Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
This week
Crude geopolitics
VIOLENT SPIKE: The escalating conflict between Israel and Hamas drove global oil prices up this week, the Times reported. On Monday, Brent crude rose to $88.15 a barrel as markets feared “wider regional instability”, Al Jazeera reported. Amid the violence, Saudi Arabia could hold the “key” to global oil prices, said Bloomberg. On Wednesday, the leaders of Iran and Saudi Arabia discussed the “need to end war crimes against Palestine” in their first phone call since resuming ties, Reuters reported. US treasury secretary Janet Yellen indicated that additional sanctions on Iranian oil “could be coming”, the New York Times reported.
SUBSEA SABOTAGE? Elsewhere, gas prices surged in response to fears that Russia sabotaged an undersea pipeline between Finland and Estonia, the Daily Telegraph reported. Finnish president Sauli Niinistö on Tuesday said the leak had signs of “external activity”, Politico reported, while Iltalehti reported that state and defence authorities suspected Russia being behind the attack.The loss of the pipeline could expose both Finland and Estonia to winter shortages, experts told the New York Times.
1.5C ‘breached’
NEW RECORD: According to an analysis published by BBC News, the world “breached” 1.5C, “a key warming threshold” for a record number of days this year, accounting for “about a third of days in 2023”. The broadcaster clarified that “breaching Paris [Agreement] thresholds doesn’t mean going over them for a day or a week, but instead involves going beyond this limit across a 20- or 30-year average”. Temperatures have also been driven up by the onset of El Niño conditions, the story added.
TEMPERATURE CHECK: Elsewhere, many climate scientists have been left puzzled by “Earth’s fever suddenly spik[ing] so high in September”, Inside Climate News reported. The lack of certainty has sent “a shiver of unease through parts of the climate science community”, with scientists “who have authored important climate science research together” contradicting one another, “at least partly”, about the possible causes, the publication said. Dr Zeke Hausfather, Carbon Brief’s climate science contributor, added that the September temperature spike is “certainly pushing the boundaries of model expectations”.
Around the world
- HEAT ATTRIBUTED: Heat scorching large parts of South America in September was made “100 times more likely” by human-caused climate change, according to a new analysis by the World Weather Attribution initiative.
- NICKEL DROPS: New data showed that tropical forests occupying an area equivalent to the size of New York have been cleared across 329 nickel mines in Indonesia since 2017 as demand for nickel batteries has increased, the Financial Times reported.
- COAL RECEIPTS: The Financial Times alleged that the influential Indian conglomerate the Adani Group “inflated” imported coal costs, leading to millions of Indian consumers and businesses overpaying for electricity. The group responded saying it uses an “open, transparent, global bidding process”.
- ESKOM EXIT: Mpho Makwana has quit as chairman of South African power utility Eskom even as parts of the country reel from floods, Bloomberg reported. It has previously called the gig “the worst job in global energy”.
77
The number of countries that just had their hottest September on record, according to climate science initiative Berkeley Earth.
Latest climate research
- A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggested that humans are “more vulnerable to moist heat stress than previously proposed”.
- Warming oceans and oxygen loss could drive a centuries-long irreversible reduction in marine ecosystem habitability, with impacts lasting “well after global temperatures have peaked”, said new research in Nature Communications Earth & Environment.
- Small Island Developing States could face flood damages 14 times higher than at present under a scenario of very high greenhouse gas emissions and no adaptation, according to a new Nature Sustainability study.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Carbon Brief analysis by Josh Gabbatiss found that the UK has fallen nearly 40% behind on its pledge to rapidly scale up climate finance for developing countries. Instead of increasing steadily to meet a £11.6bn target over five years, the UK’s climate spending abroad has fallen two consecutive years in a row and is off track by around £2bn. The chart above shows the amount of annual international climate finance provided by the UK from the financial year 2011/12 to 2022/23, indicated by the blue line. Dotted lines indicate the annual average spend that would be required to meet the £11.6bn goal by 2025/26, both from a starting point of 2020/21 (yellow) and a starting point of 2022/23 (red). This analysis is from a three-part Carbon Brief investigation into the UK’s international climate finance commitments. Read parts one, two and three – which was covered by the Guardian.
Spotlight
Lessons from Sikkim’s deadly flash floods
Devastating flash floods in India’s north-eastern Himalayan state of Sikkim claimed 37 lives last week, with scores still missing. In the aftermath, Carbon Brief looks at whether authorities were adequately prepared for such an event – and how it could be linked to climate change.
The deadly floods that burst the largest dam in India’s smallest state – the 1,200 MW Teesta III project in Sikkim – have been at the centre of a charged debate on climate change and infrastructure development across the country, after a brutal monsoon in the Himalayan region.
While the event was initially characterised by Indian authorities as a “cloudburst” – an episode of heavy rain – scientists and meteorological experts later confirmed that the floods were caused by a breach of Sikkim’s “largest and the fastest-growing” South Lhonak glacial lake, during an event known as a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF).
“Part of the slope next to the glacier fell and crashed into the lake like the wall of a house, creating a tsunami wave that eventually managed to overtop and erode the dam,” Jakob Steiner, a research fellow at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), told Carbon Brief.
This also caused parts of the glacier to collapse into the lake, he said. Permafrost has been thawing in the region and destabilising the barriers that once held the two kilometre-wide lake in place, he added.
Rainfall, while intense, was “not apocalyptic” in north Sikkim, he said, as data now confirms.
The South Lhonak GLOF had been modelled in a 2021 paper led by scientist Dr Ashim Sattar at the Divecha Institute for Climate Change, who told Carbon Brief that it was “heartbreaking” to see the events in Sikkim unfold. He added:
“Our research did not predict when this is going to happen, but it assessed the potential damage it could have downstream. The science we produce is often restricted to a scientific community, but it has to go to the common people and policymakers.”
Policymakers knew for more than a decade that the area was vulnerable to a GLOF event, according to a report in the Hindustan Times. Since 2006, activists and communities have pointed out that environment impact assessments for the Teesta III dam did not factor in the risk of earthquakes or GLOFs, Scroll.in reported – but authorities did not take action or address blindspots.
Draining glacial lakes before they burst has been attempted in the past, but, according to Sattar, “getting equipment to higher elevations is very, very challenging” and focusing on non-structural measures is also important, such as early warning systems, awareness and resilience-building.
Experts and activists have called for an urgent overhaul of India’s dam safety mechanism.
“We have the data, we have an understanding of the change in the cryosphere, so you can start at 8am tomorrow and do proper risk assessments for each and every valley,” said Steiner. He added that there is a need for central funding for early warning systems, but that this has to be “done together with the people who are supposed to be warned”.
On the question of whether this GLOF was linked to human-caused climate change, he added:
“I don’t need an attribution study to tell you that this glacial lake is linked to a changing climate because it would not have formed if you didn’t have climate change.”
He added that, with continued global emissions, there will be a limit to the degree that Himalayan communities can adapt:
“We don’t have the money or the capacity to keep putting in these early warning systems, while we keep putting more CO2 in the atmosphere. We have to change something at the source. There are many culprits in this murder.”
Watch, read, listen
‘CRUCIAL DECADE’: What does COP28 – its global stocktake, fights over loss and damage funding and 1.5C – mean for developing countries in an “overshoot” world and how should India chart its path in a changing energy, geopolitical and legal landscape? Carbon Brief moderated a discussion with the Centre for Policy Research’s Prof Navroz Dubash, Dr Lavanya Rajamani, Dr Radhika Khosla and Shibani Ghosh.
ARCTIC MONITORS: Scientific American talked to Inuvialuit climate monitors who are recording how climate change is causing their town north of the Arctic Circle in Canada to erode away.
SEEDS OF WAR: Wild Relatives, a film streaming on TrueStory, traced the journey of seeds from the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard to Lebanon, in an attempt to recreate a gene bank destroyed by the outbreak of war.
Coming up
- 9-15 October: World Bank and International Monetary Fund Annual Meetings, Marrakech, Morocco
- 14 October: Australia Indigenous rights referendum
- 14 October: New Zealand general election
- 15 October: Poland parliamentary election
- 17-20 October: Fourth Meeting of the Transitional Committee (TC4) on the operationalization of the new funding arrangements for responding to loss and damage, Aswan, Egypt
- 19-20 October: CBD resumed second part of COP15 | Nairobi, Kenya
Pick of the jobs
- Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), faculty at the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) Initiative. Salary: Unknown. Location: Gangtok, Sikkim, India
China Dialogue, ocean editor | Salary: £39,776.18. Location: London (remote work considered for international candidates) - Bank Track, campaign lead for banks and climate and banks and nature | Salary: €3,300-3,700 per month. Location: Hybrid (Netherlands or remote) with travel to the Netherlands two to four times a year
DeBriefed is written in rotation by Carbon Brief’s team and edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org
The post DeBriefed 13 October 2023: Israel and Hamas conflict hits oil prices; 1.5C ‘breached’; Lessons from India’s flash floods 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.
-
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
DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?
Pacific nations want higher emissions charges if shipping talks reopen
DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?
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