The UK will cut overseas climate spending by more than 10% to fund higher defence budgets, despite agreeing to a global pledge to triple climate finance for developing countries by 2035.

Foreign secretary Yvette Cooper told the British parliament on Thursday that the UK will “aim to spend around £6 billion ($8bn)” on international climate finance over the next three years, covering emissions reductions, adaptation and nature.

This amounts to around £2 billion ($2.66 billion) a year in the next three years, about 13% less than the £2.3 billion ($3.05 billion) a year pledged by the previous Conservative government for the period from 2021-22 to 2025-26.

The move places the UK alongside several other European countries that have recently cut aid budgets, despite a COP29 agreement to mobilise $300 billion a year in climate finance by 2035. In the United States, President Trump has gone further, cancelling most overseas aid programmes, with climate projects among the hardest hit.

The UK cuts were slammed by climate campaigners and some opposition politicians as “brutal”, a “betrayal” of the government’s election promises to be a climate leader, and a failure to recognise that development and climate spending protect the UK’s national security.

The UK will also aim to deliver an additional £6.7 billion ($8.9 billion) in “UK backed climate and nature investments” and to mobilise billions more in private finance, Cooper said. She added that those investments would include measures to help countries to recover when disasters hit, for example, as risk insurance in Jamaica enabled rapid payouts following Hurricane Melissa.

Jamaica set for post-Melissa payout but experts warn of limits to hurricane insurance

Cooper said that the cuts were a “hugely difficult decision” and “not ideological”. But, she added, they were necessary “to deliver the biggest increase in defence spending since the Cold War”.

She reiterated Labour’s commitment to restore development spending to 0.7% of gross national income “when fiscal circumstances allow”, but did not provide a timeline when pressed by an opposition member of parliament (MP). UK aid was reduced from 0.7% to 0.5% by the previous Conservative government in 2021, and is now set to fall further to 0.3%.

Cooper told the sparsely-attended parliament session that “allies such as Germany, France and Sweden have made similar choices” to cut aid to fund defence. The US has also cut almost all of its climate finance.

Cuts open to legal challenge?

These cuts come despite governments agreeing at the COP29 climate summit in 2024 to aim for $300 billion a year of climate finance by 2035, up from the $100 billion a year target for 2025.

Last year, the International Court of Justice advised that developed countries must provide climate finance “in a manner and at a level that allow for the achievement of” the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target temperature limit, language that campaigners say could underpin future legal challenges.

Reaction to Cooper’s announcement in parliament was mixed. Scottish National Party MP Chris Law called the aid cuts “the steepest, deepest and most brutal of any G7 country”, even “astonishingly” going further than the Trump administration.

Sarah Champion, an MP from Cooper’s Labour Party but who is not in government, said she had seen a yet-to-be-published equalities impact assessment. These assesments determine how different demographic groups – like women and disabled people – will be affected.

“When that comes into the public domain, we’ll then have the information that we can maybe have an informed debate on”, she said, adding that pitching defence against international development was a “false dichotomy”.

“If you ask any military person, they will tell you the best line of prevention and first defence is our development money,” she added.

Liberal Democrat and Green MPs echoed the argument, describing climate change as a central threat to global and UK security.

Conservative Party development spokesperson Wendy Morton questioned why Cooper had labelled climate change be a priority given “the country faces serious fiscal constraints”.

“Should not our first priority be economic resilience and national security, including global health security?”, she asked.

MPs from Reform UK, which is leading the national polls, did not speak in parliament. But, in November, they proposed cutting the aid budget by about 90% to £1 billion ($1.3bn) a year.

Campaigners slam “betrayal”

Climate campaigners were critical of the government’s cuts. Hannah Bond and Taahra Ghazi, co-CEOs of ActionAid UK, said cuts to climate finance were “a huge betrayal for women and girls on the frontline of the climate crisis”.

Catherine Pettengell, head of Climate Action Network UK, said that “the government promised the UK public in its manifesto to be a climate leader and create a world free from poverty on a liveable planet – but today’s announcements leave those promises entirely unfilled”.

Gareth Redmond-King of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit argued the decision runs counter to warnings from security and food system experts.

He added that climate finance is an investment in the UK’s national security given that “we import two-fifths of our food from overseas, and worsening climate change impacts hitting farmers at home and abroad are leading to shortages and higher prices on our supermarket shelves”.

The post UK cuts support for climate action abroad to fund military instead appeared first on Climate Home News.

UK cuts support for climate action abroad to fund military instead

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing.

China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.

Key developments

Carbon target locked into final five-year plan

FEW CHANGES: The final version of China’s 15th five-year plan, published on 13 March, placed renewable energy “centre stage” in China’s energy supply, reported economic news outlet Jiemian. There were few changes related to energy and climate issues from the draft published at the beginning of the “two sessions” meeting in Beijing earlier this month. The final version was updated to include a reference to China’s new ecological and environmental code (see spotlight below) and a call to “actively promote” use of geothermal energy, found analysis by Carbon Brief. Policymakers also passed a new law on drafting “long-term national development plans”, such as five-year plans, specifying that research on “environmental constraints” must be factored into future documents, said business news outlet Caixin.

CLIMATE ‘BOON’: China’s five-year plans stand in contrast to other countries’ “short-term political-cycle promises”, said an editorial by state-run newspaper China Daily, with the climate targets in the plan providing a “boon to the entire world” and “influenc[ing] whether global emissions targets are achievable”. An editorial in the state-supporting Global Times argued that the plan shows that China is a “stable” geopolitical force, with its “active participation in global climate governance” showing China is “trustworthy”. [See Carbon Brief‘s coverage for further comment.]

NEA COMMENT: National Energy Administration head Wang Hongzhi published an article in political theory newspaper Study Times on the same day as the plan’s final version was released. He stated that the 15th five-year plan period (2026-2030) is “not only the decisive phase for achieving the carbon peak target, but also a critical period for building a new energy system”. He added that China must “fully leverage” market-based pricing reforms to “promote the safe, reliable and orderly replacement of fossil fuels” and “safeguard” energy security.

China endorsed nuclear target

TRIPLING NUCLEAR: China signed up to an international pledge to “triple global nuclear energy capacity between 2020 and 2050”, reported Climate Home News. Chinese vice-premier Zhang Guoqing stated that China viewed the pledge as useful both for climate change and energy security, it added. Industry news outlet China Electric Power News quoted China Atomic Energy Authority director Shan Zhongde saying China is open to nuclear cooperation with other countries on “technological innovation, safety governance [and] industrial collaboration”.

MISSED TARGETS: State-run newspaper China Daily said in an editorial responding to the pledge that nuclear power “must be part” of China’s energy transition, as “[solar and wind] alone will not suffice”. However, Bloomberg reported that China has missed several recent domestic nuclear targets, meeting neither its goal for 58 gigawatts (GW) of capacity by 2020 nor its 70GW by 2025 target. [China’s nuclear capacity totalled 62GW at the end of 2025.] It cited Francois Morin, China director for the World Nuclear Association, saying the country would also likely miss the target set in its latest five-year plan to develop 110GW of capacity by 2030.

Middle East turmoil ‘vindicates’ China’s energy approach

STOCKPILE SUPPORT: China has “ordered an immediate ban” on exports of petrol, diesel, aviation fuel and other refined fuel products in March to “pre-empt ‌a potential domestic fuel shortage” caused by the US-Israel war on Iran, according to Reuters. The country had been stockpiling crude oil ahead of the war, Reuters also reported, with data showing the country had a surplus of “1.2m barrels per day” in the first two months of 2026. China may be “close to tapping” this stockpile, said Bloomberg, which is estimated at 1.4bn barrels in total.

CLEAN-ENERGY CUSHION: The war and the subsequent spike in oil prices have highlighted the “national security benefits of clean power” for China, said Politico, with renewable additions “cushioning” it from gas market volatility. Crude stockpiles and renewable energy mean China is “less sensitive to a prolonged closure” of the Strait of Hormuz, reported CNBC. Kate Logan, director at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s China climate hub, told Inside Climate News that the war “vindicates” China’s clean-energy push, although she added that coal will likely act as a provider of flexibility in the power sector – a role occupied by gas in other countries – and be used as a fuel and chemical feedstock. Meanwhile, the war may make relative “reliance” on Chinese clean-energy technologies “appear less like a strategic liability and more like a manageable trade-off” for other countries, argued Columbia University’s Jason Bordoff and Erica Downs in Foreign Policy.

SWITCHING SNAG: However, oil does play an “irreplaceable” role in China’s economy despite electrification, particularly as a feedstock, the Stimson Center’s China programme director Yun Sun wrote in War on the Rocks. The impact of the war on prices and availability of oil will fall hardest on industries such as “chemicals, ammonia and methanol[, as well as] advanced materials”, wrote Michal Meidan, head of China energy research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, in a briefing. She added that it may also affect light industries that switched to using gas to “comply with air-quality and carbon-intensity targets”. Columnist David Fickling noted in Bloomberg that lessons from Iran are layered on top of a gas heating “crisis” seen in northern China last winter, which exposed the mistake of “treating gas as a cheap option”.

More China news

• HYDROGEN PILOT: China launched a pilot programme aiming to bring the price of hydrogen “below 25 yuan ($3.6) per kilogram by 2030”, reported Bloomberg.
• HFC QUOTA: The Ministry for Ecology and Environment issued a notice on “further strengthening” regulations on ozone-depleting substances and hydrofluorocarbons, a group of potent greenhouse gases, said Xinhua.
• MARINE ECONOMY: President Xi Jinping wrote in the theory journal Qiushi that China must promote an “orderly” construction of offshore wind, exploration for oil and gas and development of “marine energy”.
• WIND DOMINANCE: Chinese companies now occupy the “top six spots” for global wind turbine manufacturing, according to Jiemian.

Captured

Coal production in China is shifting away from regions in the south-west of the country, where mining is associated with high methane emissions, towards lower-gas mines in the north and north-west, new research found. This, one report author wrote in Carbon Brief, is helping to “limit” the rise of China’s coal-mine methane emissions. 

Spotlight 

Experts: What does China’s new environmental code mean for climate change?

At the close of the two sessions (see above) China passed the final version of the ecological and environmental code, only the second code on any topic passed by China’s legislature since the Chinese Communist party (CCP) came to power.

The code includes a chapter on the “green and low-carbon transition”, which the government-supported Sino-German Cooperation on Climate Change said would introduce “foundational principles to guide future legislation and practices in areas such as carbon peaking and neutrality, green transition and climate adaptation”.

Carbon Brief has asked leading experts what impact the code will have on China’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Their comments have been edited for length and clarity.

Dimitri de Boer, director for China, Client Earth, and Boya Jiang, nature and climate lawyer for China, Client Earth

Think of the code as a guarantee for China’s long-term decarbonisation.

As only the second statutory code adopted in China, it provides a high-level legal foundation for the country’s climate governance as it strives towards carbon neutrality by 2060. It requires control over both the total volume and the intensity of carbon emissions, plus establishes a legal basis for key instruments, such as the national carbon market. It also mandates the government to actively participate and to play a leading role in global climate governance.

The code marks a shift from policy-led climate action to a more systematic, law-based approach, which is supported by a strong enforcement infrastructure of specialised environmental courts and public interest prosecutors. It sends a clear signal that environmental governance will remain a national priority, providing greater predictability for China’s low-carbon transition. Next steps may include revising energy-related laws, drafting further implementing regulations, and developing a dedicated climate change law.

Tianbao Qin, director, Wuhan University Research Institute of Environmental Law

China’s new ecological and environmental code marks a pivotal step in institutionalising its climate commitments. By formally enshrining the “dual-carbon” goals – peaking emissions by 2030 and achieving neutrality by 2060 – into statutory law, the code moves beyond short-term policy experiments to create a stable, long-term legal foundation.

For international observers, the most significant aspect is the establishment of legally-binding mechanisms. The codification of carbon-intensity controls, total emission caps, and a national carbon trading system provides the regulatory certainty that businesses and investors require. This legal framework ensures that emissions reductions are not just aspirational, but are backed by enforceable compliance mechanisms.

Furthermore, by integrating climate goals into broader environmental governance, China is aligning its domestic legal system with global norms, demonstrating that economic modernisation and ecological responsibility can advance in tandem under a rules-based approach.

Gu Gong, associate professor with tenure, Peking University

The ecological and environmental code has established a systematic legal framework for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The code for the first time [provides a legal basis for] the “dual-carbon” goals, clarifies the control system for the total amount and intensity of carbon emissions, and improves the rules for carbon footprint management, the national carbon-emission trading market and carbon-emission statistics and accounting.

At the same time, separate carbon-reduction pathways – such as the green and low-carbon transformation of energy, energy conservation and carbon reduction in key industries, and clean production – have been coordinated, and the carbon-reduction responsibilities of multiple entities [such as local governments and enterprises] have been clearly defined.

Overall, the code promotes the normalisation and standardisation of greenhouse gas governance, provides a clear legal basis for the “dual carbon” goals, and makes greenhouse gas reduction work more regulated and rule-based.

Watch, read, listen

‘OPENCLAW AI’: BJX News analysed how much power is being used by the AI agent tool OpenClaw, which it says the “entire internet” in China has been using, in a trend referred to as “raising lobsters”.

‘INTENSE UPHEAVAL’: The Center for Strategic and International Studies assessed whether China’s solar overcapacity would “erode China’s leadership in solar”, or further entrench it.

STORM IN A TEAPOT: Bloomberg’s Odd Lots programme spoke with Columbia University’s Erica Downs about how tensions in the Middle East are affecting China’s “teapot” oil refiners.

FOLLOW THE MONEY: A new report by Climate Energy Finance tracked $120bn in Chinese investment in critical minerals needed for the energy transition since 2023.

55-60%

The share of total vehicle sales that new-energy vehicles (NEVs) will hold in 2026, according to estimates by the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. The research institute also noted that plug-in hybrid electric vehicles lost share to battery electric vehicles in 2025.

New science 

• Implementing China’s net-zero climate policies by 2050 “reduces global CO2 emissions to 13bn tonnes (Gt), compared with 23Gt without such policies” and could “partially offset insufficient ambition elsewhere” | Nature Communications
• China has more than 3,000 petrochemical plants, which together produced 0.8Gt of CO2 in 2021 | Science Advances
• Analysis into the power shortages that “plagued” China over 2020-22 highlights “the rigidity of existing institutional arrangements”, such as capped electricity prices, in adapting to a decarbonising energy system | Energy Policy

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China Briefing is written by Anika Patel and edited by Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org 

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Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is responsible for about 30% of the global temperature increase observed since the industrial revolution.

China accounts for more than 10% of annual global human methane emissions, in large part due to unintended releases – known as “fugitive” emissions – from its energy sector.

In a recently published study, we take a closer look at China’s coal-mine methane (CMM) emissions, which account for roughly 40% of the nation’s total methane emissions.

Leveraging newly collected, mine-specific data, we develop granular estimates of CMM emissions in China since 2000.

These estimates reveal that China’s coal production is shifting towards provinces with lower-emission mines.

In addition, there has been a significant increase in the capturing of methane from coal mines for energy use.

Together, these developments have helped to limit the rise of CMM emissions, despite an overall increase in coal production since 2016.

Mine data

To estimate CMM emissions at a granular level, we needed to understand how emissions vary from one mine to the next across China.

To do this, we made use of existing safety regulations in China. As methane is a highly flammable gas, the Chinese government enforces mandatory methane gas level identification in coal mines and implements safety regulations accordingly.

Coal mines are categorised based on their “methane emission factors”, the volume of methane emitted per tonne of coal produced.

At one end are low-gas mines, with an emissions factor of less than 10 cubic metres (m3) of methane emitted per tonne of coal. At the other are high-gas mines, at more than 10m3 of methane emitted per tonne. Beyond this are “outburst” mines, which are those that have experienced coal seam or gas outburst incidents.

To get a clearer sense of how much low-gas, high-gas and outburst mines emit in practice, we built a model of the relationship between gas levels and emission factors, using a 2011 database of all Chinese coal mines.

This database includes information on methane gas levels, mine-specific emission factors, coalbed depth, mine ownership and production capacity. We further validated this relationship with newly collected coal mine data from 2023, published by Chinese local governments.

The results show that the distribution of emission factors, as shown in the figure below, varies significantly with gas level.

The top row in the figure below shows the emissions factors for a range of mines in 2011 classed as low-gas (top left, green), high-gas (top centre, pink) or outburst (top right, red). The dashed vertical lines show the central estimate for each type, ranging from 4.1m3 per tonne for low-gas mines through to 19.9m3/tonne for high-gas and 28.4m3/tonne for outburst mines.

The bottom row shows the same metrics based on the more recent 2023 data.

The strong correlation shown in the data above suggests that gas level is a crucial indicator of how much methane a coal mine emits.

In contrast, our analysis reveals no significant correlation between how much a coal mine emits and either coal mine depth or ownership.

Comparing the distributions for the same gas levels between 2011 and 2023 also shows that the link between gas levels and methane emissions remains fairly constant over time.

Therefore, the gas level of a mine can reliably serve as a proxy for its methane emissions per tonne of production, when direct measurements are unavailable.

Provincial shift

To estimate CMM emissions for each province in China, we assumed that the percentage of coal produced by mines of each gas level remains roughly constant as in 2011.

For instance, if 20% of Guizhou’s coal production in 2011 came from low-gas mines, we maintained this percentage for subsequent years.

We then calculated CMM emissions by multiplying provincial-level production-weighted emission factors by total coal production.

The line chart below illustrates our estimated CMM emissions since 2000.

The raw estimates, depicted by the lower grey dashed line, show a rapid increase in CMM emissions from approximately 5m tonnes in 2000 to nearly 21m tonnes in 2013.

This was followed by a decrease to 15m tonnes in 2016 and a subsequent rebound to 24m tonnes in 2023.

The decline between 2013 and 2016 aligns with a period of reduced coal production in China.

On the chart, the upper grey line represents CMM emissions when abandoned coal mines are included.

These mines, which continue to release methane long after operations cease, were responsible for 4.8m tonnes of methane emissions in 2020, contributing approximately 25% to the total CMM emissions.

Meanwhile, the blue line shows CMM emissions when the capture and use of methane in energy supply is taken into consideration.

National methane utilisation increased from 1.2m tonnes in 2008 to 3.7m tonnes in 2020, resulting in a reduction of total emissions by 5% and 17%, respectively.

It is noteworthy that CMM emissions did not immediately rebound after 2016, despite a reported increase in coal production by China’s National Bureau of Statistics.

This delay can likely be attributed to shifts in production locations to lower-emissions provinces, the closure of high-emissions mines and the adoption of technologies for capturing and using methane that effectively mitigate emissions.

The figure below compares CMM emissions across provinces in 2012 and 2021, two years with nearly identical total coal production levels.

Overall, changes in methane emissions closely mirrored shifts in where the coal was being mined. There is a clear geographic trend: production and emissions surged in northern and north-western regions such as Xinjiang, Shaanxi and especially Shanxi.

In fact, Shanxi alone emitted nearly 8m tonnes of coal-mine methane in 2021, making up roughly half of China’s total CMM emissions.

Meanwhile, both production and emissions dropped in south-western provinces, including Guizhou, Sichuan and Yunnan.

The figure shows that China’s coal production has switched from regions in the south-west where emissions per unit of coal production are relatively high, to lower-emission areas in the north and north-west. At the same time, total production levels have stayed similar, at just over 4bn tonnes in both 2012 and 2021.

Tackling methane

China has signalled its intention to address methane emissions, with key tasks for the next five years outlined in a national methane action plan published in 2023.

The broad trends of CMM emissions observed in this study will likely continue in China.

Small-scale coal mines – those producing less than 300,000 tonnes of coal per year – are at risk of closing or being consolidated, while increased production from large-scale, lower-emission mines in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia will likely lead to an overall reduction in national production-weighted emission factors.

(This reduction in the rate of emissions per unit of coal production does not guarantee a reduction in methane emissions overall, as several analyses show this also depends on the total coal output. Even following closures, methane may still leak from abandoned mines.)

However, this regional shift in coal production – and, thus, methane emissions – could also help to address public health concerns from pollution associated with the gas.

The Chinese government has also introduced significant changes in policy on the capturing and use of methane gas. The Ministry of Ecology and Environment recently revised coal-mine methane standardsto mandate the capture and use of methane with concentrations above 8%, down from a previous 30%.

In addition, the government has a programme providing financial incentives for capturing methane and reducing CMM emissions.

Together, these measures could help China achieve its short- and medium-run methane capture and use goals set by the methane action plan.

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The post Guest post: How changes to coal mining have affected China’s methane emissions appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Guest post: How changes to coal mining have affected China’s methane emissions