More than 70% of European cities are not adapting to climate change in a consistent and coherent way.
That is the headline finding of our new study, published in Nature Climate Change, on how European cities are – or are not – preparing for a warming world.
We find that nearly half of the 327 cities that we assess have not published an adaptation plan, leaving us unsure as to whether or how they are trying to reduce climate threats.
For the 167 cities that do have adaptation plans – ranging from Alborg and Aarhus in Denmark through to Zilona Gorá in Poland and Zaragoza in Spain – we find that the climate-related measures within them are often inconsistent.
In other words, their climate risk assessments, policy goals, adaptation measures and monitoring programmes are not aligned.
For example, 81 plans identified the increased risk of storms and winds from climate change, but only 23 of these plans (28%) mentioned increasing resilience to such severe weather events as a specific policy goal.
These inconsistencies contribute to a “gap” that the UN has identified between the adaptation goals that societies have adopted and the measures they have implemented to try and meet them.
Our study finds that Nuremberg in Germany has the largest gap in its adaptation plan, with Stuttgart and Schwerin in Germany and Birmingham in the UK close behind.
The gap is particularly alarming because Europe is warming twice as fast as any other continent – and it is a continent that has had considerable financial and institutional support for adaptation for decades.
Consistent and coherent
Much of the existing research into the “adaptation gap” focuses on the difference between the climate measures a city needs and what action has actually been taken.
But there is another key part of the adaptation gap – whether the policies and measures are actually internally consistent.
Ideally, we would expect adaptation efforts to be “joined-up” along the policy chain.
For example, where climate risk assessments suggest that a city faces specific threats from storms, flash flooding, heatwaves, forest fires or drought, these vulnerabilities should be linked directly to the municipality’s adaptation goals, policies and the monitoring and evaluation processes.
Additionally, we might hope that city governments would involve those at risk from severe climate impacts, such as vulnerable population groups, industries and sectors of the economy, in decisions as to how they will be protected.
If these different phases of adaptation management are misaligned and inconsistent, we can see how cities and societies are less likely to deal with the impact of severe weather events effectively.
‘Consistency checks’
We developed a series of “consistency checks” to identify the extent to which different stages of the adaptation management process are aligned.
These include:
- Consistency between hazards identified in a risk assessment and a city’s adaptation goals.
- Consistency between the risks to specific sectors and detailed policy measures.
- Consistency between the risks faced by vulnerable groups and detailed policy measures.
- Consistency between the policy measures targeted at vulnerable groups and monitoring and evaluation processes to ensure they are being implemented.
- Consistency between the risks faced by vulnerable groups and their involvement in decision-making.
We use these checks to assess the adaptation strategies of European cities. For this, we use an existing dataset of the local adaptation plans of more than 300 cities.
(The dataset covers the 27 member countries of the EU, plus the UK. It aims to cover around 20% of the population of each country and include national and regional capitals where possible. In general, it covers large cities with more than 250,000 people and medium-size urban areas with more than 50,000 people.)
We find that nearly half (49%) of the plans do align climate risks with climate goals. Slightly more than half (52%) align identified sectoral risks with respective measures, but only regarding specific economic sectors and industries.
For example, 68 cities (77%) identify particular risks for buildings, while 70 cities (80%) highlight risks to the water industry and include details of measures to protect these sectors.
However, identified risks for vulnerable groups, such as risks for older people, those on low-incomes and ethnic minorities, were only followed-up with consistent measures in 43% of the plans.
Also, only 4% of cities consider or involve vulnerable groups in monitoring and evaluation (if they identified these groups at risk) – and only 1% of cities were effectively engaging vulnerable communities in plan development.
Given that the least powerful members of society are often the most vulnerable to climate change, there is a real risk that they will be further exposed to severe weather events.
Overall, when assessing each of the five consistency checks in all 167 plans, we find inconsistencies in more than two-thirds (70%). This is despite the fact that adaptation planning in Europe has improved over time – as we highlighted in a previous Carbon Brief article.
The findings are illustrated in the map below, which shows the 167 cities with adaptation plans. The coloured dots indicate the extent to which each city’s plan is inconsistent (indicating a potential adaptation gap) – taken as an average across the five checks set out in our study.
Green dots indicate plans that are fully consistent, with a sliding scale of inconsistency through yellow, orange and red. The maximum inconsistency identified in the study is an adaptation gap of 79.6% – found in Nuremberg, Germany. But Stuttgart and Schwerin in Germany and Birmingham in the UK are close behind, with an average “gap” score of more than 78%.
Lack of adaptation plans
Significantly, our research finds that only 167 of the 327 cities – just over half of those in the database – had even produced a climate adaptation plan by the study’s cut-off date of December 2020.
As such, we were unable to assess how a huge number of places across Europe are planning to deal with climate threats – regardless of whether their activities are misaligned or not.
(Although many cities will have published adaptation plans since this date, it is not clear how coherent their activities are likely to be, nor whether they take sufficient account of the needs of vulnerable groups.)
Overall, our research suggests a greater need for city and national governments to base their adaptation policies on robust risk assessments and to monitor progress accordingly – particularly with the most vulnerable social groups in society in mind.
Our findings highlight the importance of focusing on those who are most vulnerable to climate change, by involving them in decision-making and targeting specific measures at these groups.
The post Guest post: More than 70% of adaptation plans for European cities are ‘inconsistent’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Guest post: More than 70% of adaptation plans for European cities are ‘inconsistent’
The launch of the Africa Energy Bank (AEB) has been put back yet again, raising doubts about the institution’s future ability to finance fossil fuel projects – its main objective – as global lenders retreat from such investments over climate concerns, experts told Climate Home News.
The bank, which had been billed to launch in September after a series of delays, is now scheduled to begin operations in November, according to the head of the African Energy Chamber, an advocacy body for the continent’s oil and gas sector.
Even as the world aims to transition away from fossil fuels, many African leaders have made clear they want to continue exploring and extracting the continent’s large oil and gas deposits – estimated at around 125 billion barrels of crude and over 600 trillion cubic feet of gas – to boost economic development.
As a group, Africa sided with a number of powerful oil-and-gas producing nations in blocking progress on negotiations to craft a global roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels at last year’s UN COP30 climate talks, although some countries did individually support the proposal.
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Meanwhile, major projects under development across the continent – including the 1,443-km East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) and Dangote’s 700,000-barrel-per-day Kenyan refinery – show that African governments see oil and gas as playing a significant role in meeting their energy and economic needs for many years to come.
In 2022, at a gathering of the African Petroleum Producers’ Organization (APPO) in oil-rich Angola, ministers from its member states adopted a resolution to create the Africa Energy Bank to finance projects for the production, use and trade of oil, gas and broader energy sources.
African control over energy resources
An article on the APPO website explains that the bank was conceived as a way to overcome “disenchantment” with fossil fuels among “the international community” which it said had crystallised around the “energy transition” concept.
“If Western countries, after having long taken advantage of the energy sources they now revile to develop, can afford the luxury of abandoning them, this is not the case in Africa,” it adds, noting that many of the continent’s economies are still largely dependent on oil and gas revenues.
A separate web page about the bank, also hosted on APPO’s website, says its objectives include financing the exploration, production and refining of oil and gas, as well as supporting member states in transitioning from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources “while ensuring energy security”.
Said Addi, a former executive with Shell and energy commodities trading house Gunvor, said the new bank was judged necessary because financing for hydrocarbons from many traditional international lenders has become constrained.
In trying to fill this financing gap, Africa is not simply setting up another fund to support oil and gas, he added. “It is also an attempt to give African countries greater control over how their energy resources and infrastructure are financed,” he explained.
Nigeria to host the AEB
The energy bank – a joint initiative of APPO and the African Export–Import Bank (Afreximbank) – has so far suffered several delays and is almost two years behind schedule. The initial plan was to start operations in January 2025, with Nigeria as the host country, but the bank’s opening was delayed to June of that year to allow Nigeria time to finalise the construction of the bank’s headquarters in Abuja.
After the government announced the completion of the offices in late November 2025, a new launch date was set for January 2026, which was moved back to April, June and then September. Now it has shifted again to November, raising concerns that the institution may be losing momentum.
Former Shell executive Addi said that if the capital is eventually paid in, the bank becomes operational and its first projects are commercially credible, then the delays will be regarded as normal teething troubles in setting up a multilateral institution. But, he added, scepticism will be justified if it continues to stall.
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Baron Lamarré, an oil and gas expert and former Petronas oil trader, said that missing “three deadlines in a row is not normal”, and warned that if the timeline slips again, “the story flips from ‘ambitious institution finding its footing’ to ‘good idea that lost momentum before it found any’.”
The Nigerian government, APPO and Afreximbank did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.
The funding challenge
The Africa Energy Bank is targeting base capital of $5 billion, with plans to scale up to $120 billion within five years by mobilising private-sector funds. However, it is expected to start operations with initial seed capital of $500 million.
The funding plan is to have the 18 member countries of the APPO contribute $83 million each to the bank as equity for a combined $1.5 billion. Afreximbank, other non-APPO African countries and investors outside the continent are expected to provide the remaining $3.5 billion.
But even the initial $500 million has not been easy to mobilise. In May, APPO Secretary-General Farid Ghezali called on members to deliver on their pledges towards the startup goal before the end of June. But the delays suggest this may not have been met, with experts saying Africa may be finding it difficult to self-fund its oil and gas projects in the absence of international capital.
Lamarré said every extension of the deadline points to the fact that “raising fossil fuel capital in Africa without the majors and their financing networks is brutally hard”.
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Since 2020, Western lenders, export credit agencies and insurers have been in steady retreat from African hydrocarbons, he said, while oil majors are divesting their African assets, handing over fields to smaller local operators whose credit ratings are not high enough to borrow cheaply.
Even capital from China and the Gulf, which has partially filled the gap, cannot match the volume, tenor or pricing that Western investors once offered, Lamarré argued.
“If mobilising the first $500 million of seed capital [for the AEB] has taken this long, that’s the clearest signal yet of how steep the climb to $120 billion looks,” he said, noting that the continent’s energy financing gap is as large as $30 billion-$45 billion per year.
Africa’s investment landscape, meanwhile, has been shifting. While foreign direct investment dropped from a 2024 peak, inflows remained roughly one-third above the continent’s long-term average in 2025, according to the 2026 World Investment Report from UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD). They are concentrated in a few sectors including critical minerals needed for renewable energy technologies, battery manufacturing and advanced industrial production.
At the same time, data on global energy investment from the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows that fossil fuel investment in Africa has declined over the last decade.
“Trojan horse” for fossil fuels
While the Africa Energy Bank struggles to get off the ground, climate campaigners have criticised its primary aim of financing oil and gas on the continent at a time when the world is starting to move away from high-carbon fuels to cleaner alternatives.
Bhekumuzi Dean Bhebhe, founder of Africa Change Lab, described the bank as a “Trojan horse”, arguing that its focus on fossil fuel financing runs counter to the global energy transition and the African Union’s Agenda 2063 goals of sustainable development and inclusive growth.
The energy bank, he warned, “risks locking Africa into a new cycle of debt, dependency and fossil fuel entrenchment”, adding that its financing blueprint does not pave the way for a climate-resilient future. “In truth, it is to deepen the same extractive, carbon-heavy pathways that the continent should be moving away from,” he added.
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Kenya-based climate and energy expert Joab Okanda said the AEB’s plan to finance oil and gas is “a misplaced priority” and it should instead back clean energy in line with the policies of some of Africa’s major export markets like Europe.
In addition, the new bank could struggle to mobilise enough resources to advance large-scale oil and gas projects, he added, noting that its proposed $5-billion initial capital is equivalent to the cost of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline alone.
The AEB’s aim of backing more fossil fuels should be flipped “to support countries that are oil-dependent to start working on their transition plans”, Okanda said.
The post Launch of Africa Energy Bank delayed again in blow to oil and gas hopes appeared first on Climate Home News.
Launch of Africa Energy Bank delayed again in blow to oil and gas hopes
A booklet published by the UK’s opposition Conservative party includes a “cost of net-zero” that appears to have been doubled by a spreadsheet error.
The “common sense” policy document argues that “what people ultimately want is a government competent enough to solve the problems for which it takes responsibility”.
In a section that says “sophisticat[ed]…modelling” should not be a substitute for “political judgement”, the “Right Way” document disparages various estimates of the cost of net-zero.
The Conservative document then claims – incorrectly – that the government’s official adviser, the Climate Change Committee (CCC), had put the cost of net-zero at close to £1tn. It says:
“In 2020, the CCC estimated that its route to net-zero would cost £957bn.”
In fact, the CCC’s 2020 estimate was exactly half this amount – £478bn – and last year it published a revised figure of £108bn, largely as a result of the falling cost of electric vehicles (EVs).
Spreadsheet error
The Conservative party’s erroneous claim appears to stem from another report that had accidentally added up numbers twice, using a spreadsheet published by the CCC in 2020.
The 2020 spreadsheet contains a table listing the additional investments that would be needed to build a net-zero economy, from low-carbon electricity generation through to heat pumps and EVs.
These extra capital expenditures, listed as “CAPEX”, add up to a total of £1.38tn over the 30 years of 2020-50. They are set against operational savings, listed as “OPEX”, of £0.90tn.
Added up over 2020-50, the combined CAPEX and OPEX figures come to a total of £478bn.
In addition to the annual sectoral CAPEX and OPEX figures, the CCC’s 2020 spreadsheet also has a line giving combined totals for each year. It appears that someone has added all of these numbers together, resulting in the savings and costs being counted twice.
This double-counted total for the cost of net-zero amounts to £957bn – as shown in the image below – and it appears to be the source of the claim in the Conservative booklet.
At the time of publication in 2020, the CCC said that the £478bn net cost of net-zero amounted to less than 1% of GDP over 30 years – and that the large investment needed would not only result in savings due to lower fossil-fuel imports, but that it would boost GDP overall, by around 2%.
In 2025, the CCC revised its estimates for investment costs and operating savings to £670bn and £562bn respectively, giving a net total of £108bn over 2025-50, or less than 0.2% of GDP.
Earlier this year, the committee said that cutting emissions to net-zero would cost less than a single fossil-fuel price shock and that doing so would have benefits worth £110bn per year.
Paper trail
The erroneous claim in the Conservative document is referenced to the CCC’s 2020 advice on the UK’s sixth “carbon budget”, which, as explained, does not contain the £957bn figure.
The earliest online use of the £957bn figure found by Carbon Brief is a 12 January 2026 article in the Spectator, by retired engineer and self-described “accidental energy analyst” David Turver.
A day later, Turver repeated the mistaken number in a report for the free-market Institute of Economic Affairs. His report cites figure 5.3 of the CCC’s 2020 advice.
However, as set out above, the CCC spreadsheet containing the data for figure 5.3 only adds up to £478bn, half the figure claimed by Turver.
It appears that Turver accidentally added up all of the numbers in the CCC spreadsheet, without noting that it already included a line for the annual total. This results in double-counting the cost.
(Turver’s report also triggered a slew of inaccurate headlines stating that net-zero would cost £7.6tn – or even £9tn. These figures, which came from Turver’s report, were based, among other things, on the implicit assumption that fossil fuels and the cars, boilers and power plants that use them are all free.)
After Turver’s report and article in January 2026, the erroneous £957bn figure was repeated in March by the Great British Think Tank. The organisation has the tagline “data, not vibes” and says of its work: “Every figure [is] sourced from official public bodies.”
The £957bn figure then appeared in the Conservative “Right Way” document in October 2026.
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https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-uk-conservatives-double-the-cost-of-net-zero-after-spreadsheet-blunder