Hundreds of scientists gathered in Oxford last week to discuss the many different ways of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and the role it can play in tackling climate change.
The third international conference on negative CO2 emissions focused on the latest science, policy gaps and methods of carbon dioxide removal (CDR). (Carbon Brief also reported from the first conference in Gothenburg in 2018.)
Discussions ranged from the potential of different technologies to the need to avoid CDR methods drawing attention away from emissions reductions.
Around 360 scientists, researchers, industry representatives and other stakeholders attended the four-day event at the University of Oxford, along with more than 150 people online.
Talks centred on the “natural” and “novel” ways to take CO2 from the atmosphere and store it on land, underground or in the ocean.
Carbon Brief attended the conference to report on the dozens of plenaries and parallel sessions that focused on a wide range of issues around CO2 removal.
- The state of CO2 removal
- What CO2 removal techniques were discussed?
- How is CDR included in government policies?
- How does CDR fit into future emissions pathways?
- What are the potential problems with CO2 removal?
- What are the next steps for CO2 removal?
The state of CO2 removal
Dr Steve Smith – the executive director of Oxford Net Zero and CO2RE – kicked off the conference in the opening plenary.
Smith is the lead author on the second “State of CDR” report, which outlines the current state of knowledge around CDR, and used his talk to outline some of its findings. (Read Carbon Brief’s nine key takeaways from the report here.)
Smith explained that “conventional” CDR – mainly through land use, land-use change and forestry activities – make up the “lion’s share” of current CDR efforts, accounting for almost all of the current 2bn tonnes of CO2 removed from the atmosphere each year. (Humans emit around 40bn tonnes each year.)
“Novel” CDR methods currently remove a much-smaller 1.3m tonnes of CO2 each year – less than 0.1% of total carbon dioxide removals – he noted.
Of the novel approaches, he explained that biochar is the main player. This is followed by bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), which is confined to “essentially two plants in the US”.
All other CDR efforts, such as direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS) are a “tiny, tiny sliver”. This breakdown is outlined in the graphic from the report below.
Smith noted that almost all current model simulations that limit future warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels use CDR methods such as BECCS.
However, he said that many models – such as those that feed into reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – begin their projections from the year 2020. Many models assume that emissions already peaked in 2020, but emissions today are continuing to rise. Smith warned:
“We are already overshooting.”
Speaking to Carbon Brief at the conference, Smith said that there is a “tension” between fast and responsible action to scale up carbon dioxide removals. He added:
“People are seeing the urgency of the climate problem and saying we need to scale lots of things now and fast.
“So probably the basic biogeochemical principles are sound, but [an important step is] actually measuring how much carbon is taken up, how quickly and what are the broader impacts on the environment and on people.”
In a separate session, experts discussed “measurement, reporting and verification” – ways to assess methods of CDR technologies to ensure they are working effectively. This is similar to discussions around monitoring the voluntary carbon market. (See Carbon Brief’s special series on carbon offsetting for more.)
Dr Paul Zakkour from Carbon Counts, a climate and energy consulting company, opened the second day of the conference by discussing the importance and challenges of monitoring, reporting and verifying claims about CO2 removals.
Zakkour said the most important principles for any carbon removal carbon credits are ensuring that they are real, measurable, additional, not double counted, not leaking and permanent.
He said there are more than 50 methodologies crediting “natural” methods of CDR such as forest management and soil organic carbon.
There are around 20 methodologies for novel CDR methods. Almost all of these methodologies were developed in just the past three years, he said.
However, he added that it is unclear how many projects are actually using these methodologies to enter voluntary carbon markets.
Zakkour noted that there is a “compromise” between ramping up carbon removals and ensuring they are done effectively, safely and in line with best scientific practices.
What CO2 removal techniques were discussed?
Over the four-day conference, there were dozens of breakout sessions discussing different CO2 removal techniques, ranging from bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) to enhanced rock weathering. Carbon Brief focuses on a few of the methods here:
Forestry
Among the land-based CDR methods, forestry was a major point of discussion.
Dr Yuan Yao from Yale University discussed her ongoing research into sequestering carbon through afforestation and reforestation on “marginal land” in Brazil. Her research team examined the CO2 impacts of “innovative forest mosaics”.
Xueyuan Gao from the University of Maryland, whose research is currently under peer review, developed a novel framework to try and detect tropical tree cover gains, using forest management and cover change datasets. The study particularly focused on former agricultural lands.
At a separate session focused on Earth system modelling, Prof Julia Pongratz – a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology – told the conference that modelling studies on large-scale afforestation and reforestation often involve “unrealistic” or “unambitious” spatiotemporal patterns.
Pongratz presented a pattern of afforestation and reforestation that she and her team developed. The pattern is aligned with “ambitious” country pledges and would result in 600m hectares of afforested/reforested land by 2060, while staying in line with “biodiversity and techno/socio/economic considerations”, she said.
This level of afforestation and reforestation would capture enough CO2 to offset global warming by 0.2C by the end of the century, Pongratz told the conference.
And at another session, Dr Clemens Schwingshackl, a researcher at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, presented results from the state of CDR report on afforestation and reforestation. He explained that CDR from these two sources currently capture around 2,000m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) per year – equivalent to around 5-6% of current fossil fuel emissions.
He added that there are “hotspots” of tree planting. The main one is in China, where there are lots of forest plantations, he explained. And the other is in Europe, where a long history of deforestation is now being reversed in many areas.
Dr Kate Dooley, a lecturer in human geography at the University of Melbourne, presented the results of the 2022 land gap report, which assesses how much land is required to meet current NDCs and net-zero pledges.
Dooley, who is lead author on the report, explained that 194 countries were assessed and that, collectively, their afforestation, reforestation and BECCS pledges require one billion hectares of land. This is an ”unprecedented” amount of land-use change, which could increase risks to ecosystems, food security and the durability of carbon stocks, she warned.
She added that 70% of the total land required by these climate pledges comes from just a few, high-emitting countries.
Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage
Another session focused on bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), a technology where plants are burned for energy and the resulting CO2 emissions are captured from air and stored under land or sea.
Dr Mai Bui from Imperial College London outlined research around minimising the cost of BECCS while ensuring the technology is CO2-efficient.
Her research shows that using biomass with a “low carbon footprint” and reducing supply chain emissions can help to maximise the overall CO2 removals of BECCS. She said that this is important in ensuring that the technology is implemented correctly, noting:
“You can do BECCs badly and end up emitting more CO2 than you can capture.”
Prof Iain Donnison from Aberystwyth University discussed the possibilities and realities of upscaling “perennial biomass crops” in the UK for the purpose of removing GHG emissions.
He said that a “significant challenge” with BECCS is producing enough wood and other types of biomass to burn for the technology.
He and other researchers are looking at the technical barriers to scaling up biomass crops, trialling different plant options such as miscanthus. Another issue around increasing growth of biomass crops is incentivising farmers to grow them, he said, adding:
“How do we get these to be seen as a more usual option for farmers?”
Dr Sabine Egerer from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich discussed research looking at the different levels of efficiency of various land-based CO2 removal methods, namely afforestation and planting biomass crops for use in CDR technologies.
This research, which is currently undergoing peer review, finds that biomass plantations are more efficient at removing carbon from the atmosphere over time. But this varies in different parts of the world, such as China where afforestation has more benefits.
Kristine Karstens from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research discussed ongoing research into the benefits of different ways to use biomass in CDR – residue recycling and BECCS.
Her findings show that using agricultural residues for BECCS has more benefits for carbon removal overall compared to residue recycling, per tonne of biomass.
Separately, Ruben Prutz – a PhD student at the Mercator Research Institute – talked about the implications of land-based CDR for biodiversity.
He looked at more than 130,000 species globally, and mapped how afforestation and BECCS would change biodiversity refugia – habitats that are less prone to extreme changes in environmental conditions than surrounding areas, and which often act as safe havens for species.
He showed that the impacts of land-based CDR are unequally distributed, mainly falling on countries in the global south.
There were also two conference sessions on direct air carbon capture, in which scientists discussed technological developments and the different engineering challenges that face the sector.
Soils and biochar
The ability of soils to sequester carbon from the atmosphere was a key discussion point at the conference. There was also a session on biochar – charcoal that is added to soils rather than burned as a fuel.
Prof Pete Smith from the University of Aberdeen discussed an ongoing systematic review looking at the side effects of different types of CDR on biodiversity, air, water quality and other factors (see: What are the next steps for CO2 removal?).
Smith said the research is not expected to yield “big shifts in the cost and potentials” of these methods, but it aims to provide deeper analysis on the co-benefits and trade-offs of each method.
He added that previous research has found there is a potential to remove 5bn tonnes of CO2-equivalent (GtCO2e) each year from soils.
Dr Jeewani Peduru Hewa from Bangor University discussed ongoing research on greenhouse gas removals through peatland restoration, including applying biochar to peatlands.
A number of universities and NGOs are working together to restore different peatland sites across the UK to assess whether “innovative” land management can secure long-term greenhouse gas removal systems, she said, noting:
“When peatlands are healthy they are good for carbon sequestration. But if we drain the peatlands for agriculture or something else, it is a problem.”
Rewetting peatlands helps them to absorb carbon dioxide, but this can also cause methane emissions to rise. Her experimental research findings show that applying biochar to peatlands can lower both CO2 and methane emissions.
These findings were concluded over the course of one year and further research is needed to assess impacts over a longer time period, she said.
Marine CO2 removal
Removing carbon through the ocean was another significant discussion point at the conference.
Speaking in a plenary session on measuring, reporting and verification, Prof David Ho from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa said that marine carbon removal still has many challenges to overcome before it is feasible on a wide scale.
Assessing this type of carbon removal is “challenging” due to the ocean’s natural variability, carbonate chemistry, ocean mixing and circulation, Ho said. It is difficult to pinpoint one specific reason for a change or an increase in CO2 sequestration.
Ho said that “abiotic” methods of marine CO2 removal are “easier” to monitor, report on and verify. These include ocean alkalinity enhancement. Last month, the carbon removals registry Isometric said it released a “world first” protocol for ocean alkalinity carbon removal.
Asked by an audience member about whether marine CO2 removal should be excluded from carbon markets due to the level of uncertainties, Ho said the ocean has the “potential” to make an impact, but advised caution. He added:
“I think if we can do a good job of quantifying the uncertainties…this is how ramp-ups can work. If buyers and sellers can trust each other, I think the ocean can certainly play a role.”
In a separate session on marine CO2 removal, Dr Miranda Boettcher – a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs – presented the results of a workshop that she ran in Germany, in which she asked participants to rank the main risks of marine CDR.
She highlighted public opinion, political dynamics, the “performance” of science and pressure from industry as key conditions that will drive policy developments in marine CDR.
Separately, Dr Christine Merk – deputy director of the Global Commons and Climate Policy research centre at the Kiel Institute – presented the results of a survey held in six different countries on public perceptions of marine CDR.
She found that more than 80% of people in Germany and Canada had never heard of marine CDR, compared to 28% and 41% in Taiwan and China, respectively. She added that people are least likely to have heard of ocean acidity enhancement and most likely to have heard of marine-based BECCS.
How is CDR included in government policies?
The conference heard from a number of researchers about the role of government in regulating CO2 removal, including a plenary panel session dedicated to the topic of CDR in national policymaking.
Prof Gideon Henderson, a professor of Earth sciences and chief scientific adviser to the UK’s Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), spoke about how CDR is used in carbon markets.
Henderson said that a government’s role is to fix market failures through regulation and deregulation, and to be stewards of the environment. However, he noted that governments cannot easily regulate the voluntary carbon market and said it should “try to get more engaged” – for example, by implementing monitoring, reporting and verification measures.
He added that the voluntary carbon market is “not trusted” by many people, but argued that it is important to keep the market going, to enable experts to try things out and eventually build a more trusted system.
Speaking on national policies, he said that countries are “not quite there yet” and argued that CDR measures should be included in countries’ nationally determined pledges under the Paris Agreement.
Dr Fabiola Zerbini, director at the department of forests at Brazil’s Ministry of the Environment, told the conference that the country has pledged to restore 12m hectares of deforested land and reach “zero deforestation” by 2030.
The role of the government as a “catalyst” for this type of action is “key”, she said. She argued that until forests and the environmental services that they provide are considered to have “real value”, the system will need to be regulated by governments.
Prof Jennifer Wilcox, former principal deputy assistant secretary at the US Department of Energy, told the conference about the CDR projects in place in the US. She highlighted the regional direct air capture (DAC) hubs program, which is investing $3.5bn into direct air capture.
She also talked about how the fossil fuel companies responsible for extraction could play an important role in CDR:
“It could be interesting for the energy companies responsible for resource extraction to realise they could leverage their structures to put carbon back into the ground. [We] need to steer energy companies so that when they put infrastructure in, it can be used for CDR.”
When asked about the upcoming US election, she said that the administration has put frameworks in place that will make their work sustainable and so she did not think that a Republican victory would cause all current projects to be “erased”. However, she did express concern about whether measures would be kept in place to make sure that the projects “benefit people”.
Dr Fabien Ramos, carbon removals lead at the European Commission, talked about policies that the EU is putting in place to monitor and verify CDR in its emission trading system, and the regulations being put in place to assess the quality of carbon offsets.
In a separate session on global policy, Harry Smith, a researcher from the University of East Anglia, presented his work on the inclusion of “residual” or “hard-to-abate” emissions in national policies. (Read Carbon Brief’s coverage of this study.)
Smith analysed the national climate strategies of 71 counties, and found that only 26 of them quantify residual emissions at the time of reaching net-zero emissions.
He noted that countries define their own residual emissions and found that the percentage of a country’s peak emissions that it considers “residual” can range from 5% to 50%.
He also explained that despite making up the majority of residual emissions, agricultural emissions are “hardly mentioned as residual”. Industry sources are mentioned the most, he found.
In a separate session, Klaas Korte from the Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research discussed ongoing research into policies to incentivise the efficient use of CO2 removal in the agriculture sector.
“Carbon farming” – farm practices focused on climate mitigation – may be one way to bridge the gap between the EU’s “ambitious targets” to cut agricultural emissions and the reality of these cuts so far, he said.
His research showed a number of ways to make carbon farming more attractive than conventional methods: subsidising costs of CDR measures, implementing CDR requirements on state-owned lands and excluding conventional practices on state-owned land.
The best solution, he said, is a mix of payment for public goods that avoid adverse environmental effects and bridging knowledge gaps among farmers and other landowners.
Dr Lauri Kujanpää from the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland discussed the carbon removal possibilities in Finland.
Kujanpää said that his research points to geological storage as a “key solution” for CO2 removal in Finland, but noted that the country currently has no national policy measures for this type of CO2 storage.
How does CDR fit into future emissions pathways?
Dr William Lamb from the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change discussed recent research on the CDR “gap”, which was covered by Carbon Brief.
The study, published in Nature Climate Change, found that plans to “draw down” CO2 from the atmosphere “fall short” of the quantities needed to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
Assessing a range of scenarios for limiting warming to 1.5C, the authors found a “CDR gap” in 2050 of 0.4bn-5.5bn tonnes of CDR per year.
To fill this gap, Lamb said there is a need to identify and quantify country plans around CDR as nations are currently not required to specify these removals in the national plans submitted at COP climate summits.
He highlighted that there are differences in the land-use sector carbon emissions in national inventories and scientific models. (This was covered in more detail in a Carbon Brief guest post last year.)
Most countries only include plans about conventional, land-based CDR methods in their national plans up to 2030, Lamb explained. Some long-term emissions reduction plans include novel techniques such as BECCS.
Dr Matthew Gidden from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis discussed similar issues about aligning emissions scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) with national land emissions inventories.
Gidden said there are a number of differences between the models and inventories, including how countries define their “managed land” and carbon fluxes.
His research, published in Nature last year, aligned the IPCC mitigation pathways with national greenhouse gas inventories to allow a direct comparison. The findings suggested that key emission-cutting goals are “harder to achieve” than currently outlined and that countries would have to reach net-zero emissions sooner than 2050.
Dr Kati Koponen from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland presented findings from a project assessing the pathways for CDR in the EU.
These findings highlighted the importance of focusing on both natural and novel CDR methods, but also mentioned the need to keep dependence on CDR “to a minimum”.
Koponen said the findings also show that existing EU CDR policies “are not sufficient for deep emission reductions”.
Dr Jennifer Pett-Ridge from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory outlined the findings of a recent report on the options for CDR in the US.
The report – put together by almost 70 scientists and 13 institutions – looks at regional possibilities for CDR and storage. Pett-Ridge said the US can reduce 1bn tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere each year by 2050 using CDR methods, at an annual cost of $129bn.
She said it is sensible to initially focus on forestry and soils. Biomass conversion also has big potentials, she added. The researchers also analysed issues in inequity and justice as part of their analysis.
Meanwhile, Prof Kirsten Zickfeld – a professor of climate science at Simon Fraser University – discussed the global temperature response to CDR. She simulated 100GtCO2 of CDR from the atmosphere and calculated how atmospheric CO2 levels changed as the Earth system re-equilibrates.
She then modelled how the temperature of the planet would change in response. Comparing 100GtCO2 of CDR with a simple 100GtCO2 reduction in global emissions, she found that they probably do not have equivalent effects on global temperatures.
However, she says that due to the uncertainty in the models, it is unclear whether carbon removal drives a greater or smaller change in global temperatures than the same amount of reduced CO2 emissions. (Zickfeld explains more about this “asymmetrical” response in a Carbon Brief guest post from 2021.)
In a separate session, Dr Morgan Edwards, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, talked about the risks of relying on uncertain CDR technologies in climate policy.
Edwards noted how difficult it is to predict the uptake of CDR over the coming century and explained the dangers of scenarios in which politicians rely on high CDR deployment, only for its rollout to be much lower than expected. She concluded that the most robust strategy is “planning for the worst and hoping for the best”.
Finally, Tabea Dorndorf, a doctoral researcher at Potsdam Institute for climate impact research, discussed the relative advantages and disadvantages of biochar, BECCS, DACCS and enhanced rock weathering. She explained that in a “middle of the road” scenario, it is likely that BECCS will be the biggest player, due to its higher carbon and biomass efficiency.
What are the potential problems with CO2 removal?
One of the main concerns around CDR is that promoting negative emissions technologies might draw attention away from the need to reduce emissions – a phenomenon known as “mitigation deterrence”.
The final day of the conference addressed this concern in a plenary session called, “How do we ensure CDR supports emission reductions instead of slowing them?”, chaired by Dr Holly Buck – an assistant professor from the University at Buffalo.
To open the session, Buck invited the conference attendees to fill in a poll, asking how concerned they are that CDR could slow down emissions reductions, and how concerned they are that mitigation deterrence could slow down CDR development.
The results, shown below, show that conference attendees were generally more concerned about the former than the latter.
The panel agreed unanimously that CDR is not a substitute for cutting emissions and that it should only be used for hard-to-abate or “residual” emissions.
Dr Zeke Hausfather, climate research lead at the financial technology company Stripe, warned that if society does not cut emissions, even a “wildly successful” CDR effort will still only reduce global warming from 2.7C to 2.6C by 2100, so mitigation is still crucial. (Haufather is also a climate science contributor for Carbon Brief.)
He added that mitigation deterrence in private companies is one of the main problems with CDR, explaining that it is almost always cheaper for companies to buy a carbon offset than to take action to reduce their own emissions, saying that the low price of CDR offsets do not reflect their true value. (See Carbon Brief’s special series for more on carbon offsets.)
This means that companies are more likely to buy CDR offsets than decarbonise their own industries, Hausfather said, warning that this “lets companies off the hook” on reducing their own emissions.
He told the conference that to correct for this, governments need to “play a much more active role” in regulation.
Hausfather also argued that “in a world in which CDR didn’t exist, global emissions would not be much different,” saying that in his view, the reason people are emitting today is not because they are banking on CDR, but because mitigation is too expensive.
He said there has been plenty of “much-needed” criticism of carbon offsets, highlighting an investigation into Verra carbon offsets, which found that more than 90% are “worthless”.
However, he noted that part of the response to criticism has been a “large-scale retreat by companies” of all types of offsets – including those which are “good”. He said that the negative emissions community needs to be clear about what companies should do, as well as what they shouldn’t.
Dr Nils Markusson – a senior lecturer at Lancaster University’s environment centre – shared his worry that CDR gives governments and companies a reason to delay or avoid decarbonising their economies.
He called it “suspicious” that governments and companies seem “very optimistic about CDR while very pessimistic about mitigation”. He warned that “CDR optimism sits very comfortably alongside a lack of ambition for phasing out fossil fuels” and called it “a way of avoiding politics”.
Dr Sara Nawaz, a researcher at the University of Oxford, shared concerns that companies are responsible for defining their own residual emissions and could define them in the way that best suits them.
Nawaz also noted the danger that CDR could lead to “competition with other resources that are needed for mitigation, for example land, water and energy”. She also told the conference that CDR can “bake in” an “equivalence” between CO2 emissions and removals that may not exist.
Hausfather said that the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) – a “corporate climate action organisation” have “got the framework right” by suggesting separate emissions and removals targets. (The SBTi recently got into hot water over its stance on carbon credits.)
Hausfather also highlighted the problem of greenwashing, telling that audience that he worried that companies would spend some money implementing some CDR, but then spend vast amounts more money publicising it.
Hausfather also noted the tendency for models to be over reliant on CDR. He explained that in many model simulations, global temperatures overshoot key thresholds early in the century and then CDR is used to bring temperature back down later in the century. Models are “far too cavalier about overshoot”, he said.
What are the next steps for CO2 removal?
In the penultimate plenary session of the conference, Prof Sabine Fuss from the Mercator Institute presented the initial stages of a “systematic review ecosystem on CDR”.
She explained that there has been “exponential growth” in literature on CDR, with some 23,000 papers included in the latest IPCC assessment cycle alone.
Hundreds of experts – including many scientists in the conference room – are working to synthesise this literature, Fuss said. She explained that the team has already grouped the studies into “clusters” of different CDR methods and developed a shared protocol so that methods and definitions are consistent across the groups.
For each cluster, an expert-led review team will work to produce an “in-depth paper”, Fuss said. A few group leads presented the early stages of their work.
Mijndert Van der Spek – an associate professor at Heriot Watt University and lead of the DAC group, explained that they “only” have 800 papers to review. Meanwhile, Prof Claudia Kammann, a researcher at Hochschule Geisenheim University, said her team on biochar had 38,000 papers to work with.
There are around 2,000 papers on BECCS to review and more than 2,000 for a cross-cutting topic on “monitoring, reporting and verification”, the respective leads of these teams said.
Dr Finn Muller-Hansen is a researcher at the Mercator research institute and head of a cross-cutting group on public perceptions to CDR. He explained that most of the 165 papers in this area of research are focused on western countries. Most studies showed low awareness of CDR and mixed or positive attitudes towards different methods, he found.
He also outlined the main factors that affect peoples’ opinions of CDR, including the perceived “naturalness” of the method, trust in institutions and perceived risks and benefits of each method.
In the final session of the conference, former Conservative MP and chair of the COP26 climate summit Alok Sharma addressed the attendees. He said that “governments are not acting quickly enough” to tackle CO2 emissions, adding:
“I think that we need to be doing everything very quickly. I don’t think there is some sort of divide between trying to take CO2 out of the atmosphere and doing more in terms of renewables…The pace isn’t fast enough.”
Film director and producer Leila Conners also spoke to conference attendees about her upcoming documentary Legion 44, which focuses on CDR technologies.
This is part of her film trilogy that also included the 11th Hour, a documentary featuring actor Leonardo DiCaprio.
Speaking to Carbon Brief about the range of discussions at the four-day conference, Dr Steve Smith said the discourse has changed since the first negative CO2 emissions conference in 2018. He told Carbon Brief:
“There’s a wider range of methods being looked at and a broader range of disciplines being brought to bear to look at this issue…Policymakers in particular are starting to move on this issue.”
Smith noted that in future, countries “may well need a lot of carbon removal as well as cutting emissions”. He added:
“For me, it’s not really emphasising just the trees or just the technologies. But we have a range of options and we should be exploring all of them at the moment.”
The next negative CO2 emissions conference will be held in Vienna, Austria in 2026.
The post Negative emissions: Scientists debate role of CO2 removal in tackling climate change appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Negative emissions: Scientists debate role of CO2 removal in tackling climate change
Drought and heatwaves occurring together – known as “compound” events – have “surged” across the world since the early 2000s, a new study shows.
Compound drought and heat events (CDHEs) can have devastating effects, creating the ideal conditions for intense wildfires, such as Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2019-20 where bushfires burned 24m hectares and killed 33 people.
The research, published in Science Advances, finds that the increase in CDHEs is predominantly being driven by events that start with a heatwave.
The global area affected by such “heatwave-led” compound events has more than doubled between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, the study says.
The rapid increase in these events over the last 23 years cannot be explained solely by global warming, the authors note.
Since the late 1990s, feedbacks between the land and the atmosphere have become stronger, making heatwaves more likely to trigger drought conditions, they explain.
One of the study authors tells Carbon Brief that societies must pay greater attention to compound events, which can “cause severe impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and society”.
Compound events
CDHEs are extreme weather events where drought and heatwave conditions occur simultaneously – or shortly after each other – in the same region.
These events are often triggered by large-scale weather patterns, such as “blocking” highs, which can produce “prolonged” hot and dry conditions, according to the study.
Prof Sang-Wook Yeh is one of the study authors and a professor at the Ewha Womans University in South Korea. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When heatwaves and droughts occur together, the two hazards reinforce each other through land-atmosphere interactions. This amplifies surface heating and soil moisture deficits, making compound events more intense and damaging than single hazards.”
CDHEs can begin with either a heatwave or a drought.
The sequence of these extremes is important, the study says, as they have different drivers and impacts.
For example, in a CDHE where the heatwave was the precursor, increased direct sunshine causes more moisture loss from soils and plants, leading to a drought.
Conversely, in an event where the drought was the precursor, the lack of soil moisture means that less of the sun’s energy goes into evaporation and more goes into warming the Earth’s surface. This produces favourable conditions for heatwaves.
The study shows that the majority of CDHEs globally start out as a drought.
In recent years, there has been increasing focus on these events due to the devastating impact they have on agriculture, ecosystems and public health.
In Russia in the summer of 2010, a compound drought-heatwave event – and the associated wildfires – caused the death of nearly 55,000 people, the study notes.
The record-breaking Pacific north-west “heat dome” in 2021 triggered extreme drought conditions that caused “significant declines” in wheat yields, as well as in barley, canola and fruit production in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, says the study.
Increasing events
To assess how CDHEs are changing, the researchers use daily reanalysis data to identify droughts and heatwaves events. (Reanalysis data combines past observations with climate models to create a historical climate record.) Then, using an algorithm, they analyse how these events overlap in both time and space.
The study covers the period from 1980 to 2023 and the world’s land surface, excluding polar regions where CDHEs are rare.
The research finds that the area of land affected by CDHEs has “increased substantially” since the early 2000s.
Heatwave-led events have been the main contributor to this increase, the study says, with their spatial extent rising 110% between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, compared to a 59% increase for drought-led events.
The map below shows the global distribution of CDHEs over 1980-2023. The charts show the percentage of the land surface affected by a heatwave-led CDHE (red) or a drought-led CDHE (yellow) in a given year (left) and relative increase in each CDHE type (right).
The study finds that CDHEs have occurred most frequently in northern South America, the southern US, eastern Europe, central Africa and south Asia.
Threshold passed
The authors explain that the increase in heatwave-led CDHEs is related to rising global temperatures, but that this does not tell the whole story.
In the earlier 22-year period of 1980-2001, the study finds that the spatial extent of heatwave-led CDHEs rises by 1.6% per 1C of global temperature rise. For the more-recent period of 2022-23, this increases “nearly eightfold” to 13.1%.
The change suggests that the rapid increase in the heatwave-led CDHEs occurred after the global average temperature “surpasse[d] a certain temperature threshold”, the paper says.
This threshold is an absolute global average temperature of 14.3C, the authors estimate (based on an 11-year average), which the world passed around the year 2000.
Investigating the recent surge in heatwave-leading CDHEs further, the researchers find a “regime shift” in land-atmosphere dynamics “toward a persistently intensified state after the late 1990s”.
In other words, the way that drier soils drive higher surface temperatures, and vice versa, is becoming stronger, resulting in more heatwave-led compound events.
Daily data
The research has some advantages over other previous studies, Yeh says. For instance, the new work uses daily estimations of CDHEs, compared to monthly data used in past research. This is “important for capturing the detailed occurrence” of these events, says Yeh.
He adds that another advantage of their study is that it distinguishes the sequence of droughts and heatwaves, which allows them to “better understand the differences” in the characteristics of CDHEs.
Dr Meryem Tanarhte is a climate scientist at the University Hassan II in Morocco, and Dr Ruth Cerezo Mota is a climatologist and a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both scientists, who were not involved in the study, agree that the daily estimations give a clearer picture of how CDHEs are changing.
Cerezo-Mota adds that another major contribution of the study is its global focus. She tells Carbon Brief that in some regions, such as Mexico and Africa, there is a lack of studies on CDHEs:
“Not because the events do not occur, but perhaps because [these regions] do not have all the data or the expertise to do so.”
However, she notes that the reanalysis data used by the study does have limitations with how it represents rainfall in some parts of the world.
Compound impacts
The study notes that if CDHEs continue to intensify – particularly events where heatwaves are the precursors – they could drive declining crop productivity, increased wildfire frequency and severe public health crises.
These impacts could be “much more rapid and severe as global warming continues”, Yeh tells Carbon Brief.
Tanarhte notes that these events can be forecasted up to 10 days ahead in many regions. Furthermore, she says, the strongest impacts can be prevented “through preparedness and adaptation”, including through “water management for agriculture, heatwave mitigation measures and wildfire mitigation”.
The study recommends reassessing current risk management strategies for these compound events. It also suggests incorporating the sequences of drought and heatwaves into compound event analysis frameworks “to enhance climate risk management”.
Cerezo-Mota says that it is clear that the world needs to be prepared for the increased occurrence of these events. She tells Carbon Brief:
“These [risk assessments and strategies] need to be carried out at the local level to understand the complexities of each region.”
The post Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 6 March 2026: Iran energy crisis | China climate plan | Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ wind turbine
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Energy crisis
ENERGY SPIKE: US-Israeli attacks on Iran and subsequent counterattacks across the Middle East have sent energy prices “soaring”, according to Reuters. The newswire reported that the region “accounts for just under a third of global oil production and almost a fifth of gas”. The Guardian noted that shipping traffic through the strait of Hormuz, which normally ferries 20% of the world’s oil, “all but ground to a halt”. The Financial Times reported that attacks by Iran on Middle East energy facilities – notably in Qatar – triggered the “biggest rise in gas prices since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine”.
‘RISK’ AND ‘BENEFITS’: Bloomberg reported on increases in diesel prices in Europe and the US, speculating that rising fuel costs could be “a risk for president Donald Trump”. US gas producers are “poised to benefit from the big disruption in global supply”, according to CNBC. Indian government sources told the Economic Times that Russia is prepared to “fulfil India’s energy demands”. China Daily quoted experts who said “China’s energy security remains fundamentally unshaken”, thanks to “emergency stockpiles and a wide array of import channels”.
‘ESSENTIAL’ RENEWABLES: Energy analysts said governments should cut their fossil-fuel reliance by investing in renewables, “rather than just seeking non-Gulf oil and gas suppliers”, reported Climate Home News. This message was echoed by UK business secretary Peter Kyle, who said “doubling down on renewables” was “essential” amid “regional instability”, according to the Daily Telegraph.
China’s climate plan
PEAK COAL?: China has set out its next “five-year plan” at the annual “two sessions” meeting of the National People’s Congress, including its climate strategy out to 2030, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. The plan called for China to cut its carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 17% from 2026 to 2030, which “may allow for continued increase in emissions given the rate of GDP growth”, reported Reuters. The newswire added that the plan also had targets to reach peak coal in the next five years and replace 30m tonnes per year of coal with renewables.
ACTIVE YET PRUDENT: Bloomberg described the new plan as “cautious”, stating that it “frustrat[es] hopes for tighter policy that would drive the nation to peak carbon emissions well before president Xi Jinping’s 2030 deadline”. Carbon Brief has just published an in-depth analysis of the plan. China Daily reported that the strategy “highlights measures to promote the climate targets of peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030”, which China said it would work towards “actively yet prudently”.
Around the world
- EU RULES: The European Commission has proposed new “made in Europe” rules to support domestic low-carbon industries, “against fierce competition from China”, reported Agence France-Presse. Carbon Brief examined what it means for climate efforts.
- RECORD HEAT: The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said there is a 50-60% chance that the El Niño weather pattern could return this year, amplifying the effect of global warming and potentially driving temperatures to “record highs”, according to Euronews.
- FLAGSHIP FUND: The African Development Bank’s “flagship clean energy fund” plans to more than double its financing to $2.5bn for African renewables over the next two years, reported the Associated Press.
- NO WITHDRAWAL: Vanuatu has defied US efforts to force the Pacific-island nation to drop a UN draft resolution calling on the world to implement a landmark International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on climate, according to the Guardian.
98
The number of nations that submitted their national reports on tackling nature loss to the UN on time – just half of the 196 countries that are part of the UN biodiversity treaty – according to analysis by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- Sea levels are already “much higher than assumed” in most assessments of the threat posed by sea-level rise, due to “inadequate” modelling assumptions | Nature
- Accelerating human-caused global warming could see the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C limit crossed before 2030 | Geophysical Research Letters covered by Carbon Brief
- Future “super El Niño events” could “significantly lower” solar power generation due to a reduction in solar irradiance in key regions, such as California and east China | Communications Earth & Environment
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
UK greenhouse gas emissions in 2025 fell to 54% below 1990 levels, the baseline year for its legally binding climate goals, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Over the same period, data from the World Bank shows that the UK’s economy has expanded by 95%, meaning that emissions have been decoupling from growth.
Spotlight
Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ community wind turbine
Following the recent launch of the UK government’s local power plan, Carbon Brief visits one of the country’s community-energy success stories.
The Lawrence Weston housing estate is set apart from the main city of Bristol, wedged between the tree-lined grounds of a stately home and a sprawl of warehouses and waste incinerators. It is one of the most deprived areas in the city.
Yet, just across the M5 motorway stands a structure that has brought the spoils of the energy transition directly to this historically forgotten estate – a 4.2 megawatt (MW) wind turbine.
The turbine is owned by local charity Ambition Lawrence Weston and all the profits from its electricity sales – around £100,000 a year – go to the community. In the UK’s local power plan, it was singled out by energy secretary Ed Miliband as a “pioneering” project.
‘Sustainable income’
On a recent visit to the estate by Carbon Brief, Ambition Lawrence Weston’s development manager, Mark Pepper, rattled off the story behind the wind turbine.
In 2012, Pepper and his team were approached by the Bristol Energy Cooperative with a chance to get a slice of the income from a new solar farm. They jumped at the opportunity.
“Austerity measures were kicking in at the time,” Pepper told Carbon Brief. “We needed to generate an income. Our own, sustainable income.”
With the solar farm proving to be a success, the team started to explore other opportunities. This began a decade-long process that saw them navigate the Conservative government’s “ban” on onshore wind, raise £5.5m in funding and, ultimately, erect the turbine in 2023.
Today, the turbine generates electricity equivalent to Lawrence Weston’s 3,000 households and will save 87,600 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) over its lifetime.
‘Climate by stealth’
Ambition Lawrence Weston’s hub is at the heart of the estate and the list of activities on offer is seemingly endless: birthday parties, kickboxing, a library, woodworking, help with employment and even a pop-up veterinary clinic. All supported, Pepper said, with the help of a steady income from community-owned energy.
The centre itself is kitted out with solar panels, heat pumps and electric-vehicle charging points, making it a living advertisement for the net-zero transition. Pepper noted that the organisation has also helped people with energy costs amid surging global gas prices.
Gesturing to the England flags dangling limply on lamp posts visible from the kitchen window, he said:
“There’s a bit of resentment around immigration and scarcity of materials and provision, so we’re trying to do our bit around community cohesion.”
This includes supper clubs and an interfaith grand iftar during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Anti-immigration sentiment in the UK has often gone hand-in-hand with opposition to climate action. Right-wing politicians and media outlets promote the idea that net-zero policies will cost people a lot of money – and these ideas have cut through with the public.
Pepper told Carbon Brief he is sympathetic to people’s worries about costs and stressed that community energy is the perfect way to win people over:
“I think the only way you can change that is if, instead of being passive consumers…communities are like us and they’re generating an income to offset that.”
From the outset, Pepper stressed that “we weren’t that concerned about climate because we had other, bigger pressures”, adding:
“But, in time, we’ve delivered climate by stealth.”
Watch, read, listen
OIL WATCH: The Guardian has published a “visual guide” with charts and videos showing how the “escalating Iran conflict is driving up oil and gas prices”.
MURDER IN HONDURAS: Ten years on from the murder of Indigenous environmental justice advocate Berta Cáceres, Drilled asked why Honduras is still so dangerous for environmental activists.
TALKING WEATHER: A new film, narrated by actor Michael Sheen and titled You Told Us To Talk About the Weather, aimed to promote conversation about climate change with a blend of “poetry, folk horror and climate storytelling”.
Coming up
- 8 March: Colombia parliamentary election
- 9-19 March: 31st Annual Session of the International Seabed Authority, Kingston, Jamaica
- 11 March: UN Environment Programme state of finance for nature 2026 report launch
Pick of the jobs
- London School of Economics and Political Science, fellow in the social science of sustainability | Salary: £43,277-£51,714. Location: London
- NORCAP, innovative climate finance expert | Salary: Unknown. Location: Kyiv, Ukraine
- WBHM, environmental reporter | Salary: $50,050-$81,330. Location: Birmingham, Alabama, US
- Climate Cabinet, data engineer | Salary: hourly rate of $60-$120 per hour. Location: Remote anywhere in the US
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 6 March 2026: Iran energy crisis | China climate plan | Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ wind turbine appeared first on Carbon Brief.
China’s leadership has published a draft of its 15th five-year plan setting the strategic direction for the nation out to 2030, including support for clean energy and energy security.
The plan sets a target to cut China’s “carbon intensity” by 17% over the five years from 2026-30, but also changes the basis for calculating this key climate metric.
The plan continues to signal support for China’s clean-energy buildout and, in general, contains no major departures from the country’s current approach to the energy transition.
The government reaffirms support for several clean-energy industries, ranging from solar and electric vehicles (EVs) through to hydrogen and “new-energy” storage.
The plan also emphasises China’s willingness to steer climate governance and be seen as a provider of “global public goods”, in the form of affordable clean-energy technologies.
However, while the document says it will “promote the peaking” of coal and oil use, it does not set out a timeline and continues to call for the “clean and efficient” use of coal.
This shows that tensions remain between China’s climate goals and its focus on energy security, leading some analysts to raise concerns about its carbon-cutting ambition.
Below, Carbon Brief outlines the key climate change and energy aspects of the plan, including targets for carbon intensity, non-fossil energy and forestry.
Note: this article is based on a draft published on 5 March and will be updated if any significant changes are made in the final version of the plan, due to be released at the close next week of the “two sessions” meeting taking place in Beijing.
- What is China’s 15th five-year plan?
- What does the plan say about China’s climate action?
- What is China’s new CO2 intensity target?
- Does the plan encourage further clean-energy additions?
- What does the plan signal about coal?
- How will China approach global climate governance in the next five years?
- What else does the plan cover?
What is China’s 15th five-year plan?
Five-year plans are one of the most important documents in China’s political system.
Addressing everything from economic strategy to climate policy, they outline the planned direction for China’s socio-economic development in a five-year period. The 15th five-year plan covers 2026-30.
These plans include several “main goals”. These are largely quantitative indicators that are seen as particularly important to achieve and which provide a foundation for subsequent policies during the five-year period.
The table below outlines some of the key “main goals” from the draft 15th five-year plan.
| Category | Indicator | Indicator in 2025 | Target by 2030 | Cumulative target over 2026-2030 | Characteristic |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Economic development | Gross domestic product (GDP) growth (%) | 5 | Maintained within a reasonable range and proposed annually as appropriate. | Anticipatory | |
| ‘Green and low-carbon | Reduction in CO2 emissions per unit of GDP (%) | 17.7 | 17 | Binding | |
| Share of non-fossil energy in total energy consumption (%) | 21.7 | 25 | Binding | ||
| Security guarantee | Comprehensive energy production capacity (100m tonnes of standard coal equivalent) |
51.3 | 58 | Binding |
Select list of targets highlighted in the “main goals” section of the draft 15th five-year plan. Source: Draft 15th five-year plan.
Since the 12th five-year plan, covering 2011-2015, these “main goals” have included energy intensity and carbon intensity as two of five key indicators for “green ecology”.
The previous five-year plan, which ran from 2021-2025, introduced the idea of an absolute “cap” on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, although it did not provide an explicit figure in the document. This has been subsequently addressed by a policy on the “dual-control of carbon” issued in 2024.
The latest plan removes the energy-intensity goal and elevates the carbon-intensity goal, but does not set an absolute cap on emissions (see below).
It covers the years until 2030, before which China has pledged to peak its carbon emissions. (Analysis for Carbon Brief found that emissions have been “flat or falling” since March 2024.)
The plans are released at the two sessions, an annual gathering of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). This year, it runs from 4-12 March.
The plans are often relatively high-level, with subsequent topic-specific five-year plans providing more concrete policy guidance.
Policymakers at the National Energy Agency (NEA) have indicated that in the coming years they will release five sector-specific plans for 2026-2030, covering topics such as the “new energy system”, electricity and renewable energy.
There may also be specific five-year plans covering carbon emissions and environmental protection, as well as the coal and nuclear sectors, according to analysts.
Other documents published during the two sessions include an annual government work report, which outlines key targets and policies for the year ahead.
The gathering is attended by thousands of deputies – delegates from across central and local governments, as well as Chinese Communist party members, members of other political parties, academics, industry leaders and other prominent figures.
What does the plan say about China’s climate action?
Achieving China’s climate targets will remain a key driver of the country’s policies in the next five years, according to the draft 15th five-year plan.
It lists the “acceleration” of China’s energy transition as a “major achievement” in the 14th five-year plan period (2021-2025), noting especially how clean-power capacity had overtaken fossil fuels.
The draft says China will “actively and steadily advance and achieve carbon peaking”, with policymakers continuing to strike a balance between building a “green economy” and ensuring stability.
Climate and environment continues to receive its own chapter in the plan. However, the framing and content of this chapter has shifted subtly compared with previous editions, as shown in the table below. For example, unlike previous plans, the first section of this chapter focuses on China’s goal to peak emissions.
| 11th five-year plan (2006-2010) | 12th five-year plan (2011-2015) | 13th five-year plan (2016-2020) | 14th five-year plan (2021-2025) | 15th five-year plan (2026-2030) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chapter title | Part 6: Build a resource-efficient and environmentally-friendly society | Part 6: Green development, building a resource-efficient and environmentally friendly society | Part 10: Ecosystems and the environment | Part 11: Promote green development and facilitate the harmonious coexistence of people and nature | Part 13: Accelerating the comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development to build a beautiful China |
| Sections | Developing a circular economy | Actively respond to global climate change | Accelerate the development of functional zones | Improve the quality and stability of ecosystems | Actively and steadily advancing and achieving carbon peaking |
| Protecting and restoring natural ecosystems | Strengthen resource conservation and management | Promote economical and intensive resource use | Continue to improve environmental quality | Continuously improving environmental quality | |
| Strengthening environmental protection | Vigorously develop the circular economy | Step up comprehensive environmental governance | Accelerate the green transformation of the development model | Enhancing the diversity, stability, and sustainability of ecosystems | |
| Enhancing resource management | Strengthen environmental protection efforts | Intensify ecological conservation and restoration | Accelerating the formation of green production and lifestyles | ||
| Rational utilisation of marine and climate resources | Promoting ecological conservation and restoration | Respond to global climate change | |||
| Strengthen the development of water conservancy and disaster prevention and mitigation systems | Improve mechanisms for ensuring ecological security | ||||
| Develop green and environmentally-friendly industries |
Title and main sections of the climate and environment-focused chapters in the last five five-year plans. Source: China’s 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th five-year plans.
The climate and environment chapter in the latest plan calls for China to “balance [economic] development and emission reduction” and “ensure the timely achievement of carbon peak targets”.
Under the plan, China will “continue to pursue” its established direction and objectives on climate, Prof Li Zheng, dean of the Tsinghua University Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development (ICCSD), tells Carbon Brief.
What is China’s new CO2 intensity target?
In the lead-up to the release of the plan, analysts were keenly watching for signals around China’s adoption of a system for the “dual-control of carbon”.
This would combine the existing targets for carbon intensity – the CO2 emissions per unit of GDP – with a new cap on China’s total carbon emissions. This would mark a dramatic step for the country, which has never before set itself a binding cap on total emissions.
Policymakers had said last year that this framework would come into effect during the 15th five-year plan period, replacing the previous system for the “dual-control of energy”.
However, the draft 15th five-year plan does not offer further details on when or how both parts of the dual-control of carbon system will be implemented. Instead, it continues to focus on carbon intensity targets alone.
Looking back at the previous five-year plan period, the latest document says China had achieved a carbon-intensity reduction of 17.7%, just shy of its 18% goal.
This is in contrast with calculations by Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), which had suggested that China had only cut its carbon intensity by 12% over the past five years.
At the time it was set in 2021, the 18% target had been seen as achievable, with analysts telling Carbon Brief that they expected China to realise reductions of 20% or more.
However, the government had fallen behind on meeting the target.
Last year, ecology and environment minister Huang Runqiu attributed this to the Covid-19 pandemic, extreme weather and trade tensions. He said that China, nevertheless, remained “broadly” on track to meet its 2030 international climate pledge of reducing carbon intensity by more than 65% from 2005 levels.
Myllyvirta tells Carbon Brief that the newly reported figure showing a carbon-intensity reduction of 17.7% is likely due to an “opportunistic” methodological revision. The new methodology now includes industrial process emissions – such as cement and chemicals – as well as the energy sector.
(This is not the first time China has redefined a target, with regulators changing the methodology for energy intensity in 2023.)
For the next five years, the plan sets a target to reduce carbon intensity by 17%, slightly below the previous goal.
However, the change in methodology means that this leaves space for China’s overall emissions to rise by “3-6% over the next five years”, says Myllyvirta. In contrast, he adds that the original methodology would have required a 2% fall in absolute carbon emissions by 2030.
The dashed lines in the chart below show China’s targets for reducing carbon intensity during the 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th five-year periods, while the bars show what was achieved under the old (dark blue) and new (light blue) methodology.
The carbon-intensity target is the “clearest signal of Beijing’s climate ambition”, says Li Shuo, director at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s (ASPI) China climate hub.
It also links directly to China’s international pledge – made in 2021 – to cut its carbon intensity to more than 65% below 2005 levels by 2030.
To meet this pledge under the original carbon-intensity methodology, China would have needed to set a target of a 23% reduction within the 15th five-year plan period. However, the country’s more recent 2035 international climate pledge, released last year, did not include a carbon-intensity target.
As such, ASPI’s Li interprets the carbon-intensity target in the draft 15th five-year plan as a “quiet recalibration” that signals “how difficult the original 2030 goal has become”.
Furthermore, the 15th five-year plan does not set an absolute emissions cap.
This leaves “significant ambiguity” over China’s climate plans, says campaign group 350 in a press statement reacting to the draft plan. It explains:
“The plan was widely expected to mark a clearer transition from carbon-intensity targets toward absolute emissions reductions…[but instead] leaves significant ambiguity about how China will translate record renewable deployment into sustained emissions cuts.”
Myllyvirta tells Carbon Brief that this represents a “continuation” of the government’s focus on scaling up clean-energy supply while avoiding setting “strong measurable emission targets”.
He says that he would still expect to see absolute caps being set for power and industrial sectors covered by China’s emissions trading scheme (ETS). In addition, he thinks that an overall absolute emissions cap may still be published later in the five-year period.
Despite the fact that it has yet to be fully implemented, the switch from dual-control of energy to dual-control of carbon represents a “major policy evolution”, Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE), tells Carbon Brief. He says that it will allow China to “provide more flexibility for renewable energy expansion while tightening the net on fossil-fuel reliance”.
Does the plan encourage further clean-energy additions?
“How quickly carbon intensity is reduced largely depends on how much renewable energy can be supplied,” says Yao Zhe, global policy advisor at Greenpeace East Asia, in a statement.
The five-year plan continues to call for China’s development of a “new energy system that is clean, low-carbon, safe and efficient” by 2030, with continued additions of “wind, solar, hydro and nuclear power”.
In line with China’s international pledge, it sets a target for raising the share of non-fossil energy in total energy consumption to 25% by 2030, up from just under 21.7% in 2025.
The development of “green factories” and “zero-carbon [industrial] parks” has been central to many local governments’ strategies for meeting the non-fossil energy target, according to industry news outlet BJX News. A call to build more of these zero-carbon industrial parks is listed in the five-year plan.
Prof Pan Jiahua, dean of Beijing University of Technology’s Institute of Ecological Civilization, tells Carbon Brief that expanding demand for clean energy through mechanisms such as “green factories” represents an increasingly “bottom-up” and “market-oriented” approach to the energy transition, which will leave “no place for fossil fuels”.
He adds that he is “very much sure that China’s zero-carbon process is being accelerated and fossil fuels are being driven out of the market”, pointing to the rapid adoption of EVs.
The plan says that China will aim to double “non-fossil energy” in 10 years – although it does not clarify whether this means their installed capacity or electricity generation, or what the exact starting year would be.
Research has shown that doubling wind and solar capacity in China between 2025-2035 would be “consistent” with aims to limit global warming to 2C.
While the language “certainly” pushes for greater additions of renewable energy, Yao tells Carbon Brief, it is too “opaque” to be a “direct indication” of the government’s plans for renewable additions.
She adds that “grid stability and healthy, orderly competition” is a higher priority for policymakers than guaranteeing a certain level of capacity additions.
China continues to place emphasis on the need for large-scale clean-energy “bases” and cross-regional power transmission.
The plan says China must develop “clean-energy bases…in the three northern regions” and “integrated hydro-wind-solar complexes” in south-west China.
It specifically encourages construction of “large-scale wind and solar” power bases in desert regions “primarily” for cross-regional power transmission, as well as “major hydropower” projects, including the Yarlung Tsangpo dam in Tibet.
As such, the country should construct “power-transmission corridors” with the capacity to send 420 gigawatts (GW) of electricity from clean-energy bases in western provinces to energy-hungry eastern provinces by 2030, the plan says.
State Grid, China’s largest grid operator, plans to install “another 15 ultra-high voltage [UHV] transmission lines” by 2030, reports Reuters, up from the 45 UHV lines built by last year.
Below are two maps illustrating the interlinkages between clean-energy bases in China in the 15th (top) and 14th (bottom) five-year plan periods.
The yellow dotted areas represent clean energy bases, while the arrows represent cross-regional power transmission. The blue wind-turbine icons represent offshore windfarms and the red cooling tower icons represent coastal nuclear plants.
The 15th five-year plan map shows a consistent approach to the 2021-2025 period. As well as power being transmitted from west to east, China plans for more power to be sent to southern provinces from clean-energy bases in the north-west, while clean-energy bases in the north-east supply China’s eastern coast.
It also maps out “mutual assistance” schemes for power grids in neighbouring provinces.
Offshore wind power should reach 100GW by 2030, while nuclear power should rise to 110GW, according to the plan.
What does the plan signal about coal?
The increased emphasis on grid infrastructure in the draft 15th five-year plan reflects growing concerns from energy planning officials around ensuring China’s energy supply.
Ren Yuzhi, director of the NEA’s development and planning department, wrote ahead of the plan’s release that the “continuous expansion” of China’s energy system has “dramatically increased its complexity”.
He said the NEA felt there was an “urgent need” to enhance the “secure and reliable” replacement of fossil-fuel power with new energy sources, as well as to ensure the system’s “ability to absorb them”.
Meanwhile, broader concerns around energy security have heightened calls for coal capacity to remain in the system as a “ballast stone”.
The plan continues to support the “clean and efficient utilisation of fossil fuels” and does not mention either a cap or peaking timeline for coal consumption.
Xi had previously told fellow world leaders that China would “strictly control” coal-fired power and phase down coal consumption in the 15th five-year plan period.
The “geopolitical situation is increasing energy security concerns” at all levels of government, said the Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress in a note responding to the draft plan, adding that this was creating “uncertainty over coal reduction”.
Ahead of its publication, there were questions around whether the plan would set a peaking deadline for oil and coal. An article posted by state news agency Xinhua last month, examining recommendations for the plan from top policymakers, stated that coal consumption would plateau from “around 2027”, while oil would peak “around 2026”.
However, the plan does not lay out exact years by which the two fossil fuels should peak, only saying that China will “promote the peaking of coal and oil consumption”.
There are similarly no mentions of phasing out coal in general, in line with existing policy.
Nevertheless, there is a heavy emphasis on retrofitting coal-fired power plants. The plan calls for the establishment of “demonstration projects” for coal-plant retrofitting, such as through co-firing with biomass or “green ammonia”.
Such retrofitting could incentivise lower utilisation of coal plants – and thus lower emissions – if they are used to flexibly meet peaks in demand and to cover gaps in clean-energy output, instead of providing a steady and significant share of generation.
The plan also calls for officials to “fully implement low-carbon retrofitting projects for coal-chemical industries”, which have been a notable source of emissions growth in the past year.
However, the coal-chemicals sector will likely remain a key source of demand for China’s coal mining industry, with coal-to-oil and coal-to-gas bases listed as a “key area” for enhancing the country’s “security capabilities”.
Meanwhile, coal-fired boilers and industrial kilns in the paper industry, food processing and textiles should be replaced with “clean” alternatives to the equivalent of 30m tonnes of coal consumption per year, it says.
“China continues to scale up clean energy at an extraordinary pace, but the plan still avoids committing to strong measurable constraints on emissions or fossil fuel use”, says Joseph Dellatte, head of energy and climate studies at the Institut Montaigne. He adds:
“The logic remains supply-driven: deploy massive amounts of clean energy and assume emissions will eventually decline.”
How will China approach global climate governance in the next five years?
Meanwhile, clean-energy technologies continue to play a role in upgrading China’s economy, with several “new energy” sectors listed as key to its industrial policy.
Named sectors include smart EVs, “new solar cells”, new-energy storage, hydrogen and nuclear fusion energy.
“China’s clean-technology development – rather than traditional administrative climate controls – is increasingly becoming the primary driver of emissions reduction,” says ASPI’s Li. He adds that strengthening China’s clean-energy sectors means “more closely aligning Beijing’s economic ambitions with its climate objectives”.
Analysis for Carbon Brief shows that clean energy drove more than a third of China’s GDP growth in 2025, representing around 11% of China’s whole economy.
The continued support for these sectors in the draft five-year plan comes as the EU outlined its own measures intended to limit China’s hold on clean-energy industries, driven by accusations of “unfair competition” from Chinese firms.
China is unlikely to crack down on clean-tech production capacity, Dr Rebecca Nadin, director of the Centre for Geopolitics of Change at ODI Global, tells Carbon Brief. She says:
“Beijing is treating overcapacity in solar and smart EVs as a strategic choice, not a policy error…and is prepared to pour investment into these sectors to cement global market share, jobs and technological leverage.”
Dellatte echoes these comments, noting that it is “striking” that the plan “barely addresses the issue of industrial overcapacity in clean technologies”, with the focus firmly on “scaling production and deployment”.
At the same time, China is actively positioning itself to be a prominent voice in climate diplomacy and a champion of proactive climate action.
This is clear from the first line in a section on providing “global public goods”. It says:
“As a responsible major country, China will play a more active role in addressing global challenges such as climate change.”
The plan notes that China will “actively participate in and steer [引领] global climate governance”, in line with the principle of “common,but differentiated responsibilities”.
This echoes similar language from last year’s government work report, Yao tells Carbon Brief, demonstrating a “clear willingness” to guide global negotiations. But she notes that this “remains an aspiration that’s yet to be made concrete”. She adds:
“China has always favored collective leadership, so its vision of leadership is never a lone one.”
The country will “deepen south-south cooperation on climate change”, the plan says. In an earlier section on “opening up”, it also notes that China will explore “new avenues for collaboration in green development” with global partners as part of its “Belt and Road Initiative”.
China is “doubling down” on a narrative that it is a “responsible major power” and “champion of south-south climate cooperation”, Nadin says, such as by “presenting its clean‑tech exports and finance as global public goods”. She says:
“China will arrive at future COPs casting itself as the indispensable climate leader for the global south…even though its new five‑year plan still puts growth, energy security and coal ahead of faster emissions cuts at home.”
What else does the plan cover?
The impact of extreme weather – particularly floods – remains a key concern in the plan.
China must “refine” its climate adaptation framework and “enhance its resilience to climate change, particularly extreme-weather events”, it says.
China also aims to “strengthen construction of a national water network” over the next five years in order to help prevent floods and droughts.
An article published a few days before the plan in the state-run newspaper China Daily noted that, “as global warming intensifies, extreme weather events – including torrential rains, severe convective storms, and typhoons – have become more frequent, widespread and severe”.
The plan also touches on critical minerals used for low-carbon technologies. These will likely remain a geopolitical flashpoint, with China saying it will focus during the next five years on “intensifying” exploration and “establishing” a reserve for critical minerals. This reserve will focus on “scarce” energy minerals and critical minerals, as well as other “advantageous mineral resources”.
Dellatte says that this could mean the “competition in the energy transition will increasingly be about control over mineral supply chains”.
Other low-carbon policies listed in the five-year plan include expanding coverage of China’s mandatory carbon market and further developing its voluntary carbon market.
China will “strengthen monitoring and control” of non-CO2 greenhouse gases, the plan says, as well as implementing projects “targeting methane, nitrous oxide and hydrofluorocarbons” in sectors such as coal mining, agriculture and chemicals.
This will create “capacity” for reducing emissions by 30m tonnes of CO2 equivalent, it adds.
Meanwhile, China will develop rules for carbon footprint accounting and push for internationally recognised accounting standards.
It will enhance reform of power markets over the next five years and improve the trading mechanism for green electricity certificates.
It will also “promote” adoption of low-carbon lifestyles and decarbonisation of transport, as well as working to advance electrification of freight and shipping.
The post Q&A: What does China’s 15th ‘five-year plan’ mean for climate change? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: What does China’s 15th ‘five-year plan’ mean for climate change?
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