Rob Hopkins, a founder of the Transition Town Movement
Episode 95: Rob Hopkins on the Role of Imagination in Climate Change Solutions
In this month’s Citizens’ Climate Radio episode, Rob Hopkins, one of the founders of the Transition Town movement, shows us how playful imagination can lead to real-world solutions, and you will discover how a life-sized whale made of plastic bags brought a community together to pass groundbreaking legislation. Artist Carrie Ziegler shares her extraordinary project that mobilized hundreds of schoolchildren to make a powerful statement about plastic pollution. In the Nerd Corner, Dana Nuccitelli tackles the big question: is a carbon price still effective in a post-Inflation Reduction Act world?
Rob Hopkins, Time Traveler and Creative Climate Change Campaigner
Rob Hopkins, co-founder of the Transition Network and Transition Town Totnes, and author of several influential books, including “The Transition Handbook” and “From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want,” believes that playful imagination is crucial for tackling climate change. An Ashoka Fellow with a PhD from the University of Plymouth and two honorary doctorates, Rob encourages communities to adopt sustainable practices that promote self-sufficiency and environmental stewardship. “My work is about finding positive solutions to climate change,” says Rob, who also engages in printmaking in his spare time. His approach to climate activism is deeply rooted in the power of imagination, urging people to envision a future where collective action has transformed our world for the better.
One of Rob’s most innovative techniques involves time travel exercises, where he guides participants to imagine themselves in the year 2030 or beyond, a time shaped by years of dedicated environmental efforts. “I always remind people, ten years is actually a long, long time in terms of things that can happen,” he explains. Participants universally envision a cleaner, more content, and more connected world through these exercises. Rob’s ability to inspire others by helping them create a “new north star” in their lives, where a low-carbon future feels “delicious and irresistible,” makes his perspective both inventive and motivating. As he puts it, “We need to cultivate and nurture in people the most profound longing for a low-carbon future.”
Rob Hopkins hosts the podcast From What If to What Next, which explores imaginative solutions to some of the world’s biggest challenges. You can learn more about Rob, his books, and the Transition Town movement by visiting his website. You can watch the film, Transition 2.0 for free on YouTube. It is “an inspirational immersion in the Transition movement, gathering stories from around the world of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.” Additionally, check out his latest projects, the Ministry of Imagination Manifesto and Field Recordings from the Future. Rob’s forthcoming book, “How to Fall in Love with the Future,” is set to be released next year. In November 2022, Rob was honored as an Honorary Citizen of Liège in Belgium. Connect with Rob and explore his innovative approaches to climate activism at robhopkins.net.
Collaborative Art Meets Activism: Carrie Ziegler’s Whale Project Sparks Change
Carrie Ziegler is a collaborative artist based in Olympia, Washington, whose passion lies in creating large-scale art projects that inspire positive change. By working with schools, nonprofits, and local governments, Carrie brings together hundreds, sometimes thousands, of individuals to address environmental and social justice issues through art.
One of her most impactful projects involved creating a life-sized gray whale made entirely of plastic bags and trash, engaging over 900 children and adults. “I decided to do a project around that,” she explains, reflecting on her mission to end the use of single-use plastic bags. “We created this whale, this life-sized gray whale out of plastic bags and other trash.” This incredible undertaking educated participants about marine biology and plastic pollution and became a powerful symbol in the community, helping to shift public opinion and inspire legislative change.
Carrie’s work is a testament to the power of art in activism. The whale, modeled after a real whale found with plastic in its stomach, was publicly unveiled at the annual Procession of the Species celebration, where thousands witnessed its impact. “There were actually council members who invited me to bring the whale to their city council meetings,” Carrie recounts, highlighting the project’s role in successfully implementing plastic bag bans across local jurisdictions. However, her work’s true success lies in the personal empowerment it fosters. “There were kids, particularly middle school kids, who talked about how they felt personally responsible for that ban on plastic bags,” she shares. Carrie’s projects provide participants with a sense of ownership and accomplishment, proving that collaborative art can indeed change the world.
Visit Carrie Ziegler’s website to learn more about her inspiring projects, read her journal, and watch videos. For images of the whale project and additional information, check out the show notes at cclusa.org/radio.
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The Nerd Corner: Carbon Fee & Dividend in a Post-IRA World
Dana Nuccitelli, CCL Research Coordinator, explores whether a carbon price remains the best climate policy in a post-Inflation Reduction Act world. “Putting a price on carbon pollution would impact almost every sector of the economy,” Dana explains, emphasizing its cost-effective impact on emissions. Visit the Nerd Corner to join the conversation. You can also read some of Dana’s articles in The Guardian.
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Read the Transcript
Rob Hopkins on the Role of Imagination in Climate Change Solutions
SPEAKERS
Carrie Ziegler, Dana Nuccitelli, Horace Mo, Erica Valdez, Peterson Toscano, Rob Hopkins
Peterson Toscano 00:00
Welcome to Citizens Climate Radio, your climate change podcast.
Peterson Toscano 00:04
In this show, we highlight people’s stories, we celebrate your successes, and together we share strategies for talking about climate change. I’m your host, Peterson Toscano. Welcome to Episode 95 of Citizens Climate Radio, a project of Citizens Climate Education. This episode is airing on Friday, May 24 2024. Erica Valdez and Horace Mo are very busy working on next month’s episode. I hope to check in with them before the show ends though. In the Nerd Corner, Dana Nuccitelli answers a very important question. Is a carbon price still the most effective policy in a post-Inflation Reduction Act world? Carrie Ziggler joins us to share an extraordinary community art project that resulted in the passage of meaningful legislation. She engaged hundreds of schoolchildren to use plastic bags to send a big message to lawmakers. Carrie demonstrates how art and artists can help us convince the public and policymakers to make the right choices.
Peterson Toscano 01:20
But first, I want to immerse us in a world of imagination. Some may think that playful imagination is a helpful escape from real world problems, my guest begs to differ, he sees our imaginations as the essential tool for addressing these problems. My first guest is a time traveling do gooder in England. Now, it’s not Doctor Who.
Rob Hopkins 01:50
So I’m Rob Hopkins, I am the founder of the Transition Movement. My work is about finding positive solutions to climate change. And in my spare time I do printmaking. So it’s normally easy just to say I’m an I’m an author and an activist really saves a bit of time.
Peterson Toscano 02:09
The Transition Town Movement is a community-led initiative that aims to promote self-sufficiency and reduce the impact of peak oil, climate change, and economic instability. It encourages communities to take control of their own future by adopting sustainable practices that are kinder to the environment. Rob and his colleagues have successfully implemented innovative approaches to change the way certain towns operate. I recommend you watch the documentary Transition 2.0, you’ll learn about inspiring stories of communities working together for self-sufficiency, and sustainability. It features innovative ideas like printing local money, growing food locally, and setting up community power stations. But I didn’t invite Rob Hopkins to our show to discuss the transition movement. Instead, I requested him to share the tools, techniques and strategies he uses to think outside the box. And this includes time travel.
03:15
And so when the time machine, I would say to people to close their eyes and imagine that we’re going to travel to 2030. And I have different techniques that I use to do it and make it quite theatrical, you know. And then I say, with the 2030 we’re traveling to isn’t a utopia. It’s not a dystopia, either. But it’s the result of us having spent those years between now and then doing everything we could possibly have done. And I always remind people that 9/10 years is actually a long, long time in terms of things that can happen. It took 10 years for Rosa Parks to refuse to give up her seat on the bus for the Civil Rights Act to be passed in America. 10 years from the first international sanctions on South Africa, to the new constitution being created in South Africa. 10 years after the first iPhone, half the people in the world have a smartphone, and maybe that’s not such a good one. But you know, things change really, really fast. So I asked people to close their eyes and to imagine that they’re moving through time, and then they’re being dropped into that 2030, And then just to take a walk around, using all their senses, what does that world smell like feel like tastes like.
Rob Hopkins 04:17
I’ve done that exercise now with 1000s of people. And I’ve done it with 10 people in a workshop. I’ve done it with one and a half 1000 people in a hall in Belgium. And what’s so fascinating to me about that activity is that no one ever says we’ve got a new IKEA, which is four times bigger than the one we had in 2022. No one ever says, Oh, my iPhone 28 can give me real tattoos or something. You know, it’s like, actually, everybody says, the air smells cleaner. The birdsong is louder. There are less cars, people seem more content, and they spend more time with their families. They don’t work so much. Their work is more meaningful, and so on and so on. You know, It’s universal. So then I always think, Well, why do we not start there and work backward? We start with how we are going to achieve that. What would that look like? And that’s why, in the podcast that I do, every episode starts with us doing some time travel. So if we’re talking about universal basic income, we don’t debate whether it’s a good idea or not, we say we’ve had a universal basic income now for eight years. How does the world taste differently? How does it sound differently? For me, there’s something about helping people to create a new North Star in their life. Like, I want that.
Peterson Toscano 05:40
Rob Hopkins’s podcast is called From What is to What If, and it’s named after his 2020 book about unleashing the power of imagination to create the future we want.
Rob Hopkins 05:52
I feel like there are some people like me who can read terrifying, depressing climate papers and somehow translate that transmute that into doing something for a lot of people. They just get really stuck and really paralyzed. And I think if all of our narrative is just about extinction and collapse, we don’t offer anything. You know, the poet Rilke said something like, “The future must enter into a long time before it happens.” So beautiful, you know, and if we don’t allow the future to enter into people, if we don’t cultivate and nurture in people, the most profound longing for a low carbon future, if the way we talk about a low carbon future doesn’t make it sound, delicious, and irresistible, and abundant and gorgeous, then why is anyone going to want to do that? We’re only going to go there if it feels like we’re moving towards something irresistible rather than being dragged away from something irreplaceable. So how do we do that? So for me, I use that idea of time travel in lots of different ways.
Peterson Toscano 07:06
Rob has often said, climate change is the greatest failure of the imagination in the history of humanity.
07:13
The big challenge that we have is that there are so many people in positions of power who should be reimagining everything. I mean, you know, just to put it in context, you know, the United Nations said staying below 1.5 degrees was beyond us unless we were to see the rapid transformation of societies, is what they called it. So, loads of people, all the headlines are saying, well, 1.5 degrees beyond us now; maybe that’s the wrong way of looking at it. Maybe the question is, how do we create a rapid transformation of societies if that’s our only option? Like death, or rapid transformation of societies? I think we should put a bit more effort into that rapid transformation in societies but myself, you know, thinking outside the box here, Mariame Kaba, who’s a great hero of mine, amazing prison abolition activist in the US, she said, we live in a system that has been locked into a false sense of inevitability. I love it. So many diff, and so many of the people who are holding on to those positions just can’t imagine anything else. The people in the Department of Transport, can’t imagine a future without cars, and the people in the Department of Energy can’t imagine a future without fossil fuels.
Peterson Toscano 08:22
I am not at all surprised that important business and government leaders have not reached the point where they can imagine big systemic changes. They take themselves very seriously. And so much creativity and fresh ideas come through cultivating a playful attitude.
08:45
When I do workshops and trainings with people, a lot of it is about play, and just getting people to play again. And so whenever I do workshops, even with the most serious, uptight people who often come with lots of baggage around being right, and not wanting to make a fool of themselves and not wanting to take any risks and having to get everything right, is I put them into groups of five or six people. I give them a potato each, and I give them a bunch of cocktail sticks. And I say you can go outside you can add anything to this that you want. But I want you back here in 25 minutes with a creature, and I want to know its name. I want to know its mating call. And I want to know what his diet is. And they just go off, and you watch them go, and they just giggle for about 25 You just hear them go rugger. Oh, and the beautiful thing about it is you can’t make anything out of potatoes. That isn’t ridiculous. Even even if you’re the most perfectionist engineer, you can’t make something out of potatoes. That doesn’t look really stupid. And it’s a really nice way of just getting people freed up a bit.
Rob Hopkins 09:48
When I do public talks as well. They become more and more like workshops and we do an exercise called yes and and yes, but which is what you learn in improv. You know the difference between Yes, But Yes And. which is really important because all of us, as activists, have experienced everything we encounter being yes. But yes, but all yes, but there’s, there’s no money for that. There’s no whatever, there’s no time we tried that before, it didn’t work, all that kind of stuff. When I design a two-day workshop, I’m going to be running in Belgium in a couple of weeks. And we spent half of the first day in the forest, using a set of exercises, which allowed adults to see the world to see the forest like they saw it when they were a child. That kind of shift in our thinking is really, really powerful, too. So in terms of an exercise, there’s something that was developed by Transition Network working with encounters to an amazing community arts organization, and it’s called Transition Town Anywhere. So the idea is you get about between two and 400 people, you need a big space, you start with doing some time traveling, and stepping into the future that we could still create. And then you think, Well, what am I doing in that future? What’s my role? What’s my job, what’s my work, then you meet other people who were thinking along the same lines, you design a project together, something you’re doing, maybe you’re running the bank, maybe you’re running the energy company, maybe or whatever. But then you literally build it with cardboard boxes, bamboo sticky tape string and pens; you create this three-dimensional version of that future that you then live in and inhabit and play in. And it’s one of the most magical, magical things I’ve ever been part of. I think we need to find a lot more things like that, and our activism needs to feel a lot more like play.
Peterson Toscano 11:40
Rob reminds us that speaking about climate change is significant climate work. How we speak about it, though, can make all the difference.
11:49
It’s really important that we have conversations with everybody we know about climate change and the situation that we’re in. You know, when people say, Well, why do you do this? It’s like, it’s one thing to say because I’m terrified about the future and climate change. Then maybe we could flip that and say it’s because I am so longing for a world where the birdsong is louder than the traffic. I’m so longing for a world where the rivers and our cities are so clean that people can swim to work. As the world grew warmer, we realized that the tarmac was killing people. Concrete was killing people. And so we took up 80% of it. And now our cities are full of wildflowers and plants, and I so long for a world where when you go to visit the theater, they’ve covered the outside of that building, with bird boxes and insect hotels. So when you approach the theater, it’s more alive with wildlife than visiting a jungle or something. Give people that longing. Cultivating longing is the most important thing, and I think that we can be doing it as activists. And we can’t do that. Without artists, storytellers. musicians, poets, film writers, novelists. We need everybody because we have to bring this alive. There’s a beautiful quote by Arundhati Roy. She says, what lies ahead, reimagining the world. Only that.
Peterson Toscano 13:30
That was Rob Hopkins, host of the podcast from what is to what if? Learn more about him his book and the Transition Town movement at his website, Rob hopkins.net. And while you’re there, definitely check out his newest projects. The Ministry of imagination manifesto and field recordings from the future.
Peterson Toscano 14:02
Coming up, Dana Nuccitelli will answer the question is a carbon price still the most effective policy in a post inflation Reduction Act world? Carrie Ziegler, an artist on the West Coast of the USA tells us about a community art project that changed a law and I have a good news story about a successful campaign that got a lot of people talking about climate change, stay tuned.
Peterson Toscano 14:53
When we want elected officials to change policy, we have many ways to reach them and build political will We write letters to the editor and op ed pieces, we start petitions, we sent messages to our lawmakers and even show up at their offices to compel them to vote for an environmental and climate friendly policy. We need to be heard above all the other voices. Without a big public relations budget. What can we do? That’s when we can turn to our friendly neighborhood artists.
Carrie Ziegler 15:34
My name is Carrie Ziegler. I am a collaborative artist living here in Olympia, Washington. And what I love to do more than just about anything else is to work with hundreds, sometimes 1000s of individuals with schools, nonprofits, and local government to create these multifaceted, large-scale collaborative art and action projects around different environmental and social justice issues. With the goal of inspiring positive change in our world. I went on a journey, you know, through a life journey for many years trying to figure out how to bring art and science together. I did that in so many different ways. I worked as a naturalist and environmental educator for a long time. So, I’ve worked with people a lot, and I would often bring art into that work. It took a long time for me to figure out what collaborative art was; for me that really came together.
Carrie Ziegler 16:32
About 10 years ago, when I was working for my county, Thurston County, as an environmental educator, I had the opportunity to create some programming for youth and my supervisor was very open-ended about it. During that time, we were going through a process in our county to decide whether or not the public was ready to want it to ban single use plastic bags. And since I was really passionate about that idea, I wanted to end the use of single-use plastic bags, so I decided to do a project around that. But as I started thinking about it, as often happens for me, my ideas they just kind of grow and get bigger. And so I thought, hey, why not create a life-sized plastic whale out of plastic bags and other trash? Amazingly, my supervisor said, Okay, go for it. You don’t get any money. We’re not giving you a budget for this. But you can go and do this wild idea.
Carrie Ziegler 17:31
I ended up working with over 900 Kids and adults in classrooms and community spaces, teaching them about marine biology, the impacts that plastic bags have on our environments, and talking about solutions to that. And then, together with all these different people, we created this whale, this life-sized gray whale, out of plastic bags and other and other trash. And so each individual who was part of that project, got to do a piece of this work. Younger kids, elementary school-aged kids, they would bring their plastic bags in from home. We all used to have this giant bag full of plastic bags just stuffed under our counter, in the closet, or somewhere. And so they would bring in these bags full of bags, and we would pull them out and create this mountain of plastic trash in the middle of their classroom or the school gymnasium. And we use that to help us understand how many plastic bags are used daily. In our school in the city. You know, throughout the world. It was really, really powerful.
Carrie Ziegler 18:39
They cut and braided plastic bags, but they loved it. I must have taught 500 kids how to braid that winter. Some of them got so into it, they would just they wouldn’t stop they would have these long braids spread all the way across gymnasium floors. It was really incredible. So the whale was modeled after an actual whale that had washed up on shore in Seattle the previous year and that whale, and when the scientists did the necropsy, they found, amongst other things, they found a bunch of plastic bags in its stomach. That’s why we chose the gray whale. The whale was 32 feet long, about the size of a juvenile gray whale. This project was so impactful, because the students and the people who worked on it, only got to see the beginning of it.
Carrie Ziegler 19:31
But then I ensured that the whale was in a very public place when it was all completed. We unveiled the whale, if you will, at our annual Procession of the Species celebration. It was in this parade where 1000s upon 1000s of people got to see it and then it was on display in the Washington Center for the Performing Arts, and everyone was invited to come and see it. People got to see the impact of it. But the thing that’s really important about this project is that whales help shift public opinion in my county. There were actually council members who invited me to bring the the whale to their city council meetings to talk to their constituents about the importance of reducing the use of plastic bags. In part because of that project, all four of our local jurisdictions implemented a ban on plastic bags. That was incredibly powerful.
Carrie Ziegler 20:27
But you know what, it was more powerful than that. Some kids, particularly middle school kids, talked about how they felt personally responsible for that ban on plastic bags. That’s one of the things that collaborative art is so important for; it’s so powerful because it allows people to create something way larger than they ever could have on their own. And to be a part of something so much bigger and take ownership of it like those kids felt like they changed our government and did. When I think about collaborative art, they think about how it opens heart, how it breaks down barriers, and how it creates an opportunity for the people involved to have a story to tell about something that they are passionate about that can help them to connect with others and create change.
Peterson Toscano 21:26
That was Carrie Ziegler, an artist-activist, and so much more. Learn about her other projects, read her journal, and see videos on her website. That website is Carrieziggler.com Ziegler spelt Z I E G L E R. See our show notes for images of the well project. Visit CCL usa.org/radio.
Peterson Toscano 21:54
Now it’s time for the nerd corner hosted by Dana Nuccitelli citizen climates or research coordinator.
Dana Nuccitelli 22:02
Hi, I’m Dana Nuccitelli, CCL research coordinator, and this is the Nerd Corner.
Dana Nuccitelli 22:16
I’m here to highlight some interesting new climate research for the nerds out there and make it understandable for the nerd curious. In this episode, we consider the question: Is a carbon price still the best climate policy in a post-Inflation Reduction Act world?
Dana Nuccitelli 22:45
Research has long shown that putting a price on carbon pollution in combination with some other complimentary climate policies, cut emissions enough to meet America’s Paris commitments. That’s what studies were finding 10 years ago and five years ago, but what about today, Time keeps marching relentlessly forward, and in 2022, America passed its largest-ever climate bill in the Inflation Reduction Act or IRA. Since then, we nerds have been waiting for some researchers to evaluate how effective carbon price and other climate policies would be in today’s post-IRA 2024 world, and we finally got our wish.
Dana Nuccitelli 23:28
The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution brought together some top-notch economists to examine seven scenarios. Those scenarios centered mainly around four big climate policies. First, they looked at repealing or keeping the EPA’s various climate regulations. Second, they considered expanding or keeping or repealing the IRA. Third, they simulated implementing a clean electricity standard, requiring electrical utilities to get a certain percentage of their electricity from clean sources by a certain date. And fourth, they looked at what would happen if we put a modest price on carbon pollution. Expanding the IRA didn’t have much of an effect on climate pollution. Because the existing laws aren’t investing a lot of money in clean technologies. The clean electricity standard didn’t fare much better because it would only affect the power sector. But the clean energy tax credits in the IRA are already working to quickly decarbonize our electricity. But putting a price on carbon pollution would impact almost every sector of the economy. So, it had the biggest and most cost-effective impact on emissions. It turns out that a carbon price is still the single best climate policy.
Dana Nuccitelli 24:45
Overall, the study found that adding a modest carbon price on top of the IRA and EPA regulations would nearly meet America’s Paris commitments. It’s fair to say that adding clean energy permitting reform to maximize the eye Ra’s potential and implementing a more ambitious carbon price like that in CCL Staver bill, the Energy Innovation Act, would meet our goal of cutting America’s climate pollution in half by 2030. We know what to do now, so we just have to go out and make it happen. I’m Dana Nuccitelli. With the nerd corner. Thank you for being curious and for your commitment to climate progress. To join the discussion about climate science, technology, Economics, and Policy with CCL research team, check out the nerd corner at CCL usa.org/nerd-corner That CCL usa.org/nerd-corner. I hope to see you there.
Peterson Toscano 25:52
Thank you so much for that, Dana. If you have a question for Dana, email us radio at citizens climate.org. We will make sure he gets your message.
Peterson Toscano 26:03
Our good news story today is about many people talking about climate change. Climate communication expert Dr. Katharine Hayhoe has said no one does anything unless it feels important. And if no one talks about it, how important can it be? And quote, okay, challenge accepted. Last month, Citizens Climate Lobby asked volunteers nationwide to have open and honest conversations about climate change. Talk with friends, family and communities. Here is the good news. We achieved our goal of 25,000 climate conversations, we broke the silence about climate change, got practice talking about it and paved the way for action. When we talk about climate change with our friends and family, it becomes more real and relevant. And that makes it more likely that we can move from just talking to acting. That is one of many monthly actions that we do if you want to find out about these monthly actions visit CCL usa.org/action. And if you have good news you want to share in our program, email, radio at citizens climate.org. That’s radio at citizens climate.org.
Peterson Toscano 27:24
Hello, Horrace? Erica.?
Peterson Toscano 27:26
Hey, Peterson.
Peterson Toscano 27:28
Hey, I hope I didn’t interrupt you recording
Erica Valdez 27:30
No, we are all good. Okay, good.
Peterson Toscano 27:32
Well, I’m just finishing up the episode and wondering what’s happening next month, you and Horace are doing the entire episode from start to finish? What should we expect for episode 96.
Horace Mo 27:45
So I did an interview with Ann E Burg, and really entertaining and fully engaged interview about a newly published book, force of nature. And that book actually talks about Rachel Carson’s life, but it’s quite different from other books you would read about Rachel Carson, like the biography ones. I’m so excited to have in our upcoming episode 96. Excellent.
Peterson Toscano 28:11
And what about you, Erica? What do you bring to the episode?
Erica Valdez 28:15
I cover a story about fossil fuel divestment, and how students are organizing and empowering themselves, to get their institutions to divest from fossil fuels. I happen to be a part of my group at my university. So I bring some of their voices into the story as well.
Peterson Toscano 28:30
Wow, that’s great. You’re totally immersed in the story, like an embedded journalist.
Erica Valdez 28:35
Yeah. Very exciting.
Peterson Toscano 28:39
I know that you, too, are working on personal stories that have nothing to do with climate change.
Horace Mo 28:45
Yeah. Thanks to you. Peterson, actually. it’s also my first time writing a personal story in a very creative way. I wrote something about my high school experience, which greatly impacted me even now. And I think it will actually impact me for the rest of my lifetime. It’s a story, you know, simply about friendship and assimilating into a new community, which I was not familiar with at first. And then I kind of went through a personal growth period, and then got too used to it. I mean, I was grateful that I can kind of relate that personal story to climate change. But I will tell you how I did that. Unless you listen to our upcoming episodes. So you should sign up for that. And stay alert.
Peterson Toscano 29:32
Nice teaser. And Erica, your personal story is also about friendship and high school.
Erica Valdez 29:38
Yeah, my stories actually have a lot of common themes. In my story, I talk about how I tried to support my friend through a very difficult time in her life. I won’t tell you what it’s about, but it is about being in a new place and supporting those around you while they’re going through that, and how that connects to climate change as well in ways that I couldn’t even see before.
Peterson Toscano 30:00
I’m excited about this, because here at Citizens Climate Radio, we’ve been talking about telling new types of climate stories that are really out of the box. Totally different ways of doing this. And this is the time, so I’m so glad you’re gonna model this for folks with a story that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with climate change. And then you will apply the magical climate hibbott, which I’m super excited about. So that’ll happen in an upcoming episode. But next month for episode 96. We’re going to hear about Rachel Carson, we’re going to hear about divestment and you’re going to run the whole show. I’m so excited about it. Thanks so much for doing that.
Erica Valdez 30:39
Yeah, we’re excited too.
Horace Mo 30:40
Yeah, we’re ready to get started.
Peterson Toscano 30:43
I will let you get back to work.
Horace Mo 30:44
Thanks for showing up.
Peterson Toscano 30:52
We would love to hear from you about your experiences, telling climate stories, and how you have used imagination to communicate climate change. Or maybe you just want to say hi; podcasting can be lonely, so it’s nice. Getting a high every now and then. We want to hear from you. Feel free to send us an email radio at citizensclimate.org And you can also text or leave a voicemail at the following number: 619-512-9646. Listen in next month and you might just hear your message, send a text or leave a voicemail at 619-512-9646.
Peterson Toscano 31:40
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Peterson Toscano 32:13
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Peterson Toscano 32:56
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Peterson Toscano 33:15
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The post Episode 95: Rob Hopkins on the Role of Imagination in Climate Change Solutions appeared first on Citizens' Climate Lobby.
Episode 95: Rob Hopkins on the Role of Imagination in Climate Change Solutions
Drought and heatwaves occurring together – known as “compound” events – have “surged” across the world since the early 2000s, a new study shows.
Compound drought and heat events (CDHEs) can have devastating effects, creating the ideal conditions for intense wildfires, such as Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2019-20 where bushfires burned 24m hectares and killed 33 people.
The research, published in Science Advances, finds that the increase in CDHEs is predominantly being driven by events that start with a heatwave.
The global area affected by such “heatwave-led” compound events has more than doubled between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, the study says.
The rapid increase in these events over the last 23 years cannot be explained solely by global warming, the authors note.
Since the late 1990s, feedbacks between the land and the atmosphere have become stronger, making heatwaves more likely to trigger drought conditions, they explain.
One of the study authors tells Carbon Brief that societies must pay greater attention to compound events, which can “cause severe impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and society”.
Compound events
CDHEs are extreme weather events where drought and heatwave conditions occur simultaneously – or shortly after each other – in the same region.
These events are often triggered by large-scale weather patterns, such as “blocking” highs, which can produce “prolonged” hot and dry conditions, according to the study.
Prof Sang-Wook Yeh is one of the study authors and a professor at the Ewha Womans University in South Korea. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When heatwaves and droughts occur together, the two hazards reinforce each other through land-atmosphere interactions. This amplifies surface heating and soil moisture deficits, making compound events more intense and damaging than single hazards.”
CDHEs can begin with either a heatwave or a drought.
The sequence of these extremes is important, the study says, as they have different drivers and impacts.
For example, in a CDHE where the heatwave was the precursor, increased direct sunshine causes more moisture loss from soils and plants, leading to a drought.
Conversely, in an event where the drought was the precursor, the lack of soil moisture means that less of the sun’s energy goes into evaporation and more goes into warming the Earth’s surface. This produces favourable conditions for heatwaves.
The study shows that the majority of CDHEs globally start out as a drought.
In recent years, there has been increasing focus on these events due to the devastating impact they have on agriculture, ecosystems and public health.
In Russia in the summer of 2010, a compound drought-heatwave event – and the associated wildfires – caused the death of nearly 55,000 people, the study notes.
The record-breaking Pacific north-west “heat dome” in 2021 triggered extreme drought conditions that caused “significant declines” in wheat yields, as well as in barley, canola and fruit production in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, says the study.
Increasing events
To assess how CDHEs are changing, the researchers use daily reanalysis data to identify droughts and heatwaves events. (Reanalysis data combines past observations with climate models to create a historical climate record.) Then, using an algorithm, they analyse how these events overlap in both time and space.
The study covers the period from 1980 to 2023 and the world’s land surface, excluding polar regions where CDHEs are rare.
The research finds that the area of land affected by CDHEs has “increased substantially” since the early 2000s.
Heatwave-led events have been the main contributor to this increase, the study says, with their spatial extent rising 110% between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, compared to a 59% increase for drought-led events.
The map below shows the global distribution of CDHEs over 1980-2023. The charts show the percentage of the land surface affected by a heatwave-led CDHE (red) or a drought-led CDHE (yellow) in a given year (left) and relative increase in each CDHE type (right).
The study finds that CDHEs have occurred most frequently in northern South America, the southern US, eastern Europe, central Africa and south Asia.
Threshold passed
The authors explain that the increase in heatwave-led CDHEs is related to rising global temperatures, but that this does not tell the whole story.
In the earlier 22-year period of 1980-2001, the study finds that the spatial extent of heatwave-led CDHEs rises by 1.6% per 1C of global temperature rise. For the more-recent period of 2022-23, this increases “nearly eightfold” to 13.1%.
The change suggests that the rapid increase in the heatwave-led CDHEs occurred after the global average temperature “surpasse[d] a certain temperature threshold”, the paper says.
This threshold is an absolute global average temperature of 14.3C, the authors estimate (based on an 11-year average), which the world passed around the year 2000.
Investigating the recent surge in heatwave-leading CDHEs further, the researchers find a “regime shift” in land-atmosphere dynamics “toward a persistently intensified state after the late 1990s”.
In other words, the way that drier soils drive higher surface temperatures, and vice versa, is becoming stronger, resulting in more heatwave-led compound events.
Daily data
The research has some advantages over other previous studies, Yeh says. For instance, the new work uses daily estimations of CDHEs, compared to monthly data used in past research. This is “important for capturing the detailed occurrence” of these events, says Yeh.
He adds that another advantage of their study is that it distinguishes the sequence of droughts and heatwaves, which allows them to “better understand the differences” in the characteristics of CDHEs.
Dr Meryem Tanarhte is a climate scientist at the University Hassan II in Morocco, and Dr Ruth Cerezo Mota is a climatologist and a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both scientists, who were not involved in the study, agree that the daily estimations give a clearer picture of how CDHEs are changing.
Cerezo-Mota adds that another major contribution of the study is its global focus. She tells Carbon Brief that in some regions, such as Mexico and Africa, there is a lack of studies on CDHEs:
“Not because the events do not occur, but perhaps because [these regions] do not have all the data or the expertise to do so.”
However, she notes that the reanalysis data used by the study does have limitations with how it represents rainfall in some parts of the world.
Compound impacts
The study notes that if CDHEs continue to intensify – particularly events where heatwaves are the precursors – they could drive declining crop productivity, increased wildfire frequency and severe public health crises.
These impacts could be “much more rapid and severe as global warming continues”, Yeh tells Carbon Brief.
Tanarhte notes that these events can be forecasted up to 10 days ahead in many regions. Furthermore, she says, the strongest impacts can be prevented “through preparedness and adaptation”, including through “water management for agriculture, heatwave mitigation measures and wildfire mitigation”.
The study recommends reassessing current risk management strategies for these compound events. It also suggests incorporating the sequences of drought and heatwaves into compound event analysis frameworks “to enhance climate risk management”.
Cerezo-Mota says that it is clear that the world needs to be prepared for the increased occurrence of these events. She tells Carbon Brief:
“These [risk assessments and strategies] need to be carried out at the local level to understand the complexities of each region.”
The post Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 6 March 2026: Iran energy crisis | China climate plan | Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ wind turbine
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Energy crisis
ENERGY SPIKE: US-Israeli attacks on Iran and subsequent counterattacks across the Middle East have sent energy prices “soaring”, according to Reuters. The newswire reported that the region “accounts for just under a third of global oil production and almost a fifth of gas”. The Guardian noted that shipping traffic through the strait of Hormuz, which normally ferries 20% of the world’s oil, “all but ground to a halt”. The Financial Times reported that attacks by Iran on Middle East energy facilities – notably in Qatar – triggered the “biggest rise in gas prices since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine”.
‘RISK’ AND ‘BENEFITS’: Bloomberg reported on increases in diesel prices in Europe and the US, speculating that rising fuel costs could be “a risk for president Donald Trump”. US gas producers are “poised to benefit from the big disruption in global supply”, according to CNBC. Indian government sources told the Economic Times that Russia is prepared to “fulfil India’s energy demands”. China Daily quoted experts who said “China’s energy security remains fundamentally unshaken”, thanks to “emergency stockpiles and a wide array of import channels”.
‘ESSENTIAL’ RENEWABLES: Energy analysts said governments should cut their fossil-fuel reliance by investing in renewables, “rather than just seeking non-Gulf oil and gas suppliers”, reported Climate Home News. This message was echoed by UK business secretary Peter Kyle, who said “doubling down on renewables” was “essential” amid “regional instability”, according to the Daily Telegraph.
China’s climate plan
PEAK COAL?: China has set out its next “five-year plan” at the annual “two sessions” meeting of the National People’s Congress, including its climate strategy out to 2030, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. The plan called for China to cut its carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 17% from 2026 to 2030, which “may allow for continued increase in emissions given the rate of GDP growth”, reported Reuters. The newswire added that the plan also had targets to reach peak coal in the next five years and replace 30m tonnes per year of coal with renewables.
ACTIVE YET PRUDENT: Bloomberg described the new plan as “cautious”, stating that it “frustrat[es] hopes for tighter policy that would drive the nation to peak carbon emissions well before president Xi Jinping’s 2030 deadline”. Carbon Brief has just published an in-depth analysis of the plan. China Daily reported that the strategy “highlights measures to promote the climate targets of peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030”, which China said it would work towards “actively yet prudently”.
Around the world
- EU RULES: The European Commission has proposed new “made in Europe” rules to support domestic low-carbon industries, “against fierce competition from China”, reported Agence France-Presse. Carbon Brief examined what it means for climate efforts.
- RECORD HEAT: The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said there is a 50-60% chance that the El Niño weather pattern could return this year, amplifying the effect of global warming and potentially driving temperatures to “record highs”, according to Euronews.
- FLAGSHIP FUND: The African Development Bank’s “flagship clean energy fund” plans to more than double its financing to $2.5bn for African renewables over the next two years, reported the Associated Press.
- NO WITHDRAWAL: Vanuatu has defied US efforts to force the Pacific-island nation to drop a UN draft resolution calling on the world to implement a landmark International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on climate, according to the Guardian.
98
The number of nations that submitted their national reports on tackling nature loss to the UN on time – just half of the 196 countries that are part of the UN biodiversity treaty – according to analysis by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- Sea levels are already “much higher than assumed” in most assessments of the threat posed by sea-level rise, due to “inadequate” modelling assumptions | Nature
- Accelerating human-caused global warming could see the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C limit crossed before 2030 | Geophysical Research Letters covered by Carbon Brief
- Future “super El Niño events” could “significantly lower” solar power generation due to a reduction in solar irradiance in key regions, such as California and east China | Communications Earth & Environment
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
UK greenhouse gas emissions in 2025 fell to 54% below 1990 levels, the baseline year for its legally binding climate goals, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Over the same period, data from the World Bank shows that the UK’s economy has expanded by 95%, meaning that emissions have been decoupling from growth.
Spotlight
Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ community wind turbine
Following the recent launch of the UK government’s local power plan, Carbon Brief visits one of the country’s community-energy success stories.
The Lawrence Weston housing estate is set apart from the main city of Bristol, wedged between the tree-lined grounds of a stately home and a sprawl of warehouses and waste incinerators. It is one of the most deprived areas in the city.
Yet, just across the M5 motorway stands a structure that has brought the spoils of the energy transition directly to this historically forgotten estate – a 4.2 megawatt (MW) wind turbine.
The turbine is owned by local charity Ambition Lawrence Weston and all the profits from its electricity sales – around £100,000 a year – go to the community. In the UK’s local power plan, it was singled out by energy secretary Ed Miliband as a “pioneering” project.
‘Sustainable income’
On a recent visit to the estate by Carbon Brief, Ambition Lawrence Weston’s development manager, Mark Pepper, rattled off the story behind the wind turbine.
In 2012, Pepper and his team were approached by the Bristol Energy Cooperative with a chance to get a slice of the income from a new solar farm. They jumped at the opportunity.
“Austerity measures were kicking in at the time,” Pepper told Carbon Brief. “We needed to generate an income. Our own, sustainable income.”
With the solar farm proving to be a success, the team started to explore other opportunities. This began a decade-long process that saw them navigate the Conservative government’s “ban” on onshore wind, raise £5.5m in funding and, ultimately, erect the turbine in 2023.
Today, the turbine generates electricity equivalent to Lawrence Weston’s 3,000 households and will save 87,600 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) over its lifetime.
‘Climate by stealth’
Ambition Lawrence Weston’s hub is at the heart of the estate and the list of activities on offer is seemingly endless: birthday parties, kickboxing, a library, woodworking, help with employment and even a pop-up veterinary clinic. All supported, Pepper said, with the help of a steady income from community-owned energy.
The centre itself is kitted out with solar panels, heat pumps and electric-vehicle charging points, making it a living advertisement for the net-zero transition. Pepper noted that the organisation has also helped people with energy costs amid surging global gas prices.
Gesturing to the England flags dangling limply on lamp posts visible from the kitchen window, he said:
“There’s a bit of resentment around immigration and scarcity of materials and provision, so we’re trying to do our bit around community cohesion.”
This includes supper clubs and an interfaith grand iftar during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Anti-immigration sentiment in the UK has often gone hand-in-hand with opposition to climate action. Right-wing politicians and media outlets promote the idea that net-zero policies will cost people a lot of money – and these ideas have cut through with the public.
Pepper told Carbon Brief he is sympathetic to people’s worries about costs and stressed that community energy is the perfect way to win people over:
“I think the only way you can change that is if, instead of being passive consumers…communities are like us and they’re generating an income to offset that.”
From the outset, Pepper stressed that “we weren’t that concerned about climate because we had other, bigger pressures”, adding:
“But, in time, we’ve delivered climate by stealth.”
Watch, read, listen
OIL WATCH: The Guardian has published a “visual guide” with charts and videos showing how the “escalating Iran conflict is driving up oil and gas prices”.
MURDER IN HONDURAS: Ten years on from the murder of Indigenous environmental justice advocate Berta Cáceres, Drilled asked why Honduras is still so dangerous for environmental activists.
TALKING WEATHER: A new film, narrated by actor Michael Sheen and titled You Told Us To Talk About the Weather, aimed to promote conversation about climate change with a blend of “poetry, folk horror and climate storytelling”.
Coming up
- 8 March: Colombia parliamentary election
- 9-19 March: 31st Annual Session of the International Seabed Authority, Kingston, Jamaica
- 11 March: UN Environment Programme state of finance for nature 2026 report launch
Pick of the jobs
- London School of Economics and Political Science, fellow in the social science of sustainability | Salary: £43,277-£51,714. Location: London
- NORCAP, innovative climate finance expert | Salary: Unknown. Location: Kyiv, Ukraine
- WBHM, environmental reporter | Salary: $50,050-$81,330. Location: Birmingham, Alabama, US
- Climate Cabinet, data engineer | Salary: hourly rate of $60-$120 per hour. Location: Remote anywhere in the US
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 6 March 2026: Iran energy crisis | China climate plan | Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ wind turbine appeared first on Carbon Brief.
China’s leadership has published a draft of its 15th five-year plan setting the strategic direction for the nation out to 2030, including support for clean energy and energy security.
The plan sets a target to cut China’s “carbon intensity” by 17% over the five years from 2026-30, but also changes the basis for calculating this key climate metric.
The plan continues to signal support for China’s clean-energy buildout and, in general, contains no major departures from the country’s current approach to the energy transition.
The government reaffirms support for several clean-energy industries, ranging from solar and electric vehicles (EVs) through to hydrogen and “new-energy” storage.
The plan also emphasises China’s willingness to steer climate governance and be seen as a provider of “global public goods”, in the form of affordable clean-energy technologies.
However, while the document says it will “promote the peaking” of coal and oil use, it does not set out a timeline and continues to call for the “clean and efficient” use of coal.
This shows that tensions remain between China’s climate goals and its focus on energy security, leading some analysts to raise concerns about its carbon-cutting ambition.
Below, Carbon Brief outlines the key climate change and energy aspects of the plan, including targets for carbon intensity, non-fossil energy and forestry.
Note: this article is based on a draft published on 5 March and will be updated if any significant changes are made in the final version of the plan, due to be released at the close next week of the “two sessions” meeting taking place in Beijing.
- What is China’s 15th five-year plan?
- What does the plan say about China’s climate action?
- What is China’s new CO2 intensity target?
- Does the plan encourage further clean-energy additions?
- What does the plan signal about coal?
- How will China approach global climate governance in the next five years?
- What else does the plan cover?
What is China’s 15th five-year plan?
Five-year plans are one of the most important documents in China’s political system.
Addressing everything from economic strategy to climate policy, they outline the planned direction for China’s socio-economic development in a five-year period. The 15th five-year plan covers 2026-30.
These plans include several “main goals”. These are largely quantitative indicators that are seen as particularly important to achieve and which provide a foundation for subsequent policies during the five-year period.
The table below outlines some of the key “main goals” from the draft 15th five-year plan.
| Category | Indicator | Indicator in 2025 | Target by 2030 | Cumulative target over 2026-2030 | Characteristic |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Economic development | Gross domestic product (GDP) growth (%) | 5 | Maintained within a reasonable range and proposed annually as appropriate. | Anticipatory | |
| ‘Green and low-carbon | Reduction in CO2 emissions per unit of GDP (%) | 17.7 | 17 | Binding | |
| Share of non-fossil energy in total energy consumption (%) | 21.7 | 25 | Binding | ||
| Security guarantee | Comprehensive energy production capacity (100m tonnes of standard coal equivalent) |
51.3 | 58 | Binding |
Select list of targets highlighted in the “main goals” section of the draft 15th five-year plan. Source: Draft 15th five-year plan.
Since the 12th five-year plan, covering 2011-2015, these “main goals” have included energy intensity and carbon intensity as two of five key indicators for “green ecology”.
The previous five-year plan, which ran from 2021-2025, introduced the idea of an absolute “cap” on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, although it did not provide an explicit figure in the document. This has been subsequently addressed by a policy on the “dual-control of carbon” issued in 2024.
The latest plan removes the energy-intensity goal and elevates the carbon-intensity goal, but does not set an absolute cap on emissions (see below).
It covers the years until 2030, before which China has pledged to peak its carbon emissions. (Analysis for Carbon Brief found that emissions have been “flat or falling” since March 2024.)
The plans are released at the two sessions, an annual gathering of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). This year, it runs from 4-12 March.
The plans are often relatively high-level, with subsequent topic-specific five-year plans providing more concrete policy guidance.
Policymakers at the National Energy Agency (NEA) have indicated that in the coming years they will release five sector-specific plans for 2026-2030, covering topics such as the “new energy system”, electricity and renewable energy.
There may also be specific five-year plans covering carbon emissions and environmental protection, as well as the coal and nuclear sectors, according to analysts.
Other documents published during the two sessions include an annual government work report, which outlines key targets and policies for the year ahead.
The gathering is attended by thousands of deputies – delegates from across central and local governments, as well as Chinese Communist party members, members of other political parties, academics, industry leaders and other prominent figures.
What does the plan say about China’s climate action?
Achieving China’s climate targets will remain a key driver of the country’s policies in the next five years, according to the draft 15th five-year plan.
It lists the “acceleration” of China’s energy transition as a “major achievement” in the 14th five-year plan period (2021-2025), noting especially how clean-power capacity had overtaken fossil fuels.
The draft says China will “actively and steadily advance and achieve carbon peaking”, with policymakers continuing to strike a balance between building a “green economy” and ensuring stability.
Climate and environment continues to receive its own chapter in the plan. However, the framing and content of this chapter has shifted subtly compared with previous editions, as shown in the table below. For example, unlike previous plans, the first section of this chapter focuses on China’s goal to peak emissions.
| 11th five-year plan (2006-2010) | 12th five-year plan (2011-2015) | 13th five-year plan (2016-2020) | 14th five-year plan (2021-2025) | 15th five-year plan (2026-2030) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chapter title | Part 6: Build a resource-efficient and environmentally-friendly society | Part 6: Green development, building a resource-efficient and environmentally friendly society | Part 10: Ecosystems and the environment | Part 11: Promote green development and facilitate the harmonious coexistence of people and nature | Part 13: Accelerating the comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development to build a beautiful China |
| Sections | Developing a circular economy | Actively respond to global climate change | Accelerate the development of functional zones | Improve the quality and stability of ecosystems | Actively and steadily advancing and achieving carbon peaking |
| Protecting and restoring natural ecosystems | Strengthen resource conservation and management | Promote economical and intensive resource use | Continue to improve environmental quality | Continuously improving environmental quality | |
| Strengthening environmental protection | Vigorously develop the circular economy | Step up comprehensive environmental governance | Accelerate the green transformation of the development model | Enhancing the diversity, stability, and sustainability of ecosystems | |
| Enhancing resource management | Strengthen environmental protection efforts | Intensify ecological conservation and restoration | Accelerating the formation of green production and lifestyles | ||
| Rational utilisation of marine and climate resources | Promoting ecological conservation and restoration | Respond to global climate change | |||
| Strengthen the development of water conservancy and disaster prevention and mitigation systems | Improve mechanisms for ensuring ecological security | ||||
| Develop green and environmentally-friendly industries |
Title and main sections of the climate and environment-focused chapters in the last five five-year plans. Source: China’s 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th five-year plans.
The climate and environment chapter in the latest plan calls for China to “balance [economic] development and emission reduction” and “ensure the timely achievement of carbon peak targets”.
Under the plan, China will “continue to pursue” its established direction and objectives on climate, Prof Li Zheng, dean of the Tsinghua University Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development (ICCSD), tells Carbon Brief.
What is China’s new CO2 intensity target?
In the lead-up to the release of the plan, analysts were keenly watching for signals around China’s adoption of a system for the “dual-control of carbon”.
This would combine the existing targets for carbon intensity – the CO2 emissions per unit of GDP – with a new cap on China’s total carbon emissions. This would mark a dramatic step for the country, which has never before set itself a binding cap on total emissions.
Policymakers had said last year that this framework would come into effect during the 15th five-year plan period, replacing the previous system for the “dual-control of energy”.
However, the draft 15th five-year plan does not offer further details on when or how both parts of the dual-control of carbon system will be implemented. Instead, it continues to focus on carbon intensity targets alone.
Looking back at the previous five-year plan period, the latest document says China had achieved a carbon-intensity reduction of 17.7%, just shy of its 18% goal.
This is in contrast with calculations by Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), which had suggested that China had only cut its carbon intensity by 12% over the past five years.
At the time it was set in 2021, the 18% target had been seen as achievable, with analysts telling Carbon Brief that they expected China to realise reductions of 20% or more.
However, the government had fallen behind on meeting the target.
Last year, ecology and environment minister Huang Runqiu attributed this to the Covid-19 pandemic, extreme weather and trade tensions. He said that China, nevertheless, remained “broadly” on track to meet its 2030 international climate pledge of reducing carbon intensity by more than 65% from 2005 levels.
Myllyvirta tells Carbon Brief that the newly reported figure showing a carbon-intensity reduction of 17.7% is likely due to an “opportunistic” methodological revision. The new methodology now includes industrial process emissions – such as cement and chemicals – as well as the energy sector.
(This is not the first time China has redefined a target, with regulators changing the methodology for energy intensity in 2023.)
For the next five years, the plan sets a target to reduce carbon intensity by 17%, slightly below the previous goal.
However, the change in methodology means that this leaves space for China’s overall emissions to rise by “3-6% over the next five years”, says Myllyvirta. In contrast, he adds that the original methodology would have required a 2% fall in absolute carbon emissions by 2030.
The dashed lines in the chart below show China’s targets for reducing carbon intensity during the 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th five-year periods, while the bars show what was achieved under the old (dark blue) and new (light blue) methodology.
The carbon-intensity target is the “clearest signal of Beijing’s climate ambition”, says Li Shuo, director at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s (ASPI) China climate hub.
It also links directly to China’s international pledge – made in 2021 – to cut its carbon intensity to more than 65% below 2005 levels by 2030.
To meet this pledge under the original carbon-intensity methodology, China would have needed to set a target of a 23% reduction within the 15th five-year plan period. However, the country’s more recent 2035 international climate pledge, released last year, did not include a carbon-intensity target.
As such, ASPI’s Li interprets the carbon-intensity target in the draft 15th five-year plan as a “quiet recalibration” that signals “how difficult the original 2030 goal has become”.
Furthermore, the 15th five-year plan does not set an absolute emissions cap.
This leaves “significant ambiguity” over China’s climate plans, says campaign group 350 in a press statement reacting to the draft plan. It explains:
“The plan was widely expected to mark a clearer transition from carbon-intensity targets toward absolute emissions reductions…[but instead] leaves significant ambiguity about how China will translate record renewable deployment into sustained emissions cuts.”
Myllyvirta tells Carbon Brief that this represents a “continuation” of the government’s focus on scaling up clean-energy supply while avoiding setting “strong measurable emission targets”.
He says that he would still expect to see absolute caps being set for power and industrial sectors covered by China’s emissions trading scheme (ETS). In addition, he thinks that an overall absolute emissions cap may still be published later in the five-year period.
Despite the fact that it has yet to be fully implemented, the switch from dual-control of energy to dual-control of carbon represents a “major policy evolution”, Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE), tells Carbon Brief. He says that it will allow China to “provide more flexibility for renewable energy expansion while tightening the net on fossil-fuel reliance”.
Does the plan encourage further clean-energy additions?
“How quickly carbon intensity is reduced largely depends on how much renewable energy can be supplied,” says Yao Zhe, global policy advisor at Greenpeace East Asia, in a statement.
The five-year plan continues to call for China’s development of a “new energy system that is clean, low-carbon, safe and efficient” by 2030, with continued additions of “wind, solar, hydro and nuclear power”.
In line with China’s international pledge, it sets a target for raising the share of non-fossil energy in total energy consumption to 25% by 2030, up from just under 21.7% in 2025.
The development of “green factories” and “zero-carbon [industrial] parks” has been central to many local governments’ strategies for meeting the non-fossil energy target, according to industry news outlet BJX News. A call to build more of these zero-carbon industrial parks is listed in the five-year plan.
Prof Pan Jiahua, dean of Beijing University of Technology’s Institute of Ecological Civilization, tells Carbon Brief that expanding demand for clean energy through mechanisms such as “green factories” represents an increasingly “bottom-up” and “market-oriented” approach to the energy transition, which will leave “no place for fossil fuels”.
He adds that he is “very much sure that China’s zero-carbon process is being accelerated and fossil fuels are being driven out of the market”, pointing to the rapid adoption of EVs.
The plan says that China will aim to double “non-fossil energy” in 10 years – although it does not clarify whether this means their installed capacity or electricity generation, or what the exact starting year would be.
Research has shown that doubling wind and solar capacity in China between 2025-2035 would be “consistent” with aims to limit global warming to 2C.
While the language “certainly” pushes for greater additions of renewable energy, Yao tells Carbon Brief, it is too “opaque” to be a “direct indication” of the government’s plans for renewable additions.
She adds that “grid stability and healthy, orderly competition” is a higher priority for policymakers than guaranteeing a certain level of capacity additions.
China continues to place emphasis on the need for large-scale clean-energy “bases” and cross-regional power transmission.
The plan says China must develop “clean-energy bases…in the three northern regions” and “integrated hydro-wind-solar complexes” in south-west China.
It specifically encourages construction of “large-scale wind and solar” power bases in desert regions “primarily” for cross-regional power transmission, as well as “major hydropower” projects, including the Yarlung Tsangpo dam in Tibet.
As such, the country should construct “power-transmission corridors” with the capacity to send 420 gigawatts (GW) of electricity from clean-energy bases in western provinces to energy-hungry eastern provinces by 2030, the plan says.
State Grid, China’s largest grid operator, plans to install “another 15 ultra-high voltage [UHV] transmission lines” by 2030, reports Reuters, up from the 45 UHV lines built by last year.
Below are two maps illustrating the interlinkages between clean-energy bases in China in the 15th (top) and 14th (bottom) five-year plan periods.
The yellow dotted areas represent clean energy bases, while the arrows represent cross-regional power transmission. The blue wind-turbine icons represent offshore windfarms and the red cooling tower icons represent coastal nuclear plants.
The 15th five-year plan map shows a consistent approach to the 2021-2025 period. As well as power being transmitted from west to east, China plans for more power to be sent to southern provinces from clean-energy bases in the north-west, while clean-energy bases in the north-east supply China’s eastern coast.
It also maps out “mutual assistance” schemes for power grids in neighbouring provinces.
Offshore wind power should reach 100GW by 2030, while nuclear power should rise to 110GW, according to the plan.
What does the plan signal about coal?
The increased emphasis on grid infrastructure in the draft 15th five-year plan reflects growing concerns from energy planning officials around ensuring China’s energy supply.
Ren Yuzhi, director of the NEA’s development and planning department, wrote ahead of the plan’s release that the “continuous expansion” of China’s energy system has “dramatically increased its complexity”.
He said the NEA felt there was an “urgent need” to enhance the “secure and reliable” replacement of fossil-fuel power with new energy sources, as well as to ensure the system’s “ability to absorb them”.
Meanwhile, broader concerns around energy security have heightened calls for coal capacity to remain in the system as a “ballast stone”.
The plan continues to support the “clean and efficient utilisation of fossil fuels” and does not mention either a cap or peaking timeline for coal consumption.
Xi had previously told fellow world leaders that China would “strictly control” coal-fired power and phase down coal consumption in the 15th five-year plan period.
The “geopolitical situation is increasing energy security concerns” at all levels of government, said the Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress in a note responding to the draft plan, adding that this was creating “uncertainty over coal reduction”.
Ahead of its publication, there were questions around whether the plan would set a peaking deadline for oil and coal. An article posted by state news agency Xinhua last month, examining recommendations for the plan from top policymakers, stated that coal consumption would plateau from “around 2027”, while oil would peak “around 2026”.
However, the plan does not lay out exact years by which the two fossil fuels should peak, only saying that China will “promote the peaking of coal and oil consumption”.
There are similarly no mentions of phasing out coal in general, in line with existing policy.
Nevertheless, there is a heavy emphasis on retrofitting coal-fired power plants. The plan calls for the establishment of “demonstration projects” for coal-plant retrofitting, such as through co-firing with biomass or “green ammonia”.
Such retrofitting could incentivise lower utilisation of coal plants – and thus lower emissions – if they are used to flexibly meet peaks in demand and to cover gaps in clean-energy output, instead of providing a steady and significant share of generation.
The plan also calls for officials to “fully implement low-carbon retrofitting projects for coal-chemical industries”, which have been a notable source of emissions growth in the past year.
However, the coal-chemicals sector will likely remain a key source of demand for China’s coal mining industry, with coal-to-oil and coal-to-gas bases listed as a “key area” for enhancing the country’s “security capabilities”.
Meanwhile, coal-fired boilers and industrial kilns in the paper industry, food processing and textiles should be replaced with “clean” alternatives to the equivalent of 30m tonnes of coal consumption per year, it says.
“China continues to scale up clean energy at an extraordinary pace, but the plan still avoids committing to strong measurable constraints on emissions or fossil fuel use”, says Joseph Dellatte, head of energy and climate studies at the Institut Montaigne. He adds:
“The logic remains supply-driven: deploy massive amounts of clean energy and assume emissions will eventually decline.”
How will China approach global climate governance in the next five years?
Meanwhile, clean-energy technologies continue to play a role in upgrading China’s economy, with several “new energy” sectors listed as key to its industrial policy.
Named sectors include smart EVs, “new solar cells”, new-energy storage, hydrogen and nuclear fusion energy.
“China’s clean-technology development – rather than traditional administrative climate controls – is increasingly becoming the primary driver of emissions reduction,” says ASPI’s Li. He adds that strengthening China’s clean-energy sectors means “more closely aligning Beijing’s economic ambitions with its climate objectives”.
Analysis for Carbon Brief shows that clean energy drove more than a third of China’s GDP growth in 2025, representing around 11% of China’s whole economy.
The continued support for these sectors in the draft five-year plan comes as the EU outlined its own measures intended to limit China’s hold on clean-energy industries, driven by accusations of “unfair competition” from Chinese firms.
China is unlikely to crack down on clean-tech production capacity, Dr Rebecca Nadin, director of the Centre for Geopolitics of Change at ODI Global, tells Carbon Brief. She says:
“Beijing is treating overcapacity in solar and smart EVs as a strategic choice, not a policy error…and is prepared to pour investment into these sectors to cement global market share, jobs and technological leverage.”
Dellatte echoes these comments, noting that it is “striking” that the plan “barely addresses the issue of industrial overcapacity in clean technologies”, with the focus firmly on “scaling production and deployment”.
At the same time, China is actively positioning itself to be a prominent voice in climate diplomacy and a champion of proactive climate action.
This is clear from the first line in a section on providing “global public goods”. It says:
“As a responsible major country, China will play a more active role in addressing global challenges such as climate change.”
The plan notes that China will “actively participate in and steer [引领] global climate governance”, in line with the principle of “common,but differentiated responsibilities”.
This echoes similar language from last year’s government work report, Yao tells Carbon Brief, demonstrating a “clear willingness” to guide global negotiations. But she notes that this “remains an aspiration that’s yet to be made concrete”. She adds:
“China has always favored collective leadership, so its vision of leadership is never a lone one.”
The country will “deepen south-south cooperation on climate change”, the plan says. In an earlier section on “opening up”, it also notes that China will explore “new avenues for collaboration in green development” with global partners as part of its “Belt and Road Initiative”.
China is “doubling down” on a narrative that it is a “responsible major power” and “champion of south-south climate cooperation”, Nadin says, such as by “presenting its clean‑tech exports and finance as global public goods”. She says:
“China will arrive at future COPs casting itself as the indispensable climate leader for the global south…even though its new five‑year plan still puts growth, energy security and coal ahead of faster emissions cuts at home.”
What else does the plan cover?
The impact of extreme weather – particularly floods – remains a key concern in the plan.
China must “refine” its climate adaptation framework and “enhance its resilience to climate change, particularly extreme-weather events”, it says.
China also aims to “strengthen construction of a national water network” over the next five years in order to help prevent floods and droughts.
An article published a few days before the plan in the state-run newspaper China Daily noted that, “as global warming intensifies, extreme weather events – including torrential rains, severe convective storms, and typhoons – have become more frequent, widespread and severe”.
The plan also touches on critical minerals used for low-carbon technologies. These will likely remain a geopolitical flashpoint, with China saying it will focus during the next five years on “intensifying” exploration and “establishing” a reserve for critical minerals. This reserve will focus on “scarce” energy minerals and critical minerals, as well as other “advantageous mineral resources”.
Dellatte says that this could mean the “competition in the energy transition will increasingly be about control over mineral supply chains”.
Other low-carbon policies listed in the five-year plan include expanding coverage of China’s mandatory carbon market and further developing its voluntary carbon market.
China will “strengthen monitoring and control” of non-CO2 greenhouse gases, the plan says, as well as implementing projects “targeting methane, nitrous oxide and hydrofluorocarbons” in sectors such as coal mining, agriculture and chemicals.
This will create “capacity” for reducing emissions by 30m tonnes of CO2 equivalent, it adds.
Meanwhile, China will develop rules for carbon footprint accounting and push for internationally recognised accounting standards.
It will enhance reform of power markets over the next five years and improve the trading mechanism for green electricity certificates.
It will also “promote” adoption of low-carbon lifestyles and decarbonisation of transport, as well as working to advance electrification of freight and shipping.
The post Q&A: What does China’s 15th ‘five-year plan’ mean for climate change? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: What does China’s 15th ‘five-year plan’ mean for climate change?
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