Welcome to Carbon Brief’s Cropped.
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
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Key developments
Agri-disasters costing trillions
CATASTROPHE COSTS: Disasters have caused about $3.8tn worth of lost crops and livestock production over the past three decades, according to a new report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The report, the first of its kind, looked at the impact of disasters such as floods, droughts and wildfires on agriculture and food security. It highlighted proactive ways to address agrifood system risks and ways to “mainstream disaster risk management”, FAO director general Qu Dongyu said in the foreword of the report. Overall, disaster-related losses have “moderately” increased since the 1990s, the report said, but “they have become more widespread in terms of the countries and products that they affect”.
IMPACTS: Extreme temperatures and droughts “inflict the largest impact per event” according to the report. It is “essential” to look at the interconnected nature of risks, the report noted, adding: “Climate change, pandemics, epidemics and armed conflict are all affecting agricultural production, value chains and food security.” Losses of cereal, such as wheat and maize, caused by disasters amounted to an average of 69m tonnes per year over the past 30 years – around the same as all of France’s cereal production in 2021, the report said. Meat, dairy and eggs accrued around 16m tonnes in losses each year.
FAO FALLOUT: Meanwhile, the Guardian reported that former FAO officials said they were “censored, sabotaged, undermined and victimised” for more than a decade after writing about and investigating the extent livestock contributes to methane emissions between 2006 and 2019. The allegations date back to the years after 2006 when a landmark UN report, “livestock’s long shadow”, was published. This report “pushed farm emissions on to the climate agenda for the first time”, the newspaper said, adding: “The officials described a culture in which attempts to probe the connection between livestock and climate change were discouraged and, in some cases, suppressed, and where management attempted to sabotage research and research networks.”
RECENT CHANGES: The 2006 FAO livestock report estimated that 18% of total greenhouse gas emissions come from livestock, mostly cattle. This figure was “revised downwards to 14.5% in a follow-up paper” in 2013, the Guardian said. Dr Anne Mottet, the FAO’s livestock development officer, “stressed that the changing figures reflected best practices and evolving methodologies”, the newspaper said. She told the Guardian: “Livestock is part of the FAO’s strategy on climate change and we work with governments and farmers and industry on this programme as well. We can’t ignore the main actors of the sector but there has been no particular pressure from them.” The newspaper said that the wider FAO declined to comment, along with several meat and dairy industry lobbyists.
Bankrolling Amazon destruction
‘GREEN BONDS’ INVESTIGATION: European banks Santander and UBS have allegedly raised hundreds of millions of pounds by selling “green” bonds, but some of these funds have gone to groups linked to Amazon deforestation and human-rights abuses, according to a new investigation from Greenpeace UK’s Unearthed and O Joio e O Trigo. Unearthed reported: “Among those linked to the bonds are a farmer who allegedly held five labourers in ‘slave-like’ conditions, a soy company identified as the biggest deforester in Brazil’s Cerrado savannah, a cattle rancher fined for preventing the regeneration of 17km2 of Amazon rainforest and an ethanol producer that poisoned a river relied on by an Indigenous community.”
BANKS’ RESPONSE: According to Unearthed, the financing was made possible by tools called “CRAs”, which are bonds specifically linked to Brazilian agribusiness. A spokesperson for Santander told Unearthed that CRAs are independently regulated and that it “has strong governance processes in place to ensure that required market standards are adhered to”. A UBS spokesperson told Unearthed that the bank “does not provide finance or advisory services to companies whose primary business activity is associated with illegal logging or high conservation value forest”.
AMAZON DROUGHT: Elsewhere, unprecedented drought in the Amazon continued to intensify. Earlier this month, the Negro River – the Amazon’s second-largest tributary – reached its lowest level since official measurements began 121 years ago, the Associated Press said. Reuters reported that human faces sculpted into stone up to 2,000 years ago have appeared at the edge of the Amazon River amid extremely low water levels. Bloomberg spoke to Brazilian atmospheric scientist Prof Paulo Artaxo, who said the drought is expected to “get worse” as no rainfall is projected “in the immediate horizon”.
Spotlight
COP15 official finale
In this spotlight, Carbon Brief examines the reaction to the conclusion of the COP15 meetings last week in Nairobi.
Although it has been almost one year since countries agreed to “halt and reverse” biodiversity loss by 2030, the meetings behind the UN agreement officially drew to a close last week.
Almost every country in the world signed up to the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) at the COP15 biodiversity summit in Montreal in December 2022.
Bernadette Fischler Hooper, the head of global advocacy at WWF International, said there “were no major breakthroughs, but also no catastrophes” at the talks. She told Carbon Brief:
“They couldn’t finish some of the outstanding business in Montreal, so they had to reopen the COP15 here [in Nairobi]. Then there were some elections that were still to be done and some other general orders of business.”
More than 700 people attended the meetings in Nairobi. The talks were two-fold – one was the resumed COP15 discussions and one was the 25th meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA-25).
A number of elections were also held for different positions within the COP.
The SBSTTA discussions brought together scientific and technical experts to give advice on the implementation of the GBF. A global review of progress, which will take place in 2026, was among the key discussion points, Fischler Hooper said.
This review is “the equivalent of the global stocktake in the climate COPs”, she said, which will see nations assess movement toward climate goals at COP28 in Dubai this year. Fischler Hooper said:
“The technical experts and scientific experts discussed what should be in this report. So it was very focused on what that report should contain.”
There was “significant progress” in providing scientific, technical and technological guidance on implementation, according to the SBSTTA chair, Hesiquio Benitez, who ended his five-year run as chair last week.
The recent assessment on invasive alien species was also discussed, alongside sustainable wildlife management plans and conservation.
Countries welcomed the sixth assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and “expressed alarm” about the “accelerating negative impact of climate change on biodiversity”, a Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) press release said.
The interconnected nature of climate change and biodiversity was “hotly debated”, Fischler Hooper added. Delegates approved a draft recommendation on biodiversity and climate change in Nairobi.
Nature-based solutions (NBS) continue to be a “contentious” topic causing “a lot of frustration on many sides”, Fischler Hooper said. The controversial concept was a dividing issue at previous COP15 discussions.
NBS are essentially actions to protect, conserve and use ecosystems to address different challenges and provide benefits. (Read Carbon Brief’s Q&A on whether nature-based solutions help address climate change.)
A location has yet to be confirmed for the next UN biodiversity summit, COP16, due to take place next autumn. Turkey withdrew as host due to the three earthquakes that hit the country in February this year, killing more than 50,000 people and displacing millions.
The CBD said discussions are being held with other potential host countries. But if no frontrunner emerges by this December, the summit will likely be held again in Montreal, where the CBD is based.
David Cooper, the acting executive secretary of the CBD, said in a press release that the biodiversity framework is “well and truly on the way to implementation” following last week’s meetings.
But Avaaz, the campaign group, said documents remain with “a substantial number of brackets to be sorted out and resolved” at COP16 and earlier discussions next May.
The proposed indicators to measure implementation “risk being weak, especially for reviewing policies”, the Avaaz campaign director, Oscar Soria, said on Twitter.
News and views
VOICED OUT: An Australian referendum to set up an Indigenous advisory body to parliament failed with more than 60% of voters against the proposal, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. Indigenous groups described the outcome as “an unparalleled act of racism by white Australia”, according to the Guardian. The Central Land Council, one of four regional groups representing Indigenous affairs in the Northern Territory of the country, said: “We will keep fighting for equality, fighting for land, fighting for water, fighting for housing, infrastructure, good jobs, education, closing the gap – a future for our children.” (Indigenous peoples around the world play a key role in protecting as much as 80% of the world’s biodiversity.)
FOREST FOCUS: Civil-society groups are calling for “urgent” collective action to preserve three major tropical forest basins at a summit this week, Afrik 21 reported. The Three Basins summit – taking place over 26-28 October in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo – aims to bring together leaders from the Amazon, Congo and Borneo-Mekong-south-east Asia regions to form a “global coalition”. Afrik 21 said the Eboko Foundation, a Congolese organisation, posted an “online call to action” with five priority areas, including the conservation and restoration of biodiversity in these regions. Carbon Brief will publish an in-depth article on the summit after it concludes.
‘CASH-FOR-CARBON HUSTLE’: The New Yorker has published a detailed long-read into how South Pole, the world’s largest carbon-offsetting firm based in Switzerland, “sold millions of credits for carbon reductions that weren’t real”. The article includes multiple interviews with the firm’s chief executive, Renat Heuberger, who told the publication: “We’re here to save the climate”. Previous media coverage investigating the practices of South Pole is included in Carbon Brief‘s map of the impacts of carbon-offsetting projects around the world.
‘ECO-CITY’ STAND-OFF: Around 7,500 Indigenous people could be forced off their land on the Indonesian island of Rempang to make way for a government-led “eco-city” project, BBC News reported. According to the publication, the government has secured Chinese investment to transform the island into an economic and tourist hub covering 7,000 of the island’s 17,000 hectares. The remaining 10,000 hectares will be protected forest cover, according to the plans. BBC News reported: “These ambitious plans require everyone who calls Rempang their home to leave. Many of them belong to seafaring Indigenous communities who have lived here for more than two centuries.” The broadcaster spoke to multiple families who are refusing to leave.
DELTA ‘EXTINCTION’: Coastal communities living in Nigeria’s low-lying Niger delta are at risk of “extinction” because of climate change, local civil-society groups have warned, according to a report in the Nigerian publication Business Day. It reported: “Godson Jim-Dorgu, executive director of Mac-Jim Foundation, said the coastal communities within the Niger delta would be wiped away sooner or later due to the effect of climate change.” The comments were made during a one-day meeting on climate change and gender in Port Harcourt, the capital of Nigeria’s Rivers State.
Watch, read, listen
MAYAN MISERY: An interactive feature from Reuters explored how climate change is contributing to hunger in Guatemala’s Mayan highlands.
PLANET EARTH III: The first episode of the third series of Planet Earth, presented by Sir David Attenborough, is available for UK viewers on the BBC iPlayer. For those outside the UK, the trailer and other clips can be viewed on the BBC Earth YouTube channel.
GREEN AND PLEASANT LAND: The Financial Times published an in-depth interactive exploring how the UK’s countryside might transform to meet its climate and nature goals.
FARMING WOES: Biman Mukherji, writing in the South China Morning Post, interviewed Himalayan farmers about the disruptive effects of climate change.
New science
Climate casualties or human disturbance? Shrinking distribution of the three large carnivores in the Greater Himalaya
Climatic Change
A new study found that the distribution of three large animals in the Greater Himalayas has shrunk since the early 1990s. The researchers analysed the effects of habitat traits, human disturbances and climatic factors to understand the distribution changes of the common leopard, snow leopard and Asiatic black bear in an Indian national park from the early 1990s until 2016-17. They found distribution reductions for all three animals within this timeframe. Snow leopards moved upwards, away from human settlements, while the common leopard and Asiatic black bear “suffered higher rates of local extinctions at higher altitudes” and moved to lower areas with more vegetation – even if this meant they were closer to humans.
Wilderness areas under threat from global redistribution of agriculture
Current Biology
As the climate warms, conditions suitable for growing crops are likely to shift into wilderness areas, potentially posing a new threat to these biodiversity-rich areas, new research suggested. Using climate model output and a crop suitability model, the study found that, over the next 40 years, 2.7m km2 of wilderness land will become newly suitable for agriculture – equivalent to 7% of all wilderness land outside of Antarctica. It added that the increase in potentially cultivable land in wilderness areas is “particularly acute” at higher latitudes in the global north, where 76% of wilderness areas will become suitable for growing crops. The researchers said: “Our results highlight an important and previously unidentified possible consequence of the disproportionate warming known…Without protection, the vital integrity of these valuable areas could be irreversibly lost.”
Increasing droughts with climate change may turn the world’s forests and plants from “a carbon sink into a carbon source [net emitter of CO2]”, a study found. The world’s “terrestrial biosphere” – plants and trees – currently absorbs around 30% of the emissions that humans release into the atmosphere, making it a carbon sink. However, increasing droughts under climate change could reduce the activity of plants, hence reducing their ability to absorb CO2. Using high-resolution climate models, the research found that drought-associated reductions in plant activity are projected to increase 2.3 times under a “sustainable development scenario” and 3.5 times under a “fossil-fuelled development scenario”. These losses are greater than the expected boost to plant growth from higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere (a phenomenon known as the “CO2 fertilisation effect”), according to the research.
In the diary
- 26-28 October: Three Basins Summit | Brazzaville
- 30 October-8 November: 3rd part of the 28th annual session of the International Seabed Authority | Kingston
- 31 October-2 November: World Hydropower Congress | Bali
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org
The post Cropped 25 October 2023: Agri-disasters costing trillions; Bankrolling deforestation; COP15 official finale appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Fred Pearce is a freelance author and journalist writing on behalf of Wetlands International Europe.
Everybody knows that saving the Amazon rainforest is critical to our planet’s future. But the Pantanal? Most people have never heard of Brazil’s other ecological treasure, the world’s largest tropical wetland – let alone understood its importance, as home to the highest concentration of wildlife in the Americas, while keeping a billion tonnes of carbon out of the atmosphere, and protecting millions of people downstream from flooding.
Hundreds of millions of euros are spent every year on protecting and restoring the world’s forests. Wetlands are just as important, yet don’t get anything like the same recognition or investment. That, scientists insist, has to change. And Europe can lead the way.
For forests, the EU already provides financial and technical assistance for a series of Forest Partnerships with non-EU countries, as part of its Global Gateway strategy for investing globally in environmentally and socially sustainable infrastructure. Such partnerships operate in Guyana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mongolia and elsewhere.
I believe the time is now right to establish a parallel EU Wetland Partnerships, framing wetlands as a strategic, cost-effective investment offering high financial, environmental and social returns.
Wetlands store a third of global soil carbon
Wetlands come in many shapes and sizes: freshwater peatlands, lakes and river floodplains, as well as coastal salt marshes, mangroves and seagrass beds. They are vital natural infrastructure, maintaining river flows that buffer against extreme weather events such as floods and drought, as well as protecting biodiversity, and providing jobs and economic opportunities, often for the most vulnerable nature-dependent communities.
Wetlands cover just six percent of the land surface, but store a third of global soil carbon – twice the amount in all the world’s forests. Yet they have been disappearing three times faster than forests, with 35 percent lost in the past half century.
Their loss adds to climate change, causes species extinction, triggers mass exoduses of fishers and other people whose livelihoods disappear, and depletes both surface and underground water reserves. Continued wetlands destruction is estimated to contribute five percent of global CO2 emissions – more than aviation and shipping combined.
EU Wetland Partnerships can be critical to unlocking finance to stem the losses and realise the benefits by promoting nature-based economic development, such as sustainable aquaculture, eco-tourism, and forms of wetlands agriculture known as paludiculture, while contributing to climate adaptation by improving the resilience of water resources.
Pantanal faces multiple threats
The Pantanal would be a prime candidate for a flagship project. The vast seasonal floodplain stretching from Brazil into Paraguay and Bolivia, is home to abundant populations of cayman, capybaras, jaguars and more than 600 species of birds. It is vital also for preventing flooding on the River Paraguay for some 2000 kilometres downstream to the Atlantic Ocean.
The Pantanal faces multiple threats, from droughts due to upstream water diversions and climate change, invasions by farmers setting fires and a megaproject to dredge the river and create a shipping corridor through the wetland.
But EU investment to achieve partnership targets agreed with Brazil on restoration, conservation and sustainable management could reinvigorate traditional sustainable land use – including cattle ranching that helps sustain the Pantanal’s open flooded grasslands.
Accounting for wetlands carbon in national emissions targets
Africa, a main focus of the Global Gateway, has abundant potential for early partnership initiatives. They include the Inner Niger Delta in Mali, which sustains some three million inhabitants, but is threatened by upstream dams and conflicts over resources between farmers and herders.
Another is the Sango Bay-Minziro wetland, a region of swamp forests, flooded grasslands and papyrus swamp straddling the border between Uganda and Tanzania on the shores of Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake.
The two countries have agreed to cooperate in pushing back against illegal logging, papyrus extraction and farming, and Wetlands International has been working with local governments to encourage community-based initiatives. But an EU partnership could dramatically expand this work, helping sustain the wider ecology of Lake Victoria and the Nile Basin.
Deep in the Amazon, forest protection cash must vie with glitter of illegal gold
National pledges to bring wetlands to the fore of environmental action are proliferating rapidly, especially since the 2023 global climate stocktake at COP28 in the UAE emphasised the importance of accounting for wetlands carbon in national emissions targets.
Since then, more than 50 countries have signed up to the 2023 Freshwater Challenge to protect freshwater ecosystems; more than 40 governments with 40 percent of the world’s mangroves have endorsed the 2022 Mangrove Breakthrough that aims to protect and restore 15 million hectares by 2030; and the newly established Peatland Breakthrough aims at rewetting at least 30 million hectares and halting the loss of undrained peatland by 2030.
Such ambition will almost certainly be endorsed at the 2026 UN Water Conference to be hosted by the UAE and Senegal in December this year. But the key to turning targets into reality on the ground lies in finding the billions of Euros needed to deliver on the ambition. EU Wetlands Partnerships could help seal the deal.
The post The EU should partner with Global South to protect carbon-storing wetlands appeared first on Climate Home News.
The EU should partner with Global South to protect carbon-storing wetlands
Climate Change
DeBriefed 30 January 2026: Fire and ice; US formally exits Paris; Climate image faux pas
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Fire and ice
OZ HEAT: The ongoing heatwave in Australia reached record-high temperatures of almost 50C earlier this week, while authorities “urged caution as three forest fires burned out of control”, reported the Associated Press. Bloomberg said the Australian Open tennis tournament “rescheduled matches and activated extreme-heat protocols”. The Guardian reported that “the climate crisis has increased the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, including heatwaves and bushfires”.
WINTER STORM: Meanwhile, a severe winter storm swept across the south and east of the US and parts of Canada, causing “mass power outages and the cancellation of thousands of flights”, reported the Financial Times. More than 870,000 people across the country were without power and at least seven people died, according to BBC News.
COLD QUESTIONED: As the storm approached, climate-sceptic US president Donald Trump took to social media to ask facetiously: “Whatever happened to global warming???”, according to the Associated Press. There is currently significant debate among scientists about whether human-caused climate change is driving record cold extremes, as Carbon Brief has previously explained.
Around the world
- US EXIT: The US has formally left the Paris Agreement for the second time, one year after Trump announced the intention to exit, according to the Guardian. The New York Times reported that the US is “the only country in the world to abandon the international commitment to slow global warming”.
- WEAK PROPOSAL: Trump officials have delayed the repeal of the “endangerment finding” – a legal opinion that underpins federal climate rules in the US – due to “concerns the proposal is too weak to withstand a court challenge”, according to the Washington Post.
- DISCRIMINATION: A court in the Hague has ruled that the Dutch government “discriminated against people in one of its most vulnerable territories” by not helping them to adapt to climate change, reported the Guardian. The court ordered the Dutch government to set binding targets within 18 months to cut greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Agreement, according to the Associated Press.
- WIND PACT: 10 European countries have agreed a “landmark pact” to “accelerate the rollout of offshore windfarms in the 2030s and build a power grid in the North Sea”, according to the Guardian.
- TRADE DEAL: India and the EU have agreed on the “mother of all trade deals”, which will save up to €4bn in import duty, reported the Hindustan Times. Reuters quoted EU officials saying that the landmark trade deal “will not trigger any changes” to the bloc’s carbon border adjustment mechanism.
- ‘TWO-TIER SYSTEM’: COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago believes that global cooperation should move to a “two-speed system, where new coalitions lead fast, practical action alongside the slower, consensus-based decision-making of the UN process”, according to a letter published on Tuesday, reported Climate Home News.
$2.3tn
The amount invested in “green tech” globally in 2025, marking a new record high, according to Bloomberg.
Latest climate research
- Including carbon emissions from permafrost thaw and fires reduces the remaining carbon budget for limiting warming to 1.5C by 25% | Communications Earth & Environment
- The global population exposed to extreme heat conditions is projected to nearly double if temperatures reach 2C | Nature Sustainability
- Polar bears in Svalbard – the fastest-warming region on Earth – are in better condition than they were a generation ago, as melting sea ice makes seal pups easier to reach | Scientific Reports
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Sales of electric vehicles (EVs) overtook standard petrol cars in the EU for the first time in December 2025, according to new figures released by the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) and covered by Carbon Brief. Registrations of “pure” battery EVs reached 217,898 – up 51% year-on-year from December 2024. Meanwhile, sales of standard petrol cars in the bloc fell 19% year-on-year, from 267,834 in December 2024 to 216,492 in December 2025, according to the analysis.
Spotlight
Looking at climate visuals
Carbon Brief’s Ayesha Tandon recently chaired a panel discussion at the launch of a new book focused on the impact of images used by the media to depict climate change.
When asked to describe an image that represents climate change, many people think of polar bears on melting ice or devastating droughts.
But do these common images – often repeated in the media – risk making climate change feel like a far-away problem from people in the global north? And could they perpetuate harmful stereotypes?
These are some of the questions addressed in a new book by Prof Saffron O’Neill, who researches the visual communication of climate change at the University of Exeter.
“The Visual Life of Climate Change” examines the impact of common images used to depict climate change – and how the use of different visuals might help to effect change.
At a launch event for her book in London, a panel of experts – moderated by Carbon Brief’s Ayesha Tandon – discussed some of the takeaways from the book and the “dos and don’ts” of climate imagery.
Power of an image
“This book is about what kind of work images are doing in the world, who has the power and whose voices are being marginalised,” O’Neill told the gathering of journalists and scientists assembled at the Frontline Club in central London for the launch event.
O’Neill opened by presenting a series of climate imagery case studies from her book. This included several examples of images that could be viewed as “disempowering”.
For example, to visualise climate change in small island nations, such as Tuvalu or Fiji, O’Neill said that photographers often “fly in” to capture images of “small children being vulnerable”. She lamented that this narrative “misses the stories about countries like Tuvalu that are really international leaders in climate policy”.
Similarly, images of power-plant smoke stacks, often used in online climate media articles, almost always omit the people that live alongside them, “breathing their pollution”, she said.
During the panel discussion that followed, panellist Dr James Painter – a research associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and senior teaching associate at the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute – highlighted his work on heatwave imagery in the media.
Painter said that “the UK was egregious for its ‘fun in the sun’ imagery” during dangerous heatwaves.
He highlighted a series of images in the Daily Mail in July 2019 depicting people enjoying themselves on beaches or in fountains during an intense heatwave – even as the text of the piece spoke to the negative health impacts of the heatwave.
In contrast, he said his analysis of Indian media revealed “not one single image of ‘fun in the sun’”.
Meanwhile, climate journalist Katherine Dunn asked: “Are we still using and abusing the polar bear?”. O’Neill suggested that polar bear images “are distant in time and space to many people”, but can still be “super engaging” to others – for example, younger audiences.
Panellist Dr Rebecca Swift – senior vice president of creative at Getty images – identified AI-generated images as “the biggest threat that we, in this space, are all having to fight against now”. She expressed concern that we may need to “prove” that images are “actually real”.
However, she argued that AI will not “win” because, “in the end, authentic images, real stories and real people are what we react to”.
When asked if we expect too much from images, O’Neill argued “we can never pin down a social change to one image, but what we can say is that images both shape and reflect the societies that we live in”. She added:
“I don’t think we can ask photos to do the work that we need to do as a society, but they certainly both shape and show us where the future may lie.”
Watch, read, listen
UNSTOPPABLE WILDFIRES: “Funding cuts, conspiracy theories and ‘powder keg’ pine plantations” are making Patagonia’s wildfires “almost impossible to stop”, said the Guardian.
AUDIO SURVEY: Sverige Radio has published “the world’s, probably, longest audio survey” – a six-hour podcast featuring more than 200 people sharing their questions around climate change.
UNDERSTAND CBAM: European thinktank Bruegel released a podcast “all about” the EU’s carbon adjustment border mechanism, which came into force on 1 January.
Coming up
- 1 February: Costa Rican general election
- 3 February: UN Environment Programme Adaptation Fund Climate Innovation Accelerator report launch, Online
- 2-8 February: Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) 12th plenary, Manchester, UK
Pick of the jobs
- Climate Central, climate data scientist | Salary: $85,000-$92,000. Location: Remote (US)
- UN office to the African Union, environmental affairs officer | Salary: Unknown. Location: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
- Google Deepmind, research scientist in biosphere models | Salary: Unknown. Location: Zurich, Switzerland
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 30 January 2026: Fire and ice; US formally exits Paris; Climate image faux pas appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed 30 January 2026: Fire and ice; US formally exits Paris; Climate image faux pas
Electric heat pumps are set to play a key role in the UK’s climate strategy, as well as cutting the nation’s reliance on imported fossil fuels.
Heat pumps took centre-stage in the UK government’s recent “warm homes plan”, which said that they could also help cut household energy bills by “hundreds of pounds” a year.
Similarly, innovation agency Nesta estimates that typical households could cut their annual energy bills nearly £300 a year, by switching from a gas boiler to a heat pump.
Yet there has been widespread media coverage in the Times, Sunday Times, Daily Express, Daily Telegraph and elsewhere of a report claiming that heat pumps are “more expensive” to run.
The report is from the Green Britain Foundation set up by Dale Vince, owner of energy firm Ecotricity, who campaigns against heat pumps and invests in “green gas” as an alternative.
One expert tells Carbon Brief that Vince’s report is based on “flimsy data”, while another says that it “combines a series of worst-case assumptions to present an unduly pessimistic picture”.
This factcheck explains how heat pumps can cut bills, what the latest data shows about potential savings and how this information was left out of the report from Vince’s foundation.
How heat pumps can cut bills
Heat pumps use electricity to move heat – most commonly from outside air – to the inside of a building, in a process that is similar to the way that a fridge keeps its contents cold.
This means that they are highly efficient, adding three or four units of heat to the house for each unit of electricity used. In contrast, a gas boiler will always supply less than one unit of heat from each unit of gas that it burns, because some of the energy is lost during combustion.
This means that heat pumps can keep buildings warm while using three, four or even five times less energy than a gas boiler. This cuts fossil-fuel imports, reducing demand for gas by at least two-fifths, even in the unlikely scenario that all of the electricity they need is gas-fired.
Since UK electricity supplies are now the cleanest they have ever been, heat pumps also cut the carbon emissions associated with staying warm by around 85%, relative to a gas boiler.
Heat pumps are, therefore, the “central” technology for cutting carbon emissions from buildings.
While heat pumps cost more to install than gas boilers, the UK government’s recent “warm homes plan” says that they can help cut energy bills by “hundreds of pounds” per year.
Similarly, Nesta published analysis showing that a typical home could cut its annual energy bill by £280, if it replaces a gas boiler with a heat pump, as shown in the figure below.
Nesta and the government plan say that significantly larger savings are possible if heat pumps are combined with other clean-energy technologies, such as solar and batteries.
Both the government and Nesta’s estimates of bill savings from switching to a heat pump rely on relatively conservative assumptions.
Specifically, the government assumes that a heat pump will deliver 2.8 units of heat for each unit of electricity, on average. This is known as the “seasonal coefficient of performance” (SCoP).
This figure is taken from the government-backed “electrification of heat” trial, which ran during 2020-2022 and showed that heat pumps are suitable for all building types in the UK.
(The Green Britain Foundation report and Vince’s quotes in related coverage repeat a number of heat pump myths, such as the idea that they do not perform well in older properties and require high levels of insulation.)
Nesta assumes a slightly higher SCoP of 3.0, says Madeleine Gabriel, the organisation’s director of sustainable future. (See below for more on what the latest data says about SCoP in recent installations.)
Both the government and Nesta assume that a home with a heat pump would disconnect from the gas grid, meaning that it would no longer need to pay the daily “standing charge” for gas. This currently amounts to a saving of around £130 per year.
Finally, they both consider the impact of a home with a heat pump using a “smart tariff”, where the price of electricity varies according to the time of day.
Such tariffs are now widely available from a variety of energy suppliers and many have been designed specifically for homes that have a heat pump.
Such tariffs significantly reduce the average price for a unit of electricity. Government survey data suggests that around half of heat-pump owners already use such tariffs.
This is important because on the standard rates under the price cap set by energy regulator Ofgem, each unit of electricity costs more than four times as much as a unit of gas.
The ratio between electricity and gas prices is a key determinant of the size and potential for running-cost savings with a heat pump. Countries with a lower electricity-to-gas price ratio consistently see much higher rates of heat-pump adoption.
(Decisions taken by the UK government in its 2025 budget mean that the electricity-to-gas ratio will fall from April, but current forecasts suggest it will remain above four-to-one.)
In contrast, Vince’s report assumes that gas boilers are 90% efficient, whereas data from real homes suggests 85% is more typical. It also assumes that homes with heat pumps remain on the gas grid, paying the standing charge, as well as using only a standard electricity tariff.
Prof Jan Rosenow, energy programme leader at the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute, tells Carbon Brief that Vince’s report uses “worst-case assumptions”. He says:
“This report cherry-picks assumptions to reach a predetermined conclusion. Most notably, it assumes a gas boiler efficiency of 90%, which is significantly higher than real-world performance…Taken together, the analysis combines a series of worst-case assumptions to present an unduly pessimistic picture.”
Similarly, Gabriel tells Carbon Brief that Vince’s report is based on “flimsy data”. She explains:
“Dale Vince has drawn some very strong conclusions about heat pumps from quite flimsy data. Like Dale, we’d also like to see electricity prices come down relative to gas, but we estimate that, from April, even a moderately efficient heat pump on a standard tariff will be cheaper to run than a gas boiler. Paired with a time-of-use tariff, a heat pump could save £280 versus a boiler and adding solar panels and a battery could triple those savings.”
What the latest data shows about bill savings
The efficiency of heat-pump installations is another key factor in the potential bill savings they can deliver and, here, both the government and Vince’s report take a conservative approach.
They rely on the “electrification of heat” trial data to use an efficiency (SCoP) of 2.8 for heat pumps. However, Rosenow says that recent evidence shows that “substantially higher efficiencies are routinely available”, as shown in the figure below.
Detailed, real-time data on hundreds of heat pump systems around the UK is available via the website Heat Pump Monitor, where the average efficiency – a SCoP of 3.9 – is much higher.
Homes with such efficient heat-pump installations would see even larger bill savings than suggested by the government and Nesta estimates.
Academic research suggests that there are simple and easy-to-implement reasons why these systems achieve much higher efficiency levels than in the electrification of heat trial.
Specifically, it shows that many of the systems in the trial have poor software settings, which means they do not operate as efficiently as their heat pump hardware is capable of doing.
The research suggests that heat pump installations in the UK have been getting more and more efficient over time, as engineers become increasingly familiar with the technology.
It indicates that recently installed heat pumps are 64% more efficient than those in early trials.
Notably, the Green Britain Foundation report only refers to the trial data from the electrification of heat study carried out in 2020-22 and the even earlier “renewable heat premium package” (RHPP). This makes a huge difference to the estimated running costs of a heat pump.
Carbon Brief analysis suggests that a typical household could cut its annual energy bills by nearly £200 with a heat pump – even on a standard electricity tariff – if the system has a SCoP of 3.9.
The savings would be even larger on a smart heat-pump tariff.
In contrast, based on the oldest efficiency figures mentioned in the Green Britain Foundation report, a heat pump could increase annual household bills by as much as £200 on a standard tariff.
To support its conclusions, the report also includes the results of a survey of 1,001 heat pump owners, which, among other things, is at odds with government survey data. The report says “66% of respondents report that their homes are more expensive to heat than the previous system”.
There are several reasons to treat these findings with caution. The survey was carried out in July 2025 and some 45% of the heat pumps involved were installed between 2021-23.
This is a period during which energy prices surged as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting global energy crisis. Energy bills remain elevated as a result of high gas prices.
The wording of the survey question asks if homes are “more or less expensive to heat than with your previous system” – but makes no mention of these price rises.
The question does not ask homeowners if their bills are higher today, with a heat pump, than they would have been with the household’s previous heating system.
If respondents interpreted the question as asking whether their bills have gone up or down since their heat pump was installed, then their answers will be confounded by the rise in prices overall.
There are a number of other seemingly contradictory aspects of the survey that raise questions about its findings and the strong conclusions in the media coverage of the report.
For example, while only 15% of respondents say it is cheaper to heat their home with a heat pump, 49% say that one of the top three advantages of the system is saving money on energy bills.
In addition, 57% of respondents say they still have a boiler, even though 67% say they received government subsidies for their heat-pump installation. It is a requirement of the government’s boiler upgrade scheme (BUS) grants that homeowners completely remove their boiler.
The government’s own survey of BUS recipients finds that only 13% of respondents say their bills have gone up, whereas 37% say their bills have gone down, another 13% say they have stayed the same and 8% thought that it was too early to say.
The post Factcheck: What it really costs to heat a home in the UK with a heat pump appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Factcheck: What it really costs to heat a home in the UK with a heat pump
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