The Brazilian COP30 presidency has published a “Baku to Belém roadmap” on how climate finance could be scaled up to “at least $1.3tn” a year by 2035.
The idea for the roadmap was a late addition to the outcome of COP29 last year, following disappointment over the formal $300bn-per-year climate-finance goal agreed in Baku.
The new document, published ahead of the UN climate talks in Belém, Brazil, says it is not designed to create new financing schemes or mechanisms.
Instead, the roadmap says it provides a “coherent reference framework on existing initiatives, concepts and leverage points to facilitate all actors coming together to scale up climate finance in the short to medium term”.
It details suggested actions across grants, concessional finance, private finance, climate portfolios, capital flows and more, designed to drive up climate finance over the next decade.
Despite geopolitical uncertainty, there is hope that this roadmap can lay out a pathway to the “trillions” in climate finance that developing countries say they need to meet their climate targets.
Countries have divergent views on how to get there, but some notable trends have emerged from the roadmap, which was spearheaded by the Azerbaijani and Brazilian COP presidencies.
Below, Carbon Brief details what the Baku to Belém roadmap is, why it was launched and what the key points within it are.
- Why was the ‘Baku to Belém roadmap’ launched?
- What is the goal of the roadmap?
- What are different countries’ views on climate finance?
- What are the solutions that the roadmap has identified?
- What happens next?
Why was the ‘Baku to Belém roadmap’ launched?
A mounting body of evidence shows that developing countries will need trillions of dollars in the coming years if they are to achieve their climate goals.
While much of this finance will likely be sourced domestically within those countries, a large slice is expected to come from international actors.
This climate finance is part of the “grand bargain” at the heart of the Paris Agreement, whereby developing countries agree to set more ambitious climate plans if they receive financial support from developed countries.
Ahead of COP29, developing countries hoped that the post-2025 climate finance target – known as the new collective quantified goal (NCQG) – would reflect their full “needs and priorities”, as set out in the Paris Agreement.
They also pushed for developed-country parties such as the EU, the US and Japan to contribute a large portion of this finance, preferably on favourable terms such as grants.
They were left largely disappointed, with a final target that fell well short of what many developing countries had been proposing.
The central target agreed at COP29 was “at least” $300bn a year by 2035, with an expectation that developed countries would “take the lead” in providing these funds from “a wide variety of sources”, including private finance.
This goal – which was effectively the successor to the previous $100bn-per-year target – was far short of what developing countries had wanted. However, another key part of the text agreed in Baku alludes to their ambitions, with a loose request that “all actors” scale up finance to at least $1.3tn per year by 2035:
“[The COP] calls on all actors to work together to enable the scaling up of financing to developing country parties for climate action from all public and private sources to at least $1.3tn per year by 2035.”
In contrast to the $300bn target, this $1.3tn figure, which first appeared in a proposal by the African Group in 2021, reflects developing-country demands and needs. It also aligns with influential analysis of developing-country needs by the Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance (IHLEG).
Yet, this part of the text lacked binding language and detail on who precisely would be responsible for providing these funds. It has therefore been described by civil-society groups as more of an aspirational “call to action” than a target.
(“Calls on” is the weakest form of words in which UN legal texts can make a request.)
However, the COP29 text contained another relevant decision, added as negotiations drew to a close. It mentioned a “Baku to Belém roadmap to $1.3tn” – a report that could flesh out ways to scale up finance further and help developing countries achieve their climate targets.
The Azerbaijani COP29 presidency and the incoming Brazilian presidency were tasked with assembling this roadmap ahead of COP30 in 2025.
In the months that followed, the presidencies engaged with governments, civil-society groups, businesses and other relevant actors. They gathered information to build a “library of knowledge and best practices”, which could boost climate finance for developing countries.
What is the goal of the roadmap?
The roadmap comes at a difficult time for climate finance, with a particularly “bleak” outlook for public funding from developed countries. Major donors – particularly the US – have made large cuts to their aid budgets, threatening climate spending overseas.
At the same time, private investment has also faltered, with successive economic shocks raising the cost of capital for clean-energy projects in developing countries.
For years, finance experts and development leaders have talked of a “billions to trillions” agenda, suggesting that public money could help to “mobilise” trillions of dollars of private investments that could be used to build low-carbon infrastructure in the global south.
Yet, the “billions to trillions” concept has also faced growing scrutiny, with even the World Bank chief economist Indermit Gill branding it “a fantasy”. Critics have highlighted wider issues constraining developing countries, such as high levels of debt.
The NCQG text from COP29 set out the roadmap’s overarching goal of scaling up annual climate finance to $1.3tn, through means including “grants, concessional and non-debt-creating instruments, and measures to create fiscal space”.
On the current trajectory, financial sources potentially covered by the target could hit around $427bn for developing countries a year by 2035, less than a third of the goal, according to analysis by the thinktank NRDC.
Achieving $1.3tn of finance relies on what one report calls “yet-to-be-defined mechanisms”, which go beyond the ones covered by the $300bn target.
Countries and other relevant parties were asked by the presidencies for their views on “short-term” – actions by 2028 and “medium-to-long term” actions beyond 2028 that could ramp up finance further. They were asked about new sources of finance and thoughts on scaling up adaptation finance, in particular.
There have already been numerous ideas and programmes put forward for scaling up international climate finance. These include G20-led reforms of the multilateral development banks (MDBs), this year’s International Conference on Financing for Development, as well as UN sovereign debt restructuring efforts.
Accordingly, the Baku to Belém roadmap was also given a remit to “tak[e] into account relevant multilateral initiatives as appropriate”. Parties were also asked for suggestions of organisations and initiatives that should be involved.
Rebecca Thissen from Climate Action Network (CAN) International tells Carbon Brief:
“The roadmap could support the UNFCCC to be sending strong signals to the international community…But also using the convening power that the UNFCCC could have, so bringing those different actors to the table in a more structured and predictable way.”
What are different countries’ views on climate finance?
There were over 227 submissions into the Baku to Belém roadmap, including 38 from countries and party groupings. The remainder came mainly from NGOs, businesses, financial experts and researchers, as shown in the figure below.
The submissions partly reflect what the thinktank C2ES describes as the “pockmarked baggage of the climate finance negotiations”, with many parties demonstrating the same entrenched, often opposing views on climate finance that they have held for decades.
Carbon Brief has captured the submissions by countries and party groupings in the interactive table below, comparing their views on key issues.
There is broad agreement among countries that the roadmap should not reopen the NCQG discussions or involve a new, negotiated outcome at COP30.
However, some parties still call for more accountability in achieving the existing goals.
Latin American countries within the AILAC grouping call for the roadmap to “define concrete milestones for scaling up climate finance”. Egypt goes further, proposing that developed countries alone commit “at least $150bn annually in public concessional finance by 2028”, mainly as grants.
A key divergence in submissions is on which governments and institutions, precisely, should be responsible for scaling finance up to $1.3tn.
Several developing-country groups stress the importance of centring developed countries as the primary contributors, referencing Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement.
The Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDCs) group, which includes India, China and Saudi Arabia, states that “the roadmap must place Article 9.1 as its central pillar”. The G77 and China – a group representing all developing countries – stresses the “additional role developed countries will play in the context of Article 9.1, which is additional to the $300bn”.
Meanwhile, many developed countries focus on what Canada refers to as “a necessary broadening of climate finance” within the roadmap. In practice, this often amounts to a greater push for private finance, as well as “innovative” new sources such as global levies.
While developing countries do not often outright oppose such sources, some of them propose tighter limits. For example, China says “purely commercial investment flows should not be included” in the $1.3tn, which should only count funds “mobilised through public interventions”.
A related dispute centres on the roadmap’s scope, with the EU suggesting it should “extend beyond the UNFCCC framework”.
Parties such as India reject the idea of involving other multilateral fora, such as the G20. This would involve moving beyond the UN climate process, where developed countries have traditionally been the ones responsible for channelling climate finance.
The submissions also show notable differences among developing-country groupings. On the topic of defining what should be counted as “climate finance”, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) opposes the inclusion of funding for fossil-fuel projects, while the Arab Group says it does not support “any exclusionary criteria”.
There is coalescence between parties around other issues, albeit with various subtle differences.
Areas of broad agreement include the importance of more funding for climate adaptation, dealing with “barriers” to funding in developing countries and improving the transparency of climate-finance provision.
The roadmap details some of the potential sources of finance identified within the submissions.
This includes direct budget contributions, which the submissions suggest could generate an additional $197bn in financing; improved rechanneling and new issuances of special drawing rights ($100-500bn per year); carbon pricing ($20-4,900bn, dependent on rate and geographies); and fees on aviation or maritime transport($4-223bn).
Additionally, a range of taxes were identified as candidates for raising new climate finance. These include taxes on specific goods such as luxury fashion, technology and military goods ($34-112bn), financial transactions taxes ($105-327bn), minimum corporate taxes ($165-540bn) and wealth taxes ($200-1,364bn).
In a statement, Rebecca Newsom, global political expert at Greenpeace International, said:
“It’s notable that the roadmap recognises new taxes and levies as key to unlocking public climate finance. Given reported profits from just five international oil and gas giants over the last decade reached almost $800bn, taxing fossil fuel corporations is clearly a huge opportunity to overcome national fiscal constraints.
“The roadmap’s recognition that the UN tax convention provides an opportunity to raise new sources of concessional climate finance is also highly welcome, and is an opportunity governments must now seize.”
What are the solutions that the roadmap has identified?
The roadmap sets out “five action fronts” for reaching $1.3tn by 2035.
These are designed to “help deliver on the at-least-$1.3tn aspiration by strengthening supply, making demand more strategic, and accelerating access and transparency”.
The report titles these five action fronts as “replenishing, rebalancing, rechanneling, revamping and reshaping”.
Within each of these, the roadmap lays out key points to help “transform scientific warning into a global blueprint for cooperation and tangible results”.
The first, “replenishing”, refers to grants, concessional finance and low-cost capital, including multilateral climate funds and MDBs.
It notes that there is a “growing role” for MDBs in advancing climate action, as well as a need for developed countries to achieve “manyfold increases in the delivery of grants and concessional climate finance, including through bilateral and multilateral channels”.
Access to grants and concessional finance is a key enabling factor for an “efficient” flow of public funding, the roadmap notes.
The roadmap calls for coordination in the international finance system, bilateral finance that is concessional and low-cost, multilateral climate funds, innovative sources of concessional finance with simplified access pathways and more.
This coordination could be key, with Sarah Colenbrander, director of ODI’s climate and sustainability programme, telling Carbon Brief:
“The bigger risk is probably that some countries will allocate their climate finance differently, so that they can report more money going out the door without a commensurate increase in fiscal effort. For example, they might shift from grants to concessional loans, and from concessional loans to market-rate loans. If the money will be repaid, there is less lift for taxpayers at home.
“Alternatively, countries might focus on using public finance to mobilise private finance that can also count towards the $300bn goal. Private finance has a very important role to play in both mitigation and adaptation, but it is very unlikely to meet the needs of the most vulnerable communities, given their high adaptation investment needs and very limited ability to pay.”
In particular, the roadmap suggests MDBs “intensify their engagement on climate finance through a strategic approach that recognises and amplifies their catalytic role in providing and mobilising capital”.
Second, “rebalancing” refers to fiscal space and debt sustainability. The roadmap calls on creditor countries, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and MDBs to work together to “alleviate onerous debt burdens faced by developing countries”.
The roadmap notes that external debt servicing costs of developing countries have more than doubled since 2014, to $1.7tn per year in 2023.
Developing countries’ net interest payments on public debt reached $921bn in 2024, a 10% increase compared to 2023, it adds.
The roadmap notes the need to “remove barriers and address disenablers faced by developing countries in financing climate action”. It adds that developing countries face at least two- to four-times the borrowing costs of developed countries.
It points to a number of “promising” solutions already being implemented, such as climate-resilient debt clauses and “debt-for-climate swaps” and debt restructuring.
In particular, MDBs, the IMF, UN agencies and regional UN economic commissions could work together to create a “one-stop shop” for assistance in these areas, the roadmap says.
Third, “rechannelling” refers to “transformative” private finance and affordable cost of capital.
It notes that mobilisation of private finance has been “stubborn to scale”: The level of private finance leveraged by official development interventions has grown by 7% per year from 2016 to 2019 and then 16% per year from 2020 to 2023, to reach $46bn.
The roadmap says that “blended finance” can play a role in scaling up climate finance and that private finance for the implementation of “nationally determined contributions” to cutting global emissions (NDCs) and national adaptation plans (NAPs) has “significant potential for growth”.
“Innovative instruments” are listed as a key approach to improving private finance, including “catalytic equity”, guarantees, foreign exchange risk management, securitisation platforms and more.
To support this, the roadmap calls for target-setting and data transparency, along with increasing, coordinating and harmonising guarantee offerings and channelling concessional finance into long-term foreign exchange hedging facilities, along with other actions.
Relying heavily on private finance could pose a risk, Jan Kowalzig, senior policy adviser for climate at Oxfam Germany, tells Carbon Brief, adding:
“The much larger problem, however, is the plan to massively rely on private finance in the future. While private finance has a key role to play to transform economies, [it] cannot replace much-needed public finance, especially for adaptation and for responding to loss and damage.
“Interventions in these sectors often do not generate return to satisfy investors’ expectations. Forcing projects to become profitable can come at great social cost for frontline communities struggling to survive in the worsening climate crisis.”
The roadmap suggests financial institutions move towards “originate-to-distribute” and “originate-to-share” business models, support the development of climate-aligned domestic financial systems and expand investor bases and diverse sources of capital, amongst other proposals.
Fourth is “revamping”, referring to capacity and coordination for scaled climate portfolios. This “demands institutions to manage risks locally, develop project pipelines, ensure country ownership and track progress and impact”.
It notes that “whole-of-government” approaches to the transition can be strengthened, with NDCs and NAPs integrated throughout national investment strategies. Additionally, it points to country-led coordination or platforms as a route for improving investment.
The roadmap suggests readiness support and project preparation as routes to “revamp” climate finance, alongside support to scale, coordinate and tailor capacity building, the development of country platforms and the provision of “predictable and flexible support for investment frameworks”.
The final “R” is “reshaping”, focused on systems and structures for capital flows. It highlights a number of barriers that still remain for capital flows through developing countries, including outdated clauses in investment treaties.
It recommends prudential regulation, interoperability of taxonomies, climate disclosure frameworks and investment treaties, as key actions to support the reshaping of capital flows.
Additionally, the roadmap suggests that credit rating agencies further refine their methodologies, that jurisdictions adopt voluntary disclosure of climate-related financial risks of financial institutions and that climate stress-test requirements are gradually embedded in supervisory reviews and bank risk management.
Beyond the “five [finance] action fronts”, the roadmap sets out five thematic areas, noting that “where and how finance is directed” matters.
These are: adaptation and loss and damage; clean-energy access and transitions; nature and supporting its guardians; agriculture and food systems; and just transitions.
Within each, it sets out some of the key challenges and suggests routes for financial support.
What happens next?
The Baku to Belem roadmap is not a formal part of COP30 negotiations, but there will be a major launch event at the summit.
Beyond that, the final section of the roadmap sets out that this is the “beginning [of] the journey”. It and details suggested short-term contributions (2026-2028), to serve as “initial, practical steps to inform and guide the early implementation of the roadmap”.
This includes the Azerbaijani and Brazilian presidencies convening an expert group tasked with refining data and developing “concrete financing pathways” to get to $1.3bn in 2035. This will build on the action fronts set out in the roadmap, with the first such report due by October 2026.
Throughout 2026, the presidencies will convene dialogue sessions with parties and stakeholders to discuss how to progress the action fronts over the medium to long term.
The roadmap suggests that to improve predictability, developed countries “could consider” working together on a delivery plan to outline how they expect to achieve the at-least $300bn goal by 2030, as well as other elements of the NCQG.
Additional suggestions in the roadmap are listed in the table below.
(Notably, almost all of these suggestions are made using loose, voluntary language. For example, the roadmap says that developed countries “could” create a delivery plan for their NCQG pathways.)
| Who | What | When |
|---|---|---|
| COP29 and COP30 presidencies | Convene an expert group to develop “concrete financing pathways” | October 2026 |
| COP29 and COP30 presidencies | Convene dialogue sessions with parties and stakeholders | 2026 |
| Developed countries | Creating a delivery plan to set out intended contributions and pathways for NCQG targets | End of 2026 |
| Parties to the Paris Agreement | Request the Standing Committee on Finance to provide an aggregate view on pathways for NCQG | 2027 |
| Governments | Request UN entities to examine and review collaboration options | October 2026 |
| Multilateral climate funds | Report annually on the implementation of their “operational framework” on complementarity and coherence, to enhance cross-fund collaboration. | Annually |
| Multilateral climate funds | Develop monitoring and reporting frameworks and coordination plans, explaining their operations by region, topic and sector | October 2027 |
| Multilateral development banks | Collective report on achieving a new aspirational climate finance target for 2035 | October 2027 |
| Multilateral development banks | Adopt “explicit, ambitious and transparent targets for adaptation and private capital mobilisation” | October 2027 |
| International Monetary Fund | Conduct an assessment of the costs, benefits and feasibility of a new issuance of “special drawing rights” | October 2027 |
| UN regional economic commissions | Develop a study on the potential for expanding debt-for-climate, debt-for-nature and sustainability-linked finance | End of 2027 |
| UNSG-convened working group | Propose a consolidated set of voluntary principles on responsible sovereign borrowing and lending. | October 2026 |
| Crediting rating agencies | Develop a structured dialogue platform with ministries of finance to make progress on refinements to credit rating methodologies. | October 2027 |
| Philanthropies | Expand funding of knowledge hubs | October 2026 |
| UN treaty executive secretariats | Develop a joint report with proposals on economic instruments to support co-benefits and efficiencies | End of 2027 |
| Insurance Development Forum and the V20 | Establish a plan for achieving cheaper and more robust insurance and pre-arranged finance mechanisms for climate disasters | October 2026 |
| Financial Stability Board, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the International Association of Insurance Supervisors | Conduct a joint assessment of whether and how barriers to investment in developing countries could be reduced | October 2027 |
| World’s 100 largest companies | Report annually on how they are contributing towards the implementation of NDCs and NAPs | Annually |
| World’s 100 largest institutional investors | Report annually on how they are contributing towards the implementation of NDCs and NAPs | Annually |
COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev and COP30 president André Aranha Corrêa do Lago conclude in the foreword of the report that while the $1.3bn “journey” is beginning amid “turbulent times”, they are confident that “technological and financial solutions exist”. They add:
“Communities and cities are acting. Families and workers are ready to roll up their sleeves and deliver more action. If resources are strategically redirected and deployed effectively – and if the international financial architecture is reset to fulfil its original purpose of ensuring decent prospects for life – the $1.3tn goal will be an achievable global investment in our present and our future. We are optimistic.”
The post COP30: What does the ‘Baku to Belém roadmap’ mean for climate finance? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
COP30: What does the ‘Baku to Belém roadmap’ mean for climate finance?
In 2026, the dangers of fossil fuel dependence have been laid bare like never before. The illegal invasion of Iran has brought pain and destruction to millions across the Middle East and triggered a global energy crisis impacting us all. Communities in the Pacific have been hit especially hard by rising fuel prices, and Australians have seen their cost-of-living woes deepen.
Such moments of crisis and upheaval can lead to positive transformation. But only when leaders act with courage and foresight.
There is no clearer statement of a government’s plans and priorities for the nation than its budget — how it plans to raise money, and what services, communities, and industries it will invest in.
As we count down the days to the 2026-27 Federal Budget, will the Albanese Government deliver a budget for our times? One that starts breaking the shackles of fossil fuels, accelerates the shift to clean energy, protects nature, and sees us work together with other countries towards a safer future for all? Or one that doubles down on coal and gas, locks in more climate chaos, and keeps us beholden to the whims of tyrants and billionaires.
Here’s what we think the moment demands, and what we’ll be looking out for when Treasurer Jim Chalmers steps up to the dispatch box on 12 May.
1. Stop fuelling the fire
2. Make big polluters pay
3. Support everyone to be part of the solution
4. Build the industries of the future
5. Build community resilience
6. Be a better neighbour
7. Protect nature
1. Stop fuelling the fire
In mid-April, Pacific governments and civil society met to redouble their efforts towards a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific. Moving beyond coal, oil and gas is fundamental to limiting warming to 1.5°C — a survival line for vulnerable communities and ecosystems. And as our Head of Pacific, Shiva Gounden, explained, it is “also a path of liberation that frees us from expensive, extractive and polluting fossil fuel imports and uplifts our communities”.
Pacific countries are at the forefront of growing global momentum towards a just transition away from fossil fuels, and it is way past time for Australia to get with the program. It is no longer a question of whether fossil fuel extraction will end, but whether that end will be appropriately managed and see communities supported through the transition, or whether it will be chaotic and disruptive.
So will this budget support the transition away from fossil fuels, or will it continue to prop up coal and gas?
When it comes to sensible moves the government can make right now, one stands out as a genuine low hanging fruit. Mining companies get a full rebate of the excise (or tax) that the rest of us pay on diesel fuel. This lowers their operating costs and acts as a large, ongoing subsidy on fossil fuel production — to the tune of $11 billion a year!
Greenpeace has long called for coal and gas companies to be removed from this outdated scheme, and for the billions in savings to be used to support the clean energy transition and to assist communities with adapting to the impacts of climate change. Will we see the government finally make this long overdue change, or will it once again cave to the fossil fuel lobby?
2. Make big polluters pay
While our communities continue to suffer the escalating costs of climate-fuelled disasters, our Government continues to support a massive expansion of Australia’s export gas industry. Gas is a dangerous fossil fuel, with every tonne of Australian gas adding to the global heating that endangers us all.
Moreover, companies like Santos and Woodside pay very little tax for the privilege of digging up and selling Australians’ natural endowment of fossil gas. Remarkably, the Government currently raises more tax from beer than from the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT) — the main tax on gas profits.
Momentum has been building to replace or supplement the PRRT with a 25% tax on gas exports. This could raise up to $17 billion a year — funds that, like savings from removing the diesel tax rebate for coal and gas companies, could be spent on supporting the clean energy transition and assisting communities with adapting to worsening fires, floods, heatwaves and other impacts of climate change.
As politicians arrive in Canberra for budget week, they will be confronted by billboards calling for a fair tax on gas exports. The push now has the support of dozens of organisations and a growing number of politicians. Let’s hope the Treasurer seizes this rare window for reform.
3. Support everyone to be part of the solution
As the price of petrol and diesel rises, electric vehicles (EVs) are helping people cut fuel use and save money. However, while EV sales have jumped since the invasion of Iran sent fuel prices rising, they still only make up a fraction of total new car sales. This budget should help more Australians switch to electric vehicles and, even more importantly, enable more Australians to get around by bike, on foot, and on public transport. This means maintaining the EV discount, investing in public and active transport, and removing tax breaks for fuel-hungry utes and vans.
Millions of Australians already enjoy the cost-saving benefits of rooftop solar, batteries, and getting off gas. This budget should enable more households, and in particular those on lower incomes, to access these benefits. This means maintaining the Cheaper Home Batteries Program, and building on the Household Energy Upgrades Fund.
4. Build the industries of the future
If we’re to transition away from fossil fuels, we need to be building the clean industries of the future.
No state is more pivotal to Australia’s energy and industrial transformation than Western Australia. The state has unrivaled potential for renewable energy development and for replacing fossil fuel exports with clean exports like green iron. Such industries offer Western Australia the promise of a vibrant economic future, and for Australia to play an outsized positive role in the world’s efforts to reduce emissions.
However, realising this potential will require focussed support from the Federal Government. Among other measures, Greenpeace has recommended establishing the Australasian Green Iron Corporation as a joint venture between the Australian and Western Australian governments, a key trading partner, a major iron ore miner and steel makers. This would unite these central players around the complex task of building a large-scale green iron industry, and unleash Western Australia’s potential as a green industrial powerhouse.
5. Build community resilience
Believe it or not, our Government continues to spend far more on subsidising fossil fuel production — and on clearing up after climate-fuelled disasters — than it does on helping communities and industries reduce disaster costs through practical, proven methods for building their resilience.
Last year, the Government estimated that the cost of recovery from disasters like the devastating 2022 east coast floods on 2019-20 fires will rise to $13.5 billion. For contrast, the Government’s Disaster Ready Fund – the main national source of funding for disaster resilience – invests just $200 million a year in grants to support disaster preparedness and resilience building. This is despite the Government’s own National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) estimating that for every dollar spent on disaster risk reduction, there is a $9.60 return on investment.
By redirecting funds currently spent on subsidising fossil fuel production, the Government can both stop incentivising climate destruction in the first place, and ensure that Australian communities and industries are better protected from worsening climate extremes.
No communities have more to lose from climate damage, or carry more knowledge of practical solutions, than Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The budget should include a dedicated First Nations climate adaptation fund, ensuring First Nations communities can develop solutions on their own terms, and access the support they need with adapting to extreme heat, coastal erosion and other escalating challenges.
6. Be a better neighbour
The global response to climate change depends on the adequate flow of support from developed economies like Australia to lower income nations with shifting to clean energy, adapting to the impacts of climate change, and addressing loss and damage.
Such support is vital to building trust and cooperation, reducing global emissions, and supporting regional and global security by enabling countries to transition away from fossil fuels and build greater resilience.
Despite its central leadership role in this year’s global climate negotiations, our Government is yet to announce its contribution to international climate finance for 2025-2030. Greenpeace recommends a commitment of $11 billion for this five year period, which is aligned with the global goal under the Paris Agreement to triple international climate finance from current levels.
This new commitment should include additional funding to address loss and damage from climate change and a substantial contribution to the Pacific Resilience Facility, ensuring support is accessible to countries and communities that need it most. It should also see Australia get firmly behind the vision of a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific.
7. Protect nature
There is no safe planet without protection of the ecosystems and biodiversity that sustain us and regulate our climate.
Last year the Parliament passed important and long overdue reforms to our national environment laws to ensure better protection for our forests and other critical ecosystems. However, the Government will need to provide sufficient funding to ensure the effective implementation of these reforms.
Greenpeace has recommended $500 million over four years to establish the National Environment Agency — the body responsible for enforcing and monitoring the new laws — and a further $50 million to Environment Information Australia for providing critical information and tools.
Further resourcing will also be required to fulfil the crucial goal of fully protecting 30% of Australian land and seas by 2030. This should include $1 billion towards ending deforestation by enabling farmers and loggers to retool away from destructive practices, $2 billion a year for restoring degraded lands, $5 billion for purchasing and creating new protected areas, and $200 million for expanding domestic and international marine protected areas.
Conclusion
This is not the first time that conflict overseas has triggered an energy crisis, or that a budget has been preceded by a summer of extreme weather disasters, highlighting the urgent need to phase out fossil fuels. What’s different in 2026 is the availability of solutions. Renewable energy is now cheaper and more accessible than ever before. Global momentum is firmly behind the transition away from fossil fuels. The Albanese Government, with its overwhelming majority, has the chance to set our nation up for the future, or keep us stranded in the past. Let’s hope it makes some smart choices.
The 2026 budget test: Will Australia break free from fossil fuels?
Anne Jellema is Executive Director of 350.org.
The war on Iran and Lebanon is a deeply unjust and devastating conflict, killing civilians at home, destroying lives, and at the same time sending shockwaves through the global economy. We, at 350.org, have calculated, drawing on price forecasts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Goldman Sachs, just how much that volatility is costing us.
Even under the IMF’s baseline scenario – a de facto “best case” scenario with a near-term end to the war and related supply chain disruptions – oil and gas price spikes are projected to cost households and businesses globally more than $600 billion by the end of the year. Under the IMF’s “adverse scenario”, with prolonged conflict and sustained price pressures, we estimate those additional costs could exceed $1 trillion, even after accounting for reduced demand.
Which is why we urgently need a power shift. Governments are under growing pressure to respond to rising fuel and food costs and deepening energy poverty. And it’s becoming clearer to both voters and elected officials that fossil dependence is not only expensive and risky, but unnecessary.
People who can are voting with their wallets: sales of solar panels and electric vehicles are increasing sharply in many countries. But the working people who have nothing to spare, ironically, are the ones stuck with using oil and gas that is either exorbitantly expensive or simply impossible to get.
Drain on households and economies
In India, street food vendors can’t get cooking gas and in the Philippines, fishermen can’t afford to take their boats to sea. A quarter of British people say that rising energy tariffs will leave them completely unable to pay their bills. This is the moment for a global push to bring abundant and affordable clean energy to all.
In April, we released Out of Pocket, our new research report on how fossil fuels are draining households and economies. We were surprised by the scale of what we found. For decades, governments have reassured people that energy price spikes are unfortunate but unavoidable – the result of distant conflicts, market forces or geopolitical shocks beyond anyone’s control. But the numbers tell a different story.
-
Santa Marta: Ministers grapple with practicalities of fossil fuel phase-out
Around 60 governments that want to make progress on transitioning away from coal, oil and gas are meeting in Colombia to work out how they can do it an equitable way -
Why the transition beyond fossil fuels depends on cities and collective action
Cities will help identify concrete pathways for an equitable shift to clean energy at the Santa Marta conference, with C40 members aiming to halve their fossil fuel use by 2030
What we are living through today is not an energy crisis. It is a fossil fuel crisis. In just the first 50 days of the Middle East conflict, soaring oil and gas prices have siphoned an estimated $158 billion–$166 billion from households and businesses worldwide. That is money extracted directly from people’s pockets and transferred, almost instantly, into fossil fuel company balance sheets. And this figure only captures the immediate impact of price spikes, not the permanent economic drain of fossil dependence. Fossil fuels don’t just cost us once, they cost us over and over again.
First, through our bills. Every time there is a war, an embargo or a supply disruption, fossil fuel prices surge. For ordinary people, this means higher costs for energy, transport and food. Many Global South countries have little or no fiscal space to buffer the shock; instead, workers and families pay the price.
Second, through our taxes. Governments around the world continue to pour vast sums of public money into fossil fuel subsidies. These are often justified as a way to protect the most vulnerable at the petrol pump or in their homes. But in reality, the benefits are overwhelmingly captured by wealthier households and corporations. The poorest 20% receive just a fraction of this support, while public finances are drained.
Third, through climate impacts. New research across more than 24,000 global locations gives a granular account of the true costs of extreme heat, sea level rise and falling agricultural yields. Using this data to update IMF modelling of the social cost of carbon, we found that fossil fuel impacts on health and livelihoods amount to over $9 trillion a year. This is the biggest subsidy of all, because these massive and mounting costs are not charged to Big Oil – they are paid for by governments and households, with the poorest shouldering the lion’s share.
Massive transfer of wealth to fossil fuel industry
Adding up direct subsidies, tax breaks and the unpaid bill for climate damages, the total transfer of wealth from the public to the fossil fuel industry amounts to $12 trillion even in a “normal” year without a global oil shock. That’s more than 50% higher than the IMF has previously estimated, and equivalent to a staggering $23 million a minute.
The fossil fuel industry has become extraordinarily adept at profiting from instability. When conflict drives up prices, companies do not lose, they gain. In the current crisis, oil producers and commodity traders are on track to secure tens of billions of dollars in additional windfall profits, even as households face rising bills and governments struggle to manage the fallout.
Fossil fuel crisis offers chance to speed up energy transition, ministers say
This growing disconnect is impossible to ignore. Investors are advised to buy into fossil fuel firms precisely because of their ability to generate profits in times of crisis. Meanwhile, ordinary people are told to tighten their belts.
In 2026, unlike during the oil shocks of the 1970s, clean energy is no longer a distant alternative. Now, even more than when gas prices spiked due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, renewables are often the cheapest option available. Solar and wind can be deployed quickly, at scale, and without the volatility that defines fossil fuel markets.
How to transition from dirty to clean energy
The solutions are clear. Governments must implement permanent windfall taxes on fossil fuel companies to ensure that extraordinary profits generated during crises are redirected to support households. These revenues can be used to reduce energy bills, invest in public services, and accelerate the rollout of clean energy.
Second, we must shift subsidies away from fossil fuels and towards renewable solutions, particularly those that can be deployed quickly and equitably, such as rooftop and community solar. This is not just about cutting emissions. It is about building a more stable, fair and resilient energy system.
Finally, we need binding plans to phase out fossil fuels altogether, replacing them with homegrown renewable energy that can shield economies from future shocks. Because what the current crisis has made clear is this: as long as we remain dependent on fossil fuels, we remain vulnerable – to conflict, to price volatility and to the escalating impacts of climate change.
The true price of fossil fuels is no longer hidden. It is visible in rising bills, strained public finances and communities pushed to the brink. And it is being paid, every day, by ordinary people around the world.
It’s time for the great power shift.
Full details on the methodology used for this report are available here.
The Great Power Shift is a new campaign by 350.org global campaign to pressure governments to bring down energy bills for good by ending fossil fuel dependence and investing in clean, affordable energy for all
The post What fossil fuels really cost us in a world at war appeared first on Climate Home News.
Computer models that use artificial intelligence (AI) cannot forecast record-breaking weather as well as traditional climate models, according to a new study.
It is well established that AI climate models have surpassed traditional, physics-based climate models for some aspects of weather forecasting.
However, new research published in Science Advances finds that AI models still “underperform” in forecasting record-breaking extreme weather events.
The authors tested how well both AI and traditional weather models could simulate thousands of record-breaking hot, cold and windy events that were recorded in 2018 and 2020.
They find that AI models underestimate both the frequency and intensity of record-breaking events.
A study author tells Carbon Brief that the analysis is a “warning shot” against replacing traditional models with AI models for weather forecasting “too quickly”.
AI weather forecasts
Extreme weather events, such as floods, heatwaves and storms, drive hundreds of billions of dollars in damages every year through the destruction of cropland, impacts on infrastructure and the loss of human life.
Many governments have developed early warning systems to prepare the general public and mobilise disaster response teams for imminent extreme weather events. These systems have been shown to minimise damages and save lives.
For decades, scientists have used numerical weather prediction models to simulate the weather days, or weeks, in advance.
These models rely on a series of complex equations that reproduce processes in the atmosphere and ocean. The equations are rooted in fundamental laws of physics, based on decades of research by climate scientists. As a result, these models are referred to as “physics-based” models.
However, AI-based climate models are gaining popularity as an alternative for weather forecasting.
Instead of using physics, these models use a statistical approach. Scientists present AI models with a large batch of historical weather data, known as training data, which teaches the model to recognise patterns and make predictions.
To produce a new forecast, the AI model draws on this bank of knowledge and follows the patterns that it knows.
There are many advantages to AI weather forecasts. For example, they use less computing power than physics-based models, because they do not have to run thousands of mathematical equations.
Furthermore, many AI models have been found to perform better than traditional physics-based models at weather forecasts.
However, these models also have drawbacks.
Study author Prof Sebastian Engelke, a professor at the research institute for statistics and information science at the University of Geneva, tells Carbon Brief that AI models “depend strongly on the training data” and are “relatively constrained to the range of this dataset”.
In other words, AI models struggle to simulate brand new weather patterns, instead tending forecast events of a similar strength to those seen before. As a result, it is unclear whether AI models can simulate unprecedented, record-breaking extreme events that, by definition, have never been seen before.
Record-breaking extremes
Extreme weather events are becoming more intense and frequent as the climate warms. Record-shattering extremes – those that break existing records by large margins – are also becoming more regular.
For example, during a 2021 heatwave in north-western US and Canada, local temperature records were broken by up to 5C. According to one study, the heatwave would have been “impossible” without human-caused climate change.
The new study explores how accurately AI and physics-based models can forecast such record-breaking extremes.
First, the authors identified every heat, cold and wind event in 2018 and 2020 that broke a record previously set between 1979 and 2017. (They chose these years due to data availability.) The authors use ERA5 reanalysis data to identify these records.
This produced a large sample size of record-breaking events. For the year 2020, the authors identified around 160,000 heat, 33,000 cold and 53,000 wind records, spread across different seasons and world regions.
For their traditional, physics-based model, the authors selected the High RESolution forecast model from the Integrated Forecasting System of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. This is “widely considered as the leading physics-based numerical weather prediction model”, according to the paper.
They also selected three “leading” AI weather models – the GraphCast model from Google Deepmind, Pangu-Weather developed by Huawei Cloud and the Fuxi model, developed by a team from Shanghai.
The authors then assessed how accurately each model could forecast the extremes observed in the year 2020.
Dr Zhongwei Zhang is the lead author on the study and a researcher at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He tells Carbon Brief that many AI weather forecast models were built for “general weather conditions”, as they use all historical weather data to train the models. Meanwhile, forecasting extremes is considered a “secondary task” by the models.
The authors explored a range of different “lead times” – in other words, how far into the future the model is forecasting. For example, a lead time of two days could mean the model uses the weather conditions at midnight on 1 January to simulate weather conditions at midnight on 3 January.
The plot below shows how accurately the models forecasted all extreme events (left) and heat extremes (right) under different lead times. This is measured using “root mean square error” – a metric of how accurate a model is, where a lower value indicates lower error and higher accuracy.
The chart on the left shows how two of the AI models (blue and green) performed better than the physics-based model (black) when forecasting all weather across the year 2020.
However, the chart on the right illustrates how the physics-based model (black) performed better than all three AI models (blue, red and green) when it came to forecasting heat extremes.
The authors note that the performance gap between AI and physics-based models is widest for lower lead times, indicating that AI models have greater difficulty making predictions in the near future.
They find similar results for cold and wind records.
In addition, the authors find that AI models generally “underpredict” temperature during heat records and “overpredict” during cold records.
The study finds that the larger the margin that the record is broken by, the less well the AI model predicts the intensity of the event.
‘Warning shot’
Study author Prof Erich Fischer is a climate scientist at ETH Zurich and a Carbon Brief contributing editor. He tells Carbon Brief that the result is “not unexpected”.
He adds that the analysis is a “warning shot” against replacing traditional models with AI models for weather forecasting “too quickly”.
The analysis, he continues, is a “warning shot” against replacing traditional models with AI models for weather forecasting “too quickly”.
AI models are likely to continue to improve, but scientists should “not yet” fully replace traditional forecasting models with AI ones, according to Fischer.
He explains that accurate forecasts are “most needed” in the runup to potential record-breaking extremes, because they are the trigger for early warning systems that help minimise damages caused by extreme weather.
Leonardo Olivetti is a PhD student at Uppsala University, who has published work on AI weather forecasting and was not involved in the study.
He tells Carbon Brief that “many other studies” have identified issues with using AI models for “extremes”, but this paper is novel for its specific focus on extremes.
Olivetti notes that AI models are already used alongside physics-based models at “some of the major weather forecasting centres around the world”. However, the study results suggest “caution against relying too heavily on these [AI] models”, he says.
Prof Martin Schultz, a professor in computational earth system science at the University of Cologne who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief that the results of the analysis are “very interesting, but not too surprising”.
He adds that the study “justifies the continued use of classical numerical weather models in operational forecasts, in spite of their tremendous computational costs”.
Advances in forecasting
The field of AI weather forecasting is evolving rapidly.
Olivetti notes that the three AI models tested in the study are an “older generation” of AI models. In the last two years, newer “probabilistic” forecast models have emerged that “claim to better capture extremes”, he explains.
The three AI models used in the analysis are “deterministic”, meaning that they only simulate one possible future outcome.
In contrast, study author Engelke tells Carbon Brief that probabilistic models “create several possible future states of the weather” and are therefore more likely to capture record-breaking extremes.
Engelke says it is “important” to evaluate the newer generation of models for their ability to forecast weather extremes.
He adds that this paper has set out a “protocol” for testing the ability of AI models to predict unprecedented extreme events, which he hopes other researchers will go on to use.
The study says that another “promising direction” for future research is to develop models that combine aspects of traditional, physics-based weather forecasts with AI models.
Engelke says this approach would be “best of both worlds”, as it would combine the ability of physics-based models to simulate record-breaking weather with the computational efficiency of AI models.
Dr Kyle Hilburn, a research scientist at Colorado State University, notes that the study does not address extreme rainfall, which he says “presents challenges for both modelling and observing”. This, he says, is an “important” area for future research.
The post Traditional models still ‘outperform AI’ for extreme weather forecasts appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Traditional models still ‘outperform AI’ for extreme weather forecasts
-
Climate Change9 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases9 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
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
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”
-
Renewable Energy6 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits
-
Renewable Energy2 years ago
GAF Energy Completes Construction of Second Manufacturing Facility