Cutting emissions from buildings and transport across the UK could yield billions of pounds in economic “co-benefits”, leaving people healthier and better off, a new study finds.
The research calculates that meeting sectoral climate targets out to 2037 could result in at least £164bn worth of benefits in six UK urban centres, from Belfast to Manchester.
The UK-wide figure is likely to be far higher, say the authors, because this analysis only covers a handful of regions and does not account for all the co-benefits, including the impact cutting emissions would have on climate change.
Some right-leaning politicians and media outlets like to claim that the UK’s net-zero policies should be abandoned due to “excessive” costs. This has led to many inaccurate claims about the “cost of net-zero”.
Yet official analysis for the UK government has repeatedly concluded that the lower costs of running clean technologies and cutting reliance on fossil fuels will likely save money, offsetting much of the upfront investment costs.
The new study, published in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, argues that while such running cost savings are significant, they are dwarfed by the “social benefits” of net-zero. These include the economic benefits of improved air quality, less congested roads and warmer homes.
The researchers calculate that around four-fifths of the economic gains from cutting building and transport emissions over the next decade will be social benefits. This is mostly due to fewer people driving cars, with far-reaching consequences for everyone’s health.
‘Cost’ of net-zero
Climate sceptics and some right-leaning politicians have seized on the “cost of net-zero” as an argument to weaken climate policies or abandon the target altogether.
This rhetoric cut through when the previous Conservative government rolled back core climate targets, citing the burden on “hard-pressed British families”.
The recent election saw both the Conservatives and Reform UK spreading misleading messages about the cost of net-zero. Typically, they chose to ignore the cost of business-as-usual, plus cited costs but not benefits or omitted the costs of failing to tackle climate change.
Achieving the UK target of net-zero emissions by 2050 will require significant investment in low-carbon infrastructure. Government advisors at the Climate Change Committee (CCC) place the figure at £50bn a year by 2030 – mostly delivered by the private sector.
Yet the CCC and others have also stressed that these numbers do not account for the financial benefits of net-zero. Ultimately, the lower costs of driving electric cars, heating well-insulated homes and cutting reliance on gas are expected to save people money, offsetting most of the cost of net-zero investments.
But even this is only part of the story. Moving to a low-carbon economy is also set to bring all sorts of other benefits, including cleaner air, less traffic and improved health.
These “co-benefits” of climate action have been “side-lined in many economic analyses”, according to the new study. This is partly because it is hard to place a value on things that lack data, are difficult to quantify or vary depending on location and context.
Amid pushback against net-zero, the paper argues that it is essential to quantify these co-benefits. Study co-author Ruaidhrí Higgins-Lavery, a senior carbon analyst at the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute, tells Carbon Brief:
“At the end of the day, we need to decarbonise – we have a legal commitment – and the way we do that will have massive implications across economic and social barriers…If you incorporate co-benefits into the decision-making process, we can have a more balanced deployment of measures.”
Among Higgins-Lavery’s six co-authors, two have affiliations at the consultancy PwC and two at the consultancy Your Climate Strategy. The latter describes its focus as “designing and delivering ambitious climate strategies” for local authorities, businesses and other organisations.
Case for action
The study focuses on six major urban regions – three in England, one in Scotland, one in Wales and one in Northern Ireland – which are home to 13% of the UK population. They are Belfast, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, Glasgow, Greater Manchester and Liverpool.
It assesses policies that would allow the UK to meet “sixth carbon budget” targets for transport and buildings in these areas, out to 2037. (The CCC says nearly half of the emissions reductions required over this period will need to come from these two sectors.)
The analysis covers around 750 measures that would collectively help curb emissions by the sixth carbon budget target of 78% by 2035, compared to 1990 levels.
In total, the researchers find that this programme of action for achieving the sixth carbon budget would generate £179bn in total benefits in these regions. Accounting for investment costs, this amounts to £164bn in net benefits.
These benefits are made up of three components. First, the researchers use “best-practice UK government methods” – including the Treasury’s own “green book” – to assess the financial costs and benefits of investing in low-carbon homes and transport.
Their assessment finds that the investment required to electrify transport, build charging stations and replace gas boilers with heat pumps is significantly offset by the energy savings and lower costs of running these technologies.
Overall, the analysis concludes that these regions would need to invest £14.5bn, but would save £23.2bn – meaning a saving of £8.7bn over this period.
Second, the researchers assess the “carbon case for action” by converting the emissions savings from policy interventions into monetary values.
They use the UK’s own “carbon value” calculations, which are the costs the government says are associated with cutting a tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2), and are used to gauge the impact of climate policies. This results in savings of £13.6bn.
However, while the financial and carbon benefits are substantial, the study concludes that £142bn – or 79% of the total benefits – are “social”.
In order to arrive at this figure, the team uses a range of well-established methods to convert everything from warmer homes to reduced traffic accidents into monetary values.
The chart below shows how the social benefits of the transport and building policies set out in the new study far exceed the investment needs over the sixth carbon budget period. It also shows that social benefits are significantly larger than financial and carbon benefits.
Higgins-Lavery notes that while they attempted to be as comprehensive as possible, the team’s calculation of total benefits is likely an underestimate. This is because many major benefits that could arise from cutting emissions, including avoided harm to food supplies and lower heat stress, were “beyond the scope” of their analysis.
Cutting cars
The study concludes that by far the biggest co-benefits come from reducing the number of cars on the roads. Instead, people would depend more on public transport, walking and cycling.
The resulting dip in congestion and increase in physical activity accounts for 86% of the social benefits identified. Among other things, cities would see lower healthcare costs due to fewer car accidents, less air pollution and fitter populations.
The researchers note that their estimate of per-capita health improvements resulting from transport sector policies is between four and 13 times higher than previous studies.
This is largely due to their optimistic estimates of how much people will choose to walk or cycle. The authors defend this assumption on the basis that it is still lower than the active transport rates seen in the Netherlands and Denmark, and similar to those seen in Paris.
Higgins-Lavery tells Carbon Brief that all of this highlights the importance of different policy decisions made on the path to net-zero:
“If we don’t prioritise things like active travel – if we instead prioritise switching to electric vehicles – we could miss out on a lot of social benefits.”
As it stands, the UK’s highest-profile net-zero transport policies have focused on electric cars. The government has a target to deliver a “world-class cycling and walking network in England by 2040”, but this has been hampered by years of underinvestment.
Citing this as a key example, Higgins-Lavery and his colleagues write that co-benefits are “significantly affected by value-based decisions” made during the policymaking process.
With this in mind, they call for organisations such as the CCC to be clearer about the assumptions that inform their advice to the government.
(The research group’s work will inform the CCC”s upcoming seventh carbon budget, which will include an assessment of “non-monetary benefits and costs”.)
‘Lopsided picture’
Overall, the authors argue that accounting for co-benefits can help to make the economic case for net-zero and “overcome ideological barriers” to climate action.
Prof Sam Fankhauser, a climate change economist at the University of Oxford who was not involved in the new study, welcomes the new paper. He tells Carbon Brief:
“Most net-zero cost studies acknowledge [co-benefits], but don’t actually quantify them. This produces a lopsided picture since the qualitatively assessed benefits get forgotten and the focus is on the hard cost numbers.”
He notes that focusing on transport and buildings alone means the authors “chose sectors where the indirect benefits of action are particularly pronounced”, compared to other sectors such as power and industry.
However, Fankhauser says this is “swings and roundabouts”, considering that, for example, the direct costs of decarbonising buildings are higher than for the power sector.
Dom Boyle, study co-author and director of net-zero policy and economics at the consultancy PwC, notes that the public is “not particularly aware” of the co-benefits of net-zero. He tells Carbon Brief:
“There has been a reticence from previous governments to communicate these benefits to the public, which has not been matched by the relish the right-wing press show in communicating the dis-benefits.”
This is despite the CCC estimate that nearly two-thirds of the emissions cuts required to meet the UK’s net-zero target will depend on individual choices and behaviours.
Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, who was not involved in the study, says co-benefits should not be viewed as merely “coincidental” by-products of climate policy. He tells Carbon Brief:
“It is far more accurate to talk about the multiple benefits of smart policies that address the great environmental crises, and these should be central to any cost-benefit analysis.”
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Net-zero transition will deliver at least ‘£164bn in benefits’ to UK
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 forc