The first-ever international conference on the contentious topic of “overshoot” was held last week in a palace in the small town of Laxenburg in Austria.
The three-day conference brought together nearly 200 researchers and legal experts to discuss future temperature pathways where the Paris Agreement’s “aspirational” target to limit global warming to 1.5C is met “from above, rather than below”.
Overshoot pathways are those which exceed the 1.5C limit – before being brought back down again through techniques that remove carbon from the atmosphere.
The conference explored both the feasibility of overshoot pathways and the legal frameworks that could help deliver them.
Researchers also discussed the potential consequences of a potential rise – and then fall – of global temperatures on climate action, society and the Earth’s climate systems.
Speaking during a plenary session, Prof Joeri Rogelj, a professor of climate science and policy at Imperial College London, said that “moving into a world where we exceed 1.5C and have to manage overshoot” was an exercise in “managing failure”.
He said that it was “essential” that this failure was acknowledged, explaining that this would help set out the need to “minimise and manage” the situation and clarify the implications for “near-term action” and “long-term [temperature] reversal”.
Below, Carbon Brief draws together some of the key talking points, new research and discussions that emerged from the event.
- Defining overshoot
- Mitigation ambition and 1.5C viability
- Carbon removal
- Impacts of overshoot
- Adaptation
- Legal implications and loss and damage
- Communication challenges and next steps
Defining overshoot
The study of temperature overshoot has grown in recent years as the prospects of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C have dwindled.
Conference organiser Dr Carl-Friedrich Schleussner – a senior research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) – explained the event was designed to bring together different research communities working on a “new field of science”.
He told Carbon Brief:
“If we look at [overshoot] in isolation, we may miss important parts of the bigger picture. That’s why we also set out the conference with very broad themes and a very interdisciplinary approach.”
The conference was split between eight conference streams: mitigation ambition; carbon dioxide removal (CDR); Earth system responses; climate impacts; tipping points; adaptation; loss and damage; and legal implications.
There was also a focus on how to communicate the concept of overshoot.
In simple English, “overshoot” means to go past or beyond a limit. But, in climate science, the term implies both a failure to meet a target – as well as subsequent action to correct that failure.
Today, the term is most often deployed to describe future temperature trajectories that exceed the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C limit – and then come back down.
(In the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) fifth assessment cycle, completed in 2014, the term was used to describe a potential rise and then fall of CO2 concentrations above levels recommended to meet long-term climate goals. A recent “conceptual” review of overshoot noted this was because, at the time, CO2 concentrations were the key metric used to contextualise emissions reductions).
The plot below provides an illustration of three overshoot pathways. The most pronounced pathway sees global temperatures rise significantly above the 1.5C limit – before eventually falling back down again as carbon dioxide is pulled from the atmosphere at scale.
In the second and third pathways, global temperature rise breaches the limit by a smaller margin, before either falling enough just to stabilise around 1.5C, or dropping more dramatically due to larger-scale carbon removals.
In an opening address to delegates, Prof Jim Skea, who is the current chair of the IPCC, acknowledged the scientific interpretation of overshoot was not intuitive to non-experts.
“The IPCC has mainly used two words in relation to overshoot – “exceeding” and “limiting”. To a lay person, these can sound like opposites. Yet we know that a single emissions pathway can both exceed 1.5C in the near term and limit warming to 1.5C in the long term.”
Noting that different research communities were using the term differently, Skea urged researchers to be precise with terminology and stick to the IPCC’s definition of overshoot:
“We should give some thought to communication and keep this as simple as possible. When I look at texts, I hear more poetic words like “surpassing” and “breaching”. I would urge you to keep the range of terms as small as possible and make sure that we’re absolutely using them consistently.”
In the glossary for its latest assessment cycle, AR6, the IPCC defines “overshoot” pathways as follows:
IIASA’s Schleussner stressed that not all pathways that go beyond 1.5C qualify as overshoot pathways:
“The most important understanding is that overshoot is not any pathway that exceeds 1.5C. An overshoot pathway is specific to this being a period of exceedance. It is going to come back down below 1.5C.”
Mitigation ambition and 1.5C viability
Perhaps the most prominent topic during the conference was the implications of overshoot for global ambition to cut carbon emissions and the viability of the 1.5C limit.
Opening the conference, IIASA director general Prof Hans Joachim Schellnhuber shared his personal view that “1.5C is dead, 2C is in agony and 3C is looming”.
In a pre-recorded keynote speech, Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s minister for climate change, called for a rejection of the “normalisation of overshoot” and argued that “we must treat 1.5C as the absolute limit that it is” and avoid backsliding. He added:
“Minimising peak warming must be our lodestar, because every tenth of a degree matters.”
Prof Skea opened his keynote with some theology:
“I’m going to start with the prayer of St Augustine as he struggled with his youthful longings: ‘Lord grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.’ And it does seem that this is the way that the world as a whole is thinking about 1.5C: ‘Lord, limit warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, but not yet.’”
Referencing the “lodestar” mentioned by Regenvanu, Skea warned that it is light years away and, “unless we act with a sense of urgency, [1.5C is] likely to remain just as remote”.
Speaking to Carbon Brief on the sidelines of the conference, Skea added:
“We are almost certain to exceed 1.5C and the viability of 1.5C is now much more referring to the long-term potential to limit it through overshoot.”
Schleussner told Carbon Brief that the framing of 1.5C in the conference is “one that further solidifies 1.5C as the long-term limit and, therefore, provides a backstop against the idea of reducing or backsliding on targets”.
If warming is going to surpass 1.5C, the next question is when temperatures are going to be brought back down again, Schleussner added, noting that there has been no “direct” guidance on this from climate policy:
“The [Paris Agreement’s] obligation to “pursue efforts” [to limit global temperature rise by 1.5C] points to doing it as fast as possible. Scientifically, we can determine what this means – and that would be this century. But there’s no clear language that gives you a specific date. It needs to be a period of overshoot – that is clear – and it should be as short as possible.”
In a parallel session on the “highest possible mitigation ambition under overshoot”, Prof Joeri Rogelj, professor of climate science and policy at Imperial College London, outlined how the recent ruling from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) provides guidance to countries on the level of ambition in their climate pledges under the Paris Agreement, known as “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs). He explained:
“[The ruling] highlights that the level of NDC ambition is not purely discretionary to a state and that every state must do its utmost to ensure its NDC reflects the highest possible ambition to meet the Paris Agreement long-term temperature goal.”
Rogelj presented some research – due to be published in the journal Environmental Research Letters – on translating the ICJ’s guidance “into a framework that can help us to assess whether an NDC indeed is following a standard of conduct that can represent the highest level of ambition”. He showed some initial results on how the first two rounds of NDCs measure up against three “pillars” covering domestic, international and implementation considerations.
In the same session, Prof Oliver Geden, senior fellow and head of the climate policy and politics research cluster at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs and vice-chair of IPCC Working Group III, warned that the concept of returning temperatures back down to 1.5C after an overshoot is “not a political project yet”.
He explained that there is “no shared understanding that, actually, the world is aiming for net-negative”, where emissions cuts and CDR together mean that more carbon is being taken out of the atmosphere than is being added. This is necessary to achieve a decline in global temperatures after surpassing 1.5C.
This lack of understanding includes developed countries, which “you would probably expect to be the frontrunners”, Geden said, noting that Denmark is the “only developed country that has a quantified net-negative target” of emission reductions of 110% in 2050, compared to 1990 levels. (Finland also has a net-negative target, while Germany announced its intention to set one last year. In addition, a few small global-south countries, such as Panama, Suriname and Bhutan, have already achieved net-negative.)
Geden pondered whether developed countries are a “little bit wary to commit to going to net-negative territory because they fear that once they say -110%, some countries will immediately demand -130% or -150%” to pay back a larger carbon debt.
Carbon removal
To achieve a decline in global temperatures after an initial breach of 1.5C would require the world to reach net-negative emissions overall.
There is a wide range of potential techniques for removing CO2 from the atmosphere, such as afforestation, direct air capture and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). Captured carbon must be locked away indefinitely in order to be effective at reducing global temperatures.
However, despite its importance in achieving net-negative emissions, there are “huge knowledge gaps around overshoot and carbon dioxide removal”, Prof Skea told Carbon Brief. He continued:
“As it’s very clear from the themes of this conference, we don’t altogether understand how the Earth would react in taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. We don’t understand the nature of the irreversibilities. And we don’t understand the effectiveness of CDR techniques, which might themselves be influenced by the level of global warming, plus all the equity and sustainability issues surrounding using CDR techniques.”
Skea notes that the seventh assessment cycle of the IPCC, which is just getting underway, will “start to fill these knowledge gaps without prejudging what the appropriate policy response should be”.
Prof Nebojsa Nakicenovic, an IIASA distinguished emeritus research scholar, told Carbon Brief that his “major concern” was whether there would be an “asymmetry” in how the climate would respond to large-scale carbon removal, compared to its response to carbon emissions.
In other words, he explained, would global temperatures respond to carbon removal “on the way down” in the same way they did “on the way up” to the world’s carbon emissions.
Nakicenovic noted that overshoot requires a change in focus to approaching the 1.5C limit “from above, rather than below”.
Schleussner made a similar point to Carbon Brief:
“We may fail to pursue [1.5C] from below, but it doesn’t relieve us from the obligation to then pursue it from above. I think that’s also a key message and a very strong overarching message that’s going to come out from the conference that we see…that pursuing an overshoot and then decline trajectory is both an obligation, but it also is well rooted in science.”
Reporting back to the plenary from one of the parallel sessions on CDR, Dr Matthew Gidden, deputy director of the Joint Global Change Research Institute at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, also noted another element of changing focus:
“When we’re talking about overshoot, we have become used to, in many cases, talking about what a net-zero world looks like. And that’s not a world of overshoot. That’s a world of not returning from a peak. And so communicating instead about a net-negative world is something that we could likely be shifting to in terms of how we’re communicating our science and the impacts that are coming out of it.”
On the need for both CDR and emissions cuts, Gidden noted that the discussions in his session emphasised that “CDR should not be at the cost of mitigation ambition”. But, he added, there is still the question of how “we talk about emission reductions needed today, but also likely dependence on CDR in the future”.
In a different parallel session, Prof Geden also made a similar point, noting that “we have to shift CDR from being seen as a barrier to ambition to an enabler of even higher ambition, but not doing that by betting on ever more CDR”.
Among the research presented in the parallel sessions on CDR was a recent study by Dr Jay Fuhrman from the JGCRI on the regional differences in capacity to deploy large-scale carbon removal. Ruben Prütz, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, presented on the risks to biodiversity from large-scale land-based CDR, which – in some cases – could have a larger impact than warming itself.
In another talk, the University of Oxford’s Dr Rupert Stuart-Smith explored how individual countries are “depending very heavily on [carbon] removals to meet their climate targets”. Stuart-Smith was a co-author on an “initial commentary” on the legal limits of CDR, published in 2023. This has been followed up with a “much more detailed legal analysis”, which should be published “very soon”, he added.
Impacts of overshoot
Since the Paris Agreement and the call for the IPCC to produce a special report on 1.5C, research into the impacts of warming at the aspirational target has become commonplace.
Similarly, there is an abundance of research into the potential impacts at other thresholds, such as 2C, 3C and beyond.
However, there is comparatively little research into how impacts are affected by overshoot.
The conference included talks on some published research into overshoot, such as the chances of irreversible glacier loss and lasting impacts to water resources. There were also talks on work that is yet to be formally published, such as the risks of triggering interacting tipping points under overshoot.
Speaking in a morning plenary, Prof Debra Roberts, a coordinating lead author on the IPCC’s forthcoming special report on climate change and cities and a former co-chair of Working Group II, highlighted the need to consider the implications of different durations and peak temperatures of overshoot.
For example, she explained, it is “important to know” whether the impacts of “overshoot for 10 years at 0.2C above 1.5C are the same as 20 years at 0.1C of overshoot”.
Discussions during the conference noted that the answer may be different depending on the type of impact. For heat extremes, the peak temperature may be the key factor, while the length of overshoot will be more relevant for cumulative impacts that build up over time, such as sea level rise.
Similarly, if warming is brought back down to 1.5C after overshoot, what happens next is also significant – whether global temperature is stabilised or net-negative emissions continue and warming declines further. Prof Schleussner told Carbon Brief:
“For example, with coastal adaptation to sea level rise, the question of how fast and how far we bring temperatures back down again will be decisive in terms of the long-term outlook. Knowing that if you stabilise that around 1.5C, we might commit two metres of sea level rise, right? So, the question of how far we can and want to go back down again is decisive for a long-term perspective.”
One of the eight themes of the conference centred specifically on the reversibility or irreversibility of climate impacts.
In his opening speech, Vanuatu’s Ralph Regenvanu warned that “overshooting 1.5C isn’t a temporary mistake, it is a catalyst for inescapable, irreversible harm”. He continued:
“No level of finance can pull back the sea in our lifetimes or our children’s. There is no rewind button on a melted glacier. There is no time machine for an extinct species. Once we cross these tipping points, no amount of later ‘cooling’ can restore our sacred reefs, it cannot regrow the ice that already vanished and it cannot bring back the species or the cultures erased by the rising tides.”
As an example of a “deeply, deeply irreversible” impact, Dr Samuel Lüthi, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Bern, presented on how overshoot could affect heat-related mortality.
Using mortality data from 850 locations across the world, Lüthi showed how projections under a pathway where warming overshoots 1.5C by 0.1-0.3C, before returning to 1.5C by 2100 has 15% more heat-related deaths in the 21st century than a pathway with less than 0.1C of overshoot.
His findings also suggested that “10 years of 1.6C is very similar [in terms of impacts] to five years of 1.7C”.
Extreme heat also featured in a talk by Dr Yi-Ling Hwong, a research scholar at IIASA, on the implications of using solar geoengineering to reduce peak temperatures during overshoot.
She showed that a world where a return to 1.5C had been achieved through geoengineering would see different impacts from a world where 1.5C was reached through cutting emissions. For example, in her modelling study, while geoengineering restores rainfall levels for some regions in the global north, significant drying “is observed in many regions in the global south”.
Similarly, a world geoengineered to 1.5C would see extreme nighttime heat in some tropical regions that is more severe than in a 2C world with no geoengineering, Hwong added.
In short, she said, “this implies the risk of creating winners and losers” under solar geoengineering and “raises concerns about equity and accountability that need to be considered”.
After describing how overshoot features in the outlines of the forthcoming AR7 reports in his opening speech, Prof Skea told Carbon Brief that he expects a “surge of papers” on overshoot in time to be included.
But it was important to emphasise that a “lot of the science that people have been carrying out is relevant within or without an overshoot”, he added:
“At points in the future, we are not going to know whether we’re in an overshoot world or just a high-emissions world, for example. So a lot of the climate research that’s been done is relevant regardless of overshoot. But overshoot is a new kind of dimension because of this issue of focus on 1.5C and concerns about its viability.”
Adaptation
The implications of overshoot temperature pathways for efforts to prepare cities, countries and citizens for the impacts of climate change remains an under-researched field.
Speaking in a plenary, Prof Kristie Ebi – a professor at the University of Washington’s Center for Health and the Global Environment – described research into adaptation and overshoot as “nascent”. However, she stressed that preparing society for the impacts associated with overshoot pathways was as important as bringing down emissions.
She told Carbon Brief that there were “all kinds of questions” about how to approach “effective” adaptation under an overshoot pathway, explaining:
“At the moment, adaptation is primarily assuming a continual increase in global mean surface temperature. If there is going to be a peak – and, of course, we don’t know what that peak is – then how do you start planning? Do you change your planning? There are places, for instance when thinking about hard infrastructure, [where overshoot] may result in a change in your plan.”
IIASA’s Schleussner told Carbon Brief that the scientific community was only just “beginning to appreciate” the need to understand and “quantify” the implications of different overshoot pathways on adaptation.
In a parallel session, Dr Elisabeth Gilmore, associate professor in environmental engineering and public policy at Carleton University in Canada, made the case for overshoot modelling pathways to take greater account of political considerations.
“Not just, but especially, in situations of overshoot, we need to start thinking about this as much as a physical process as a socio-political process…If we don’t do this, we are really missing out on some key uncertainties.”
Current scenarios used in climate research – including the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and Representative Concentration Pathways – are “a bit quiet” when it comes to thinking about governance, institutions and peace and conflict, Gilmore said. She added:
“Political institutions, legitimacy and social cohesion continue to shift over time and this is really going to shape how much we can mitigate, how much we adapt and especially how we would recover when adding in the dimension of overshoot.”
Gilmore argued that, from a social perspective, adaptation needs are greatest “before the peak” of temperature rise – because this is when society can build the resilience to “get to the other side”. She said:
“Orthodoxy in adaptation [research] that you always want to plan for the worst [in the context of adaptation, peak temperature rise]… But we don’t really know what this peak is going to be – and we know that the politics and the social systems are much more messy.”
Dr Marta Mastropietro, a researcher at Politecnico di Milano in Italy, presented the preliminary results of a study that used emulators – simple climate models – to explore how human development might be impacted under low, medium and high overshoot pathways.
Mastropietro noted how, under all overshoot scenarios studied, both the drop to the human development index (HDI) – an index which incorporates health, knowledge and standard of living – and uncertainty increases as the peak temperature increases.
However, she said “the most important takeaway” from the preliminary results was around society’s constrained ability to recover from damage.
“This percentage of damages that are absorbed is always less than 50%. So, even in the most optimistic scenarios of overshoot, we will not be able to reabsorb these damages, not even half of them. And this is considering a damage function which does not consider irreversible impacts like sea level rise.”
Meanwhile, Dr Inês Gomes Marques from the University of Lisboa in Portugal, shared the results of an as-yet-unpublished study investigating whether the Lisbon metropolitan area holds enough public spaces to offer heatwave relief to the population under overshoot scenarios. The 1,900 “climate refugia” counted by researchers included schools, museums and churches.
Marques noted that most of the population were found to be within one kilometre of a “climate refugia” – but noted that “nuances” would need to be added to the analysis, including a function which considers the limited mobility of older citizens.
She explained that the researchers were aiming to “establish a framework” for this type of analysis that would be relevant to both the science community and municipalities tasked with adaptation. She added:
“The main point is that we need to think about this now, because we will face some big problems if we don’t”.
Legal implications and loss and damage
Significant attention was given throughout the conference to the legal considerations of the breach of – and impetus to return to – the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C warming limit.
This included discussions about how the international legal frameworks should be updated for an “overshoot” world where countries would need to pursue “net-negative” strategies to bring temperatures down to 1.5C.
There were also discussions around governance of geoengineering technologies and the fairness and justice considerations that arise from the real-world impacts of breached targets.
The conference was being held just months after the ICJ’s advisory decision that limiting temperature increase to 1.5C should be considered countries’ “primary temperature goal”.
IIASA’s Shleussner told Carbon Brief that the decision provided “clarity” that countries had a “clear obligation to bring warming back to 1.5C”. He added:
“We may fail to pursue it from below, but it doesn’t relieve us from the obligation to then pursue it from above.”
Prof Lavanya Rajamani, professor of international environmental law at the University of Oxford, insisted that “1.5C was very much alive and well in the legal world”, but noted there were “very significant limits” to what could be achieved through the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) – the global treaty for coordinating the response to climate change – both today and in the future.
Summarising discussions around how countries can be pushed to deliver the “highest possible ambition” in future climate plans submitted to the UN, Rajamani urged delegates to be “tempered in [its] expectations of what we’re going to get from the international regime”. She added:
“Changing the narratives and practices at the national level are far more likely to filter up to the international level than trying to do it from a top-down perspective.”
In a parallel session, Prof Christina Voigt, a professor of international law at the University of Oslo, pointed out that overshoot would require countries to aspire beyond “net-zero emissions” as “the end climate goal” in national plans.
Stabilising emissions at “net-zero” by mid-century would result in warming above 1.5C, she explained, whereas “net-negative” emissions are required to deliver overshoot pathways that return temperatures to below the Paris Agreement’s aspirational limit. She continued:
“We will need frontrunners. Leaders, states, regions would need to start considering negative-emission benchmarks in their climate policies and laws from around mid-century. There will be an expectation that developed country parties take the lead and explore this ‘negativity territory’.”
Voigt added that it was “critical” that nations at the UNFCCC create a “shared understanding” that 1.5C remains the “core target” for nations to aim for, even after it has been exceeded. One possible place for such discussions could be at the 2028 global stocktake, she noted.
She said there would need to be more regulation to scale up CDR in a way that addresses “environmental and social challenges” and an effort to “recalibrate policies and measures” – including around carbon markets – to deliver net-negative outcomes.
In a presentation exploring governance of solar radiation management (SRM), Ewan White, a DPhil student in environmental law at the University of Oxford, said the ICJ’s recent advisory opinion could be interpreted to be “both for and against” solar geoengineering.
Countries tasked with drawing up global rules around SRM in an overshoot world would need to take a “holistic approach to environmental law”, White said. In his view, this should take into account international legal obligations beyond the Paris Agreement and consider issues of intergenerational equity, biodiversity protection and nations’ duty to cooperate.
Dr Shonali Pachauri, research group leader at IIASA, provided an overview of the equity and justice implications that might arise in an overshoot world.
First, she said that delays to emissions reductions today are “shifting the burden” to future generations and “others within this generation” – increasing the need for “corrective justice” and potential loss-and-damage payments.
Second, she said that adaptation efforts would need to increase – which, in turn, would “threaten mitigation ambition” given “constrained decision-making”.
Finally, she pointed to resource consumption issues that might arise in a world of overshoot:
“The different technologies that one might use for CDR often depend on the use of land, water, other materials – and this, of course, then means competing with many other uses [of resources].”
A separate stream focused on loss and damage. Session chair Dr Sindra Sharma, international policy lead at the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network, noted that the concept of loss and damage was “fundamentally transformed” by overshoot – adding there were “deep issues of justice and equity”.
However, Sharma said that the literature on loss and damage “has not yet deeply engaged with the specific concept of overshoot” despite it being “an important, interconnected issue”.
Sessions on loss and damage explored the existence of “hard social limits” under future overshoot scenarios, insurance and the need to bring more factors into assessments of habitability, including biophysical and social-economic constraints.
Communication challenges and next steps
At the conference, scientists and legal experts collaborated on a series of statements that summarised discussions at the conference – one for each research theme and an overarching umbrella statement.
IIASA’s Schleussner told Carbon Brief that the statements represented a “key outcome of the conference” that could provide a “framework” to guide future research.
Nevertheless, he noted that statements are a “work in progress” and set to be “further refined” following feedback from experts not able to attend the conference.
At the time of going to press, the overarching conference statement read as follows:
“Global warming above 1.5C will increase irreversible and unacceptable losses and damages to people, societies and the environment.
“It is imperative to minimise both the maximum warming and duration of overshoot above 1.5C to reduce additional risks of human rights violations and causing irreversible social, ecological and Earth system changes including transgressing tipping points.
“This is required by international law and possible by removing CO2 from the atmosphere and further reducing remaining greenhouse emissions.”
Conference organisers also pointed delegates to an open call for research on “pathways and consequences of overshoot” in the journal Environmental Research Letters. The special issue will be guest edited by a number of scientists who played a key role in the conference.
Meanwhile, communications experts at the conference discussed the challenges inherent in conveying overshoot science to non-experts, noting potential confusion around the word “overshoot” and the difficulties in explaining that the 1.5C limit, while breached, was still a goal.
Holly Simpkin, communications manager at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, urged caution when communicating overshoot science to the general public:
“I don’t know whether ‘overshoot’ is an effective communication framing. It is an important scientific question, but when it comes to near-term action and the requirements that an ambitious overshoot pathway would ask of us, emissions are what are in our control.
“We could spend 10 more years defining this and, actually, it’s quite complex…I think it’s better to be honest about that and to try to be more simple in that frame of communication, knowing that this community is doing a wealth of work that provides a technical basis for those discussions.”
The post Overshoot: Exploring the implications of meeting 1.5C climate goal ‘from above’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Overshoot: Exploring the implications of meeting 1.5C climate goal ‘from above’
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 31 October 2025: Hurricane Melissa strikes Jamaica; Climate plans overshoot 1.5C; Protest crackdowns
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Hurricane Melissa
‘TOTAL DEVASTATION’: Hurricane Melissa has killed at least 49 people after sweeping through the Caribbean islands of Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti and Bermuda, reported Independent. Jamaica’s prime minister Andrew Holness said the storm left “total devastation”, destroying homes and infrastructure and leaving people “stranded on roofs and without power”, said BBC News. In Haiti, at least 30 people were killed in floods, Reuters added.
WARM WATERS: Melissa is tied as the strongest Atlantic hurricane to ever hit land, slamming Jamaica with winds of 185mph and fuelled by anomalously warm waters, reported the Associated Press. Fossil-fuelled climate change made the storm “four times more likely”, according to analysis cited by Agence France-Presse. Early estimates suggest infrastructure damage alone could amount to 40% of Jamaica’s gross domestic product, said the newswire.
RECORD RAINS: Elsewhere, Al Jazeera reported on major floods in central Vietnam, where the former imperial city of Huế saw record rainfall of more than 1,000mm over a 24-hour period, according to the country’s weather agency. The Associated Press reported that climate change is “driving more intense winds, heavier rainfall and shifting precipitation patterns across East Asia”.
Climate plans off track for 1.5C
‘DRASTICALLY SHORT’: The latest national climate plans will cause global emissions to drop 10% by 2035 from 2019 levels, “bending the emissions curve downwards for the first time”, but falling “drastically short” of the 60% cut needed to keep 1.5C in sight, said the Guardian. The plans – known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement – were assessed by the UN in a synthesis report ahead of COP30, the publication said. The 10% cut reflects plans announced by China and the EU, in addition to formal submissions from 64 countries, according to Reuters.
OVERSHOOT ‘INEVITABLE’: UN secretary-general António Guterres said in a joint interview with the Guardian and the Amazonian publication Sumaúma that overshooting 1.5C of global warming was now “inevitable” and would have “devastating consequences”. Guterres “did not give up on the [1.5C] target”, but urged world leaders to “change course” during COP30 to ensure the “overshoot is as short as possible and as low in intensity as possible to avoid tipping points like the Amazon”.
Around the world
- DELIVERY: The UK government published its “carbon budget and growth delivery” plan, outlining policies to meet its mid-2030s climate targets. Read more in Carbon Brief’s in-depth coverage of the plan.
- DEAL UNEARTHED: Donald Trump and Xi Jinping have settled a dispute over rare-earth mineral supplies during trade talks, said the Guardian. Trump described the talks as “amazing” and agreed to reduce tariffs on Chinese goods by 10%, it added.
- AVOIDABLE DEATHS: Climate change and policy “failures” are leading to “millions” of avoidable deaths each year, according to Le Monde’s coverage of the latest Lancet Countdown report on health and climate change.
- DEFORESTATION DOWN: On the eve of hosting COP30, Brazil’s government announced an 11% drop in annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, the fourth consecutive annual fall and lowest deforestation rate since 2014, reported Agence France-Presse.
- DUTCH ELECTION: Democrats 66 (D66), the centrist party led by former climate minister Rob Jetten, narrowly won a snap general election in the Netherlands, said Brussels Signal.
- EU FLEXIBILITY: As the EU continues to negotiate 2040 emissions targets, the bloc is considering a “more flexible path” for industries to meet the goals, reported Reuters.
12 times
The extent to which current finance flows would have to increase to meet developing countries’ adaptation finance needs in 2035, according to the latest UN adaptation gap report covered by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- Young children in sub-Saharan Africa are 77% more at risk from malaria for every 1C temperature increase | PLOS One
- Social media use is linked to “climate anxiety, climate doom and support for radical action” | Climatic Change
- Future droughts could weaken peatlands’ ability to store carbon, creating a positive feedback cycle for climate change | Science
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Carbon Brief explored the importance of soil health for food security and climate change in a new Q&A. As the diagram above illustrates, agricultural soil is composed of four layers – known as soil horizons – containing varying quantities of minerals, organic matter, living organisms, air and water. The world’s soils have lost 133bn tonnes of carbon since the advent of agriculture around 12,000 years ago, with crop production and cattle grazing responsible in equal part.
Spotlight
Crackdowns on climate and environmental activism
This week, Carbon Brief speaks to Mary Lawlor, UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders, who led a recent report highlighting crackdowns on the rights of climate and environmental activists around the world.
Carbon Brief: Why do you see climate change as a human-rights issue?
Mary Lawlor: I don’t think there’s any doubt about climate change being a human-rights issue nowadays, because everyone can see it. It interferes with so many rights. The right to food, for example. We’ve seen the situation where drought, storms and floods interfere with food production. And then if you look at the right to life – according to the WHO, we’re currently seeing an average of 175,000 heat-related deaths per year around the world, and those numbers will increase. But we now also have advisory opinions of the ICJ, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, all of which state clearly that climate change is a reality. They see it as a human-rights crisis.
CB: What human-rights violations are being faced by climate and environmental activists around the world right now?
ML: We went to a lot of Indigenous communities in the Amazon and we saw firsthand the threats against Indigenous defenders in Brazil who are opposing carbon-credit projects in their territories, where they themselves have been reducing deforestation with success for years. Then, for example, there were smears against a lawyer in Argentina who was supporting communities in their legal fight against the extraction of lithium from their territories without their consent. And, then, you have surveillance of climate activists organising peaceful protests against new fossil-fuel projects, for example, in the Philippines. So it’s kind of like an octopus, the tentacles are reaching out.
In some of the more developed countries, like France and Spain, you have accusations of terrorism against peaceful climate-justice movements. In Germany, you had the investigation and prosecution of a climate-justice group for alleged organised crime based solely on their peaceful protests that put no human being in danger and did no harm to anyone.
CB: What are some examples that you’ve seen of good practice by governments in relation to the work of climate and environmental activists?
ML: My favourite is Brazil and MST [Landless Workers’ Movement]. They were aided in their tree-planting programme by the federal authorities, who provided helicopters and the federal highway police piloted these helicopters. Seeds of the endangered juçara palm and araucaria trees could be air-dropped over land in Paraná, after the devastating fires that took place. So that’s my absolute favourite, because it showed how a state and defenders can work together as allies to prevent destruction and even worse climate change.
CB: According to Global Witness, 413 land and environmental defenders were killed in Brazil during 2012-2024. What is the current situation for environmental defenders in Brazil going into COP30?
[Brazil] are really making efforts, as far as I can see, to address the root causes – and this is really why human-rights defenders are in such danger – that is, land is at the heart of all the problems there. But progress is still very slow. At the moment, only 16 territories have been demarcated by [Brazilian president] Lula and that is hugely important because, as I said, it’s at the root of pretty much all the attacks and killings by either the thugs associated with the companies, or the big landowners, the illegal logging, and all the stuff that is happening there. So that is something that we really need a speed up of – the demarcation of Indigenous lands.
When it comes to COP30, they’ve put some effort into making it more inclusive, especially when it comes to bringing the voices and experiences of Indigenous defenders into the negotiations. Now we’ll see what will happen in November and what the negotiations bring.
This interview has been edited for length.
Watch, read, listen
‘GOD’S WILL’: Samaa TV followed four street workers across Pakistan, exploring their views on climate change through the lens of faith.
COP EXPECTATIONS: Down to Earth unpacked what to expect from COP30 from a global-south perspective in their Carbon Politics podcast.
1.5C ALIGNED: Scientist and former UN climate lead Ploy Achakulwisut grappled via a LinkedIn post with the challenges of assessing whether national targets are aligned with a 1.5C world.
Coming up
- 4 November: UN emissions gap 2025 report launch
- 4 November: International Energy Agency (IEA) world energy outlook 2025 report launch
- 6-7 November: COP30 leaders summit, Belém, Brazil
Pick of the jobs
- International Institute for Sustainable Development, head of secretariat, national adaptation plan global network | Salary: CA$129,000-CA$161,000. Location: Ottawa or Toronto, Canada (hybrid)
- SRM360, lead writer/editor | Salary: $100,000-$120,000. Location: Remote
- Project Drawdown, senior analyst, climate philanthropy and investing | Salary: $120,000-$160,000. Location: US
- Climate News Tracker, journalism insights analyst | Salary: Unknown. Location: London (hybrid)
- University of Birmingham, climate and public health policy impact fellow | Salary: £36,636-£46,049. Location: Birmingham, UK
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 31 October 2025: Hurricane Melissa strikes Jamaica; Climate plans overshoot 1.5C; Protest crackdowns appeared first on Carbon Brief.
The UK government has set out a long-awaited plan explaining how it will cut emissions in the 2030s, on its legally bound path to net-zero by the middle of the century.
Under the Climate Change Act, the government must lay out “carbon budgets” that set limits on the UK’s emissions over five-year periods.
In 2021, the government announced it would cut emissions by 78% by 2035 under its sixth carbon budget, but the “delivery plan” detailing how this would be achieved proved contentious.
The new “carbon budget and growth delivery plan” (CBGD) is the third draft, after the previous two delivery plans were successfully challenged in court.
Unlike previous versions, in this plan the government concludes that it has sufficient climate policies to achieve its sixth carbon budget and “96-99%” of its international obligations under the Paris Agreement.
This is in spite of the government scaling back its expectations for various climate policies, including clean-hydrogen production, tree-planting and carbon capture and storage (CCS).
The CBGD plan comes amid a fractured political consensus in the UK on climate action, with the Conservative party vowing to repeal the Climate Change Act and the hard-right Reform UK party repeatedly attacking net-zero.
Below, Carbon Brief gives an overview of the 363 pages of documents included in the plan, what it says about meeting UK emissions targets and what it means for individual sectors.
- Why is there a new ‘carbon budget delivery plan’?
- What does the new delivery plan say?
- How does the new delivery plan meet the UK’s emissions targets?
- What does the delivery plan mean for the UK economy?
Why is there a new ‘carbon budget delivery plan’?
This is the third version of the sixth carbon budget delivery plan produced by the UK government, with the previous two having been ruled unlawful by the High Court.
The then-Conservative government passed the sixth carbon budget in 2021, legislating an emissions cut of 78% below 1990 levels by 2035. Carbon budgets are interim targets that act as “stepping stones” on the pathway to net-zero emissions by 2050.
However, in July 2022, the High Court ruled that the government had breached sections 13 and 14 of the Climate Change Act in adopting the delivery plan for the budget.
These sections refer to the government’s duty to prepare and adopt policies to meet its climate targets and publish on these policies so that parliament and the public can “scrutinise” them.
It ruled that the then-secretary of state Kwasi Kwarteng had “insufficient knowledge” to adopt the plan, as he did not know what emissions savings individual policies would be responsible for.
The plan also lacked “critical information” on a number of elements – for example, the reason for a shortfall in the emissions cuts, according to the claimants Friends of the Earth, ClientEarth and Good Law Project.
The High Court ordered the government to revise its strategy to correct these errors and a new plan was published in March 2023.
Once again, this was challenged in the High Court. The same claimants argued that the government did not consider “delivery risk” in a lawful way or publish sufficient information to allow meaningful scrutiny of its net-zero policies, among other breaches of sections 13 and 14.
In May 2024, the court sided with the claimants, finding that the secretary of state – by that time Claire Coutinho – had not been adequately informed about the delivery risks associated with the proposed policies. It also called for transparent, evidence-based policies to meet the carbon budget.
The government was given a new deadline of May 2025 to publish another version of the delivery plan. This was later extended to October 2025, as a result of last year’s general election.
What does the new delivery plan say?
The new plan includes an overview document highlighting the government’s key political messages and a 238-page report laying out the details of expected emissions cuts.
The government emphasises how its policies will help the UK to “take back control of our energy” by expanding domestic renewables – cutting bills and boosting jobs in the process.
It also highlights how Labour’s climate plans will improve “quality of life and health”, plus help to “protect our natural environment”.
Other components of the delivery plan include a “technical annex” with details of modelling and accounting, an “investor prospectus” that outlines net-zero investment opportunities in the UK and a methane action plan, with sectoral plans for cutting the greenhouse gas.
The plan confirms that the government has all the climate policies in place to meet the UK’s fourth and fifth carbon budgets, covering the period 2023-2032.
Crucially, it also establishes that the government has enough extra policies in the pipeline to ensure 100% of the emissions cuts required for the sixth carbon budget are also achieved.
This is a step up from the plan released by the previous Conservative government, which only covered 97% of the cuts required for the period 2033-2037.
The new report explains that 76% of emissions cuts for the sixth carbon budget are covered by policies that have already been “implemented, adopted or planned”.
The remaining emissions cuts come from 169 additional proposals and policies that have been modelled by the government for the coming years, ranging from electrified steel plants to accelerated rates of tree-planting. The plan also accounts for another 12 “early-stage” proposals.
In addition to its domestic carbon-budget goals, the UK also has international climate targets under the Paris Agreement, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
Unlike carbon budgets, which provide flexibility by allowing a set amount of emissions over a five-year period, the UK’s NDC goals involve specific emissions-reduction targets for single years, compared to a 1990 baseline.
The government calculates that its plans will cut emissions by 66% below 1990 levels by 2030 and 81% by 2035. These reductions are just shy of the UK’s NDC targets for 2030 and 2035 – representing 96% and 99% of the required cuts, respectively.
(Notably, the 2030 NDC target is more ambitious than the UK’s domestic climate target for that period, as the latter was set prior to the UK committing to net-zero emissions by 2050.)
In the delivery plan, the government says it will “seek to improve delivery and, where appropriate, will explore further measures, to ensure that the UK will meet its international commitments”.
The CBGD plan also considers the risk that government climate programmes underdeliver – for example, due to slow consumer uptake of low-carbon technologies.
Part of the legal case against the previous iteration of the plan was centred on its lack of adequate information about delivery risk. The new strategy appears to include a more extensive consideration of risk, stressing that there are “mechanisms in place to monitor and mitigate risks for each individual policy”.
It also states that the emissions savings for each policy are “credible” because, in cases where risks could not be avoided, the government revised down the emissions savings.
As a result, it concludes
“We, therefore, have confidence that each and every proposal and policy will deliver its planned scenario emissions savings.”
How does the new delivery plan meet the UK’s emissions targets?
The government’s CBGD plan lays out what it describes as a “credible level of emission savings”, enabling the UK to hit all of its upcoming domestic carbon budgets under the Climate Change Act.
Yet, a striking aspect of the plan is that the government has, in fact, significantly scaled back its expectations for several important sectors.
Government forecasts of low-carbon hydrogen production and peatland restoration are among the elements that have been downgraded since the 2023 plan. Expectations for biofuel-crop planting have also dropped to zero hectares in the near term.
Some of these policy areas have underperformed so far, such as tree-planting, or are less-established technologies, such as industrial carbon capture and storage (CCS).
These deployment assumptions have been highlighted in red in the table below. The relatively few sectors that have seen ambition ramped up are highlighted by Carbon Brief in green, while those that have remained steady since 2023 are grey.
Comparison of sectoral deployment assumptions in the new carbon budget delivery plan (2025), compared to previous versions from 2023 and 2021. Source: DESNZ. Chart: Carbon Brief
The rolling back of expectations for key emissions-cutting policies raises the question of how the new plan can still put the UK on track to meet its sixth carbon budget, which covers the period 2033-2037.
First, the “baseline” emissions from which future reductions are calculated is considerably lower in 2025 than it was in the 2023 delivery plan.
This is largely because a set of policies that were previously “under development” have now been integrated into the baseline, as they are considered “implemented or developed”.
These include the zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate to encourage electric-car sales and the “sustainable aviation fuel” (SAF) mandate to drive the uptake of “clean” aviation fuels.
Together with some modelling adjustments, these changes reduced baseline emissions by 46.1m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) during the sixth carbon budget period. This shrinks the emissions gap that must be filled by upcoming climate policies and proposals.
Crucially, there are also three new categories of emissions savings that the Labour government has introduced, all of which further reduce this gap.
First, the government has captured the impact of various societal shifts that could affect decarbonisation, using the term “wider factors” to describe such changes. As an example, it mentions “developments in digital technologies including AI”.
Together, the plan states that these factors could “credibly” cut emissions by an extra 99MtCO2e in the sixth carbon budget period.
Second, the government also has a new category termed “other early-stage policies and proposals”. These are ideas deemed too preliminary to fully model, except for the sixth carbon budget period, during which the government estimates they could contribute an extra 43MtCO2e in emissions cuts.
Among these proposals are marine CO2 removals, saltmarsh restoration and policies to boost the market for “low-carbon industrial products”.
Finally, another 24MtCO2e over the sixth carbon budget period comes from what the government calls “cascade effects”. These “occur when changes in one system propagate through connected systems” – for example, when the uptake of net-zero technology becomes a “social norm”, the plan explains.
The combined impact of these three additional factors – none of which were considered in the 2023 plan – can be seen in the chart below.
Collectively, these components help to cut the remaining emissions during the sixth carbon budget period by 34MtCO2e, compared to the 2023 plan, in the government’s forecast. This is enough to meet the target, according to the government, rather than breaching it by 32MtCO2e as the previous plan did.
What does the delivery plan mean for the UK economy?
The CBGD plan includes an overview of how the government plans to make changes across different sectors of the economy, in order to bring down their emissions in the 2030s.
Transport
The transport sector continues to be the UK’s biggest source of emissions, accounting for 26% of the country’s total, the CBGD plan says. This figure rises to 35% when the UK’s contribution to international aviation and shipping is considered.
In 2023, road travel accounted for around 90% of domestic transport emissions, the plan continues, chiefly from journeys by petrol cars and vans.
After entering power in July 2024, the Labour government met a manifesto pledge to reinstate a 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles.
This target was originally set by the Conservative government under Boris Johnson’s leadership in 2020, but then delayed to 2035 by Rishi Sunak in 2023 as part of a wider rollback of net-zero policies.
Johnson’s government had also pledged to introduce a zero emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate to set specific sales targets for car manufacturers in the lead up to the ban.
The ZEV mandate came into force in January 2024. Labour’s CBGD plan notes that it is “driving sales that made the UK Europe’s largest zero-emission car market in 2024 and the third largest globally”.
However, despite growing numbers of EVs on UK roads, the market is currently set to miss the ZEV mandate for 2025. In May, EVs accounted for 21.8% of new car registrations, below the 28% target set by the ZEV mandate.
In April this year, the government made some “tweaks” to the ZEV mandate, including introducing rules allowing manufacturers to count hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles towards their pure EV sales goals.
In a letter to the transport secretary, the Climate Change Committee warned that the changes “could encourage a greater role for hybrid vehicles and a reduction in emissions savings”.
In addition, Labour’s CBGD plan sets out less ambitious targets for the total proportion of ZEV cars on UK roads than previous strategies set out under the Conservatives in 2021 and 2023.
Namely, the CBGD plan sets targets of 21% of all cars being ZEV by 2030 and 48% by 2035. This compares to targets of 24% by 2030 and 53% by 2035 set under the 2021 net-zero strategy.
The government’s new CBGD plan notes that key risks to delivering its planned cuts to transport emissions include that “zero emission cars and vans do not displace their petrol and diesel counterparts at the rate we forecast”. This is as a result of lower than anticipated demand or “wider global supply chain challenges”.
Another key risk could be “unanticipated growth in travel demand”, with this being “most acute for our projections of emissions from cars, vans and air travel”, the plan says.
Commentators have noted a lack of new action in the plan to tackle emissions from rising demand for air travel in the UK.
Juliet Michaelson, director of climate charity Possible, said in a statement that the plan “still lacks realistic thinking on the most difficult to decarbonise areas, such as aviation”.
Colin Walker, head of transport at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), added that the government is continuing to “pin its hopes for cutting aviation emissions on sustainable aviation fuels and technological innovations that are still very much in their infancy”, while “failing to encourage ultra-frequent flyers from making more sustainable choices”.
Heat and buildings
Buildings remain one of the biggest sources of emissions in the UK, accounting for 74MtCO2e in 2023, or 17% of the country’s emissions.
This is predominantly due to the use of gas in heating systems, with 85% of UK homes using the fossil fuel to keep warm, according to the NGO Nesta.
However, efforts to decarbonise emissions from heating, in particular, have been viewed as contentious in some sections of the UK media, with outlets often referencing the “fury” of the public at policies dubbed “boiler bans” or “boiler taxes”.
One of the most significant policies to cut emissions in the sector is the “warm homes plan”, which the government is planning to publish “shortly”. The plan was set to be published in October, but is now expected after the autumn budget in November.
The scheme was first announced in spring 2025 by the newly appointed Labour government, with the goal of lifting more than a million households out of fuel poverty by 2030. During the spending review over the summer, the government said £13.2bn would be allocated to the scheme.
The policy is set to support the rollout of heat pumps and heat networks, alongside energy efficiency measures and other technologies, such as solar and batteries. More details are set to follow when the warm homes plan is published.
Beyond this, the CBGD plan includes other previously announced policies, such as the “boiler upgrade scheme”, which provides vouchers of up to £7,500 to support the rollout of heat pumps. The plan notes that the budget for this scheme has been almost doubled this financial year to £295 and funding will continue to increase each year up to 2029/30.
The delivery plan states that the government’s “vision is that, over the next decade, low-carbon solutions will become the natural choice for all households”.
It adds that, by the early 2030s, the government expects that more than one million existing homes will transition to low-carbon heating, as part of the “normal cycle of replacing an existing heating appliance (such as a gas boiler) at the end of its life”. By 2035, low-carbon heating will represent the majority of all heating-system replacements.
This new target seems to take over from the previous goal of 600,000 installations a year by 2028, which was included in the previous two versions of the CBGD plan. While the number of installations has been increasing, the UK has consistently fallen short of the level needed to meet this goal.
Additionally, the delivery plan removes the controversial “ban” on the sale of gas boilers in 2035, set under the previous Conservative government. The government notes that it will “continue to refine” its approach in coming years and consider additional interventions if needed.
The delivery plan’s technical annex notes that the modelling does not include any use of hydrogen for heating at present, but that the government will consult on it further in the future. It adds:
“As hydrogen is not yet a proven technology for home heating, any role would come much later and would likely be limited. If we conclude that hydrogen could play a role then some of the savings to be delivered by heat pump deployment in on gas grid homes could instead be delivered through hydrogen heating.”
Industry, CCS and hydrogen
In 2023, the UK’s industry emissions were 64MtCO2e, equivalent to 15% of total territorial emissions, the government says.
According to the CBGD plan, this represents a 12% decrease from 2019 levels and a 60% drop from 1990 levels.
The plan notes that the industrial sector “has a significant contribution to make to enable carbon budgets to be met”.
In June, the government set out a 10-year industry strategy, which it says aims to “drive long-term sustainable, inclusive and secure growth through securing investment into crucial sectors of the economy”.
The plan says that the government will also set out a “refreshed industrial decarbonisation plan”, which will “set the strategic direction for our approach to working with industry towards a competitive and low-carbon industrial base in the UK”.
It continues that the government is “looking at what could be delivered with further government action on resource and energy efficiency, fuel switching and CCUS [carbon, capture, utilisation and storage]”.
The plan says that the government is supporting fuel-switching and energy efficiency through its industrial energy transformation fund, which was launched in 2020 with plans to support the deployment of projects until 2028. (In July, the government confirmed that it is closing the fund to new applicants.)
In June, Miliband confirmed that £200m will be provided to progress the Acorn carbon capture and storage (CCS) scheme in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
Despite this, the CBGD plan is less ambitious on both industrial resource efficiency and industrial CCS than previous net-zero strategies under the Conservatives in 2021 and 2023.
The government’s 2021 net-zero strategy set a target of industrial resource efficiency providing 11MtCO2e in savings by 2035. However, the CBGD plan has a target of just 5.4MtCO2e.
In addition, the 2021 net-zero strategy targeted 7MtCO2e of industrial CCS by 2035. The CBGD plan targets just 4.3MtCO2e.
The CBGD also cuts back a separate target for engineered greenhouse gas removal (GGR) techniques to provide 5MtCO2 in emissions savings by 2030, first made in the 2021 net-zero strategy.
(Engineered GGRs are technological methods for removing CO2 from the atmosphere, such as by using giant fans to suck the gas out of the air.)
The CBGD revises down this target to just 0.51MtCO2 a year from 2028-32.
Commenting on this decision, Prof Steve Smith, a GGR scientist at the University of Oxford, posted on LinkedIn, saying:
“This revision is reflective of the fact that little-to-no removal tech has actually been deployed in the UK since the 5Mt target was set. 2030 is really not far away in project development terms. We know from 20 years of experience with emission reductions that plans often fall behind (e.g. home insulation, CCS). Sensible strategy involves pursuing new technologies while being live to the risk of over-optimism in them.”
On hydrogen, the CBGD plan says the government is continuing to “support the rollout of hydrogen production to meet demand across sectors requiring hydrogen to decarbonise”.
It notes that, as part of the autumn 2024 budget, the government confirmed support for 11 green hydrogen projects and shortlisted another 27 projects for potential approval in April 2025.
However, the CBGD also significantly reduces ambition on clean hydrogen production, compared to previous net-zero strategies.
The CBGD targets 4 terawatt hours (TWh) of clean hydrogen production by 2030 and 24TWh by 2035. This compares to 40TWh by 2030 and 80-140TWh by 2035 under the 2021 net-zero strategy.
On LinkedIn, Harry Smith, an industrial emissions expert at the consultancy Aether, posted that the “deployment of low-carbon hydrogen no longer meets the 2030 targets set out in the 2021 UK hydrogen strategy”.
A new hydrogen strategy is due to be published this autumn.
Electricity
The power sector now makes up 10% of the UK’s emissions, accounting for around 44MtCO2e in 2023. Of this, gas combustion makes up around 75%.
Overall, the sector has decarbonised significantly, with CO2 emissions per unit of electricity falling by more than two-thirds in a decade, according to previous Carbon Brief analysis.
This is due to the rollout of renewable energy technologies and the closure of coal-fired power plants.
However, the UK has some of the most expensive electricity in the world. While this is due predominantly to gas prices – which set the wholesale cost of electricity 98% of the time – it remains a challenge for driving decarbonisation through electrification.
The cost of electricity in the UK is a key focus of the CBGD plan, which notes:
“The price disparity between electricity and gas needs to be addressed to make it more attractive for consumers to install clean technologies like heat pumps. Over this parliament, the government will be working relentlessly to translate the much cheaper wholesale costs of clean power into lower bills for consumers. This will be core to every decision we make. We will set out our plan in due course.”
The new CBGD plan does not include “rebalancing” the cost of gas bills relative to electricity, as the previous delivery plan did. It also does not consider shifting levies away from electricity bills.
Instead, the focus is broadly on the expansion of clean-power technologies, predominantly through pre-existing policies.
This includes investing in 80 power networks and enabling infrastructure projects, costing an estimated £40bn annually in the coming years. The plan recognises that the electricity network “must undergo unprecedented expansion”. (It is worth noting that, with or without net-zero targets in place, the UK’s grid would need constant investment and upgrades.)
The government also notes that it will work to “ensure appropriate planning arrangements, acceleration of grid connections and strong supply chains” to underpin this.
For example, the “strategic spatial energy plan” was commissioned to the National Energy System Operator in October 2024 and aims to “support a more actively planned approach” to electricity infrastructure.
The CBGD plan often points to the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan, published in December 2024, which set out the government’s approach to decarbonising the electricity sector by 2030.
It states that the government is investing “record amounts in clean energy, climate and nature”, including £63bn in capital funding.
The plan specifically highlights a final investment decision that was taken earlier this year to build Sizewell C nuclear power plant in Suffolk, with £14.2bn in funding allocated to the project. The government has also brought in reforms to the upcoming contracts for difference renewable energy subsidy auction to “maximise competition between bidders and reduce the costs to consumers”.
In addition, the first projects by the government’s new, publicly owned clean-energy company, Great British Energy, have also now been launched.
To support the rapid expansion of power-sector infrastructure, the plan notes that the “urgent need for change means we must undertake a wide-ranging reform programme”.
Finally, the plan notes that “hydrogen to power” has the “potential to play a key role” in the electricity system, along with other technologies that offer flexibility, such as power CCUS and energy storage.
Farming and land use
In 2023, agriculture and other land use accounted for 11% of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions, when international aviation and shipping is included, the CBGD plan says.
It adds that cow and sheep farming “currently make up the largest share of these emissions”.
The CBGD lists some of the government’s major policies for cutting emissions from agriculture and land use.
This includes the environment land management schemes (Elms), a post-Brexit project to pay farmers to cut CO2 emissions and protect nature on their land, first introduced by Boris Johnson’s government in 2020.
The CBGD plan says that “half of all farmed land” is now under Elms and that spending for the schemes will increase from £800m in 2023-24 to £2bn by 2028-29.
The National Farmers Union (NFU) has previously called the claim that spending had increased “misleading”, as farmers were originally promised a figure of £2.4bn a year from Elms after Brexit, the Guardian reported.
The largest of the Elms schemes is the sustainable farming initiative, the CBGD plan says.
In May, the government was forced to reverse a decision to close applications for the scheme after the NFU threatened legal action, according to Edie.
More widely, Labour’s plans to introduce an inheritance tax on farmers when businesses are worth more than £1m has caused mass protests across the country in recent months.
The CBGD plan revises down its deployment assumptions for the percentage of farmers taking up low-carbon practices, when compared to net-zero strategies from the Conservatives in 2021 and 2023.
Previous net-zero strategies set an assumption of 75% of farmers taking up low-carbon practices by 2030 and 85% by 2035. The CBGD sets assumptions of 67% by 2030 and 74% by 2035.
The Climate Change Committee has said the government must have a comprehensive plan for restoring peatlands if it is to meet the UK’s net-zero goal.
Healthy peatlands are carbon-rich habitats that support a range of species. However, some 80% of the UK’s peatlands are degraded, with the carbon they release accounting for 5% of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
The CBGD plan says that, under the Elms landscape recovery scheme, 35,000 hectares of peatlands will be restored, in addition to the 30,000 hectares targeted for restoration under a separate nature for climate peatland grant scheme.
However, the CBGD also revises down its deployment assumptions for peatland restoration, compared to previous net-zero strategies.
The 2021 net-zero strategy assumed that just over 10,000 hectares of peatlands would be restored in 2030. The CBGD plan has a lower figure of just under 8,000 hectares for the same date.
The CBGD plan also significantly revises down expectations for tree-planting, compared to previous strategies.
The 2021 net-zero strategy assumed that 40,000 hectares of new trees would be planted in 2030. The CBGD has a much lower number of 7,455 hectares for 2030.
Tom Cantillon, senior analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), noted in a statement that the CBGD plan “seems to reduce ambition” on restoring peatlands and planting trees. He adds:
“With climate change worsening flooding in the UK, unless we work with nature by planting more trees and restoring habitats like peatlands to capture rainfall, people’s homes and farmers’ fields will be at ever greater risk.”
The post Q&A: The UK government’s ‘carbon budget delivery plan’ for 2035 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: The UK government’s ‘carbon budget delivery plan’ for 2035
Greenhouse Gases
China Briefing 30 October 2025: 15th ‘five-year plan’ priorities; 2035 wind goal; ‘Vehicle-to-grid’ tech
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing.
China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
China’s next ‘five-year plan’
NEW PLAN: The Chinese Communist party held its fourth plenum meeting, reported the Guardian, which described it as a “key meeting in the country’s political cycle and a crucial one in the development of its 15th ‘five-year plan’”. China’s “five-year plans” serve as blueprints guiding the country’s economic and social development. The 15th one runs from 2026-30. While the plan will not be released until next year, the full text of the official “adopting recommendations” said a “main target” will be making “major new progress in building a beautiful China”. This includes a “green production and lifestyle to be basically established [and] the carbon-peak target [for 2030] to be achieved as scheduled”, according to the text.
TECHNOLOGY AND ‘INVOLUTION’: The Guardian’s report highlighted the “recommendations” for technology investments and a “crackdown on ‘involution’” – a reference to “fierce internal competition” that has, in the past, led to oversupply. In a “15th ‘five-year plan’ explanation” speech, Chinese president Xi Jinping said “it should be noted that the development of new quality productive forces”, which largely relies on technology, requires “full consideration of practical feasibility”, according to the transcript published by state news agency Xinhua. He also called on local officials to avoid a “rush” to develop projects, when talking about using technological innovation for “promoting a comprehensive green transformation”.
‘GREEN’ TRANSITION: At a post-meeting press conference, Zheng Shanjie, head of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said the “comprehensive realisation of green transformation” requires the construction and implementation of the “dual control of carbon” system and the “green and low-carbon” transition of energy, as well as “industrial structure” and “production and lifestyle”. The National Energy Administration (NEA) also pledged to “focus on” building a “clean, low-carbon, safe and efficient new energy system” at a separate meeting, reported industry news outlet BJX News. Belinda Schäpe, China policy analyst from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), commented on LinkedIn that the commitment to build the “dual control of carbon” was “expected”. She added that the “reaffirmation” of renewable expansion was an “important signal given the uncertainty of the sector’s future after the policy pricing reform” came into force earlier this year.
EXPERT REACTION: Schäpe called the mention of “[promoting the] peaking [of] coal and oil consumption” an “important signal”, as this is the first time “such language appears in a top-level planning document”. The oil-peak target “aligns with international expectations” and the “references to ‘clean and efficient use’ and ‘orderly replacement’ suggest a managed transformation of coal’s role – focusing on retrofits, flexibility and system support rather than new capacity growth”, she added. This suggestion of a peaking for coal and oil “allows” coal consumption to “increase in the early years of the five-year period”, according to a LinkedIn post by Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst from CREA. He said the peaking suggestion, although “in line with the goal of peaking [carbon dioxide] CO2 emissions before 2030”, provides “no guarantees of achieving a [CO2] reduction from 2025 to 2030, let alone starting from 2025”. The “most important question” for the next “five-year plan”, he added, is “whether China is committed to honouring the 2021 commitments: reducing carbon intensity by 65% from 2005 to 2030 and ‘gradually reducing coal consumption’” over the next five years.
Pre-COP30 report
CLIMATE REPORT: The Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) released an annual report on “China’s policies and actions on climate change 2025” ahead of COP30, reported the Chinese media outlet 21st Century Business Herald. The newspaper quoted Xia Yingxian, director of the MEE’s department of climate change, saying the report “showcased” China’s “significant contributions to mitigation, adaptation, carbon markets, carbon footprint, climate policies and regulations and leading global climate governance”.
GLOBAL COOPERATION: The Paper, a Shanghai-based media outlet, reported that Xia said China “follows through” on its global climate cooperation commitments. Speaking about the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi said climate change has become an “urgent issue” and – in an apparent reference to the US – added that no country can “be a deserter”, according to a video posted by China News. Vice premier Ding Xuexiang also “said that China stands ready to work with all parties to advance global green development”, reported Xinhua. China’s stance on global climate cooperation was reiterated at a G20 environmental meeting in South Africa, according to International Energy Net.
China-EU climate cooperation
FINANCE: The 21st Century Business Herald wrote that the MEE’s report indicated COP30 should make “positive progress” in meeting the financial targets agreed at COP29 – the “aspirational” target of $1.3tn a year and at least $300bn of climate finance a year by 2035. Xia said the $300bn pledge did not “fully reflect” the “capital contribution obligations of developed countries”, added the outlet. Meanwhile, the EU’s climate chief Wopke Hoekstra asked China to boost its climate-finance offering, reported European news website Euractiv. He said “China is an upper middle income country” and “Europe just simply does not have the pockets” to provide all the needed climate finance “by itself”, according to the outlet.
CLIMATE TIES: In a press release following a recent meeting between Chinese premier Li Qiang and European Council president António Costa, Costa was quoted saying that “climate action has to remain [at the] top of our agendas” and that COP30 will “offer an opportunity for the EU and China to lead with ambition in order to achieve a successful outcome”. The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post said Li also expressed Beijing’s willingness to work with the EU on matters including “the environment”. Costa added that “I shared my strong concern about China’s expanding export controls on critical raw materials”, urging Li to “restore as soon as possible fluid, reliable and predictable supply chains”, according to the press release.
-
Sign up to Carbon Brief’s free “China Briefing” email newsletter. All you need to know about the latest developments relating to China and climate change. Sent to your inbox every Thursday.
EXPORT CONTROLS: The trade dispute over China’s supply of rare earths was “settled” during a meeting between US president Donald Trump and his counterpart Xi in South Korea earlier today, reported the Guardian. Reuters said China agreed to delay the introduction of the next round of export controls, but that earlier restrictions on critical minerals will remain. The rare-earth minerals “play tiny, but vital roles” in products such as cars, planes and weapons, the newswire added. The US will also lower tariffs on some Chinese imports, according to ABC News.
More wind, less coal
COAL DECLINE: Official data showed that China’s thermal power generation – mainly from coal – dropped 5.4% in September, reported Bloomberg. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is consulting on its new steel capacity “swap” policy that aims to “promote market supply and demand balance”. Reuters said this was a “more stringent” swapping plan than the previous one that has been paused for 14 months. Shen Xinyi, researcher from CREA, explained on LinkedIn that the new programme “raises the replacement ratio to 1.5:1 nationwide” and encourages cross-regional swaps. She added the measures “signal a deeper shift: from expansion control to structural optimisation and decarbonisation”, calling it a “strategic move to restructure and rebalance China’s steel landscape”.
MORE WIND: A new industry proposal, the “Beijing Declaration on Wind Energy 2.0”, put forward a goal for the country’s wind capacity to reach “1.3 terawatts (TW) by 2030, at least 2TW by 2035 and a staggering 5TW by 2060”, said state-run newspaper China Daily. The outlet called the new plan a “significant increase” from an earlier declaration, which had targeted 3TW by 2060. The same group of wind-industry players are “lobbying the government to install at least 120 gigawatts (GW) of wind-power capacity in each of the next five years, an acceleration of the country’s energy transition that would more than double output by the end of the decade”, reported Bloomberg. The official goal is to install 3.6TW of capacity for wind and solar power combined by 2035, added the outlet.
OVERSEAS EXPANSION: After two years of talk with the UK government, Chinese wind turbine manufacturer Ming Yang announced that it wants to build a £1.5bn project in Scotland, said BBC News. European governments, however, were “increasingly wary of Chinese companies’ involvement” in offshore wind, which is a “cornerstone of northern Europe’s clean-energy strategy”, reported Reuters. Exports of China’s other renewable energy products, namely, the “new three” – lithium-ion batteries, solar cells and electric vehicles (EVs) – rose nearly 40% year-on-year in September, according to official data, reported financial outlet Caixin. Separately, China “sent a clear signal that it is willing to pull the plug on subsidies” for the EV industry, said Reuters.
Spotlight
Q&A: How China is developing ‘vehicle-to-grid’ to strengthen its electricity system
China’s surging electric vehicles (EVs) ownership – now exceeding 25.5m – is opening the door to a new technology that turns EVs into “power banks” to help with the flexibility of electricity supply.
Carbon Brief looks into the technology, known as “vehicle-to-grid” (V2G), and explains how it has sparked interest in China. The full article is available on Carbon Brief’s website.
How can V2G help balance the grid?
In China, EVs with bidirectional batteries, when plugged into V2G-capable charging stations, are able to sell their stored electricity back to the grid in nine “pilot cities”, including Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
Dr Muyi Yang, senior electricity analyst at thinktank Ember, told Carbon Brief that a fleet of grid-connected EVs could help China achieve its broader plan to restructure its power sector towards a “new power system” that aims to be more flexible and responsive to power volatility.
Zhou Xiaohang, China clean-power project manager at the US-registered Natural Resource Defense Council in Beijing, told Carbon Brief that, in the long run, V2G can help to address the curtailment issue for renewable energy, which is often referred to as the “Xiaona” problem in China.
What is the current state of V2G adoption?
Currently, V2G has not been widely deployed in China. The cost of V2G infrastructure installation remains high.
Zhou said the success of large-scale roll out of V2G depends on whether there are enough EVs equipped with the bidirectional batteries and able to be plugged into V2G-capable charging stations.
China “already [has] enough EVs on the road to make [V2G] possible”, she added.
Meanwhile, popular car brands such as BYD and Nio have released new EV models with V2G features and many more are actively testing and preparing for two-way electric charging.
There are 30 demonstration projects going on at the moment. Shenzhen, for example, received more than 70,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity from about 2,500 EVs in June.
Regional governments have also been working to introduce more profitable pricing systems to boost user participation.
Guangdong province, in south China, launched a V2G pricing plan that is “appealing” enough for EV owners to see a profit from participating in the scheme, according to Zhou.
What are the challenges in expansion?
A large share of China’s electricity is still traded through long-term power contracts, which could limit incentives for individual EV owners to engage in power-trading.
Shen Xinyi, researcher at Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), told Carbon Brief:
“Flexible systems like V2G and distributed solar power need a well-developed spot market and experienced, professional players such as power retailers to truly thrive.”
Zhou said whether V2G can be rolled out at scale also depends on the attitudes of consumers.
Chinese media outlet the Paper reported that people had expressed concerns on battery health and safety issues, including whether frequent discharges could cause battery degradation.
In April 2024, Hui Dong, chief technical expert at the China Electric Power Research Institute, a research institute affiliated to the State Grid Corporation of China, stated that, in terms of lifespan, chemical energy storage systems, represented by lithium-ion batteries, are still “underperforming”.
Watch, read, listen
CARBON REDUCTION: Prof Jiang Yi, director of building energy research centre at Tsinghua University, explained how to “reduce carbon” on both “the side of production” and “the side of consumption” in an interview with financial outlet Yicai.
INDONESIA’S JOURNEY: The China Global South Project aired a podcast on China’s role in “Indonesia’s push for clean energy and more coal”.
CLIMATE STATEMENTS: China Daily published a list of climate statements from prominent Chinese politicians and researchers, including Liu Zhenmin, China special envoy for climate change.
ENERGY CHALLENAGES: In a long interview with 21st Century Business Herald, Energy Foundation China president Zou Ji said “grid integration challenges” are the most “immediate obstacle” to China’s clean-energy buildout.
5tn
The growth in “added value” – a component of economic output – of China’s “green industries” from 2020-25, in Chinese yuan ($700bn), according to 21st Century Business Herald. The newspaper quoted Ren Yong, chief engineer at the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, saying that the “added value of green and low-carbon sectors in key industries” accounted for 8.3% of GDP in 2020 and is expected to rise to 11.7% in 2025, according to the newspaper. [Previous analysis for Carbon Brief found clean-energy industries accounted for 10% of China’s GDP in 2024.]
New science
Ecology and Society
New research examined different approaches to assessing the vulnerability of fisheries to climate impacts, finding that using a data-driven approach can result in differing vulnerability than using a “knowledge-driven” one. The authors wrote that their results underline the “importance of engaging local knowledge to validate findings and provide contextualised interpretations for more effective management strategies”.
Mechanisms behind the rapid rise of extreme heat discomfort days in south China
Npj climate and atmospheric science
The number and strength of extreme heat discomfort days in south China has undergone a “sharp rise” since 2000, according to a new study. Researchers used observational weather data and a machine-learning model to determine the atmospheric circulation patterns that cause the extreme events. They found that an area of high pressure over the Pacific Ocean weakened the summer monsoon winds.
China Briefing is compiled by Wanyuan Song and Anika Patel. It is edited by Wanyuan Song and Dr Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org
The post China Briefing 30 October 2025: 15th ‘five-year plan’ priorities; 2035 wind goal; ‘Vehicle-to-grid’ tech appeared first on Carbon Brief.
“No Trump”
At Rallies in Utah and Wyoming, PacifiCorp Customers Urge the Utility to Pursue Renewables
Trump Inks Rare Earth Deals with Japan and Southeast Asia to Secure Supply Chains
Spanish-language misinformation on renewable energy spreads online, report shows
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
The toxic gas flares fuelling Nigeria’s climate change – BBC News
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Spanish-language misinformation on renewable energy spreads online, report shows
-
Climate Change3 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Climate Change Videos2 years ago
The toxic gas flares fuelling Nigeria’s climate change – BBC News
-
Greenhouse Gases1 year ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Greenhouse Gases3 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Climate Change1 year ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits
-
Renewable Energy4 months ago
US Grid Strain, Possible Allete Sale