The UK’s Climate Change Act is a landmark piece of legislation that guides the nation’s response to global warming and has proved highly influential around the world.
Increasingly, the law has come under attack from right-wing politicians, who want to scrap the UK’s net-zero target and the policies supporting it.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has announced that her party would “repeal” the Climate Change Act entirely, if her party is able to form the next government.
The opposition leader said she still believed that “climate change is real”, but offered no replacement for the legislation that the Conservatives have backed since its inception.
Her proposal drew intense criticism from scientists, business leaders and even senior Conservatives, who argued that abandoning the act would harm the UK economy and drive more climate extremes.
Meanwhile, the hard-right populist Reform UK party – which is currently leading in the polls – has also rejected climate action and promised to “ditch net-zero”.
Below, Carbon Brief explains what the Climate Change Act does – and does not – mean for the UK, correcting inaccurate comments as the UK’s political right veers further away from the previous consensus on climate action.
- Why does the UK have the Climate Change Act?
- What does the Climate Change Act require?
- The costs and benefits of the Climate Change Act
- How nearly 70 countries followed the UK’s Climate Change Act
- What comes next under the Climate Change Act?
- What would happen if the Climate Change Act was repealed?
Why does the UK have the Climate Change Act?
It is well-known that the Climate Change Act was voted through the UK parliament with near-unanimous cross-party support. In October 2008, some 465 MPs voted in favour, including 263 Labour members, 131 Conservatives, 52 Liberal Democrats. Just five Conservatives voted against.
Less widely appreciated is the fact that the Labour government only agreed to legislate in the face of huge public and political pressure, including from then-Conservative leader David Cameron.
Jill Rutter, senior fellow at thinktank the Institute for Government (IfG), tells Carbon Brief that the Conservatives “can also claim significant credit for the Climate Change Act”.
This is at odds with comments made by Badenoch, who described it as “Labour’s law”, when pledging to repeal it if she were ever elected as prime minister.
In early 2005, two Friends of the Earth campaigners – Bryony Worthington and Martyn Williams – had drafted a Climate Change Bill, inspired by the “worsening problem of climate change and the inadequacy of the government’s policy response”, according to a 2018 academic paper.
Worthington tells Carbon Brief they had “decided [the government’s plan] was rubbish and we needed a different approach”, based on five-yearly carbon budgets rather than single-year goals.
Their draft was introduced into parliament that July, as a private members’ bill, by high-profile backbench MPs from the three main political parties: Labour’s Michael Meacher; the Conservatives’ John Gummer (now Lord Deben); and Norman Baker for the Liberal Democrats.
This was the centrepiece of Friends of the Earth’s “Big Ask” campaign, gaining huge public support and backing from more than 100 other NGOs, 412 MPs and celebrities such as Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke.
Then, in December 2005, Cameron was elected Conservative leader, using support for climate action as part of his efforts to “‘decontaminate’ the Tory brand”, according to an IfG retrospective.
With the Labour government still resisting the idea of new climate change legislation, Cameron made what the IfG called a “really significant political intervention” on 1 September 2006, throwing his weight behind the “Big Ask” and publishing his own draft bill, on green recycled paper.
Credit: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo
As the Guardian reported at the time, a letter from Cameron and others “call[ed] on the government to enshrine annual targets for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions into a bill, to be introduced in the next Queen’s speech…the government believes a bill is unnecessary”.
At prime minister’s questions on 25 October 2006, Cameron continued to press Labour prime minister Tony Blair, who was still not committed to legislation.
Cameron went beyond the “Big Ask” draft by calling for an independent commission with executive powers, able to adjust the UK’s climate goals. Cameron asked Blair:
“Are we getting a bill: yes or no?…Will it include the two things that really matter: annual targets and an independent body that can measure and adjust them in the light of circumstances?”
The IfG says a former aide to David Miliband, who was then environment secretary, “remembers him commenting that Labour could not get into the position of being the only major party not in favour of the proposed bill”.
Finally, in November 2006, the Labour government confirmed in the Queen’s speech that it would introduce a new climate change bill.
Emphasising the cross-party consensus, Lord Deben tells Carbon Brief: “It was the Tories who wrote it and it was the Labour Party who accepted it – and all parties supported it.” He adds:
“It’s not just that every Tory leader since [then] has supported climate change, the Climate Change Act [and the] Climate Change Committee, but it’s simply that, actually, they ought to, because they invented it.”
The Labour government published its own draft climate change bill in March 2007 and this, after lengthy negotiation, went on to become the 2008 act.
Cameron continued to campaign for “independent experts, not partisan…ministers” to set the UK’s statutory climate targets, but this responsibility was, ultimately, left to the government.
Rutter tells Carbon Brief that, in pledging to repeal the 2008 act, Badenoch is “rejecting” a Conservative “inheritance” on climate change that runs back to Margaret Thatcher. She says:
“One of the defining features of climate policy to date in the UK has been the political consensus that has underpinned it. That may have been because Margaret Thatcher was the first leading world politician to draw attention to climate change in 1989 [via a speech at the UN in New York].”
Rutter adds that David Miliband had only been able to convince then-chancellor Gordon Brown to accept legally binding targets as a result of Cameron’s enthusiasm for the cause. She says:
“Although it was Labour legislation, brought forward by David Miliband (though implemented by brother Ed), the reason Miliband was…able to convince a sceptical Gordon Brown at the Treasury that the UK should set legally binding targets, was the enthusiasm with which new Conservative leader David Cameron embraced the Friends of the Earth ‘Big Ask’ campaign as part of his moves to detoxify the Conservative party after its 2005 defeat. Theresa May then increased the target [in 2019] from 80% to net-zero as part of her legacy. It is that long Conservative inheritance on climate action that Badenoch is now rejecting.”
What does the Climate Change Act require?
The Climate Change Act sets out an overall “framework” for both cutting the UK’s emissions and preparing the country for the impacts of climate change.
At its heart is a legally binding goal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Originally envisaged as a 60% reduction on 1990 levels, this was quickly increased to 80%.
In 2019, amid a surge in concern about climate change, the then-Conservative government strengthened the target again to a reduction to “at least 100%” below 1990 levels, more commonly referred to as net-zero.
![The target for 2050: (1) It is the duty of the Secretary of State to ensure that the net UK carbon account for the year 2050 is at least [F1100%] lower than the 1990 baseline. (2)“The 1990 baseline” means the aggregate amount of— (a)net UK emissions of carbon dioxide for that year, and (b)net UK emissions of each of the other targeted greenhouse gases for the year that is the base year for that gas.](https://breakingclimatechange.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/cca-rag-scaled-11.webp)
On the pathway to this long-term goal, the act also requires the government to set legally binding interim targets known as ”carbon budgets”. These must be set 12 years in advance, to allow time for the government and the rest of the economy to plan ahead.
The carbon budgets set limits on emissions over five-year periods, providing greater flexibility than annual goals, while tackling the cumulative emissions that determine global warming.
Section 13 of the act specifies that the government has a “duty to prepare proposals and policies for meeting carbon budgets”. There is also a requirement for the government to explain how its actions will achieve its climate goals.
(In addition, the act requires the government to set out a programme of measures for climate adaptation and how it intends to meet them.)
The final key pillar of the act is the creation of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), an independent advisory body. The CCC advises – but does not decide – on the level at which carbon budgets should be set and the climate-related risks facing the UK.
The committee also produces annual assessments of “progress” and recommendations for going further, which the government is obliged to respond to, but not to accept.
Each time the secretary of state sets out their plan for a new carbon budget – taking the CCC’s advice into account – or responds to a progress report from the committee, parliament scrutinises the government’s activities.
Contrary to recent criticisms from the opposition Conservatives and the hard-right populist Reform UK, however, the act says nothing at all about how the government should meet its targets.
The only requirement is that the government’s plan should be capable of meeting its targets.
Moreover, it was the Conservatives under Cameron that had wanted to give the CCC executive and target-setting powers. This was opposed at the time by the then-Labour government.
Rachel Solomon Williams, executive director of the Aldersgate Group, notes on LinkedIn that this was a “closely debated” issue, but that, ultimately, the act puts the government “in control”:
“A closely debated aspect of the bill at the time was whether the CCC should have an executive or an advisory function. In the end, it was appointed as an expert advisory committee and the government remains entirely in control of delivery choices.”
The Conservative press release announcing Badenoch’s plan to “repeal” the act is, therefore, incorrect to state that the legislation “force[s]” governments to introduce specific policies.
(Speaking at the 2025 Conservative party conference, shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho caricatured what she called “Ed Miliband’s…act” as requiring “1970s”-style “central planning” that “dictate[s] what products people must buy, and when”.
Just 18 months earlier, she, as energy secretary, had written of her “government’s unwavering commitment to meeting our ambitious emissions targets, including the legislated carbon budgets and the net-zero by 2050 target”.)
The press release also falsely describes the targets set under the act as “arbitrary” and falsely suggests they were set without consideration for the impact on jobs, households and the economy.
(In 2021, Badenoch herself, then a government minister, told parliament: “We will put affordability and fairness at the heart of our reforms to reach net-zero.”)
Specifically, section 10 of the act lists “matters to be taken into account” when setting carbon budgets, including the latest climate science, available technologies, “economic circumstances”, “fiscal circumstances” and the impact of any decisions on fuel poverty.
As for the net-zero target, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that reducing emissions to net-zero is the only way to stop global warming. The target was set on this basis, following detailed advice from the CCC that took climate science, economic and social factors into account.
The Conservatives have also taken aim at the CCC itself as part of their rejection of the Climate Change Act, highlighting the committee’s advice on meat consumption and flying.
In an echo of widely circulated conspiracy theories, Badenoch even told the Spectator that the CCC “wants us to eat insects”. This is not true.
Despite the framing by right-leaning media and politicians, the CCC’s recommendations for contentious topics such as meat consumption and reductions in flight numbers are modest.
The committee notes that “meat consumption has been falling” without policy interventions and says this will help to free up land for tree-planting. It says “demand management measures” to curb flight numbers “may” be needed, but only if other efforts to decarbonise aviation fail.
More importantly, the government decides how to meet the carbon budgets. It can – and often does – ignore recommendations from the CCC, including those on diets and airport expansion.
The costs and benefits of the Climate Change Act
The debate over whether to tackle climate change, how quickly and to what extent has almost invariably centred on the costs and benefits of doing so.
Those opposed to climate action have, in general, sought to exaggerate the supposed costs, while playing down the losses and damages already being caused by global warming.
Yet serious efforts to weigh up the costs and the benefits have concluded – again and again and again – that it would be cheaper to cut emissions than to face the consequences of inaction.
Indeed, this was precisely the conclusion of the landmark 2006 Stern Review, to which the 2008 Climate Change Act partly owes its existence. The review said:
“[T]he evidence gathered by the review leads to a simple conclusion: the benefits of strong and early action far outweigh the economic costs of not acting.”
More specifically, it said that the cost of action “can be limited to around 1% of global GDP [gross domestic product]”, whereas the damages from climate change would cost 5% – and as much as 20% of GDP.
When the act was passed in 2008, it was again estimated that the UK would need to invest around 1% of GDP in meeting its target of cutting emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.
Since then, estimates of the cost of cutting emissions have fallen, as the decline in low-carbon technology costs has outperformed expectations. At the same time, estimates of the economic losses due to rising temperatures have tended to keep going up.
(Some years after the review’s publication, Stern said he had “got it wrong on climate change – it’s far, far worse…Looking back, I underestimated the risks.”)
When it recommended the target of net-zero by 2050, the CCC estimated that the UK would need to invest 1-2% of GDP to hit this goal. It later revised this down to less than 1% of GDP.
Most recently, the CCC revised its estimates down once again, putting the net cost of reaching net-zero at £116bn over 25 years – roughly £70 per person per year – or just 0.2% of GDP.
In July 2025, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) went on to estimate that the UK could take an 8% hit to its economy by the early 2070s, if the world warms by 3C.
It concluded that while there were potentially significant costs to the government from reaching net-zero, these would be far lower than the costs of failing to limit warming.
Despite all this, Conservative leader Badenoch has falsely argued that the UK’s net-zero target will be “impossible” to meet without “bankrupting” the country and that the the Climate Change Act has “loaded us with costs”.
Her party has also pledged to “axe the carbon tax” on electricity generation – a significant source of government revenue – claiming that this “just adds extra costs to our bills for no reason”.
Prof Jim Watson, director of the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, tells Carbon Brief that the costs of climate policies are “sometimes exaggerated” and are not the main reason for high bills:
“Policies that are in place to meet the UK’s carbon targets have costs, but these costs are sometimes exaggerated. These policies are not the primary cause of the energy price shock businesses and households have experienced over the past three years.”
Watson says that high gas prices were the “main driver” of high bills and adds that shifting away from fossil fuels “will also reduce the UK’s exposure to future fossil-fuel price shocks”.
How nearly 70 countries followed the UK’s Climate Change Act
In the interview announcing her ambition to scrap the Climate Change Act, Badenoch falsely told the Spectator that the UK was “tackl[ing] climate change…alone”. She said:
“We need to do what we can sensibly to tackle climate change, but we cannot do it alone. If other countries aren’t doing it, then us being the goody-two-shoes of the world is not actually encouraging anyone to improve.”
This is a common claim among climate-sceptic politicians and commentators, who argue that the UK has gone further than other nations and that this is unfair. Badenoch’s predecessor, Rishi Sunak, used similar reasoning to justify net-zero policy rollbacks.
The UK has indeed been a leader in passing climate legislation, but it is far from the only country taking action to tackle climate change.
The Climate Change Act was among the first comprehensive national climate laws and the first to include legally binding emissions targets.
It has inspired legislation around the world, with laws in New Zealand, Canada and Nigeria among those explicitly based on the UK model.
Indeed, 69 countries have now passed “framework” climate laws similar to the UK’s Climate Change Act, as the chart below shows. This is up from just four when the act was legislated in 2008. Of these, 14 are explicitly titled the “climate change act”.
The UK was also the first major economy to legislate a net-zero target in 2019, but since then virtually every major emitter in the world has announced the target. (Not all of these targets have been put into law, as the UK’s has.)
When the UK announced its target in June 2019, around 1% of global emissions were covered by net-zero targets. By the end of that year, France and Germany brought this up to nearly 4%.
Over the following years, major economies including China and India announced net-zero targets, meaning that around three-quarters of global emissions are now covered by such goals, as the chart below shows.
(This figure would be even higher if the Trump administration in the US, which accounts for around a tenth of annual global emissions, had not abandoned the nation’s net-zero target.)
While it is true that the UK is “only responsible for 1% of global emissions”, as Badenoch has also noted, this does not mean its actions are inconsequential. Around a third of global emissions come from countries that are each responsible for 1% of global emissions or less.
Moreover, as a relatively wealthy country that is responsible for a large share of historical emissions, many argue that the UK also has a moral responsibility to lead on climate action.
This historical responsibility is implicitly invoked by the Paris Agreement, which recognises countries’ “common but differentiated responsibilities” for current climate change.
Finally, Badenoch’s position diverges from that of recent Conservative leaders.
Theresa May and Boris Johnson spoke positively of the UK “leading the world” in low-carbon technology and expressed pride about the nation’s climate record.
They framed the UK’s success in tackling climate change as a good reason to do more, rather than less. “Green” Conservatives also argue that the UK should race to gain a competitive advantage in producing low-carbon technologies domestically.
Responding to Badenoch’s plan to scrap the act, May issued a statement criticising the “retrograde step” following nearly two decades of the UK “[leading] the way in tackling climate change”.
What comes next under the Climate Change Act?
The debate over the future of the Climate Change Act, triggered by the Conservative pledge to repeal it, comes ahead of two key moments for the legislation.
First, the government has until the end of October 2025 to publish a new plan for meeting the sixth carbon budget (CB6), covering the five-year period from 2033-2037.
In 2021, the then-Conservative government passed legislation to cut emissions to 78% below 1990 levels during the sixth carbon budget period, centred on 2035. The government set out its “carbon budget delivery plan” for CB6 in October 2021, as part of a wider net-zero strategy.
In July 2022, however, this plan was ruled unlawful by the High Court for failing to publish sufficient details on exactly how the target would be met. The revised plan, published in March 2023, was once again found unlawful by the High Court in May 2024.
The High Court then gave the government a deadline of May 2025 to publish another version, later extended to October 2025 as a result of last year’s general election.
Second, the government has until June 2026 to legislate for the seventh carbon budget, covering the period 2037 to 2042. This legislation will be subject to a vote in parliament.
In February 2025, the CCC advised the government to set this budget at 87% below 1990 levels, in order to stay on track for the goal of net-zero by 2050, as shown in the chart below.
Both the CB6 delivery plan this October and the parliamentary vote over CB7 next June are likely to be hotly contested, with the Conservatives and Reform having come out against climate action.
After publishing two unlawful carbon budget delivery plans and ahead of a widely anticipated election loss, the Conservatives began calling for greater scrutiny around carbon budgets in 2023.
Then-prime minister Rishi Sunak said in September of that year that parliament should be able to debate plans to meet the next carbon budget, before voting on the target. He said:
“So, when parliament votes on carbon budgets in the future, I want to see it consider the plans to meet that budget, at the same time.”
Then-secretary of state Coutinho subsequently wrote that a draft delivery plan for CB7 should be published alongside draft legislation setting the level of the carbon budget. She also argued that CB7 be debated on the floor of the House, rather than in the “delegated legislation committee”.
In response, the current government has pledged to provide “further information” to parliament, ahead of the vote on CB7. In a July 2025 letter to the chair of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC), energy secretary Ed Miliband wrote:
“Prior to parliament’s vote, we will publish an impact assessment which will clearly articulate the full range of benefits and costs of the government’s chosen CB7 target and the cross-economy pathway to deliver it.”
However, Miliband said the government would not publish a CB7 delivery plan until “as soon as reasonably practicable after” the parliamentary vote on the level of the budget.
The EAC itself is holding an inquiry on the seventh carbon budget and how the “costs of delivering it will filter through to households and businesses”. It is likely to report back in February 2026.
What would happen if the Climate Change Act was repealed?
If any future government wanted to repeal the Climate Change Act and its legally binding net-zero goal, it would not be a straightforward process.
The government would need to introduce a new bill in parliament just to repeal the act.
This process would involve seeking approval from both the House of Commons and the House of Lords before receiving Royal Assent to become law. Within the make-up of the current UK parliament, it is likely that such a bill would face significant challenges.
Any new law repealing the Climate Change Act would need to introduce new climate commitments of a similar nature – or else the UK would be in breach of several international laws and treaties, explains Estelle Dehon KC, a barrister specialising in climate change. She tells Carbon Brief:
“In short, repeal of the Climate Change Act without any replacement commitments of a similar type would be in breach of the UK’s international obligations under: the climate change treaties (so UNFCCC, Kyoto and Paris); international human rights law and customary international law, as well as specific sources like UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.”
Under the Paris Agreement, the UK has made pledges to cut its emissions by 2030 and 2035, known as “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs).
The UK’s NDCs are directly informed by its domestic emissions-cutting targets, known as carbon budgets. The act specifies that the government has a “duty to prepare proposals and policies for meeting carbon budgets”.
Any move in breach of international laws and treaties could be vulnerable to legal challenges, particularly in light of a recent opinion on climate change by the International Court of Justice.
Repealing the Climate Change Act could also put the UK in opposition with its international trade agreements.
The most recent trade agreement between the UK and the EU states that each party “reaffirms its ambition of achieving economy-wide climate neutrality by 2050”.
It also contains rules on “non-regression” in relation to climate protection.
The post Factcheck: What the Climate Change Act does – and does not – mean for the UK appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Factcheck: What the Climate Change Act does – and does not – mean for the UK
Climate Change
“Sustainable fuels” pose high risks to Lula’s promised roadmap away from fossil fuels
President Lula opened COP30 with his boldest call yet for climate action and a clean-energy future. In his address, the Brazilian President declared that the world must “accelerate the energy transition” and “get rid of fossil fuels.” What drew the loudest applause from climate and energy experts in Belém, however, were his calls for COP30 to deliver tangible roadmaps to “overcome dependence on fossil fuels,” “reverse deforestation,” and secure equitable climate finance in a “fair and planned manner.”
Yet the day after, Lula’s promotion of so-called “sustainable fuels” cast a shadow of concern. A Roadmap away from oil, gas and coal will only succeed if negotiators and the Brazilian presidency resist the dangerous distractions of biofuels and other false solutions and stay focused on the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
The rationale for a roadmap
The case for a global roadmap could not be clearer. The latest round of national climate targets falls dramatically short of the Paris Agreement’s ambition. If the race to decarbonisation at the pace required to limit warming to 1.5°C were a 42-kilometre marathon, by 2035 we should have already covered half the distance. Instead, current pledges take us barely two kilometres forward.
As Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) miss the mark, they must become the floor, not the ceiling, of global ambition. A roadmap – if not hijacked as a Trojan horse for false solutions like “sustainable fuels” – could help accelerate the phase out of fossil fuels, the source of nearly three quarters of global emissions. Clearly, a roadmap on its own will not solve these challenges, but it can be a critical step further.
What a roadmap could entail and what’s the process for it?
A full roadmap may not be finalized at COP30, but the mandate to begin accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels could well emerge in Belém – whether through a declaration, the UAE Dialogue, a new agenda item, or an omnibus decision.
To give such an outcome real weight, it should be formally anchored under the CMA and Paris Agreement, not left as an optional declaration. This would transform it into a stronger, coordinated Mutirão, a collective effort embedded within a broader ministerial dialogue on the transition away from fossil fuels.
Such a process should explore transition scenarios and produce global pathways aligned with International Energy Agency (IEA) and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) benchmarks, providing structured guidance ahead of the next Global Stocktake, with milestones for 2035 and 2040 and links to long term strategies.
It could also involve developing country-tailored roadmaps that identify enabling conditions, barriers, cooperation mechanisms, and international support needs, consistent with national capacities and equity. Such a process should include a political segment, bringing together ministers and high-level representatives to assess progress and report to COP31 with concrete recommendations for adoption.
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Lula’s ‘Sustainable Fuels’ Mirage
On the second day of the Leaders Summit, President Lula, leader of the world’s second-largest biofuels producer, after the United States again spoke of a roadmap to ‘end dependency on fossil fuels’. But this time, he tried to slip in a twist: positioning “sustainable fuels” as a third pillar of the energy transition, alongside renewables and efficiency, and even launching a pledge to quadruple their production. It’s hard not to suspect that Brazil envisions the roadmap as a vehicle to advance its biofuels agenda.
That would be a serious mistake. Ironically, this proposal came alongside Lula’s call for a roadmap to halt deforestation. Yet, biofuels remain a leading driver of forest loss. If both roadmaps emerge from COP30, they must be interlinked to ensure one doesn’t undermine the other. Emission savings from biofuels are wildly overstated; some studies even find they emit more than the fossil fuels they replace. And let’s be honest: it’s impossible to imagine a world that quadruples “sustainable fuels” without devastating consequences for food security.
The pledge to quadruple so-called “sustainable fuels” rests on more shaky ground than one might realize: It conveniently draws from a recent IEA study “prepared in support of Brazil’s COP30 Presidency”. But this study refers to the IEA scenario of an “accelerated case”, which assumes existing policies are implemented, not that these policies align with net-zero pathways or the goals of the Paris Agreement. In fact, this pledge risks slowing down electrification across multiple sectors, contradicting what the IEA itself identifies as essential for a credible net-zero pathway.
Not another COP-out: We must rewrite the rules of the UN climate talks
If COP30 succeeds in establishing a roadmap – and it should – as part of the broader response to the global climate ambition gap, it must not be hijacked by Brazil’s biofuels agenda. Other countries should push back – or at the very least, insist on strong safeguards.
The lack of support speaks for itself: beyond Brazil, only 18 others have backed the pledge, hardly a groundswell compared to the 133 nations that endorsed the tripling renewables target at COP28. What’s more, countries such as Japan and Italy appear to be backing this pledge not to advance decarbonization, but to justify extending the life of combustion-engine vehicles and even coal plants through co-firing under the guise of biofuels.
Brazil’s biofuels push is not a breakthrough. It’s a dangerous distraction. A roadmap for a fast, fair and funded energy transition is urgently needed but it must be science-aligned, electrification-focused, and firmly aimed at phasing out fossil fuels, not replacing one problem with another.
The post “Sustainable fuels” pose high risks to Lula’s promised roadmap away from fossil fuels appeared first on Climate Home News.
“Sustainable fuels” pose high risks to Lula’s promised roadmap away from fossil fuels
Kate Cell is senior climate campaign manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and a Climate Action Against Disinformation steering committee member and Kathy Mulvey is corporate accountability campaign director at UCS
For years, fossil fuel lobbyists have swarmed the international climate summits outnumbering most national delegations and drowning out the voices of climate-vulnerable nations. Their mission is clear: derail progress, spread disinformation, and dodge accountability for fueling the climate crisis.
This overwhelming influence raises urgent questions – how do we prevent industry obstruction of science-based policy, and what would a climate summit look like if fossil fuel interests were finally shut out?
Climate policy must be guided by science, evidence, and justice – not fossil fuel industry influence. Yet the industry relies on disinformation to undermine science and delay action. This tactic is neither new nor surprising: for decades, fossil fuel companies have funded climate denial, obstructed progress, and profited from confusion.
At the Union of Concerned Scientists, our team’s latest report documents the ongoing role of Big Oil corporations as key drivers and beneficiaries of climate disinformation.
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Tools now exist to confront this threat. The Climate Action Against Disinformation coalition seeks to classify climate disinformation as a serious risk under laws regulating search engines and social media. Meanwhile, advocates pursue litigation against fossil fuel companies for “greenwashing,” exposing misleading ads that conceal their role in driving the crisis and holding them accountable.
An international commitment to information integrity (accurate, consistent and reliable information) at COP30 can help remove barriers to strong national climate solutions.
This week, a coalition of civil society groups, local leaders, businesses, and individuals is urging participants to “UNEQUIVOCALLY RECOGNIZE that upholding information integrity on climate change is a prerequisite for effective climate action, democratic principles, public health, and human rights.”
Acknowledging both the importance of information integrity and the dangers of disinformation is vital to advancing robust, verifiable measures that curb greenwashing and manipulative content undermining climate progress.
Limiting the influence of fossil fuel companies
CEOs and lobbyists from BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and others should not shape climate goals or clean energy plans; the fossil fuel industry has an irreconcilable conflict of interest with policies to curb climate change and advance renewable energy.
Yet, year after year, their representatives flood international negotiations, undermining progress and protecting profits while obstructing the urgent transition away from fossil fuels toward a sustainable, science-based future.
2023 marked the first COP where delegates were required to disclose affiliations with fossil fuel companies. These disclosures exposed the thousands of lobbyists granted access to negotiations. New research from the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition found that over the last four years, 5,350 oil, gas, and coal lobbyists were given access to COPs. At last year’s summit in Azerbaijan alone, 1,773 fossil fuel lobbyists registered—70% more than the combined 1,033 delegates from the ten mostclimate vulnerable nations.
This staggering imbalance reveals how polluters dominate climate talks and weaken policy. Amid this lobbying blitz, nations’ fossil fuel production plans are set to double what’s compatible with a 1.5°C pathway by 2030. Major fossil fuel corporations continue to prioritise profits over people and planet. Research shows the 250 largest oil and gas companies invest almost nothing in clean energy compared to their vast fossil fuel extraction, disregarding climate goals; and their role in deepening the crisis.
COP30 PR firm found to be “uniquely reliant” on fossil fuel clients
Requiring delegates to disclose affiliations and funding is a vital step in exposing fossil fuel influence. Yet with the 1.5°C target slipping away, disclosure alone is insufficient. World leaders must advance to disqualification, barring fossil fuel companies from shaping COP negotiations. Future COP hosts must also refuse to retain PR firms tied to fossil fuel companies. This blatant conflict of interest shields industry culpability, distorts public understanding of the demand for climate action, and undermines trust in global climate negotiations.
A summit free from such conflicts of interest would empower nations most affected by extreme heat, rising seas, and other escalating climate impacts, ensuring their voices are not drowned out by lobbyists and spin doctors for the very industry primarily driving destructive, deadly climate change.
Advancing accountability at COP30
The challenge extends beyond the fossil fuel industry. Big Tech’s richest leaders are actively fueling climate denial, deception, and delay when they amplify lies to increase ad revenue—just like fossil fuel corporations and their trade groups. COP30 must confront this corruption head-on: advancing bold policies to hasten a just transition away from fossil fuels, protect a truthful information ecosystem, and hold corporate actors accountable for the lies they spread and the deadly damage they inflict on our planet.
By resisting disinformation and other fossil fuel industry influence at COP30, world leaders can propel a people-centered transition toward a clean energy future grounded in rights, fairness, equity, and solidarity. A summit safeguarded against conflicts of interest would finally prioritize those most affected by the climate crisis, ensuring that science, justice, and integrity—not corporate deception—guide the path forward.
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https://www.climatechangenews.com/2025/11/12/bad-cop-to-good-cop-blocking-fossil-fueled-disinformation-in-belem-and-beyond/
The world’s fossil-fuel use is still on track to peak before 2030, despite a surge in political support for coal, oil and gas, according to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The IEA’s latest World Energy Outlook 2025, published during the opening days of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil, shows coal at or close to a peak, with oil set to follow around 2030 and gas by 2035, based on the stated policy intentions of the world’s governments.
Under the same assumptions, the IEA says that clean-energy use will surge, as nuclear power rises 39% by 2035, solar by 344% and wind by 178%.
Still, the outlook has some notable shifts since last year, with coal use revised up by around 6% in the near term, oil seeing a shallower post-peak decline and gas plateauing at higher levels.
This means that the IEA expects global warming to reach 2.5C this century if “stated policies” are implemented as planned, up marginally from 2.4C in last year’s outlook.
In addition, after pressure from the Trump administration in the US, the IEA has resurrected its “current policies scenario”, which – effectively – assumes that governments around the world abandon their stated intentions and only policies already set in legislation are continued.
If this were to happen, the IEA warns, global warming would reach 2.9C by 2100, as oil and gas demand would continue to rise and the decline in coal use would proceed at a slower rate.
This year’s outlook also includes a pathway that limits warming to 1.5C in 2100, but says that this would only be possible after a period of “overshoot”, where temperature rise peaks at 1.65C.
The IEA will publish its “announced pledges scenario” at a later date, to illustrate the impact of new national climate pledges being implemented on time and in full.
(See Carbon Brief’s coverage of previous IEA world energy outlooks from 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 and 2015.)
World energy outlook
The IEA’s annual World Energy Outlook (WEO) is published every autumn. It is regarded as one of the most influential annual contributions to the understanding of energy and emissions trends.
The outlook explores a range of scenarios, representing different possible futures for the global energy system. These are developed using the IEA’s “global energy and climate model”.
The latest report stresses that “none of [these scenarios] should be regarded as a forecast”.
However, this year’s outlook marks a major shift in emphasis between the scenarios – and it reintroduces a pathway where oil and gas demand continues to rise for many decades.
This pathway is named the “current policies scenario” (CPS), which assumes that governments abandon their planned policies, leaving only those that are already set in legislation.
If the world followed this path, then global temperatures would reach 2.9C above pre-industrial levels by 2100 and would be “set to keep rising from there”, the IEA says.
The CPS was part of the annual outlook until 2020, when the IEA said that it was “difficult to imagine” such a pathway “prevailing in today’s circumstances”.
It has been resurrected following heavy pressure from the US, which is a major funder of the IEA that accounts for 14% of the agency’s budget.
For example, in July Politico reported “a ratcheted-up US pressure campaign” and “months of public frustrations with the IEA from top Trump administration officials”. It noted:
“Some Republicans say the IEA has discouraged investment in fossil fuels by publishing analyses that show near-term peaks in global demand for oil and gas.”
The CPS is the first scenario to be discussed in detail in the report, appearing in chapter three. The CPS similarly appears first in Annex A, the data tables for the report.
The second scenario is the “stated policies scenario” (STEPS), featured in chapter four of this year’s outlook. Here, the outlook also includes policies that governments say they intend to bring forward and that the IEA judges as likely to be implemented in practice.
In this world, global warming would reach 2.5C by 2100 – up marginally from the 2.4C expected in the 2024 edition of the outlook.
Beyond the STEPS and the CPS, the outlook includes two further scenarios.
One is the “net-zero emissions by 2050” (NZE) scenario, which illustrates how the world’s energy system would need to change in order to limit warming in 2100 to 1.5C.
The NZE was first floated in the 2020 edition of the report and was then formally featured in 2021.
The report notes that, unlike in previous editions, this scenario would see warming peak at more than 1.6C above pre-industrial temperatures, before returning to 1.5C by the end of the century.
This means it would include a high level of temporary “overshoot” of the 1.5C target. The IEA explains that this results from the “reality of persistently high emissions in recent years”. It adds:
“In addition to very rapid progress with the transformation of the energy sector, bringing the temperature rise back down below 1.5C by 2100 also requires widespread deployment of CO2 removal technologies that are currently unproven at large scale.”
Finally, the outlook includes a new scenario where everyone in the world is able to gain access to electricity by 2035 and to clean cooking by 2040, named “ACCESS”.
While the STEPS appears second in the running order of the report, it is mentioned slightly more frequently than the CPS, as shown in the figure below. The CPS is a close second, however, whereas the IEA’s 1.5C pathway (NZE) receives a declining level of attention.
US critics of the IEA have presented its stated policies scenario as “disconnected from reality”, in contrast to what they describe as the “likely scenario” of “business as usual”.
Yet the current policies scenario is far from a “business-as-usual” pathway. The IEA says this explicitly in an article published ahead of the outlook:
“The CPS might seem like a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario, but this terminology can be misleading in an energy system where new technologies are already being deployed at scale, underpinned by robust economics and mature, existing policy frameworks. In these areas, ‘business as usual’ would imply continuing the current process of change and, in some cases, accelerating it.”
In order to create the current policies scenario, where oil and gas use continues to surge into the future, the IEA therefore has to make more pessimistic assumptions about barriers to the uptake of new technologies and about the willingness of governments to row back on their plans. It says:
“The CPS…builds on a narrow reading of today’s policy settings…assuming no change, even where governments have indicated their intention to do so.”
This is not a scenario of “business as usual”. Instead, it is a scenario where countries around the world follow US president Donald Trump in dismantling their plans to shift away from fossil fuels.
More specifically, the current policies scenario assumes that countries around the world renege on their policy commitments and fail to honour their climate pledges.
For example, it assumes that Japan and South Korea fail to implement their latest national electricity plans, that China fails to continue its power-market reforms and abandons its provincial targets for clean power, that EU countries fail to meet their coal phase-out pledges and that US states such as California fail to extend their clean-energy targets.
Similarly, it assumes that Brazil, Turkey and India fail to implement their greenhouse gas emissions trading schemes (ETS) as planned and that China fails to expand its ETS to other industries.
The scenario also assumes that the EU, China, India, Australia, Japan and many others fail to extend or continue strengthening regulations on the energy efficiency of buildings and appliances, as well as those relating to the fuel-economy standards for new vehicles.
In contrast to the portrayal of the stated policies scenario as blindly assuming that all pledges will be met, the IEA notes that it does not give a free pass to aspirational targets. It says:
“[T]argets are not automatically assumed to be met; the prospects and timing for their realisation are subject to an assessment of relevant market, infrastructure and financial constraints…[L]ike the CPS, the STEPS does not assume that aspirational goals, such as those included in the Paris Agreement, are achieved.”
Only in the “announced pledges scenario” (APS) does the IEA assume that countries meet all of their climate pledges on time and full – regardless of how credible they are.
The APS does not appear in this year’s report, presumably because many countries missed the deadlines to publish new climate pledges ahead of COP30.
The IEA says it will publish its APS, assessing the impact of the new pledges, “once there is a more complete picture of these commitments”.
Fossil-fuel peak
In recent years, there has been a significant shift in the IEA’s outlook for fossil fuels under the stated policies scenario, which it has described as “a mirror to the plans of today’s policymakers”.
In 2020, the agency said that prevailing policy conditions pointed towards a “structural” decline in global coal demand, but that it was too soon to declare a peak in oil or gas demand.
By 2021, it said global fossil-fuel use could peak as soon as 2025, but only if all countries got on track to meet their climate goals. Under stated policies, it expected fossil-fuel use to hit a plateau from the late 2020s onwards, declining only marginally by 2050.
There was a dramatic change in 2022, when it said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting global energy crisis had “turbo-charged” the shift away from fossil fuels.
As a result, it said at the time that it expected a peak in demand for each of the fossil fuels. Coal “within a few years”, oil “in the mid-2030s” and gas ”by the end of the decade”.
This outlook sharpened further in 2023 and, by 2024, it was saying that each of the fossil fuels would see a peak in global demand before 2030.
This year’s report notes that “some formal country-level [climate] commitments have waned”, pointing to the withdrawal of the US from the Paris Agreement.
The report says the “new direction” in the US is among “major new policies” in 48 countries. The other changes it lists include Brazil’s “energy transition acceleration programme”, Japan’s new plan for 2040 and the EU’s recently adopted 2040 climate target.
Overall, the IEA data still points to peaks in demand for coal, oil and gas under the stated policies scenario, as shown in the figure below.
Alongside this there is a surge in clean technologies, with renewables overtaking oil to become the world’s largest source of energy – not just electricity – by the early 2040s.
In this year’s outlook under stated policies, the IEA sees global coal demand as already being at – or very close to – a definitive peak, as the chart above shows.
Coal then enters a structural decline, where demand for the fuel is displaced by cheaper alternatives, particularly renewable sources of electricity.
The IEA reiterates that the cost of solar, wind and batteries has respectively fallen by 90%, 70% and 90% since 2010, with further declines of 10-40% expected by 2035.
(The report notes that household energy spending would be lower under the more ambitious NZE scenario than under stated policies, despite the need for greater investment.)
However, this year’s outlook has coal use in 2030 coming in some 6% higher than expected last year, although it ultimately declines to similar levels by 2050.
For oil, the agency’s data still points to a peak in demand this decade, as electric vehicles (EVs) and more efficient combustion engines erode the need for the fuel in road transport.
While this sees oil demand in 2030 reaching similar levels to what the IEA expected last year, the post-peak decline is slightly less marked in the latest outlook, ending some 5% higher in 2050.
The biggest shift compared with last year is for gas, where the IEA suggests that global demand will keep rising until 2035, rather than peaking by 2030.
Still, the outlook has gas demand in 2030 being only 7% higher than expected last year. It notes:
“Long-term natural gas demand growth is kept lower than in recent decades by the expanding deployment of renewables, efficiency gains and electrification of end-uses.”
In terms of clean energy, the outlook sees nuclear power output growing to 39% above 2024 levels by 2035 and doubling by 2050. Solar grows nearly four-fold by 2035 and nearly nine-fold by 2050, while wind power nearly triples and quadruples over the same periods.
Notably, the IEA sees strong growth of clean-energy technologies, even in the current policies scenario. Here, renewables would still become the world’s largest energy source before 2050.
This is despite the severe headwinds assumed in this scenario, including EVs never increasing from their current low share of sales in India or the US.
The CPS would see oil and gas use continuing to rise, with demand for oil reaching 11% above current levels by 2050 and gas climbing 31%, even as renewables nearly triple.
This means that coal use would still decline, falling to a fifth below current levels by 2050.
Finally, while the IEA considers the prospect of global coal demand continuing to rise rather than falling as expected, it gives this idea short shrift. It explains:
“A growth story for coal over the coming decades cannot entirely be ruled out but it would fly in the face of two crucial structural trends witnessed in recent years: the rise of renewable sources of power generation, and the shift in China away from an especially coal-intensive model of growth and infrastructure development. As such, sustained growth for coal demand appears highly unlikely.”
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