The European Commission has set out a proposal to cut EU emissions 90% by 2040, with up to 3% coming via carbon credits purchased from other countries.
In a proposed amendment to EU climate legislation, the commission has laid out what it calls a “new way to get to 2040”, including “flexibilities” to ease the burden on member states.
Besides the limited use of carbon credits, the proposal also gives a potentially larger role to carbon dioxide (CO2) removal technologies and leaves the door open for weaker sectoral goals.
It has drawn criticism from climate NGOs and left-leaning European politicians, who argue that it “waters down” the EU’s climate ambitions and presents “considerable risks”.
Yet, the proposal is seen by many as an acceptable compromise option, following strong pushback from many member states to the 90% target, originally proposed last year.
With all nations expected to come forward with new international climate targets for 2035 by September and ahead of the COP30 climate summit, the 2040 goal will also be crucial in determining where the EU’s pledge lands.
In this Q&A, Carbon Brief outlines what the amendment proposed by the commission includes, why it has proved controversial and what is expected to happen next.
What has the European Commission proposed?
The European Commission has proposed an amendment to the EU Climate Law, which would set a target for a 90% reduction in net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2040, compared to 1990 levels.
It will “give certainty to investors, innovation, strengthen industrial leadership of our businesses and increase Europe’s energy security”, the commission says.
In a statement, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, added:
“As European citizens increasingly feel the impact of climate change, they expect Europe to act. Industry and investors look to us to set a predictable direction of travel. Today we show that we stand firmly by our commitment to decarbonise [the] European economy by 2050. The goal is clear, the journey is pragmatic and realistic.”
The proposal includes new “flexibilities”, such as a limited role for “high-quality international credits” from 2036, the use of domestic permanent emissions removals within the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) and additional flexibilities across certain hard-to-decarbonise sectors.
These additional flexibilities are designed to allow countries to meet targets in a cost-effective and “socially fair” way, the commission adds. It says they will provide the possibility that a member state could compensate for a struggling land-use sector with overachievement in other areas, such as emissions from waste or transport.
The target will “send a signal to the global community” that the EU will “stay the course on climate change, deliver the Paris Agreement and continue engaging with partner countries to reduce global emissions”, says the commission.
It has been announced ahead of the UN COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil in November.
The European Commission says it will now work with the council presidency – representing EU member state governments – to finalise the EU’s climate pledges for 2035, so that the EU can submit its “nationally determined contribution” (NDC) under the Paris Agreement.
The EU was among the 95% of countries that missed the UN deadline to submit their NDCs by February of this year.
A recent update from the European parliament noted that the EU “needs to update its NDC…by September”, in order to meet an extended deadline from the UN.
In 2023, independent advisory body the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change recommended that the EU should aim for net emissions reductions of 90-95% by 2040, compared to 1990 levels.
As such, the advisory board said that the bloc would need to limit its cumulative emissions from 2030-50 to 11-14bn tonnes of CO2 equivalent (GtCO2e), in order to be in line with bringing global warming down to 1.5C by the end of the century.
The 90% emissions reduction figure set out by the EU is on the lower end of guidance.
Why is the commission making this proposal now?
The European Commission’s new proposal builds on previous targets and roadmaps, representing a significant step towards enshrining the 2040 target in law.
In July 2021, the European Climate Law officially entered into force, setting a target of a net GHG reduction of at least 55% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels, as shown in the chart below.
Rules were introduced governing sectors, such as clean energy, energy efficiency and transport, among others, to help meet this target.
If all were successful in their implementation, they would reduce emissions by roughly 57% by 2030, according to a European parliament assessment in 2022.
Subsequently, the commission has been working on developing a target for 2040, as an interim benchmark between the 2030 target and the EU goal – announced in 2018 – to be “climate neutral” by 2050. At this point, the bloc would reach net-zero emissions overall and would stop adding to global warming.
In 2024, the commission published an impact assessment, detailing the underlying qualitative analysis it had undertaken around emissions reduction targets for 2040.
This, together with the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change’s report (detailed above) and advice from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, formed the basis for the 90% target, the commission says.
The headline 90% target for 2040 was announced as part of a roadmap outlined by the commission in February 2024.
The roadmap kicked off a lengthy process in which EU politicians and institutions worked to cement the details of this target, ahead of this week’s proposal on turning it into law.
This process included “substantial engagement” with member states, the European parliament, stakeholders, civil society and citizens, the commission says.
In particular, certain European countries have been placing pressure on the commission to change or adapt the 2040 target, slowing the progress of this week’s proposal, which had been due out in February.
For example, Italy called for the goal to be weakened and France asked for “flexibility” to be introduced (See: Who has supported and opposed the proposed climate target?).
The commission hopes that publishing the proposed target now will allow it to be factored into the EU’s upcoming NDC, in which it will establish an emissions reduction target for 2035.
What does it say about international carbon credits and ‘flexibilities’?
The European Commission’s proposal sets out a “pragmatic” pathway towards the 2040 target, including specific measures to give EU member states “flexibility”.
Of these, the one that has received the most attention is to allow limited use of international carbon credits, under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, starting in 2036.
In effect, this flexibility means that emissions within the EU would only need to fall to 87% below 1990 levels by 2040, with the remaining 3% taking place overseas.
This would mean member states could buy credits generated by emissions-cutting projects in other countries and count those cuts towards their own targets.
Other nations, including Japan and Switzerland, have already welcomed the use of international credits to meet their climate goals.
In an unusual intervention that coincided with the proposal itself, the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change stated that the EU should not count such credits towards the 2040 target. It said:
“Using international carbon credits to meet this target, even partially, could undermine domestic value creation by diverting resources from the necessary transformation of the EU’s economy.”
The board also mentioned other concerns that are frequently levelled at “carbon offsetting”, such as credits not resulting in real-world emissions cuts.
The commission’s proposal refers to “high-quality international credits under Article 6”, but does not specify which types of credit. This leaves the door open for lower quality options.
For example, carbon trading under Article 6.2 is subject to far less oversight than trading of Article 6.4 credits.
The proposal also states that: “The origin, quality criteria and other conditions concerning the acquisition and use of any such credits shall be regulated in union law.”
This suggests that the EU would conduct its own assessment of any credits used by member states, beyond the rules that have been negotiated at an international level.
Jonathan Crook, the lead expert on global carbon markets at Carbon Market Watch, tells Carbon Brief that additional safeguards would be “essential”, given outstanding issues with Article 6 carbon credits.
A Q&A accompanying the commission proposal states that credits would be bought from “credible and transformative” projects in nations with Paris-aligned climate goals.
It mentions direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS) and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) as examples of the kinds of projects that the EU could source credits from.
This could severely limit the pool of available credits, because – as it stands – almost all carbon credits are from tree planting, forest conservation and clean-energy projects.
DACCS and BECCS projects could result in relatively permanent carbon removal. Crook says this would be one of the “many necessary safeguards” needed for credit purchases, although he points to potential issues with such projects. He adds:
“This potential durability criterion is only mentioned in the Q&A, rather than in the actual commission proposal and so currently has very limited standing unless it is introduced [into the legal text] during the co-legislation process.”
There are two additional “new flexibilities” mentioned in the commission’s proposal, to help member states meet the 2040 emissions target more easily.
One is the inclusion of permanent carbon dioxide (CO2) removal in the EU ETS, something that was already being discussed as part of an ETS revision.
This would mean that DACCS and BECCS projects in EU member states could sell credits to help high-emitting companies, such as steel plant operators, stay within their ETS limits.
Paying for such credits could become more appealing as the number of available emissions “allowances” under the overall “cap” for ETS system shrinks and the allowances become more expensive.
The commission says this would help to “compensate for residual emissions from hard-to-abate sectors”, referring to those that are expensive or difficult to reduce to zero.
The need to remove CO2 from the atmosphere is widely recognised and inclusion in the ETS could help to drive investment into early-stage technologies, such as DACCS.
However, there are concerns that focusing on removals diverts investment from readily available technologies that cut emissions, such as electric-arc furnaces for steel plants.
In its recommendations, the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change says there should be separate targets for emissions reductions and removals. This would ensure the removals contribute to EU targets “without deterring emission reductions”, it says.
Finally, the commission’s proposal also includes a vague mention of “enhanced flexibility across sectors, to support the achievement of targets in a cost-effective way”.
Linda Kalcher, executive director of the thinktank Strategic Perspectives, tells Carbon Brief that this is “alluding to the fact that we might see weakening of some laws”.
Michael Forte, a senior policy advisor at thinktank E3G, expands on this, noting that it could mean member states adjusting emissions targets between different parts of the EU climate architecture, depending on where they were over- or underperforming.
“I would infer that this means letting member states transfer a greater share of their mitigation efforts between these different instruments,” Forte tells Carbon Brief.
Kalcher notes that such changes cannot be regulated in this law, but instead would need to be part of the expected 2040 framework or other pieces of law:
“They are more alluding to future changes, instead of making them now. So that…gives confidence to the countries that have concerns [about the 2040 target] that something will happen.”
Who has supported and opposed the proposed climate target?
Climate campaigners and left-leaning politicians were highly critical of the “flexibilities” included in the commission’s proposal, in particular the use of international carbon credits.
The options proposed were described by civil-society groups as “creative accounting” and a “dangerous new precedent” that relies on “outsourcing Europe’s responsibility” to other countries.
The European parliament’s centre-left Socialists and Democrats coalition issued a statement warning that “the inclusion of international carbon credits as a means to meet the target carries considerable risks”.
Critics also noted that using such flexibilities contradicted the official advice offered by the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change.
Yet the proposal, presented as a “new way to get to 2040”, is widely viewed as an attempt to find a political compromise against a tricky geopolitical backdrop.
It allows the EU to aim for the target set out by its scientific advisers, albeit at the lower end of the “90-95%” emissions reduction that had been proposed. This is in spite of a strong political pushback from some member states.
A statement released by Peter Liese and Christian Ehler, German members of the European parliament’s centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) group, explained:
“We think it’s very dangerous to criticise the European Commission because they intend to include flexibility in their proposal on the 2040 target. We don’t see a majority in parliament nor council for any 2040 target without flexibility.”
Some member states, including Spain and Denmark, supported the 90% target without asking for major concessions. Others, including Poland and Italy, have argued for a less stringent headline goal.
Meanwhile, others pushed for some kind of compromise during discussions of the new target.
Notably, the newly elected, right-leaning German government gave qualified support for the 90% goal in its coalition agreement, subject to conditions such as the inclusion of international carbon credits. Other influential nations have also increasingly stressed the need for “flexibility” around the target.
Meanwhile, according to Politico, France has been part of a push – alongside “climate laggards” Hungary and Poland – to separate discussions of the EU’s domestic 2040 target from its international 2035 NDC pledge.
According to the news outlet, such decoupling could result in a weaker 2035 target, compared to the 2035 target that is expected to be derived from the 90% reduction 2040 goal.
How does the goal fit with the EU’s industrial growth plans?
The commission says its 2040 proposal goes “hand in hand” with its clean industrial deal strategy, its affordable energy action plan and its “competitiveness compass” plan.
Alongside tabling its 2040 climate goal, the commission issued a new “communication” on “delivering on the clean industrial deal”. (The deal was first announced in February.)
The communication says that “decarbonisation and reindustrialisation are two sides of the same coin” and reaffirms that the aim of the deal is to “enable the EU to lead in
developing the clean-technology markets of the future”.
The commission says delivery of the deal is “already underway”. It points to the adoption of the clean industrial deal state aid framework on 25 June, an €85bn ($100bn) state-aid package for helping member states transition their economies.
Environmental law charity Client Earth said a draft version of the framework risked “entrenching support for fossil gas and fossil based low-carbon gases”.
The clean industrial deal communication also notes that the commission this week published recommendations on tax incentives for speeding up the energy transition.
On 18 June, the European parliament and council agreed on a commission proposal to simplify the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), a policy for taxing carbon-intensive imports at levels equivalent to the EU ETS.
The agreement introduces a new exemption threshold of 50 tonnes for CBAM goods, meaning small and medium-sized companies that do not exceed this weight of imports per year will now be exempt from the measure.
EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra described it as a “win for both climate policy and competitiveness of our companies”, with the new measure meaning 90% of companies will now be exempt from the CBAM, but 99% of emissions will still be covered.
Previous analysis has found that, in isolation, the CBAM will have a limited impact on global emissions.
What comes next?
Before the target can be adopted, it must be agreed by member states and pass through the European parliament.
Once the parliament and national ministers have agreed on their separate positions, three-way “trialogue” negotiations between them and the commission can begin with the aim of finalising the 2040 legislative proposal.
All nations were asked to submit new 2035 climate pledges, known as “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs), to the UN by February of this year (see: What has the European Commission proposed?). The EU was among the vast majority of parties to miss the deadline.
UN climate chief Simon Stiell has now asked all parties to submit their NDCs “by September”. This is to allow time for the preparation of a report on the collective ambition of all nations’ pledges before COP30 in November.
The EU’s NDC will include an “indicative 2035 figure” derived from the bloc’s 2040 climate target, according to the commission.
The commission says it will work with the Danish presidency of the EU council and member states to finalise its NDC.
It is expected that the EU will aim to finalise both its 2035 NDC and its 2040 climate goal ahead of the next UN general assembly, which starts on 9 September in New York.
The post Q&A: European Commission’s proposal to cut EU emissions 90% by 2040 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: European Commission’s proposal to cut EU emissions 90% by 2040
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Absolute State of the Union
‘DRILL, BABY’: US president Donald Trump “doubled down on his ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda” in his State of the Union (SOTU) address, said the Los Angeles Times. He “tout[ed] his support of the fossil-fuel industry and renew[ed] his focus on electricity affordability”, reported the Financial Times. Trump also attacked the “green new scam”, noted Carbon Brief’s SOTU tracker.
COAL REPRIEVE: Earlier in the week, the Trump administration had watered down limits on mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, reported the Financial Times. It remains “unclear” if this will be enough to prevent the decline of coal power, said Bloomberg, in the face of lower-cost gas and renewables. Reuters noted that US coal plants are “ageing”.
OIL STAY: The US Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments brought by the oil industry in a “major lawsuit”, reported the New York Times. The newspaper said the firms are attempting to head off dozens of other lawsuits at state level, relating to their role in global warming.
SHIP-SHILLING: The Trump administration is working to “kill” a global carbon levy on shipping “permanently”, reported Politico, after succeeding in delaying the measure late last year. The Guardian said US “bullying” could be “paying off”, after Panama signalled it was reversing its support for the levy in a proposal submitted to the UN shipping body.
Around the world
- RARE EARTHS: The governments of Brazil and India signed a deal on rare earths, said the Times of India, as well as agreeing to collaborate on renewable energy.
- HEAT ROLLBACK: German homes will be allowed to continue installing gas and oil heating, under watered-down government plans covered by Clean Energy Wire.
- BRAZIL FLOODS: At least 53 people died in floods in the state of Minas Gerais, after some areas saw 170mm of rain in a few hours, reported CNN Brasil.
- ITALY’S ATTACK: Italy is calling for the EU to “suspend” its emissions trading system (ETS) ahead of a review later this year, said Politico.
- COOKSTOVE CREDITS: The first-ever carbon credits under the Paris Agreement have been issued to a cookstove project in Myanmar, said Climate Home News.
- SAUDI SOLAR: Turkey has signed a “major” solar deal that will see Saudi firm ACWA building 2 gigawatts in the country, according to Agence France-Presse.
$467 billion
The profits made by five major oil firms since prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago, according to a report by Global Witness covered by BusinessGreen.
Latest climate research
- Claims about the “fingerprint” of human-caused climate change, made in a recent US Department of Energy report, are “factually incorrect” | AGU Advances
- Large lakes in the Congo Basin are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from “immense ancient stores” | Nature Geoscience
- Shared Socioeconomic Pathways – scenarios used regularly in climate modelling – underrepresent “narratives explicitly centring on democratic principles such as participation, accountability and justice” | npj Climate Action
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
The constituency of Richard Tice MP, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of Reform UK, is the second-largest recipient of flood defence spending in England, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Overall, the funding is disproportionately targeted at coastal and urban areas, many of which have Conservative or Liberal Democrat MPs.
Spotlight
Is there really a UK ‘greenlash’?
This week, after a historic Green Party byelection win, Carbon Brief looks at whether there really is a “greenlash” against climate policy in the UK.
Over the past year, the UK’s political consensus on climate change has been shattered.
Yet despite a sharp turn against climate action among right-wing politicians and right-leaning media outlets, UK public support for climate action remains strong.
Prof Federica Genovese, who studies climate politics at the University of Oxford, told Carbon Brief:
“The current ‘war’ on green policy is mostly driven by media and political elites, not by the public.”
Indeed, there is still a greater than two-to-one majority among the UK public in favour of the country’s legally binding target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, as shown below.
Steve Akehurst, director of public-opinion research initiative Persuasion UK, also noted the growing divide between the public and “elites”. He told Carbon Brief:
“The biggest movement is, without doubt, in media and elite opinion. There is a bit more polarisation and opposition [to climate action] among voters, but it’s typically no more than 20-25% and mostly confined within core Reform voters.”
Conservative gear shift
For decades, the UK had enjoyed strong, cross-party political support for climate action.
Lord Deben, the Conservative peer and former chair of the Climate Change Committee, told Carbon Brief that the UK’s landmark 2008 Climate Change Act had been born of this cross-party consensus, saying “all parties supported it”.
Since their landslide loss at the 2024 election, however, the Conservatives have turned against the UK’s target of net-zero emissions by 2050, which they legislated for in 2019.
Curiously, while opposition to net-zero has surged among Conservative MPs, there is majority support for the target among those that plan to vote for the party, as shown below.
Dr Adam Corner, advisor to the Climate Barometer initiative that tracks public opinion on climate change, told Carbon Brief that those who currently plan to vote Reform are the only segment who “tend to be more opposed to net-zero goals”. He said:
“Despite the rise in hostile media coverage and the collapse of the political consensus, we find that public support for the net-zero by 2050 target is plateauing – not plummeting.”
Reform, which rejects the scientific evidence on global warming and campaigns against net-zero, has been leading the polls for a year. (However, it was comfortably beaten by the Greens in yesterday’s Gorton and Denton byelection.)
Corner acknowledged that “some of the anti-net zero noise…[is] showing up in our data”, adding:
“We see rising concerns about the near-term costs of policies and an uptick in people [falsely] attributing high energy bills to climate initiatives.”
But Akehurst said that, rather than a big fall in public support, there had been a drop in the “salience” of climate action:
“So many other issues [are] competing for their attention.”
UK newspapers published more editorials opposing climate action than supporting it for the first time on record in 2025, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Global ‘greenlash’?
All of this sits against a challenging global backdrop, in which US president Donald Trump has been repeating climate-sceptic talking points and rolling back related policy.
At the same time, prominent figures have been calling for a change in climate strategy, sold variously as a “reset”, a “pivot”, as “realism”, or as “pragmatism”.
Genovese said that “far-right leaders have succeeded in the past 10 years in capturing net-zero as a poster child of things they are ‘fighting against’”.
She added that “much of this is fodder for conservative media and this whole ecosystem is essentially driving what we call the ‘greenlash’”.
Corner said the “disconnect” between elite views and the wider public “can create problems” – for example, “MPs consistently underestimate support for renewables”. He added:
“There is clearly a risk that the public starts to disengage too, if not enough positive voices are countering the negative ones.”
Watch, read, listen
TRUMP’S ‘PETROSTATE’: The US is becoming a “petrostate” that will be “sicker and poorer”, wrote Financial Times associate editor Rana Forohaar.
RHETORIC VS REALITY: Despite a “political mood [that] has darkened”, there is “more green stuff being installed than ever”, said New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells.
CHINA’S ‘REVOLUTION’: The BBC’s Climate Question podcast reported from China on the “green energy revolution” taking place in the country.
Coming up
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean, Brasília
- 3 March: UK spring statement
- 4-11 March: China’s “two sessions”
- 5 March: Nepal elections
Pick of the jobs
- The Guardian, senior reporter, climate justice | Salary: $123,000-$135,000. Location: New York or Washington DC
- China-Global South Project, non-resident fellow, climate change | Salary: Up to $1,000 a month. Location: Remote
- University of East Anglia, PhD in mobilising community-based climate action through co-designed sports and wellbeing interventions | Salary: Stipend (unknown amount). Location: Norwich, UK
- TABLE and the University of São Paulo, Brazil, postdoctoral researcher in food system narratives | Salary: Unknown. Location: Pirassununga, Brazil
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 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Greenhouse Gases
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
The Lincolnshire constituency held by Richard Tice, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of the hard-right Reform party, has been pledged at least £55m in government funding for flood defences since 2024.
This investment in Boston and Skegness is the second-largest sum for a single constituency from a £1.4bn flood-defence fund for England, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
Flooding is becoming more likely and more extreme in the UK due to climate change.
Yet, for years, governments have failed to spend enough on flood defences to protect people, properties and infrastructure.
The £1.4bn fund is part of the current Labour government’s wider pledge to invest a “record” £7.9bn over a decade on protecting hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses from flooding.
As MP for one of England’s most flood-prone regions, Tice has called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
He is also one of Reform’s most vocal opponents of climate action and what he calls “net stupid zero”. He denies the scientific consensus on climate change and has claimed, falsely and without evidence, that scientists are “lying”.
Flood defences
Last year, the government said it would invest £2.65bn on flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) schemes in England between April 2024 and March 2026.
This money was intended to protect 66,500 properties from flooding. It is part of a decade-long Labour government plan to spend more than £7.9bn on flood defences.
There has been a consistent shortfall in maintaining England’s flood defences, with the Environment Agency expecting to protect fewer properties by 2027 than it had initially planned.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has attributed this to rising costs, backlogs from previous governments and a lack of capacity. It also points to the strain from “more frequent and severe” weather events, such as storms in recent years that have been amplified by climate change.
However, the CCC also said last year that, if the 2024-26 spending programme is delivered, it would be “slightly closer to the track” of the Environment Agency targets out to 2027.
The government has released constituency-level data on which schemes in England it plans to fund, covering £1.4bn of the 2024-26 investment. The other half of the FCERM spending covers additional measures, from repairing existing defences to advising local authorities.
The map below shows the distribution of spending on FCERM schemes in England over the past two years, highlighting the constituency of Richard Tice.
By far the largest sum of money – £85.6m in total – has been committed to a tidal barrier and various other defences in the Somerset constituency of Bridgwater, the seat of Conservative MP Ashley Fox.
Over the first months of 2026, the south-west region has faced significant flooding and Fox has called for more support from the government, citing “climate patterns shifting and rainfall intensifying”.
He has also backed his party’s position that “the 2050 net-zero target is impossible” and called for more fossil-fuel extraction in the North Sea.
Tice’s east-coast constituency of Boston and Skegness, which is highly vulnerable to flooding from both rivers and the sea, is set to receive £55m. Among the supported projects are beach defences from Saltfleet to Gibraltar Point and upgrades to pumping stations.
Overall, Boston and Skegness has the second-largest portion of flood-defence funding, as the chart below shows. Constituencies with Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs occupied the other top positions.
Overall, despite Labour MPs occupying 347 out of England’s 543 constituencies – nearly two-thirds of the total – more than half of the flood-defence funding was distributed to constituencies with non-Labour MPs. This reflects the flood risk in coastal and rural areas that are not traditional Labour strongholds.
Reform funding
While Reform has just eight MPs, representing 1% of the population, its constituencies have been assigned 4% of the flood-defence funding for England.
Nearly all of this money was for Tice’s constituency, although party leader Nigel Farage’s coastal Clacton seat in Kent received £2m.
Reform UK is committed to “scrapping net-zero” and its leadership has expressed firmly climate-sceptic views.
Much has been made of the disconnect between the party’s climate policies and the threat climate change poses to its voters. Various analyses have shown the flood risk in Reform-dominated areas, particularly Lincolnshire.
Tice has rejected climate science, advocated for fossil-fuel production and criticised Environment Agency flood-defence activities. Yet, he has also called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
This may reflect Tice’s broader approach to climate change. In a 2024 interview with LBC, he said:
“Where you’ve got concerns about sea level defences and sea level rise, guess what? A bit of steel, a bit of cement, some aggregate…and you build some concrete sea level defences. That’s how you deal with rising sea levels.”
While climate adaptation is viewed as vital in a warming world, there are limits on how much societies can adapt and adaptation costs will continue to increase as emissions rise.
The post Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
Greenhouse Gases
Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter.
Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Food inflation on the rise
DELUGE STRIKES FOOD: Extreme rainfall and flooding across the Mediterranean and north Africa has “battered the winter growing regions that feed Europe…threatening food price rises”, reported the Financial Times. Western France has “endured more than 36 days of continuous rain”, while farmers’ associations in Spain’s Andalusia estimate that “20% of all production has been lost”, it added. Policy expert David Barmes told the paper that the “latest storms were part of a wider pattern of climate shocks feeding into food price inflation”.
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NO BEEF: The UK’s beef farmers, meanwhile, “face a double blow” from climate change as “relentless rain forces them to keep cows indoors”, while last summer’s drought hit hay supplies, said another Financial Times article. At the same time, indoor growers in south England described a 60% increase in electricity standing charges as a “ticking timebomb” that could “force them to raise their prices or stop production, which will further fuel food price inflation”, wrote the Guardian.
‘TINDERBOX’ AND TARIFFS: A study, covered by the Guardian, warned that major extreme weather and other “shocks” could “spark social unrest and even food riots in the UK”. Experts cited “chronic” vulnerabilities, including climate change, low incomes, poor farming policy and “fragile” supply chains that have made the UK’s food system a “tinderbox”. A New York Times explainer noted that while trade could once guard against food supply shocks, barriers such as tariffs and export controls – which are being “increasingly” used by politicians – “can shut off that safety valve”.
El Niño looms
NEW ENSO INDEX: Researchers have developed a new index for calculating El Niño, the large-scale climate pattern that influences global weather and causes “billions in damages by bringing floods to some regions and drought to others”, reported CNN. It added that climate change is making it more difficult for scientists to observe El Niño patterns by warming up the entire ocean. The outlet said that with the new metric, “scientists can now see it earlier and our long-range weather forecasts will be improved for it.”
WARMING WARNING: Meanwhile, the US Climate Prediction Center announced that there is a 60% chance of the current La Niña conditions shifting towards a neutral state over the next few months, with an El Niño likely to follow in late spring, according to Reuters. The Vibes, a Malaysian news outlet, quoted a climate scientist saying: “If the El Niño does materialise, it could possibly push 2026 or 2027 as the warmest year on record, replacing 2024.”
CROP IMPACTS: Reuters noted that neutral conditions lead to “more stable weather and potentially better crop yields”. However, the newswire added, an El Niño state would mean “worsening drought conditions and issues for the next growing season” to Australia. El Niño also “typically brings a poor south-west monsoon to India, including droughts”, reported the Hindu’s Business Line. A 2024 guest post for Carbon Brief explained that El Niño is linked to crop failure in south-eastern Africa and south-east Asia.
News and views
- DAM-AG-ES: Several South Korean farmers filed a lawsuit against the country’s state-owned utility company, “seek[ing] financial compensation for climate-related agricultural damages”, reported United Press International. Meanwhile, a national climate change assessment for the Philippines found that the country “lost up to $219bn in agricultural damages from typhoons, floods and droughts” over 2000-10, according to Eco-Business.
- SCORCHED GRASS: South Africa’s Western Cape province is experiencing “one of the worst droughts in living memory”, which is “scorching grass and killing livestock”, said Reuters. The newswire wrote: “In 2015, a drought almost dried up the taps in the city; farmers say this one has been even more brutal than a decade ago.”
- NOUVELLE VEG: New guidelines published under France’s national food, nutrition and climate strategy “urged” citizens to “limit” their meat consumption, reported Euronews. The delayed strategy comes a month after the US government “upended decades of recommendations by touting consumption of red meat and full-fat dairy”, it noted.
- COURTING DISASTER: India’s top green court accepted the findings of a committee that “found no flaws” in greenlighting the Great Nicobar project that “will lead to the felling of a million trees” and translocating corals, reported Mongabay. The court found “no good ground to interfere”, despite “threats to a globally unique biodiversity hotspot” and Indigenous tribes at risk of displacement by the project, wrote Frontline.
- FISH FALLING: A new study found that fish biomass is “falling by 7.2% from as little as 0.1C of warming per decade”, noted the Guardian. While experts also pointed to the role of overfishing in marine life loss, marine ecologist and study lead author Dr Shahar Chaikin told the outlet: “Our research proves exactly what that biological cost [of warming] looks like underwater.”
- TOO HOT FOR COFFEE: According to new analysis by Climate Central, countries where coffee beans are grown “are becoming too hot to cultivate them”, reported the Guardian. The world’s top five coffee-growing countries faced “57 additional days of coffee-harming heat” annually because of climate change, it added.
Spotlight
Nature talks inch forward
This week, Carbon Brief covers the latest round of negotiations under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which occurred in Rome over 16-19 February.
The penultimate set of biodiversity negotiations before October’s Conference of the Parties ended in Rome last week, leaving plenty of unfinished business.
The CBD’s subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) met in the Italian capital for four days to discuss a range of issues, including biodiversity finance and reviewing progress towards the nature targets agreed under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
However, many of the major sticking points – particularly around finance – will have to wait until later this summer, leaving some observers worried about the capacity for delegates to get through a packed agenda at COP17.
The SBI, along with the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA) will both meet in Nairobi, Kenya, later this summer for a final round of talks before COP17 kicks off in Yerevan, Armenia, on 19 October.
Money talks
Finance for nature has long been a sticking point at negotiations under the CBD.
Discussions on a new fund for biodiversity derailed biodiversity talks in Cali, Colombia, in autumn 2024, requiring resumed talks a few months later.
Despite this, finance was barely on the agenda at the SBI meetings in Rome. Delegates discussed three studies on the relationship between debt sustainability and implementation of nature plans, but the more substantive talks are set to take place at the next SBI meeting in Nairobi.
Several parties “highlighted concerns with the imbalance of work” on finance between these SBI talks and the next ones, reported Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB).
Lim Li Ching, senior researcher at Third World Network, noted that tensions around finance permeated every aspect of the talks. She told Carbon Brief:
“If you’re talking about the gender plan of action – if there’s little or no financial resources provided to actually put it into practice and implement it, then it’s [just] paper, right? Same with the reporting requirements and obligations.”
Monitoring and reporting
Closely linked to the issue of finance is the obligations of parties to report on their progress towards the goals and targets of the GBF.
Parties do so through the submission of national reports.
Several parties at the talks pointed to a lack of timely funding for driving delays in their reporting, according to ENB.
A note released by the CBD Secretariat in December said that no parties had submitted their national reports yet; by the time of the SBI meetings, only the EU had. It further noted that just 58 parties had submitted their national biodiversity plans, which were initially meant to be published by COP16, in October 2024.
Linda Krueger, director of biodiversity and infrastructure policy at the environmental not-for-profit Nature Conservancy, told Carbon Brief that despite the sparse submissions, parties are “very focused on the national report preparation”. She added:
“Everybody wants to be able to show that we’re on the path and that there still is a pathway to getting to 2030 that’s positive and largely in the right direction.”
Watch, read, listen
NET LOSS: Nigeria’s marine life is being “threatened” by “ghost gear” – nets and other fishing equipment discarded in the ocean – said Dialogue Earth.
COMEBACK CAUSALITY: A Vox long-read looked at whether Costa Rica’s “payments for ecosystem services” programme helped the country turn a corner on deforestation.
HOMEGROWN GOALS: A Straits Times podcast discussed whether import-dependent Singapore can afford to shelve its goal to produce 30% of its food locally by 2030.
‘RUSTING’ RIVERS: The Financial Times took a closer look at a “strange new force blighting the [Arctic] landscape”: rivers turning rust-orange due to global warming.
New science
- Lakes in the Congo Basin’s peatlands are releasing carbon that is thousands of years old | Nature Geoscience
- Natural non-forest ecosystems – such as grasslands and marshlands – were converted for agriculture at four times the rate of land with tree cover between 2005 and 2020 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Around one-quarter of global tree-cover loss over 2001-22 was driven by cropland expansion, pastures and forest plantations for commodity production | Nature Food
In the diary
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean | Brasília
- 5 March: Nepal general elections
- 9-20 March: First part of the thirty-first session of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) | Kingston, Jamaica
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz.
Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org
The post Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate
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