The Forest Service didn’t make a ‘reasoned decision’ in using a categorical exclusion to exempt timber harvests from environmental reviews to ease wildfire mitigation and habitat improvement, the judge ruled.
A niche rule established by the U.S. Forest Service to justify the clearing of tens of thousands of acres of forest in the name of reducing wildfire risk was unlawfully created and applied, the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon found last week, invalidating its future use across the United States.
Decades-Old Rule that Allowed Logging on Vast Swaths of US Land Ruled Unlawful by Oregon Court
The UK government has released its long-awaited “warm homes plan”, detailing support to help people install electric heat pumps, rooftop solar panels and insulation in their homes.
It says up to 5m households could benefit from £15bn of grants and loans earmarked by the government for these upgrades by 2030.
Electrified heating and energy-efficient homes are vital for the UK’s net-zero goals, but the plan also stresses that these measures will cut people’s bills by “hundreds of pounds” a year.
The plan shifts efforts to tackle fuel poverty away from a “fabric-first” approach that starts with insulation, towards the use of electric technologies to lower bills and emissions.
Much of the funding will support people buying heat pumps, but the government has still significantly scaled back its expectations for heat-pump installations in the coming years.
Beyond new funding, there are also new efficiency standards for landlords that could result in nearly 3m rental properties being upgraded over the next four years.
In addition, the government has set out its ambition for scaling up “heat networks”, where many homes and offices are served by communal heating systems.
Carbon Brief has identified the key policies laid out in the warm homes plan, as well as what they mean for the UK’s climate targets and energy bills.
- Why do homes matter for UK climate goals?
- What is the warm homes plan?
- What is included in the warm homes plan?
- What does the warm homes plan mean for energy bills?
- What has been the reaction to the plan?
Why do homes matter for UK climate goals?
Buildings are the second-largest source of emissions in the UK, after transport. This is largely due to the gas boilers that keep around 85% of UK homes warm.
Residential buildings produced 52.8m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) in 2024, around 14% of the nation’s total, according to the latest government figures.
Fossil-fuel heating is by far the largest contributor to building emissions. There are roughly 24m gas boilers and 1.4m oil boilers on the island of Great Britain, according to the National Energy System Operator (NESO).
This has left the UK particularly exposed – along with its gas-reliant power system – to the impact of the global energy crisis, which caused gas prices – and energy bills – to soar.
At the same time, the UK’s old housing stock is often described as among the least energy efficient in Europe. A third of UK households live in “poorly insulated homes” and cannot afford to make improvements, according to University College London research.
This situation leads to more energy being wasted, meaning higher bills and more emissions.
Given their contribution to UK emissions, buildings are “expected to be central” in the nation’s near-term climate goals, delivering 20% of the cuts required to achieve the UK’s 2030 target, according to government adviser the Climate Change Committee (CCC).
(Residential buildings account for roughly 70% of the emissions in the buildings sector, with the rest coming from commercial and public-sector buildings.)
Over recent years, Conservative and Labour governments have announced various measures to cut emissions from homes, including schemes to support people buying electric heat pumps and retrofitting their homes.
However, implementation has been slow. While heat-pump installations have increased, they are not on track to meet the target set by the previous government of 600,000 a year by 2028.
Meanwhile, successive schemes to help households install loft and wall insulation have been launched and then abandoned, meaning installation rates have been slow.
At the same time, the main government-backed scheme designed to lift homes out of fuel poverty, the “energy company obligation” (ECO), has been mired in controversy over low standards, botched installations and – according to a parliamentary inquiry – even fraud.
(The government announced at the latest budget that it was scrapping ECO.)
The CCC noted in its most recent progress report to parliament that “falling behind on buildings decarbonisation will have severe implications for longer-term decarbonisation”.
What is the warm homes plan?
The warm homes plan was part of the Labour party’s election-winning manifesto in 2024, sold at the time as a way to “cut bills for families” through insulation, solar and heat pumps, while creating “tens of thousands of good jobs” and lifting “millions out of fuel poverty”.
It replaces ECO, introduces new support for clean technologies and wraps together various other ongoing policies, such as the “boiler upgrade scheme” (BUS) grants for heat pumps.
The warm homes plan was officially announced by the government in November 2024, stating that up to 300,000 households would benefit from home upgrades in the coming year. However, the plan itself was repeatedly delayed.
In the spending review in June 2025, the government confirmed the £13.2bn in funding for the scheme pledged in the Labour manifesto, covering spending between 2025-26 and 2029-30.
The government said this investment would help cut bills by up to £600 per household through efficiency measures and clean technologies such as heat pumps, solar panels and batteries.
After scrapping ECO at the 2025 budget, the treasury earmarked an extra £1.5bn of funding for the warm homes plan over five years. This is less than the £1bn annual budget for ECO, which was funded via energy bills, but is expected to have lower administrative overheads.
In the foreword to the new plan, secretary of state Ed Miliband says that it will deliver the “biggest public investment in home upgrades in British history”. He adds:
“The warm homes plan [will]…cut bills, tackle fuel poverty, create good jobs and get us off the rollercoaster of international fossil fuel markets.”
Miliband argues in his foreword that the plan will “spread the benefits” of technologies such as solar to households that would otherwise be unable to afford them. He writes: “This historic investment will help millions seize the benefits of electrification.” Miliband concludes:
“This is a landmark plan to make the British people better off, secure our energy independence and tackle the climate crisis.”
What is included in the warm homes plan?
The warm homes plan sets out £15bn of investment over the course of the current parliament to drive uptake of low-carbon technologies and upgrade “up to” 5m homes.
A key focus of the plan is energy security and cost savings for UK households.
The government says its plan will “prioritise” investment in electrification measures, such as heat pumps, solar panels and battery storage. This is where most of the funding is targeted.
However, it also includes new energy-efficiency standards to encourage landlords to improve conditions for renters.
Some policies were notable due to their absence, such as the lack of a target to end gas boiler sales. The plan also states that, while it will consult on the use of hydrogen in heating homes, this is “not yet a proven technology” and therefore any future role would be “limited”.
New funding
Technologies such as heat pumps and rooftop solar panels are essential for the UK to achieve its net-zero goals, but they carry significant up-front costs for households. Plans for expanding their uptake therefore rely on government support.
Following the end of ECO in March, the warm homes plan will help fill the gap in funding for energy-efficiency measures that it is expected to leave.
As the chart below shows, a range of new measures under the warm homes plan – including a mix of grants and loans – as well as more funding for existing schemes, leads to an increase in support out to 2030.
One third of the total funding – £5bn in total – is aimed at low-income households, including social housing tenants. This money will be delivered in the form of grants that could cover the full cost of upgrades.
The plan highlights solar panels, batteries and “cost-effective insulation” for the least energy-efficient homes as priority measures for this funding, with a view to lowering bills.
There is also £2.7bn for the existing boiler upgrade scheme, which will see its annual allocation increase gradually from £295m in 2025-26 to £709m in 2029-30.
This is the government’s measure to encourage better-off “able to pay” households to buy heat pumps, with grants of £7,500 towards the cost of replacing a gas or oil-fired boiler. For the first time, there will also be new £2,500 grants from the scheme for air-to-air heat pumps (See: Heat pumps.)
A key new measure in the plan is £2bn for low- and zero-interest consumer loans, to help with the cost of various home upgrades, including solar panels, batteries and heat pumps.
Previous efforts to support home upgrades with loans have not been successful. However, innovation agency Nesta says the government’s new scheme could play a central role, with the potential for households buying heat pumps to save hundreds of pounds a year, compared to purchases made using regular loans.
The remaining funding over the next four years includes money assigned to heat networks and devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which are responsible for their own plans to tackle fuel poverty and household emissions.
Heat pumps
Heat pumps are described in the plan as the “best and cheapest form of electrified heating for the majority of our homes”.
The government’s goal is for heat pumps to “increasingly become the desirable and natural choice” for those replacing old boilers. At the same time, it says that new home standards will ensure that new-build homes have low-carbon heating systems installed by default.
Despite this, the warm homes plan scales back the previous government’s target for heat-pump installations in the coming years, reflecting the relatively slow increase in heat-pump sales. It also does not include a set date to end the sale of gas boilers.
The plan’s central target is for 450,000 heat pumps to be installed annually by 2030, including 200,000 in new-build homes and 250,000 in existing homes.
This is significantly lower than the previous target – originally set in 2021 under Boris Johnson’s Conservative government – to install 600,000 heat pumps annually by 2028.
Meeting that target would have meant installations increasing seven-fold in just four years, between 2024 and 2028. Now, installations only need to increase five-fold in six years.
As the chart below shows, the new target is also considerably lower than the heat-pump installation rate set out in the CCC’s central net-zero pathway. That involved 450,000 installations in existing homes alone by 2030 – excluding new-build properties.
Some experts and campaigners questioned how the UK would remain on track for its legally binding climate goals given this scaled-back rate of heat-pump installations.
Additionally, Adam Bell, policy director at the thinktank Stonehaven, writes on LinkedIn that the “headline numbers for heat pump installs do not stack up”.
Heat pumps in existing homes are set to be supported primarily via the boiler upgrade scheme and – according to Bell – there is not enough funding for the 250,000 installations that are planned, despite an increased budget.
The government’s plan relies in part on the up-front costs of heat pump installation “fall[ing] significantly”. According to Bell, it may be that the government will reduce the size of boiler upgrade scheme grants in the future, hoping that costs will fall sufficiently.
Alternatively, the government may rely on driving uptake through its planned low-cost loans and the clean heat market mechanism, which requires heating-system suppliers to sell a growing share of heat pumps.
Rooftop solar
Rooftop solar panels are highlighted in the plan as “central to cutting energy bills”, by allowing households to generate their own electricity to power their homes and sell it back to the grid.
At the same time, rooftop solar is expected to make a “significant contribution” to the government’s target of hitting 45-47 gigawatts (GW) of solar capacity by 2030.
As it stands, there is roughly 5.2GW of solar capacity on residential rooftops.
Taken together, the government says the grants and loans set out in the warm homes plan could triple the number of homes with rooftop solar from 1.6m to 4.6m by 2030.
It says that this is “in addition” to homes that decide to install rooftop solar independently.
Efficiency standards
The warm homes plan says that the government will publish its “future homes standard” for new-build properties, alongside necessary regulations, in the first quarter of 2026.
On the same day, the government also published its intention to reform “energy performance certificates” (EPCs), the ratings that are supposed to inform prospective buyers and renters about how much their new homes will cost to keep warm.
The current approach to measuring performance for EPCs is “unreliable” and thought to inadvertently discourage heat pumps. It has faced long-standing calls for reform.
As well as funding low-carbon technologies, the warm homes plan says it is “standing up for renters” with new energy-efficiency standards for privately and socially rented homes.
Currently, private renters – who rely on landlords to invest in home improvements – are the most likely to experience fuel poverty and to live in cold, damp homes.
Landlords will now need to upgrade their properties to meet EPC ratings B and C across two new-style EPC metrics by October 2030. There are “reasonable exemptions” to this rule that will limit the amount landlords have to spend per property to £10,000.
In total, the government expects “up to” 1.6m homes in the private-rental sector to benefit from these improvements and “up to” 1.3m social-rent homes.
These new efficiency standards therefore cover three-fifths of the “up to” 5m homes helped by the plan.
The government also published a separate fuel poverty strategy for England.
Heat networks
The warm homes plan sets out a new target to more than double the amount of heating provided using low-carbon heat networks – up to 7% of England’s heating demand by 2035 and a fifth by 2050.
This involves an injection of £1.1bn for heat networks, including £195m per year out to 2030 via the green heat network fund, as well as “mobilising” the National Wealth Fund.
The plan explains that this will primarily benefit urban centres, noting that heat networks are “well suited” to serving large, multi-occupancy buildings and those with limited space.
Alongside the plan, the government published a series of technical standards for heat networks, including for consumer protection.
What does the warm homes plan mean for energy bills?
The warm homes plan could save households “hundreds on energy bills” for those whose homes are upgraded, according to the UK government.
This is in addition to two changes announced in the budget in 2025, which are expected to cut energy bills for all homes by an average of £150 a year.
This included the decisions to bring ECO to an end when the current programme of work wraps up at the end of the financial year and for the treasury to cover three-quarters of the cost of the “renewables obligation” (RO) for three years from April 2026.
Beyond this, households that take advantage of the measures outlined in the plan can expect their energy bills to fall by varying amounts, the government says.
The warm homes plan includes a number of case studies that detail how upgrades could impact energy bills for a range of households. For example, it notes that a social-rented two-bedroom semi-detached home that got insulation and solar panels could save £350 annually.
An owner-occupier three-bedroom home could save £450 annually if it gets solar panels and a battery through consumer loans offered under the warm homes plan, it adds.
Similar analysis published by Nesta says that a typical household that invests in home upgrades under the plan could save £1,000 a year on its energy bill.
It finds that a household with a heat pump, solar panels and a battery, which uses a solar and “time of use tariff”, could see its annual energy bill fall by as much as £1,000 compared with continuing to use a gas boiler, from around £1,670 per year to £670, as shown in the chart below.
Ahead of the plan being published, there were rumours of further “rebalancing” energy bills to bring down the cost of electricity relative to gas. However, this idea failed to come to fruition in the warm homes plan.
This would have involved reducing or removing some or all of the policy costs currently funded via electricity bills, by shifting them onto gas bills or into general taxation.
This would have made it relatively cheaper to use electric technologies such as heat pumps, acting as a further incentive to adopt them.
Nesta highlights that in the absence of further action with regard to policy costs, the electricity-to-gas price ratio is likely to stay at around 4.1 from April 2026.
What has been the reaction to the plan?
Many of the commitments in the warm homes plan were welcomed by a broad range of energy industry experts, union representatives and thinktanks.
Greg Jackson, the founder of Octopus Energy, described it as a “really important step forward”, adding:
“Electrifying homes is the best way to cut bills for good and escape the yoyo of fossil fuel costs.”
Dhara Vyas, chief executive of the trade body Energy UK, said the government’s commitment to spend £15bn on upgrading home heating was “substantial” and would “provide certainty to investors and businesses in the energy market”.
On LinkedIn, Camilla Born, head of the campaign group Electrify Britain, said the plan was a “good step towards backing electrification as the future of Britain, but it must go hand in hand with bringing down the costs of electricity”.
However, right-leaning publications and politicians were critical of the plan, focusing on how a proportion of solar panels sold in the UK are manufactured in China.
According to BBC News, two-thirds (68%) of the solar panels imported to the UK came from China in 2024.
In an analysis of the plan, the Guardian’s environment editor Fiona Harvey and energy correspondent Jillian Ambrose argued that the strategy is “all carrot and no stick”, given that the “longstanding proposal” to ban the installation of gas boilers beyond 2035 has been “quietly dropped”.
Christopher Hammond, chief executive of UK100, a cross-party network of more than 120 local authorities, welcomed the plan, but urged the government to extend it to include public buildings.
The government’s £3.5bn public sector decarbonisation scheme, which aimed to electrify schools, hospitals and council buildings, ended in June 2025 and no replacement has been announced, according to the network.
The post Q&A: What UK’s ‘warm homes plan’ means for climate change and energy bills appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: What UK’s ‘warm homes plan’ means for climate change and energy bills
The individual approach taken by several African countries in negotiating minerals deals with Washington is not in the best interest of the continent, which would benefit from adopting a more united front, a senior trade official told the World Economic Forum in Davos this week.
At a panel on how Africa can prosper in the “new economy”, Wamkele Mene, secretary-general of the African Continental Free Trade Area Secretariat, said African nations risk missing out on the opportunities offered by the global race for critical minerals if they do not coordinate their approach.
He said the African Union (AU) has adopted a continental strategy for critical minerals – which are essential for electrification and the clean energy transition – but deals are still being done separately.
“If you take, for example, the expiry of AGOA [the African Growth and Opportunity Act] and the fact that individual countries are being pulled to Washington to negotiate individually, that is not in Africa’s interest,” Mene said.
Climate at Davos: Energy security in the geopolitical driving seat
AGOA, which grants duty-free access to US markets for eligible sub-Saharan African countries, lapsed last autumn, but the US Congress is now in the process of approving an extension through 2028. One argument being used to convince lawmakers is the strategic need for the US to tap more of Africa’s mineral resources in the face of huge Chinese investments in exploiting the continent’s reserves.
Mene said Africa’s institutional limitations are hampering collective bargaining with trade partners. Unlike the European Union, the AU is not a supranational body with the legal authority to negotiate trade deals on behalf of member states, he noted.
Continent-wide minerals strategy ignored
Although Africa’s regions have varying mineral assets requiring different perspectives in negotiating investments, there should be basic principles guiding talks with third parties, Mene said. “There’s a strategy document, but the implementation is not AU implementation. I concede that we are not there yet,” he added.
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In 2024, the African Union drafted a continent-wide green minerals strategy with the aim of developing African supply chains, as well as expanding processing and value addition in the region. However, this has not worked in practice as countries continue to pursue bilateral agreements.
This week, for example, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) sent Washington a shortlist of state-owned assets – including manganese, copper-cobalt, gold and lithium projects – for US investors to consider as part of a minerals partnership, Reuters reported.
And next month, African leaders including from Kenya, the DRC and Guinea are expected in Washington for the inaugural US-led Critical Minerals Ministerial, where they will try to negotiate deals with the US.
Climate at Davos: Clean tech powers on despite policy wobbles
Echoing Mene’s call, Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio argued at Davos that Africa’s lack of coordination weakens its position with foreign investors and limits the continent’s ability to mobilise capital.
Investors are wary of Africa’s investment climate, legal systems and profit repatriation rules, he said.
“At the same time, what is interesting is that they are never shy to come for our resources – even with wars,” he added. “But there are a lot of other conditions that keep them away. We do not have collective bargaining power as a continent.”
Minerals ‘not the development path’ for Africa
Rachel Glennerster, president of the Center for Global Development, said the rush for minerals as Africa’s route to development should be approached with caution. While minerals will continue to be an important revenue source, they create few jobs, she noted.
“I don’t think it’s the long-term future of an inclusive growth path,” she said, arguing that proceeds from mining minerals should be used to fund education and human development rather than treated as a standalone growth strategy. She urged the continent to look more towards agriculture given its abundance of land and focus on getting reliable electricity to businesses to boost production.
At ‘Davos of mining’, Saudi Arabia shapes new narrative on minerals
Sierra Leone’s leader Maada Bio stressed that Africa is not yet prepared to capture the full benefits of the energy transition and digital revolution, warning that inadequate infrastructure, unreliable energy supplies and weak connectivity could leave the continent “at the receiving end” of global shifts.
While welcoming the growing role of African financial institutions in backing local ventures, he said political leaders should place more value on building a regional market, strengthening economic integration and investing in young people’s education so they can take advantage of the opportunities.
“The people must be ready for it,” he said.
The post Africa urged to unite on minerals as US strikes bilateral deals appeared first on Climate Home News.
Africa urged to unite on minerals as US strikes bilateral deals
Ten years ago, switching from burning coal to gas was a key element of China’s policy to reduce severe air pollution.
However, while gas is seen in some countries as a “bridging” fuel to move away from coal use, rapid electrification, uncompetitiveness and supply concerns have suppressed its share in China’s energy mix.
As such, while China’s gas demand has more than doubled over the past decade, the fuel is not currently playing a decisive role in the country’s strategy to tackle climate change.
Instead, renewables are now the leading replacement for coal demand in China, with growth in solar and wind generation largely keeping emissions growth from China’s power sector flat.
While gas could play a role in decarbonising some aspects of China’s energy demand – particularly in terms of meeting power demand peaks and fuelling heavy industry – multiple factors would need to change to make it a more attractive alternative.
Small, but impactful
The share of gas in China’s primary energy demand is small and has remained relatively unchanged at around 8-9% over the past five years.
It also comprises 7% of China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fuel combustion, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Gas combustion in China added 755m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) into the atmosphere in 2023 – double the total amount of CO2 emitted by the UK.
However, its emissions profile in China lags well behind that of coal, which represented 79% of China’s fuel-linked CO2 emissions and was responsible for almost 9bn tonnes of CO2 emissions in 2023, according to the same IEA data.
Gas consumption continues to grow in line with an overall uptick in total energy demand. Chinese gas demand, driven by industry use, grew by around 7-8% year-on-year in 2024, according to different estimates.
This rapid growth is, nevertheless, slightly below the 9% average annual rise in China’s gas demand over the past decade, during which consumption has more than doubled overall, as shown in the figure below.
The state-run oil and gas company China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) forecast in 2025 that demand growth for the year may slow further to just over 6%.
The majority of China’s gas demand in 2023 was met by domestic gas supply, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).
Most of this supply comes from conventional gas sources. But incremental Chinese domestic gas supply in recent years has come from harder-to-extract unconventional sources, including shale gas, which accounted for as much as 45% of gas production in 2024.
Despite China’s large recoverable shale-gas resources and subsidies to encourage production, geographical and technical limitations have capped production levels relative to the US, which is the world’s largest gas producer by far.
CNPC estimates Chinese gas output will grow by just 4% in 2025, compared with 6% growth in 2024. Nevertheless, output is still expected to exceed the 230bn cubic metre national target for 2025.
Liquified natural gas (LNG) is China’s second most-common source of gas, imported via giant super-cooled tankers from countries including Australia, Qatar, Malaysia and Russia.
This is followed by pipeline imports – which are seen as cheaper, but less reliable – from Russia and central Asia.
One particularly high-profile pipeline project is the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline project. However, Beijing has yet to explicitly agree to investing in or purchasing the gas delivered by the project. Disagreements around pricing and logistics have hindered progress.
Evolving role
Beijing initially aimed for gas to displace coal as part of a broader policy to tackle air pollution.
A three-year action plan from 2018-2020, dubbed the “blue-sky campaign”, helped to accelerate gas use in the industrial and residential sectors, as gas displaced consumption of “dispersed coal” (散煤)”– referring to improperly processed coal that emits more pollutants.
Meanwhile, several cities across northern and central China were also mandated to curtail coal usage and switch to gas instead. Many of these cities were based in provinces with a strong coal mining economy or higher winter heating demand.
China’s pollution levels saw “drastic improvement” as a result, according to a report by research institute the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).
(In January 2026, there were widespread media reports of households choosing not to use gas heating despite freezing temperatures, as a result of high prices following the expiry of subsidies for gas use.)
Industry remains the largest gas user in China, with “city gas” – gas delivered by pipeline to urban areas – trailing in second, as shown in the figure below. Power generation is a distant third.
Gas has never gained momentum in China’s power sector, with its share of power generation remaining at 4% while wind and solar power’s share has soared from 4% to 22% over the past decade, Yu Aiqun, a research analyst at the US-based thinktank Global Energy Monitor, tells Carbon Brief.
Yu adds that this stagnation is largely due to insufficient and unreliable gas supply, which drives up prices and makes gas less competitive compared to coal and renewables. She says:
“With the rapid expansion of renewables and ongoing geopolitical uncertainties, I don’t foresee a bright future for gas power.”
Average on-grid gas-fired power prices of 0.56-0.58 yuan per kilowatt hour (yuan/kWh) in China are far higher than that of around 0.3-0.4 yuan/kWh for coal power, according to some industry estimates. Recent auction prices for renewables are even cheaper than this.
Meanwhile, the share of renewables in China’s power capacity stood at 55% in 2024, compared with gas at around 4%.
Generation from wind and solar in particular has increased by more than 1,250 terawatt-hours (TWh) in China since 2015, while gas-fired generation has increased by just 140TWh, according to IEEFA.
As the share of coal has shrunk from 70% to 61% during this period, IEEFA suggests that renewables – rather than gas – are displacing coal’s share in the generation mix.
However, China’s gas capacity may still rise from approximately 150 gigawatts (GW) in 2025 to 200GW by 2030, Bloomberg reports.
A report by the National Energy Administration (NEA) on development of the sector notes that gas will continue to play a “critical role” in “peak shaving”, where gas turbines can be used for short periods to meet daily spikes in demand. As such, the NEA says gas will be an “important pillar” in China’s energy transition.
In 2024, a new policy on gas utilisation also “explicitly promoted” the use of gas peak-shaving power plants, according to industry outlet MySteel.
China’s current gas storage capacity is “insufficient”, according to CNPC, reducing its ability to meet peak-shaving demand. The country built 38 underground gas storage sites with peak-shaving capacity of 26.7bn cubic metres in 2024, but this accounts for just 6% of its annual gas demand.
Transport use
Gas is instead playing a bigger part in the displacement of diesel in the transport sector, due to the higher cost competitiveness of LNG as a fuel – particularly in the trucking sector.
CNPC expects that LNG displaced around 28-30m tonnes of diesel in the trucking sector in 2025, accounting for 15% of total diesel demand in China.
This is further aided by policy support from Beijing’s equipment trade-in programme, part of efforts to stimulate the economy.
However, gas is not necessarily a better option for heavy-duty, long-haul transportation, due to poorer fuel efficiency compared with electric vehicles (EVs).
In fact, “new-energy vehicles” (NEVs) – including hydrogen fuel-cell, pure-electric and hybrid-electric trucks – are displacing both LNG-fueled trucks and diesel heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs).
In the first half of 2025, battery-electric models accounted for 22% of all HDV sales, a year-on-year increase of 9%, while market share for LNG-fueled trucks fell from 30% in 2024 to 26%.
Gas can be cheaper than oil but is not competitive with EVs and – with the emergence of zero-emission fuels such as hydrogen and ammonia – gas may eventually lose even this niche market, says Yu.
Supply security
Chinese government officials frequently note that China is “rich in coal, poor in oil and short of gas” (“富煤贫油少气”). Concerns around import dependence have underpinned China’s focus on coal as a source of energy security.
However, Beijing increasingly sees electrification as a more strategic way to decarbonise its transport sector, according to some analysts.
“Overall, electrification is a clear energy security strategy to reduce exposure to global fossil fuel markets,” says Michal Meidan, head of the China energy research programme at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.
Chinese oil and gas production grew dramatically in the last few years under a seven-year action plan from 2019-25, as Beijing ordered its state oil firms to ramp up output to ensure energy security.
Despite this, gas import dependency still hovers at around 40% of demand. This, according to assessments in government documents, exposes the country to price shocks and geopolitical risks.
The graph below shows the share of domestically produced gas (dark blue), LNG imports (mid-blue) and pipeline imports (light blue), in China’s overall gas supply between 2017 and 2024.
“Gas use is unlikely to play a significant role in decarbonising the power system, but could be more significant in industrial decarbonisation,” Meidan tells Carbon Brief.
She estimates that if LNG prices fall to $6 per million British thermal units (btu), compared to an average of $11 in 2024-25, this could encourage fuel switching in the steel, chemical manufacturing, textiles, ceramics and food processing industries.
The chart below shows the year-on-year change in gas demand between 2001-2022.
Growth in gas demand has been decelerating in some industries in recent years, such as refining. But it also remains unclear if Beijing will adopt more aggressive policies favouring gas, Meidan adds.
A roadmap developed by the Energy Research Institute (ERI), a thinktank under the National Development and Reform Commission’s Academy of Macroeconomic Research, finds that gas only begins to play an equivalent or greater role in China’s energy mix than coal by 2050 at the earliest – 10 years ahead of China’s target for achieving carbon neutrality.
Both fossil fuels play a significantly smaller role than clean-energy sources at this point.
Wang Zhongying and Kaare Sandholt, both experts at the ERI, write in Carbon Brief:
“Gas does not play a significant role in the power sector in our scenarios, as solar and wind can provide cheaper electricity while existing coal power plants – together with scaled-up expansion of energy storage and demand-side response facilities – can provide sufficient flexibility and peak-load capacity.”
Ultimately, China’s push for gas will be contingent on its own development goals. Its next five-year plan, from 2026-2030, will build a framework for China’s shift to controlling absolute carbon emissions, rather than carbon intensity.
Recent recommendations by top Chinese policymakers on priorities for the next five-year plan did not explicitly mention gas. Instead, the government endorses “raising the level of electrification in end-use energy consumption” while also “promoting peaking of coal and oil consumption”.
The Chinese government feels that gas is “nice to have…if available and cost-competitive but is not the only avenue for China’s energy transition,” says Meidan.
The post Explainer: Why gas plays a minimal role in China’s climate strategy appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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