A “collapse” of key Atlantic ocean currents would cause winter temperatures to plunge across northern Europe, overriding the warming driven by human activity.
That is according to new research, published in Geophysical Research Letters, which looks at the combined impact of the shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and global warming on temperatures in northern Europe.
Scientists have warned that human-caused climate change is likely causing AMOC to weaken and that continued warming could push it towards a “tipping point”.
The study suggests that, in an intermediate emissions scenario, greenhouse gas-driven warming would not be able to outweigh the cooling impact of an AMOC collapse.
In this modelled world, one-in-10 winters in London could see cold extremes approaching -20C.
Winter extremes in Oslo in Norway, meanwhile, could plummet to around -48C.
The cold temperatures are projected to be driven by the loss of heat transfer from the tropics via ocean currents, as well as the spread of sea ice to northern Europe in the winter months.
The research does not look at when AMOC might tip – instead, it focuses on scenarios in the far future when this has already happened, so as to explore what impact it would have.
Lead author Dr René van Westen, a researcher in oceanography at Utrecht University, says Europe might stand alone as the one region set to get “cooler in a warmer world”. He tells Carbon Brief:
“If the AMOC collapses, we need to prepare for substantially cooler winters. Winter extremes will be very substantial for some regions. Temperatures could go down to -50C in Scandinavia. At -40C and lower in Scandinavia – everything breaks down over there.”
The research is being published alongside an interactive map, featured below, which highlights how a collapsed AMOC under different warming scenarios could impact temperature averages, extremes and sea ice across Europe.
‘Will warming or cooling win?’
AMOC is a system of ocean currents which plays a crucial role in keeping Europe warm. It transports warm water northwards from the tropics to Europe and cold, deep waters back southwards.
The potential collapse of these ocean currents – caused by the influx of freshwater from melting ice as well as rising air temperatures – is seen by some scientists as a “tipping point” that, once triggered, would be irreversible on human timescales.
However, there is significant scientific debate around whether human-caused climate change is causing the AMOC to slow down – and whether and when it might “tip”.
(The “tipping” of AMOC is often referred to as a “collapse”, “breakdown” or “shutdown”.)
Some scientists have argued that ocean currents have been slowing down since the mid-20th century, whereas others say there has been no weakening since the 1960s.
On the risks of an approaching tipping point, some researchers have estimated a collapse could occur this century, but others have questioned the robustness of the early warning signals being interpreted as evidence of a forthcoming shutdown.
(Regular direct measurements of AMOC’s strength started in 2004. To estimate the ocean currents’ health prior to this, scientists turn to a number of methods, including looking at palaeoclimate records, running climate model “hindcasts” and analysing historical patterns in sea surface temperature.)
A paper published last year by van Westen and colleagues, which ranked second in Carbon Brief’s round-up of the most talked-about climate papers of 2024, found that the present-day AMOC is on a trajectory towards tipping.
That paper set out some of the climate impacts of such an event, including a 10-30C drop in average monthly winter temperatures in northern Europe within a century and a “drastic change” in rainfall patterns in the Amazon.
The scientist’s latest offering provides a more detailed look at how an AMOC tipping event might impact Europe, using simulations produced by the Community Earth System Model (CESM).
The research models the impact of an AMOC collapse in combination with the impacts of human-caused climate change, instead of looking at the collapse of the ocean currents in isolation.
Van Westen says the research was designed to answer the question of how warming from greenhouse gas emissions could offset cooling from an AMOC shutdown. He tells Carbon Brief:
“[A question we wanted to address was] what would happen in a scenario where we have climate change and an AMOC collapse. Will it get cooler over Europe, or will it get warmer? Will regional warming win or will the cooling win?”
Simulating AMOC ‘collapse’
To answer this question, the scientists run a raft of climate simulations, exploring different combinations of global temperature rise and AMOC collapse.
Specifically, the scientists explore the collapse of AMOC under three scenarios:
- An “intermediate” climate scenario (RCP4.5), which is in line with current global climate policies.
- A very high-emissions scenario (RCP8.5) where warming hits 4C above the pre-industrial average by 2100.
- A “pre-industrial” scenario, without any human-caused global warming.
Across all three scenarios, the researchers run multiple simulations 500 years into the future, stabilising global temperature rise at 2C and above 4C from 2100 onwards. The researchers explore scenarios where AMOC is stable and when it has tipped.
The paper does not discuss the level of warming at which AMOC might tip – instead, it focuses on a point in the future after it has occurred, when the ocean currents and the climate have “equilibrated to a new background state”.
To simulate an AMOC collapse in the climate model under the two warming pathways, the researchers apply high levels of freshwater forcing to the north Atlantic.
Van Westen acknowledges the level of freshwater forcing applied to the model to create an AMOC shutdown is “unrealistic”, but says the adjustment is necessary to override a “bias” in climate models. He explains:
“[Climate models] have an overly stable AMOC. So, we need to add this kind of freshwater flux to get the AMOC in a more unstable regime which corresponds to actual observations.”
The paper focuses largely on impacts under the intermediate scenario with AMOC collapse. Under this combination, AMOC shutdown causes some global cooling, resulting in a world that is around 2C warmer than pre-industrial levels.
Prof Stefan Rahmstorf, a professor of physics of the oceans at Potsdam University who was not involved in the research, tells Carbon Brief the new study is “highly welcome”. He explains that “not many” studies have investigated the combined impact of global warming with AMOC collapse since a paper he co-authored in 1999, and adds:
“[The new study] uses a sophisticated climate model with good regional resolution – far better than what was possible 26 years ago. The model confirms the long-standing concern that an AMOC collapse would have massive impacts on European climate, in this case focusing on temperature extremes.”
Dr Alejandra Sanchez-Franks, senior research scientist in the marine physics and ocean climate group at National Oceanography Centre, who was also not involved in the research, says the study’s conclusions should not be used to explain how the European climate will respond in the near-term to changes in the strength of AMOC. She tells Carbon Brief:
“The study uses an idealised experiment with unrealistic freshwater changes to force an AMOC collapse. Very importantly, the author’s conclusions refer to the European climate 200 years after an AMOC change and do not describe what will happen to European temperatures and sea ice in the years and decades following an AMOC collapse.
“Therefore, the study does not serve to tell us how an AMOC tipping point or collapse will affect us immediately.”
‘Out of the freezer and into the frying pan’
The most “striking” finding of the paper, according to van Westen, is that an AMOC collapse in a world that is 2C warmer will result in a Europe that is cooler than it is today.
The research notes that – under this scenario – north-west Europe is set to face “profound cooling”, characterised by more intense winter extremes.
Summer temperatures, on the other hand, would be expected to remain just slightly cooler than they would in a pre-industral climate – meaning that Europeans would experience dramatic swings in temperatures throughout the year.
Increased winter storms and greater day-to-day temperature fluctuations are also expected in this scenario. This is due to a greater temperature contrast between northern Europe and southern Europe, which would be less impacted by a weakened AMOC.
The research notes that cooling from the reduced heat transfer from ocean currents would be amplified by “extensive” sea ice expansion to the coasts of north-west Europe. (Sea ice reflects incoming solar sunlight, resulting in less heat uptake and cooler temperatures overall.)
The map below shows the extent of sea ice in February under the scenario where AMOC collapses and the world is 2C warmer. It shows how Arctic sea ice – when at its yearly maximum – would cover the coasts of Scandinavia and much of the island of Great Britain.
Prof Tim Lenton, chair of climate change and Earth system science at the University of Exeter, who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief it is “hard to over-stress how different” the climate simulated by the model is from present-day conditions. He says:
“The extreme winters would be like living in an ice age. But at the same time summer temperature extremes are barely impacted – they are slightly cooler than they would be due to global warming, but still with hotter extremes than the preindustrial climate.
“This means the seasonality of the climate is radically increased. In extreme years it would be like coming out of the freezer into a frying pan of summer heatwaves.”
The research also looks at the impacts of a shutdown of AMOC in a world that is 4C warmer.
It suggests that, under this scenario, cooling related to the shutdown of ocean currents would not outweigh global warming. Northern Europe would not experience extensive sea-ice expansion or the strong cooling projected under the 2C scenario.
Instead, temperatures would be expected to increase throughout the year and particularly in the summer months. However, northern Europe would be expected to see warming below the global average.
Frigid cities
While the paper itself uses the Dutch town of De Bilt as a case study, the researchers have published projections for a range of European cities under the scenarios explored in the study.
For example, the data shows that, under AMOC collapse in a 2C-warmer world, London could experience an average winter temperature of 1.9C, roughly 17.6 freezing days each year and one-in-10-year cold extremes of -19.3C.
In the Norwegian capital of Oslo, average winter temperatures are projected to plunge to -16.5C, with maximum daily temperatures not surpassing 0C for almost half the year, or 169 days. The research suggests the Norwegian city could experience cold extremes of -47.9C.
The map below shows projected cold extremes under 2C of warming and AMOC collapse in cities in Belgium, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK. It shows how temperatures could drop to -29.7 in Edinburgh, -19.3C in London and -18C in Paris.
Van Westen says the findings are “highly relevant for society and policymakers” because they “shift the narrative” about the direction of Europe’s future climate. He explains:
“Parts of the Netherlands and parts of the UK will experience spectacular cold extremes down to -20C or even lower. Our societal structure and our infrastructure is not built for these cold extremes.”
The paper is being published alongside an interactive map, shown below, that shows ice cover, temperature averages and extremes across Europe under five of the scenarios explored in the study. These are: a pre-industrial world with a stable AMOC, a pre-industrial world with a collapsed AMOC, a 2C world with a stable AMOC, a 2C world with a collapsed AMOC and a 4C world with a collapsed AMOC.
Future research
Scientists not involved in the study said the work would need to be followed up with further exploration of the interplay between global warming and potential AMOC collapse.
Dr Bablu Sinha, leader of climate and uncertainty, marine systems modelling at the National Oceanography Centre, told Carbon Brief:
“Given that observational data is limited, theoretical climate modelling approaches need to be taken to properly investigate this topic. Van Westen and Baatsen motivate the need for more detailed investigation into the combined impacts of global warming and AMOC decline on European extreme temperatures.”
Dr Yechul Chin, researcher at Seoul National University’s climate system lab, tells Carbon Brief:
“Although [this research] demonstrates the potential for more extreme weather under combined global warming and AMOC collapse scenarios, significant uncertainties remain that must be resolved before we can quantify risks or devise robust mitigation strategies.
“Projections about AMOC have a large spread and it means that alternative AMOC trajectories and different levels of warming could substantially widen the range of possible outcomes.”
His comments are echoed by Rahmstorf from Potsdam University, who points out that the “exact outcome” for Europe hinges on the development of “two opposing trends” – global warming due to greenhouse gases and regional cooling due to AMOC weakening. He says:
“The balance between those two will depend on the speed and extent of these trends and will, therefore, depend on the emission and AMOC weakening scenarios.
“Therefore, the more scenarios will be explored with different models in future, we will see a range of different outcomes for Europe as well as other parts of the world. A large uncertainty in this respect will remain.”
The post Ocean current ‘collapse’ could trigger ‘profound cooling’ in northern Europe – even with global warming appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Starting on Monday, about 10,000 government negotiators, scientists, journalists and campaigners will gather at a purpose-built venue in a national park in Mongolia’s capital Ulaanbaatar to discuss how to stop land turning into desert as the world warms.
Drought is currently sweeping much of the Northern hemisphere, leaving normally green urban parks looking like dry savannah, causing crops to fail, food prices to rise and billions to be shaved off economic output.
On Wednesday, Britain’s prime minister chaired an emergency meeting of the government’s Cobra committee. These are usually reserved for wars, terrorist attacks, riots and pandemics – but this one was on the extreme heat and drought the UK has been suffering since May.
With many countries facing far worse with fewer resources than the UK, the issues to be discussed at the UN’s COP17 summit in Mongolia – often overlooked – should be nearer the top of policy-makers minds.
But what is COP17? What will be decided and announced there over the next two weeks? How does it relate to climate change and how will it help restore the lands on which we all rely for our food, water and other essential resources? Climate Home News explains all below.
What is COP17?
It is the conference of parties (COP) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). The parties are 196 governments, which includes all of the countries recognised by the UN.
The convention was conceived at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, at the same time as the other two larger “Rio trio” conventions on climate and biodiversity.
While the climate convention’s COP takes place every year, the UNCCD COP happens only once every two years. COP17 will be its seventeenth gathering.
What is desertification?
It is the process by which land degrades and becomes more like a desert, making it harder – and sometimes impossible – to grow crops or graze livestock there.
Climate change and other human activities – like excessive irrigation which depletes ground water – are making this process worse, causing poverty, hunger, health problems, forced migration and loss of species.
It’s a widespread problem. The UN estimates that half a billion people live within areas that have experienced desertification since the 1980s and that two-fifths of the world’s land is degraded.
What has it got to do with climate change?
The planet’s climate is heating up, mainly due to humans burning fossil fuels, and drying out its land. This kills plants and exposes the soil which can then be blown away by wind and washed away by water.
Without a top layer of soil, plants struggle to grow again and the land gets closer to being a desert. So combating desertification is a way of adapting to climate change.
It is also a way of lessening the pace of climate change, as land degradation releases carbon dioxide previously stored in healthy soils and plants.
What will be negotiated at COP17?
The main issue is what form a new initiative to tackle drought could take. The last COP saw Africa push hard for this to be a protocol – a kind of binding sub-treaty to the UNCCD.
But the US, Europe, Argentina and others argued that would take too long to set up, cost too much and take money away from what can be spent on the ground. They prefer a legally weaker alternative – a framework instead of a protocol.
Negotiations went late into the last night of talks in Riyadh, with the Saudis hosting informal consultations, but eventually governments had to agree to disagree and pick up talks again in Ulaanbaatar.
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Governments will also negotiate a new policy on protecting rangelands and pastoralists from degradation. Rangelands are areas where animals graze. They cover around half the Earth’s land and include almost everything other than forest, deserts, farms, glaciers and cities. Pastoralists are people who herd animals on these rangelands, often moving from place to place to find fresh pasture.
COP17 host country Mongolia has a lot of both – and pushed successfully for the UN to declare 2026 the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists. It is keen to agree a decision at COP17 bringing those issues more to the forefront of the UNCCD.
Negotiators will also debate the UNCCD’s post-2030 strategic framework, which they hope to adopt at COP18 in 2028. Campaign groups like the World Wildlife Fund want a stronger focus on biodiversity and nature-positive food systems.
What will happen when?
The COP will formally open with a ceremony on Monday August 17, followed by opening statements by governments and the adoption of the agenda.
Negotiations will begin, mostly behind closed doors for two weeks until the closing plenaries on Friday August 28.
While talks rumble on in the background, the second week will see senior government representatives including ministers get involved, with a “high-level segment” running from August 24-26.
They will discuss issues like drought resilience, finance and pastoralist communities. This is likely to be when any announcements – of new funding, for instance – are made.
On Monday August 24, there will also be an open dialogue between government officials and civil society members. Here, local practitioners are likely to share stories of how they are helping their communities reverse land degradation. UNCCD prides itself on being a bottom-up convention.
Unlike climate COPs, which often end a day or two over time, UNCCD COPs usually finish on the evening of their last day and – while they have gone late into the night – have never run into the next day.
What else should we watch out for?
At the last COP two years ago, host Saudi Arabia led the creation of an initiative called the Riyadh Global Drought Resilience Partnership to help 80 of the poorest nations deal with drought.
It received $12 billion in pledges, mainly from Gulf-based development finance institutions. Saudi Arabia is expected to report back on whether these pledges have been delivered and how the money will reach those in need now.
There are also hopes that governments will announce financial support for Mongolia’s Rangelands Flagship Initiative, which aims to mobilise investment in projects to fight land degradation.
Who will preside over COP17?
While the last five and the next two climate COPs have been or will be presided over by men, COP17 will be woman-led with Mongolia’s foreign minister, Battsetseg Batmunkh, as president.
This will also be the first COP for the UNCCD’s new executive director Yasmin Fouad. Before being appointed environment minister in her native Egypt, Fouad was a scientist and lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s special report on desertification. She played a key role at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt in 2022.
Although Saudi Arabia’s UNCCD COP presidency is ending, the Gulf power house will likely continue to be influential. It has supported the COP financially as part of the Riyadh-Ulaanbaatar action agenda and will be following up on initiatives announced two years ago.
While Saudi Arabia is often blamed for obstructing progress at climate talks, as a desert nation it is generally thought to have played a constructive role at UNCCD COPs.
What are the negotiating dynamics?
The UNCCD has six main negotiating groups: Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Northern Mediterranean, Central and Eastern Europe, and developed donor countries. Governments can also speak in their own capacities.
While divisions between the Global North and Global South do exist at UNCCD COPs, they are not as stark as at climate COPs. The Global South’s umbrella group – the G77 and China – usually only speaks on finance issues, on which developing countries tend to be united.
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Civil society groups are present but not as vocal or as confrontational as at climate COPs. There are generally no protests and campaigners tend to try to hold governments accountable more quietly. There are likely to be far fewer journalists than at climate COPs too.
What role will the US play?
While the US has left the UN’s climate convention, it remains in the UNCCD and is expected to bring a delegation of officials from its departments of agriculture and state. It is likely to resist any renewed push from Africa for a drought protocol.
The post Will the world’s drying lands get relief from COP17 in Mongolia? appeared first on Climate Home News.
Will the world’s drying lands get relief from COP17 in Mongolia?
Helen Phillips’ book, ‘Hum’, is set in a dystopian near future, in a city suffering the effects of climate breakdown and with dire air quality. Robots (the Hums) press advertising messages during conversations, meetings and even as they carry out medical procedures.
The Hums are vehicles for these ad messages, which are often for products like cosmetics, sweets or anything that might be relevant during interactions with humans. This advertising is poorly disguised, and merges with sentiments that lean towards concerns of well-being, convincing people how much better off they’ll be if they make a purchase.
While the novel is futuristic, the insidious way advertising permeates daily life is resonant of how adverts show up in our world today. And these ads are directly contributing to the worsening future climate Phillips describes in her book.
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Already by the summer of 2026, Europe had seen a 57% increase in wildfires in just four years with western Europe recording the hottest ever June and July on record. We’re facing droughts and floods, as well as predicted hikes in food costs or even chronic food shortages – and that’s before the expected additional effects of a strong El Niño later this year.
Frequent flying and bigger burgers
A portion of this climate breakdown is fuelled by over-consumption in richer countries, particularly of products that are high carbon – for which advertising can take some of the blame. Research shows that adverts drive citizens to consume about a third more goods and services in general, over and above what they might have purchased.
Yet despite a clear link between promoting high-carbon behaviours and climate breakdown, little advertising regulation exists in the UK. Take frequent flying for instance, one of the most carbon-intensive activities we can partake in.
EasyJet’s latest ad campaign is called “Drop Everything”. It encourages consumers to book cheap flights departing within the next 48 hours for presumably short or weekend getaways. Rather than promoting a specific destination, “Drop Everything” promotes a mindset that encourages indiscriminate consumption of flying. The ads were shown on billboards with clever creative slogans, as well as on digital media and through influencer campaigns.
Overall, flight numbers are increasing. The UK Civil Aviation Authority reported the highest number of UK passengers in the first quarter of 2026 (more than 61 million, breaking previous records for travel between January and March). It seems we’re still not joining the dots between flying and a worsening climate.
And how about meat consumption? Scientists advocate for less meat-eating, especially beef which has the highest carbon footprint of nearly all foods. Yet adverts from McDonald’s proliferate, helping make it one of the highest-volume sellers of fast-food chain beef burgers. In 2024, the outdoor advertising budget for McDonald’s UK rose to £86 million, an increase of 71% on previous years.
Small share for sustainability
While over half of UK ad professionals feel increasingly queasy about their profession and its effects on the climate crisis, the people running the show – the UK trade bodies – prefer to focus on the growth advertising brings.
In the first three months of 2026, they stated that UK advertising spend increased by 9.3%, reaching a total of £11.7 billion for that quarter, fuelling consumption and market growth.
But how many of those adverts actually promote low carbon goods and services? Kantar’s Sustainable Ads Tracker shows the percentage of ads featuring sustainability messaging in 2026 is around 4.3%. That’s woefully low, and much of this is made up of messaging that promotes recycling.
Additionally, the ad industry continues to happily produce adverts for the large oil and gas corporations that are fuelling climate breakdown. These adverts only narrowly pass the Advertising Standards Authorities’ advertising codes, allowing the continued greenwashing of the world’s most polluting brands.
There is essentially no leadership from the UK trade bodies, likely because they are directly funded by the brands and advertisers themselves. They are essentially ‘ad shushing’ – pushing for indiscriminate growth and directing attention to their sustainability awards, while confusingly denying that adverts drive higher consumption overall.
Let’s ‘un-shush’
Where does this leave us as we are subjected to hundreds, if not thousands, of persuasive advertising messages every day that support high-carbon lifestyles? Most ad professionals are unable to push back against this agenda at work, often due to the threat of job loss. The advertising trade bodies won’t take the lead as they work in service to big brands and advertisers.
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So, who can push for the changes we need? Members of the public.
Through pressuring our city officials and governments, we can force through restrictions, such as the watershed bans on unhealthy foods on TV before 9pm in the UK. Through supporting the efforts of organisations such as Ad Free Cities and others, we can help achieve bans on outdoor advertising for fossil fuels, aviation, meat and even single-use plastics in cities and regions such as Amsterdam, The Hague, Edinburgh, Florence, Uppsala and many more.
If we’re serious about climate change and stopping big global brands pushing their high-carbon products onto us, then advertising restrictions are one of the best ways to achieve this. If we don’t want a world like the one Phillips describes in her book, we need to make our voices heard above the advertising noise.
The post Pushing the climate crisis: How advertising fuels high-carbon lifestyles appeared first on Climate Home News.
Pushing the climate crisis: How advertising fuels high-carbon lifestyles
An upcoming UK government consultation on weakening targets for electric vehicles (EVs) could cost consumers as much as £3bn a year by 2030, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
It could require the UK to import an extra 17m barrels of oil in 2030, raising expected net imports by 8%, as well as adding 2.5% to national emissions that year, the analysis shows.
After years of fierce lobbying by parts of the car industry – and despite the significant savings on offer for EV drivers – media reports suggest that EV targets could be “watered down”.
Under current rules, battery EVs – BEVs, those which run only on electricity – must make up a rising share of new car sales in the UK.
This policy, known as the “zero-emission vehicles” (ZEV) mandate, was introduced by the previous Conservative government and sets a goal for 33% BEV sales in 2026, rising to 80% in 2030.
(Carmakers are able to use “flexibilities” to help meet their targets, which reduces the effective target under the ZEV mandate to an estimated 25% of sales in 2026.)
Now, the government under new Labour prime minister Andy Burnham is reported to be considering a cut in the BEV target for 2030 to just 50% of new car sales, alongside options for 60% or 70%.
Carbon Brief understands that a consultation on weakening the ZEV mandate is being reviewed by the prime minister’s office in Number 10, ahead of being formally released.
If the mandate is weakened to 50% by 2030 – and if carmakers make more use of “flexibilities” – there could be up to 3m fewer BEVs on UK roads by 2030, according to the NGO T&E.
Previous Carbon Brief analysis found that BEVs are around £1,100 cheaper to run per year than a petrol car, thanks to far lower fuel costs.
Overall, BEVs are more than £1,000 per year cheaper to own than either petrol cars or plug-in hybrids (PHEVs, which can run on petrol or electricity).
This is according to analysis of the “total cost of ownership” by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), including purchase price, fuel costs, insurance and proposed pay-per-mile charges.
In total, Carbon Brief analysis shows that UK drivers could be hit with an extra £3bn in annual ownership costs by 2030, if the ZEV mandate is weakened, as shown below.
A weaker ZEV mandate could “put billions of pounds of committed investments at risk”, reports BusinessGreen, including in the EV charging network and battery supply chains.
Industry group Energy UK says that the mandate is “working in the way it was designed to work” and that it is the “single biggest driver of emissions reductions” in government climate plans.
However, Carbon Brief analysis shows that a weaker ZEV mandate could result in an extra 7.4m tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions (MtCO2) in 2030. This would add the equivalent of 2.5% to national emissions in 2030, under the UK’s international climate goal for that year.
In addition, a weaker ZEV mandate could result in the UK needing to import an extra 17m barrels of oil in 2030, equivalent to 8% of projected net imports that year.
Energy UK says that shifting to EVs will help to reduce household energy bills “for everyone”. This is not only through direct cost-of-ownership savings for EV drivers, but also by spreading the costs of upgrading the electricity system across a wider user base.
Car industry group the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders claims that its members are spending “blilions…on discounts, finance incentives and marketing support” and that “natural” EV demand is below the level required to meet the current ZEV mandate. Its claims are disputed.
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The post Analysis: Weaker EV targets could cost UK consumers £3bn a year by 2030 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Weaker EV targets could cost UK consumers £3bn a year by 2030
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