The UK’s high electricity prices have become intensely political, with competing claims over the cause of rocketing bills and how best to get them down.
Prices spiked after Russia cut off gas exports to Europe, precipitating a global energy crisis alongside its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The UK has been particularly exposed, as gas sets its wholesale power prices 98% of the time – and gas remains three times more expensive than before the crisis.
Nevertheless, some have sought instead to misleadingly blame the UK’s high power electricity on “green levies” that support the expansion of clean power, as well as the target for net-zero emissions by 2050.
While the UK is making significant investments in new clean-power capacity and in upgrading its electricity grid, “green levies” and network charges account for just 6% and 20% of the rise in bills since before the energy crisis, respectively, against 53% due to wholesale prices driven by gas.
Moreover, part of the rise in network charges is also down to gas, resulting from utility firms going out of business during the energy crisis, as well as high gas-related costs for managing the electricity grid.
Dhara Vyas, chief executive of industry body Energy UK tells Carbon Brief that it is “crystal clear what has driven electricity bills up in the UK…it’s the wholesale costs, driven by the price of gas”.
This article looks at how electricity prices could be reduced in the short- to medium term and why the transition to clean power is, ultimately, expected to result in lower energy bills overall.
(This article refers to the UK throughout, but strictly relates to the island of Great Britain made up of England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland is part of the separate all-Ireland electricity system.)
- Why are UK electricity prices so high?
- What has driven the rise in UK household electricity bills?
- Why network charges on electricity bills are going up
- What about UK industrial electricity prices?
- How could UK electricity prices be cut?
- What will the UK’s climate goals mean for bills in the future?
Why are UK electricity prices so high?
In the months before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, global gas prices had already started to rise as the global economy bounced back from the Covid pandemic and Russian president Vladimir Putin began restricting energy supplies to Europe.
In the wake of its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia then cut off the bulk of gas deliveries to Europe, having previously been the continent’s biggest source of the fuel.
Gas prices rocketed – and so did the UK’s energy bills. Millions of households were left in fuel poverty, despite the government spending £100bn on support to alleviate the pressure.
While gas prices have subsided from their historic highs in 2022, as of May 2025, they remain three times higher than they were before the global energy crisis.
As such, despite all of the media commentary and politicians’ speeches arguing the contrary, the UK’s exposure to high gas prices is still, by far, the biggest reason for the country’s high electricity prices.
(In 2022, International Energy Agency (IEA) chief Dr Fatih Birol wrote in the Financial Times that it was “absurd” to blame high prices on clean energy. He added: “When people misleadingly blame clean energy and climate policies for today’s energy crisis they are, intentionally or not, moving the spotlight away from the real culprits – the gas supply crunch and Russia.”)
The figure below shows the price cap for household electricity bills set by energy regulator Ofgem, breaking down the different elements of average household costs over the past decade.
The biggest driver of recent increases in electricity bills is the wholesale price of electricity, which is set in the UK almost exclusively by wholesale gas prices (see below).
Consequently, the spike in electricity bills shown by the dark blue area in the figure below is a reflection of the spike in gas prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
In contrast, “green levies” – costs added to bills in order to pay for government climate policies – actually fell during the height of the gas price spike, as the dark grey area of the chart shows. They are currently only marginally above pre-crisis levels.
In recognition of these basic facts, the UK’s prime minister Keir Starmer has reiterated the link between high energy bills and the country’s exposure to fossil-fuel prices.
The UK’s households and businesses have “paid the price” for “our over-exposure” to fossil fuels, he told an energy security summit in London at the end of April 2025, attended by Carbon Brief and jointly hosted by the UK government and the IEA.
Starmer told the summit that half the UK’s recessions since the 1970s had been caused by “fossil-fuel shocks” and that his government was “determined” to get the country off the “roller-coaster of international fossil-fuel markets” by shifting to clean energy:
“When it comes to energy, we’re also paying the price for our over-exposure, over many years, to the roller-coaster of international fossil-fuel markets, leaving the economy and therefore peoples’ household budgets vulnerable to the whims of dictators like [Russian president Vladimir] Putin, to price hikes, and to volatility that is beyond our control.”
Under the latest price cap from Ofgem, the average household now faces an electricity bill of £926 per year, up from £603 before the energy crisis – a rise of 54%.
Two-fifths of the current cap is made up of wholesale costs (38%), one-fifth from network charges (22%), plus another one-fifth from green levies (15%) and social policies (4%). The final fifth of the bill is made up of operating costs (14%), profits (2%) and other items.
The biggest change in these costs has come from the spike in wholesale energy costs.
Other elements of household electricity bills have also gone up over the past decade, including network charges and levies. (See: What has driven the rise in UK household electricity bills?)
However, the gradual rises in these other costs have been overwhelmed in recent years by the huge spike in wholesale power prices driven by expensive gas.
One common objection to these facts is that gas prices have been equally eye-watering in other European countries, but their electricity prices have not been quite so affected as the UK’s.
Whereas the UK once had middling power prices relative to other European countries, it has risen up the ranks to post some of the continent’s costliest electricity per unit.
(Figures comparing electricity prices in European capital cities in April 2025 put the UK fourth, whereas France is close to the continental average.)
The biggest reason for this rise in the UK’s relative prices is the fact that its power system is far more exposed to gas-fired generation than other countries.
Specifically, gas sets the wholesale price of electricity in the UK 98% of the time, according to academic research published in 2023. This is far more often than in other European countries, including France (7%) or Germany (24%), as shown in the figure below.
The UK’s electricity market operates using a system known as “marginal pricing”. This means that all of the power plants running in each half-hour period are paid the same price, set by the final generator that has to switch on to meet demand, which is known as the “marginal” unit.
While this is unfamiliar to many people, marginal pricing is far from unique to the UK’s electricity market. It is used in most electricity markets in Europe and around the world, as well as being widely used in commodity markets in general.
Still, the UK’s current electricity mix means that gas is almost always the marginal fuel, even though it only accounts for a third of generation overall.
(In contrast, the marginal fuel in many other European countries is hydro. In France, it tends to be nuclear, while in Germany it is split between coal, gas and hydro.)
The result is that the UK’s wholesale electricity prices track wholesale gas prices almost perfectly, as shown in the figure below.
In summary, the UK electricity system is far more heavily exposed to gas prices than those of other European countries and, consequently, its power prices have been hit harder by the energy crisis.
Prof Rob Gross, director of the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC), tells Carbon Brief:
“I think the bottom line on it all is that we are particularly exposed to gas prices…That’s the principal driver of our [electricity] prices.”
Energy UK chief Vyas said in a recent statement that “it’s the volatile cost of fossil fuels and our dependence on them that have driven up energy bills for customers”.
In comments to Carbon Brief for this article, Vyas expands on the point, explaining how the UK’s exposure to imported fossil fuels has left it worse off than its neighbours:
“Our electricity prices are high largely because our energy system depends on imported gas – and because of the extent to which that gas sets the price for electricity. This is what has driven UK bills to record levels in recent years – and why, despite falling from that peak, they remain high compared to three years ago. It’s also largely why our energy costs are higher than our European counterparts.”
What has driven the rise in UK household electricity bills?
Since 2021, the household electricity price cap set by regulator Ofgem has risen from £603 per year for average households to £926 per year – an increase of £324, or 54%.
Some £162 of the increase is due to wholesale costs, which have roughly doubled over the period.
Put another way, the UK has spent £140bn on buying gas since the start of the global energy crisis, according to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU).
Vyas tells Carbon Brief:
“It’s crystal clear what has driven bills up in the UK. If you look at any data about our energy bills over the last 5 years – every single time it’s the wholesale costs, driven by the price of gas, that pushes bills up or down. The policy costs on bills (sometimes referred to as green levies) hardly shift.”
Underneath the large spike in wholesale power costs due to the “roller coaster” of international gas markets, there have also been steady increases in policy and network charges in recent years. This includes the “green levies” that support the expansion of the UK’s clean energy supplies.
Specifically, some £63 has been added to bills since 2021 as a result of rising network charges, another £18 from “green levies” and £65 from other sources.
(Notably, as explained below, part of the rise in network charges is also due to high gas prices.)
This means that network charges and “green levies” account for 20% and 6% of the rise since pre-crisis levels, respectively, compared with 54% due to higher wholesale prices.
These contributions to the increase in electricity bills since 2021 are shown in the figure below.
As explained above, the driver of higher wholesale electricity costs is high gas prices, with the fuel remaining three times more expensive than before the global energy crisis.
In contrast, “green levies” have gone from £118 per year in summer 2021 to £137 today. As bills rose dramatically in this period, the share due to green levies has dropped from 20% to just 15%.
The small rise in green levies is due to a £22 inflationary increase in the cost of the “renewables obligation” (RO) scheme, which closed to new projects in 2017. The RO currently adds £89 per year to average household electricity bills, some 10% of the total.
Ironically, this means that the cost of renewable support has risen, at least in part, because of high gas prices, which have contributed to higher-than-expected inflationary pressures.
The RO still supports around 30% of UK electricity supplies, but the first tranche of 15-year contracts will come to an end from 2027, meaning the cost will fall over time.
In 2023, the then-Conservative government sought views on changing the measure of inflation used to calculate the RO each year from the “technically deficient” index known as “RPI”, to the lower “CPI”. However, this shift was not pursued.
The cost of renewables that hold newer “contracts for difference” (CfDs) has actually fallen by £5 per household per year since before the energy crisis – from £32 to £27 – despite supporting more capacity than four years ago.
This is because CfDs offer a fixed price for each unit of electricity generated. As wholesale prices have climbed, the top-up needed to meet this fixed price has fallen. CfDs currently account for less than 3% of average electricity bills, down from 5% before the crisis.
In total, the RO and CfDs currently add around £10bn a year to end-user electricity bills, of which households account for around a third. This amounts to £116 per household per year.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasts that the combined cost of the RO and CfDs will rise by 3% between now and the end of the decade, from £9.6bn to £9.9bn.
Current electricity bills also include £20 to pay for “feed-in tariffs” (FiTs), which were offered to small-scale renewable schemes until 2019. This is up by £2 per year since before the crisis.
FiTs also rise with inflation, but, as with the RO, the scheme is closed to new projects. This means costs will fall over time as the oldest installations see their contracts coming to an end.
The cost of government social policies adds another £36 to average electricity bills, up £18 since summer 2021 due to higher spending on insulating the homes of families on low incomes.
This type of spending had been falling until 2019, after the then-Conservative government tried to lower energy bills from 2013 by “cutting the green crap”. Although these efforts reduced bills in the short term, they ended up adding £22bn to bills in the long term, previous Carbon Brief analysis found, because they left homes more exposed to the spike in gas prices during the energy crisis.
Vyas tells Carbon Brief:
“For well over a decade, investors have been telling us they want to see ambition and certainty from government. Taking a ‘boom and bust’ approach, where policy and direction of travel keep changing, adds costs to everyone’s bills. For example, the infamous move to ‘cut the green crap’ cost customers in this country billions of pounds, as Carbon Brief has demonstrated.”
Why network charges on electricity bills are going up
Alongside wholesale prices, network charges have also seen significant increases since before the global energy crisis, as noted above. These charges have risen by £63 from £136 a year in summer 2021 to £198 today, up by nearly 50%.
The figure below breaks down the £200 cost of network charges per household per year.
Some £115 of this – 13% of bills – is earmarked for “distribution” networks, which deliver electricity to households and businesses at lower voltages. This segment has seen the largest increase of all network charges, adding £25 per year.
Next is the national “transmission” network, at £51, which moves electricity around the country on towering pylons carrying high-voltage lines – sometimes referred to as the “motorways of the grid”. While these costs have risen by more than half since 2021, this still only added an extra £18 to bills each year.
The third component is grid balancing, which reflects the costs of making sure that supply and demand are perfectly matched at all times. This has soared from £12 a year in 2021 to £32 today.
Many articles on the UK’s high electricity bills have said that rising network charges are due to the cost of managing and expanding the grid to cope with new, variable wind and solar generation.
While major investments are being made in the grid, the rise in network charges is not all it seems. Indeed, parts of these increases are also due to high gas prices.
For example, the cost of bailing out the dozens of electricity retailers that went out of business during the energy crisis – ultimately, as a result of high gas prices – is being paid for by households and is included within distribution network charges under the Ofgem price cap.
The amounts being added to bills to pay for these bailouts, within each of the price-cap periods shown in the figure above, is not routinely disclosed by Ofgem.
However, in 2022, Ofgem said that £66 was being added to household bills to pay for these failures under a scheme known as the “supplier of last resort” (SoLR). This aligns with the first hump in the figure above – and the second hump likely relates to further SoLR costs.
For grid balancing costs, there is a similar story, because high gas prices make it more expensive to manage the electricity system.
National Grid Electricity System Operator (NESO) sometimes pays gas power plants to switch on – and these “redispatch” instructions are more expensive as a result of high gas prices.
NESO explains that balancing costs are “strongly in correlation to the wholesale spot electricity markets and [therefore] dependent on the natural gas market”.
A gas-related bump in balancing costs is clearly evident in the figure above.
There have been two other important drivers of rising balancing costs. First, an increase in the number of balancing actions that NESO needs to take, mainly relating to “constraints” on the network that result in wind projects being paid to switch off – known as curtailment.
Constraint costs have risen because grid capacity has not kept pace with the number of new wind power projects being built, particularly in Scotland.
A series of new grid connections are being built between Scotland and England, which will add to transmission charges while cutting balancing costs.
The second additional factor for balancing charges is that, since 2023, consumers have paid for 100% of these costs, whereas they were previously shared equally with electricity generators.
Despite their rapid recent rise, balancing charges still only add £32 a year to average household electricity bills, including the much–publicised cost of wind constraint payments.
One analyst tells Carbon Brief:
“I know people make a great fuss about constraint payments…it sounds like a big number. It’s actually not, in terms of its impact on bills.”
A final important factor in rising network charges is that the UK’s electricity networks are ageing and require significant ongoing investment in order to replace old equipment before it fails.
(For example, the substation fire that closed Heathrow airport earlier this year started in a transformer that had been commissioned in 1968, making it 57 years old.)
Moreover, grid operators have been allowed to increase their investments in recent years, partly in order to make up for previous periods of what a select committee report called “under-investment”.
The 2003 report, on the resilience of the electricity network, said that customers at the time had been “living off the investment made by [their] predecessors” and that there was “insufficient investment” to replace old equipment “in a planned and orderly way”.
Similarly, a 2009 Ofgem report on energy network price controls found that distribution network operators “may not have been carrying out the investment required to maintain” the grid.
Gross tells Carbon Brief:
“My suspicion is that the investment to facilitate renewables being connected to the grid is a pretty small fraction of that increase [in network charges]…I think [a lot of it is] the legacy of maybe…squeezing and minimising expenditures in the immediate post-privatisation period.”
To be clear, it remains the case that major investments are being made in expanding the grid – and that these investments will, ultimately, be paid for via consumer electricity bills.
Yet, to take one example, expanding the distribution network to support the electrification of heat and transport will add just £5-10 to annual household bills by 2030 and £20-25 by 2050, according to a February 2025 report from the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC), now part of the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority.
The relatively low annual cost increase to households is despite these investments totalling as much as £50bn, according to NIC. (This is a good illustration of the way that “scary-sounding numbers” can be used to mislead people about the “cost” of the transition to net-zero.)
Moreover, NIC expects household energy bills to drop significantly overall by 2035, even as electricity network charges rise. (It sees the average dual-fuel bill for electricity and gas falling from just shy of £2,000 a year in 2019 to around £1,300 by 2035 and to less than £1,200 by 2050.)
In broader terms, rising levies and network charges illustrate the changing nature of electricity bills – and energy bills more broadly – as the UK shifts towards net-zero.
Historically, fuel costs have accounted for the bulk of energy bills, including not only household gas and electricity, but also the cost of motoring.
In a net-zero future, fuel costs would be massively reduced, as gas for heat and power, as well as petrol in cars, are progressively replaced with more efficient electrified alternatives.
Notably, this means that part of the cost of upgrading, decarbonising and expanding the UK’s electricity system would translate into major savings in the cost of UK transport.
This transition carries upfront capital costs to build new clean power sources, as well as the infrastructure needed to connect them to consumers and to manage their variable output.
However, the cost of these upfront investments will be spread over many years. Moreover, they are ultimately expected to pay dividends via lower operating costs (See: What will the UK’s climate goals mean for bills in the future?)
What about UK industrial electricity prices?
The UK’s industrial electricity prices have also been a prominent fixture in the debate over why energy costs have become so high, particularly following the latest crisis in steelmaking.
In November 2024, the Financial Times had published a chart showing that industrial electricity prices in the UK in 2023 were far higher than in any other country listed.
The idea that the UK’s industrial power prices are among the “highest in the world” has now become firmly embedded in the political discourse.
Yet this discourse frequently ignores the dominant role of gas in driving high prices.
In her March 2025 speech abandoning Conservative support for the UK’s net-zero by 2050 target, opposition leader Kemi Badenoch misleadingly blamed high power prices on climate policies in general and “environmental levies” in particular.
The debate around industrial power prices was supercharged at the end of March with the news that the owner of the Scunthorpe steelworks, British Steel, planned to shut it down.
After the closure was averted by a government takeover, an April editorial in the Daily Telegraph illustrated the tenor of much of the commentary in right-leaning, climate-sceptic newspapers by confidently blaming the crisis on “sky-high energy costs imposed by successive governments in the name of net-zero”.
Like so many others debating the UK’s high industrial electricity prices, the editorial failed to even mention the word “gas”, let alone acknowledge its role in driving up costs.
In reality, the UK steel industry is completely exempt from “environmental levies” and – under the government’s “supercharger” scheme – it also gets relief from the majority of network costs.
While the UK steel industry still faces higher electricity prices than its counterparts in the likes of France or Germany, this is almost entirely down to expensive gas driving up UK wholesale prices.
Indeed, as UK Steel explained in a recent report, environmental levies have a smaller impact on steel industry electricity bills in the UK than in neighbouring countries.
Frank Aaskov, director, energy and climate change policy at UK Steel, tells Carbon Brief that the debate around industrial energy costs since the start of the global energy crisis has been “poorly informed”, adding that that is “probably a bit of an understatement”.
Some actors have been “willingly misinforming others” by blaming net-zero for the problems in the steel industry, says Aaskov, adding that other factors are “much more important”. He says:
“Net-zero, in itself, is not the cause of the decline in the steel industry. There are much more important factors, such as global overcapacity, [as well as] inflexible and unambitious trade policies.”
While Aaskov identifies high industrial electricity prices as a “key factor” for the sector, he says that “today, it’s not net-zero policies” that are causing those prices to be high. He says:
“Today, [net-zero policies] are not the driver of high industrial electricity prices in the UK. It is higher network charges – because we have lower exemptions than there are in Germany and France – and it’s the cost of natural gas, which is driving the higher wholesale price.”
Aaskov says attempts to blame net-zero are “unhelpful to the steel industry, especially because we as a sector have committed to decarbonising, our members are making huge investments in reducing emissions and Port Talbot is the key example of that”.
How could UK electricity prices be cut?
Ever since the start of the global energy crisis in 2022, debate has been raging over how to get spiralling energy bills under control.
The spike in gas prices put the spotlight on its role in setting wholesale power prices via marginal pricing, leading some people to call for electricity market reform.
In April 2022, the then-Conservative government launched a “review of electricity market arrangements”, known by its acronym REMA. It ran the first consultation in July that year.
Although the review was much broader in scope, it was presented as a way to tackle high electricity prices and – potentially – to decouple them from the high price of gas.
In the foreword of the first REMA consultation, then-energy secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said that the electricity markets will be the “backbone” of the future electricity system, so it is “critical” to get the design right. He added:
“The last major programme of electricity market reform was 10 years ago and left some key parts of our market structure unchanged from the time when fossil fuels were the dominant source of energy; it is time to look again at whether they are fit for purpose, or whether reform is needed to deliver a clean, secure and low-cost energy system for consumers.”
The consultation explained that, while the use of marginal pricing left UK wholesale power prices “closely track[ing] gas prices”, the impact of this would “naturally diminish over time” as the share of generation coming from gas declined and that of clean power increased.
Still, it set out a number of options for explicitly breaking the link between wholesale power prices and the price of gas, such as a market that was “split by characteristic”, or that offered generators a price reflecting their own costs, rather than that of the marginal unit (“pay-as-bid”).
A summary of the responses to this consultation was published in March 2023, with the government deciding to rule out a number of options – including “pay-as-bid” – shown in the figure below.
Source: Review of Electricity Market Arrangements: summary of responses to consultation, March 2023.
A second consultation followed in March 2024, with the results published alongside the REMA autumn update in December 2024.
This narrowed the options still further, including ruling out both the “green power pool” and split market options, both of which would have created a separate market for renewables.
This means that, while there are numerous options within REMA that are still being considered, breaking the link between wholesale power prices and the price of gas is no longer on the table.
The core final decision within REMA is now between reforming the current national wholesale market, where this is a single price for wholesale electricity across the country, or switching to a regional market split into a number of zones with their own prices.
Both options would continue to use marginal pricing, whether at national or regional level. The switch to “zonal” pricing has been made in numerous markets in recent years, including Ontario, Italy, Denmark and Australia. It is also being considered in Germany.
In the UK, the “bruising” question around whether to adopt zonal prices is seen as the “most hotly contested aspect” of REMA and has become an “energy death-match”.
As such, despite the role of gas in wholesale power prices continuing to be the biggest driver of high electricity bills, it has come to dominate the discussion around market reform.
Those who support zonal prices have claimed it would more closely reflect local supply and demand conditions, ultimately leading to a more efficient electricity system, as well as helping to cut network costs.
Analysis by the Energy Systems Catapult suggests that it would save £30bn by 2035, while a study by FTI Consulting for Octopus Energy found that it could save consumers between £55bn and £74bn by 2050.
Octopus Energy and its CEO, Greg Jackson, are some of the most vocal proponents of zonal pricing. Jackson and supporters argue that while it is true that wholesale prices and CfD payments would increase under a zonal system – by £35bn and £15bn, respectively, over 25 years – these would be more than offset by a drop in constraint costs and “congestion rents” of £40bn and £65bn.
The impact on constraint costs is a core pillar of the argument for zonal. However, grid balancing costs overall – including constraints – currently only make up 4% of electricity bills. (See: Why are UK electricity prices so high?)
The shift to zonal pricing is also supported by key organisations such as Ofgem, NESO and Citizens Advice.
However, there is also a long list of groups that are strongly opposed to zonal pricing, including Energy UK, Renewable UK, energy intensive industries and many individual energy firms.
These organisations have mustered numerous studies of their own, which they say show that zonal pricing could dent investment and could, as a result, even raise costs for consumers.
In the public realm, the main criticisms of zonal prices focus on the potential for it to create a “postcode lottery” for consumers and to create uncertainty – and higher costs – for investors in the clean power capacity needed to hit UK targets.
For example, a report prepared by consultants LCP Delta for energy company SSE found that zonal pricing could increase wholesale prices across 97% of the country. Its research suggested a drop in wholesale costs would only be seen in Northern Scotland.
(Advocates for zonal argue that these higher wholesale costs would be outweighed by lower costs for building and managing the electricity network.)
Recent research by consultancy Afry, summarised in the screenshot below, suggests that the savings from a shift to zonal pricing are “overestimated” and that risks, such as higher borrowing costs, could mean it translated into an increase in energy bills overall.
Jane Cooper, deputy CEO at trade body RenewableUK, said in a statement that people in England and Wales are “rightly worried” about zonal pricing creating a postcode lottery, adding:
“This scheme would create so much uncertainty in our electricity market that it could disrupt investment in vital new clean-energy projects and push up their costs, at the very time when we need to start building at pace to deliver the government’s target of clean power by 2030. We’re urging ministers to rule out zonal pricing as soon as possible and to focus on policy decisions which do not undermine the confidence of investors.”
(Analysis by Cornwall Insight highlights that there is already a “postcode lottery” of sorts, with households in London paying £120 less than those in north Wales and Merseyside over the coming year. This is to do with the variation in the regional distribution network charges added to bills. The figures in the sections above are national averages.)
Modelling from UKERC found that zonal pricing could increase strike prices in the next CfD auction by up to £20 per megawatt hour (MWh), as investors seek to factor in the associated risk. It found that higher prices in the CfD auctions could increase consumer costs by £3bn a year.
Non-profit Regen highlighted that the £55bn savings over 20 years, as suggested by FTI, only equates to around £31 per household per year, if applied evenly across current demand.
Ultimately, the debate around the benefits of zonal prices continues, with many aspects of the exact design of such a system – for example, how many zones there would be – still undecided.
The government is expected to make a decision on whether to switch to zonal power pricing ahead of the seventh CfD allocation round in summer 2025, to minimise the impact on renewable energy investment by providing greater certainty.
Zonal was chosen over nodal in part because it would be simpler to implement, with the government estimating in 2023 that this would take about 18 months. (It is not clear if this 18-month timeline includes consultation, such as on the number of zones.)
Subsequently, the government has told industry that a shift to zonal pricing would not be put in place until 2032, according to RenewableUK.
This is supported by recent analysis from consultants Cornwall Insight, which suggests that a shift to zonal would take closer to five years, until the mid-2030s.
In a statement, Kate Mulvany, principal consultant at Cornwall Insight, said:
“The government’s commitment to a decision by mid-2025 is welcome. But we must be realistic: this is the start of a long road, not the finish line. Clear, early communication and a credible delivery timeline will be essential to retain market confidence, keep renewables investment and avoid unintended consequences, which could have substantial impacts on government targets.
“Zonal pricing may still form part of the long-term vision for electricity market reform. But, for now, its delivery sits firmly in the next decade.”
With zonal pricing – and any associated changes in the costs of the electricity system – unlikely to kick in before the next election in 2029, the hunt for options to cut bills more quickly continues.
However, there are currently no mechanisms in place that would guarantee a reduction in energy bills in the short term, according to Energy UK, meaning potential reductions would only be possible if the gas wholesale market tumbles.
Gross says: “We could all cross our fingers and hope that the global price of gas will collapse over the next few years…[But] it’s definitely not a great energy-security strategy for the long term.”
In a recent report, Energy UK identified a number of ways the government could lower electricity bills during the current parliament, listed in the table below.
These can be categorised into optimising the energy system, investing public money in a “strategic and targeted way” and capitalising on the benefits of a smarter, more flexible host of technologies in the energy sector.
For example, Energy UK says that households with equipment such as a battery, a heat pump or an electric vehicle (EV), could save £115 per year if changes are made to maximise flexibility. This might mean charging the EV at night or warming the house in advance of periods with high electricity prices.
Additionally, it says flexibility could be used to reduce the need to build out networks and power stations to meet peak demand, potentially reducing the need for investment by £3.5bn.
| Option | Cost | Savings |
|---|---|---|
| Maximising flexibility | None | At least £115 per year for households with flexibility equipment |
| Closer UK-EU cooperation on energy | None | Up to £370m reduction in overall energy costs. Total savings for the economy are likely to be around £10bn this parliament |
| Modernising system operation | Small investment in NESO systems | Full savings are hard to quantify. Likely billions of pounds in efficiency savings this parliament. |
| Rebalancing policy levies for domestic users | £1.5bn per year (reducing from 2027 as RO & FiT taper off) | Up to £400 a year to households using electric heating, while guaranteeing that no households see an increase in cost. |
| Targeted consumer support | £1.5bn per year | £400 per year for the 3.17m households currently in fuel poverty, closing the fuel poverty gap completely. |
| Invest in energy efficiency | £13.2bn already committed in Labour manifesto | £140 per year is the average saving to a household from schemes such as ECO and GBIS. A Warm Homes Plan targeted at measures such as clean heat and solar is likely to achieve larger bill reductions. |
| Make the most of Contracts for Difference | Negligible | Up to £20 per year for the typical household. |
| Optimise network investment | Negligible | Almost £100 per year. |
| Electrify non-domestic demand | £1-4bn to be covered by hypothecated ETS/CBAMM revenues and general taxation | Level of bill savings depends on the nature of the business. UK supermarkets could save up to 15% on their energy costs. |
| Unlock private investment | Negligible (credit guarantees) | Full savings are hard to quantify. Likely to enable a minimum reduction of £150m in CfD costs. |
Source: Energy UK.
Energy UK’s table of options to reduce electricity bills in the UK in the short term. Source: Energy UK.
(Following Energy UK releasing this advice, the UK and EU have signed a new energy cooperation deal. This includes exploring UK participation in the EU’s electricity trading platforms, because, “since we left the EU, we have traded electricity inefficiently, adding costs and friction”.)
The single-biggest way the government could reduce electricity bills would be to remove some or all of the policy costs they currently include – a total of £173 for the average household.
These costs could be paid for via general taxation, which is split more fairly between households on different incomes, or the government could “rebalance” bills by shifting levies onto gas.
At present, gas faces an implicit subsidy because resulting CO2 emissions do not face a carbon price. However, raising gas bills could have implications for fuel poverty, even if power prices drop.
Many other organisations have looked at how bills could be “rebalanced”, given that the UK’s net-zero target relies heavily on increased use of electricity and reduced reliance on gas. Many of these analyses examine options to ensure fuel-poor households are not disadvantaged.
Further options for cutting bills, beyond those considered by Energy UK, have been proposed by a number of other groups.
A recent report by thinktank Common Wealth, for example, suggested that gas power plants should be nationalised, in order to prevent owners holding the electricity market “to ransom”.
One final possibility is that bills could drop as a result of falling gas prices. The latest forecast from Cornwall Insight suggests that there will already be a small 7% drop in the Ofgem price cap from 1 July, as a result of slightly cheaper gas.
EU gas use is set to fall in the coming years, meaning that available supply could exceed demand by 43% by 2030 and 42% by 2040, according to projections from the European Commission.
At the same time, the IEA’s latest World Energy Outlook noted that analysts are expecting a glut of liquified natural gas (LNG) on the global market, as projects in the pipeline come on stream.
On top of this, US president Donald Trump is pushing for an even faster expansion of LNG exports, which could see European gas prices going down by up to 9% by 2030, according to November 2024 analysis from Aurora.
Cornwall Insight forecasts power prices will fall between 2024 and 2030, predominantly due to ample gas storage levels in Europe for the winter, alleviating previous supply security concerns – although they expect prices to remain higher than the pre-crisis 2021 levels.
Moreover, gas prices remain at the whims of geopolitical disruption and a drop cannot be taken as a guarantee. In Cornwall Insight’s most recent power price forecast, Dr Craig Lowrey, principal consultant at the organisation, said:
“We mustn’t get ahead of ourselves. While prices are falling, recent patterns show the impact that wholesale market volatility can have on bills in the space of just a few days. The UK’s heavy reliance on energy imports – particularly gas – combined with ongoing geopolitical tensions, ensure household bills remain highly vulnerable to sudden shocks.
“To secure the UK’s energy future and drive down costs for good, we must break free from volatile international markets and fast-track the transition to renewables.”
Despite the clear impact of gas on UK power prices and energy security – and the lack of any evidence to suggest it would be good for bills – several prominent politicians have recently called for a slower transition to renewable energy. (See: What will the UK’s climate goals mean for bills in the future?)
Paul Drummond, climate and environment research lead at consultancy Redwheel, tells Carbon Brief that sticking with gas would leave the UK exposed. He says:
“We wouldn’t be solving any of the problems we have now. We’re still going to be significantly reliant on the gas price setting the power price – and as we’ve seen in the last few years, that has been highly volatile. That volatility in itself is a cost. It’s uncertain. So we wouldn’t change the situation we’re in now, which is not a great position to be in.”
Beyond household energy bills, Energy UK has produced a list of recommendations for reducing electricity prices for non-domestic users. This includes shifting legacy policy costs and Climate Change Levy payments away from electricity bills, among other actions.
Additionally, the government is reportedly looking at plans to help shield industry from “sky-high energy costs in what is expected to be the centrepiece of Keir Starmer’s vaunted new industrial strategy”, according to the Financial Times.
The industrial strategy is set to be published in June.
A coalition of manufacturers, investors and climate groups recently called on chancellor Rachel Reeves to move policy costs, which would include green levies, off electricity prices and into general taxation. They argued that this would cut business energy costs by up to 15% and household bills by up to £370 per year.
What will the UK’s climate goals mean for bills in the future?
At the heart of debates over the causes of high electricity prices are different views on the future path of the UK’s energy system.
The UK’s Labour government is targeting a “fully decarbonised” power system by 2030, setting a goal for clean sources to meet 100% of domestic demand and account for at least 95% of electricity generation in the country.
To reach these targets, it has laid out plans for a massive expansion of wind and solar power, along with steep increases in energy storage capacity and flexible low-carbon generation.
The government’s 2024 plan suggests it would require a programme of investment in clean power and associated infrastructure worth around £40bn per year until the end of the decade.
During campaigning and after being elected last summer, the Labour party had stated that this transition to clean electricity would save “up to £300” on household energy bills.
More recently, however, the party has gone quiet on this specific number. Speaking at an event run by the UK government and the IEA in April, energy secretary Ed Miliband said:
“Our vision of low-carbon power goes well beyond the climate imperative – important as that is. Homegrown low-carbon power is our nationally chosen route to energy security. Solar power, wind power, tidal, geothermal, nuclear power – also an essential part of the low carbon opportunity. These are often unlimited, low-cost power supplies which we can exploit for the benefit of our citizens.”
While the short-term picture is relatively uncertain, there is credible analysis to suggest that the government’s push for clean power will leave bills lower than or consistent with their current levels.
In its Clean Power 2030 report on reaching clean power by 2030, system operator NESO highlights that the overall cost to consumers “would not increase as a result of the move to a clean power system”.
Instead, it says that the much-reduced role for gas in a clean power system would be responsible for an increasingly small percentage of the wholesale costs protecting the country from price swings, the operator notes.
In one of the scenarios set out by NESO, gas would set the price in just 15% of hours by 2030, insulating consumers from “volatile international gas prices”.
It states that without accelerated action towards clean power, a repeat of the sort of gas price spike seen in 2022 would add around £22bn to electricity costs in 2030.
If the clean power mission is successful, it says, this cost would be cut in half and price spikes would be less likely.
(NESO does note that “how costs flow through to prices and, ultimately, bills, will depend on policy design”.)
As highlighted by research by Ember and E3G, deploying renewables “at speed” helps lower bills and increase energy security.
According to consultancy Aurora, a total of £116bn will need to be invested between 2025-35 to reach Labour’s 2030 clean power target, or around £10.6bn per year.
Despite criticism of the impact of bringing forward the target date, Aurora’s analysis suggests that it would require just an extra £1bn of investment a year to achieve the target five years earlier.
Aurora found that consumer energy bills will be lower under Labour’s 2030 target than under a 2035 goal.
In the longer term, there is more widespread agreement that a clean energy system – predominantly using electricity for heat, power and transport – would reduce overall energy costs for the UK.
For example, thinktank E3G suggests that the UK’s clean power “mission” could cut bills could fall by £200 by 2030, while consultancy DNVGL expects bills to fall 40% by 2050.
In contrast, the Conservative party has recently ended cross-party support for the UK’s net-zero-by-2050 target, launching an intensifying attack on clean energy.
Party leader Kemi Badenoch falsely claimed in a recent speech that the UK’s current climate policies are “driving up the cost of energy”.
Similarly, Reform UK has argued that net-zero policies are to blame for higher energy bills and that it would scrap the 2050 target if elected. In its manifesto in June 2024, it claimed, without evidence, that scrapping net-zero would save “over £30bn per year for the next 25 years.”
In contrast, asked if rowing back on climate action would reduce bills, Energy UK’s Vyas tells Carbon Brief: “No – not least because we’re only part way through the job and haven’t realised the full benefits yet.” She adds:
“Investing in clean power is crucial if we are to make progress on tackling climate change and achieving energy security. People across the country are clear that they want cheaper bills – and they want to see action when it comes to tackling the climate crisis. Of course, we need to go at a pace we can manage in practical terms and make sure that the costs of the transition are paid fairly.”
In a post on LinkedIn, Vyas’s colleague Adam Berman, director of policy and advocacy at Energy UK, writes that the “mental gymnastics” needed to believe it would be cheaper to stick with gas for electricity, instead of shifting to clean power, is “truly remarkable”. He says:
“If you genuinely believe gas is cheaper than clean power over an extended period of time, how do you reconcile that with the £100bn the UK government spent supporting homes and businesses during the energy crisis? The mental gymnastics required to ignore this are truly remarkable.”
In the longer term, electrification is key to net-zero, helping the UK to decarbonise not just its electricity system, but sectors including transport and heating at pace and in the most economical way.
Speaking at the UK government and IEA event in April, Emma Pinchbeck, the chief executive of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), said that electrification with clean power was vital to the UK’s climate targets and energy security, but was also the cheapest option to pursue.
The impact of clean power on lowering household bills is supported by the CCC’s recent advice to the government, which suggested the transition to net-zero would cut average household energy bills to £700 below today’s levels by 2050.
Additionally, the CCC said it would cut household motoring costs by a similar amount, thanks to EVs being much cheaper to run than petrol or diesel alternatives.
Vyas tells Carbon Brief that the best way to lower bills in the long-term will be to decarbonise the power system and to electrify energy end use, such as heat and transport. She says:
“The focus has to be on taking action that will make it quicker and easier to do two things. The first is to decarbonise our power system, encouraging investment in generation, storage, infrastructure and other technologies, tackling barriers that cause delays, such as planning and consents. And the second is to electrify – with a big focus on decarbonising the way we heat homes and buildings, as well as the way we power our transport.”
Much of this impact comes from reducing the UK’s need for fossil fuel imports, as well as improving energy efficiency. Analysis by ECIU highlights that renewables have already cut the UK’s dependence on foreign fuels for electricity generation from 65% in 2014 to under 50% today.
A report from the IEA last year similarly concluded that accelerating climate action towards net-zero “could lead to major reductions in household energy bills” around the world.
The post Factcheck: Why expensive gas – not net-zero – is keeping UK electricity prices so high appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Factcheck: Why expensive gas – not net-zero – is keeping UK electricity prices so high
Drought and heatwaves occurring together – known as “compound” events – have “surged” across the world since the early 2000s, a new study shows.
Compound drought and heat events (CDHEs) can have devastating effects, creating the ideal conditions for intense wildfires, such as Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2019-20 where bushfires burned 24m hectares and killed 33 people.
The research, published in Science Advances, finds that the increase in CDHEs is predominantly being driven by events that start with a heatwave.
The global area affected by such “heatwave-led” compound events has more than doubled between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, the study says.
The rapid increase in these events over the last 23 years cannot be explained solely by global warming, the authors note.
Since the late 1990s, feedbacks between the land and the atmosphere have become stronger, making heatwaves more likely to trigger drought conditions, they explain.
One of the study authors tells Carbon Brief that societies must pay greater attention to compound events, which can “cause severe impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and society”.
Compound events
CDHEs are extreme weather events where drought and heatwave conditions occur simultaneously – or shortly after each other – in the same region.
These events are often triggered by large-scale weather patterns, such as “blocking” highs, which can produce “prolonged” hot and dry conditions, according to the study.
Prof Sang-Wook Yeh is one of the study authors and a professor at the Ewha Womans University in South Korea. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When heatwaves and droughts occur together, the two hazards reinforce each other through land-atmosphere interactions. This amplifies surface heating and soil moisture deficits, making compound events more intense and damaging than single hazards.”
CDHEs can begin with either a heatwave or a drought.
The sequence of these extremes is important, the study says, as they have different drivers and impacts.
For example, in a CDHE where the heatwave was the precursor, increased direct sunshine causes more moisture loss from soils and plants, leading to a drought.
Conversely, in an event where the drought was the precursor, the lack of soil moisture means that less of the sun’s energy goes into evaporation and more goes into warming the Earth’s surface. This produces favourable conditions for heatwaves.
The study shows that the majority of CDHEs globally start out as a drought.
In recent years, there has been increasing focus on these events due to the devastating impact they have on agriculture, ecosystems and public health.
In Russia in the summer of 2010, a compound drought-heatwave event – and the associated wildfires – caused the death of nearly 55,000 people, the study notes.
The record-breaking Pacific north-west “heat dome” in 2021 triggered extreme drought conditions that caused “significant declines” in wheat yields, as well as in barley, canola and fruit production in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, says the study.
Increasing events
To assess how CDHEs are changing, the researchers use daily reanalysis data to identify droughts and heatwaves events. (Reanalysis data combines past observations with climate models to create a historical climate record.) Then, using an algorithm, they analyse how these events overlap in both time and space.
The study covers the period from 1980 to 2023 and the world’s land surface, excluding polar regions where CDHEs are rare.
The research finds that the area of land affected by CDHEs has “increased substantially” since the early 2000s.
Heatwave-led events have been the main contributor to this increase, the study says, with their spatial extent rising 110% between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, compared to a 59% increase for drought-led events.
The map below shows the global distribution of CDHEs over 1980-2023. The charts show the percentage of the land surface affected by a heatwave-led CDHE (red) or a drought-led CDHE (yellow) in a given year (left) and relative increase in each CDHE type (right).
The study finds that CDHEs have occurred most frequently in northern South America, the southern US, eastern Europe, central Africa and south Asia.
Threshold passed
The authors explain that the increase in heatwave-led CDHEs is related to rising global temperatures, but that this does not tell the whole story.
In the earlier 22-year period of 1980-2001, the study finds that the spatial extent of heatwave-led CDHEs rises by 1.6% per 1C of global temperature rise. For the more-recent period of 2022-23, this increases “nearly eightfold” to 13.1%.
The change suggests that the rapid increase in the heatwave-led CDHEs occurred after the global average temperature “surpasse[d] a certain temperature threshold”, the paper says.
This threshold is an absolute global average temperature of 14.3C, the authors estimate (based on an 11-year average), which the world passed around the year 2000.
Investigating the recent surge in heatwave-leading CDHEs further, the researchers find a “regime shift” in land-atmosphere dynamics “toward a persistently intensified state after the late 1990s”.
In other words, the way that drier soils drive higher surface temperatures, and vice versa, is becoming stronger, resulting in more heatwave-led compound events.
Daily data
The research has some advantages over other previous studies, Yeh says. For instance, the new work uses daily estimations of CDHEs, compared to monthly data used in past research. This is “important for capturing the detailed occurrence” of these events, says Yeh.
He adds that another advantage of their study is that it distinguishes the sequence of droughts and heatwaves, which allows them to “better understand the differences” in the characteristics of CDHEs.
Dr Meryem Tanarhte is a climate scientist at the University Hassan II in Morocco, and Dr Ruth Cerezo Mota is a climatologist and a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both scientists, who were not involved in the study, agree that the daily estimations give a clearer picture of how CDHEs are changing.
Cerezo-Mota adds that another major contribution of the study is its global focus. She tells Carbon Brief that in some regions, such as Mexico and Africa, there is a lack of studies on CDHEs:
“Not because the events do not occur, but perhaps because [these regions] do not have all the data or the expertise to do so.”
However, she notes that the reanalysis data used by the study does have limitations with how it represents rainfall in some parts of the world.
Compound impacts
The study notes that if CDHEs continue to intensify – particularly events where heatwaves are the precursors – they could drive declining crop productivity, increased wildfire frequency and severe public health crises.
These impacts could be “much more rapid and severe as global warming continues”, Yeh tells Carbon Brief.
Tanarhte notes that these events can be forecasted up to 10 days ahead in many regions. Furthermore, she says, the strongest impacts can be prevented “through preparedness and adaptation”, including through “water management for agriculture, heatwave mitigation measures and wildfire mitigation”.
The study recommends reassessing current risk management strategies for these compound events. It also suggests incorporating the sequences of drought and heatwaves into compound event analysis frameworks “to enhance climate risk management”.
Cerezo-Mota says that it is clear that the world needs to be prepared for the increased occurrence of these events. She tells Carbon Brief:
“These [risk assessments and strategies] need to be carried out at the local level to understand the complexities of each region.”
The post Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 6 March 2026: Iran energy crisis | China climate plan | Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ wind turbine
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Energy crisis
ENERGY SPIKE: US-Israeli attacks on Iran and subsequent counterattacks across the Middle East have sent energy prices “soaring”, according to Reuters. The newswire reported that the region “accounts for just under a third of global oil production and almost a fifth of gas”. The Guardian noted that shipping traffic through the strait of Hormuz, which normally ferries 20% of the world’s oil, “all but ground to a halt”. The Financial Times reported that attacks by Iran on Middle East energy facilities – notably in Qatar – triggered the “biggest rise in gas prices since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine”.
‘RISK’ AND ‘BENEFITS’: Bloomberg reported on increases in diesel prices in Europe and the US, speculating that rising fuel costs could be “a risk for president Donald Trump”. US gas producers are “poised to benefit from the big disruption in global supply”, according to CNBC. Indian government sources told the Economic Times that Russia is prepared to “fulfil India’s energy demands”. China Daily quoted experts who said “China’s energy security remains fundamentally unshaken”, thanks to “emergency stockpiles and a wide array of import channels”.
‘ESSENTIAL’ RENEWABLES: Energy analysts said governments should cut their fossil-fuel reliance by investing in renewables, “rather than just seeking non-Gulf oil and gas suppliers”, reported Climate Home News. This message was echoed by UK business secretary Peter Kyle, who said “doubling down on renewables” was “essential” amid “regional instability”, according to the Daily Telegraph.
China’s climate plan
PEAK COAL?: China has set out its next “five-year plan” at the annual “two sessions” meeting of the National People’s Congress, including its climate strategy out to 2030, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. The plan called for China to cut its carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 17% from 2026 to 2030, which “may allow for continued increase in emissions given the rate of GDP growth”, reported Reuters. The newswire added that the plan also had targets to reach peak coal in the next five years and replace 30m tonnes per year of coal with renewables.
ACTIVE YET PRUDENT: Bloomberg described the new plan as “cautious”, stating that it “frustrat[es] hopes for tighter policy that would drive the nation to peak carbon emissions well before president Xi Jinping’s 2030 deadline”. Carbon Brief has just published an in-depth analysis of the plan. China Daily reported that the strategy “highlights measures to promote the climate targets of peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030”, which China said it would work towards “actively yet prudently”.
Around the world
- EU RULES: The European Commission has proposed new “made in Europe” rules to support domestic low-carbon industries, “against fierce competition from China”, reported Agence France-Presse. Carbon Brief examined what it means for climate efforts.
- RECORD HEAT: The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said there is a 50-60% chance that the El Niño weather pattern could return this year, amplifying the effect of global warming and potentially driving temperatures to “record highs”, according to Euronews.
- FLAGSHIP FUND: The African Development Bank’s “flagship clean energy fund” plans to more than double its financing to $2.5bn for African renewables over the next two years, reported the Associated Press.
- NO WITHDRAWAL: Vanuatu has defied US efforts to force the Pacific-island nation to drop a UN draft resolution calling on the world to implement a landmark International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on climate, according to the Guardian.
98
The number of nations that submitted their national reports on tackling nature loss to the UN on time – just half of the 196 countries that are part of the UN biodiversity treaty – according to analysis by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- Sea levels are already “much higher than assumed” in most assessments of the threat posed by sea-level rise, due to “inadequate” modelling assumptions | Nature
- Accelerating human-caused global warming could see the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C limit crossed before 2030 | Geophysical Research Letters covered by Carbon Brief
- Future “super El Niño events” could “significantly lower” solar power generation due to a reduction in solar irradiance in key regions, such as California and east China | Communications Earth & Environment
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
UK greenhouse gas emissions in 2025 fell to 54% below 1990 levels, the baseline year for its legally binding climate goals, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Over the same period, data from the World Bank shows that the UK’s economy has expanded by 95%, meaning that emissions have been decoupling from growth.
Spotlight
Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ community wind turbine
Following the recent launch of the UK government’s local power plan, Carbon Brief visits one of the country’s community-energy success stories.
The Lawrence Weston housing estate is set apart from the main city of Bristol, wedged between the tree-lined grounds of a stately home and a sprawl of warehouses and waste incinerators. It is one of the most deprived areas in the city.
Yet, just across the M5 motorway stands a structure that has brought the spoils of the energy transition directly to this historically forgotten estate – a 4.2 megawatt (MW) wind turbine.
The turbine is owned by local charity Ambition Lawrence Weston and all the profits from its electricity sales – around £100,000 a year – go to the community. In the UK’s local power plan, it was singled out by energy secretary Ed Miliband as a “pioneering” project.
‘Sustainable income’
On a recent visit to the estate by Carbon Brief, Ambition Lawrence Weston’s development manager, Mark Pepper, rattled off the story behind the wind turbine.
In 2012, Pepper and his team were approached by the Bristol Energy Cooperative with a chance to get a slice of the income from a new solar farm. They jumped at the opportunity.
“Austerity measures were kicking in at the time,” Pepper told Carbon Brief. “We needed to generate an income. Our own, sustainable income.”
With the solar farm proving to be a success, the team started to explore other opportunities. This began a decade-long process that saw them navigate the Conservative government’s “ban” on onshore wind, raise £5.5m in funding and, ultimately, erect the turbine in 2023.
Today, the turbine generates electricity equivalent to Lawrence Weston’s 3,000 households and will save 87,600 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) over its lifetime.
‘Climate by stealth’
Ambition Lawrence Weston’s hub is at the heart of the estate and the list of activities on offer is seemingly endless: birthday parties, kickboxing, a library, woodworking, help with employment and even a pop-up veterinary clinic. All supported, Pepper said, with the help of a steady income from community-owned energy.
The centre itself is kitted out with solar panels, heat pumps and electric-vehicle charging points, making it a living advertisement for the net-zero transition. Pepper noted that the organisation has also helped people with energy costs amid surging global gas prices.
Gesturing to the England flags dangling limply on lamp posts visible from the kitchen window, he said:
“There’s a bit of resentment around immigration and scarcity of materials and provision, so we’re trying to do our bit around community cohesion.”
This includes supper clubs and an interfaith grand iftar during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Anti-immigration sentiment in the UK has often gone hand-in-hand with opposition to climate action. Right-wing politicians and media outlets promote the idea that net-zero policies will cost people a lot of money – and these ideas have cut through with the public.
Pepper told Carbon Brief he is sympathetic to people’s worries about costs and stressed that community energy is the perfect way to win people over:
“I think the only way you can change that is if, instead of being passive consumers…communities are like us and they’re generating an income to offset that.”
From the outset, Pepper stressed that “we weren’t that concerned about climate because we had other, bigger pressures”, adding:
“But, in time, we’ve delivered climate by stealth.”
Watch, read, listen
OIL WATCH: The Guardian has published a “visual guide” with charts and videos showing how the “escalating Iran conflict is driving up oil and gas prices”.
MURDER IN HONDURAS: Ten years on from the murder of Indigenous environmental justice advocate Berta Cáceres, Drilled asked why Honduras is still so dangerous for environmental activists.
TALKING WEATHER: A new film, narrated by actor Michael Sheen and titled You Told Us To Talk About the Weather, aimed to promote conversation about climate change with a blend of “poetry, folk horror and climate storytelling”.
Coming up
- 8 March: Colombia parliamentary election
- 9-19 March: 31st Annual Session of the International Seabed Authority, Kingston, Jamaica
- 11 March: UN Environment Programme state of finance for nature 2026 report launch
Pick of the jobs
- London School of Economics and Political Science, fellow in the social science of sustainability | Salary: £43,277-£51,714. Location: London
- NORCAP, innovative climate finance expert | Salary: Unknown. Location: Kyiv, Ukraine
- WBHM, environmental reporter | Salary: $50,050-$81,330. Location: Birmingham, Alabama, US
- Climate Cabinet, data engineer | Salary: hourly rate of $60-$120 per hour. Location: Remote anywhere in the US
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 6 March 2026: Iran energy crisis | China climate plan | Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ wind turbine appeared first on Carbon Brief.
China’s leadership has published a draft of its 15th five-year plan setting the strategic direction for the nation out to 2030, including support for clean energy and energy security.
The plan sets a target to cut China’s “carbon intensity” by 17% over the five years from 2026-30, but also changes the basis for calculating this key climate metric.
The plan continues to signal support for China’s clean-energy buildout and, in general, contains no major departures from the country’s current approach to the energy transition.
The government reaffirms support for several clean-energy industries, ranging from solar and electric vehicles (EVs) through to hydrogen and “new-energy” storage.
The plan also emphasises China’s willingness to steer climate governance and be seen as a provider of “global public goods”, in the form of affordable clean-energy technologies.
However, while the document says it will “promote the peaking” of coal and oil use, it does not set out a timeline and continues to call for the “clean and efficient” use of coal.
This shows that tensions remain between China’s climate goals and its focus on energy security, leading some analysts to raise concerns about its carbon-cutting ambition.
Below, Carbon Brief outlines the key climate change and energy aspects of the plan, including targets for carbon intensity, non-fossil energy and forestry.
Note: this article is based on a draft published on 5 March and will be updated if any significant changes are made in the final version of the plan, due to be released at the close next week of the “two sessions” meeting taking place in Beijing.
- What is China’s 15th five-year plan?
- What does the plan say about China’s climate action?
- What is China’s new CO2 intensity target?
- Does the plan encourage further clean-energy additions?
- What does the plan signal about coal?
- How will China approach global climate governance in the next five years?
- What else does the plan cover?
What is China’s 15th five-year plan?
Five-year plans are one of the most important documents in China’s political system.
Addressing everything from economic strategy to climate policy, they outline the planned direction for China’s socio-economic development in a five-year period. The 15th five-year plan covers 2026-30.
These plans include several “main goals”. These are largely quantitative indicators that are seen as particularly important to achieve and which provide a foundation for subsequent policies during the five-year period.
The table below outlines some of the key “main goals” from the draft 15th five-year plan.
| Category | Indicator | Indicator in 2025 | Target by 2030 | Cumulative target over 2026-2030 | Characteristic |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Economic development | Gross domestic product (GDP) growth (%) | 5 | Maintained within a reasonable range and proposed annually as appropriate. | Anticipatory | |
| ‘Green and low-carbon | Reduction in CO2 emissions per unit of GDP (%) | 17.7 | 17 | Binding | |
| Share of non-fossil energy in total energy consumption (%) | 21.7 | 25 | Binding | ||
| Security guarantee | Comprehensive energy production capacity (100m tonnes of standard coal equivalent) |
51.3 | 58 | Binding |
Select list of targets highlighted in the “main goals” section of the draft 15th five-year plan. Source: Draft 15th five-year plan.
Since the 12th five-year plan, covering 2011-2015, these “main goals” have included energy intensity and carbon intensity as two of five key indicators for “green ecology”.
The previous five-year plan, which ran from 2021-2025, introduced the idea of an absolute “cap” on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, although it did not provide an explicit figure in the document. This has been subsequently addressed by a policy on the “dual-control of carbon” issued in 2024.
The latest plan removes the energy-intensity goal and elevates the carbon-intensity goal, but does not set an absolute cap on emissions (see below).
It covers the years until 2030, before which China has pledged to peak its carbon emissions. (Analysis for Carbon Brief found that emissions have been “flat or falling” since March 2024.)
The plans are released at the two sessions, an annual gathering of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). This year, it runs from 4-12 March.
The plans are often relatively high-level, with subsequent topic-specific five-year plans providing more concrete policy guidance.
Policymakers at the National Energy Agency (NEA) have indicated that in the coming years they will release five sector-specific plans for 2026-2030, covering topics such as the “new energy system”, electricity and renewable energy.
There may also be specific five-year plans covering carbon emissions and environmental protection, as well as the coal and nuclear sectors, according to analysts.
Other documents published during the two sessions include an annual government work report, which outlines key targets and policies for the year ahead.
The gathering is attended by thousands of deputies – delegates from across central and local governments, as well as Chinese Communist party members, members of other political parties, academics, industry leaders and other prominent figures.
What does the plan say about China’s climate action?
Achieving China’s climate targets will remain a key driver of the country’s policies in the next five years, according to the draft 15th five-year plan.
It lists the “acceleration” of China’s energy transition as a “major achievement” in the 14th five-year plan period (2021-2025), noting especially how clean-power capacity had overtaken fossil fuels.
The draft says China will “actively and steadily advance and achieve carbon peaking”, with policymakers continuing to strike a balance between building a “green economy” and ensuring stability.
Climate and environment continues to receive its own chapter in the plan. However, the framing and content of this chapter has shifted subtly compared with previous editions, as shown in the table below. For example, unlike previous plans, the first section of this chapter focuses on China’s goal to peak emissions.
| 11th five-year plan (2006-2010) | 12th five-year plan (2011-2015) | 13th five-year plan (2016-2020) | 14th five-year plan (2021-2025) | 15th five-year plan (2026-2030) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chapter title | Part 6: Build a resource-efficient and environmentally-friendly society | Part 6: Green development, building a resource-efficient and environmentally friendly society | Part 10: Ecosystems and the environment | Part 11: Promote green development and facilitate the harmonious coexistence of people and nature | Part 13: Accelerating the comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development to build a beautiful China |
| Sections | Developing a circular economy | Actively respond to global climate change | Accelerate the development of functional zones | Improve the quality and stability of ecosystems | Actively and steadily advancing and achieving carbon peaking |
| Protecting and restoring natural ecosystems | Strengthen resource conservation and management | Promote economical and intensive resource use | Continue to improve environmental quality | Continuously improving environmental quality | |
| Strengthening environmental protection | Vigorously develop the circular economy | Step up comprehensive environmental governance | Accelerate the green transformation of the development model | Enhancing the diversity, stability, and sustainability of ecosystems | |
| Enhancing resource management | Strengthen environmental protection efforts | Intensify ecological conservation and restoration | Accelerating the formation of green production and lifestyles | ||
| Rational utilisation of marine and climate resources | Promoting ecological conservation and restoration | Respond to global climate change | |||
| Strengthen the development of water conservancy and disaster prevention and mitigation systems | Improve mechanisms for ensuring ecological security | ||||
| Develop green and environmentally-friendly industries |
Title and main sections of the climate and environment-focused chapters in the last five five-year plans. Source: China’s 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th five-year plans.
The climate and environment chapter in the latest plan calls for China to “balance [economic] development and emission reduction” and “ensure the timely achievement of carbon peak targets”.
Under the plan, China will “continue to pursue” its established direction and objectives on climate, Prof Li Zheng, dean of the Tsinghua University Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development (ICCSD), tells Carbon Brief.
What is China’s new CO2 intensity target?
In the lead-up to the release of the plan, analysts were keenly watching for signals around China’s adoption of a system for the “dual-control of carbon”.
This would combine the existing targets for carbon intensity – the CO2 emissions per unit of GDP – with a new cap on China’s total carbon emissions. This would mark a dramatic step for the country, which has never before set itself a binding cap on total emissions.
Policymakers had said last year that this framework would come into effect during the 15th five-year plan period, replacing the previous system for the “dual-control of energy”.
However, the draft 15th five-year plan does not offer further details on when or how both parts of the dual-control of carbon system will be implemented. Instead, it continues to focus on carbon intensity targets alone.
Looking back at the previous five-year plan period, the latest document says China had achieved a carbon-intensity reduction of 17.7%, just shy of its 18% goal.
This is in contrast with calculations by Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), which had suggested that China had only cut its carbon intensity by 12% over the past five years.
At the time it was set in 2021, the 18% target had been seen as achievable, with analysts telling Carbon Brief that they expected China to realise reductions of 20% or more.
However, the government had fallen behind on meeting the target.
Last year, ecology and environment minister Huang Runqiu attributed this to the Covid-19 pandemic, extreme weather and trade tensions. He said that China, nevertheless, remained “broadly” on track to meet its 2030 international climate pledge of reducing carbon intensity by more than 65% from 2005 levels.
Myllyvirta tells Carbon Brief that the newly reported figure showing a carbon-intensity reduction of 17.7% is likely due to an “opportunistic” methodological revision. The new methodology now includes industrial process emissions – such as cement and chemicals – as well as the energy sector.
(This is not the first time China has redefined a target, with regulators changing the methodology for energy intensity in 2023.)
For the next five years, the plan sets a target to reduce carbon intensity by 17%, slightly below the previous goal.
However, the change in methodology means that this leaves space for China’s overall emissions to rise by “3-6% over the next five years”, says Myllyvirta. In contrast, he adds that the original methodology would have required a 2% fall in absolute carbon emissions by 2030.
The dashed lines in the chart below show China’s targets for reducing carbon intensity during the 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th five-year periods, while the bars show what was achieved under the old (dark blue) and new (light blue) methodology.
The carbon-intensity target is the “clearest signal of Beijing’s climate ambition”, says Li Shuo, director at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s (ASPI) China climate hub.
It also links directly to China’s international pledge – made in 2021 – to cut its carbon intensity to more than 65% below 2005 levels by 2030.
To meet this pledge under the original carbon-intensity methodology, China would have needed to set a target of a 23% reduction within the 15th five-year plan period. However, the country’s more recent 2035 international climate pledge, released last year, did not include a carbon-intensity target.
As such, ASPI’s Li interprets the carbon-intensity target in the draft 15th five-year plan as a “quiet recalibration” that signals “how difficult the original 2030 goal has become”.
Furthermore, the 15th five-year plan does not set an absolute emissions cap.
This leaves “significant ambiguity” over China’s climate plans, says campaign group 350 in a press statement reacting to the draft plan. It explains:
“The plan was widely expected to mark a clearer transition from carbon-intensity targets toward absolute emissions reductions…[but instead] leaves significant ambiguity about how China will translate record renewable deployment into sustained emissions cuts.”
Myllyvirta tells Carbon Brief that this represents a “continuation” of the government’s focus on scaling up clean-energy supply while avoiding setting “strong measurable emission targets”.
He says that he would still expect to see absolute caps being set for power and industrial sectors covered by China’s emissions trading scheme (ETS). In addition, he thinks that an overall absolute emissions cap may still be published later in the five-year period.
Despite the fact that it has yet to be fully implemented, the switch from dual-control of energy to dual-control of carbon represents a “major policy evolution”, Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE), tells Carbon Brief. He says that it will allow China to “provide more flexibility for renewable energy expansion while tightening the net on fossil-fuel reliance”.
Does the plan encourage further clean-energy additions?
“How quickly carbon intensity is reduced largely depends on how much renewable energy can be supplied,” says Yao Zhe, global policy advisor at Greenpeace East Asia, in a statement.
The five-year plan continues to call for China’s development of a “new energy system that is clean, low-carbon, safe and efficient” by 2030, with continued additions of “wind, solar, hydro and nuclear power”.
In line with China’s international pledge, it sets a target for raising the share of non-fossil energy in total energy consumption to 25% by 2030, up from just under 21.7% in 2025.
The development of “green factories” and “zero-carbon [industrial] parks” has been central to many local governments’ strategies for meeting the non-fossil energy target, according to industry news outlet BJX News. A call to build more of these zero-carbon industrial parks is listed in the five-year plan.
Prof Pan Jiahua, dean of Beijing University of Technology’s Institute of Ecological Civilization, tells Carbon Brief that expanding demand for clean energy through mechanisms such as “green factories” represents an increasingly “bottom-up” and “market-oriented” approach to the energy transition, which will leave “no place for fossil fuels”.
He adds that he is “very much sure that China’s zero-carbon process is being accelerated and fossil fuels are being driven out of the market”, pointing to the rapid adoption of EVs.
The plan says that China will aim to double “non-fossil energy” in 10 years – although it does not clarify whether this means their installed capacity or electricity generation, or what the exact starting year would be.
Research has shown that doubling wind and solar capacity in China between 2025-2035 would be “consistent” with aims to limit global warming to 2C.
While the language “certainly” pushes for greater additions of renewable energy, Yao tells Carbon Brief, it is too “opaque” to be a “direct indication” of the government’s plans for renewable additions.
She adds that “grid stability and healthy, orderly competition” is a higher priority for policymakers than guaranteeing a certain level of capacity additions.
China continues to place emphasis on the need for large-scale clean-energy “bases” and cross-regional power transmission.
The plan says China must develop “clean-energy bases…in the three northern regions” and “integrated hydro-wind-solar complexes” in south-west China.
It specifically encourages construction of “large-scale wind and solar” power bases in desert regions “primarily” for cross-regional power transmission, as well as “major hydropower” projects, including the Yarlung Tsangpo dam in Tibet.
As such, the country should construct “power-transmission corridors” with the capacity to send 420 gigawatts (GW) of electricity from clean-energy bases in western provinces to energy-hungry eastern provinces by 2030, the plan says.
State Grid, China’s largest grid operator, plans to install “another 15 ultra-high voltage [UHV] transmission lines” by 2030, reports Reuters, up from the 45 UHV lines built by last year.
Below are two maps illustrating the interlinkages between clean-energy bases in China in the 15th (top) and 14th (bottom) five-year plan periods.
The yellow dotted areas represent clean energy bases, while the arrows represent cross-regional power transmission. The blue wind-turbine icons represent offshore windfarms and the red cooling tower icons represent coastal nuclear plants.
The 15th five-year plan map shows a consistent approach to the 2021-2025 period. As well as power being transmitted from west to east, China plans for more power to be sent to southern provinces from clean-energy bases in the north-west, while clean-energy bases in the north-east supply China’s eastern coast.
It also maps out “mutual assistance” schemes for power grids in neighbouring provinces.
Offshore wind power should reach 100GW by 2030, while nuclear power should rise to 110GW, according to the plan.
What does the plan signal about coal?
The increased emphasis on grid infrastructure in the draft 15th five-year plan reflects growing concerns from energy planning officials around ensuring China’s energy supply.
Ren Yuzhi, director of the NEA’s development and planning department, wrote ahead of the plan’s release that the “continuous expansion” of China’s energy system has “dramatically increased its complexity”.
He said the NEA felt there was an “urgent need” to enhance the “secure and reliable” replacement of fossil-fuel power with new energy sources, as well as to ensure the system’s “ability to absorb them”.
Meanwhile, broader concerns around energy security have heightened calls for coal capacity to remain in the system as a “ballast stone”.
The plan continues to support the “clean and efficient utilisation of fossil fuels” and does not mention either a cap or peaking timeline for coal consumption.
Xi had previously told fellow world leaders that China would “strictly control” coal-fired power and phase down coal consumption in the 15th five-year plan period.
The “geopolitical situation is increasing energy security concerns” at all levels of government, said the Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress in a note responding to the draft plan, adding that this was creating “uncertainty over coal reduction”.
Ahead of its publication, there were questions around whether the plan would set a peaking deadline for oil and coal. An article posted by state news agency Xinhua last month, examining recommendations for the plan from top policymakers, stated that coal consumption would plateau from “around 2027”, while oil would peak “around 2026”.
However, the plan does not lay out exact years by which the two fossil fuels should peak, only saying that China will “promote the peaking of coal and oil consumption”.
There are similarly no mentions of phasing out coal in general, in line with existing policy.
Nevertheless, there is a heavy emphasis on retrofitting coal-fired power plants. The plan calls for the establishment of “demonstration projects” for coal-plant retrofitting, such as through co-firing with biomass or “green ammonia”.
Such retrofitting could incentivise lower utilisation of coal plants – and thus lower emissions – if they are used to flexibly meet peaks in demand and to cover gaps in clean-energy output, instead of providing a steady and significant share of generation.
The plan also calls for officials to “fully implement low-carbon retrofitting projects for coal-chemical industries”, which have been a notable source of emissions growth in the past year.
However, the coal-chemicals sector will likely remain a key source of demand for China’s coal mining industry, with coal-to-oil and coal-to-gas bases listed as a “key area” for enhancing the country’s “security capabilities”.
Meanwhile, coal-fired boilers and industrial kilns in the paper industry, food processing and textiles should be replaced with “clean” alternatives to the equivalent of 30m tonnes of coal consumption per year, it says.
“China continues to scale up clean energy at an extraordinary pace, but the plan still avoids committing to strong measurable constraints on emissions or fossil fuel use”, says Joseph Dellatte, head of energy and climate studies at the Institut Montaigne. He adds:
“The logic remains supply-driven: deploy massive amounts of clean energy and assume emissions will eventually decline.”
How will China approach global climate governance in the next five years?
Meanwhile, clean-energy technologies continue to play a role in upgrading China’s economy, with several “new energy” sectors listed as key to its industrial policy.
Named sectors include smart EVs, “new solar cells”, new-energy storage, hydrogen and nuclear fusion energy.
“China’s clean-technology development – rather than traditional administrative climate controls – is increasingly becoming the primary driver of emissions reduction,” says ASPI’s Li. He adds that strengthening China’s clean-energy sectors means “more closely aligning Beijing’s economic ambitions with its climate objectives”.
Analysis for Carbon Brief shows that clean energy drove more than a third of China’s GDP growth in 2025, representing around 11% of China’s whole economy.
The continued support for these sectors in the draft five-year plan comes as the EU outlined its own measures intended to limit China’s hold on clean-energy industries, driven by accusations of “unfair competition” from Chinese firms.
China is unlikely to crack down on clean-tech production capacity, Dr Rebecca Nadin, director of the Centre for Geopolitics of Change at ODI Global, tells Carbon Brief. She says:
“Beijing is treating overcapacity in solar and smart EVs as a strategic choice, not a policy error…and is prepared to pour investment into these sectors to cement global market share, jobs and technological leverage.”
Dellatte echoes these comments, noting that it is “striking” that the plan “barely addresses the issue of industrial overcapacity in clean technologies”, with the focus firmly on “scaling production and deployment”.
At the same time, China is actively positioning itself to be a prominent voice in climate diplomacy and a champion of proactive climate action.
This is clear from the first line in a section on providing “global public goods”. It says:
“As a responsible major country, China will play a more active role in addressing global challenges such as climate change.”
The plan notes that China will “actively participate in and steer [引领] global climate governance”, in line with the principle of “common,but differentiated responsibilities”.
This echoes similar language from last year’s government work report, Yao tells Carbon Brief, demonstrating a “clear willingness” to guide global negotiations. But she notes that this “remains an aspiration that’s yet to be made concrete”. She adds:
“China has always favored collective leadership, so its vision of leadership is never a lone one.”
The country will “deepen south-south cooperation on climate change”, the plan says. In an earlier section on “opening up”, it also notes that China will explore “new avenues for collaboration in green development” with global partners as part of its “Belt and Road Initiative”.
China is “doubling down” on a narrative that it is a “responsible major power” and “champion of south-south climate cooperation”, Nadin says, such as by “presenting its clean‑tech exports and finance as global public goods”. She says:
“China will arrive at future COPs casting itself as the indispensable climate leader for the global south…even though its new five‑year plan still puts growth, energy security and coal ahead of faster emissions cuts at home.”
What else does the plan cover?
The impact of extreme weather – particularly floods – remains a key concern in the plan.
China must “refine” its climate adaptation framework and “enhance its resilience to climate change, particularly extreme-weather events”, it says.
China also aims to “strengthen construction of a national water network” over the next five years in order to help prevent floods and droughts.
An article published a few days before the plan in the state-run newspaper China Daily noted that, “as global warming intensifies, extreme weather events – including torrential rains, severe convective storms, and typhoons – have become more frequent, widespread and severe”.
The plan also touches on critical minerals used for low-carbon technologies. These will likely remain a geopolitical flashpoint, with China saying it will focus during the next five years on “intensifying” exploration and “establishing” a reserve for critical minerals. This reserve will focus on “scarce” energy minerals and critical minerals, as well as other “advantageous mineral resources”.
Dellatte says that this could mean the “competition in the energy transition will increasingly be about control over mineral supply chains”.
Other low-carbon policies listed in the five-year plan include expanding coverage of China’s mandatory carbon market and further developing its voluntary carbon market.
China will “strengthen monitoring and control” of non-CO2 greenhouse gases, the plan says, as well as implementing projects “targeting methane, nitrous oxide and hydrofluorocarbons” in sectors such as coal mining, agriculture and chemicals.
This will create “capacity” for reducing emissions by 30m tonnes of CO2 equivalent, it adds.
Meanwhile, China will develop rules for carbon footprint accounting and push for internationally recognised accounting standards.
It will enhance reform of power markets over the next five years and improve the trading mechanism for green electricity certificates.
It will also “promote” adoption of low-carbon lifestyles and decarbonisation of transport, as well as working to advance electrification of freight and shipping.
The post Q&A: What does China’s 15th ‘five-year plan’ mean for climate change? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: What does China’s 15th ‘five-year plan’ mean for climate change?
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