The leader of the opposition Conservative party, Kemi Badenoch, has shattered the political consensus on climate change in a speech attacking the UK’s net-zero by 2050 target.
In a speech launching a “policy renewal programme” to shape the Conservatives’ approach to key issues, Badenoch disowned the target passed into law by her own party in 2019.
She offered no alternative to the 2050 net-zero target and failed to cite any evidence in support of her assertion that meeting it would be “impossible” without “bankrupting” the country.
As a government minister in 2022, Badenoch had touted the “opportunity” for “growth and revitalised communities” as a result of the “clean energy revolution”.
However, she then ran her leadership campaign as a “net-zero sceptic” from the home of Neil Record, the chair of the UK’s main climate-sceptic lobby group Net Zero Watch.
Her speech received widespread media coverage, including frontpage stories for the Daily Mail, the Times and the Daily Telegraph, as well as editorials from the Daily Telegraph and the Sun.
In this factcheck, Carbon Brief looks at the evidence on the UK’s net-zero target and how it contradicts the claims made by Badenoch in her speech.
- Net-zero is ‘the only way’ to stop global warming
- Net-zero by 2050 in the UK is ‘feasible’ and ‘affordable’
- The UK has a ‘delivery plan’ to meet its climate goals
- Reaching net-zero will be ‘73% cheaper than thought’
- Unchecked warming would be ‘catastrophic’ for public finances
- High gas prices are making energy bills expensive
- Net-zero will ‘make energy cheaper, not more costly’
- Net-zero makes energy ‘more secure’
- Two-thirds of UK public backs net-zero by 2050
- More than 80% of world’s population covered by net-zero targets
Net-zero is ‘the only way’ to stop global warming
In her speech, Badenoch claimed that she was committed to “safeguard[ing] the delicate balance of nature for future generations” and that she was offering “three truths” about net-zero.
Yet she also falsely claimed that “no one knows” why the UK has a net-zero by 2050 target.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has detailed the extensive evidence that it will be impossible to stop global warming without reaching net-zero.
In its latest assessment report, the IPCC explained:
“Without net-zero CO2 emissions, and a decrease in the net non-CO2 forcing (or sufficient net negative CO2 emissions to offset any further warming from net non-CO2 forcing), the climate system will continue to warm.”
Speaking at the report launch, IPCC Working Group I co-chair Dr Valérie Masson-Delmotte said reaching net-zero emissions was the “only way to limit global warming”. She said:
“This report reaffirms that there is a near-linear relationship between the cumulative amount of emissions of CO2 in the atmosphere from human activities and the extent of observed and future warming. This is physics. This means that the only way to limit global warming is to reach net-zero CO2 emissions at the global scale. Every additional tonne of CO2 emissions adds to global warming.”
This is why the 2015 Paris Agreement, signed by almost every country in the world, targets a “balance” between greenhouse gas sources and the “sinks” that remove them from the atmosphere .
The IPCC also explained that limiting warming by the end of the century to less than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels would require emissions to reach net-zero globally by the “early 2050s”.
In 2019, the UK’s advisory Climate Change Committee (CCC) considered the breadth of scientific evidence, the economics of the transition, as well as societal and technological trends when it offered detailed advice – covering 277 pages – on setting a net-zero by 2050 target.
This advice formed the basis for the then-Conservative government’s decision to put the net-zero target into law, by amending the UK’s 2050 target under the 2008 Climate Change Act from an 80% reduction in emissions to a 100% goal.
With the academies of other G7 nations, the UK’s Royal Society set out the “need” for countries to “carefully design, plan and accelerate action to reach net-zero by 2050 or earlier”. It said:
“Science tells us we must act now and continue to act into the future to deliver net-zero emissions if we are to avoid unacceptable warming.”
When she signed the net-zero target into law in 2019, former Conservative prime minister Theresa May said that the goal was “a conservative mission to end our contribution to climate change and build a more prosperous and resilient economy”.
Net-zero by 2050 in the UK is ‘feasible’ and ‘affordable’
Despite the clear evidence of the need to reach net-zero emissions to stop global warming, Badenoch said in her speech that reaching the target by 2050 was “impossible”.
She did not offer any evidence to support this supposedly “unvarnished truth”.
Announcing the adoption of the target in 2019, Conservative then-secretary of state Greg Clark said that it was “necessary and feasible”, pointing to the CCC’s advice as evidence.
Indeed, the 2019 advice set out in detail how it would be “feasible” to cut UK emissions to net-zero by 2050. In its latest advice to the government, the CCC set out a “balanced pathway” to net-zero by 2050 that showed the target was “feasible and deliverable”.
Similarly, in 2024 the National Energy System Operator (NESO) published three “credible” and “affordable” pathways to net-zero by 2050, as part of its annual “future energy scenarios”. It said:
“Our net-zero pathways identify three credible, strategic routes to reach net-zero…Decisive action is needed within the next two years to deliver the fundamental change required for a fair, affordable, sustainable and secure net-zero energy system by 2050.”
A peer-reviewed research paper in 2022 identified and compared seven pathways to net-zero by 2050, published by four different organisations.
Directly contradicting Badenoch’s speech, the study concluded that “the breadth of pathways analysed in this paper has shown that there are several possible routes to net-zero”.
Moreover, the Conservative government in 2021 published its own strategy for reaching net-zero by 2050, including an entire section titled “why net-zero”.
In a foreword to the 2021 strategy, then-Conservative prime minister Boris Johson wrote that “reaching net-zero is entirely possible”.
An updated 2023 strategy published under Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak – when Badenoch was secretary of state for business and trade – says that “the transition to net-zero will provide the economic opportunity of the 21st century”.
At a global level, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has published a pathway “for the global energy sector to achieve net-zero CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions by 2050, with advanced economies reaching net-zero emissions in advance of others”.
In addition to meeting global climate goals, the IEA’s pathway also meets “key energy-related sustainable development goals (SDGs), in particular universal energy access by 2030 and major improvements in air quality”.
Numerous other global pathways showing how to reach net-zero emissions by or around 2050 have been published, as summarised by the IPCC’s latest assessment report.
The UK has a ‘delivery plan’ to meet its climate goals
Another of the ideas promoted in Badenoch’s speech is that there has “never, ever been a detailed plan” to reach net-zero or other UK climate goals.
This is flatly contradicted by the extensive legislative and policy framework set up around UK climate targets under the 2008 Climate Change Act.
This legislation requires the government to seek and take into account the CCC’s advice on how to reach net-zero. It also requires the government, under sections 13 and 14 of the act, to prepare and publish “proposals and policies” that “will enable” the UK’s legally binding targets to be met.
The UK’s 2021 strategy was subject to legal challenge and was subsequently ruled unlawful for failing to publicly spell out the ways it would cut UK emissions, policy by policy.
However, these numbers – quantifying the impact of each policy to cut emissions – had always been available behind the scenes. They were later published as part of a revised, highly detailed “delivery plan” for meeting the UK’s goals.
Indeed, it was published in 2023 alongside a veritable “avalanche” of plans and policies, amounting to nearly 3,000 pages of documents on how the UK was going about cutting its emissions.
While this revised strategy was later ruled unlawful once again, it is hard to argue that there has “never, ever been a detailed plan”.
The Labour government has until May 2025 to submit a revised delivery plan to the high court.
Reaching net-zero will be ‘73% cheaper than thought’
In addition to claiming that there is no plan for reaching net-zero, Badenoch claimed that this fictional absence is because it “would reveal just how catastrophic the actual costs will be for families, for businesses and for our economy”.
Badenoch also claimed falsely that reaching net-zero would be a “multi-trillion” project and that it could only be reached by “bankrupting us”. She said:
“Anyone who has done any serious analysis knows it cannot be achieved without a significant drop in our living standards or worse, by bankrupting us.”
Her speech follows a wave of “scary-sounding numbers” being thrown around the UK debate about net-zero over the past 18 months.
Invariably, these arguments – and the numbers behind them – focus on the costs of reaching net-zero without mentioning the costs of business-as-usual; look at the cost of cutting emissions, but not the benefits; or ignore the costs of failing to tackle climate change.
On the contrary, the only “serious analysis” – as Badenoch quipped – on the economic impact of the UK’s net-zero target, has found that meeting the goal will require significant, but affordable investments, which will deliver long-term savings in terms of lower bills for importing fossil fuels.
Badenoch herself, while a minister in 2022, touted the “opportunity, growth and revitalised communities” offered by “the clean energy revolution”, which she said was the “future-proofing force that will help us create a better tomorrow”.
Her comments echoed the independent review commissioned by the government she was part of at the time, which concluded that net-zero was the “growth opportunity of the 21st century”.
It added that while significant investments would be needed – primarily from the private sector – the “benefits of investing in net-zero today outweigh the costs”.
Similarly, in its latest advice to the government, the CCC concluded that the UK would need to make additional investments totalling less than £700bn over the 25 years to 2050.
This was significantly lower than the £1.3tn estimate published just five years earlier and several times lower than the “multi-trillion” cost claimed by Badenoch.
Those investments would deliver almost equally large operational savings of £600bn, due to more efficient electrified heat, transport and industry needing less fossil fuel imports.
In total, the CCC therefore estimated that the net cost of reaching net-zero would amount to just over £100bn over 25 years, equivalent to £4bn per year or 0.2% of GDP.
This £100bn net cost is 73% lower than the CCC’s estimate from five years earlier, Carbon Brief analysis found.
Moreover, the CCC said that the large majority of the investment required – some 65-90% – would come from the private sector, rather than from government coffers.
In a statement responding to Badenoch’s speech, Dhara Vyas, the head of Energy UK agreed on the need for “honest conversations”, but added that delaying investments “increases the eventual cost” and – as per Carbon Brief analysis – had already “added billions to bills”. She said:
“Of course we need honest conversations about how we fund the costs in a way that is fair to households and businesses – and this also needs to include a consideration of the potential price of inaction. Delaying upfront investment increases the eventual cost and rowing back on green measures added billions to bills during the gas crisis.”
Unchecked warming would be ‘catastrophic’ for public finances
Badenoch’s speech did not mention the costs of unchecked warming. Instead, she described the UK’s approach to climate policy as “fantasy politics…Promising the Earth. And costing it too.”
In contrast, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) concluded in 2021: “Unmitigated climate change would ultimately have catastrophic economic and fiscal consequences.”
This was, in part, due to the impact of increasingly severe extreme weather events, which the OBR subsequently said might cost the UK nearly 8% of GDP by 2050.
The conclusion was also based on the fact that shifting to clean energy would reduce the UK’s exposure to volatile fossil fuel prices set by international markets. It said:
“There is a risk that the UK economy remains relatively highly dependent on imported gas…Continued dependence on gas could be as expensive fiscally as completing the transition to net-zero”.
Furthermore, the OBR found that delaying action “could double the overall cost” to the UK of cutting emissions to net-zero.
In its own 2021 review of the net-zero target, the Treasury under Rishi Sunak said that unchecked climate change would be a “significant fiscal risk” and that while the transition to net-zero would have “material fiscal consequences”, those consequences could be “managed”. It added:
“Furthermore, the increased investment required to transition to net-zero creates opportunities for growth and employment.”
This is illustrated by a February 2025 report from the Confederation for British Industry (CBI), which concluded that net-zero was making a “growing contribution” to the UK economy. It said:
“Think going green is just a nice idea? Think again. The net-zero economy has become a powerhouse of job creation and economic expansion with 10.1% growth in the total economic value supported by the net-zero economy since 2023.”
The report found that the net-zero economy was growing three times faster than other sectors. Responding to Badenoch’s speech, CBI head Rain Newton-Smith said in a statement:
“Now is not the time to step back from the opportunities of the green economy. Cross-party support for net-zero has underpinned international investors’ confidence to choose the UK for investment in the energy transition.”
High gas prices are making energy bills expensive
Part of Badenoch’s argument against the net-zero target is her claim that the UK’s current climate policies are “driving up the cost of energy”. In her speech, she said:
“The cost of electricity – far too high – much higher than nearby and comparative countries with the real possibility of it going even higher with environmental levies.”
The UK does face very high electricity prices relative to many other countries. However, contrary to Badenoch’s speech, the UK’s extreme exposure to gas prices is the main reason for this.
(As Energy UK’s Vyas notes in her statement, “it’s the volatile cost of fossil fuels and our dependence on them that have driven up energy bills for customers”.)
Indeed, the UK’s wholesale electricity prices are almost entirely dictated by the price of gas, which remains more than three times more expensive than before the global energy crisis.
This near-perfect correlation between gas and power prices is shown in the figure below. (Note that Northern Ireland is part of the separate all-Ireland electricity market.)
While the UK’s electricity was the “cleanest ever” in 2024, with a record-low share coming from fossil fuels, gas continues to set the price of electricity during the vast majority of hours.
This is a result of the “marginal pricing” system used in most countries around the world. Specifically, gas sets the wholesale price of electricity in the UK during 98% of hours, whereas the EU average is less than 40%, as shown in the figure below.
The government’s target of clean power by 2030 is expected to significantly reduce the amount of time when gas sets the price of electricity.
In one of the scenarios set out in NESO advice last autumn, gas would set the price in just 15% of hours by 2030, insulating consumers from “volatile international gas prices”.
While the UK’s high exposure to gas prices is the main reason for high electricity bills, the government is also under pressure to cut other costs, including the cost of building and operating the electricity system, as well as funding historical support for renewable projects.
A long-running government review of the way the electricity market operates is due to reach a conclusion by summer 2025. This could result in changes designed to reduce the influence of gas on electricity prices and to make the system more efficient, among other things.
In a March 2025 report, Energy UK set out a range of shorter-term options to cut the price of electricity, most prominently removing policy costs from electricity bills and paying them via gas bills or from general taxation. This shifting of costs is known as “rebalancing”.
The CCC’s recent advice to government also called for policy costs – which make up around 25% of household electricity prices – to be rebalanced onto gas bills or taxation.
Net-zero will ‘make energy cheaper, not more costly’
In the longer term – and contrary to what Badenoch implies in her speech – the transition to clean energy is widely expected to cut household energy costs.
Looking specifically at the UK, the CCC said in February 2025 that shifting towards net-zero would help cut household energy bills and motoring costs by £1,400 per year by 2050.
It said that household energy bills for heat and power would fall by £700 in 2050, compared with current levels, and that the cost of fuelling cars would fall by a similar amount.
In a pre-launch press briefing, CCC chief executive Emma Pinchbeck addressed MPs arguing against the transition to net-zero, telling journalists that their opposition amounted to being hostile to lower bills for their constituents. She said:
“If you are an elected representative who is hostile to renewables, heat pumps, electric vehicles, what our numbers say is you are also hostile to your constituents saving £700 on their energy bill and [another] £700 on their fuel bill through making those changes.”
At a global level, the IEA concluded that reaching net-zero by 2050 would “make energy cheaper, not more costly”.
Strikingly, the IEA concluded that accelerating climate action to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 would make the global energy system “more affordable and fairer”.
According to the agency, this is because higher investment costs would be more than offset by lower fuel bills, greater efficiency and reduced fossil fuel rents. It concluded:
“Energy transitions could lead to major reductions in household energy bills and accelerate progress towards universal energy access. But managing upfront costs for poorer and rural households – as well as ongoing costs – remains a key public policy challenge.”
Net-zero makes energy ‘more secure’
Another key part of Badenoch’s speech was her argument that net-zero “makes us dangerously dependent on countries who don’t share our values and it is risking our energy security”.
She did not find space in her speech to mention the UK’s current exposure to expensive fossil fuel imports, many of which come from what she refers to as “countries who don’t share our values”.
Indeed, the UK’s exposure to international gas prices, which surged following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, left the country the “worst hit” in western Europe by the subsequent global energy crisis, according to Guardian coverage of a report from the International Monetary Fund.
The government’s target to shift to clean power by 2030 would leave the country “much less reliant on energy imports for power and far less exposed to fluctuations in international gas prices”, according to NESO advice published last November.
The wider shift away from fossil fuels, towards electrified heat and transport, would mean the UK could cut its oil imports tenfold from current levels by 2050 and its gas imports by two-thirds, according to the CCC’s recently published pathway to net-zero.
While Badenoch said that she, too, supported the shift to renewables “when they make energy cheaper and more secure”, she also claimed that they would leave the UK “heavily dependent on China”. The country currently manufactures most of the world’s solar panels and large proportions of the batteries and other clean technologies needed to decarbonise.
The shift away from fossil fuels towards clean energy will indeed reshape the geopolitics of global energy supplies. However, Badenoch omits the fundamentally different nature of buying an electric vehicle, which can be fuelled with domestically produced electricity, compared with a petrol car, for which imported fuel must be bought, burned and then bought again and again.
In its 2023 energy security strategy, the then-Conservative government said that the shift to clean energy was the “most effective route to ensuring both climate and energy security”, which would help “avoid risks associated with dependency on fossil fuels”.
Two-thirds of UK public backs net-zero by 2050
In its coverage of Badenoch’s speech, Bloomberg reports that her positioning on net-zero is an attempt to win back votes lost to the hard-right, climate-sceptic Reform UK party.
Ever since the Uxbridge byelection in July 2023, the Conservatives had been tacking away from their historical support for climate policies in general and the net-zero target in particular.
This shift saw then-prime minister Rishi Sunak make a September 2023 speech in which he abandoned or delayed key parts of the then-government’s climate strategy.
Using similar language to Badenoch’s speech, Sunak said at the time that he was adopting an “honest” approach to net-zero and that he was going to remove “unacceptable costs” from “hard-working British people”. Several of his changes would have cost consumers billions.
Many political observers noted at the time that this approach carried electoral risks for the Conservatives. Even some within the party argued that the “right lessons” needed to be drawn from the Uxbridge result. Yet Badenoch has doubled down, going even further than Sunak.
This is despite the fact that anti net-zero rhetoric from the Conservatives was reportedly at least partly to blame for their loss in last year’s general election.
Indeed, some 65%% of the UK public backs the net-zero by 2050 target, according to polling by Climate Barometer, compared with 22% who oppose it.
Moreover, 55% of Conservative voters back the target, as well as 90% of MPs.
YouGov polling released on the day of Badenoch’s speech found that 61% of people in Great Britain support net-zero and just 24% oppose it.
Among those who voted Conservative in the last election 52% support the goal and 38% oppose it, according to the YouGov results.
More than 80% of world’s population covered by net-zero targets
One final point raised by Badenoch’s speech is that even if the UK were to reach net-zero, global emissions would not be guaranteed to reach net-zero overall.
She went on to claim that “other countries are not following us”. Contrary to this claim, some 142 countries – representing more than 80% of the world’s population – are covered by net-zero targets.
The post Factcheck: Why Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch is wrong about UK’s net-zero goal appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Factcheck: Why Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch is wrong about UK’s net-zero goal
Benito Müller, Anju Sharma, Jen Allan, Matthias Roesti and Luis Gomez-Echeverri.
Every November, tens of thousands of people descend on the world’s annual UN climate conference. Presidents and prime ministers, negotiators, business executives, campaigners, journalists, celebrities and lobbyists converge on one city for two frenetic weeks, all convinced they need to be there.
Everyone with a stake in climate action feels they must be present. Any suggestion of a smaller, more focused conference is quickly met with concerns about exclusion. But it is time to ask an uncomfortable question: has the fear of missing out (FOMO) become one of the biggest obstacles to effective international climate cooperation?
The story in numbers
When governments first met under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in the 1990s, the annual Conferences of the Parties (COPs) attracted only a few thousand participants. Even the Kyoto conference, which produced the first legally binding emissions agreement, hosted fewer than 10,000 people.
Since then, analysis by ecbi reveals a striking trend: after each major treaty COP, the participation at the next COP approximately doubled (see chart below).
Why?
Part of the answer is success. As climate change has risen up the political and economic agenda, more actors quite rightly want to engage. But our analysis reveals that a less acknowledged force is also driving the spikes in participation: FOMO.
As more heads of state attended, ministers concluded they had to be there too. As ministers arrived in greater numbers, government delegations expanded. Businesses, investors, researchers, campaigners, journalists, city leaders and philanthropies reached the same conclusion: if everyone important is going to COP, we cannot afford to stay away.
The result is a self-reinforcing cycle. The larger COP becomes, the more indispensable attendance appears, because presence signals relevance.
The negotiating community has barely grown
The headline attendance figures tell only part of the story. At COP28, more than 42,000 Party badges were issued to official national delegations. However, only 1,581 delegates had also attended the technical negotiating session in Bonn just five months earlier. Fewer than 4% of Party delegates formed the core negotiating community.
Comment: The UN climate process was built for negotiation – now it must support implementation
This core negotiating community has remained remarkably stable: across the five COPs since Paris, between roughly 1,300 and 1,600 delegates consistently attended both the June negotiating session and the annual COP.
The negotiating community has not become twenty times larger, but the COP has.
One COP, three different events
Today’s COP has, in fact, evolved into three very different events rolled into one.
The first is the formal negotiating session, where governments agree rules, guidance and decisions under the Convention and the Paris Agreement.
The second is a global political summit, where leaders announce initiatives and demonstrate political commitment.
The third is a vast climate expo, where businesses, cities, researchers, financial institutions and civil society showcase solutions, build partnerships and engage the public.
Each of them serves a valuable purpose, but the problem is that they have become bundled together by historical accident rather than institutional design.
Bigger is not always better
The consequences of “mega-COPs” are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
The countries most vulnerable to climate change are increasingly less able to host COPs and thus lose the ability to have their voices properly heard. Hosting a modern COP now requires enormous financial resources, extensive security operations and accommodation capacity that many countries simply do not possess. Even wealthier nations have become more reluctant to take on the burden.
Inside the venue, size creates its own inefficiencies. Climate negotiations often advance through informal conversations: a chance meeting in a corridor, a discussion over coffee, an impromptu conversation between delegates who discover common ground. Those opportunities become rarer when participants spend hours navigating enormous venues and crowded security checkpoints.
Comment: COP presidencies should focus less on climate policy, more on global politics
Observer access is constrained by overcrowding. National delegations increasingly include large numbers of non-government participants, sometimes outnumbering officials from government ministries. Meanwhile, businesses, campaigners and journalists compete with negotiators for the same space and attention.
The very scale of the event also creates a reputational problem. A gathering of 60,000 or more people inevitably creates expectations of dramatic political breakthroughs every year. Yet much of today’s climate diplomacy involves steady, technical progress. When those quieter achievements are judged against the expectations generated by a mega-event, disappointment in the UN climate change process becomes almost inevitable.
Time to unbundle
Not everything must happen in the same place at the same time. Negotiations, political leadership and implementation partnerships each deserve their own space. They should become separate events.
Routine governing body sessions, involving the roughly 5,000 participants directly engaged in the formal process, could be held in Bonn, where the UN climate secretariat is based. Political summits could be convened separately when leaders’ intervention is genuinely needed. Climate expos could continue to rotate with the COP Presidency, providing dedicated opportunities for businesses, investors, cities, researchers and civil society to showcase solutions and forge partnerships.
Such an approach would strengthen, not weaken, participation. Negotiators would benefit from a more focused and effective working environment. Host countries would face a far more manageable logistical and financial challenge. Climate-vulnerable countries would once again have a realistic opportunity to host key meetings and shape the global agenda. Businesses, investors, cities and civil society would gain greater visibility by engaging in forums designed for partnership, innovation and implementation, rather than competing with formal negotiations for space and attention.
Comment: Not another COP-out: We must rewrite the rules of the UN climate talks
Today’s mega-COPs evolved incrementally, one seemingly sensible decision at a time, until their sheer scale began to undermine many of the objectives they were intended to serve. The fear of missing out now risks becoming one of the biggest barriers to the reforms needed to make the process more effective.
The greatest fear now is not missing out on the next COP, but missing the opportunity to redesign the process so it can deliver on its ultimate purpose: tackling the climate crisis.
Benito Müller is managing director of Oxford Climate Policy and director of the European Capacity Building Initiative (ecbi).
Anju Sharma is a climate policy specialist with Oxford Climate Policy.
Jen Allan is a senior Lecturer at Cardiff University and strategic advisor at the International Institute for Sustainable Development.
Matthias Roesti is a postdoctoral researcher studying the political economy of climate change at the University of Pennsylvania’s Environmental Politics Lab.
Luis Gomez-Echeverri is a former senior staff member with UNDP and UNFCCC and currently an emeritus research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, working at the intersection of climate and development.
The post Is FOMO undermining climate diplomacy? appeared first on Climate Home News.
Heatwaves are becoming more likely and more intense due to climate change, impacting sources of power generation around the world as they work to meet increased demand.
When temperatures soared past 40C in parts of Europe in June and July 2026, nuclear reactors shuttered, gas plants’ efficiency fell, wind speeds dropped and electricity networks sagged.
Yet, while all types of electricity generation are affected variously by extreme heat, some commentators are quick to point the finger at “intermittent” wind and solar, while downplaying the impact on sources such as gas or nuclear power.
Extreme heat also drives up electricity demand, as people turn on air conditioning and fridges work harder.
For example, in France, daily electricity demand rose by almost 20% during a two-week heatwave in June 2026.
This often leads to an increase in power prices, as generation strains and demand rises, putting a premium on electricity.
Below, Carbon Brief – amid a slew of misleading claims – explains how key power sources cope with extreme heat.
Nuclear
The impact of heatwaves on nuclear power generation is well documented, with a plethora of headlines often accompanying record temperatures in nations that rely on the technology.
For example, around 70% of electricity is generated by nuclear power in France, leaving it vulnerable to the impacts of heatwaves.
During the July 2026 heatwave, three of France’s 57 nuclear reactors had to shut down. Generation was reduced at another seven, causing an almost 9% dip in power production.
(This is a well-known phenomenon – France has seen reductions in nuclear generation due to heatwaves in 2003, 2006, 2015, 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2025.)
A similar story is true across various countries in Europe. Low river levels on the Danube have hit nuclear reactors in Romania, Hungary and Serbia this summer, while a Swiss nuclear reactor shuttered due to high river temperatures.
It is nuclear plants using river water to cool their reactors that are most significantly affected by heatwaves and droughts. These make up 14% of the global fleet. Around 60 of the world’s 440 river-cooled reactors are located in France, with a further seven across Europe.
Nuclear power plants use fission to generate heat, which is used to create steam. This steam spins the blades of a turbine that is connected to a generator to create electricity.
Following this process, the water is cooled to allow it to be recycled back through the system as steam again. Nuclear power plants generally use water from rivers or the sea to help cool and condense this steam.
As such, when water temperatures rise due to a heatwave, their cooling capacity is reduced and the overall efficiency of the nuclear power station is affected. Similarly, if there is less water available due to drought, they cannot be cooled as effectively.
Michael Tadrous, a researcher at McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business in Canada, tells Carbon Brief that the “impact [of heatwaves] is real, but it is far smaller than many headlines suggest” and that the “effect [of heat] is gradual”. He adds:
“Warmer intake water makes a reactor slightly less efficient. [But] even an extreme 15C rise in cooling-water temperature would cost a large reactor only about 6% of its output.
“The real pressure point during a heatwave is usually legal rather than technical. Plants return their cooling water to the river a few degrees warmer than they drew it and the law limits how warm that water may be in order to protect aquatic life.”
Henry Preston, a spokesperson for the industry body the World Nuclear Association, adds that reactor shutdowns due to high river temperatures are “typically an automatic response to comply with regulations to protect local ecosystems, rather than a technological fault”.
He notes that in some extreme heatwaves, these regulations are waived given the “essential need for electricity and taking a proportional approach to climate risks”.
While nuclear power plants can generally return to standard operation quickly if they have been affected by high water temperatures, drought can cause a more significant impact.
Preston tells Carbon Brief:
“In contrast to high river temperatures, which can quickly return to acceptable levels once a heatwave passes, low river levels can persist for much longer, if drought conditions continue. As a result, low water levels may have a more prolonged impact on plant operations than elevated water temperatures.”
This is set to be the case in the current European drought, where multiple reactors in Hungary and Romania have shut down or reduced their output due to low water levels.
The Danube is not expected to return to normal water levels for “days or even weeks as no significant rainfall is forecast”, reported the Associated Press on 3 August 2026. It said this was “push[ing] some countries in eastern Europe to the brink of energy emergency”.
While heatwaves and drought can produce significant short-term effects, their impact on the availability of nuclear power across a full year is generally minimal.
On average, heatwaves cut annual nuclear generation by 0.6% between 2003 and 2022, according to a recent study that Tadrous co-authored.
He adds that, across the whole period studied, the only time a national nuclear fleet lost more than 1% of its nuclear power over a year to heat- and drought-related curtailments was France in 2003, which lost 1.3%.
According to an article in Forbes, for every additional degree Celsius in temperature, a nuclear power plant loses around 0.6-1% in cycle efficiency.
To minimise the impact on both energy security and costs, governments and nuclear companies are looking at a range of solutions to adapt to heatwaves.
For example, French nuclear-plant operator EDF is looking at additional cooling towers for its sites that are the most exposed to the impacts of a warming climate, reported Bloomberg recently.
Tadrous says the nuclear power industry is already adapting to heatwaves that are “more frequent and more intense”, adding:
“France’s river-cooled fleet lost 5.5 terawatt hours (TWh) of output to the 2003 heatwave. By 2022, one of the most severe heat-and-drought summers on record, losses had fallen to 0.5TWh, a reduction of roughly 90%, as utilities upgraded cooling systems, refined operating practices and scheduled maintenance around periods of extreme heat.”
There remain challenges for adapting nuclear power – and the wider electricity systems in which it sits – to heatwaves. However, Tadrous notes that this is less about “technical feasibility than of economic prioritisation and timely implementation”.
Gas
Gas power plants have a reputation for being reliable and able to switch on at any moment, sometimes referred to as “firm, dispatchable” capacity.
Yet, as a type of thermal generation, they are subject to many of the same stresses during heatwaves as nuclear power.
An article by the science advocacy organisation Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) notes that the “purported ability of gas plants to be available at all times to generate electricity, particularly when the grid needs it most, is increasingly under scrutiny” due to heatwaves.
As a matter of physics, the efficiency of gas power plants drops as temperatures rise. At 40C, a gas-fired power station can expect its capacity to be reduced by 13% and its efficiency by 7% compared to when running at 20C, according to Electric Insights.
Dr Iain Staffell, associate professor in sustainable energy at Imperial College London, tells Carbon Brief:
“Simple gas turbines (the kind which turn on rapidly to meet peak demand) are hit harder [than solar, for example], with their power output falling by about 10% per 10C.”
(He adds that the transmission system struggles more than electricity generation during high temperature. Power line capacity can fall by up to 16% for a 10C rise in temperature, according to a report for the UK government.)
Several types of gas power plants require cooling as part of their process, including gas steam and combined cycle turbines (CCGTs). They usually rely on nearby bodies of water for this.
Additionally, as the UCS article notes, hot air has a lower density than cool air. As gas CCGTs rely on burning a mix of gas and air, this lower density means air takes up more space, leaving less room for gas.
Ultimately, this means that when the air is hot, gas power plants cannot generate as much electricity as normal.
These effects are not just theoretical. For example, across two nights in August 2020, there were rolling blackouts in California, US, as demand exceeded supply amid a heatwave.
While a number of factors contributed to the blackouts, gas plants made up around 79% of the capacity that dropped off the system on 14 August and a similar share the following day.
Amid record-breaking heat in summer 2026, gas power plants have also seen their capacity cut in the UK, France and other countries.
Dr Staffell adds that gas power stations are thought of as “reliable, because of the way we use them” in the UK.
Whereas wind and solar are usually used to the maximum extent possible, he says that on average, only around 40% of the gas fleet is in use at any one time. As such, even if the efficiency of one gas power plant is affected by high temperatures, “we have a lot of slack to call on more of them to run”. He adds:
“The issue is less that they can’t deliver, but we have to pay through the nose to persuade more to turn on at critical times, adding to sky-high energy bills.”
Wind
The impact of heatwaves on wind generation is less direct than for other technologies.
However, wind speeds often drop during heatwaves, which tend to build during periods of sustained high pressure into extreme events such as “heat domes”.
Dr Staffell, explains to Carbon Brief:
“The very hottest days tend to create heat domes with very low wind speeds, which directly reduces the output that windfarms can produce. Air is also less dense the hotter it is, so it carries less energy within it, so there is a double impact on wind turbines.”
High temperatures are linked to low wind speeds across three-quarters of the globe, according to one recent study, looking at data from 1980 to 2023.
The study found that, as a result, across Australia, northern Asia and Europe, wind power decreased by an average of 30-50% during heatwaves.
This is inconsistent globally, however, with the Amazon, the Great Plains in North America and central Africa actually seeing a slight increase in wind during high temperatures.
As such, while the effect of heatwaves on wind generation is less direct than other generation technologies, it can have a significant impact.
In the UK in June 2026, wind generation fell to around 15% of the electricity mix due to low wind speeds, from an average for the month of about 30%, according to Octopus.
Low wind generation during this period was a key feature of the strain on the grid experienced during this time – in particular, as demand rose amid record-high temperatures.
On Wednesday 24 June, for example, the National Electricity System Operator (Neso) had to pay high prices to balance supply and demand. This included paying as much as £1,400 a megawatt-hour to secure around 1.7 gigawatts (GW) of imported power, nearly 20 times the average price for electricity in June 2025.
A Neso spokesperson said in a statement: “This is due to the impact of extremely high temperatures affecting Great Britain and the continent, and low wind.”
While reduced wind generation is common during a heatwave, it is not generally viewed as a concern for energy system operators. This is due to wind following well-established seasonal patterns – it generates less power in summer than in winter – as well as being complementary to other renewable technologies, such as solar.
Dr Chris Rosslowe, senior energy analyst for Europe at Ember, tells Carbon Brief:
“Power systems are less reliant on wind power in the summer months and its lower-than-average output is already expected and planned for. Heatwaves often bring still, but clear conditions, highlighting the benefit of wind and solar as a duo – poor conditions for one often mean good conditions for the other.”
As such, wind power remains one of very few technologies considered “resilient” to heatwaves by the UK government.
However, this did not stop the anti-renewables Daily Mail from attempting to blame the technology for strain on the UK grid on 24 June 2026, despite its own article acknowledging that gas plants had also been forced to cut their output by 2.5GW on the day.
Solar
Another common claim seen in the media is that solar “struggles” during heatwaves, with high temperatures pushing down the technology’s efficiency.
Yet heatwaves tend to coincide with long, cloudless days, when solar generation is reliably above average – despite the impact of high temperatures.
While hot weather does reduce the efficiency of solar cells, the effect is relatively modest – and widely understood. Each 1C of temperature rise reduces output by around 0.4-0.5%, according to a recent study.
This is in line with an evidence review for the UK government, which suggests the performance of solar panels falls by 0.2-0.5% for every degree of heat above 25C.
Generally, however, this effect is easily outweighed by high sunlight hours during hot spells. For example, across a four-day heatwave in the UK in June 2026, solar generated 484 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity – a 46% increase over the same period a week earlier.
Similar generation highs were seen across Europe, amid record temperatures and dangerous heat that was pushing people towards the use of air conditioning.
Solar generated a record 52TWh across the EU in June 2026, beating the high set just the month before of 47TWh.
In fact, solar – especially when combined with battery storage – is a complementary technology to air conditioning, given their similar seasonal patterns. Over the course of the day, demand from air conditioning and generation from solar also marry up well.
Dr Rosslowe says:
“Solar, battery storage and air conditioning are a highly complementary trio of technologies during heatwaves. There’s a high overlap between solar output and demand from AC.”
For example, on the hottest day of the year so far in Great Britain (the island grid serving England, Wales and Scotland), on 26 June 2026, solar surged to 13.9GW in the middle of the afternoon, as demand also hit its highest point, as shown in the chart below.
Across June 2026, homes with solar panels generated the equivalent of five hours of “free” self-supplied air conditioning, according to recent analysis.
Despite the impact of heat on solar efficiency, the technology is, therefore, well placed to bolster energy systems during heatwaves.
Indeed, as Dr Rosslowe tells Carbon Brief, solar suppresses power prices during daylight hours. But, even though it is predictable, there are still challenges around managing the dip in solar generation as the evening sets in. This is often compounded because it coincides with the usual evening increase in demand.
Dr Rosslowe explains:
“Problems arise when the sun goes down, but demand for cooling remains high. In the early evening hours, when gas power typically ramps up to replace solar, we have seen prices spike to extreme levels, made worse by high international gas prices.”
Storage
Energy storage systems are increasingly key to managing the impact of heatwaves on electricity systems.
The category of technologies is dominated by batteries, with more than 108GW of battery storage added in 2025 alone, according to the International Energy Agency.
Already, batteries have been used to take advantage of surges in solar generation during the daytime, amid high summer temperatures.
This is particularly useful to meet evening peaks in electricity demand, as well as the need for air conditioning overnight when temperatures do not fall.
In a statement, Pawel Czyzak , Europe programme director at Ember, said:
“Heatwaves will not go away – they will only get more severe in the future. Solutions that can help mitigate their impacts, such as battery storage, interconnection, demand flexibility and dynamic tariffs, should become a key part of grid planning and power market design.”
However, batteries are not without their challenges during heatwaves. Battery performance also decreases as temperatures exceed their optimal level.
Additionally, high temperatures can accelerate the degradation of components in lithium-ion batteries, which dominate the sector.
Analysis for the UK government found that prolonged operation at very high temperatures could – at least in theory – “overwhelm” the cooling systems built into batteries, “posing risks such as thermal runaway and explosions”. However, it noted that in practice, these cooling systems are “routinely” designed to handle temperatures of up to 45C.
(The analysis added that “developers and manufacturers have a strong understanding of risk to [battery storage systems] from high temperature and mitigate risks through regular maintenance, design improvements, and passive cooling strategies”.)
Other storage technologies also face challenges during heatwaves. For example, pumped hydro storage can be significantly impacted by drought.
Australia – which now has 4.3GW of large-scale battery storage capacity – saw its fleet of batteries and pumped hydro storage tested at the beginning of 2026, amid the most severe heatwave in years.
Temperatures above 40C posed “challenges” to storage technologies, reported Energy Storage News, which explained that their output and operating times were reduced by the increased need for their cooling systems to operate.
Despite these challenges, the use of battery storage is helping to spread the ability of renewables to meet electricity demand during heatwaves. For example, a combination of solar and battery energy storage “kept the lights on” in California amid a heatwave in 2024.
By storing abundant power during the day, it can be discharged during evening peaks, helping to minimise generation constraints and thereby keep power prices down.
Dr Rosslowe says:
“The extreme price spikes that we witness during heatwaves are a blaring signal for more power system flexibility. That could come from battery storage, demand response, or increased interconnection between countries or regions.”
The post Factcheck: How nuclear, gas, wind and solar power are affected during heatwaves appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Factcheck: How nuclear, gas, wind and solar power are affected during heatwaves
As governments at the UN seek ways to prevent the US from unilaterally mining the deep ocean floor for critical minerals, the latest UN seabed talks launched “long” processes that would seek to challenge Washington’s approach.
The International Seabed Authority (ISA), the UN body regulating the deep ocean floor, held annual three-week talks ending on Friday. The discussions come as the US – which is not a member country – moved forward in its unilateral deep-sea mining push, and as mining companies applying for American permits fought back a UN inquiry into their behaviour.
The Trump administration and mining frontrunners, among them Canadian firm The Metals Company (TMC), want to mine a huge area of the Pacific Ocean known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. Although it holds deposits of mangenese, nickel and rare earths – key for military use and clean energy components – it is also an unexplored ecosystem with thousands of unnamed species.
The meeting, held at ISA headquarters in Jamaica’s capital Kingston, ended with no immediate breakthroughs. Instead, it started long processes that seeks to hold mining firms and the US accountable, according to ocean governance expert Pradeep Singh, from the Oceano Azul Foundation.
“It shows some level of maturity as well as understanding from member states that this is a long process that requires policy discussions that might not be resolved by acting right away without considerate thought” he said.
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Countries have begun consultations on whether to request an advisory opinion from the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), which would seek to clarify the legality of the US-issued permits in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone and whether other states should recognise them.
The ISA will also move forward with an inquiry into its contractors, including The Metals Company (TMC). The company tried to prevent this inquiry by suing the ISA at the ITLOS for allegedly acting in bad faith, an argument that the world’s top maritime court rejected.
ISA secretary-general Letícia Carvalho said in her closing remarks that the past year “presented both significant challenges and noteworthy achievements”. Earlier in the talks, she said the agency’s role is “more important than ever” and that resources in the deep seabed are “the common heritage of humankind”.
Advisory opinion on legality of US mining push
Towards the end of the ISA assembly, Carvalho submitted a draft text to countries proposing they request an advisory opinion from the ITLOS, clarifying the legality of the US deep-sea mining push.
The initiative proposed questions to the court, including whether international law backs the principle that the deep seafloor cannot be appropriated by any single country, and whether other governments should avoid recognising any similar effort.
Several nations including the African group, New Zealand, Norway, France, Singapore, Jamaica and Canada argued that while they could back such a proposal, it required careful legal consideration. Some regretted that the note was not sent earlier in the talks.
Russia and China backed the request for an advisory opinion. The Chinese delegation suggested asking whether unilateral actions by non-member states – such as the US – would break international law, and what the consequences of such actions would be.
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By the end of the talks there was no consensus on this proposal. The assembly decided instead to hold consultations led by Malta, and decide on whether to request an advisory opinion by next year’s meeting.
“They are not rushing into this,” Singh explained. “It also seems that they are not feeling immediately threatened at this stage, and that there are still some things that could be done to find a way forward and perhaps persuading the US from acting unilaterally.”
Growing call for deep-sea mining moratorium
Activists were also critical of the ISA deciding to renew one of TMC’s exploration licenses in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, which expired last month. Haldis Helle, ocean campaigner at Greenpeace, said this was a “reward” for TMC despite “their clear disregard for international law”.
But Singh argued that the renewal was “not an endorsement to act unilaterally” but an effort from countries to make the “whole decision-making including the inquiry process robust”, without showing signs of any bias.
Instead, campaigners highlighted a growing call for a moratorium on deep-sea mining, which seeks to halt all activity until enough scientific evidence can show that it is not harmful for marine wildlife. The initiative is now backed by 46 governments, with Mauritius, Mozamboque and the Republic of Congo becoming the latest supporters.
“The lesson from the past three weeks is clear: only a pause on exploitation, now backed by over a quarter of ISA member states, can deliver the legal certainty this moment demands and rein in a situation being driven out of control by a handful of reckless companies“, said Sofia Tsenikli, global campaign director at the Deep-Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC).
The post Governments weigh response to US going alone on deep-sea mining appeared first on Climate Home News.
Governments weigh response to US going alone on deep-sea mining
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