The Labour government wants to cut UK greenhouse gas emissions to 87% below 1990 levels by 2040, which it says will deliver £865bn in economic benefits.
The target has been set out in draft legislation for the seventh “carbon budget”, a legally binding limit on emissions during the five-year period from 2038-2042.
The government says this would protect billpayers from “fossil-fuel shocks”, boost energy security, improve quality of life and help tackle climate change, by getting the country on track for net-zero by 2050.
The UK would need to invest around £880bn over 25 years to meet the budget, but doing so would yield benefits worth £1,620bn, according to a government impact assessment.
Pointedly, the government presents these benefits and costs relative to a policy of “no net-zero”, as the opposition Conservatives and hard-right Reform UK have both pledged to abandon the 2050 goal.
The 137-page impact assessment mentions energy security more than 30 times and says the seventh carbon budget would help save £445bn up to 2050 from ever decreasing fossil-fuel imports.
Moreover, the assessment is based on fossil-fuel price projections published in 2024, before the cost of oil and gas surged earlier this year after the effective closure of the strait of Hormuz.
The document says that the UK’s climate goals would be even more beneficial – worth £1,035bn, relative to “no net-zero” – if the country is exposed to “persistently high fossil-fuel prices”.
The seventh carbon budget must be approved by parliament before the end of June and the government must then publish a plan to meet it “as soon as reasonably practicable”.
What is the UK’s seventh ‘carbon budget’?
The UK’s efforts to tackle and respond to global warming are governed by the Climate Change Act, which was passed with near-unanimous cross-party support in 2008, by 463 votes to five.
In 2019, the then-Conservative government amended the Act to set a long-term goal for cutting emissions to 100% below 1990 levels by 2050, known as the net-zero target.
(The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has affirmed that reaching net-zero is the only way to stop global warming from getting worse – and that emissions would need to reach net-zero by 2050 globally to have a chance of limiting the rise in temperatures to 1.5C.)
To stay on track for the 2050 target, the act requires the government to set a series of “carbon budgets”. These are binding limits on the UK’s emissions covering successive five-year periods.
The UK met its first three carbon budgets, covering 2008-2022. It is currently just over half way through the fourth “carbon budget”, covering 2023-2027.
Under the act, the government is required to set the level of the seventh carbon budget, covering 2038-2042, by the end of June this year.
Before setting the budget, the government must take advice from the Climate Change Committee (CCC). In turn, this advice must take into account a range of factors, including the latest scientific evidence, technological trends, the state of the economy and public finances.
No government has ever gone against the advice of the CCC when setting carbon budgets. However, the government could have chosen not to do so, if it had explained why.
What target is the government aiming for?
The CCC recommended last year that the UK should aim to cut its emissions to 87% below 1990 levels under the seventh carbon budget for 2038-2042 – equivalent to a three-quarters reduction on current levels.
The government has followed this advice, setting a draft seventh carbon budget of 535m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e), some 107MtCO2e per year.
The proposed 2040 target is shown in the figure below, alongside previously legislated budgets and the UK’s international climate pledges for 2030 and 2035 under the Paris Agreement.
In a written statement to parliament, energy secretary Ed Miliband said the target would reduce the UK’s exposure to “volatile international fossil-fuel markets and protect bill-payers”, as well as delivering benefits for jobs, growth, health and the natural environment. Miliband wrote:
“Against the backdrop of heightened geopolitical instability, including the ongoing crisis in the Middle East and its implications for global energy markets, the case for setting a clear and credible long-term pathway for the UK on clean energy and climate action is stronger than ever.”
Echoing a 2023 review commissioned by the then-Conservative government, Miliband also wrote that “clean energy and climate action is the economic opportunity of the 21st century”.
(On the day of the draft budget, the Guardian reported findings that the UK’s “net-zero economy” was worth “more than £100bn a year”, according to consultancy CBI Economics.)
The impact assessment sets out the climate-change “case for action”. It says the “science is clear” that the UK is becoming wetter and warmer, with increasing floods, droughts, heatwaves and wildfires. This is “unequivocally” due to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. It continues:
“Without action, climate change will continue to endanger the UK’s food and water security, exacerbate global population displacement and pose national security risks.”
The document adds that the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) found the “costs of climate damage are getting higher, while the cost of the net-zero transition is getting lower”.
In its impact assessment, the government also outlines a less ambitious goal to cut emissions to 83% below 1990 levels by 2040 and a tighter target for 89%.
In what may be an attempt to pre-empt future legal challenges (see: What happens next?), the government outlines why it is not choosing to pursue either greater or lesser ambition for 2040.
It says the low end of ambition “increases the risk of underinvestment”, while the highest target could face “deliverability risks [that] may undermine [the UK’s] credibility”.
Note that the sixth and seventh budgets were set in line with the net-zero target, whereas previous budgets were set on a pathway to 80% by 2050 – hence, the step change in the figure above.
The sixth and later carbon budgets include the UK’s share of emissions from international aviation and shipping. These emissions relate to journeys that start or finish at UK ports and airports. Draft legislation to make this change was laid in parliament earlier this year.
The UK’s legally binding climate goals do not include the “imported” emissions associated with the production of goods and services in other countries. Among other reasons, this is because the UK does not have legal jurisdiction over activities taking place outside its borders.
The UK’s imported emissions were growing until around 2008, but have remained relatively flat since then. This means that the UK’s overall “carbon footprint”, including imported emissions, has been falling by a similar amount as the territorial emissions within its own borders.
How could the UK meet the seventh carbon budget?
To date, UK emissions cuts have largely come from the power sector, as the country has stopped burning coal to generate electricity and shifted from gas towards clean power.
In order to meet the seventh carbon budget, the UK will need to cut emissions across the economy. According to the CCC’s advice, the biggest contributions would come from electrifying transport, heat and industry, driven by a massively expanded supply of clean electricity.
It said at the time of its advice:
“In many key areas, the best way forward is now clear. Electrification and low-carbon electricity supply make up the largest share of emissions reductions in our pathway.”
This would mean shifting to electric vehicles (EVs), electric heat pumps and electrified industrial processes on a massive scale, reducing the need for fossil fuels.
Since electrified technologies are far more efficient than those based on fossil-fuel combustion, this shift would also dramatically cut the need for oil and gas imports, the CCC said.
In broad terms, the government backs a similar path to cutting UK emissions through mass electrification. In its release on the seventh carbon budget, it says:
“Half of the UK’s recessions since 1970 have been caused by fossil-fuel shocks. The government is investing in renewable and nuclear energy to get the UK off the rollercoaster of fossil-fuel prices…By 2050, the UK could cut its reliance on fossil fuels from around three quarters of our energy today to around 15%, while avoiding around £445bn in fossil-fuel spending over the next 25 years.”
In its “delivery plan” for the sixth carbon budget, covering 2033-2037, it said roughly a third of UK homes should have heat pumps by 2035 and around half of cars on the road should be EVs.
There is one key difference between the CCC’s suggested approach to meeting the UK’s carbon budgets and that of the government. Specifically, the CCC suggested there would be an important role for behaviour change in relation to diets and efforts to limit the rise in the number of flights.
In contrast, the government has placed much less emphasis on these areas. This means that it relies to a greater extent on expensive technologies that can remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
Despite this context, some right-leaning newspapers have misleadingly focused their coverage on the perceived need to alter diets to meet the seventh carbon budget.
What are the benefits and costs of reaching this target?
The government says that the proposed seventh carbon budget would “deliver the benefits of clean energy and climate action for jobs and growth, health and our natural environment”, as well as aligning with the 1.5C target of the Paris Agreement to “avoid climate disaster”.
Overall, it says that the net-zero target for 2050 “continues to represent value for money, with strong net benefits relative to alternative pathways”.
The detailed impact assessment sets out the benefits and costs of meeting the proposed seventh carbon budget in monetary terms, in line with Treasury guidance under the “green book”.
The results are presented in terms of “net present value” (NPV). This takes into account the human preference for enjoying benefits today, rather than in the future. When measuring NPV, future costs and benefits are “discounted”, to reflect their lower value in the present moment.
Specifically, meeting the proposed seventh carbon budget would have net benefits worth £865bn to the UK, relative to a world where the net-zero target is abandoned and existing technology continues to be used. For example, in this “no net-zero” alternative, gas boilers and petrol cars would be replaced like-for-like when they reach the end of their life.
It says that a lower bill for fossil fuels is a “major component” of the net benefits, with savings reaching £445bn over 25 years if the seventh carbon budget is met, relative to “no net-zero”.
The “vast majority” of these savings result from electrification – in other words, swapping those boilers and petrol cars for heat pumps and EVs.
However, the largest benefit of the proposed budget comes from avoided climate-change damages, which amount to £1,495bn over 25 years, according to the document. This benefit relates to lower UK emissions limiting climate impacts, such as extreme heat and flooding.
The government also acknowledges that significant investments would be required to meet the seventh carbon budget. It puts the cost of these investments at £880bn over 25 years, including financing, relative to the alternative of “no net-zero”.
These benefits and costs of the proposed budget are shown in the figure below. In aggregate, these add up to the headline net benefits of £865bn over 25 years.
In addition to the “no net-zero” baseline, the impact assessment compares the proposed budget with a continuation of current policies. The results are directionally similar to, but slightly lower than, the net benefits relative to “no net-zero”.
The document also considers a range of “sensitivities” to explore the impact of higher or lower technology costs and fossil-fuel prices, as well as to consider alternative pathways that use less carbon capture and storage (CCS), fewer EVs or a reduced number of heat pumps.
Finally, the impact assessment also considers the ongoing benefits and costs of meeting the seventh carbon budget when looking out to 2060.
This roughly doubles the net benefits of meeting the target from £865bn by 2050 to £1,520bn by 2060, because the upfront investments yield ongoing savings, such as lower fossil-fuel bills.
Notably, the impact assessment is based on fossil-fuel price projections published in 2024, when the average cost of wholesale gas was around 80p per therm.
These projections envisaged gas prices of 75p/therm in 2025, falling to 70p by 2030. A “high” case, explored in the impact assessment, had prices of up to around 110p/therm.
In reality, prices climbed to around 85p/therm in 2025 and gas is currently trading at 115p, having reached as high as 150p/therm in the immediate aftermath of the US-Israel attack on Iran in February. This was still well below the 640p peak seen during the global energy crisis in 2022.
In the “high” case for fossil-fuel prices – in which prices are below current levels – the net benefit of the seventh carbon budget climbs to £1,035bn over 25 years.
The impact assessment does not consider the potential for “feedback and system loops, which have potential to decrease costs faster than estimated”.
What happens next?
Under the Climate Change Act, there is a deadline of 30 June 2026 to legislate for the seventh carbon budget, subject to parliamentary approval.
In setting out the draft target, the UK government has already taken into account the views of the devolved administrations for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The impact assessment notes that none of them had made “representations” on the level of the seventh carbon budget.
The draft carbon budget legislation is subject to the “affirmative procedure”, which means it must be debated and voted through by both houses of parliament.
For the sixth carbon budget, which was legislated under the then-Conservative government in 2021, this vote took place during the “committee stage”.
The government statement says that its delivery plan for the sixth carbon budget, published in October 2025, will “drive substantial abatement into the carbon budget seven period”. It adds:
“These policies will continue to deliver the bulk of emissions savings needed for carbon budget seven. This provides a strong and credible starting point…reducing delivery risk and giving confidence that the transition can be delivered in an affordable and manageable way.”
Specifically, the impact assessment says that the existing CB6 delivery plan “would get the UK to 84% emissions reduction” by 2040, only just shy of the proposed 87% target.
The government commits to publishing a new delivery plan for the seventh carbon budget “as soon as reasonably practical”, in line with the wording with the Climate Change Act. It says:
“This statutory sequencing recognises the time needed to develop and agree an ambitious and robust package of policies to deliver the target.”
The impact assessment notes that the delivery plan will determine how the UK meets the seventh carbon budget, as well as the implications for different regions and sectors of the UK economy.
Two earlier delivery plans, published by previous Conservative governments, were subject to successful legal challenge in the High Court. These cases, brought by groups including Friends of the Earth and ClientEarth, resulted in the latest delivery plan, published last October.
A separate group, calling itself “Carbon Reckoning”, is attempting to crowdfund a fresh legal challenge to the government’s plans for the seventh carbon budget. In late May 2026, it wrote to Miliband arguing that the 87% by 2040 target “fails to comply with international obligations”.
The post Q&A: How UK’s seventh carbon budget will deliver ‘£865bn’ in economic benefits appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: How UK’s seventh carbon budget will deliver ‘£865bn’ in economic benefits
The United Nations Secretary-General and foreign ministers from the UK, France and Spain have blamed the deadly wildfires engulfing Europe on climate change, using the disaster to renew calls for faster cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.
António Guterres told journalists on Friday that the “climate crisis is in overdrive”, adding that global heat seen so far is just a “warm up act” as a phenomenon known as El Niño intensifies “adding fuel to a planet already on fire”.
A new World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) report published on Friday predicts that the weather pattern will grow into a “strong event” between now and October, increasing the risk of higher than normal temperatures across much of the world and disrupted rainfalls.
“That risks shattering every seasonal record – and driving even more severe effects worldwide,” Guterres said.
El Niño builds on top of an already warming world, driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels. A WMO scientist, who did not want to be named, told journalists that all the heatwaves and other climate impacts seen so far this year are “before the effects of El Niño are really kicking in at a global scale”.
Fossil fuellling the fires
Fires have broken out across much of Europe but are threatening the most people in the south-west of France near Bordeaux and in Central Spain near Madrid. Nearly a quarter of a million people have been evacuated in France with hundreds of homes destroyed while in Spain 80,000 people have had to leave their homes and at least 13 died in one village.
A scientific study published on Friday by the World Weather Attribution group found that man-made climate change made deadly fires in France twice as likely and those in Spain twenty times more likely. Smaller fires in the UK were not analysed by the study.
UN Climate Change leader Simon Stiell blamed fossil fuels for the fires, as well as storms in Chile and heatwaves in North America and Japan in recent weeks. “The climate alarm is blaring”, he said on Wednesday.
Guterres criticised new fossil fuel production projects and fossil fuel subsidies for causing hardship across the world. Discussing his speech, a senior UN official – who did not want to be named – said the subsidies amounted to trillions of US dollars a year and criticised pension funds and institutional investors, including insurance companies, for continuing to invest in fossil fuel projects.
Asked why world leaders and the public are not prioritising climate action, Guterres said they are distracted by wars in Ukraine, the Middle East, Sudan and elsewhere and sometimes forget “other aspects that are a sometimes even more dangerous threat”.
Also the fossil fuel industry and “some countries” are campaigning to pretend that climate change does not exist, he said, adding that the UN should be more active in “naming the situations as they are and the responsibilties as they are and mobilising the public opinion”.
After meetings in Paris and Madrid earlier in the week, the UK’s new foreign minister Ed Miliband issued joint statements with his French and Spanish counterparts – Jean-Noël Barrot and José Manuel Albares Bueno – calling on the world to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels.
They promised to do more to reduce emissions and protect their people and encouraged other governments to do the same.
The UK-French statement called on governments to publish UN climate plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), which are aligned with the Paris Agreement’s goal to limit global average temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
According to Climate Action Tracker, only three countries – the UK, Nigeria and Norway – have submitted NDCs with 2035 emissions reduction targets which are compatible with 1.5C. Fifty-two countries – including Egypt, Vietnam and Argentina – have yet to submit an NDC at all.
Defending science
Beyond action on emissions, the ministers also intervened in an ongoing dispute over the timing of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC)’s next flagship assessment.
Miliband and Barrot’s statement said they “underline the importance” of scientific report feeding into governments’ next global stocktake of progress on climate action in two years’ time, calling it a “critical input” to that process.
The timing of this report has been a contentious issue in government negotiations at the IPCC and at June’s climate talks in Bonn. While a group of nations calling themselves the “friends of science” want the report before the stocktake, others like Saudi Arabia and India have argued that this would make the report of a worse quality and less inclusive of developing countries’ scientists.
Science ‘under attack’ from fossil fuel interests at UN climate talks
The UK-Spanish statement weighed in less explicitly on this issue but said that they “recall the importance of scientific evidence and acknowledge the work of the IPCC in this respect.”
The British and French ministers said they would seek to accelerate reductions of emissions in methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas, at COP31 in November. They encouraged governments “to work jointly to develop a marketplace for fossil fuels with near-zero methane intensity.”
Methane leaks from oil, gas and coal production are a major contributor to global warming. Over a 20-year period, methane traps around 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide.
The UK and Spanish statement emphasised the importance of supporting the Global South and underlined the need to mobilise sustainable financing “at scale with the challenge we face”. The previous UK government, in which Miliband was energy minister, cut climate finance to developing countries to pay for increases in military spending.
The UK government led by new Prime Minister Andy Burnham has yet to outline any major changes to climate finance in its two weeks in power but has announced it will convert some finance from grants to loans in order to free up money to subsidise bus travel in England.
More adaptation needed
Guterres said that “it is time to stop treating each disaster as an isolated tragedy and recognise the systemic risk that is unfolding before our eyes.” A recent study found that three-quarters of UK media reports about the British June heatwave did not mention climate change.
As well as reducing emissions, the UN Secretary-General called for measures to adapt vulnerable people to extreme heat. Specifically, he said that buildings should be built and retrofitted for extreme heat and that every city and country should have heat-health action plans and early warning systems. Over 250 cities have joined the UN’s ‘beat the heat’ initiative, he said.
The Portuguese diplomat called for governments and employers to do more to protect their workers from heat, criticising global fashion brands for not setting heat standards for the factories that supply them. “No one should have to risk their life to earn a living,” he said.
The post UN chief warns climate crisis “in overdrive” as El Niño threatens to fuel the fire appeared first on Climate Home News.
UN chief warns climate crisis “in overdrive” as El Niño threatens to fuel the fire
Climate Change
‘Ride the wave of momentum’: Australia announces once-in-a-decade Marine Parks Network review
In response to the federal government announcing its once-in-a-decade review of Australia’s Marine Parks Network, the following lines can be attributed to Elle Lawless, Senior Campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific:
“Greenpeace Australia Pacific welcomes today’s announcement that the Albanese Government will review Australia’s Commonwealth Marine Parks Network. This is a rare, once-in-a-decade opportunity to strengthen our marine parks and ban industrial fishing in Australia’s marine protected areas.
“Australians would be appalled to know that more than half of Australia’s Marine Parks Network currently allows for extractive industries, like longlining, bottom trawling and oil and gas mining. These so-called ‘protected’ areas were designed to safeguard our beloved ocean wildlife and underwater ecosystems – that is what Australians expect. Damaging industrial industries should not be given a free pass to trawl, fish, drill or extract from our marine parks.”
“With the first Ocean COP just around the corner, and off the back of Australia’s move to ratify the Global Ocean Treaty earlier this year, the Australian government has a unique opportunity to ride the wave of this momentum and solidify itself as a true global ocean leader.
“Greenpeace Australia Pacific is calling for industrial activities to be banned from our protected waters and for at least 30% of Australia’s ocean to be protected as ocean sanctuaries. This review presents a rare opportunity to create more ocean sanctuaries, true blue havens where ocean life can recover, thrive and repopulate the surrounding waters.”
—ENDS—
‘Ride the wave of momentum’: Australia announces once-in-a-decade Marine Parks Network review
In recent days, prominent climate sceptics and rightwing commentators have shared charts on social media incorrectly implying that Europe is having its “quietest” year for wildfires in 2026.
These include Dr Matthew Wielicki, a former University of Alabama geochemist and self-described “professor in exile”, who was recently appointed by the Trump administration to lead the US Global Change Research Program.
However, these charts paint a misleading picture as they are skewed by encompassing the entirety of Russia in the data – including the vast plains of Siberia.
These charts also use data that include fires that are deliberately lit to manage cropland, which is a declining practice across much of Europe.
In this factcheck, Carbon Brief shows that the area burned by wildfires across the European Union in 2026 is second only to 2022 for this time of year.
The latest data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) also shows that France has set a new modern record for area burned and Spain’s wildfire season is among the worst on record.
The fires have displaced more than a third of a million people across south-western Europe, while an impending heatwave has also raised fears of the fires worsening in the coming days.
‘Quietest year’
On 27 July, as wildfires raged across multiple European countries, former Conservative peer and climate-sceptic commentator Matt Ridley posted on Twitter that “2026 is the quietest year for wildfires in Europe by some distance”.
Ridley, who sits on the academic advisory council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a UK-based climate-sceptic lobby group that refuses to reveal the sources of its funding, was responding to an article by Daily Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley.
Stanley’s column, headlined: “Climate change is real – and the right needs to get serious about it”, warned:
“This is no longer a matter of speculation: the wildfires of Europe, pitiless and persistent, are the way we live now.”
Ridley included a chart from Our World In Data, showing the cumulative area burned by wildfires by week for Europe. The chart puts 2026 as having the smallest area for this time of year in a dataset going back to 2012.
Ridley’s post was widely shared by prominent rightwing figures – including Richard Tice, deputy leader of the hard-right, climate-sceptic Reform UK party, former Conservative cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg and multiple commentators.
Separately, Wielicki also shared a chart on Twitter to imply that wildfires in Europe are declining. Wielicki has previously claimed that the “science is not settled on climate change”.
The charts posted by Ridley and Wielicki both use data from the Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS). The GWIS category for “Europe” encompasses all the countries on the continent and includes the whole of Russia.
As a result, Russia accounts for about 74% of the area included in the GWIS definition of “Europe”.
Wildfires in Russia typically account for 80-90% of the burned area in the GWIS Europe dataset. In 2026, fires in Russia are substantially below average. Therefore, including Russia in this comparison creates the false impression that wildfire activity across Europe is unusually low.
Dr Calum Cunningham, a research fellow at the University of Tasmania’s Fire Centre, says that such claims are “highly misleading”, noting that “they rely on aggregating fire activity across an enormous and climatically diverse region”. He tells Carbon Brief:
“A relatively quiet season in Russia can easily mask an exceptionally active season in France or Spain. If the analysis is focused on the regions actually experiencing the current fires, the picture is very different.
“The reality is that western Europe has experienced an extraordinary sequence of climate conditions this year.”
In contrast, the EFFIS provides a subset of wildfire data specifically for the area covered by the 27 nations of the EU, which, therefore, excludes Russia.
Another difference between the two datasets is that GWIS monitors all fires – including those on agricultural land that are intentionally set alight. The burned area as measured by GWIS contains significant cropland area.
By contrast, EFFIS uses land-cover data and other information to filter specifically for forest fires.
Looking at the EU-only data from EFFIS reveals that Europe is far from having its “quietest” year. The bloc’s burned area, as of 29 July, is almost 435,000 hectares (ha) – second only to 2022 for this time of year.
Notably, Wielicki has actually continued to post charts based on GWIS data, even after acknowledging that “includ[ing] all of Russia, including vast areas of Siberia…isn’t a good proxy for Europe”.
French fires
Even looking at EU-wide data misses the scale of this year’s wildfires for some individual countries.
The chart below shows the surge in burned area in France since mid-July.
For much of the first half of the year, the country was having a wildfire season that was only slightly above average in terms of total burned area. However, a notable uptick began in the first week of July.
The third week of the month saw France break its previous cumulative annual record by more than 19,000ha. That gap has widened as the fires continue to burn; as of 29 July, the cumulative burned area in France during 2026 was nearly 24,700ha above the previous record.
The fires in France follow a record-breaking June heatwave that “dried out vegetation across the region, allowing fires to spread quickly”, wrote the New York Times.
On 27 July, French president Emmanuel Macron called a “crisis cabinet meeting” in order to address the fires “ravaging several areas of south-west France”, said France 24.
More than 220,000 people have been evacuated due to the Gironde fire, west of Bordeaux, in “what may be France’s largest peacetime evacuation”, reported the Associated Press.
In the Conversation, Cunningham and two other University of Tasmania researchers write that evacuation orders “protec[t] human lives, but makes it more likely houses and other structures will burn if there’s no one to defend them”. They add:
“There is little doubt climate change has made France and Spain’s wildfires worse. They represent yet another reason to redouble our efforts to tackle climate change and stabilise our climate.”
Central Spain scorched
While Spain’s fire season has not broken records in the same way that France’s has, it is on track to be among the worst since EFFIS began reporting data in 2006.
The chart below shows the rapid increase in burned area in Spain since 8 July. The latest data from EFFIS reveal that, as of 29 July, Spain has almost matched its previous record at this point in the year. It is also nearly five times the average area burned for this time of year.
In Spain, the wildfires have been concentrated in the central part of the country, near Madrid.
BBC News reported that the fires outside the capital have burned “an area more than twice as large as the city itself”.
Nearly 90,000 people were forced from their homes in central Spain by the fires, said the Associated Press.
Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, called the fires a “painful expression” of climate change.
Meanwhile, the UK, French and Spanish governments have issued joint statements this week in response to the fires. The UK/Spain statement begins:
“This summer’s wildfires demonstrated that climate change was now a national security emergency facing Europe and threatening our way of life.”
Related
The post Factcheck: No, Europe is not having its ‘quietest’ year for wildfires appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Factcheck: No, Europe is not having its ‘quietest’ year for wildfires
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