The two countries set to lead this year’s COP31 have unveiled three headline goals for November’s UN climate summit – on electrification, waste and buildings – following six months of consultations with governments.

At mid-year climate talks in Bonn, Turkish COP31 President-Designate Murat Kurum and the talks’ chief negotiator, Australia’s Chris Bowen, billed the targets as a blueprint for climate action, with electrification emerging as the top priority.

Bowen said he wanted this year’s COP negotiations in the Turkish city of Antalya to “take inspiration” from the targets, adding that he would push in particular for a “strong outcome” on switching from fossil fuels to electricity to run vehicles, industry and buildings.

“35 by 35” goal

The electrification target – dubbed the “35 by 35” goal and based on analysis by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) – would strive to ramp up the share of final energy consumption provided by electricity to 35% by 2035 from about 20% today.

That would be achieved by accelerating the switch to technologies such as heat pumps, electric vehicles (EVs) and electric cookers.

Bowen said he wants to lead a push focused on “electrifying everything that can be electrified and making sure as much of that electricity as possible is renewable”.

He said electrification is “the key to transitioning away from fossil fuels”, urging negotiators to keep in mind that 2035 is just nine years away.

Bonn Bulletin: Tackling climate crisis is “hardest” challenge ever, Stiell says

Kurum said the COP presidency would work to forge “a strong global coalition that is ready and determined to act”, promising to facilitate access to technical assistance, particularly to developing countries.

Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA), which will produce a special report to map out pathways to achieving the target, said the world was already electrifying because of the current global oil shock and the growth of electricity-using sectors such as air conditioning, EVs and AI data centres.

Previous COPs have seen similar goals on boosting renewables, energy efficiency, nuclear, biofuels, grids and other technologies. Some of these have been agreed by all governments as part of a negotiated COP decision, while others have remained as goals that only some countries have put their names to.

Bowen told reporters in Bonn there was strong interest around the world in electrification as he continues his talks with governments, saying the COP presidency wanted “to seize that for the negotiations”.

Climate campaigners generally welcomed the announcement. Duygu Kutluay, a campaigner at Beyond Fossil Fuels, said elevating electrification to a flagship priority was a “positive step”.

But she cautioned that “electrification can only deliver meaningful climate benefits if the power comes from renewables, not fossil fuels”.

Berkan Ozyer, director of Greenpeace Türkiye, said the electrification goal was “vital”, noting however that Türkiye has 37 active coal power plants and was “leaving the door open” for more.

Last-minute change on buildings

At the same time, the COP presidency quietly overhauled its goal for reducing energy use in buildings.

An initial press statement on Monday set out a target “to achieve at least a 25% increase in energy efficiency in buildings by 2035”. But in “a small update” issued on Tuesday, that was replaced with a different goal to “reduce energy consumption intensity in the building sector by at least 25% by 2035”.

No reason was given for the change and Kurum did not directly address a question from Climate Home News about the decision to remove the energy efficiency target, a step that experts said raised potential questions about ambition and implementation.

“Energy efficiency improvement and energy intensity reduction are complementary metrics: efficiency targets drive the deep physical upgrades that lock in long-term performance and, crucially, higher resilience, while intensity targets keep operators accountable for real-world outcomes. What matters is that both remain in the frame,” Roxana Dela Fiamor, global policy lead at the U.S. Green Building Council, told Climate Home News.

“Only looking at energy intensity is really delaying the crucial role that buildings can play in the energy transition,” she added.

Focusing only on energy intensity risks delaying deeper structural changes, she warned, as it can be achieved through short-term measures like switching off lights or optimising usage, rather than investing in retrofits.

“Energy efficiency requires a lot of investments and structural measures, energy intensity is easier to achieve. But energy intensity is not sufficient,” she said. “It doesn’t tackle the systemic changes needed, it doesn’t look at all the different components that drive energy consumption in buildings.”

Missing details on waste target

The COP31 presidency has set a goal to halve the growth in global waste by 2035, but key details about the goal are still missing.

Announcing the target, Kurum said waste was “one of the areas where the fastest results can be achieved” in climate action, but he did not specify the baseline for the target, or what types of waste it covered. A COP31 spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for clarification.

Türkiye prioritises cleaning up garbage emissions in COP31 ‘action agenda’

Mariel Vilella, climate director at the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, said it was “encouraging” to see waste getting more attention, but warned that the target “remains difficult to assess without clarity on the baseline, scope and implementation pathway”.

She said success should be judged not by a headline figure alone, but by whether it drives real change – including waste prevention, methane cuts, lower plastic production and protections for waste workers.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates that municipal waste could rise from 2.1 billion tonnes today to 3.8 billion tonnes by 2050 without significant action.

Cutting waste generation would curb planet-heating emissions, protect ecosystems and improve human health, the UN says.

New initiative on climate finance?

The COP31 joint presidency has also floated a new climate finance initiative – the so-called Climate Implementation Bridge (CIB) – to help countries make progress on the three proposed targets.

Kurum said the initiative would not involve creating a new fund or financial mechanism, describing it as “a complementary initiative that supports climate finance and strengthens partnerships among countries”.

While few further details were immediately available on how it would work or fit into the existing climate finance landscape, Rebecca Thissen of CAN International said adding new processes without simplifying existing systems risked causing confusion and proving counterproductive.

The post COP31 leaders unveil global targets, with spotlight on electrification appeared first on Climate Home News.

COP31 leaders unveil global targets, with spotlight on electrification

Welcome to Cited, your essential guide to new climate research.

In the news

SPRING HEATWAVE: Temperature records for May fell across western Europe as the region baked in an “exceptionally early” heatwave, reported the Associated Press. The outlet noted that temperatures reached 35.1C in the UK and 36C in France at the end of last month, with the latter’s national weather service stating that a “heat dome” had produced temperatures more than 10C higher than “usual”. BBC News said temperatures reached 40.3C in Portugal. Carbon Brief explored how the media covered the extreme weather and the role of climate change.

CLIMATE RESEARCH ‘STYMIED’: The White House released draft regulations that would “give political appointees the final word” on federal research grants and other funding across government agencies, reported Scientific American. According to Bloomberg, climate experts said the “sweeping” changes would “stymie research in the field”. At the same time, the Guardian reported the National Science Federation – a US government agency – announced it would be dismantling a $368m deep-sea observation system that provides “crucial” data on ocean systems and climate change. [For more, see ‘Spotlight’ below].

WMO WARNING: A report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and UK Met Office, covered by Reuters, found that average global temperatures are forecast to reach “near-record levels” in the next five years. The newswire said the report projected that average temperatures each year over 2026-30 will range between 1.3-1.9C above pre-industrial levels, with one year where temperatures will top the warmest year on record, set in 2024.

Research picks

Impacts

• Climate change and population growth have led to a 51% increase in global exposure to extreme daytime heat in cities over the past two decades | Communications Earth & Environment
• Global warming interacts with poverty to “magnify educational disruption” and “deepen existing inequities” among children and young people | The Lancet
• Human-caused greenhouse gas emissions has increased the likelihood of “landfalling” oceanic heatwaves by a factor of nine | One Earth

Nature

• Wildfire “disturbances” have been shifting Canada’s forests from a carbon sink to a carbon source since the 2000s | Global Change Biology 
• Following decades of rapid decline, mangrove forests around the world have been recovering since 2010, with both forest loss and degradation rates slowing | Science 
• Large-scale cultivation of macroalgae has “low potential” for carbon dioxide removal and unintended consequences that “can be substantial” | Biogeosciences 

Projections

• Global hailstorm-induced damage potential could increase by 37-42% by the late 21st century, depending on the emission scenario | Nature 
• Even under a low-emissions scenario, 45% and 35% of mountain bird and mammal species, respectively, are at risk of seeing losses in habitat range by 2050 that outweigh any gains by at least 20% | Conservation Biology
• Future warming will likely boost natural methane emissions from freshwater, as methane-oxidising bacteria fail to keep pace | Nature Climate Change

Captured

China accounts for more “conventional” carbon dioxide removal (CDR), such as afforestation and reforestation, than any other country in the world. That is according to the third edition of the annual state of carbon dioxide removal report, published last week and covered in detail by Carbon Brief. China’s average conventional CDR of 539m tonnes of CO2 over 2014-23 is more than double that of the US, the next-highest country.   

625

How many times greater cities in the global south experienced “compound” exposure to extreme heat and air pollution than global-north cities over 2003-20, according to an npj urban sustainability study.

Spotlight

AMOC observations at risk

The Irminger Sea, a patch of frigid ocean east of Greenland, plays an outsized role in the Earth’s climate.

Here, surface water that has travelled thousands of kilometres from the tropics grows cold and dense enough to sink to the ocean’s depths – a transformation that must occur for the water to begin a long journey back to the southern hemisphere.

This makes the Irminger Sea an “action centre” for the mighty Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the vast system of ocean currents that keeps temperatures in Europe mild.

Last week, the US government announced plans to dismantle ocean moorings installed in the Irminger Sea which, among other things, collect data on the health of the AMOC.

This came as part of a programme to “descope” the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a $368m network of ocean sensors installed in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

Two of the moorings earmarked for removal in the Irminger Sea form part of an internationally funded, trans-Atlantic AMOC monitoring array, known as OSNAP, that stretches from Canada to Scotland.

Experts told Carbon Brief the move by the Trump administration highlights the vulnerability of AMOC observation systems around the world. These deep-sea moorings – scattered across the Atlantic – collect real-time data on, among other things, ocean current, temperature, pressure and biochemistry.

Prof Penny Holliday, chief scientific officer of the UK National Oceanography Centre, told Carbon Brief that the OSNAP array, as well as the RAPID array at 26N, are “entirely dependent” on research grants that have to be “continually reapplied for”.

“Funding is perilous all the time,” she said.

A report prepared last month by scientists for Nordic ministers exploring the security of funding for AMOC observing systems warned that RAPID and OSNAP were in “critical condition” and faced “material exposure over an 18-month horizon”. Meanwhile, other key basin-wide and global components of the global AMOC observing system were rated as “at risk”.

It is not just US funding that is uncertain. The report notes, for example, that the five-yearly funding the UK provides to RAPID and OSNAP is “at risk from 2027 due to year-on-year budget reductions” at the Natural Environmental Research Council.

(RAPID is funded by the US and UK, whereas OSNAP is backed by five different countries, with the US contributing half of the total financial support.)

Report co-author Dr Femke de Jong from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research told Carbon Brief that “continued AMOC observations” are under pressure in “multiple countries”. She said:

“While the risk of a declining AMOC to society is starting to be recognised, there is not yet a system or institution in place to guarantee a way to monitor it.”

AMOC monitoring arrays are still in their infancy – RAPID, the oldest, was launched in 2004. Two decades of data captured so far shows that the AMOC is slowing down. However, scientists will need many more years of data to be able to confidently link the decline to climate change, rather than natural variability in the ocean.

NOC’s Holliday points to the disconnect between scientific and funder timelines:

“The timescale of observations needed in order to be able to detect a climate change signal from the very naturally variable ocean is around 40-60 years…. [And yet], in the Netherlands, they have to apply for a new grant for their ocean moorings every two years. They are going to have to do that for 40 years.

“This is a very inefficient way of getting funding for what should be critical infrastructure.”

Preprints to watch

Carbon Brief’s pick of new papers still going through peer review

• Urban areas were responsible for two-thirds of CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels in 2022 | Nature portfolio
• Climate adaptation measures are responsible for one-quarter of greenhouse gas emissions and three-quarters of human freshwater withdrawals | Earth System Dynamics
• Global food miles – the emissions generated from transporting food – could be “lower than previously estimated”, at around 0.82bn tonnes per year | Nature portfolio

Noticeboard

• 10 June: AMS Washington Forum early registration deadline 
• 10-12 June: Fourth international conference on carbon dioxide removal, Milan
• 11 June: Application deadline for postdoctoral research position in the political economy of net-zero at the University of Oxford; Salary: £39,424-47,779
• Mid-June: AGU annual meeting abstract submissions open
• 17 June: World Weaving climate research programme funding application deadline
• 17 June: CCMC lecture (online): “Temperature, health and adaptation: What actually protects people?”
• 21 June: Application deadline for postdoctoral research position in extreme event health impacts at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Salary: £42,552-66,456

Cited is researched and written by Cecilia Keating, Robert McSweeney, Ayesha Tandon, Daisy Dunne and Dr Giuliana Viglione.

Please send tips, feedback and upcoming climate research to cited@carbonbrief.org

This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cited email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

The post Cited 9 June 2026: Europe’s ‘exceptional’ heatwave | Warming forecast | AMOC observations ‘at risk’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Cited 9 June 2026: Europe’s ‘exceptional’ heatwave | Warming forecast | AMOC observations ‘at risk’

Bill Hare is the CEO of Climate Analytics, a global climate science and policy institute working to accelerate climate action.

The word ‘implementation’ has featured long and loud recently in discussions about the UN climate process.

The host government of last year’s COP30 summit, Brazil, argued that it should be an “implementation COP”. And if you talk regularly to influential participants in the UN process, you’d be surprised how many will tell you that in the current political climate, it’s all about implementing the pledges and targets governments have already made, rather than aiming to raise them.

This interpretation of ‘implementation’ is dangerously wrong. You can see that it is wrong by simply going back to the Paris Agreement. Article 4 states that Parties (countries) “shall prepare, communicate and maintain successive nationally determined contributions” (NDCs), and that each new NDC “will represent a progression” beyond the Party’s previous one and “reflect its highest possible ambition”.

In other words, regularly increasing ambition is a central element of implementing the Paris Agreement. Governments pledged to increase ambition regularly, and the community of people who care about climate change needs to hold them to that pledge.

Raised expectations

Even a cursory look at the current state of emissions shows that without increased ambition, the other central pillars of the Paris Agreement will not be realised. The global emissions peak will not come “as soon as possible”, net zero will not be reached in the second half of this century, and global warming will race beyond the 1.5°C limit, with catastrophic impacts beginning in the most vulnerable countries and risks increasing for everyone.

Since the Paris summit in 2015, expectations and obligations on governments to step up on decarbonising their economies have increased. In 2021 and 2022, governments declared via the UN Human Rights Council and UN General Assembly that the right to a healthy environment is a universal human right. An environment of dangerous climate change is not a healthy one, so the obligation to cut emissions further and faster is clear.

Last year, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that 1.5°C is the primary limit of the Paris Agreement and constitutes a legally binding target. It clarified that states have obligations, not only under the UN climate convention, but under customary international law, human rights law and the Law of the Sea.

It also reaffirmed that governments’ NDCs must reflect their highest possible ambition. Last month, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution endorsing the ICJ ruling, with governments voting 141 for, and only eight against.

Failing on ambition

Nonetheless, most governments are not showing the ambition required by their international obligations. Fifty-two countries have not submitted their third NDC with emission-cutting targets for 2035, which they were supposed to do more than a year ago.

Many submitted NDCs fall well short of what is required, with Indonesia, Russia and Saudi Arabia among countries whose level of ambition, if reflected globally, would usher in at least 4°C of global warming.

We know from our own analysis that if countries just implemented their present level of ambition through 2035, the world would warm by 2.6°C above preindustrial levels by 2100, a catastrophic scenario.

But we also know that if countries implemented policies consistent with their highest possible ambition, we can limit overshoot of 1.5°C to about 0.2°C, halt global warming within 25 years, and bring it down to about 1.2°C by the end of the century. Other analyses paint a similar picture.

Make no mistake: this level of overshoot will have serious adverse consequences. But two things are very clear: we can get warming back below 1.5°C before 2100, and countries can be far more ambitious than they are now.

Meanwhile real-world events are demonstrating more clearly than ever that moving quickly and decisively to an economy powered by clean electricity bolsters energy security, reduces energy costs and avoids the geopolitical blackmail and bullying associated with dependence on a continuous supply of fossil fuel imports.

Back the collective process

Because the various UN declarations and decisions outlined above are taken collectively by governments, we can make an interesting deduction: most governments themselves recognise that they need to show more ambition. There are many reasons why each of them doesn’t do so on its own; and one of the key aspects of the UN climate process is that it allows and encourages them to do so with some degree of collectivity.

What all of this speaks to is the need to increase the focus on raising ambition, to continue to use the UN climate process as the key convening forum, and to use COPs as the place where governments are held accountable at a high political level every year. There is no other forum that does that and no other place in which vulnerable countries are at the table on equal terms with the biggest emitters.

What to expect from the Bonn climate talks

Right now, the geopolitical going is tough; and the tough need to get going towards the trouble, not run away from it.

Yes, delivery of existing pledges is absolutely necessary. If governments use this decade to honour the Global Stocktake outcomes from 2024 – if they triple renewable energy capacity, double the rate of energy efficiency improvements and make deep cuts in methane emissions – that will go a long way to keeping global warming below 2°C. Most are not on track – so yes, full implementation of what countries have already agreed is sorely needed.

But ambition must also be strengthened, urgently. It’s not an either-or: ‘implementation’ has to include ‘increasing ambition’. Climate science, international law, climate justice and the needs of the world’s most climate-impacted societies demand nothing less.

The post The UN climate process needs ambition – the law demands it appeared first on Climate Home News.

The UN climate process needs ambition – the law demands it