In 2024, the world is facing one of the most volatile geopolitical outlooks in decades.
More than 50 countries, accounting for half of the global population, are going to the polls, with high levels of political uncertainty across many of the world’s largest economies.
Additionally, ongoing conflicts, extreme weather events, trade disputes and resource competition are contributing to geopolitical volatility.
With the world nearly half way through a “critical decade” for climate action, overcoming geopolitical risks in order to start rapidly cutting emissions is paramount to limiting global warming.
Carbon Brief has asked a range of scientists, policy experts and campaigners from around the world what they think the biggest geopolitical risks to climate action will be in 2024.
These are their responses, first as sample quotes, then, below, in full:
- Prof Jason Bordoff: “We are currently at risk of a troubling downward spiral, in which today’s geopolitical conflicts are complicating and slowing the energy transition.”
- Olivia Lazard: “Structural and dynamic risks lead to grievances ripe for an economic, political and/or geo-politicised backlash against or away from climate action.”
- Faten Aggad: “From an African perspective, the key challenge is that the geopolitical tension between China and the US/EU will be used as an excuse this year to argue for a limited increase in climate finance.”
- Jennie King: Many are using “climate issue… as a gateway to undermine democratic life and norms.”
- Iskander Erzini Vernoit: “Development assistance and aid budgets are at risk of being slashed by shortsighted politicians.”
- Dr Dhanasree Jayaram: “The India-China conflict poses immense risks to transboundary climate and water cooperation.”
- Anna Ackermann: “Right-wing populism gaining visibility and votes in democracies means there is a risk of rising anti-climate sentiments.”
- Juan Pablo Medina Bickel: “The global discussion to protect the Amazonian rainforest requires incorporating a security angle.”
- Prof Sophia Kalantzakos: “The road to net-zero and global digitalisation have been subsumed by … power struggles, driven by Sino-American hyper-competition exacerbated further by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
- Kate Logan: “Concerns over China’s [clean-tech] dominance have further entrenched protectionist policies in the US and EU especially, where climate action is increasingly intertwined with economic competitiveness and political support from domestic industrial bases.”
Jason Bordoff
Founding director
Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs
Today’s increasingly volatile and unstable geopolitical environment is one of the most powerful forces shaping the global energy transition and climate action. We are currently at risk of a troubling downward spiral, in which today’s geopolitical conflicts are complicating and slowing the energy transition, while the risks of a disorderly transition risk exacerbating some of today’s most troublesome geopolitical trends.
Increasingly fraught global conflicts are sapping resources and political will to address the climate crisis, from the Middle East to Russia’s unjustified aggression against Ukraine. Most recently, strikes by Israel and Iran directly against one another have inflamed tensions, escalating risks in a region critical to climate action that may also have ripple effects globally.
Additionally, great power competition between many of the countries needed to lead on climate action, notably the US and China, is rewriting the rules of the international economic order and complicating climate action further. The urgency of accelerating the deployment of clean energy technologies far more rapidly than is the case today risks being hampered by concerns about national security, economic competitiveness fueled by the rise of industrial policy, and supply chain resilience that could raise the costs of those technologies. A recent example of this concern was the Biden administration’s launching of a national security investigation into the risks posed by imported Chinese electric vehicles.
While there are real policy concerns to address with regard to China’s dominance in clean energy supply chains, there is also a real tension between limiting China’s market access and scaling clean energy technologies at the speed and scale needed for climate action.
Finally, there are signs of growing resentment and backlash by emerging and developing economies at the perceived unfairness in how the energy transition is unfolding. Leaders in the global south increasingly point to the inability of countries responsible for most of the cumulative emissions to mobilise capital for the transition in lower income countries, or what they see as hypocrisy in how wealthier countries approach fossil fuel investment at home versus in energy-poor countries, among other concerns. As a significant share of future emissions growth will come from emerging and developing economies and more than half of investment is needed in those countries by the early 2030s, ensuring they see the transition as proceeding in a just and equitable way is essential.
Olivia Lazard
Fellow
Carnegie Europe
The list is long! It is a year when a third of the world is going to the election polls, including in the EU and in the US. Needless to say, a radical right wave in the west would be disastrous for the coherence of climate trajectories. It would undermine the key message that democracies can deliver on social contracts and inter-generational stakes. In Europe, the radical right has been making progress on the back of economic and societal issues, but one should not underestimate two other factors that magnify the risks.
The first one is disinformation and misinformation, especially the kinds piloted from Russia. The latter has perfected the art of fragmentation weaponisation in all its forms, including on the information and policy debate. Its tactics are both diffuse – via social media and digitalisation – and direct – co-opting and/or influencing political actors in Europe to serve its own interests.
The second one is Europe’s own geopolitical blindspots, lack of foresight and, therefore, lack of strategic communication to European citizens. As opposed to what [European Commission] president [Ursula] von der Leyen said, the world is not going through a series of “crises”, which require weathering through. The world is in a state of biospheric, economic and power transitions, which require adaptation and transformation. Europe did not anticipate the paradigm shifts which are now unfolding. Political extremes are, however, riding the wave of this lack of anticipation to come to power and cement a more protectionist approach. The latter will break trust that Europe needs to deliver legally-binding climate action, and more largely, that Europe needs to exist.
Underpinning election-related risks is inflation. 2023 was indeed a record-breaking year from a climate perspective. Global temperature average overshot past the 1.5C threshold compared to pre-industrial levels on a few occasions. Marine and pole temperatures broke records that indicate tipping points may activate sooner than later. El Nino contributed to dramatic impacts on various forms of agriculture. These global trends may seem abstract, but they indicate that the world is indeed headed towards more impactful forms of “natural” hazards – which translate in economic shocks at various levels – combined with more structural forms of scarcity and shortages, particularly with regards to water and food.
These combined dynamic forms of economic stress will have different effects: disruption of agricultural and industrial, energy sources and trade passage points; inflation levels will remain a growing concern in the global economic system. This will have direct purchasing power impacts on vulnerable populations in all countries alike, with potential for active breakdown of social contracts in some countries, and change in political tides in others – including pushing a swell of radical parties in Europe. On a more macro-economic level, it will keep straining relationships between countries of the global north and global south, with detrimental effects on debt-relief conversations. Yet, the latter are absolutely crucial to enhance global adaptation and [emissions] mitigation capacity.
All of these structural and dynamic risks lead to grievances ripe for an economic, political and/or geo-politicised backlash against or away from climate action. Considering that we’re in the pivot years towards a world past the 1.5C threshold, to say that this would be disastrous is an understatement.
Faten Aggad
CEO
African Future Policies Hub
All eyes are on the US presidential election and what [candidate Donald] Trump will do.
From an African perspective, the key challenge is that the geopolitical tension between China and the US/EU will be used as an excuse this year to argue for a limited increase in climate finance. We are likely to see this play out during COP29 [in Baku] when the discussion on the new financing goal is due to be discussed – [including the] insistence of western countries on a contributor base that includes China – as well as the replenishment of the International Development Association (IDA).
The insistence on financing through specific frameworks – rather than net flows to developing countries – is not constructive and risks poisoning discussions around international commitments for climate finance.
While it is clear that the quantum needs to be increased and that contributions need to come from all high polluters, any attempts to capture the discussion by adding these geopolitical tensions will be seen as a lack of commitment by developing countries. Understandably, these countries can only commit to decarbonisation – and to more ambitious NDCs next year – if they have a sense that there is serious consideration for their argument on financial flows.
Also, internationally, the major risk is emission increase due to the issues on the Red Sea shipping route (estimated at [being an increase in emissions up to] 11%), as well as announced increase in weapon manufacturing due to increased demands. Considering that the defence sector estimated carbon footprint stands at 5.5% of global emissions, this is concerning.
Jennie King
Director of climate research and policy
Institute for Strategic Dialogue
It’s generally assumed that mis- and disinformation in this space has a clear policy goal: weaken the public mandate for action, slow down the legislative process and, ultimately, maintain the status quo of the carbon economy. By confusing the public, actors can delay progress and prevent us from achieving a sustainable, decarbonised future.
That remains true in many cases, but I think there is a bigger or parallel game at play: climate issues are also being used as a gateway to undermine democratic life and norms. Nowadays, the aim of much content is not just to delay net-zero, but rather weaken trust in political systems and institutions writ large. Framing climate action as an elite conspiracy or inherently undemocratic, and feeding into wider anti-establishment sentiment, has proven very successful.
Climate is by no means the only victim of that trend, which has also impacted issues like racial justice, sexual and reproductive health, civil rights and electoral integrity. But I think what makes it uniquely vulnerable is how holistic the problem is and how every pocket of society has to be involved in the transition moving forward.
By its very nature, climate is a problem that requires not only big government solutions, but multilateral cooperation. We are living in a time where people have lost faith or patience in either of those things. Citizens are suspicious of government and sceptical that policymaking can actually yield results. At the same time, nativism and isolationism are on the rise. That means the idea of doing things collaboratively with other countries – potentially even hostile states – and the global community rallying together around a shared crisis is an easy one to exploit and turn people against.
When we think about the problem in this huge election year – the so-called “year of democracy” – and beyond, I see those as the two parallel challenges: one, ongoing and coordinated efforts to thwart climate action, often funded by billions of corporate dollars; second, the way that climate is being weaponised to increase social division and embed the idea that democracy doesn’t work. We cannot address one without the other.
Iskander Erzini Vernoit
Director
IMAL Initiative for Climate & Development
The most significant question to be addressed within the multilateral climate regime – in 2024 – is that of international climate finance. The new collective quantified goal (“NCQG”) on climate finance in the UNFCCC, mandated [as part of the Paris Agreement] to be agreed before 2025, is to exceed and replace the goal of $100bn per year originally agreed in Copenhagen.
This will be enormously consequential to the future of climate action, as a time-limited window for governments to start, essentially for the first time, having responsible conversations about the magnitude of climate finance required to deliver the Paris Agreement. Climate change mitigation, including but not limited to energy transition, adaptation and loss and damage entail financing needs for poorer countries in the trillions of dollars per annum (in terms of overall nominal public/private sums required), of which at least hundreds of billions are needed in public finance support (in grant-equivalent terms).
One great risk in 2024 is that geopolitical rivalries between the so-called superpowers distract from the urgent need to scale up finance from the world’s richer countries to the world’s poorer countries, amid widespread sovereign debt distress and a shrinking window to deliver the Paris Agreement and UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Despite the historical examples of the highest peaks in development spending being motivated by geopolitical rivalries, development assistance and aid budgets are at risk of being slashed by shortsighted politicians precisely when an increase is needed.
Dr Dhanasree Jayaram
Assistant professor at the department of geopolitics and international relations, and co-coordinator of Centre for Climate Studies (CCS)
Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Karnataka, India
South Asia is fraught with multiple crises, including political instability, socio-economic uncertainty, ecological fragility and resource inaccessibility. Both internal and transboundary challenges impede much-needed climate action to protect the most vulnerable populations in the region. The region is not immune to global developments such as the wars in Ukraine and Middle East either, as they have had adverse impacts on the countries’ energy and food security – making them less climate-resilient.
The governance gap is exacerbated by regional geopolitical tensions too. For example, the India-China conflict poses immense risks to transboundary climate and water cooperation. In fact, border infrastructure expansion and troop buildup could increase fossil fuel dependencies and socio-ecological vulnerabilities, especially in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region that sustains major ecosystems and river basins of South Asia.
More importantly, the lack of trust and robust institutional arrangements, despite common/shared challenges, hampers regional cooperation. While many transboundary ecological concerns in the region such as climate migration, fisheries management and air pollution lack governance mechanisms, many mutually beneficial opportunities are not being capitalised on, such as cross-border renewable energy trade.
Anna Ackermann
Policy analyst at the International Institute for Sustainable Development
Board member at the Centre for Environmental Initiatives “Ecoaction”
Global movement to advance climate action requires sustainable peace, opportunities for development of the green economy around the world and a fair contribution from all countries responsible for historically high shares of greenhouse gas emissions. More people should be living in democracies to ensure their rights are protected, including the right to a clean environment and climate protection. Unfortunately, the world is becoming more complicated, with higher geopolitical risks and many uncertainties.
The ongoing military conflicts are likely to continue or escalate. Having moved from authoritarianism to totalitarianism, Russia keeps running the economy and financing its war against Ukraine – the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II – with fossil fuels. Russia is gaining billions of dollars weekly from its oil and gas exports, while increasing military spending to the record $110bn this year. As Ukraine struggles to protect itself without sufficient international support and an unstable situation with the upcoming US elections, European countries boost their defence preparedness. This sets security on top of the agenda both on national level and globally – during most world leader meetings.
As half of the world will be voting in 2024, we see worrying trends of democratic backsliding and autocratisation of countries around the globe. We tend to focus criticism for the lack of climate action on democracies (often fairly enough). Meanwhile, authoritarian regimes do not allow criticism as such, preferring civil society’s silence or absence, and use of harmful disinformation tactics at home and abroad. Right-wing populism gaining visibility and votes in democracies means there is a risk of rising anti-climate sentiments. As we saw in recent years, this may well translate into shockwaves to international climate policies and COP outcomes.
Juan Pablo Medina Bickel
Research associate
International Institute for Strategic Studies
Tackling deforestation in the Amazonian rainforest, the world’s largest tropical forest, also known as the planet’s lungs for its carbon-sinking characteristics, is key for the global climate action agenda.
The protection of this rainforest requires addressing multiple drivers of forest loss, including the expansion of transnational drug trafficking and related environmental crime linked to illegal mining, logging and cattle ranching. Yet, the discussion of security and armed conflict risks across the Amazon in global fora is limited. The current international security agenda is largely focused on the Russian-Ukraine war, the Israel-Palestinian Territories armed conflict, and the Red Sea crisis. Moreover, the Venezuelan displacement emergency with over seven million refugees and migrants, the worst humanitarian crisis in the western hemisphere in decades, has taken centre stage in diplomatic, developmental assistance and security cooperation talks in the Americas. In particular, the record level of irregular Venezuelan migration into the US across the Mexican border has become a priority for US foreign relations with the region.
All in all, in 2024 the global discussion to protect the Amazonian rainforest requires incorporating a security angle.
Prof Sophia Kalantzakos
Global distinguished professor, environmental studies and public policy
New York University Abu Dhabi
The road to net-zero and global digitalisation have been subsumed by realist power struggles, driven by Sino-American hyper-competition exacerbated further by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Supply chains and the fourth industrial revolution have become securitised, and a world of “clubs” and “fences” has emerged undermining ties of interdependence. Moreover, the race for critical minerals and the chip wars raise fears of a scramble: for inputs, “geopolitically engineered” supply chains and the building up of tech and knowledge barriers that produce new exclusions and inequities.
This is why I have argued that global climate leadership should not be driven by the US and China. Their relationship is unstable and acrimonious and has proven that climate is readily sacrificed on the altar of their wider rivalries. While ideologically framed as a fight between democracy and autocracy, they struggle to ensure primacy in the green energy and industrial shifts – and more importantly to control the “tech imperium”. To add to the current instability, a Trump victory in November 2024 will pull the US out of the [global] climate regime. While the Biden administration has made extraordinary efforts to transform the US economy, a Trump White House will wreak further havoc in the global order and undermine climate resolve.
Kate Logan
Associate director of climate
Asia Society Policy Institute, Asia Society
With major armed conflicts continuing to divert attention and financial flows, there is no shortage of geopolitical risk to climate action in 2024. From a mitigation perspective especially, the role of China – as both the world’s largest emitter, and the largest producer of decarbonisation technologies – looms large over prospects for progress.
China’s large-scale production of clean energy technologies, such as solar panels, electric vehicles and batteries has brought down the cost of these critical products and spurred their uptake. But concerns over China’s dominance have further entrenched protectionist policies in the US and EU, especially, where climate action is increasingly intertwined with economic competitiveness and political support from domestic industrial bases.
Analysis by Wood Mackenzie indicates that excluding Chinese cleantech from global markets would raise the cost of the energy transition 20% by 2050, or $6tn. While supply chain diversification is important, how the world navigates these tensions will pose major implications for the speed and cost of emissions reductions – including in developing countries that don’t necessarily want to choose between the US and China.
Domestically in China, political support for new coal power continues in the name of energy security. How soon the country can peak its emissions and bring them into structural decline will largely depend on power sector reforms and whether massive deployment of renewables can dampen coal power utilisation.
The entire world is also watching the US presidential election. A Trump victory would remove US pressure on China and other major emitters to cut their domestic emissions faster and introduce a new source of instability that may push countries to further prioritise security. Regardless, under either administration, trade tensions threaten to persist, with proposed legislation on carbon border adjustments receiving bipartisan support in the US Congress.
The post Experts: What are the biggest geopolitical risks to climate action in 2024? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Experts: What are the biggest geopolitical risks to climate action in 2024?
Mariana Paoli, from Brazil, is the Global Advocacy Lead at Christian Aid and Iskander Erzini Vernoit, from Morocco, is the Executive Director at the IMAL Initiative for Climate and Development.
Government negotiators in Bonn will discuss in the coming two weeks how to put into practice an idea that emerged from the corridors of the COP29 climate talks: “the Baku to Belém Roadmap to $1.3 Trillion”.
This exercise, that aims to propose approaches for scaling climate finance flows for developing countries to over a trillion dollars per year by 2035, is due to be presented at COP30 in Brazil this November. The origins of its mandate offer insights into its perils – as well as its promise.
Brazil seeks early deals on two stalled issues at Bonn climate talks
Initially, negotiators from the G77+China countries united behind Africa’s call for $1.3 trillion as the replacement for the $100-billion goal for annual mobilisation of climate finance by developed countries for developing nations, set 15 years ago. Faithful to this, some G77 countries originally called for a roadmap to indicate actions that developed countries might take to raise public finance resources for this provision and mobilisation for the Global South.
There were, however, those in the Global North who pushed for a broader, less well-defined $1.3 trillion target that would include other sources and types of finance. These forces ultimately won the day, resulting in a final decision on $1.3 trillion that calls for “all finance” from “all … sources”, establishing a “roadmap” process toward this.
Exceedingly disappointing for the Global South, this new formulation obfuscates the responsibility of wealthy historical emitters to pay their fair share of public finance to tackle a proble they have caused and risks shifting the burden to developing countries.
Loss and damage threat
In this context, the Roadmap to 1.3T has the potential to be a milestone in the global governance of climate finance. Yet it faces risks and opportunities, being essentially at the discretion of Azerbaijan and Brazil as the COP29 and COP 30 presidencies.
There is a very real risk that the Roadmap will fall short of sending a strong signal of what level of ambition is required, in terms of public finance from contributor countries. If that happens, the Roadmap could entrench injustice, increase debt burdens, and delay urgent action on climate change.
In terms of injustice, poorer countries, while largely not responsible for climate change, could face loss and damage of $450 billion-$900 billion per year before 2030, not including the costs of reducing emissions and adapting to global warming.
Loss and damage fund to hand out $250 million in initial phase
Within this, Africa’s nomadic pastoral communities are one real-life example of those whose livelihoods and way of life are being destroyed by the choices of others. The COP29 decision on the new climate finance goal disregarded their needs by not including a target for loss and damage funding, but the Roadmap need not.
Heavy debt burden
The Roadmap must not ignore that external debts are at record highs, with repayment costs now higher than capacities for repayment in two-thirds of developing countries, according to UNCTAD.
In 2023, African governments paid around 17% of their revenues on servicing debts, the highest levels in decades, equalling 15% of African export earnings. By comparison, after the Second World War, inspired by the work of Keynes and others, it was decided to cap Germany’s debt repayments at 3% of its exports earnings, to allow recovery.
In this context, Global South countries may lack the fiscal space to invest in essential climate action – or may prioritise other areas, such as healthcare or education.
COP30 President-designate Andrea Corrêa do Lago is correct in his assertion that there is too often a denial of the economic benefits of climate action – yet Global South countries are not always able to pursue economically beneficial investments. Markets are not always efficient, economic benefits do not always equal revenues for investors , and the cost of capital is higher in Global South countries, heightening the need for support, especially with upfront costs.
Framework to scale up finance
Of course, in addition to underscoring the necessity of rich countries increasing their provision of grant-equivalent public funds for poorer countries, for the reasons cited above, the Roadmap can point to opportunities to build the architecture for scaling finance.
Reforming the international financial architecture is important, but, to achieve this, wealthy countries must relinquish their current hegemony and drop their resistance to reform in the negotiations for a UN tax convention and in those around the potential UN sovereign debt workout mechanism that could be agreed at the upcoming Financing for Development (FFD) Conference in Seville.
Climate shocks and volatile currencies hike debt burden for poor countries
Further additions to the financial architecture could include country platforms, aimed at unlocking finance, particularly private investment – but these require resourcing to administer and will only reaffirm the need for catalytic public resources, whether for technical assistance, project preparation, or making finance more affordable.
Of course, current politics are not conducive to increasing international provision of grant-equivalent finance, with recent short-sighted decisions taking overseas aid even further away from the global target for countries to provide assistance equal to 0.7% of their gross national income, established over fifty years ago, despite public support.
Naturally, Global South countries should not hold their breath waiting for others to come to their senses, but should do what they can, including South-South cooperation.
Bold signal needed
And yet, if global temperature goals are not to slip out of reach, if climate action is to be enhanced and injustice and indebtedness curtailed, richer countries must step up on finance. Will the Roadmap affirm this? The COP presidencies have yet to give a firm indication, though have called for inputs from finance ministers and other key groupings through ongoing consultations.
To be successful, there must be a willingness to depart from the status quo — just as was demonstrated with the Paris Agreement and the UAE Consensus, which set ambitious goals to limit global temperature rise and accelerate energy transition, respectively. Even amid uncertainty, these agreements raised the standard for ambition instead of passively allowing low expectations to go unchallenged.
A comparable approach is now needed for international public finance – the Baku-to-Belem Roadmap must send a bold signal of what is required, lest a key opportunity be lost.
The post A COP30 roadmap to inaction or ambition on climate finance? appeared first on Climate Home News.
Climate Change
DeBriefed 13 June 2025: Trump’s ‘biggest’ climate rollback; UK goes nuclear; How Carbon Brief visualises research
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Trump’s latest climate rollback
RULES REPEALED: The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has begun dismantling Biden-era regulations limiting pollution from power plants, including carbon dioxide emissions, reported the Financial Times. Announcing the repeal, climate-sceptic EPA administrator Lee Zeldin labelled efforts to fight climate change a “cult”, according to the New York Times. Politico said that these actions are the “most important EPA regulatory actions of Donald Trump’s second term to date”.
WEBSITE SHUTDOWN: The Guardian reported that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Climate.gov website “will imminently no longer publish new content” after all production staff were fired. Former employees of the agency interviewed by the Guardian believe the cuts were “specifically aimed at restricting public-facing climate information”.
EVS TARGETED: The Los Angeles Times reported that Trump signed legislation on Thursday “seeking to rescind California’s ambitious auto emission standards, including a landmark rule that eventually would have barred sales of new gas-only cars in California by 2035”.
UK goes nuclear
NEW NUCLEAR: In her first spending review, UK chancellor Rachel Reeves announced £14.2bn for the Sizewell C new nuclear power plant in Suffolk, England – the first new state-backed nuclear power station for decades and the first ever under a Labour government, BBC News reported. The government also announced funding for three small nuclear reactors to be built by Rolls-Royce, said the Times. Carbon Brief has just published a chart showing the “rise, fall and rise” of UK nuclear.
MILIBAND REWARDED: The Times described energy secretary Ed Miliband as one of the “biggest winners” from the review. In spite of relentless negative reporting around him from right-leaning publications, his Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) received the largest relative increase in capital spending. Carbon Brief’s summary has more on all the key climate and energy takeaways from the spending review.
Around the world
- UN OCEAN SUMMIT: In France, a “surge in support” brought the number of countries ratifying the High Seas Treaty to just 10 short of the 60 needed for the agreement to become international law, according to Sky News.
- CALLING TRUMP: Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said he would “call” Trump to “persuade him” to attend COP30, according to Agence France-Presse. Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported that the country’s environmental agency has fast tracked oil and highway projects that threaten the Amazon.
- GERMAN FOSSIL SURGE: Due to “low” wind levels, electricity generation from renewables in Germany fell by 17% in the first quarter of this year, while generation from fossil-fuel sources increased significantly, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
- BATTERY BOOST: The power ministry in India announced 54bn rupees ($631m) in funding to build 30 gigawatt-hours of new battery energy storage systems to “ensure round-the-clock renewable energy capacities”, reported Money Control.
-19.3C
The temperature that one-in-10 London winters could reach in a scenario where a key Atlantic ocean current system “collapses” and global warming continues under “intermediate” emissions, according to new research covered by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- A study in Science Advances found that damage to coral reefs due to climate change will “outpace” reef expansion. It said “severe declines” will take place within 40-80 years, while “large-scale coral reef expansion requires centuries”.
- Climatic Change published research which identified “displacement and violence, caregiving burdens, early marriages of girls, human trafficking and food insecurity” as the main “mental health” stressors exacerbated by climate change for women in lower and middle-income countries.
- The weakening of a major ocean current system has partially offset the drying of the southern Amazon rainforest, research published in Environmental Research has found, demonstrating that climate tipping elements have the potential to moderate each other.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Aerosols – tiny light‑scattering particles produced mainly by burning fossil fuels – absorb or reflect incoming sunlight and influence the formation and brightness of clouds. In this way they have historically “acted as an invisible brake on global warming”. New Carbon Brief analysis by Dr Zeke Hausfather illustrated the extent to which a reduction in aerosol emissions in recent decades, while bringing widespread public health benefits through avoided deaths, has “unmasked” the warming caused by CO2 and other greenhouse gases. The chart above shows the estimated cooling effect of aerosols from the start of the industrial era until 2020.
Spotlight
How Carbon Brief turns complex research into visuals
This week, Carbon Brief’s interactive developer Tom Pearson explains how and why his team creates visuals from research papers.
Carbon Brief’s journalists will often write stories based on new scientific research or policy reports.
These documents will usually contain charts or graphics highlighting something interesting about the story. Sometimes, Carbon Brief’s visuals team will choose to recreate these graphics.
There are many reasons why we choose to spend time and effort doing this, but most often it can be boiled down to some combination of the following things.
Maintaining editorial and visual consistency
We want to, where possible, maintain editorial and visual consistency while matching our graphical and editorial style guides.
In doing this, we are trying to ease our audience’s reading experience. We hope that, by presenting a chart in a way that is consistent with Carbon Brief’s house style, readers will be able to concentrate on the story or the explanation we are trying to communicate and not the way that a chart might have been put together.
Highlighting relevant information
We want to highlight the part of a chart that is most relevant to the story.
Graphics in research papers, especially if they have been designed for a print context, often strive to illustrate many different points with a single figure.
We tend to use charts to answer a single question or provide evidence for a single point.
Paring charts back to their core “message”, removing extraneous elements and framing the chart with a clear editorial title helps with this, as the example below shows.
Ensuring audience understanding
We want to ensure our audience understands the “message” of the chart.
Graphics published in specialist publications, such as scientific journals, might have different expectations regarding a reader’s familiarity with the subject matter and the time they might be expected to spend reading an article.
If we can redraw a chart so that it meets the expectations of a more general audience, we will.
Supporting multiple contexts
We want our graphics to make sense in different contexts.
While we publish our graphics primarily in articles on our website, the nature of the internet means that we cannot guarantee that this is how people will encounter them.
Charts are often shared on social media or copy-pasted into presentations. We want to support these practices by including as much context relevant to understanding within the chart image as possible.
Below illustrates how adding a title and key information can make a chart easier to understand without supporting information.
When we do not recreate charts
When will we not redraw a chart? Most of the time! We are a small team and recreating data graphics requires time, effort, accessible data and often specialist software.
But, despite these constraints, when the conditions are right, the process of redrawing maps and charts allows us to communicate more clearly with our readers, transforming complex research into accessible visual stories.
Watch, read, listen
SPENDING $1BN ON CLIMATE: New Scientist interviewed Greg de Temmerman, former nuclear physicist turned chief science officer at Quadrature Climate Foundation, about the practicalities and ethics of philanthropic climate-science funding.
GENDER HURDLES: Research director Tracy Kajumba has written for Climate Home News about the barriers that women still face in attending and participating in COPs.
OCEAN HEATWAVES: The New York Times presented a richly illustrated look at how marine heatwaves are spreading across the globe and how they affect life in the oceans.
Coming up
- 16-26 June: Bonn climate talks, Bonn, Germany
- 16 June: 79th meeting of the World Meteorological Organization executive council, Geneva, Switzerland
- 17 June: International Energy Agency (IEA) Oil 2025 report launch
Pick of the jobs
- Inside Climate News, California environmental reporter | Salary: Unknown. Location: Southern California
- Natural Resources Wales, lead marine and energy policy advisor | Salary: £45,367-£50,877. Location: Wales
- Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, senior manager, climate | Salary: £82,000. Location: London/hybrid
- Green Party,social media and digital content officer | Salary: £33,211. Location: London/remote
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 13 June 2025: Trump’s ‘biggest’ climate rollback; UK goes nuclear; How Carbon Brief visualises research appeared first on Carbon Brief.
The UK’s chancellor Rachel Reeves gave the green light this week to the Sizewell C new nuclear plant in Suffolk, along with funding for “small modular reactors” (SMRs) and nuclear fusion.
In her spending review of government funding across the rest of this parliament, Reeves pledged £14.2bn for Sizewell C, £2.5bn for Rolls-Royce SMRs and £2.5bn for fusion research.
The UK was a pioneer in civilian nuclear power – opening the world’s first commercial reactor at Calder Hall in Cumbria in 1956 – which, ultimately, helped to squeeze out coal generation.
Over the decades that followed, the UK’s nuclear capacity climbed to a peak of 12.2 gigawatts (GW) in 1995, while electricity output from the fleet of reactors peaked in 1998.
The chart below shows the contribution of each of the UK’s nuclear plants to the country’s overall capacity, according to when they started and stopped operating.
The reactors are dotted around the UK’s coastline, where they can take advantage of cooling seawater, and many sites include multiple units coded with numbers or letters.
Since Sizewell B was completed in 1995, however, no new nuclear plants have been built – and, as the chart above shows, capacity has ebbed away as older reactors have gone out of service.
After a lengthy hiatus, the Hinkley C new nuclear plant in Somerset was signed off in 2016. It is now under construction and expected to start operating by 2030 at the earliest.
(Efforts to secure further new nuclear schemes at Moorside in Cumbria failed in 2017, while projects led by Hitachi at Wylfa on Anglesey and Oldbury in Gloucestershire collapsed in 2019.)
The additional schemes just given the go-ahead in Reeves’s spending review would – if successful – somewhat revive the UK’s nuclear capacity, after decades of decline.
However, with the closure of all but one of the UK’s existing reactors due by 2030, nuclear-power capacity would remain below its 1995 peak, unless further projects are built.
Moreover, with the UK’s electricity demand set to double over the next few decades, as transport, heat and industry are increasingly electrified, nuclear power is unlikely to match the 29% share of generation that it reached during the late 1990s.
There is an aspirational goal – set under former Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson – for nuclear to supply “up to” a quarter of the UK’s electricity in 2050, with “up to” 24GW of capacity.
Assuming Sizewell B continues to operate until 2055 and that Hinkley C, Sizewell C and at least three Rolls-Royce SMRs are all built, this would take UK capacity back up to 9.0GW.
Methodology
The chart is based on data from the World Nuclear Association, with known start dates for operating and retired reactors, as well as planned closure dates announced by operator EDF.
The timeline for new reactors to start operating – and assumed 60-year lifetime – is illustrative, based on published information from EDF, Rolls-Royce, the UK government and media reports.
The post Chart: The rise, fall and rise of UK nuclear power over eight decades appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Chart: The rise, fall and rise of UK nuclear power over eight decades
DeBriefed 13 June 2025: Trump’s ‘biggest’ climate rollback; UK goes nuclear; How Carbon Brief visualises research
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