developed” and “developing” states in UN talks. This “firewall” was partially broken down with the Paris Agreement, which compelled all countries to set their own “nationally determined contribution” to climate action, but has remained in place for climate finance.
Charlene Watson, a senior research associate at the ODI, says developed country officials argue that having more countries on board makes it easier for them to persuade their treasuries to release more climate finance. However, she questions the value of insisting countries that already provide climate-related funds are included in the UN system:
“My view is that the cake is not going to get any bigger in the short term. It’s just going to be that we can better see the size of the cake.”
Pauw says there is a need for more nuance, including a new category of “net recipients” that both give and receive climate finance. He says coming up with a new list of contributors may be too difficult:
“Whatever you push forward as an idea is arbitrary. There will always be countries who say ‘we cannot agree to this’ – which means that you will not reach agreement.”
One compromise that has been proposed is to introduce different contributor bases for different “layers” of the NCQG, if countries agree on a “multilayered” goal.
That way, China and others might not be responsible for contributing to the “new $100bn” part of the goal, but may be covered by another layer. (See: What sources of money should be included in the NCQG?)
Meanwhile, Vernoit says poorer developing countries are “extremely wary” of the contributor base discussions, as any ambiguity over who is obliged to provide climate finance could hamper its provision. “Accountability is why burden-sharing frameworks and differentiated lists, like the Annex II list, are important to poorer recipient countries,” he explains.
What sources of money should be included in the NCQG?
Another highly contentious issue in the NCQG negotiations is what types of finance should feed into it. This inevitably influences the discussion of how big the goal could be.
The $100bn target is already fairly broad, covering finance “from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance”.
This in itself is controversial, with civil society groups and developing countries often arguing that the goal relies too much on low-quality finance, such as non-concessional loans. Nevertheless, the NCQG has the potential to be even broader.
Developed countries argue that expanding the scope, with a focus on private investment and gearing the entire financial system towards climate action, is the only way to raise the trillions of dollars of money required.
These wealthier nations generally want the goal to be “multilayered”, with a large outer layer consisting of “global investment flows for climate action”. The framing is important, as it could refer to all kinds of money being spent everywhere – not only in developing countries – including investments made by the developing countries themselves.
The developed nations also propose a smaller sub-goal within this investment layer, more aligned with traditional “climate finance”, which consists of finance “provided” and “mobilised” for developing countries.
(Here, “provided” is understood as referring to climate finance given by one country to another, while “mobilised” refers to private investment that comes as a result of public money “de-risking” investments and getting projects off the ground.)
This approach could make a big difference to how much money these countries would be obliged to provide. For example, an EU submission describes an “investment” goal in the trillions, in contrast to a “provided and mobilised” goal in the billions.
In addition, developed-country statements have stressed the “important role of the private sector”, the need for “reforming the multilateral financial architecture to further unlock climate finance” and the role of “innovative financial instruments” to raise more money.
By contrast, many developing countries have argued for a single goal that channels high-quality climate finance from developed countries to them in a reliable way.
In practice, this means developing countries want as much of it as possible to come in the form of grants from developed countries’ public coffers. The Arab Group has suggested that at least $441bn of the $1.1tn in annual climate finance it has proposed should come from developed-country grants.
All of this speaks to a central tension about the significance of two articles in the Paris Agreement. Article 9 states that developed countries are obliged to provide climate finance to developing countries and others are encouraged to do so voluntarily. Article 2.1c, meanwhile, calls for all “financial flows” to be aligned with the agreement’s goals.
As the WRI diagram below shows, developing countries want to keep the NCQG talks focused on Article 9, whereas developed countries say both articles should be covered. Developed countries, such as Japan, have said that they think Article 2.1c also justifies expanding the contributor base. (See: Which countries will contribute to the new target?)
Pauw of Eindhoven University of Technology tells Carbon Brief that this comes down to a fundamental difference of opinion on what climate finance is and should be.
On the one hand, the world needs to channel as much money as possible into tackling climate change and, on the other hand, there is the question of transferring money from developed to developing countries – often framed using the language of climate justice. He says:
“You can’t mobilise a lot of money if you provide everything in grants. So those two motivations seem to clash, and it’s important to understand that both of them are relevant, both of them are important and both of them need to be realised.”
The wording below from the proposed “draft negotiating text” released ahead of the COP29 negotiations shows the main options on the table for the NCQG.
Option 1 broadly captures ideas proposed by developing countries, while option 2 captures the layered “annual investment goal” presented by developed countries.
There are practical reasons for developing countries wanting to avoid certain types of finance in the NCQG.
Some global-north leaders have framed private finance as essential for meeting the needs of developing countries. For example, when asked about climate finance, former US climate envoy John Kerry repeatedly stated that “we don’t have the money”, arguing that the key would be to encourage more private capital into climate-related activities.
Yet the amount of private climate finance “mobilised” by developed countries remained virtually unchanged at around $14bn each year between 2016-2021, only increasing significantly to $22bn in 2022. (This is based on OECD data for private finance with a clear causal link to a donor country sending development finance to a project.)
Private investment is also far less likely to flow into the poorest countries, many of which are the most in need of climate finance. It is often viewed as unsuitable for many climate-adaptation projects, which are less likely to generate profits than mitigation work such as clean-energy projects.
Moreover, while national governments are within the remit of the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement, private companies and other financial actors, such as banks, are not. This could make it more risky to rely on them to meet the NCQG.
There are also strong calls from many developing countries to exclude “non-concessional” loans – provided at or near market rates – from climate finance altogether.
Since 2016, around 70% of public climate finance has been delivered in the form of loans, with Japan, France and Germany, as well as MDBs, providing most of their contributions in this way.
UN figures suggest that at least one-fifth of reported loans are “non-concessional”, resulting in wealth flowing back to the donor countries as loan repayments and interest, according to a Reuters investigation.
Many of the poorest countries are spending more on servicing debts than they receive in climate finance, according to the International Institute for Sustainable Development.
These debates form part of a wider discussion around the “quality” of finance.
Developing countries want finance to be predictable and accessible, especially given the complications they often face when obtaining it from MDBs and large funds.
For their part, developed countries are more likely to emphasise the need for “effective” climate finance – meaning funds that are used for their intended purposes and have a climate impact.
What kind of activities will the NCQG support?
Finance for climate action is divided into broad categories, depending on its main purpose. The $100bn target supports two types of activities: those that cut emissions – mitigation; or those that help countries adapt to climate change.
Now, there is pressure from most developing countries to include loss and damage as a “third pillar” in the NCQG. This would enshrine support for the victims of climate disasters as an official component of the international climate finance goal, for the first time.
After years of fraught negotiations, developing countries secured a “win” last year with the launch of the loss-and-damage fund at COP28.
However, contributions to the fund have been small compared to the scale of climate-related damages, which are estimated to reach $447bn-894bn per year by 2030.
Some developing countries would like to see NCQG sub-goals in order to ensure there is ring-fenced funding available for adaptation – which remains poorly resourced compared to mitigation – and for loss and damage. This would involve percentages of the overall target being assigned to each of the three pillars.
Sherri Ombuya, a consultant at Perspectives Climate Group, tells Carbon Brief that there has been some convergence between parties on the general idea of increasing adaptation finance. “This builds on some existing positions that have already taken place within the broader negotiation space,” she says.
(Developed country parties have already pledged to double adaptation finance from 2019 levels by 2025, for example.)
However, developed countries broadly do not want to incorporate loss and damage under the NCQG. They argue that, while a fund for loss and damage finance has now been established, contributions to it are voluntary and not part of the NCQG mandate.
Moreover, Article 9 of the Paris Agreement only refers to climate finance for “mitigation and adaptation” – and the Paris “decision text” that mandates the NCQG does the same.
Developing countries argue that including loss and damage in the NCQG is nevertheless valid, because Article 8 of the Paris Agreement separately “recognises” the importance of “averting, minimising and addressing” loss and damage.
They also see room for the climate-finance goal to expand over time, to reflect the changing needs of developing countries, in line with the Paris Agreement requirement that “efforts of all parties will represent a progression over time”.
How long will countries have to meet the NCQG?
Parties at COP29 must also agree on the timeframe for the provision of climate finance under the NCQG, as this was not specified in Paris.
A key source of conflict concerns whether the target should cover a shorter period of around five years or a longer one of 10 years or more.
Some developing party groupings, including the LMDCs and the Arab Group, have expressed a preference for a five-year goal covering the period from 2025-2030, with the same amount of money – roughly $1tn – provided every year.
An advantage of having a shorter timeframe could be that it gets money moving faster. Supporters also stress the importance of a “revision” or “review” process once the five years are up, in order to adequately reflect “the evolving needs of developing countries”.
Other developing countries, including AOSIS and the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), have supported a 10-year timeframe, but with some kind of review after around five years.
Some parties and civil-society groups have pointed out that a five-year timeframe aligns with existing processes for monitoring progress under the Paris Agreement.
Both the global stocktake and national climate plans – known as “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) – run on five-year cycles and could, therefore, feed into a review of the NCQG goal.
In an assessment of the NCQG, the World Resources Institute (WRI) notes that, while there are advantages to revisiting the target, “reopening negotiations on the NCQG during revision cycles has the potential to cause additional delays and complexity”.
Meanwhile, developed countries including Switzerland and the EU favour a 10-year timeline.
Notably, they have suggested that the NCQG will be achieved “by 2035”. This leaves room to gradually scale funding up over time rather than achieving it up from 2025 onwards, meaning less immediate pressure on contributors.
How will progress towards the target be reported and tracked?
There is general agreement that a workable NCQG requires a system where governments and other institutions report their climate finance transparently. Only then can progress towards the goal be tracked – and contributors held accountable.
As it stands, there are fundamental gaps in the system for tracking climate finance.
Despite being agreed upon in 2009, there was no official UN system in place to track progress towards the $100bn goal until the Standing Committee on Finance (SCF) was tasked with doing so in 2021 – one year after the goal was supposed to have been delivered.
This does not mean that no one has been reporting climate finance. Developed countries have to produce reports for the UNFCCC every two years, which must include the finance they have channelled into developing countries, both directly and through multilateral institutions.
Developed countries also submit information about climate-related spending to the OECD, which publishes its own assessments of climate-finance progress. (In addition, the OECD served as the de facto tracker of progress towards the $100bn goal.)
Meanwhile, NGOs – particularly Oxfam – have produced regular analyses of climate finance.
Crucially, these assessments arrive at very different estimates of how much climate finance has been provided to developing countries. This is partly because there is no widely accepted definition of “climate finance” in the UN climate process.
Nations are allowed to come up with their own definitions of what counts, as well as their own methodologies to track, measure and report it to official bodies. “This results in challenges in aggregating data on climate finance,” according to the SCF.
The lack of clarity around climate-finance figures has contributed to a “continuous erosion of trust between parties in international climate negotiations”, according to one paper.
Real-world implications include governments inflating the amounts they have given and labelling questionable funding for everything from coal to hotels as climate finance.
So far in the NCQG discussions, there has been a broad consensus that the enhanced transparency framework (ETF) is the best way to report on progress. The ETF is a system set up under the Paris Agreement, which requires most parties to submit information about their climate progress in biennial transparency reports (BTR) from the end of this year.
However, the ODI’s Watson tells Carbon Brief that even if this is agreed there will still be plenty to discuss in the NCQG transparency negotiations:
“The ETF just captures reporting from countries…The more we start talking about whether other sources [of finance] count, or how to capture finance from purely private actors, they’re obviously not covered by the BTRs that come out of the ETF. So what else do we need to know?”
These discussions are, therefore, tied to the question of which sources feed into the NCQG and also which countries contribute towards the goal.
Developing countries have fewer reporting obligations under the ETF and there may be pressure on them to report more if the contributor base is expanded, Watson says.
As for tracking the resulting figures, some parties have suggested the SCF should be given this task. Governments may prefer to opt for a UN committee rather than leaving the task to an NGO or external international body, but this may still face opposition.
Finally, despite the apparent convergence between parties on some of the transparency requirements, there is far less agreement on the need to define “climate finance”.
The G77 and China group of developing countries has pushed for such a definition, calling for non-concessional loans and “non-climate specific finance” to be excluded.
Many developing countries stress that climate finance must be defined as “new and additional”, in line with the language used when the $100bn target was set and in the original UNFCCC treaty. This is broadly understood to mean money that comes on top of other obligations.
However, developed countries provide much of their climate finance from their aid budgets and studies suggest that much of this is not “new and additional”.
Given the impact it could have on their finances, developed countries have strongly resisted a strict definition. Perspectives Climate Group’s Ombuya tells Carbon Brief that, while she thinks it is possible that parties could converge on excluding some types of finance from the NCQG, “I feel that to have a successful outcome, it’s likely that parties will have to have a willingness to do without a common definition on climate finance”.
The post COP29: What is the ‘new collective quantified goal’ on climate finance? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
COP29: What is the ‘new collective quantified goal’ on climate finance?
Last month, COP31 president-designate Murat Kurum launched a target for 35% of the world’s final energy to come from electricity by 2035.
In an interview with Carbon Brief, Kurum says that the target was not a political choice, but instead reflects the latest evidence on “what is needed to keep 1.5C within reach”.
The ongoing Hormuz crisis means there is an “urgent” need for renewables and electrification, which are the “surest and cleanest way to protect citizens” from high energy prices.
Kurum says that the Brazilian and Ethiopian presidencies of COP30 and COP32, as well as the EU, UK and Canada, have welcomed the target.
He adds that “all have confirmed it will be central to discussions at COP31”.
In the interview, Kurum – who is also Turkey’s minister of environment, urbanisation and climate change – tells Carbon Brief where the target came from and what he expects to happen next.
Carbon Brief: You recently launched a target for 35% of the world’s final energy to come from electricity by 2035. Where did this idea come from?
Murat Kurum: The “35 by 35” target is grounded in technical data and based on the IEA [International Energy Agency] and IRENA [International Renewable Energy Agency] analysis of what is needed to keep [the 1.5C Paris Agreement target] within reach. The level was not chosen politically. Rather, it reflects what the science and the energy modelling tell us is required.
CB: Why do you think an electrification target is important right now?
MK: The case for the target is urgent right now. The latest war in the Gulf has made energy diversification – and, in particular, renewable energy transition and electrification – a top global priority, because it is the surest and cleanest way to protect citizens around the world from high and volatile energy prices.
At a time of real fragmentation in international relations, a single, shared target is needed to focus global efforts by aligning governments, businesses and investors behind a common benchmark and to send a clear market signal.
CB: Which countries are supporting this target so far?
MK: The reaction so far has been extremely positive and, while we presented our target at the UN June climate meetings in Bonn, our earlier conversations with parties at both the Petersberg and Copenhagen climate dialogues paved the way for this launch.
For example, the EU, UK, and Canada have welcomed the target, as have the Brazilian COP30 and Ethiopian COP32 presidencies. All have confirmed it will be central to discussions at COP31.
This support has been reflected in the business community as well, with polling by the We Mean Business Coalition showing that 90% of businesses expect to have largely electrified their operations by 2035 and that 88% expect electrification will make their business more competitive.
CB: How do you hope and expect to see this taken forward at the COP? Could it be in the formal COP outcomes, or part of the second global stocktake?
MK: We are now taking electrification forward as an “action agenda” initiative to bring actors together and drive progress. The action agenda and the [formal COP] negotiations are separate, but complementary, with different processes and thresholds, and it is too early to say what all countries might be able to agree in the negotiations. That is for parties to determine as the year progresses.
We are focused and determined to use COP31 as a moment to spark a global conversation about electrification.
CB: What are the key priorities for reaching the target?
MK: The critical sectors for reaching the target are buildings, transport and industry, which together account for around 45% of global emissions. Financial support for the developing world and investment in grids and infrastructure is also crucial.
The target also builds on COP28’s target to triple renewable energy capacity and seeks to take advantage of the tumbling cost of renewable power and other technologies critical to the energy transition. This is a journey that Turkey itself is taking ambitious steps on, including our plan to reach 120GW [gigawatts] of renewable capacity by 2035.
This interview was first published in the 10 July 2026 edition of Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed weekly newsletter. Sign up for free.
The post Interview: COP31 president says electrification is ‘surest way to protect citizens’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Interview: COP31 president says electrification is ‘surest way to protect citizens’
Climate Change
DeBriefed 10 July 2026: Deadly Europe heat | EU electrification leak | COP31 president interview
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
‘Catastrophic’ climate impacts
RECORD HEAT: Western Europe experienced its hottest June on record – some 3C above average – according to analysis covered by the Guardian. It said the finding came “as the UK enters its third heatwave of the year and wildfires ravage France and Spain”. Le Monde said 10,000 people had been evacuated due to wildfires in southern France.
‘EXCESS DEATHS’: The June heatwave killed more than 2,700 people in France, according to a guest post analysis for Carbon Brief. Similar analysis for Germany said there had been more than 5,000 “excess deaths”, reported Bloomberg. Meanwhile, an ongoing heatwave in the US has killed at least 30 people, said USA Today.
STORM TEST: Floods have killed 39 people in Guangxi province in southern China, said state-run newspaper China Daily. Scientists warned that climate change and the weather phenomenon El Niño are exposing China to “catastrophic storms” that will test its resilience in 2026, reported Reuters. The nation’s latest official climate report found that “extreme weather and climate events…have become more frequent and severe”, said China National Radio.
Around the world
- EU ELECTRIFICATION: The European Commission is set to unveil a 2040 target for EU electrification on 17 July, reported Bloomberg. Citing a leaked draft, it said the plan would aim to cut oil use in half and gas use by two-thirds.
- PEAKING PLAN: China has published an “action plan” for peaking emissions during the 15th five-year plan period to 2030, reported Xinhua. It lists targets including “new energy vehicles” making up 30% of cars on the road by 2030, said Reuters.
- CLIMATE ‘FLAT EARTHER’: The Trump administration has appointed Matthew Wielicki, described by Politico as a “climate critic”, to lead the office in charge of the US national climate assessment. Common Dreams quoted a scientist describing the move as “like putting a flat-earther in charge of NASA”.
- UGANDAN SUIT: A group of farmers from Uganda have launched a legal suit in London against the East African oil pipeline, according to Climate Home News.
23%
The share of Irish electricity used by data centres in 2025, reported the Irish Times.
2%
The share of global electricity used by data centres in the same year, according to Carbon Brief analysis of the Energy Institute statistical review.
Latest climate research
- Meltwater from the western Himalayan glaciers will peak at around 2C of warming, before declining at higher warming levels | Environmental Research Letters
- Current coral restoration efforts may be unsuitable for temperate reefs, including those in the Mediterranean | Nature Ecology & Evolution
- People tend to underestimate the level of “broad public support” for climate action | Nature Climate Change
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Carbon Brief explained – via eight facts – why air conditioning rates in some parts of Europe are relatively low, as the technology emerges as a new front in the global “culture war” over climate action. Analysis for the article illustrated that, in many parts of the world’s fastest-warming continent, air conditioning simply was not needed in the past.
Spotlight
COP31 president speaks to Carbon Brief on electrification
This week, Carbon Brief interviews Murat Kurum, president-designate of the COP31 UN climate talks in November and Turkey’s minister of environment, urbanisation and climate change, on his target to boost global electrification.
Carbon Brief: You recently launched a target for 35% of the world’s final energy to come from electricity by 2035. Where did this idea come from?
Murat Kurum: The “35 by 35” target is grounded in technical data and based on the IEA [International Energy Agency] and IRENA [International Renewable Energy Agency] analysis of what is needed to keep [the 1.5C Paris Agreement target] within reach. The level was not chosen politically. Rather, it reflects what the science and the energy modelling tell us is required.
CB: Why do you think an electrification target is important right now?
MK: The case for the target is urgent right now. The latest war in the Gulf has made energy diversification – and, in particular, renewable energy transition and electrification – a top global priority, because it is the surest and cleanest way to protect citizens around the world from high and volatile energy prices.
At a time of real fragmentation in international relations, a single, shared target is needed to focus global efforts by aligning governments, businesses and investors behind a common benchmark and to send a clear market signal.
CB: Which countries are supporting this target so far?
MK: The reaction so far has been extremely positive and, while we presented our target at the UN June climate meetings in Bonn, our earlier conversations with parties at both the Petersberg and Copenhagen climate dialogues paved the way for this launch.
For example, the EU, UK, and Canada have welcomed the target, as have the Brazilian COP30 and Ethiopian COP32 presidencies. All have confirmed it will be central to discussions at COP31.
This support has been reflected in the business community as well, with polling by the We Mean Business Coalition showing that 90% of businesses expect to have largely electrified their operations by 2035 and that 88% expect electrification will make their business more competitive.
CB: How do you hope and expect to see this taken forward at the COP? Could it be in the formal COP outcomes, or part of the second global stocktake?
MK: We are now taking electrification forward as an “action agenda” initiative to bring actors together and drive progress. The action agenda and the [formal COP] negotiations are separate, but complementary, with different processes and thresholds, and it is too early to say what all countries might be able to agree in the negotiations. That is for parties to determine as the year progresses.
We are focused and determined to use COP31 as a moment to spark a global conversation about electrification.
CB: What are the key priorities for reaching the target?
MK: The critical sectors for reaching the target are buildings, transport and industry, which together account for around 45% of global emissions. Financial support for the developing world and investment in grids and infrastructure is also crucial.
The target also builds on COP28’s target to triple renewable energy capacity and seeks to take advantage of the tumbling cost of renewable power and other technologies critical to the energy transition. This is a journey that Turkey itself is taking ambitious steps on, including our plan to reach 120GW [gigawatts] of renewable capacity by 2035.
Watch, read, listen
HEATED: A Financial Times long read asked if Europe – the world’s fastest-warming continent – is “prepared for a world of extreme heat”.
LITIGATED: The Outrage and Optimism podcast spoke to Prof Joana Setzer and Catherine Higham about the latest trends in climate litigation.
‘SHATTERED’: Confidence in fossil-fuel exports via the strait of Hormuz has been “shattered”, wrote IEA chief Fatih Birol for Foreign Policy.
Coming up
- 13-17 July: Meeting of open-ended working group on the Montreal Protocol, Bangkok, Thailand
- 13-24 July: International Seabed Authority Council, Kingston, Jamaica
- 16 July: International Energy Agency critical minerals outlook 2026, online
Pick of the jobs
- Wellcome Trust, head of policy – climate and health | Salary: £84,640-£105,800. Location: London
- Financial Times, senior reporter, Sustainable Views | Salary: Unknown. Location: London
- North Texas Public Broadcasting, climate, energy and environment reporter | Salary: $70,000-$78,000. Location: Fort Worth, Texas
- Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, head of communications and engagement | Salary: £65,000-£70,000. Location: London
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 10 July 2026: Deadly Europe heat | EU electrification leak | COP31 president interview appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed 10 July 2026: Deadly Europe heat | EU electrification leak | COP31 president interview
As successive heatwaves hit Europe, air-conditioning (AC) has emerged as a new front in the international “culture war” over climate action.
France, Germany and the UK have experienced record-breaking heat and thousands of heat-related deaths this summer, with June temperatures in many regions passing 40C.
This has drawn attention to the relatively low rates of AC use in these countries – and in Europe as a whole – especially when compared to its widespread adoption in the US.
Legacy newspapers, bloggers and even Elon Musk have all weighed in on “European hostility” to AC, criticising Europe’s “cultural conservatism” and “overbearing governments”.
Right-wing politicians, including National Rally in France and the UK Conservatives, have styled themselves as champions of AC, while opposing efforts to tackle climate change.
Missing from most of these interventions is the fact that human-caused climate change has made once-rare heat far more common, in what is the world’s fastest warming continent.
Carbon Brief analysis for this article shows that, until the 2020s, it was rare for many European cities to see days above 30C, making AC an unnecessary expense.
Here, Carbon Brief explains – via eight facts – why AC rates in some parts of Europe are relatively low, as well as clarifies and contextualises some of the misleading claims circulating about the technology.
- Much of Europe has not needed AC in the past
- AC is already widely used in hotter parts of Europe
- Some European nations have ‘resisted’ AC – but its popularity is growing
- AC emissions are growing, but its climate impact could be limited
- Heat from AC can contribute to directly warming cities
- More AC could help to reduce heat deaths in Europe
- ‘Net-zero rules’ are not blocking AC installation in the UK
- AC is not the only answer to overheating cities
Much of Europe has not needed AC in the past
AC installation rates in northern parts of Europe are very low. The best available estimates suggest that 6% of households in Germany and just 4% in England use AC.
However, these rates are largely explained by the historical climates in these nations.
Unlike the US, much of the housing stock and infrastructure in Europe was built at a time when AC did not exist and was not necessary.
Moreover, nations such as France, Germany and the UK have only started to regularly experience extreme heat in recent decades.
The chart below shows the average number of days per year, in each decade since the 1950s, when maximum temperatures have exceeded 30C in major European cities. Capitals such as London and Paris have seen a significant jump since around 2000.
Prof Jan Rosenow, an energy and climate researcher at the University of Oxford, tells Carbon Brief:
“For most of the 20th century, northern Europe simply didn’t need cooling. Homes in Britain and Germany were built to keep heat in, not out, because winters were cold and summers rarely hot.”
Much of the commentary about the relatively low rates of European AC use focuses on cultural or “ideological” factors. (See: Some European nations have ‘resisted’ AC – but its popularity is growing.)
However, Rosenow says people’s views on AC in these countries likely stem from their historically colder climates. He adds:
“Attitudes formed around those facts, not the other way round…There is a cultural element, but it is the product of climate, not of some green ideological project.”
In the past, many in Europe relied on traditional methods to keep buildings cool. Richard Black, head of communications at Climate Analytics, made this point in a post on LinkedIn:
“Once, residents of cities such as Paris could cope with summer heatwaves by opening shutters and windows during the night, and closing them again in the morning to trap the cool air inside…We’ve reached a limit to this sort of adaptation.”
Now, with Europe around 2.5C warmer than pre-industrial levels, climate change is routinely driving record-breaking heatwaves, even in the north of the continent.
This is forcing a reappraisal of societies that were “built for a climate that no longer exists”, as the UK’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) put it in a recent report.
Experts broadly agree that much of Europe will indeed need more AC, particularly in spaces housing the most vulnerable populations, such as care homes, schools and hospitals.
At the same time, they also emphasise broader, “passive” efforts to make cities and homes cooler alongside increased AC use. (See: AC is not the only answer to overheating cities.)
AC is already widely used in hotter parts of Europe
During periods of extreme heat, articles criticising “European hostility” towards the technology frequently note that “only about 20%” of households in Europe have AC.
Often, this is contrasted with the US, where more than 90% of households have AC installed. (In fact, the US is something of a global outlier, matched only by Japan.)
However, the continent-wide figure for Europe obscures the reality. In southern Europe – where temperatures are and have always been higher – AC is relatively common.
The map below, based on official EU data, shows that southern European nations use far more household energy for “space cooling” than those in the north.
Government figures show that nearly 60% of Italian households have AC. Household-level data in many countries is patchy, but various analyses have placed that figure at 70-80% in Greece and 41% in Spain – with higher penetration in the hotter, southern part of the country.
The same pattern can be seen within France. International coverage has stressed the country’s “cultural resistance to AC”, citing a nationwide figure from 2020 that suggests “only” 25% of French households have AC.
However, polling data from customers of the Hello Watt energy app suggests that there is a distinct north-south divide in French uptake. At least 60% of households in Mediterranean regions of France are equipped with AC, according to these figures.
This can be seen in the map below, with households across northern regions, including Paris, reporting far lower AC installation rates, often below 5%.
Finally, when making such comparisons to Europe, it is worth noting that high rates of AC use reported for the entire US also obscure significant differences between – and within – US states. This, too, aligns with differences in regional climate.
Hotter states in the US south have near-universal AC access. But in Washington, a north-western state with a climate more comparable to that of western Europe, 66% of people have AC in their homes.
Some European nations have ‘resisted’ AC – but its popularity is growing
International commentators have written extensively about Europe’s “longstanding resistance to cooling technology”, especially when compared to the US.
Newspaper editorials in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, alongside numerous op-eds and blog posts, have added fuel to this “culture war”. Elon Musk has even promoted an AI-generated message stating that Europeans “should just install AC”.
Often, European attitudes are attributed to “guilt” about AC’s energy demand, “cultural conservatism” or “overbearing governments”. One commentator ascribed divergent attitudes in Europe and the US to “different ideas about physical suffering and sacrifice”.
Meanwhile, right-leaning commentators and climate-sceptic groups have blamed “climate policies, which view AC as an unnecessary luxury”.
In general, these critiques often fail to consider the most obvious explanation, which is that AC adoption is low in northern Europe because the historical climate made AC unnecessary.
Critical articles have instead drawn attention to restrictions on AC use in some European countries, as well as the lack of support for AC in official heatwave guidance.
For France, in particular, polling has indeed highlighted widespread disapproval of AC, both on environmental grounds and due to alleged health impacts. Such messages have also been voiced regularly in French media and by left-leaning and green politicians.
However, across Europe there are plenty of signs that such attitudes are shifting, following successive spells of extreme heat.
Amid the June heatwave, there were reports from Germany, France and the UK of “skyrocketing” AC sales. This surge was even acknowledged by the foreign ministry in China, due to the nation’s role in supplying many of these products.
The shift is taking place in politics as well. Marine Tondelier, leader of the French Green party – which has traditionally opposed AC – recently stated that “there are places where we just can’t do without AC anymore”.
Overall, AC has been on the rise across Europe, with France, Spain and the Netherlands all using more than twice as much energy for AC and other “space cooling” technologies in 2024 as they did in 2015.
AC production in Germany has also risen by at least 75% in recent years and a growing share of German homes are being built with it installed.
Notably, there is little evidence that “climate policies” are blocking Europeans from installing AC. Polling in Germany shows that, while people are concerned about environmental impacts, the high costs of installing and running it are perceived as greater barriers.
Finally, there is an important distinction between individual AC units in people’s homes and installing them in public spaces, such as hospitals, care homes and schools.
While neither is widespread in France, support for the latter can increasingly be found across the political spectrum, from Greens to the far-right National Rally (RN).
AC emissions are growing, but its climate impact could be limited
Some people have noted that a wider rollout of AC in Europe could drive up emissions.
As noted in the Financial Times by columnist and chief data reporter John Burn-Murdoch, there is a logic to this argument, “at least superficially”. He writes:
“AC uses a lot of energy; if the proposed defence against emissions-driven global warming means emitting more, then we have an obvious problem.”
The emissions impact of AC depends heavily on the generation mix of a country’s power sector.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), “space cooling” – mostly AC, but this does include some fans – used 2,100 terawatt-hours (TWh) of power globally in 2022.
As such, it was responsible for 1bn tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) from electricity use globally. This equates to around 2.7% of total CO2 emissions globally from fossil fuels and industry.
(As well as indirect emissions through power use, AC units can also directly release greenhouse gases – used as AC refrigerants – when they leak or are improperly disposed of. Following the 2016 Kigali Amendment, countries are progressively trying to phase down the use of potent greenhouse gases in AC units.)
In a LinkedIn post, Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and regular Carbon Brief contributor, says:
“There is a lot of alarmist messaging about how much electricity AC uses. However, on an annual basis, the demand is not that substantial. Currently, AC uses about 1% of electricity in the EU and catching up to adoption rates in the US would double this.”
According to the IEA estimates from 2018, “if left unchecked, energy demand from AC will more than triple by 2050”, reaching 6,200TWh of power.
By mid-century, households would contribute the most to the increase (70%), with at least two-thirds of the world’s households potentially having AC, according to the Paris-based agency.
Decarbonising electricity grids and energy-efficiency improvements can reduce AC emissions and their impact on climate.
For instance, in countries with a low-carbon electricity mix – such as France, where nuclear energy accounts for 67% of its electricity generation – expanding AC would have a more limited climate impact than in other countries.
In countries such as India, there could be a more significant increase in emissions as AC is adopted, due to the role coal plays in the country’s energy mix, especially during the night. Demand is growing fast – following low access historically – and many AC units are inefficient, with high electricity use.
According to a new working paper from the India Energy and Climate Center (IECC) at the University of California, Berkeley, “room AC” – portable plug-in units, as opposed to those permanently installed in buildings – already accounts for nearly one-quarter of India’s peak electricity demand (60-70GW) – and this is before the majority of Indian households have bought their first AC unit.
Dr Nikit Abhyankar, co-faculty director of the IECC, tells Carbon Brief that, as AC use is expanded across the world, it should be paired with solar and battery storage, where the “economics have completely shifted” in the last few years. This will help to cut both energy bills and emissions.
According to the IEA, accelerating energy efficiency improvements could deliver more than one-third of all CO2 emission reductions between now and 2030.
The global energy demand needed to run ACs alone in 2050 could be reduced by 1,300GW – the equivalent of all of China and India’s coal plants – through energy efficiency measures, it estimates.
Aditya Valiathan Pillai, a climate adaptation researcher at King’s College London, tells Carbon Brief that, as the use of AC expands, there is a conversation to be had about where and “what type of technology [is used] and who gets access” to it.
A final point is that many AC units are air-to-air heat pumps, which can efficiently heat homes, as well as keeping them cool. As such, wider AC adoption could boost the adoption of electrified heat, helping to cut emissions from gas boilers.
Heat from AC can contribute to directly warming cities
Some critics of AC mention its electricity demands and associated CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel combustion, which contribute to raising the temperature of the entire planet. (See: AC emissions are growing, but its climate impact could be limited.)
But AC also has a localised impact. It works by removing heat from indoor air and pushing it outdoors, raising temperatures on the street and exacerbating the “urban heat island” effect.
Left-leaning French politicians are among those citing this as an argument against AC, particularly in cities. Indeed, Emmanuel Grégoire, the Socialist mayor of Paris, appeared to be making this point in an interview with Le Monde, during the June heatwave:
“[AC] can be useful for cooling collective spaces and protecting the most vulnerable populations, but individual AC is a scourge – it makes the problem worse by heating the city even more.”
One study concludes that, in a city such as Phoenix, Arizona, where the technology is widespread, AC use during a heatwave can raise night-time temperatures by 1-1.5C.
Another models a nine-day heatwave in Paris – in a future with “massive” AC use – and finds an increase in external temperature of more than 2C, due to heat emitted by the units.
Given this, some scientists argue that AC can be a form of climate “maladaptation” – referring to actions that backfire and make people more vulnerable to global warming.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has highlighted this issue, concluding:
“AC may constitute a maladaptation because of its high demands on energy and associated heat emissions, especially in high-density cities.”
Compared to the US, more people in Europe live in dense, urban areas. According to Dr Vincent Viguié, a climate change economist at École des Ponts ParisTech, this could leave Europeans more exposed to heat from AC units. He tells Carbon Brief:
“If you live in a neighbourhood that is not dense, like in a suburban neighbourhood or in the countryside, you don’t care about this…So, once again, there is a key difference between US and European cities.”
Viguié is among the experts arguing that other climate-adaptation measures should be considered alongside AC, to keep entire cities cool – not just individual homes. He says:
“It’s not to say that the heat released by AC by itself is a reason to forbid AC…It’s just that not taking that into account may lead to bad decisions.”
More AC could help to reduce heat deaths in Europe
Heatwaves can be deadly, especially for older or vulnerable members of society.
According to climate scientists at World Weather Attribution, “heatwaves cause more deaths in Europe than all other natural hazards combined”.
The heatwave in June 2026 is estimated to have killed more than 20,000 people in Europe. In France – which has seen some of the hottest temperatures – the heatwave caused more than 2,700 heat-related deaths, according to analysis published by Carbon Brief.
AC does help to protect people from the effects of extreme heat. A 2021 study found that globally, AC averted an estimated 190,000 heat-related deaths annually during 2019-21.
With its much higher penetration of AC, the US has fewer deaths due to extreme heat than Europe.
Heat kills around 11 people out of every 100,000 in Europe, compared to around two people in the US, according to analysis by data scientist Dr Hannah Ritchie from Our World in Data.
Several publications have pointed out that “Europe’s heatwaves are deadlier than American gun violence”. While this is technically accurate in absolute terms, Ritchie says the comparison is “a bit silly” for a number of reasons, not least because on a per-capita basis, US gun deaths are higher.
However, experts suggest that AC is only one part of a wider effort to protect people from extreme heat.
A 2020 study looking at heat-related mortality in Canada, Japan, Spain and the US, found that excess deaths due to heat decreased between 1972 and 2009.
For example, the proportion of deaths due to extreme heat fell from 1.7% to 0.5% over the period in the US and 3.5% to 2.8% in Spain.
However, an increase in AC only explained 16.7% of the drop in the US and 14.3% in Spain.
The research concludes that “other factors have played an equal or more important role in increasing the resilience of populations”. This is supported by research that shows changes to cities, such as planting more trees, as well as behavioural shifts and public-health measures, can all protect people from dangerous heat.
Additionally, across Europe there is already a range of policies and measures in place to protect the most vulnerable from heatwaves. Many of these were brought in following the unprecedented summer of 2003, when 70,000 died from extreme heat.
These policies were highlighted by French environment minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher, in response to the far-right National Rally (RN) party’s AC proposals:
“The incompetent RN has just found out that nursing homes need air-conditioned rooms. Thank you, but it’s actually been mandatory since 2004.”
Another study found that measures that have already been rolled out in France would cut the projected death toll of a 2003-like heatwave by more than 75%. This is in part due to the expansion of AC in places such as nursing homes, but also other approaches, such as heat action plans.
For example, France has a multi-tiered action plan, which includes local governments ensuring access to cooled spaces and water, keeping a list of vulnerable individuals for targeted interventions, as well as national information campaigns.
According to the UN’s office for disaster risk reduction, this French plan has led to a “significant reduction in heat-related mortality”.
While action plans have proved successful in a number of nations, less than half of European countries have such a plan in place.
‘Net-zero rules’ are not blocking AC installation in the UK
In the UK, Conservative politicians and right-leaning media have tried to pit the adoption of AC against net-zero policy.
Writing in the climate-sceptic Daily Telegraph, columnist Matthew Lynn claimed falsely:
“Strict net-zero rules now mean that aircon is effectively banned in the UK.”
(Further down the article, he concedes: “AC is not strictly speaking banned in new-build homes in the UK. But tough environmental rules mean that it is very hard, and expensive, to install in practice.”)
The same narrative has been used in articles by GB News, the Sun and others. A separate article in the Daily Telegraph’s “money” section goes further, claiming that AC had been “torn from homes under net-zero clampdown”.
A blog post from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government rebuts these claims, stating:
“There has been media coverage this week suggesting that AC is banned in homes. This is incorrect.”
For the UK, while it is true that fewer than 5% of homes currently have AC, this is largely due to the fact that it was not hot enough in the past to warrant the expense. Historically, the focus has therefore been on keeping buildings warm, rather than cool.
Extreme heat has previously been rare in the country, so homes were built with insulation and other measures to keep heat in during the “dank winters”. (See: Much of Europe has not needed AC in the past.)
Current regulations do not ban the installation of AC outright. However – as the government’s blog post notes – there is no blanket rule, meaning there are some localised differences.
Certain areas – or certain kinds of properties – may be subject to additional complications for installing AC.
In a 2025 video on Instagram, shadow secretary of state for energy security and net-zero Claire Coutinho referenced the London plan, for example, which is a framework for development in the capital launched in 2021. She said:
“[London mayor] Sadiq Khan says no. The London plan says we shouldn’t have air con because it uses too much energy. But this is mad! This is a poverty mindset that we need to get away from.”
The London Plan does not stop homes from having AC. It simply says that, for new buildings, passive design measures should be prioritised, such as the orientation of the building, the window design and incorporation of measures such as external shading and trees.
A recent response from the mayor added further measures, such as the need to “minimise the necessity for the operation of mechanical measures including AC, which would further add to the heat island effect within urban areas and add operational cost to residents”.
Elsewhere, new-build homes across England must meet the requirements of “part O” of the 2022 building regulation updates. This includes addressing overheating in buildings through energy-efficient design and prioritising passive cooling, with AC as a last resort.
For existing buildings, most AC units fall under “permitted development rights”, meaning no planning application is required to install them.
Additionally, regulations were relaxed in 2025 to make it easier to install an air-to-air heat pump – which can both heat and cool air – without planning permission.
This means that, far from blocking the expansion of AC, net-zero policy has made it easier to install specific cooling systems.
Speaking to Carbon Brief, Andrew Sissons, director of sustainable future at Nesta, says the government must now implement its announced £2,500 subsidy for air-to-air heat pumps “as quickly as possible”, to further ensure that the technology can be rolled out efficiently. He adds:
“[The government] should also continue to expand permitted development rights for air-to-air heat pumps, with a particular focus on flats and homes in denser areas. As long as heat pumps meet the MCS [Microgeneration Certification Scheme] noise test, there are few reasons to limit their use via the planning system.”
Some properties, such as large homes, listed buildings or those in conservation areas, may still require planning permission to install an air-to-air heat pump or other AC. Sissons notes that this can add cost and delay to installation.
While it cannot be said that AC has been blocked or banned due to net-zero, neither has it been prioritised.
This may shift as temperatures continue to rise. UK government advisors at the Climate Change Committee (CCC) suggest that 22% of the UK’s housing stock will likely need active cooling, such as AC, to cope with 2C of global warming.
The CCC’s recent adaptation report also calls for all new homes to be built using low-cost, passive cooling measures, alongside more AC.
Active cooling such as AC is more likely to be needed for retrofitting existing homes, the report adds.
AC is not the only answer to overheating cities
AC has become increasingly politicised in Europe, as demonstrated by France’s RN party announcing its “grand plan for AC” in all public buildings.
As noted by Dutch MEP Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy, this “far-right” embrace of AC is coming from the same people who for years have “delayed emissions reductions”.
In response, left-leaning policymakers in Europe have frequently downplayed the role of AC, prioritising programmes of urban greening and retrofitting older buildings.
Such approaches for dealing with extreme heat have already proved successful. Therefore, many experts argue that these methods, alongside AC, will be essential to prepare for a hotter world.
According to the IPCC’s sixth assessment report, adaptive infrastructure, such as urban forests and green roofs, can reduce energy use because of cooling, with co-benefits for climate, air quality, physical and mental health.
While retrofitting older buildings for heat as well as insulating them from the cold might prove challenging, urban greening and an active shade policy – one that determines how much of every street is exposed to direct sunlight – are simple measures cities can adopt.
Some experts have also warned about the high cost of running AC, expressing concerns that excessive reliance on the technology could increase energy poverty.
In a Carbon Brief guest post published in 2025, researchers at the Basque Centre for Climate Change found that framing AC as the “default solution” can miss the opportunity to design “more inclusive, human-centred responses” to rising temperatures.
William Lewis, a PhD candidate and one of the guest post’s authors, tells Carbon Brief it is not a case of “one or the other”, when considering AC and other options:
“We have this opportunity in European countries to choose a slightly different path [from the US], which isn’t AC in every single home.”
King’s College London’s Pillai says that, by centring the debate on AC, the far-right response to the heatwaves in Europe has “completely neglected the science of how you cool human beings”.
There are many solutions, he adds, that are already widely used across hot developing countries, such as ceiling fans, windows that open and cross-ventilation, as well as strategies to reduce cumulative hours of heat exposure.
Pillai tells Carbon Brief that, while places reaching 42C and higher “definitely need to think about AC very seriously”, places in the “low to mid 30Cs” could rely on these alternatives.
Behavioural change, he adds, is the “least glamorous part” of heat policy, but “pulls most of the weight” of protecting people. These include a wide range of actions and responses – from reducing heat exposure, to wearing lighter clothing and drinking more water and fluids.
There are also workplace protections. Pillai tells Carbon Brief that these could include legislation on mandatory work breaks, cooling and shade requirements at workplaces, as well as health insurance that covers heat stress days that have been lost by heat-exposed workers.
The post Eight facts about air conditioning amid an overheated global debate appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Eight facts about air conditioning amid an overheated global debate
-
Climate Change11 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases11 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Renewable Energy9 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits
-
Greenhouse Gases12 months ago
嘉宾来稿：探究火山喷发如何影响气候预测