So-called “debt-for-nature swaps” have regained prominence in recent years as part of efforts to raise finance for conservation efforts across biodiverse developing countries.
These “swaps” are financial agreements in which a conservation organisation or government reduces, restructures or buys a developing country’s debt at a discount in exchange for investment in local conservation activities.
Despite a biodiversity “finance gap” estimated at $700bn per year, little finance has been forthcoming from developed countries to help debt-distressed lower-income countries meet their biodiversity and climate targets.
One expert, who helped Ecuador negotiate a debt conversion deal in 2023, tells Carbon Brief that these swaps are “a very tangible strategy that is starting to be proven”.
He adds that they are one of the “big sustainable financing tools that can help” support global-south countries in following through on international treaties.
However, critics are less optimistic about the feasibility of debt-for-nature swaps.
Another expert tells Carbon Brief that the swaps are “far too small to have any impact at all” on the debt of developing countries and that they are “not even marginal to a solution at the current level of their size”.
Additionally, she says, “there’s no evidence that they have worked for nature”.
In this Q&A, Carbon Brief examines how debt-for-nature swaps work, the criticism they have received and whether they can alleviate biodiversity loss and climate change in developing countries.
- Where did the idea of debt-for-nature swaps come from?
- How do debt-for-nature swaps work?
- How are they gaining traction in nature finance and conservation policy?
- What are some of the chief criticisms of debt-for-nature swaps?
- Can debt-for-nature swaps be done better?
Where did the idea of debt-for-nature swaps come from?
The idea of debt swaps emerged in response to the global debt crisis of 1982-83 brought on by multiple shocks to the world economy.
The 1979-80 “oil shock”, for example, more than doubled the real price of oil for the oil-importing developing countries, raising interest rates on debt and reducing how much foreign exchange they could raise to service their debts.
This mushrooming crisis led to the creation of a secondary market for developing country debt in 1982, where loans to developing countries could be traded at a market-determined price.
This paved the way for “swaps” of various kinds, where banks could trade their foreign debt at a discount and reduce their financial exposure to precarious loans, while private investors could gain a foothold in new markets that were otherwise closed off to them.
In 1984, ecologist Dr Thomas Lovejoy – then a vice president of science at WWF – wrote a column in the New York Times advocating for swaps where the local currency raised would go towards conservation.
Unlike previous debt swaps driven by a profit motive and giving multinationals “equity” in a country, debt-for-nature swaps were supposed to benefit the debtor country. Lovejoy’s column is widely recognised as one of the “catalysts” for debt-for-nature swaps.
Three years later, in 1987, US-based Conservation International entered into the first-ever debt-for-nature agreement with Bolivia.
In exchange for the Bolivian government’s commitment to grant maximum legal protection to nearly 4m hectares in the Amazon Basin, Conservation International bought $650,000 worth of debt from a swiss bank for $100,000. Bolivia also agreed to provide $250,000 in local currency for management activities in the Beni Reserve.
Even early proponents of debt-for-nature swaps acknowledged that they were “no panacea” for environmental issues in the least-developed countries. Nevertheless, they continued to be popular and have seen a resurgence in the post-Covid era.
How do debt-for-nature swaps work?
In its simplest sense, a debt-for-nature swap involves:
- An indebted, biodiverse developing country.
- A creditor or a group of creditors, such as other governments or private bondholders.
- International conservation organisations, to buy back the debt.
- Local conservation organisations, to implement the swap.
International conservation organisations or private foundations based in the global north have initiated or brokered most debt-for-nature swaps.
Other actors and intermediaries involved in swaps can include commercial banks, multilateral development banks, private finance institutions, insurance companies and legal and financial advisors.
Today, there are many different kinds of debt-for-nature deals in progress, but swaps can broadly be classified as “private”, involving commercial debt, or “public”, involving the debt between governments.
Private debt swaps
In private debt swaps, NGOs offer to buy back part of a government’s commercial debt from private creditors at a significant discount compared to the debt’s face value.
The indebted country then commits to repaying this debt – in whole or in part and generally in local currency. The amount generated by this payment – the difference between the price paid in local currency and the discounted price the NGO buys the debt for – is then put into an environmental protection fund administered by the conservation NGO.
While this was the model for most debt-for-nature swaps until 2008, arrangements have grown more complex in recent years.
The “buy-back” of debt claims by NGOs, for instance, has grown to take the form of various kinds of bonds – essentially, an IOU or loan issued by a government or company, whereby the issuer promises to pay back the face value of the loan on a set date, with regular interest.
For example, the Nature Conservancy set up a trust fund in 2015 which issued a $15.2m “blue bond” that private philanthropic funds paid into. This sum was then lent to the Seychelles government, which used it to buy back $21.6m of debt from the Paris Club of developed country creditors.
In exchange, Seychelles pledged to protect 30% of its marine area and 15% of high-biodiversity regions, along with upgrading its marine mapping and fisheries policies.
Despite a total debt reduction of only $1.4m, the island state committed to investing $5.6m in marine conservation and $3m towards an endowment trust fund.
Public debt swaps
Swaps of debt between countries in exchange for conservation commitments are known as “public debt-for-nature swaps”.
Here, the indebted, biodiverse country restructures or buys back debt from a lender country at a reduced price. The interest or a percentage of the buy-back price then goes toward environmental protection.
The first such swap took place in 1988 between Costa Rica and the Netherlands to finance a 4,000-hectare reforestation programme.
These bilateral debt-for-nature swaps have seen a resurgence in the past year or so.
In January 2023, for instance, Portugal signed an agreement to swap up to $140m of Cape Verde’s debt for investments in a special environmental and climate fund, with more debt relief determined by how its former colony meets key climate and nature goals.
In September last year, the US and Peru entered into a swap agreement covering more than $20m of Peru’s debt to the US. The money will go towards a conservation fund to protect three priority areas in the Amazon rainforest and provide grants to local communities and NGOs.
How are swaps gaining traction in nature finance and conservation policy?
Since the 1980s, 145 debt-for-nature swaps worldwide have written off $3.7bn from the face value of debt globally, according to a 2022 report by the African Development Bank (AfDB).
Most of the debt swaps – $2.4bn of the total – have occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Carbon Brief has compiled a list of debt swaps that have taken place around the world. This is based on data from the African Development Bank report, along with reports from governments, conservation organisations and the media. It is not an exhaustive list.
The map below shows where swaps have taken place. The circles indicate the financial size of the debt involved in the swap, while the colours show the decade in which the swap was completed.
Debt-for-nature swap deals around the world over 1987-2023. The size of the circles corresponds to the face value of debt being swapped for conservation investments by countries, while the colour of the circles corresponds to the decade in which the swaps took place. Source: Carbon Brief analysis of African Development Bank (2022) and media and conservation organisations reports (2022), WWF Center for Conservation Finance (2003) and Eurodad (2023). Debt values not adjusted for inflation.
At the COP15 climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, debt-for-nature swaps featured at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change for the first time. They were included in the negotiating text after Indonesia introduced “external debt swap/relief” as a source of finance.
At COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh in 2022, the Sustainable Debt Coalition Initiative was established with the support of 16 countries. It asked for debt swaps and other mechanisms to tackle both climate change and financial stability concerns.
At COP28 in Dubai last year, eight multilateral development banks, including the Green Climate Fund and the Global Environment Facility, announced a working group to boost the effectiveness, accessibility and scalability of sustainability-linked sovereign finance, including debt-for-nature swaps.
In the announcement, the development banks acknowledged that the burden of debt owed by the developing countries “greatly hinder[s] their ability to meet their global climate and nature commitments”.
The debt issue is also being addressed in other international meetings.
During the April 2024 World Bank and International Monetary Fund spring meetings, the Vulnerable Twenty Group (V20) – made up of 68 heavily indebted, climate-vulnerable countries – called for additional reforms to the international financial system. They proposed several measures, including increased representation in the global financial system and greater access to concessional finance, or finance provided at lower interest rates than commercial finance, including debt-for-nature swaps.
Eva Martínez, a human rights lawyer and programme officer at the Centre for Economic and Social Rights (CEDES) in Ecuador, tells Carbon Brief that swaps will also feature at this year’s G20 summit in Brazil. She explains:
“There is a working document on the new financial architecture…There are [also] references to [debt swaps] for food sovereignty, debt-for-health swaps. The spectrum is broadening.”
What are some of the chief criticisms of debt-for-nature swaps?
Since their inception, debt-for-nature swaps have attracted considerable concern over whether they are effective for either debt relief or conservation.
As with biodiversity offsets and nature-based solutions, debt-for-nature swaps have been criticised for putting a price on nature and “reducing” it to a financial commodity.
Another complication is that “biodiversity is really cheap”, Dr Rebecca Ray from Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center tells Carbon Brief. As a result, creating and maintaining new protected areas is often a small fraction of a country’s sovereign debt. She adds:
“This means a little bit of debt swapped goes a really long way to fund new natural protected areas, but it doesn’t go very far on the debt. And so it’s not the most efficient way to discharge debt, even though countries are particularly facing debt stress right now.
”Repaying debt is hard for countries all around the world due to problems that are not their fault.”
These countries need “immediate debt relief that is fast and large”, Ray points out, but biodiversity conservation projects “tend to cost a lot less money and take a lot more time”.
The following sections provide an overview of some of the other criticisms of debt-for-nature swaps.
Conditionality, sovereignty and additionality
The earliest controversy around debt-for-nature swaps was a perceived fear of foreign interference, sovereignty and a “return to the colonial system”.
The first swap in Bolivia in 1987, for instance, “unilaterally titled” the land to be protected in the Amazon before Indigenous communities could obtain land tenure claims. In 1989, Brazil’s then-president Jose Sarney rejected debt-for-nature swaps stating: “[The] Amazon is ours… [a]fter all, it is situated in our territory.”
Entering into a debt-swap agreement “immediately results in a loss of autonomy and sovereignty” over the resolution of public debt, argues Mae Buenaventura, senior programme manager on debt and green economy at the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD). She tells Carbon Brief:
“Lenders determine the terms of the swap, meaning that they can impose conditions on borrowing governments on how they should invest the freed-up funds and can work towards privileging the lender and private corporations.”
This, Mae and other critics say, gives lenders in the global north “more control” in a developing country than if the debt were to be cancelled outright.
They point out that debt-for-nature swaps also inherently come with conditions attached for conservation measures and can, thus, be described as conditional debt relief.
Others fear that swaps could open the door to “tied-aid” methods, where aid must be spent on services from the lending country, such as swaps being coupled with carbon credits.
However, Ray sees significant evolution in governments’ and creditors’ understanding of the need to put traditional communities that depend on biodiversity front and centre in the planning process.
She cites the success of the 2015 Seychelles debt-for-nature swap, where the Seychelles government undertook a multi-year “deep consultation” process to understand threats to the livelihoods of small fishing communities living on remote islands. Ray says:
“This was a way that got community buy-in, obviously, because this was protecting the livelihoods of those fishing communities, but also recognising that traditional communities frequently don’t just live off of biodiversity, but they have to help protect the biodiversity in order to survive.”
Another criticism of swaps is that they do not create new, “additional” biodiversity funds from the global north. They also run the risk of being “double counted”, if the original loan being restructured in a swap had already been counted towards meeting aid targets.
Frederic Hache, co-founder of the independent thinktank of the EU Green Finance Observatory, tells Carbon Brief:
“The reality is that no global-north country has any intention of dispersing significant amounts of new grant money…All you get is these conditional financial instruments designed to benefit primarily global private investors.”
Scale, fees and forgiveness
The biggest criticism of debt swaps from all the experts Carbon Brief spoke to is their size relative to the looming sovereign debt of biodiversity-rich countries.
The graphic below compares the size of debt swaps (small, dark blue circle) to the amount that indebted developing countries have paid to service their debts (large, light blue circle) over the past three decades.
Between 1987 and 2023, low- and middle-income countries paid more than US$7.6tn in debt service versus $8.4bn treated through debt-for-nature swaps. Source: World Bank International Debt Report (2023) and Eurodad calculations based on the data from the World Bank International Debt Statistics.
The Seychelles marine biodiversity swap, for instance, was considered “one of the largest in history at the time”, but only amounted to $23m. Ray says:
“That’s pennies, in comparison to the billions of dollars that countries like Sri Lanka are currently negotiating for debt restructuring…[Swaps] only make sense as part of a broader package of debt relief to meet the current crisis.”
According to Prof Jayati Ghosh, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, while debt swaps imply debt reduction, they “are far too small to have any impact at all” on countries’ debt. Sometimes, she says, swaps are not even a reduction, but instead allow countries some leeway in rescheduling their debt payments. Ghosh adds:
“It’s not even rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It’s pretending to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, with big creditor countries refusing to really make the kinds of interventions that would make a difference in reducing the sovereign debt while pretending to do something about climate and conservation finance. And they’re not.”
According to Carbon Brief analysis, among all the debt-for-nature swaps that have taken place, Poland’s 1992 swap allocated the highest amount of resources to nature conservation, totalling over $500m. Ecuador’s 2023 swap, which saw the largest amount of debt swapped at $1.1bn, had the second-highest investment in conservation, allocating more than $400m for this purpose.
The chart below shows the 20 countries that have been the target of the largest debt swaps (light blue) and the amount of that money earmarked for conservation funds (dark blue).
High transaction costs, which are driven up by lengthy, complex, multilateral negotiations, the number of agents involved and intermediary fees, also eat into conservation savings.
Others point out that other real-world challenges, such as unstable exchange rates along with high inflation, can “erode and undermine the real value” of a country’s conservation commitments. For example, in Zambia, funds generated by a $2.2m debt swap in 1989 were exhausted in a year “due to the rapid devaluation” of the local currency.
Human rights
Sandra Guzmán, founder and general coordinator of the Climate Finance Group for Latin America and the Caribbean (GFLAC), tells Carbon Brief that it is not possible to generalise the impacts of debt-for-nature swaps. She adds:
“A swap with the World Bank, a swap with the IDB [Inter-American Development Bank] or a swap with a commercial bank is very different. Not all swaps are done in the same way because it depends on the institutions involved.”
The 2007 debt-for-nature swap between Costa Rica and the US is an example of a swap where public information on its activities in Indigenous and local communities is available.
This swap involved more than 200 rural communities. One of the projects in the KéköLdi Indigenous territory, in south-eastern Costa Rica, helped the community reintroduce native iguanas and transmit ancestral knowledge to youth. Guzmán tells Carbon Brief:
“It has been said to be one of the most effective [swaps] because of the size of the debt cut and the conservation programme that Costa Rica promoted.”
However, not all debt-for-nature swaps have been so clear about the impacts on Indigenous and local communities.
Martínez, of CEDES Ecuador, tells Carbon Brief that the Galapagos debt-for-nature swap – signed last year to cancel $1.1bn of Ecuador’s debt in exchange for investing $450m to protect Galapagos islands – did not undergo a consultation process with Indigenous peoples and local communities. This could impact the economic, social, cultural and environmental rights of these communities, Martínez said.
The Climate Bonds Initiative published a report in 2023 analysing debt-for-nature swaps in the Seychelles, Belize, Barbados and Ecuador.
Daniel Costa, senior sustainability debt analyst at Climate Bonds Initiative, tells Carbon Brief that most of the analysed swaps do not mention how they involve local communities. He adds:
“This is what we would like to see further as these transactions are developed.”
Governance
Other criticisms of debt-for-nature swaps are the inadequate governance conditions that debtor countries may have. Governance refers to how swaps are implemented in the countries, the institutions and stakeholders involved and the structure of negotiations.
For example, the 2023 Galapagos swap had “serious limitations” in monitoring and enforcement, lack of transparency and accountability and “little clarity on potential fiscal risks for Ecuador”, according to recent analysis by the Latin American Network for Economic and Social Justice (Latindadd) and other organisations.
The analysis also revealed a lack of public information on the conservation fund and whether these actions have contributed to capacity-building at the local level.
The decision on which conservation activities will be implemented with a debt-for-nature swap varies from transaction to transaction, notes Costa, of Climate Bonds Initiative. These activities are often managed by funds, whose members include conservation organisations in addition to the government, he adds.
Carola Mejía, climate justice, transitions and Amazon coordinator at Latindadd, tells Carbon Brief that while swaps may be potentially scalable, they need to be improved in many ways. She says swaps must be built on principles such as transparency, respect for sovereignty and fairness in negotiation.
Guzmán, of GFLAC, tells Carbon Brief:
“Not all countries will have the same capacities in terms of governance, structures, human, financial and institutional capacities. There are severely indebted countries that need [debt] cancellation; there are countries that can do swaps because they have economies that can move towards those scenarios; and there are countries with greater financial capacity that may not [need] swaps, but other types of financing.”
Greenwashing
Civil society organisations and researchers have also raised concerns about the potential for “greenwashing” in some debt-for-nature swaps.
Mejía says countries in the global north are not meeting their climate finance and biodiversity commitments, but are promoting swaps as “the big solution”. This carries the risk of greenwashing, Mejía adds, as rather than creating positive action for the environment, swaps are generating more loans and debt.
For example, the $30m swap between Indonesia and the US made in 2009 in exchange for conserving rainforests on the island of Sumatra had several shortcomings, according to a 2011 study. The swap did not free up additional resources for the Indonesian government and was “too insignificant to create indirect (positive) economic effects”, the study says.
In the 2023 Galapagos swap, although the IDB provided an $85m guarantee to support the debt agreement for 18.5 years, the Latindadd report found that “there have been no additional international commitments or disbursements so far”.
Debt-for-nature swaps have also been questioned for not directly benefiting citizens and for transferring power over the management of the funds and the implementation of conservation projects to creditors.
The Gabon Blue Conservation was created as part of the swap where Gabon received $500m in exchange for protecting 30% of its oceans. This foreign-owned conservation organisation receives a 20% administration fee, which “immediately reduces the savings for the country by a [fifth]”, a report by the Coalition for Fair Fisheries Arrangements says.
Moreover, the report adds, “it is hard to see evidence that” the marine spatial plan, mandated by the Nature Conservancy for this swap, empowers marginalised groups, including fishers, for decision-making around coastal management.
Hache tells Carbon Brief:
“From a geopolitical perspective, swaps are great. It’s a way to gain access and control to land resources that will prove possibly precious in the future. This is…diplomacy by other means.”
Can debt-for-nature swaps be more effective?
Debt-for-nature swaps are being reviewed for their effectiveness again at a time when biodiverse, developing countries struggling with debt payments are having to find the financial resources to meet biodiversity and climate targets.
According to the latest World Bank debt report, low- and middle-income countries owed their foreign lenders $9tn in 2022. The same year, these countries paid a record $443.5bn to pay down these debts, with these payments diverting government spending away from critical development priorities, as well as climate and nature spending.
A 2023 study found that 67 countries at risk of defaulting on their loans collectively host 22% of global “biodiversity priority areas”, such as relatively intact but vulnerable forests, grasslands, deserts and mangroves. For 35 of these countries, it estimated that all of their unprotected biodiversity priority areas could be protected for a fraction of their national debt.
Debt-for-nature swaps and debt-for-climate swaps could free up more than $100bn of debt in developing countries, according to a recent analysis by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).
Ray, from Boston University, says that swaps can help create space for countries to make climate-adaptation plans that also help preserve livelihoods that depend on biodiversity, such as fishing or collecting forest produce.
She adds that this can “interrupt a vicious cycle between natural capital and volatile financial capital”, where economic crises and extreme weather events drastically reduce climate adaptation and biodiversity budgets.
But, in order to create this breathing room for biodiversity, swaps need to accomplish multiple things, she tells Carbon Brief:
“You need a lot of time. You need political capital and institutional capacity to centre the communities who have traditionally been the stewards of biodiversity and find a way to make sure that not only is their access to biodiversity uninterrupted, but that they are accountable for that job and rewarded for it. And a real commitment to accountability from everyone involved to make sure these projects actually help support biodiversity and communities.”
Ray points to the case of “blue bonds” for marine conservation, a label that multinational bank Barclays called “misleading” in 2023. According to Barclays, while “the point of a green bond is that 100% of the proceeds raised are spent on” marine projects, in blue bonds floated, each extra party “takes a cut from the proceeds”.
Other experts Carbon Brief spoke to had differing views, suggesting that debt-for-nature swaps would not just require improvements in governance, but in reforming the architecture of international finance.
Guzmán says:
“[Swaps] are initially going to open up your fiscal space, but are not going to solve the financing problem for countries. What we need to fundamentally change is the operation of financial institutions and the type of loans and the conditions they give for those loans, i.e., lower interest rates and much more appropriate treatment. That is really what is going to help sustainable financing.”
To Ghosh, creditors are often “unwilling to make very large commitments of debt reduction”. She adds:
“You have to do something about sovereign debt on its own, which means you have to be serious about the debt reductions. That’s independent of whether you’re linking this conditionality with nature, because without dealing with the sovereign debt, you are not going to generate a green transition in any of these countries. They simply can’t afford it.”
Ghosh suggests solutions that could change the “landscape of debt”, including a standstill on debt during debt negotiations – where the amount of debt stays the same instead of accruing interest while parties come to a resolution – and involving all creditors: private, public and multilateral.
To Hache, the “devil lies in the details” of debt-for-nature swaps. He says:
“It’s about the proportion of the budget allocated to conservation. It’s about the real amount of debt forgiveness compared to where the debt was trading, compared to its nominal value earlier…Ultimately, you also have to compare it to the real alternative, which is debt forgiveness, and you kill any chances of debt forgiveness, loss and damages by endorsing or accepting these deals.”
The post Q&A: Can debt-for-nature ‘swaps’ help tackle biodiversity loss and climate change? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: Can debt-for-nature ‘swaps’ help tackle biodiversity loss and climate change?
Climate Change
China Briefing 28 May 2026: Deadly rains | China pushes back | Examining China’s carbon intensity metric
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
Several dead as record rainfall hit several provinces
DEADLY DOWNPOUR: Multiple rounds of heavy rainfall have hit central and eastern China, with Agence France-Presse reporting that at least 25 people were killed in the first round, which affected provinces including Guangxi, Guizhou, Hunan and Hubei. Shortly afterwards, nine people died in south-western Chongqing province, reported finance news outlet Caixin, after receiving “nearly 300mm of rain in just two hours, a deluge local residents described as the worst in more than 60 years”. The government has dedicated 280m yuan ($41m) to support affected provinces, reported state news agency Xinhua. The Communist party-backed newspaper China Youth Daily reported that more than 20 provinces have been affected so far, with rains expected to continue throughout June.
CLIMATE CONTRIBUTION: National rainfall over 11-23 May was 46% higher than the seasonal norm, said Xinhua. Nearly 500 weather stations nationwide have logged record rainfall levels, according to state-sponsored newspaper Guangming Daily. The rains were described as “quite unusual”, according to Xinhua, with the National Climate Centre’s chief forecaster Gao Hui telling the agency that the heavy rains were caused by a combination of factors. These included a convergence of several climate systems carrying in strong flows of moisture from nearby marine regions, as well as “rapid global warming, compounded by a fast-developing El Niño” increasing the atmosphere’s moisture content.
The EU ‘overcapacity’ debate
‘CONCERNS’ REGISTERED: The EU will debate proposals in June to “step up efforts” to reduce economic reliance on China and protect its industries, including “safeguard investigations” for at-risk sectors and an “overcapacity instrument”, reported Politico. Finance news outlet Yicai said China in turn has registered its “concerns” with the World Trade Organization over the EU’s Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA), which includes local content requirements for industries including clean-energy technologies.
PATIENCE ‘WEARING THIN’: A report by the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post cited “some observers” as saying a trade war characterised by the EU “clos[ing] its market down to Chinese imports” may be the “only” way in which the EU can get China to fully engage with its concerns. A China Daily editorial states that China’s “patience” over the EU’s “politicisation and over-securitisation of trade and economic issues” is “wearing thin”. An editorial in the state-supporting Global Times says “erecting higher trade barriers” against Chinese cleantech is “clearly unwise”, given the Iran conflict, adding: “China will never sit idly by while the EU unreasonably suppresses Chinese companies.”
MISSING AGREEMENTS: Meanwhile, Bloomberg covered US president Donald Trump’s claims that his counterpart Xi Jinping “likes the idea of buying more US oil”, following Trump’s state visit to China. [None of the Chinese government readouts or press briefings covering trade outcomes have mentioned any energy agreements so far.] Similarly, the “Kremlin said…a general understanding” had been reached on the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline following Russian president Vladimir Putin’s visit to China, according to Reuters, but that there was “no mention of any oil and gas deals among documents signed” during his meeting with Xi. A joint statement published by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said China and Russia will “deepen” cooperation around oil and gas, coal, nuclear and renewable energy, adding that they will “strengthen cooperation in addressing climate change”.
Coal-power generation rose in April
‘INFLEXIBLE’ COAL: Thermal power generation in China “grew for a fourth straight month in April”, rising 3.1% year-on-year in the face of reduced wind and nuclear generation, reported Bloomberg. “Unfavorable weather” was not the only reason for weaker clean-energy generation, wrote Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air lead analyst Lauri Myllyvirta on Bluesky, with “grid congestion due to inflexible operation of coal plants and transmission lines” also a factor. Separately, research by Global Energy Monitor found that Chinese coal-plant developers “requested approval for 51 gigawatts (GW)” of new capacity in January-March 2026, reported Bloomberg.
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SOLAR SLOWDOWN: Total power demand grew 6% year-on-year in April, according to Xinhua. Total capacity rose 14% by the end of April, reported energy news outlet International Energy Net, with China’s total solar-power capacity now exceeding 1,250 gigawatts (GW) and wind reaching 661GW, while thermal capacity rose 7% to 1,556GW. However, the growth rate of new solar installations continued to fall for a “fourth straight month”, said Bloomberg, with 9.5GW added in April 2026 compared to 45.2GW the year before.
POLICY EXPANDS: Meanwhile, the government has expanded its renewable power “direct connection” policy to allow clean-energy generators to supply multiple users directly “through dedicated [power] lines”, rather than just one consumer, reported finance news outlet Caixin. It cited a government official saying the policy is “intended to support cleaner energy use in industrial parks…and other large energy-consuming facilities”, which comprise more than two-thirds of total energy demand. Economic news outlet Jiemian quotes an expert saying the policy enables both “lower electricity prices” and “higher utilisation rates” for renewables, “reducing curtailment rates”.
More China news
- ‘SOLIDARITY AND RESOLVE’: China voted in favour of a UN general assembly resolution to back the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) landmark 2025 opinion on states’ legal obligations to tackle climate change. The Chinese embassy to Vanuatu said on Facebook this displayed its “solidarity and collective resolve”.
- BOND DISCLOSURE: According to a disclosure report by China’s finance ministry, the country raised 6bn yuan in “green sovereign bonds” in 2025, said finance news outlet EastMoney ($884m), of which 700m ($103m) was spent on clean-energy retrofitting.
- WAR ON SAND: The central government has pledged to “improve” and expand its ecological compensation mechanism, including to now provide compensation for building solar farms in desertified areas, said power news outlet BJX News.
- SPACE-BASED SOLAR: Chinese scientists have begun “initial experiments” in a project to “collect [solar] energy in orbit and beam it wirelessly to Earth”, said PV Magazine.
- MINERAL STRATEGY: China has pledged to “accelerate the construction of strategic mineral-reserve sites”, reported Reuters. It will also work with the US on “reasonable” concerns around its rare-earth export controls, Reuters also reported.
Captured
Hydrogen in China continues to be mostly produced from coal, according to a National Energy Administration report. A new Carbon Brief article explored how a series of new policies in China could help scale hydrogen, particularly “green” hydrogen made with renewable power.
Spotlight
China’s new carbon metric leaves Germany-sized gap in its emissions
A major change in the way that China measures its core climate goal has effectively halved the growth in the country’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions over the past five years.
The revised measure of “carbon intensity” implies that China’s emissions have only gone up by 7% from 2020-2025, just half of the 14% rise indicated by previous official statistics.
This spotlight is an excerpt of an analysis explaining how the metric appears to have shifted and its implications for China’s climate goals. The full article can be found on the Carbon Brief website.
Germany-sized gap
Reducing carbon intensity – CO2 emissions per unit of GDP – has been China’s key climate commitment since the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009.
Neither China’s international climate pledges nor other official documents have ever set out a definition of carbon intensity.
However, until this year, it was possible to closely reproduce the reported numbers, based on a straightforward interpretation of what carbon intensity means – combining official GDP data with estimates of emissions from the use of fossil fuels.
Now, the types of emissions that are included in the carbon-intensity metric have changed.
The previous carbon-intensity measure apparently included emissions from the use of fossil fuels to generate energy and as chemical feedstocks, so-called “non-energy uses”. It did not include non-fossil fuel CO2 emissions from industrial processes, such as the production of cement.
Based on reported progress against this old scope, China’s carbon intensity had fallen by 12.4% from 2020-2025, well short of its 18% target under the 14th five-year plan.
Yet the 15th five-year plan reported that China had cut its carbon intensity by 17.7% over the same period, indicating a major shift in which types of emissions are included.
A footnote in China’s latest statistical communique indicates that carbon intensity now includes industrial process emissions and excludes non-energy uses of fossil fuels.
The shift has implications for estimates of the country’s emissions.
China’s total emissions were 11.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2) in 2020. Based on the original methodology, its fossil-fuel CO2 emissions had grown 14% by 2024, an increase of 1,430m tonnes (MtCO2).
In contrast, the newly reported carbon-intensity figures imply that China’s CO2 emissions only grew by 7% between 2020 and 2025, up just 690MtCO2.
The gap between these figures amounts to 730MtCO2, equivalent to the annual emissions of Germany or South Korea.
Decoding the new methodology
The methodology change could have significant implications, making it important to understand how it is being calculated.
The new scope includes industrial-process emissions. One of the largest sources of these emissions, the cement industry, has been contracting, helping explain the improvement to carbon intensity under the new scope.
In addition, the new scope excludes non-energy use of fossil fuels – largely relating to the chemicals industry – which have seen rapid growth in the past five years.
One way to make the numbers add up would be to assume that the amount of carbon embedded in chemical-industry products has increased by the equivalent of 500MtCO2.
However, the reported output of major chemical-industry products cannot account for this level of embedded carbon.
Neither the change in scope of the carbon-intensity calculation, nor the change in the amount of carbon retained in products, can explain the size of the revision in the newly reported numbers. There must be another explanation.
Either the new scope broadly aligns with the explanation outlined above, but also excludes a subset of the CO2 emissions. Or the scope does not exclude any of the CO2, but there are gaps in the monitoring of some energy or industrial-process emissions.
Either explanation would mean China is not accounting for some of its CO2 emissions.
Implications for China’s targets
This change has the effect of weakening China’s climate targets and introducing more uncertainty into tracking progress.
The new numbers means it will require less effort to hit the 2030 carbon-intensity target in its Paris pledge. This target can now be met even if emissions rise, whereas the previous metric would have required a reduction.
It will also require less effort to hit the carbon-intensity target in China’s 15th five-year plan.
In addition, China would be able to officially meet its target to peak emissions by 2030, even if its overall CO2 emissions do not actually peak. The change could also affect delivery of China’s targets to cut emissions by 2035.
While China may use any definition it wants for carbon intensity under the UN climate framework, retrospective changes or inconsistent accounting could erode the value of its commitments.
Moreover, it will ultimately have to close any gaps in its emissions data and reporting, under the transparency rules of the Paris Agreement.
This spotlight is adapted from an article by Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air lead analyst Lauri Myllyvirta for Carbon Brief.
Watch, read, listen
MINING ACCIDENT: A column in Bloomberg argued that “continuing to veer…toward cleaner [energy] development” could avoid coal-mine accidents such as the one that claimed 82 lives in Shanxi province.
INDONESIAN NICKEL: The European Guanxi Podcast recorded a discussion with Ember’s Dr Muyi Yang about the role China plays in Indonesia’s coal-reliant nickel industry.
INDUSTRIAL HURDLES: A new article in Yicai investigated the reasons why companies are holding back on relocating to zero-carbon industrial parks.
NEGATIVE PRICES: The Communist party-affiliated People’s Daily published a widely-read article on how the emergence of “negative electricity prices” signals a need for a more “coordinated” buildout of clean energy.
163
In billion tonnes, the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) that China could avoid between 2025-2060 by transitioning to clean energy, according to a new study published by several leading academic institutions in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment. Scientists estimate that the remaining global budget for keeping temperatures below 1.5C is 130bn tonnes of CO2.
New science
- Population exposure to heatwave-drought events “increased markedly” across China during between 1961-90 and 1991-2020, driven by a combination of population growth and more frequent heatwave-drought events | Atmospheric Research
- Fossil-fired power generation accounts for three-quarters of China’s total water consumption for energy production | Mitigation and adaptation strategies for global change
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China Briefing is written by Anika Patel, with contributions from Lekai Liu, and edited by Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org
The post China Briefing 28 May 2026: Deadly rains | China pushes back | Examining China’s carbon intensity metric appeared first on Carbon Brief.
A new book examines “renewable portfolio standard” laws and the ways utilities drove the bus.
Not long ago, the rise of U.S. renewable energy was largely tied to state policies that required or encouraged utilities to meet benchmarks for obtaining wind and solar power.
How Utility Companies and States Shaped America’s Clean Energy Transition
Europe has been hit by a searing heatwave, which has shattered temperature records across France, Spain and the UK.
In London, for example, the mercury hit a record high for May of 35.1C at Kew Gardens on Tuesday 26 May, breaking the former record-high May temperature by more than 2C.
Multiple people have died as a result of the high temperatures, including 14 people across the UK and France who drowned.
The heatwave was driven by a “heat dome”, in which warm air moving up from northern Africa has become trapped under a high-pressure system over western Europe.
Experts have been quick to point out the link between extreme heat and global warming, with one saying it was “beyond a shadow of a doubt” that climate change was making such events “more likely and more severe”.
In this article, Carbon Brief examines the impacts of the heatwave and the role of climate change.
- What is happening with the May heatwave in Europe?
- What is driving the record-shattering heat?
- What are the impacts of the extreme heat?
- How has the media responded?
What is happening with the May heatwave in Europe?
Europe has been hit by “mind-bogglingly crazy” temperature records in May, according to the Financial Times, quoting Peter Thorne, director of the ICARUS Climate Research Centre at Maynooth University in Ireland.
In London, on Tuesday 26 May, temperatures hit a record high for May of 35.1C at Kew Gardens – breaking the previous record of 34.8C, set just the day before.
This was more than 2C above the previous May temperature high of 32.8C recorded in 1922 and again in 1944, reported the Times.
The Associated Press added that the UK capital also recorded a rare “tropical night”, when temperatures did not fall below 20C overnight.
The Daily Telegraph reported that Wales and Northern Ireland also saw record-high temperatures, of 27.4C in Cardiff and 23.4C in Armagh, on Sunday.
As with the UK record, these were quickly surpassed. BBC News reported that temperatures hit 32.9C in Bute Park, Cardiff and 24.5C in Thomastown, County Fermanagh, on Tuesday.
BBC News quoted a spokesperson from the Met Office, who said:
“This heat would be exceptional in the UK even in mid-summer, let alone in May.”
The broadcaster added that the average temperature in the UK at the end of May is usually 14-20C.
The Associated Press reported that temperature records have also fallen across Europe.
This includes in France, where temperatures reached 36C on Monday in the country’s south-west and remained above 20C at night across much of the country. The newspaper Libération declared that “it has never been so hot, so early, in France”.
The Guardian reported that the weather agency Météo France said the heatwave could last through the week and bring temperatures as high as 39C in some areas in the country.
As well as the UK and France, other nations have been seeing temperatures soar. France24 reported that temperatures in Spain were expected to reach 38C, with Italy also facing high temperatures.
The Irish Times reported that the May high-temperature record was broken twice in Ireland on the same day, with 29.7C recorded in Carlow and then 30.5C at Shannon Airport on Tuesday.
Le Monde explained that a “heat dome” of warm air from northern Africa is behind the high temperatures across Europe. (See: What is driving the record-breaking heat?)
The Financial Times quoted ICARUS’s Thorne saying that the records being set in Europe, “particularly in the UK and France, are mind-bogglingly crazy”. He added:
“We have more than 100 years of observational records. To break the all-time May record by more than 2C…is hard to comprehend.”
What is driving the record-shattering heat?
The immediate driver of the extreme heat seen over Europe this week is a “heat dome”, according to Politico.
The outlet explained that the phenomenon is driven by “warm air moving up from northern Africa [that] has become trapped under a high-pressure system over western Europe”. It added:
“The effect is similar to that of a lid on a pot, with warm air forced downward and baking affected regions with prolonged, blistering heat.”
Spain’s El Correo explained that the phenomenon is “not a simple heatwave”, adding that such “high-pressure systems trapped over Europe are not usually seen before summer”.
However, many publications have linked the severity of the extreme heat to climate change. The Associated Press quoted ICARUS’s Thorne, who said:
“We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that heatwave events such as this have been made more likely and more severe due to climate change arising from our emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.”
The Guardian quoted Dr Chloe Brimicombe, a researcher at the University of Oxford, who said:
“The record-breaking heat is a reminder of how climate change is impacting our lives in the UK. It highlights the urgency of recent calls for heat adaptation.”
France’s Le Figaro described the event as an “unequivocal sign of global warming”.
The Independent reported that the heatwave “has the fingerprints of climate change all over it”. Other outlets, including Inside Climate News and Scientific American, also covered the links between extreme heat and climate change.
BBC News noted that over the last 30 years, Europe has been warming by 0.56C per decade – more than twice the global average.
The outlet quoted Prof Erich Fischer, professor at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, who compared the record-breaking temperatures to setting a new record in sports.
He explained that “if someone beats a world record in high jump, you would expect them to beat it by one centimetre and not suddenly by 20, 30 centimetres”. Similarly, he said that in the case of temperature, you would expect new records to be broken by a fraction of a degree, rather than 2 or 3C.
However, the broadcaster explained that “when a relatively rare weather system, such as this week’s heat dome, comes around in a warming climate, the margin of record can be huge”.
Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of UN Climate Change, called the heatwave a “brutal reminder of the cost of global warming”, according to Politico.
The Guardian also quotes Stiell, who said:
“The science is clear that human-induced climate change is making these heatwaves more frequent and extreme”.
What are the impacts of the extreme heat?
The heatwave has already been linked to multiple deaths.
This included seven people in France, five of whom died by drowning and two who suffered heat-related deaths while competing in sporting events, said the Guardian.
Separately, the Guardian reported that at least nine people have died in the UK from “water-related incidents” during the heatwave.
France24 reported that “restrictions on outdoor work were imposed in parts of Italy” and that “farmers reported accelerated harvests as temperatures went beyond 30C across [south-west France]”.
The Guardian reported that tennis players at the French Open were “forced to adjust their games while trying to find their best level through obvious discomfort”, amid 33C temperatures in Boulogne-Billancourt, Paris, on Monday.
CNN added that, in the UK, “a wildfire broke out near Arthur’s Seat, a hill in Edinburgh, Scotland, and hundreds of properties in south-east England were left without water as demand spiked”.
BBC News reported on a warning from a chief nurse that hospitals in the south-west of England were busier than usual amid the heatwave.
BBC News reported that the UK saw a surge in emergency calls on Tuesday. The Daily Telegraph added that “Britain’s roads started melting and rail commuters were left stranded for hours”.
Meanwhile, the Guardian reported on a warning from climate campaigners that the government “urgently” needs to start installing air conditioning units in schools and care homes.
The extreme heat has also affected Europe’s renewable energy generation. Bloomberg said that “the heat dome has blocked clouds and fueled booming solar generation”, but added that “by clearing clouds and calming the atmosphere, the heat dome has had the opposite effect on wind speeds”.
How has the media responded?
The unseasonably high temperatures have caught the attention of news outlets in the UK, France and other affected nations.
Often, news stories were accompanied by photos of people relaxing at the beach, eating ice cream and swimming in the sea.
Such images of “fun in the sun” have often drawn criticism from climate researchers for “misrepresenting” the risks of heatwaves.
This choice of imagery – and the way right-leaning newspapers in the UK tend to focus on the positive aspects of hot weather – was highlighted by journalist and media critic Mic Wright in a Substack post. He wrote:
“Most British newspapers write about extremely hot weather with the tone of a frog in a boiling pot pretending it’s a jacuzzi.”
Despite blanket news coverage of the record heat in media outlets across western Europe, there has been relatively little commentary from their opinion pages.
No major UK newspapers have published editorials about the heat and there has been no space dedicated to it in the comment sections of the largest French and Spanish newspapers.
One exception in UK media was the Daily Mail’s climate-sceptic columnist Richard Littlejohn writing an article mocking heat-safety measures and warnings issued by the Met Office and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).
In contrast, the Guardian published an article by Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London, warning of the dangers facing the UK as extreme heat becomes “the norm”. He wrote:
“We need, then, to face the fact that life in the 2050s is going to be very different from today, and act now. The sooner we recognise this and begin – as a nation – to prepare and adapt accordingly, the better we will be able to meet these enormous challenges to our everyday lives.”
Oliver Duff, editor-in-chief of the i newspaper, wrote that the UK is “emotionally underprepared”, as a nation, for the heat:
“Worries about climate change are forgotten in the giddy determination to enjoy our brief, unreliable summers, whichever month of the year they deign to visit.”
Writing in the Independent, journalist Kat Brown reflected on the Climate Change Committee’s recent advice to the UK government on adapting to climate change. She stressed the need to “take heatwaves seriously”.
James Wallace, chief executive of the charity River Action, was given a guest column in the Daily Express in which he wrote: “As the nation swelters in record-breaking temperatures, England is sleepwalking into a water crisis.”
In reference to water shortages and increasingly extreme weather, Wallace also emphasised that “this is climate breakdown in real time”.
The post Media reaction: UK and Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May heat and climate change appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Media reaction: UK and Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May heat and climate change
China Briefing 28 May 2026: Deadly rains | China pushes back | Examining China’s carbon intensity metric
How Utility Companies and States Shaped America’s Clean Energy Transition
Media reaction: UK and Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May heat and climate change
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