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.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
Snapshot
At the UN general assembly in New York, climate change was one of the main agenda items, with the secretary general convening the first-ever “climate ambition” summit.
As part of a new week-long series, Carbon Brief examined the ins and outs of carbon-offsetting.
A landmark Brazil supreme court ruling on land rights was widely hailed as a “great victory for Indigenous peoples”.
Key developments
UN’s first-ever ‘climate ambition’ summit
‘DANGEROUS AND UNSTABLE’: As part of the UN general assembly in New York, secretary-general António Guterres convened the first-ever “climate ambition” summit, inviting 34 leaders to speak “in recognition of their strong action on climate change”, notably omitting the US, UK, China, India and COP28 hosts the United Arab Emirates, Reuters reported. At the summit, Guterres warned that society was moving “towards a dangerous and unstable world”, citing “distraught farmers watching crops carried away by floods” as one of the “horrendous effects” of unabated fossil-fuel use, according to Politico. Dennis Francis, a diplomat from Trinidad and Tobago, warned the summit of “potential catastrophe” due to sea level rise, adding that “fertile river deltas like the Mississippi, Mekong and Nile – the world’s breadbaskets – are sinking”, a UN News story said.
AMBITION AND ASSISTANCE: Brazil “brought the biggest news to the table” at the summit, Climate Home News wrote, announcing its plan to “undo former president Jair Bolsonaro’s cuts to its climate ambition and strengthen its targets further”. The country now plans to cut emissions by 48% by 2025 and 53% by 2030. Meanwhile, leaders from several island nations castigated rich countries at the general assembly, with Marshall Islands president David Kabua calling for “the establishment of an international financing facility to assist small island and low-lying atoll nations facing natural disasters”, according to a separate Reuters piece. Another event at the general assembly was the first-ever meeting of the Commonwealth environment and climate ministers. At the meeting, the ministers “noted the role of ecosystem-based approaches, ocean action, land restoration and food-systems transformations in climate resilience and sustainable development”, said a press release from the Commonwealth.
HIGH-SEAS SIGNATORIES: Also at the general assembly, 76 nations and the EU signed the high-seas treaty, “signalling interest in ratifying the agreement designed to protect marine biodiversity in international waters”, Mongabay said. The signing marks a “significant step” towards conserving the high seas, which make up around two-thirds of the world’s oceans, the outlet added. Each country must now ratify the treaty according to its own procedures; once 60 nations have done so, the treaty can finally come into force. The Pacific Islands News Association quoted Pacific Ocean commissioner Dr Filimon Manoni, who said that “to be truly paradigm-shifting, we must aim towards universal participation” in the treaty.
Carbon offsets series
NEW SERIES: Carbon Brief examined the topic of carbon-offsetting in a new week-long series of articles delving into the impact, history and controversies of offsets. As part of the series, Aruna Chandrasekhar wrote an in-depth Q&A on ‘biodiversity offsets’, which have been promoted as one of the key ways to support nature conservation and its goals. Biodiversity-offsetting “sits at the heart” of tensions between biodiversity-rich developing countries demanding more public finance and “debt forgiveness” to help them meet biodiversity targets and rich countries rolling out new “nature markets”. The piece discussed the history, concerns and use of these offsets.
ALL THINGS OFFSETS: In the main article of the series, Carbon Brief examined all aspects of carbon-offsetting. The outlet’s international team of journalists explained what offsets are, how they are used by businesses and nations and why they can be a problematic climate solution. It also explored whether the carbon-offsetting system, which one expert described as “deeply broken”, could ever be effectively reformed. This infographic further explained how offsets work by following the journey of a fictional carbon offset purchased on the voluntary market. Elsewhere, a recent report found that rainforest conservation offset projects are not suitable and a different approach should be used to safeguard critical ecosystems, according to the Guardian.
CLOSER LOOK: In a separate Carbon Brief piece, Daisy Dunne and Yanine Quiroz trawled through news stories and investigations into individual carbon-offset projects to create a detailed map showing the global scale of these initiatives. They found that 70% of the articles examined showed evidence of the projects causing harm to Indigenous peoples and local communities. Almost half of the reports found evidence of offset projects overstating their ability to reduce emissions. To round out the week of reporting, Carbon Brief is hosting a free webinar at 3pm UK time tomorrow, Thursday 28 September, where a group of expert panellists will discuss how carbon-offsetting could be reformed. Click here to register.
Brazil Indigenous victory
LAND RIGHTS: Brazil’s supreme court ruled against a “highly controversial time-frame proposal” that would have “stripped Indigenous rights” to land, according to Mongabay. Indigenous chief Arakuã Pataxó told the outlet: “Without a doubt this is a great victory for Indigenous peoples.” The “time-frame thesis”, if approved, would have prevented Indigenous claims to traditional lands that they had not physically occupied before 5 October 1988, when Brazil’s constitution was enacted. Brazil Reports said this would have “overlooked that during Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964-85), many Indigenous peoples were persecuted and forced from their lands”, alongside the “obvious challenges” in obtaining proof of land occupation.
TENSIONS RUN ON: The ruling will “reshape the way the state approaches Indigenous land rights in Brazil”, according to the Guardian, setting a precedent that will have “widespread implications for all land-boundary disputes in Brazil”. However, the newspaper said that the ruling will not fully solve long-standing tensions around land conflicts. Indigenous leaders told the newspaper that they remain “anxious about attacks by non-Indigenous tenants”. Farmers said they are also worried about potential conflicts as “frictions emerge when Indigenous ranchers and farmers live in the same region”, the piece noted.
NEW DEAL: Elsewhere, the Cameroon government reached an agreement with the Indigenous Baka people to provide them with “more access to natural resources in the country’s protected forest areas”, Radio France Internationale reported. This expanded on a 2019 deal that gave Baka communities “unfettered access” to two national parks in the south-east of the country, the radio network said. The “original forest dwellers” will now have access to another national park and a wildlife reserve. The country’s minister of forestry and wildlife, Jules Doret Ndongo, said this is “another milestone moment in our efforts to promote the rights of Indigenous people and local communities in the preservation of biodiversity”.
News and views
AG EMERGENCY: Uruguay has extended its agricultural state of emergency until at least the end of the year. The declaration encompasses “livestock, dairy, horticulture, fruit, agriculture, beekeeping, poultry and forestry”, according to the South American news agency MercoPress. The initial declaration was signed on 25 October 2022 due to ongoing drought in much of the country. Uruguayan livestock minister Fernando Mattos said that the country is “on the way to normal rainfall, [but] there is still a long way to go to recover and reach the ideal point”. MercoPress added that the onset of El Niño “is likely to bring above-average rainfall”.
BURNED OUT: Canada’s record-breaking wildfire season – with more than 200 fires still burning across the country – have turned its “vast forests from carbon sink into super-emitter”, the Guardian wrote. The blazes have emitted around 2bn tonnes of CO2, or “triple the country’s annual carbon footprint”, the newspaper said. It added: “Decades of large wildfire and the mass die-off of trees from insects transformed the boreal from carbon sink to source.” Carbon Brief recently attended a US National Academies workshop on measuring greenhouse gas emissions from wildland fires, where experts noted that such emissions are “considered natural and, therefore, are not included in national greenhouse gas inventories”.
FRAUGHT FARM BILL: With the possibility of a US government shutdown looming, “it will be difficult or even impossible for Congress to enact a new farm bill”, Ag Insider wrote. The current bill expires on 30 September – the same day that the government is slated to shut down, although funding for many programmes follows a separate schedule. “There is little peril until dairy subsidies terminate on 31 December,” according to a separate Ag Insider article, which noted that December “is the new target” for the bill’s passage. The farm bill is projected to contain more than $1.5tn of spending, including on nutrition programmes, international aid, conservation work and crop subsidies.
SOMETHING IN THE WATER: The biggest freshwater lake in Ireland and Britain has hit a “crisis point” due to toxic blue-green algae, the Irish Times reported. This cyanobacteria – a type of bacteria that can photosynthesise – has made Lough Neagh “dangerous to anyone or anything that enters the water”, the newspaper added. The “underpinning drivers” of the issue, according to the Northern Ireland department of environment, include “excess nutrients from agricultural and wastewater systems” along with “climate change and the associated weather patterns, with the very warm June, followed by the wet July and August”. The Social Democratic and Labour party launched a motion to recall the devolved government in Northern Ireland, which has been at a standstill since last year, to discuss the “ecological crisis” on Lough Neagh, BBC News said.
COP28 GREENWASHING: DeSmog released a guide to the “greenwashing” terms that “the world’s largest food and farming companies will be using to sway debates” at COP28 in Dubai. Making the list are “regenerative agriculture”, which the outlet wrote “has ‘limited potential’ to mitigate climate change”; “sustainable intensification”, which is “the idea that industrial farming can continue to grow…but can do so while causing less damage”; and “nature-based solutions”, which DeSmog wrote is likely to be invoked during negotiations around the global carbon-credit market. In a separate piece, DeSmog examined the “Pathways to Dairy Net-Zero” group, a collaboration between the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and several other “international groups connected to the dairy industry” that focuses on climate change “solutions that can serve the industry”. DeSmog argued that its focus on improving “efficiency”, rather than reducing pollution, “has only enabled it to produce more milk – and with it, more emissions”.
KIWI FARMERS: “Rural voter anger” towards policies to tackle climate change and reduce emissions may bolster a “return of right-wing parties to power” during an upcoming general election in New Zealand, according to Reuters. Rural voters, who had a “flirtation” with the country’s Labour party in 2020, are looking to conservative candidates on 14 October to “unwind or delay” policies such as “planting pine forests on grazing land and taxing livestock methane burps”. Farmers have staged several protests in the past two years against these regulations, Reuters noted. Similar protests in the Netherlands saw a farmers’ party winning “sufficient support to shake up the country’s senate”, the newswire said, acquiring 16 of the 75 senate seats.
Watch, read, listen
SPROUTING: For Hawai’i Magazine, Kevin Allen wrote about the 150-year-old Lahaina Banyan Tree, which is acting as a “ray of hope” for locals devastated by last month’s Maui wildfires.
INCLUSIVE AG: In the Kathmandu Post, two researchers discussed the “multifaceted challenges” facing the agriculture sector in the mid-hills of Nepal, and how they can be addressed through gender-inclusive policies.
BIODIVERSITY CHATS: BBC Sounds podcast, the Life Scientific, spoke to Alexandre Antonelli, the director of science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, about his “life spent in the wild”.
CHARRED: A piece by Max Graham in Grist looked at whether the production of biochar – described as a “focal point” in efforts to turn agriculture into a climate solution – can be scaled up.
New science
Earthworms contribute significantly to global food production
Nature Communications
New research found that earthworms contribute to around 6.5% of the world’s grain production. Researchers looked at maps of earthworm abundance, soil properties and crop yields alongside earthworm-yield responses to estimate the impact these invertebrates have on the global production of key crops. They found that impacts were “especially notable” in the global south – for example, earthworms contributed to 10% of overall grain production in sub-Saharan Africa. The scientists concluded that while the earthworm impact is important, they “suspect that other soil biota may be equally as important and that further study is needed”.
Intentional creation of carbon-rich dark earth soils in the Amazon
Science Advances
Ancient peoples in the Amazon used soil management practices to improve soil fertility and crop productivity, according to a new study. Researchers compared modern fertile soil called “dark earth” to that of ancient times, then used studies of present-day Indigenous practices to propose a model of how dark earth may have formed previously. They found that the “ancient and modern dark earth deposits have similar compositions and spatial distributions”, indicating that the former may have also been intentionally cultivated by Indigenous peoples of the time. The researchers wrote that the study “highlight[s] the value of Indigenous knowledge for sustainable rainforest management”.
Likely impacts of the 2022 heatwave on India’s wheat production
Environmental Research Letters
The spring 2022 heatwave in India reduced wheat production in some regions by up to 15% compared to a normal year, a new study found. The researchers built a statistical model using weather and wheat-production data from 1967-2018 across five Indian states that together produce around 90% of the country’s wheat. The results showed that the heatwave reduced wheat yields by 4.5% on a national scale. The likelihood and intensity of heatwaves are due to continue as a result of climate change, the researchers wrote, so “timely forecasts of their impacts on agriculture are critical”.
In the diary
- 29 September: UN International day of awareness on food loss and waste reduction
- 2-6 October: FAO 30th session of the Asia-Pacific Forestry Commission | Sydney
- 3-6 October: EUROPARC conference 2023 | Leeuwarden, Netherlands
- 3-6 October: UNEP Fifth forum of ministers and environment authorities of Asia Pacific | Colombo, Sri Lanka
- 4-5 October: FAO Rome water dialogues | Rome
- 9-13 October: UNEP Final intergovernmental consultations on nature-based solutions | Nairobi
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 27 September 2023: UN’s ‘climate ambition’ summit; Carbon offsets series; Brazil Indigenous victory appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Climate Change
DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Absolute State of the Union
‘DRILL, BABY’: US president Donald Trump “doubled down on his ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda” in his State of the Union (SOTU) address, said the Los Angeles Times. He “tout[ed] his support of the fossil-fuel industry and renew[ed] his focus on electricity affordability”, reported the Financial Times. Trump also attacked the “green new scam”, noted Carbon Brief’s SOTU tracker.
COAL REPRIEVE: Earlier in the week, the Trump administration had watered down limits on mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, reported the Financial Times. It remains “unclear” if this will be enough to prevent the decline of coal power, said Bloomberg, in the face of lower-cost gas and renewables. Reuters noted that US coal plants are “ageing”.
OIL STAY: The US Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments brought by the oil industry in a “major lawsuit”, reported the New York Times. The newspaper said the firms are attempting to head off dozens of other lawsuits at state level, relating to their role in global warming.
SHIP-SHILLING: The Trump administration is working to “kill” a global carbon levy on shipping “permanently”, reported Politico, after succeeding in delaying the measure late last year. The Guardian said US “bullying” could be “paying off”, after Panama signalled it was reversing its support for the levy in a proposal submitted to the UN shipping body.
Around the world
- RARE EARTHS: The governments of Brazil and India signed a deal on rare earths, said the Times of India, as well as agreeing to collaborate on renewable energy.
- HEAT ROLLBACK: German homes will be allowed to continue installing gas and oil heating, under watered-down government plans covered by Clean Energy Wire.
- BRAZIL FLOODS: At least 53 people died in floods in the state of Minas Gerais, after some areas saw 170mm of rain in a few hours, reported CNN Brasil.
- ITALY’S ATTACK: Italy is calling for the EU to “suspend” its emissions trading system (ETS) ahead of a review later this year, said Politico.
- COOKSTOVE CREDITS: The first-ever carbon credits under the Paris Agreement have been issued to a cookstove project in Myanmar, said Climate Home News.
- SAUDI SOLAR: Turkey has signed a “major” solar deal that will see Saudi firm ACWA building 2 gigawatts in the country, according to Agence France-Presse.
$467 billion
The profits made by five major oil firms since prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago, according to a report by Global Witness covered by BusinessGreen.
Latest climate research
- Claims about the “fingerprint” of human-caused climate change, made in a recent US Department of Energy report, are “factually incorrect” | AGU Advances
- Large lakes in the Congo Basin are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from “immense ancient stores” | Nature Geoscience
- Shared Socioeconomic Pathways – scenarios used regularly in climate modelling – underrepresent “narratives explicitly centring on democratic principles such as participation, accountability and justice” | npj Climate Action
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
The constituency of Richard Tice MP, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of Reform UK, is the second-largest recipient of flood defence spending in England, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Overall, the funding is disproportionately targeted at coastal and urban areas, many of which have Conservative or Liberal Democrat MPs.
Spotlight
Is there really a UK ‘greenlash’?
This week, after a historic Green Party byelection win, Carbon Brief looks at whether there really is a “greenlash” against climate policy in the UK.
Over the past year, the UK’s political consensus on climate change has been shattered.
Yet despite a sharp turn against climate action among right-wing politicians and right-leaning media outlets, UK public support for climate action remains strong.
Prof Federica Genovese, who studies climate politics at the University of Oxford, told Carbon Brief:
“The current ‘war’ on green policy is mostly driven by media and political elites, not by the public.”
Indeed, there is still a greater than two-to-one majority among the UK public in favour of the country’s legally binding target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, as shown below.
Steve Akehurst, director of public-opinion research initiative Persuasion UK, also noted the growing divide between the public and “elites”. He told Carbon Brief:
“The biggest movement is, without doubt, in media and elite opinion. There is a bit more polarisation and opposition [to climate action] among voters, but it’s typically no more than 20-25% and mostly confined within core Reform voters.”
Conservative gear shift
For decades, the UK had enjoyed strong, cross-party political support for climate action.
Lord Deben, the Conservative peer and former chair of the Climate Change Committee, told Carbon Brief that the UK’s landmark 2008 Climate Change Act had been born of this cross-party consensus, saying “all parties supported it”.
Since their landslide loss at the 2024 election, however, the Conservatives have turned against the UK’s target of net-zero emissions by 2050, which they legislated for in 2019.
Curiously, while opposition to net-zero has surged among Conservative MPs, there is majority support for the target among those that plan to vote for the party, as shown below.
Dr Adam Corner, advisor to the Climate Barometer initiative that tracks public opinion on climate change, told Carbon Brief that those who currently plan to vote Reform are the only segment who “tend to be more opposed to net-zero goals”. He said:
“Despite the rise in hostile media coverage and the collapse of the political consensus, we find that public support for the net-zero by 2050 target is plateauing – not plummeting.”
Reform, which rejects the scientific evidence on global warming and campaigns against net-zero, has been leading the polls for a year. (However, it was comfortably beaten by the Greens in yesterday’s Gorton and Denton byelection.)
Corner acknowledged that “some of the anti-net zero noise…[is] showing up in our data”, adding:
“We see rising concerns about the near-term costs of policies and an uptick in people [falsely] attributing high energy bills to climate initiatives.”
But Akehurst said that, rather than a big fall in public support, there had been a drop in the “salience” of climate action:
“So many other issues [are] competing for their attention.”
UK newspapers published more editorials opposing climate action than supporting it for the first time on record in 2025, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Global ‘greenlash’?
All of this sits against a challenging global backdrop, in which US president Donald Trump has been repeating climate-sceptic talking points and rolling back related policy.
At the same time, prominent figures have been calling for a change in climate strategy, sold variously as a “reset”, a “pivot”, as “realism”, or as “pragmatism”.
Genovese said that “far-right leaders have succeeded in the past 10 years in capturing net-zero as a poster child of things they are ‘fighting against’”.
She added that “much of this is fodder for conservative media and this whole ecosystem is essentially driving what we call the ‘greenlash’”.
Corner said the “disconnect” between elite views and the wider public “can create problems” – for example, “MPs consistently underestimate support for renewables”. He added:
“There is clearly a risk that the public starts to disengage too, if not enough positive voices are countering the negative ones.”
Watch, read, listen
TRUMP’S ‘PETROSTATE’: The US is becoming a “petrostate” that will be “sicker and poorer”, wrote Financial Times associate editor Rana Forohaar.
RHETORIC VS REALITY: Despite a “political mood [that] has darkened”, there is “more green stuff being installed than ever”, said New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells.
CHINA’S ‘REVOLUTION’: The BBC’s Climate Question podcast reported from China on the “green energy revolution” taking place in the country.
Coming up
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean, Brasília
- 3 March: UK spring statement
- 4-11 March: China’s “two sessions”
- 5 March: Nepal elections
Pick of the jobs
- The Guardian, senior reporter, climate justice | Salary: $123,000-$135,000. Location: New York or Washington DC
- China-Global South Project, non-resident fellow, climate change | Salary: Up to $1,000 a month. Location: Remote
- University of East Anglia, PhD in mobilising community-based climate action through co-designed sports and wellbeing interventions | Salary: Stipend (unknown amount). Location: Norwich, UK
- TABLE and the University of São Paulo, Brazil, postdoctoral researcher in food system narratives | Salary: Unknown. Location: Pirassununga, Brazil
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 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Seven Pacific island nations say they will demand heftier levies on global shipping emissions if opponents of a green deal for the industry succeed in reopening negotiations on the stalled accord.
The United States and Saudi Arabia persuaded countries not to grant final approval to the International Maritime Organization’s Net-Zero Framework (NZF) in October and they are now leading a drive for changes to the deal.
In a joint submission seen by Climate Home News, the seven climate-vulnerable Pacific countries said the framework was already a “fragile compromise”, and vowed to push for a universal levy on all ship emissions, as well as higher fees . The deal currently stipulates that fees will be charged when a vessel’s emissions exceed a certain level.
“For many countries, the NZF represents the absolute limit of what they can accept,” said the unpublished submission by Fiji, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Nauru, Palau, Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands.
The countries said a universal levy and higher charges on shipping would raise more funds to enable a “just and equitable transition leaving no country behind”. They added, however, that “despite its many shortcomings”, the framework should be adopted later this year.
US allies want exemption for ‘transition fuels’
The previous attempt to adopt the framework failed after governments narrowly voted to postpone it by a year. Ahead of the vote, the US threatened governments and their officials with sanctions, tariffs and visa restrictions – and President Donald Trump called the framework a “Green New Scam Tax on Shipping”.
Since then, Liberia – an African nation with a major low-tax shipping registry headquartered in the US state of Virginia – has proposed a new measure under which, rather than staying fixed under the NZF, ships’ emissions intensity targets change depending on “demonstrated uptake” of both “low-carbon and zero-carbon fuels”.
The proposal places stringent conditions on what fuels are taken into consideration when setting these targets, stressing that the low- and zero-carbon fuels should be “scalable”, not cost more than 15% more than standard marine fuels and should be available at “sufficient ports worldwide”.
This proposal would not “penalise transitional fuels” like natural gas and biofuels, they said. In the last decade, the US has built a host of large liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals, which the Trump administration is lobbying other countries to purchase from.
The draft motion, seen by Climate Home News, was co-sponsored by US ally Argentina and also by Panama, a shipping hub whose canal the US has threatened to annex. Both countries voted with the US to postpone the last vote on adopting the framework.
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IMO head: Shipping decarbonisation “has started” despite green deal delay
Arsenio Dominguez said the shipping industry’s net zero emissions goal is not in dispute although countries have stalled on adopting a framework to reach it -
US-led alliance wins a year’s delay in adoption of green shipping deal
The IMO’s Net-Zero Framework will be up for approval again in October 2026, after the US and Saudi Arabia persuaded countries not to vote on it as planned
The IMO’s Panamanian head Arsenio Dominguez told reporters in January that changes to the framework were now possible.
“It is clear from what happened last year that we need to look into the concerns that have been expressed [and] … make sure that they are somehow addressed within the framework,” he said.
Patchwork of levies
While the European Union pushed firmly for the framework’s adoption, two of its shipping-reliant member states – Greece and Cyprus – abstained in October’s vote.
After a meeting between the Greek shipping minister and Saudi Arabia’s energy minister in January, Greece said a “common position” united Greece, Saudi Arabia and the US on the framework.
If the NZF or a similar instrument is not adopted, the IMO has warned that there will be a patchwork of differing regional levies on pollution – like the EU’s emissions trading system for ships visiting its ports – which will be complicated and expensive to comply with.
This would mean that only countries with their own levies and with lots of ships visiting their ports would raise funds, making it harder for other nations to fund green investments in their ports, seafarers and shipping companies. In contrast, under the NZF, revenues would be disbursed by the IMO to all nations based on set criteria.
Anais Rios, shipping policy officer from green campaign group Seas At Risk, told Climate Home News the proposal by the Pacific nations for a levy on all shipping emissions – not just those above a certain threshold – was “the most credible way to meet the IMO’s climate goals”.
“With geopolitics reframing climate policy, asking the IMO to reopen the discussion on the universal levy is the only way to decarbonise shipping whilst bringing revenue to manage impacts fairly,” Rios said.
“It is […] far stronger than the Net-Zero Framework that is currently on offer.”
The post Pacific nations want higher emissions charges if shipping talks reopen appeared first on Climate Home News.
Pacific nations want higher emissions charges if shipping talks reopen
Doubts over whether governments will maintain ambitious targets on boosting the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) are a threat to the industry’s growth and play into the hands of fossil fuel companies, investors warned this week.
Several executives from airlines and oil firms have forecast recently that SAF requirements in the European Union, United Kingdom and elsewhere will be eased or scrapped altogether, potentially upending the aviation industry’s main policy to shrink air travel’s growing carbon footprint.
Such speculation poses a “fundamental threat” to the SAF industry, which mainly produces an alternative to traditional kerosene jet fuel using organic feedstocks such as used cooking oil (UCO), Thomas Engelmann, head of energy transition at German investment manager KGAL, told the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Investor conference in London.
He said fossil fuel firms would be the only winners from questions about compulsory SAF blending requirements.
The EU and the UK introduced the world’s first SAF mandates in January 2025, requiring fuel suppliers to blend at least 2% SAF with fossil fuel kerosene. The blending requirement will gradually increase to reach 32% in the EU and 22% in the UK by 2040.
Another case of diluted green rules?
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, CEO of French oil and gas company TotalEnergies Patrick Pouyanné said he would bet “that what happened to the car regulation will happen to the SAF regulation in Europe”.
The EU watered down green rules for car-makers in March 2025 after lobbying from car companies, Germany and Italy.
“You will see. Today all the airline companies are fighting [against the EU’s 2030 SAF target of 6%],” Pouyanne said, even though it’s “easy to reach to be honest”.
While most European airline lobbies publicly support the mandates, Ryanair Group CEO Michael O’Leary said last year that the SAF is “nonsense” and is “gradually dying a death, which is what it deserves to do”.
EU and UK stand by SAF targets
But the EU and the British government have disputed that. EU transport commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas said in November that the EU’s targets are “stable”, warning that “investment decisions and construction must start by 2027, or we will miss the 2030 targets”.
UK aviation minister Keir Mather told this week’s investor event that meeting the country’s SAF blending requirement of 10% by 2030 was “ambitious but, with the right investment, the right innovation and the right outlook, it is absolutely within our reach”.
“We need to go further and we need to go faster,” Mather said.
SAF investors and developers said such certainty on SAF mandates from policymakers was key to drawing the necessary investment to ramp up production of the greener fuel, which needs to scale up in order to bring down high production costs. Currently, SAF is between two and seven times more expensive than traditional jet fuel.
Urbano Perez, global clean molecules lead at Spanish bank Santander, said banks will not invest if there is a perceived regulatory risk.
David Scott, chair of Australian SAF producer Jet Zero Australia, said developing SAF was already challenging due to the risks of “pretty new” technology requiring high capital expenditure.
“That’s a scary model with a volatile political environment, so mandate questioning creates this problem on steroids”, Scott said.
Others played down the risk. Glenn Morgan, partner at investment and advisory firm SkiesFifty, said “policy is always a risk”, adding that traditional oil-based jet fuel could also lose subsidies.
Asian countries join SAF mandate adopters
In Asia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Japan have recently adopted SAF mandates, and Matti Lievonen, CEO of Asia-based SAF producer EcoCeres, predicted that China, Indonesia and Hong Kong would follow suit.
David Fisken, investment director at the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, said the Australian government, which does not have a mandate, was watching to see how the EU and UK’s requirements played out.
The US does not have a SAF mandate and under President Donald Trump the government has slashed tax credits available for SAF producers from $1.75 a gallon to $1.
Is the world’s big idea for greener air travel a flight of fancy?
SAF and energy security
SAF’s potential role in boosting energy security was a major theme of this week’s discussions as geopolitical tensions push the issue to the fore.
Marcella Franchi, chief commercial officer for SAF at France’s Haffner Energy, said the Canadian government, which has “very unsettling neighbours at the moment”, was looking to produce SAF to protect its energy security, especially as it has ample supplies of biomass to use as potential feedstock.
Similarly, German weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall said last year it was working on plans that would enable European armed forces to produce their own synthetic, carbon-neutral fuel “locally and independently of global fossil fuel supply chain”.
Scott said Australia needs SAF to improve its fuel security, as it imports almost 99% of its liquid fuels.
He added that support for Australian SAF production is bipartisan, in part because it appeals to those more concerned about energy security than tackling climate change.
The post Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn appeared first on Climate Home News.
Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn
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Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
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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”
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Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
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Climate Change2 years ago
Spanish-language misinformation on renewable energy spreads online, report shows
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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”
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Climate Change Videos2 years ago
The toxic gas flares fuelling Nigeria’s climate change – BBC News
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Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits