The year of 2023 was the second-warmest on record for the UK, narrowly behind the record set as recently as 2022.
It was also the warmest year on record for Wales and Northern Ireland, second-warmest for England and third-warmest for Scotland.
In this review, we look back at the UK’s climate in 2023, the significant climate events that shaped the year and how human-caused climate change influenced them. We find:
- Eight of the 12 months of the year were warmer than average.
- Somewhat unusually, the warmest periods were in June and September, with the high summer months of July and August generally cooler and wetter.
- June was the hottest month of the year for the first time since 1966 and was the hottest June on record by a large margin.
- Through a climate attribution analysis, we show that a year as warm as 2023 has been made around 150 times more likely due to human-caused climate change.
- We would expect to reach or exceed the 2023 annual temperature in around 33% of years in the current climate.
- 2023 was relatively wet with 1,290mm of rainfall, making it the UK’s 11th wettest year in a series going back to 1836.
- The few wintery cold spells of the year were relatively short-lived.
- 2023-24 has seen the most active start to the storm season since naming storms began in 2015.
(See our previous annual analysis for 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019 and 2018.)
The year in summary
The Met Office produces the HadUK-Grid dataset for monitoring the UK climate. Using geostatistical methods, we combine UK observational data from land-based stations across the country into a gridded, geographically complete dataset.
There is enough coverage of observational data in our digital archives for national coverage of monthly temperature since 1884, rainfall since 1836 and sunshine since 1910. These are used to define long-running climate series and climatological averages, which provide context for variability and change in the UK’s climate through time.
The maps below show the average anomalies compared to 1991-2020 for temperature (left), rainfall (middle) and sunshine duration (right) across the UK during 2023. The darkest shading shows the areas of the country that saw the warmest (red), driest (brown) and sunniest (yellow) conditions relative to the baseline climate.
The maps show that 2023 was, for most of the country, a warm and wet year compared to average, with close to average sunshine overall. The exception to this being western Scotland which saw drier and sunnier conditions.
The UK annual average temperature was 9.97C for 2023, which is just 0.06C below the record high of 10.03C in 2022. This continues an observed warming of the UK climate since the 1960s.
The hottest year in the UK during the whole of the 20th century was 1997, with an average temperature of 9.41C. So far in the 21st century, 13 years have exceeded this value, meaning that the majority of years so far in the 21st century have exceeded what was the hottest year of the 20th century.
In contrast, the coldest year of the 21st century so far was 2010 (7.94C) which was more than 0.5C warmer than the coldest year of the 20th century in 1963 (7.40C).
While 2010 is an extreme-cold year in the context of the current UK climate, it would have been much closer to the average for the late 19th and early 20th century. Climate change has significantly reduced the occurrence and severity of cooler conditions in the UK.
Looking regionally, the map below colour-codes UK counties by the ranking of annual average temperature.
The darkest shade of red identifies those counties that recorded their warmest year in 2023. It was the warmest year on record for all of Northern Ireland and Wales, and also for counties in western England and south-west Scotland.
The year 2022 retains the record for the majority of England and Scotland, with the exception of far north Scotland (for which the warmest year on record was 2014), Western Isles (2006), Orkney (2003) and Shetland (2014).
In addition, 2023 is also provisionally the warmest year on record for Ireland in the 124 year national series maintained by Met Eireann.
Central England Temperature record
The year of 2023 was also the second-warmest year in the Met Office Central England Temperature series (CET), marginally behind 2022. The CET represents a region bounded by Hertfordshire, Worcestershire and Lancashire.
The chart below compares the records for the CET (black) and whole UK (red) for annual average temperature.
While there are inevitable differences in the precise ranking and anomalies of individual years between UK and CET, the series show the strong overall level of agreement. It also highlights how unusual the temperature of 2022 and 2023 are in the context of more than 360 years of observational data.
Extremes and rainfall
The UK climate monitoring network records both daily maximum and daily minimum temperatures.
Last year was the record highest for the annual average daily minimum temperature for the UK, England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and fourth highest for Scotland.
It was the highest annual average daily maximum temperature for Northern Ireland, second-highest for the UK, England and Wales, and third-highest for Scotland.
The year of 2023 was relatively wet with 1,290mm of rainfall, equivalent to 111% of UK average rainfall and putting it just outside the top 10 as the 11th wettest year in a series going back to 1836.
It was the sixth wettest March and July, seventh wettest October and ninth wettest December. In addition, 2023 is the only year that has four individual months within the top 10 wettest on record for the respective month.
The wet spells of March and July followed dry spells during February and June, but it was the higher-than-average rainfall through the autumn and into December that pushed up the annual accumulation for the year overall.
As the chart below shows, there has been an observed increase in UK annual rainfall over recent decades, with 2023 joining a cluster of notably wet years that have occurred since the late 1990s.
The lines show the annual rainfall (dark blue) and trend (black dashes), along with the 1991-2020 average (pink), 2023 total (brown) and the highest (red dashes) and lowest (blue dashes) annual totals on record.
The drivers of annual rainfall trends are complex as the annual total masks distribution of rainfall throughout the year and will respond to a multitude of factors, which will include human-caused climate change but also contributions from natural climate variability.
Attribution of UK annual mean temperature in 2023
Met Office scientists conducted an attribution study to quantify the influence of human-caused climate change on the likelihood of reaching a UK annual average temperature at or above that recorded in 2023.
The method uses an established Met Office system for rapid attribution of extreme events. The analysis uses observed values of the UK annual temperature and temperature data for the UK drawn from 14 climate model simulations from the sixth – and most recent – phase of the global Coupled Model Intercomparison Project.
The models are evaluated against the observational data across the period 1884-2014 using approaches commonly adopted for attribution studies. This determines whether they are suitable for use in the assessment and provide adequate representations of UK annual average temperature trends and variability.
One set of model simulations uses only natural climate forcings (“NAT”) for the period 1850-2020, while another set uses all natural and human-caused forcings (“ALL”) for the historical period and the SSP2-4.5 emissions scenario, often described as a “medium” emissions scenario, out to 2100.
These simulations are then able to provide estimates of the likelihood of the UK annual temperature exceeding the observed 2023 value for the following scenarios:
- A natural climate without human-caused greenhouse gases.
- The current climate taken as a 20-year period centred on 2023.
- An end-of-century climate under a medium emissions scenario taken as the period 2081-2100.
A reference baseline for all the experiments is the period 1901-30.
The estimated return period for a UK annual average temperature exceeding 9.97C in the NAT simulations is once every 460 years (with a range of 82 to 587). For the ALL simulations in the present day, this drops to once every three years (with a range of 2.86 to 3.17). For the ALL simulations in the future, this falls further and could see temperatures warmer than 2023 being exceeded more frequently than every other year.
Human-caused climate change is, therefore, estimated to have increased the likelihood of a year as warm as 2023 by a factor of more than 150.
These results are, unsurprisingly, very similar to an equivalent study conducted a year ago in relation to the record-breaking annual mean temperature of 10.03C set in 2022. Regarding that study, we stated:
“A warming climate means that an event that would have been exceptionally unlikely in the past has become one that we will increasingly see in the coming decades.”
Importantly, this analysis also indicates that 2022 and 2023 are not necessarily that extreme in the context of our current climate. This means that there is the potential for a far higher UK annual average temperature extreme even in the present-day climate. In addition, by the end of the 21st century, most years will be warmer than 2023.
Weather through the year
Temperature
The chart below tracks UK average temperatures through the year, with orange highlighting periods that were warmer than the 1991-2020 average for the time of year and blue were cooler than average.
Overall, 66% of days (240 days) were warmer than the 1991-2020 average for the time of year and 34% (125 days) were colder. The most notable warm spells were in June, September and December.
The highest maximum temperature of the year was 33.5C at Faversham (Kent) on 10 September, which is only the fifth time a highest maximum has been recorded in September. This is equal to the 1991-2020 average annual maximum temperature, so it is close to what we would expect as the highest UK temperature for a typical year. However, it is 2.3C higher than the average maximum during the earlier period of 1961-90 (31.2C).
In September, there was also a run of seven consecutive days with temperatures somewhere in the UK exceeding 30C, which is the longest such run in September on record.
The lowest temperature of the year was -16.0C, recorded at Altnaharra (Sutherland) on 9 March during a spell of wintry weather. This is 0.5C below the 1991-2020 average (-15.5C), but 3C above the 1961-90 average (-19.0C) for the year’s coldest day.
In 2023, both the hottest and coldest weather of the year occurred outside of the climatological summer and winter season, a reminder of the variable nature of the UK climate.
Both the highest maximum and lowest minimum temperature of the year for the UK have been increasing at a faster rate than the UK average temperature, reflecting that heat extremes are becoming more severe while cold extremes are becoming less severe in our warming climate.
Rainfall
For rainfall, the wettest periods were seen in March, July, October and December.
In the chart below, the rainfall accumulation is tracked through the course of the year. The solid black line is the 1991-2020 average, the grey shading reflects the variability across years with the red and blue marking the highest and lowest on record. Brown shading highlights points in the year where the total rainfall since the start of the year was below average, and blue regions are where it is above average.
The chart highlights that a dry spell in February was compensated by the wet March, and the dry spell through May and June was followed by a wet July, returning the year to near-average by the start of autumn.
Western Scotland was an exception to this rainfall pattern, with a somewhat drier autumn in particular, although wetter conditions in the east, including some extreme rainfall such as during storm Babet in October, meant that Scotland overall was still wetter than average. For England it was the sixth wettest year on record, third wettest for Northern Ireland, 12th for Wales and 32nd for Scotland.
Storms
The Met Office storm naming, first launched in 2015, provides a storm name list for the period from 1 September to 31 August each year in collaboration with Met Eireann and KNMI, the Irish and Dutch national weather services, respectively.
The 2022-23 storm season was rather notable for the relative absence of storms, with the only storms to be named under this scheme both occurring right at the end of the season in August – storms Antoni (5 August) and Betty (18-19 August).
In contrast, the 2023-24 season has experienced a much more active start with seven named storms from September to December, and the eighth (storm Henk) in early January 2024, which is the most active start to the named storm season since its inception in 2015.
| Storm Name | Dates affected UK | Maximum wind gust | Number of observing sites recording wind gusts over 50 knots |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-23 names | |||
| Otto | 17 February (named by Danish Meteorological Service) | 72 Kt (83mph) Inverbervie, Kincardineshire | 31 |
| Noa | 12 April (named by Meteo-France) | 83 Kt (96mph) Needles, Isle of Wight | 25 |
| Antoni | 5 August | 68 Kt (78mph) Berry Head, Devon | 2 |
| Betty | 18-19 August | 57 Kt (66mph) Capel Curig, Conwy | 5 |
| 2023-24 names | |||
| Agnes | 27-28 September | 73 Kt (84mph) Capel Curig, Conwy | 15 |
| Babet | 18-21 October | 67 Kt (77mph) Inverbervie, Kincardineshire | 16 |
| Ciarán | 1-2 November | 68 Kt (77mph) Langdon Bay, Kent | 11 |
| Debi | 13 November | 67 Kt (77mph) Aberdaron, Gwynedd | 21 |
| Elin | 9 December | 70 Kt (81mph) Capel Curig, Conwy | 13 |
| Fergus | 10 December | 64 Kt (74mph) Aberdaron, Gwynedd | 11 |
| Gerrit | 27-28 December | 77 Kt (89mph) Fair Isle, Shetland | 42 |
| Henk | 2 January 2024 | 82 Kt (94mph) Needles, Isle of Wight | 35 |
List of named storms for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 storm seasons
Overall, 2023 was calmer than average. This reflects a long-term decline in average wind speed, as illustrated in the chart below. This shows average UK wind speeds for each year since 1969 (dark blue line), the trend (black dashes), 1991-2020 average (pink), 2023 total (brown) and the highest (red dashes) and lowest (blue dashes) annual averages on record.
This long-term trend should be interpreted with some caution as it is possible that changes in instrumentation and exposure of the observing network through time may influence these trends. However, the decline is consistent with a widespread global slowdown termed “global stilling”.
More recently, global and UK data have shown that since 2010 the decline has stopped or even reversed.
Winter
After a notably wet spell at the start of the year – resulting in flooding across south Wales and Midlands on the 12 January – the late winter period was characterised by a very sunny January and very dry February overall.
It was the driest February since 1993 with much of central and southern England, which received less than 20% of the normal monthly rainfall.
The climatological winter season (1 December 2022 to 28 February 2023) was drier than average and – as discussed above – relatively calm with just one named storm (Otto) occurring in an otherwise dry February.
The chart below depicts UK winter rainfall per year (dark blue line) since 1836. While 2023 was relatively, but not exceptionally, dry in the context of recent decades, it is closer to the average for earlier in the series. The winter of 2022-23 had 83% of the 1991-2020 average rainfall, but 94% compared to the earlier period of 1961-90.
Comparing 1991-2020 to 1961-90, winter rainfall for the UK has risen by 14%. The increase is not uniform across the UK, however, with the greatest increases in excess of 20% across north and west Scotland, and smaller rises below 10% for central and southern England.
It is notable that, in a series stretching back to 1836, the five wettest winters have all occurred since 1990. The record wettest winter of 2013-14 had approximately double the rainfall of 2023, highlighting the large interannual variability in UK rainfall.
In contrast, at the time of writing, wet weather through the first half of the 2023-24 winter has resulted in widespread flooding across the country.
Climate variability is a critical driver in recent extremes of winter rainfall, while the emerging climate change signal resulting from increased moisture in the atmosphere is an important secondary factor contributing to the risk of wetter winters.
UK climate projections indicate a clear shift to higher probability of wet winters over the UK. This is caused by an increase in the number of wet days, an increase in intensity of rainfall, and a decrease in the proportion of winter precipitation falling as snow.
Spring
The first half of March was generally cold and resulted in some of the lowest temperatures of the year.
By the middle of the month, the situation became milder and wetter. March was exceptionally wet for many regions except for northern Scotland. It was the sixth-wettest March for the UK, third-wettest for England and Northern Ireland and fifth-wettest for Wales.
April saw temperature and rainfall statistics near-average, although Storm Noa was one of the most significant April storms since 2013, with hundreds of homes across south-west England and Wales left without power.
A maximum wind gust of 83 Kt (96mph) at Needles on the Isle of Wight was the highest wind gust on record for England during the month of April. This particular site is located at the top of a cliff exposed to westerly winds so is representative of a very exposed coastal location. Inland winds were lower, but still sufficient to cause some disruption.
May was warmer and drier overall, although heavy thunderstorms over 7-11 May caused surface-water flooding across parts of southern and eastern England. Drier weather from the middle of the month, however, resulted in a shift to wildfire reports across parts of Wales, the south-west and west Yorkshire by the end of the month.
Summer
It was the warmest June on record for the UK with an average temperature of 15.8C, beating the previous record of 14.9C that was set in the Junes of 1940 and 1976 by 0.9C. Previously, the top three warmest Junes were separated by just 0.1C.
The highest daily temperature reached in the month was 32.2C (on 10 and 25 June), which did not challenge the June temperature record of 35.6C, recorded on 28 June 1976. What was unusual about June 2023 was the persistence of the warmth rather than its severity. Temperatures exceeded 25C for at least a fortnight with peaks in excess of 30C.
A long-standing curious statistical quirk of UK climatology was that 13 June was the only June date that had never previously recorded temperatures in excess of 30C in meteorological records spanning over 100 years. This quirky fact was finally broken this year, reaching 30.8C on 13 June.
The chart below shows a comparison of the 2023 June heatwave with 1976, the previous joint record warmest June. This shows the UK-average daily maximum temperature through June and July for 1976 (dotted line and grey shading) and 2023 (blue line and orange shading).
The 1976 heatwave was certainly more severe than 2023, but occurred slightly later in the season, peaking in early July. In contrast, the persistent warmth in 2023 fell within the calendar month of June.
A significant contributing factor to the exceptional and persistent warmth was a major North Atlantic marine heatwave, which brought record-breaking temperatures in the North Atlantic and around the UK. A severe marine heatwave was declared in mid-June, which further amplified temperatures over the UK land.
An attribution study by the Met Office found that the likelihood of beating the UK land June temperature record had at least doubled compared to when it was first set in 1940. We estimated there was around a 3% chance of beating the record in a 1991-2020 climate and, by the 2050s, a record could be occurring around every other year on average under a high-emissions scenario.
Unsurprisingly, the June warmth was associated with a persistent high-pressure system resulting in plenty of clear skies and dry conditions. The month was, therefore, also the fourth sunniest June on record, and the sunniest June since 1957, but not as sunny as the exceptionally sunny month of May 2020.
Some more unsettled weather at the end of the month meant that while recording only around 68% of average rainfall, June was not dry enough to trouble any records.
A more unsettled situation then took over for the remainder of the summer, with conditions turning cooler, duller and windier.
It was the sixth-wettest July on record with 140.1mm and the wettest since 2009 (145.5mm). It was the wettest July on record for Northern Ireland and for parts of north-west England including Merseyside, Lancashire and Greater Manchester.
August continued the unsettled theme with a distinct lack of summery weather – however, it was not as wet as July.
A key driver of the wet high summer was a displacement in the jet stream to a more southerly track across the UK. The map below shows anomalies in wind speed at 250hPa, relative to a 1991-2020 average. (250hPa is a level of equal pressure and is equivalent to a height of around 10.5km.)
The purple regions show where the wind is stronger than average and orange they are weaker – highlighting a strengthening of the upper-level wind across southern England and a weakening in the more typical summer jet stream to the north of Scotland. This resulted in low-pressure weather systems from the Atlantic being directed on a more southerly track over the UK.
Despite being relatively wet during the high summer (July through August), the average temperature averaged across July (14.9C) and August (15.3C) was 15.1C. This was cooler than June (15.8C), but close to the 1991-2020 average for Jul-Aug (15.2C).
Another indicator of the influence of climate change on UK climate is that a wet summer such as that of 2023 is approximately 1C warmer than equivalently wet summers from the past.
Autumn (and December)
In early September, the jet stream shifted north and high pressure returned. Consequently, the UK experienced another heatwave bringing some of the hottest weather of the year, peaking at 33.5C at Faversham, Kent on 10 September.
A new high-temperature record was also set for the month for Northern Ireland with 28C at Castlederg, County Tyrone on the 8 September.
It was the longest run of days reaching 30C somewhere in the country during September on record at seven consecutive days (4-10 September). It is only the fourth time on record that the highest temperature of the year has occurred in September, with the other years being 2016, 1954, 1949 and 1919. High temperatures were not confined to the daytime and some locations also recorded “tropical nights” when the minimum temperatures do not drop below 20C.
The month concluded with Storm Agnes kicking off the 2023-24 storm season. But the early warmth contributed to it becoming the joint-warmest September on record for the UK (with 2006). An average temperature of 15.2C was warmer than July and only marginally behind August.
A rapid attribution conducted at the time showed that a September this warm would be exceptionally unlikely in a natural climate, but in our current climate there is approximately a 3% chance of reaching or exceeding it. A September this warm does still require the right combination of factors, but climate change is making such late-season warmth more likely.
The remainder of the autumn season and December continued the generally mild, wet and – at times – stormy theme, with the joint-sixth wettest October and joint-eighth wettest December on record. It was the sixth-warmest autumn for the UK and third-warmest for both England and Wales.
Reviewing 2023 demonstrates how the UK is subject to the combined influences of the variability in the weather, but also the influence of human-caused climate change. This is affecting both our climate statistics and also the likelihood of some types of extreme events.
The post Met Office: A review of the UK’s climate in 2023 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
For the first time in the UK, more new electric vehicles (EVs) have been sold over a 12-month period than petrol cars, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
The news comes amid a battle over the future of the UK’s “zero-emissions vehicle” (ZEV) mandate, which the car industry and some unions are pushing to water down.
The mandate sets a rising target for the share of new car sales that must be “zero-emissions vehicles” (ZEVs) each year – primarily “pure” or “battery” EVs that only run on electricity.
The car industry argues that demand for these cars is too low to meet the requirements of the ZEV mandate, despite the fact that the industry has “over-complied” to date.
Carbon Brief’s analysis of the latest data on new UK car sales, shown in the figure below, illustrates that demand for EVs has, in fact, grown consistently – and it has now overtaken demand for petrol cars for the first time.
In the 12 months to May 2026, UK consumers bought 516,490 new BEVs, against only 504,010 new petrol cars.
Note that the analysis is based on figures from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA). Figures published by the UK Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) are based on a slightly different categorisation for hybrid cars.
All hybrids run entirely on petrol or diesel fuel, while also carrying a small battery and an electric motor. ACEA counts these cars separately to petrol and diesel models.
In contrast, the SMMT counts what it calls “mild” hybrids as petrol cars, while listing “full” hybrids – such as Toyota’s Prius – in a separate category.
The ACEA data shows that hybrids are the most popular type of car in the UK, as illustrated in the figure below, but also shows that their sales are relatively stagnant.
Some 56,321 hybrids were sold in May 2026, the most recent month with data from ACEA. This is an increase of 1,181 year-on-year, or just 2%.
In contrast, EV sales grew 34% to reach 43,931, while petrol cars were down 14% to 35,068.
Plug-in hybrids, which can be run on electricity from the grid or from a petrol engine, are also seeing relatively rapid sales growth, up 24% year-on-year in May 2026 to 22,167.
(In the UK, numberplates for “pure” EVs that only run on electricity are marked out by a distinctive green stripe on the left-hand side. These stripes are not used for any type of hybrid.)
The new analysis for the UK follows a similar milestone for the EU, with more BEVs having been sold in the month of December 2025 than petrol cars.
The UK first saw more sales of BEVs than petrol cars in a single month in December 2022, but this pattern has only been repeated on a consistent basis over the past year.
Globally, EV sales grew by 20% in 2025 and accounted for one in every four new cars sold, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The agency said that global EV sales were set to grow by another 15% in 2026.
The post Analysis: UK sales of electric vehicles just overtook petrol cars for the first time appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: UK sales of electric vehicles just overtook petrol cars for the first time
This could be a big year for the circular economy.
In autumn, the European Commission is due to adopt the Circular Economy Act (CEA), aimed at supporting the EU in its stated aim to become a world leader in circularity by 2030.
There is a clear environmental imperative behind the legislation, but also a geopolitical one. Europe imports the vast majority of all its critical raw materials; for example, 100% of its heavy rare earth metals come from China and 71% of its platinum from South Africa.
The bloc is seeking to reduce its dependency on imports of key commodities, energy and materials, and as a result achieve greater self-sufficiency. Circular products are one route to achieving that.
Circular ambitions
Whether the EU’s aim is achievable, or not, brings into sharp relief the current state of the circular economy. According to the European Environment Agency, in 2024, secondary recovered materials made up 12% of total material use across Europe. This was only 1.5% higher than in 2010.
But, by some estimates, the global circular economy is already worth around $700 billion and could reach several trillion within the next decade. This rate of growth would take considerable support from national governments, starting with something akin to the CEA, which aims to double the EU’s circularity rate to 24% and create a single market for secondary raw materials. The hope is that this will stoke demand from businesses to adopt more circular practices.
Carsten Wachholz, business-policy engagement lead at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, described the forthcoming act as “a critical opportunity to turn circular solutions from a niche proposition into a mainstream market choice,” adding that by harmonising rules across the single market the EU can allow the circular economy to “scale across borders”.
From there the argument runs that rules created in Europe will be copied in other markets, shaping global supply chains and standards elsewhere. “The EU can work towards shared international ambition, reducing protectionism risks, and unlocking large-scale investment globally,” he added.
Making two ends meet
Raising awareness of what is meant by circularity, and being able to identify and treat circular products correctly, is one of the challenges the sector faces.
The global economy has been built on a simple linear structure where we source a material, create something out of it, sell it on and then throw it away. This process, sometimes called ‘take, make, use, dispose’ is the opposite of the principles of circularity.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation defines the circular economy as a system where “materials never become waste”. In such a system, products and materials are “kept in circulation through processes like maintenance, reuse, refurbishment, remanufacture, recycling and composting”.
Circularity is about the whole life cycle of a product, seeing how it can be used for longer, upgrading when possible, and then potentially using that product to create something else afterwards. The intention with circularity is to increase the use of non-virgin materials, reducing the need to extract more from the ground.
Signify: “We believe resilience is becoming more important to businesses right now”
Thomas Marinelli, head of sustainable innovation and design at Signify, a global lighting company, said: “I once explained it to a child with Lego. You put Lego blocks together and you can pull them apart again and make something new.”
Circular practices also lead to more products – phones, washing machines, lighting – being leased instead of created from scratch. These services cut the need for large upfront investments and reduce environmental impacts.
How business is responding
The next step is to convince businesses it is the right thing to do, from a financial, environmental and product perspective.
“Using products for longer and using less material and energy is a topic of interest in our markets,” added Marinelli, while at the same time acknowledging that part of the challenge is “awareness creation”.
“We need to prove that products made from non-virgin, or bio-circular materials are at least as good. And that a business’s environmental footprint is much lower when you use non-virgin materials,” he said.
Part of the awareness-raising piece is showing that older products can be repaired, refurbished and remanufactured, depending on their condition. Signify takes lighting systems that are up to 10 years old, and makes them new again, saving on material waste and cutting emissions, often at a lower cost than buying a new product.
A growing number of companies are already sold on the benefits of going circular. A recent survey from the World Economic Forum found that out of 491 manufacturing executives, 79% said circularity is crucial to their business, and 95% said it will be important within three years.
Carrefour, the French retail giant, has adopted circular practices in some of its stores as a way of driving down energy costs and cutting carbon emissions. In one of its Belgian stores, the company installed 3D-printed light fixtures made from recycled water bottles. Lighting systems were made from recycled materials that can be fully dismantled and used to make new ones after they reach the end of their natural life.
A separate example comes from Denmark where the area of Tuborg Havn in Copenhagen chose to upgrade its historic street lamps with efficient LEDs instead of replacing them. More than 80 light fixtures were cleaned, upgraded and reinstalled as part of the new initiative, and the new lights will be 3.5 times more efficient than the old ones. The initiative has allowed the harbour to retain its historic character while reducing energy consumption and modernising the area.
Overcoming barriers
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation recently coordinated an open letter to the European Commission – signed by 12 global brands including The LEGO Group, H&M and Philips – calling for lawmakers to support new reforms that address common barriers facing circular products.
These include simplifying EU-wide rules, creating tax incentives and stronger financial support for the burgeoning sector. Current VAT rules, for example, can mean secondhand goods are repeatedly taxed across their lifetime, something the charity is seeking to change.
“Capital is not lacking,” said Wachholz, “but the risk profile of circular economy projects keeps too many ventures stuck at pilot scale rather than reaching industrial deployment.”
The letter calls for the creation of a secondary materials platform to improve price transparency, digital product passports to track material flows, and the creation of new industrial hubs to provide the infrastructure and technology the sector needs in order to scale up.
Those measures, coupled with fossil energy price spikes, will help circular products compete on cost with the extractive economy, experts say. “Using recycled materials or non-virgin alternatives can become competitive in the long run,” said Marinelli, pointing to the volatility in the price of raw materials. “If you look at plastics, when oil is a problem, the price of plastics goes up. But recycled plastic stays at the same level.”
“And it’s not only about materials but production as well. When volumes of recycled materials go up, then the price remains stable or goes down,” he added.
Opportune moment
The current geopolitical environment could serve to support growth in the circular economy. Supply chain constraints caused by the war in Iran have caused commodity prices to skyrocket. This has led many companies – and countries – to seek ways to protect themselves against future shocks.
In that context, new circular policies and products could receive a favourable hearing from businesses looking to build resilience, cut costs and protect nature. A future where circularity is fully embedded across society will need time and support to grow, but may well be on its way.
Adam Wentworth is a freelance journalist based in Brighton, UK
The post Can the circular economy win over big business? appeared first on Climate Home News.
A new report from Greenpeace Australia Pacific advocates for a Pasifika-led transition toward a future free from coal, oil, and gas. It emphasises that while Pacific island nations contribute minimally to global emissions, they face existential threats from rising sea levels and coral reef destruction.
Leadership from the frontlines
Three decades ago, the world united to confront the greatest challenge of our age: climate change and transitioning away from fossil fuels.
The Pacific has been there at every step, playing a central role in shaping the global climate regime. We have defended science, been a voice for ambition and justice, and delivered successive breakthroughs — from securing the 1.5°C goal in the Paris Agreement to taking the world’s biggest problem to the world’s highest court. Today, we are spearheading efforts — both inside and outside the formal process of UN climate negotiations — towards a just and equitable transition away from fossil fuels.
Timeline
| 1980s | Pacific island countries first warn of the threats to physical and cultural survival from climate change. |
| 1990 | Together with island nations of the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean, the Pacific forms the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). |
| 1991 | Vanuatu makes the first proposal for what we now call loss and damage finance. |
| 1994 | Nauru puts forward the first draft of what became the Kyoto Protocol. |
| 2009 | Pacific island countries press for a binding agreement that would limit warming to 1.5°C, with Tuvalu and AOSIS offering text for a new legal protocol. |
| 2015 | The Pacific plays a pivotal role in securing the Paris Agreement — including the all-important goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C, and a stand-alone article on addressing loss and damage from climate change. |
| 2022 | Vanuatu is the first country in the world to support a Fossil Fuel Treaty, followed shortly by Tuvalu. |
| 2023 | Pacific island countries help secure the first ever reference to fossil fuels in a UN climate decision, with COP28 calling on countries to “transition away from fossil fuels”. The Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage becomes operational. |
| 2024 | Following a request by Pacific and Caribbean island countries, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea clarified states’ obligations to protect the world’s oceans from the impacts of climate change. |
| 2025 | Following a campaign led by Pacific island students, a historic ruling from the International Court of Justice affirms that countries are legally obliged to limit warming to 1.5°C, and that continuing down the path of fossil fuels may be an internationally wrongful act. |
| 2026 | Pacific Ministers and civil society gather in Vanuatu to set the ongoing course of Pacific leadership towards a fossil fuel free future. The Tassiriki Call reaffirms the vision of a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific and agrees to establish an Inter-Governmental Taskforce. |
1.5°C and the transition away from fossil fuels
By the 2000s, it was clear that warming beyond 1.5°C posed a profound threat to communities in the Pacific and worldwide.
Rising seas, destructive storms, extreme heat, shifting rainfall patterns, ocean acidification… no level of warming is ‘safe’. Every fraction of a degree increases the risks to our food and water supply, our physical and mental wellbeing, our cultures, and our sovereignty.
Only when you have seen sacred land swallowed by the rising ocean and the graves of your ancestors washed out to sea, cared for elders suffering through extreme heat, watched the familiar rhythm of the seasons change before your eyes, or lied awake at night worried whether your children will still have a nation to call home, do you truly understand what is at stake. For some people and communities, 1.5°C is a point of no return.
In Paris, we held the line, and refused to negotiate away our futures. The result — a universal agreement to strive to limit warming to 1.5°C — became a lifeline for Pacific communities, and a gift to the entire world.
In the decade since Paris, the case for limiting warming to 1.5°C has only grown stronger. Beyond 1.5°C, the risks grow from highly destructive to truly existential. How? The impacts of climate change do not merely increase in a linear fashion as the global temperature climbs. At a certain point we start to trigger far more severe and abrupt changes — such as the destabilisation of polar ice sheets, committing the world to much faster sea level rise, or the mass death of critical ecosystems we depend on for our sustenance.
Cross these ‘tipping points’ and we will set in motion changes at a pace to which it may be impossible to adapt, and which will continue to play out for millenia. We will have left behind the relatively stable climate of the last 11,000 years, in which today’s modern civilisations evolved, and which is the only Earth they have known. We will have tipped our Earth into a far more chaotic state, and our survival as a species will be by no means assured.
“The salt spray of the Pacific Ocean is in my blood; I grew up watching the tides shape the shores of the islands of Tuvalu. But now, those tides are rising relentlessly, eroding lands, swallowing homes, decimating livelihoods and washing away the futures of communities.
— Dr Maina Talia, Minister for Home Affairs, Climate Change and Environment, Tuvalu
We now know that even at today’s level of global warming, of just below 1.5°C, we may have crossed tipping points for the tropical coral reefs upon which millions of people in the Pacific and worldwide depend for their food and livelihoods, and for some of the world’s major ice sheets. At warming of beyond 1.5°C, crossing these and many other tipping points becomes not merely possible but a greater and greater certainty.
Let us make this urgent reality even clearer by speaking more about the ocean — the big blue beating heart of our planet. Like the blood in our veins, ocean currents distribute nutrients, oxygen and heat around the planet. Without this planetary pulse, life simply would not exist. As the world warms, these ocean currents are slowing. The planet’s pulse is becoming fainter. Ignore these planetary health warnings, and push our ocean currents beyond a tipping point, and that pulse may stop — unable to be resuscitated — with consequences for all life connected to the ocean, including our own. The ocean that raised us is now carrying a stark warning.
We are already deep in the danger zone, and it is going to take all of us pulling in the same canoe to get back to safer shores.
Course correction
Our world is changing rapidly. Around the globe, solar panels now adorn millions of roofs and windfarms dot the landscape. Growth in renewable energy has outstripped all projections.
But here’s the rub: despite remarkable progress with renewable energy, we have seen no slowdown in the burning of coal, oil and gas. Globally, our hunger for energy has been growing fast, and with it our consumption of fossil fuels, even as renewable energy has grown alongside. We are on track to be producing double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C.
The lesson? We need, as a global community, to be far more proactive about transitioning away from fossil fuels. Merely betting on growing renewable energy is not going to save us. It is like trying to mop up a flooded floor while leaving the tap running — unless we turn down fossil fuel production, the flood only rises. In the decade since Paris, and in the three years since the world agreed explicitly to transition away from fossil fuels, consumption has reached dangerous new highs, bringing us to the brink of all-out climate catastrophe.
We need roadmaps that help us remove the barriers to action, overcome technical obstacles, and help us finally break away from fossil fuels.
But we must also ask ourselves what we truly value. Today, so much growth in energy demand is coming not from meeting our basic needs, but from material excesses and overconsumption of energy among wealthy nations and corporations, or powering artificial intelligence and technologies that only separate us further from each other and the land and oceans that sustain us. Is this really the world we want?
The Pacific has much to remind the world about what truly matters — family, connection, reciprocity, and living in harmony with our shared home.
The course ahead
The Paris Agreement, its underlying Convention, and the ongoing process of negotiations on its implementation, provide legitimacy, universality and accountability. They offer the only forums where every country has a seat at the table. They provide the legally binding framework for our common but differentiated responsibilities, and the obligation of advanced economies, whose wealth was built off the back of fossil fuels, to support the majority world in transitioning to renewable energy, adapting to the impacts of climate change, and addressing loss and damage from climate change.
But we now know that this is not enough. The greatest strength of this all-in process is also its weakness. The process of consensus decision-making provides legitimacy and durability, but also puts a brake on ambition. At best, it offers the lowest common denominator. At worst, it allows the process to be held hostage by one or more regressive forces.
Alongside the formal process of UN climate negotiations, we must continue to grow and strengthen the coalition of committed nations already getting on with the work of building a vibrant future beyond fossil fuels. We must carry forward the momentum generated by the landmark conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels in Santa Marta, as we voyage towards the second conference in Tuvalu next year. We will build a fossil fuel free Pacific, shaped by Pacific values. We will continue to be a voice of science, ambition and conscience, and we will seek justice and accountability through the full implementation of the historic ruling from the International Court of Justice.
Recommendations
1.5°C as our guiding star
The transition away from fossil fuels must be anchored to the fundamental scientific, moral and legal imperative of limiting warming to 1.5°C. This means timelines, targets and trajectories that minimise the duration and extent of any overshoot, and return the long-term average temperature rise to 1.5°C as soon as possible.
Strengthening global cooperation
The COP31 Presidency of Negotiations, to be held by Australia, must be a meaningful partnership with the Pacific. This means elevating the voices of our leaders, backing Pacific-led solutions, and maximising the opportunity of the Pacific pre-COP to ensure the 1.5°C imperative and the transition away from fossil fuels are central to the agenda at COP31 in Antalya.
COP31 must operationalise and accelerate the commitment to transition away from fossil fuels, building on the momentum from COP30 and the Santa Marta conference.
Alongside and complementary to the UN climate negotiations, willing countries should work to accelerate implementation through parallel initiatives such as the Brazilian COP30 Presidency-led roadmap, the follow-up to the Santa Marta conference, bilateral and regional collaborations, and implementation of the advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice.
National roadmaps that promote justice
All governments should develop national roadmaps for a just transition away from fossil fuels, aligned with their fair share of the global action needed to limit warming to 1.5°C, and identify needs for international support.
National roadmaps should include an immediate commitment to no new fossil fuel expansion, rule out false solutions, set timelines to phase out production and consumption — with developed countries moving fastest — and maximising the opportunities for increasing energy sovereignty, access and security.
From extraction to regeneration
The transition away from fossil fuels must also aim to reduce future energy use and demand for transition minerals. This means focussing on energy efficiency, a return to regenerative approaches, and reorienting our energy, transport, food systems and built environments away from material excesses and over-consumption, aligning instead with the values, wellbeing and long-term interests of our communities.
The transition must not lead to new industries that harm our environment and communities, and that repeat and compound the injustices of past extractive models. In particular, governments should put a permanent ban on deep sea mining.
Funding
Developed countries must provide adequate and accessible finance for transitioning away from fossil fuels, adapting to the impacts of climate change, and addressing loss and damage. This should include an increase in grants and direct budget support, be accompanied by debt relief, and be enabled through taxing polluters and ending fossil fuel subsidies.
Authored by the Pacific team at Greenpeace Australia Pacific. Words by Simon Bradshaw, Shiva Gounden, Moemoana Schwenke. Edited by Kate O’Callaghan.
Photos curated by Olivia Louella.
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