It’s COP season again and as governments, businesses and green groups gather in Azerbaijan’s historic capital, Baku, for this year’s COP29 climate summit, a bunch of reports have been released with new information on the state of the Earth’s climate and action to tackle global warming.
From the heatwaves that plagued Nigeria earlier this year, to floods in Spain that killed at least 220 people this month, and recent hurricanes battering swathes of the US, these reports explain what’s turbo-charging extreme weather worldwide and ring the alarm bell on the need to move faster in addressing the climate crisis and protecting people from its growing effects.
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) titled this year’s Adaptation Gap Report “Come hell and high water”, underscoring the need to step up efforts to make economies and societies more resilient to climate change impacts. It also highlights the devastating consequences the world could face at the 2.6-3.1 degrees Celsius of warming projected this century without larger cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.
Here are some key numbers from the latest batch of international climate reports intended to inform and drive the negotiations at COP29:
2024 set to be warmest year on record…
The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) released new data showing that 2024 is set to be the hottest year on record.
Based on temperatures from January to October, the climate service said 2024 has become the first year to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels for that period, surpassing 2023 by 0.16C.
Under the Paris Agreement, countries agreed to limit global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius and ideally to 1.5C, but whether those targets have been broken is not judged on short-term data for one year as they refer to longer-term temperature trends.
The global average temperature for the past 12 months (November 2023-October 2024) was an estimated 1.62C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average. That is 0.74C above the 1991-2020 average.
The report added that unless the average temperature anomaly for the rest of the year drops to almost zero – which is very unlikely – 2024 is virtually certain to become the warmest year.
C3S Deputy Director Samantha Burgess said this “marks a new milestone in global temperature records and should serve as a catalyst to raise ambition for… COP29.”
… sounding a red alert for 1.5C warming limit
Outlining similar findings in an update to its “State of the Climate 2024” report, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), said 2024 is on track to be the warmest year on record after temporarily hitting the 1.5C warming limit.
In the period from January to September, the global mean surface air temperature was 1.54C above the pre-industrial average, with climate warming boosted by the El Niño weather pattern, the WMO said.
That does not mean, however, that the world has exceeded the 1.5C temperature goal set in the Paris Agreement as long-term warming measured over decades remains below that benchmark, the report emphasised.
The report said 2015-2024 will be the warmest ten years on record, adding that ocean warming rates show a particularly strong increase in the past two decades and the planet’s seas will continue to heat up irreversibly.
WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo warned that although the world has not yet broken the 1.5C limit, “it is essential to recognise that every fraction of a degree of warming matters. Whether it is at a level below or above 1.5C of warming, every additional increment of global warming increases climate extremes, impacts and risks.”
Over 570,000 deaths in two decades…
As the planet is heating up, the effects are already hitting hard. A report from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group of scientists says the death toll from the 10 deadliest disasters in the last two decades stands at just over 570,000 – that’s a little above the population size of Cabo Verde.
Even then, the researchers say the number of deaths from climate-induced disasters is greatly underestimated, as there may have been millions more heat-related deaths not reported in the official statistics, especially in poorer countries where people are most vulnerable to high temperatures.
Without doubt, these 10 extreme events were made more intense and more likely by human-caused climate change, they note.
… but the world can be better prepared to prevent these deaths…
While many of these deaths were avoidable, threats are becoming more frequent and severe, in the face of today’s 1.3C of warming.
However, there are actions that can drastically reduce the human impacts of extreme weather. One of these is investing in early-warning systems to alert people of extreme weather ahead of time. According to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), countries are making progress in this regard.
In its latest “State of Climate Services” report, the WMO says that, in 2024, one-third of national meteorological and hydrological services provide climate services, such as early warning activities, at an “essential” level, and nearly one third at an “advanced” or “full” level.
With targeted adaptation funding, countries in Asia and Africa, in particular, have made strides in boosting their capacity, the report says. But, it adds, there are still significant gaps in the coverage of observing networks in Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS).
Notwithstanding, the WMO says that with better early warnings and disaster risk management, weather and climate-related reported deaths have decreased by nearly two-thirds since the 1970s.
… and countries need to set more ambitious climate plans to curb global warming…
The economic losses and damage caused by climate change should motivate countries to come up with more ambitious “nationally determined contribution” climate plans (NDCs) due early next year, UNEP urges.
In its Emissions Gap Report 2024, the environmental body said failure to do this would put the world at risk of 2.6-3.1C of warming this century, which would be more catastrophic.
Reducing planet-heating emissions, according to UNEP’s Executive Director Inger Andersen, would not only protect economies but also save lives, prevent damage, conserve biodiversity and enable global average temperatures to fall again if they do overshoot the Paris Agreement goals of limiting warming to “well below 2C” and ideally to 1.5C above pre-industrial times.
So there is some hope. The report shows there is technical potential for emissions cuts in 2030 of up to 31 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent and 41 gigatonnes in 2035, which would close the gap to putting the world on track for limiting global warming to 1.5C pathway if delivered.
Increased deployment of solar photovoltaic technologies and wind energy would allow the world to deliver 27% of that total reduction potential in 2030 and 38% in 2035, it says.
And action to protect forests could deliver around 20% of the potential by both years. Efficiency measures, electrification and fuel-switching in the buildings, transport and industry sectors are other effective ways to deliver emissions reductions.
… but investments in clean energy remain unequal in the global transition…
Given their emissions-cutting potential, investments in clean energy have increased significantly, approaching $2 trillion per year, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its 2024 World Energy Outlook.
Additionally, the costs of most clean technologies are declining, causing renewables to enter the energy system at an unprecedented rate, including more than 560 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity added in 2023.
But deployment is far from uniform across technologies and countries. The IEA’s “Financing Clean Energy in Africa” report stated that the continent attracts less than 2% of global spending on clean energy, despite a recent surge in investments.
On top of that, markets for fossil fuels and clean technologies are becoming more fragmented. The World Energy Outlook states that since 2020, almost 200 trade measures affecting clean energy technologies – most of them restrictive – have been introduced around the world, compared with 40 in the preceding five-year period.
… “transition” gas won’t save the day, instead fuelling risks for investors…
Meanwhile, the uptake of clean energy for the green transition will cause a dwindling market for oil and gas, particularly for liquefied natural gas, according to a recent Carbon Tracker report. This engenders risks for investors who project an increase in demand for LNG.
Some governments, including in Africa, have been pushing for the use of gas as a “transition” fuel to sustain their economies and bridge the gap as they wait for accelerated investments in renewables.
But a rush to boost gas production for domestic use and export could cause an oversupply by the end of the decade, the report says, as global production capacity is expected to increase by around 50% by 2030.
The report warns that in the face of the massive industry push into LNG, there is a need to reassess assumptions because investors risk generating lower returns than anticipated.
… COP hosts chase fossil fuels despite COP28 commitment…
At COP28 in Dubai last year, an agreement to “transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems” was hailed by some as signalling the ‘beginning of the end’ of the industrial era powered by coal, oil and gas. But that may be premature.
The three host nations of the 2023-2025 COPs are among those promising one thing and doing another. New research by Oil Change International shows that the United Arab Emirates (COP28), Azerbaijan (COP29) and Brazil (COP30) plan to collectively expand oil and gas production by 32% by 2035, threatening the climate limits they have pledged to protect.
And they are not the only ones. The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) reports that some countries are preparing for an oil and gas exploration splurge in the near term, leading to a strong uptick in exploration licensing.
If fully exploited, oil and gas reserves set to be licensed in the next six months could result in 15 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions – nearly as large as the combined emissions of the US and China in 2022.
Currently, the 10 countries with the biggest oil and gas licensing plans, in terms of embodied emissions – generated by extraction, production, transportation and use of fossil fuels along the whole supply chain – are China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Indonesia, the United States, Iran, Angola, Australia, Nigeria, and India, Oil Change says.
… continued fossil fuel investment will mean national climate plans fall short of expectations…
The recently released UN’s NDC synthesis report shows that countries’ current climate plans “fall miles short of what’s needed” to stop global heating.
While the world needs to cut emissions 43% by 2030 to limit warming to 1.5C and avert climate chaos, the current NDCs from nearly 200 countries combined would see global emissions in 2030 fall by only 2.6% compared to their level in 2019, the report finds.
Therefore UN officials and climate advocates are calling for the next round of NDCs, due by February next year – but likely to be submitted throughout the year in the run-up to COP30 – to deliver a substantial increase in climate action and ambition.
… yet finance for stronger climate action remains far too low…
In meeting their NDC targets, countries – especially vulnerable nations like small island states and the poorest countries – need external finance to help pay for the measures required.
But despite a doubling of annual climate finance between 2018 and 2022 – from $674 billion to $1.46 trillion – there is still a need to increase it at least five-fold to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, a new study by Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) shows.
Climate finance flows reached almost $1.5 trillion in 2022, but that still only represents 1% of global GDP – and CPI says this falls far short of what is needed.
By 2030, emerging markets and developing economies may need to spend as much as 6.5% of their GDP to meet climate goals, it warns.
Reiterating the need for more finance, UNEP in its new Adaptation Gap Report says international public funding to protect communities in poorer, vulnerable countries from worsening extreme weather and rising seas is only a fraction – between 7% and 13% – of what is needed, leaving an estimated gap of $187-359 billion.
From cyclone to drought, Zimbabwe’s climate victims struggle to adapt
At COP29, finance is set to take centre-stage as countries are tasked with agreeing a new climate finance goal for the coming years. With demands running into trillions of dollars, a tough fight over the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) is expected at COP29 as wealthy countries try to push some of the responsibility onto new donors, including richer developing countries and the private sector.
Sandra Guzmán, founder and general coordinator of the Climate Finance Group for Latin America and the Caribbean (GFLAC), told a Climate Home News webinar on climate finance prospects at COP29 that the new goal is fundamental to enable higher ambition in the NDCs – and without it countries will struggle to implement their transition plans.
(Reporting by Vivian Chime; editing by Joe Lo and Megan Rowling)
The post In numbers: The state of the climate in 2024 appeared first on Climate Home News.
Climate Change
DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Absolute State of the Union
‘DRILL, BABY’: US president Donald Trump “doubled down on his ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda” in his State of the Union (SOTU) address, said the Los Angeles Times. He “tout[ed] his support of the fossil-fuel industry and renew[ed] his focus on electricity affordability”, reported the Financial Times. Trump also attacked the “green new scam”, noted Carbon Brief’s SOTU tracker.
COAL REPRIEVE: Earlier in the week, the Trump administration had watered down limits on mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, reported the Financial Times. It remains “unclear” if this will be enough to prevent the decline of coal power, said Bloomberg, in the face of lower-cost gas and renewables. Reuters noted that US coal plants are “ageing”.
OIL STAY: The US Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments brought by the oil industry in a “major lawsuit”, reported the New York Times. The newspaper said the firms are attempting to head off dozens of other lawsuits at state level, relating to their role in global warming.
SHIP-SHILLING: The Trump administration is working to “kill” a global carbon levy on shipping “permanently”, reported Politico, after succeeding in delaying the measure late last year. The Guardian said US “bullying” could be “paying off”, after Panama signalled it was reversing its support for the levy in a proposal submitted to the UN shipping body.
Around the world
- RARE EARTHS: The governments of Brazil and India signed a deal on rare earths, said the Times of India, as well as agreeing to collaborate on renewable energy.
- HEAT ROLLBACK: German homes will be allowed to continue installing gas and oil heating, under watered-down government plans covered by Clean Energy Wire.
- BRAZIL FLOODS: At least 53 people died in floods in the state of Minas Gerais, after some areas saw 170mm of rain in a few hours, reported CNN Brasil.
- ITALY’S ATTACK: Italy is calling for the EU to “suspend” its emissions trading system (ETS) ahead of a review later this year, said Politico.
- COOKSTOVE CREDITS: The first-ever carbon credits under the Paris Agreement have been issued to a cookstove project in Myanmar, said Climate Home News.
- SAUDI SOLAR: Turkey has signed a “major” solar deal that will see Saudi firm ACWA building 2 gigawatts in the country, according to Agence France-Presse.
$467 billion
The profits made by five major oil firms since prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago, according to a report by Global Witness covered by BusinessGreen.
Latest climate research
- Claims about the “fingerprint” of human-caused climate change, made in a recent US Department of Energy report, are “factually incorrect” | AGU Advances
- Large lakes in the Congo Basin are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from “immense ancient stores” | Nature Geoscience
- Shared Socioeconomic Pathways – scenarios used regularly in climate modelling – underrepresent “narratives explicitly centring on democratic principles such as participation, accountability and justice” | npj Climate Action
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
The constituency of Richard Tice MP, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of Reform UK, is the second-largest recipient of flood defence spending in England, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Overall, the funding is disproportionately targeted at coastal and urban areas, many of which have Conservative or Liberal Democrat MPs.
Spotlight
Is there really a UK ‘greenlash’?
This week, after a historic Green Party byelection win, Carbon Brief looks at whether there really is a “greenlash” against climate policy in the UK.
Over the past year, the UK’s political consensus on climate change has been shattered.
Yet despite a sharp turn against climate action among right-wing politicians and right-leaning media outlets, UK public support for climate action remains strong.
Prof Federica Genovese, who studies climate politics at the University of Oxford, told Carbon Brief:
“The current ‘war’ on green policy is mostly driven by media and political elites, not by the public.”
Indeed, there is still a greater than two-to-one majority among the UK public in favour of the country’s legally binding target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, as shown below.
Steve Akehurst, director of public-opinion research initiative Persuasion UK, also noted the growing divide between the public and “elites”. He told Carbon Brief:
“The biggest movement is, without doubt, in media and elite opinion. There is a bit more polarisation and opposition [to climate action] among voters, but it’s typically no more than 20-25% and mostly confined within core Reform voters.”
Conservative gear shift
For decades, the UK had enjoyed strong, cross-party political support for climate action.
Lord Deben, the Conservative peer and former chair of the Climate Change Committee, told Carbon Brief that the UK’s landmark 2008 Climate Change Act had been born of this cross-party consensus, saying “all parties supported it”.
Since their landslide loss at the 2024 election, however, the Conservatives have turned against the UK’s target of net-zero emissions by 2050, which they legislated for in 2019.
Curiously, while opposition to net-zero has surged among Conservative MPs, there is majority support for the target among those that plan to vote for the party, as shown below.
Dr Adam Corner, advisor to the Climate Barometer initiative that tracks public opinion on climate change, told Carbon Brief that those who currently plan to vote Reform are the only segment who “tend to be more opposed to net-zero goals”. He said:
“Despite the rise in hostile media coverage and the collapse of the political consensus, we find that public support for the net-zero by 2050 target is plateauing – not plummeting.”
Reform, which rejects the scientific evidence on global warming and campaigns against net-zero, has been leading the polls for a year. (However, it was comfortably beaten by the Greens in yesterday’s Gorton and Denton byelection.)
Corner acknowledged that “some of the anti-net zero noise…[is] showing up in our data”, adding:
“We see rising concerns about the near-term costs of policies and an uptick in people [falsely] attributing high energy bills to climate initiatives.”
But Akehurst said that, rather than a big fall in public support, there had been a drop in the “salience” of climate action:
“So many other issues [are] competing for their attention.”
UK newspapers published more editorials opposing climate action than supporting it for the first time on record in 2025, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Global ‘greenlash’?
All of this sits against a challenging global backdrop, in which US president Donald Trump has been repeating climate-sceptic talking points and rolling back related policy.
At the same time, prominent figures have been calling for a change in climate strategy, sold variously as a “reset”, a “pivot”, as “realism”, or as “pragmatism”.
Genovese said that “far-right leaders have succeeded in the past 10 years in capturing net-zero as a poster child of things they are ‘fighting against’”.
She added that “much of this is fodder for conservative media and this whole ecosystem is essentially driving what we call the ‘greenlash’”.
Corner said the “disconnect” between elite views and the wider public “can create problems” – for example, “MPs consistently underestimate support for renewables”. He added:
“There is clearly a risk that the public starts to disengage too, if not enough positive voices are countering the negative ones.”
Watch, read, listen
TRUMP’S ‘PETROSTATE’: The US is becoming a “petrostate” that will be “sicker and poorer”, wrote Financial Times associate editor Rana Forohaar.
RHETORIC VS REALITY: Despite a “political mood [that] has darkened”, there is “more green stuff being installed than ever”, said New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells.
CHINA’S ‘REVOLUTION’: The BBC’s Climate Question podcast reported from China on the “green energy revolution” taking place in the country.
Coming up
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean, Brasília
- 3 March: UK spring statement
- 4-11 March: China’s “two sessions”
- 5 March: Nepal elections
Pick of the jobs
- The Guardian, senior reporter, climate justice | Salary: $123,000-$135,000. Location: New York or Washington DC
- China-Global South Project, non-resident fellow, climate change | Salary: Up to $1,000 a month. Location: Remote
- University of East Anglia, PhD in mobilising community-based climate action through co-designed sports and wellbeing interventions | Salary: Stipend (unknown amount). Location: Norwich, UK
- TABLE and the University of São Paulo, Brazil, postdoctoral researcher in food system narratives | Salary: Unknown. Location: Pirassununga, Brazil
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 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Seven Pacific island nations say they will demand heftier levies on global shipping emissions if opponents of a green deal for the industry succeed in reopening negotiations on the stalled accord.
The United States and Saudi Arabia persuaded countries not to grant final approval to the International Maritime Organization’s Net-Zero Framework (NZF) in October and they are now leading a drive for changes to the deal.
In a joint submission seen by Climate Home News, the seven climate-vulnerable Pacific countries said the framework was already a “fragile compromise”, and vowed to push for a universal levy on all ship emissions, as well as higher fees . The deal currently stipulates that fees will be charged when a vessel’s emissions exceed a certain level.
“For many countries, the NZF represents the absolute limit of what they can accept,” said the unpublished submission by Fiji, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Nauru, Palau, Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands.
The countries said a universal levy and higher charges on shipping would raise more funds to enable a “just and equitable transition leaving no country behind”. They added, however, that “despite its many shortcomings”, the framework should be adopted later this year.
US allies want exemption for ‘transition fuels’
The previous attempt to adopt the framework failed after governments narrowly voted to postpone it by a year. Ahead of the vote, the US threatened governments and their officials with sanctions, tariffs and visa restrictions – and President Donald Trump called the framework a “Green New Scam Tax on Shipping”.
Since then, Liberia – an African nation with a major low-tax shipping registry headquartered in the US state of Virginia – has proposed a new measure under which, rather than staying fixed under the NZF, ships’ emissions intensity targets change depending on “demonstrated uptake” of both “low-carbon and zero-carbon fuels”.
The proposal places stringent conditions on what fuels are taken into consideration when setting these targets, stressing that the low- and zero-carbon fuels should be “scalable”, not cost more than 15% more than standard marine fuels and should be available at “sufficient ports worldwide”.
This proposal would not “penalise transitional fuels” like natural gas and biofuels, they said. In the last decade, the US has built a host of large liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals, which the Trump administration is lobbying other countries to purchase from.
The draft motion, seen by Climate Home News, was co-sponsored by US ally Argentina and also by Panama, a shipping hub whose canal the US has threatened to annex. Both countries voted with the US to postpone the last vote on adopting the framework.
-
IMO head: Shipping decarbonisation “has started” despite green deal delay
Arsenio Dominguez said the shipping industry’s net zero emissions goal is not in dispute although countries have stalled on adopting a framework to reach it -
US-led alliance wins a year’s delay in adoption of green shipping deal
The IMO’s Net-Zero Framework will be up for approval again in October 2026, after the US and Saudi Arabia persuaded countries not to vote on it as planned
The IMO’s Panamanian head Arsenio Dominguez told reporters in January that changes to the framework were now possible.
“It is clear from what happened last year that we need to look into the concerns that have been expressed [and] … make sure that they are somehow addressed within the framework,” he said.
Patchwork of levies
While the European Union pushed firmly for the framework’s adoption, two of its shipping-reliant member states – Greece and Cyprus – abstained in October’s vote.
After a meeting between the Greek shipping minister and Saudi Arabia’s energy minister in January, Greece said a “common position” united Greece, Saudi Arabia and the US on the framework.
If the NZF or a similar instrument is not adopted, the IMO has warned that there will be a patchwork of differing regional levies on pollution – like the EU’s emissions trading system for ships visiting its ports – which will be complicated and expensive to comply with.
This would mean that only countries with their own levies and with lots of ships visiting their ports would raise funds, making it harder for other nations to fund green investments in their ports, seafarers and shipping companies. In contrast, under the NZF, revenues would be disbursed by the IMO to all nations based on set criteria.
Anais Rios, shipping policy officer from green campaign group Seas At Risk, told Climate Home News the proposal by the Pacific nations for a levy on all shipping emissions – not just those above a certain threshold – was “the most credible way to meet the IMO’s climate goals”.
“With geopolitics reframing climate policy, asking the IMO to reopen the discussion on the universal levy is the only way to decarbonise shipping whilst bringing revenue to manage impacts fairly,” Rios said.
“It is […] far stronger than the Net-Zero Framework that is currently on offer.”
The post Pacific nations want higher emissions charges if shipping talks reopen appeared first on Climate Home News.
Pacific nations want higher emissions charges if shipping talks reopen
Doubts over whether governments will maintain ambitious targets on boosting the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) are a threat to the industry’s growth and play into the hands of fossil fuel companies, investors warned this week.
Several executives from airlines and oil firms have forecast recently that SAF requirements in the European Union, United Kingdom and elsewhere will be eased or scrapped altogether, potentially upending the aviation industry’s main policy to shrink air travel’s growing carbon footprint.
Such speculation poses a “fundamental threat” to the SAF industry, which mainly produces an alternative to traditional kerosene jet fuel using organic feedstocks such as used cooking oil (UCO), Thomas Engelmann, head of energy transition at German investment manager KGAL, told the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Investor conference in London.
He said fossil fuel firms would be the only winners from questions about compulsory SAF blending requirements.
The EU and the UK introduced the world’s first SAF mandates in January 2025, requiring fuel suppliers to blend at least 2% SAF with fossil fuel kerosene. The blending requirement will gradually increase to reach 32% in the EU and 22% in the UK by 2040.
Another case of diluted green rules?
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, CEO of French oil and gas company TotalEnergies Patrick Pouyanné said he would bet “that what happened to the car regulation will happen to the SAF regulation in Europe”.
The EU watered down green rules for car-makers in March 2025 after lobbying from car companies, Germany and Italy.
“You will see. Today all the airline companies are fighting [against the EU’s 2030 SAF target of 6%],” Pouyanne said, even though it’s “easy to reach to be honest”.
While most European airline lobbies publicly support the mandates, Ryanair Group CEO Michael O’Leary said last year that the SAF is “nonsense” and is “gradually dying a death, which is what it deserves to do”.
EU and UK stand by SAF targets
But the EU and the British government have disputed that. EU transport commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas said in November that the EU’s targets are “stable”, warning that “investment decisions and construction must start by 2027, or we will miss the 2030 targets”.
UK aviation minister Keir Mather told this week’s investor event that meeting the country’s SAF blending requirement of 10% by 2030 was “ambitious but, with the right investment, the right innovation and the right outlook, it is absolutely within our reach”.
“We need to go further and we need to go faster,” Mather said.
SAF investors and developers said such certainty on SAF mandates from policymakers was key to drawing the necessary investment to ramp up production of the greener fuel, which needs to scale up in order to bring down high production costs. Currently, SAF is between two and seven times more expensive than traditional jet fuel.
Urbano Perez, global clean molecules lead at Spanish bank Santander, said banks will not invest if there is a perceived regulatory risk.
David Scott, chair of Australian SAF producer Jet Zero Australia, said developing SAF was already challenging due to the risks of “pretty new” technology requiring high capital expenditure.
“That’s a scary model with a volatile political environment, so mandate questioning creates this problem on steroids”, Scott said.
Others played down the risk. Glenn Morgan, partner at investment and advisory firm SkiesFifty, said “policy is always a risk”, adding that traditional oil-based jet fuel could also lose subsidies.
Asian countries join SAF mandate adopters
In Asia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Japan have recently adopted SAF mandates, and Matti Lievonen, CEO of Asia-based SAF producer EcoCeres, predicted that China, Indonesia and Hong Kong would follow suit.
David Fisken, investment director at the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, said the Australian government, which does not have a mandate, was watching to see how the EU and UK’s requirements played out.
The US does not have a SAF mandate and under President Donald Trump the government has slashed tax credits available for SAF producers from $1.75 a gallon to $1.
Is the world’s big idea for greener air travel a flight of fancy?
SAF and energy security
SAF’s potential role in boosting energy security was a major theme of this week’s discussions as geopolitical tensions push the issue to the fore.
Marcella Franchi, chief commercial officer for SAF at France’s Haffner Energy, said the Canadian government, which has “very unsettling neighbours at the moment”, was looking to produce SAF to protect its energy security, especially as it has ample supplies of biomass to use as potential feedstock.
Similarly, German weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall said last year it was working on plans that would enable European armed forces to produce their own synthetic, carbon-neutral fuel “locally and independently of global fossil fuel supply chain”.
Scott said Australia needs SAF to improve its fuel security, as it imports almost 99% of its liquid fuels.
He added that support for Australian SAF production is bipartisan, in part because it appeals to those more concerned about energy security than tackling climate change.
The post Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn appeared first on Climate Home News.
Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn
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