Crops that have been “altered” by scientists in a laboratory can be found growing on millions of hectares of farmland around the world.
These “genetically modified organisms” (GMOs) are planted extensively across swathes of North and South America, in particular, but remain strictly limited in many countries.
However, these stringent regulations have eased in some nations for crops altered using new, more precise “gene-editing” technologies.
Several experts tell Carbon Brief that these new technologies are not a “silver-bullet” solution for agriculture, but that they could help crops deal with extreme weather and boost nutrition in a faster, safer and cheaper way than GMOs.
In contrast, other experts, as well as environmental groups, are concerned about how these gene-edited crops will be produced, regulated and patented.
In this Q&A, Carbon Brief looks at the difference between GMOs and gene-edited foods and whether these technologies can help crops deal with climate change while boosting food security.
- What are genetically modified crops?
- Where are genetically modified and gene-edited crops grown around the world?
- What are the perceived benefits and concerns of genetically engineered foods?
- Could gene-editing and GMOs benefit food security?
- Do genetically modified crops benefit climate mitigation and adaptation?
What are genetically modified crops?
For centuries, farmers have used selective breeding techniques to prioritise growing crops with desirable traits, such as resistance to disease.
In the 1970s, scientists developed new ways to boost these traits directly by changing a plant’s genetic material.
GMOs – genetically modified organisms – are plants, animals and microorganisms whose genes have been altered with the help of technology.
Dr Jennifer Pett-Ridge is a senior researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and principal investigator on a soil carbon project at the Innovative Genomics Institute in Berkeley, California.
She explains that gene modification technologies take DNA from one species and insert it into another. She tells Carbon Brief:
“It might be a frog or a tomato, or something like that, that you’re importing from another organism that has a trait that you really want that will work within your organism of choice. You’re splicing that in, essentially.”
The most common traits scientists put into genetically modified crops include tolerance to weed-killing herbicides and resistance to insects and viruses. The techniques can also be used to develop plants that are better able to deal with drought, heat and other intensifying effects of climate change.
In the US in 1994 – after years of testing and experiments – a GM tomato was the world’s first genetically engineered food sold in shops, according to the country’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
This tomato was “genetically altered to ripen longer on the vine while remaining firm for picking and shipping”, the New York Times reported at the time.
Two years later, farmers began growing genetically engineered crops across the US. One example is “Roundup Ready” maize, cotton and other crops. These plants were developed by the chemical company Monsanto – which was bought out by Bayer in 2018 – to be more resistant to the weed-killer Roundup.
A gene that is resistant to glyphosate – the herbicide used in Roundup – was taken from a type of bacteria and inserted into these crops. This, in turn, allowed farmers to apply the herbicide to kill weeds without destroying their crops.
In more recent years, scientists have developed different ways to alter DNA. One prevailing method is Crispr/Cas9 – a gene-editing technology that can tweak genetic code without needing to introduce traits from another species. The scientists behind the discovery were awarded a Nobel Prize in 2020.
The method is akin to using a “pair of scissors to just snip a gene out and move it somewhere else” within the same plant, Pett-Ridge says, preventing the need to mix in DNA from other species, which is how GMOs are made.
For example, the technology could be used to remove a gene that makes a plant less able to deal with drought.
A 2016 study on the possibilities of Crispr for plants described the technology as relatively simple, cheap and versatile compared to other methods. So far, scientists have carried out studies on the method’s ability to alter the genetic make-up of a wide range of crops, from rice and tomatoes, to oranges and maize.
However, these trials are in the early stages of development and experts tell Carbon Brief more research is needed before they are widely commercially available.
New technologies such as Crispr are being regulated differently to other GMOs in many countries, but opinions differ on how different they truly are from older genetic-engineering techniques.
Although there is limited evidence showing that GMOs have a negative effect on human health and the environment, they remain controversial for many due to concerns over reduced biodiversity and the prevalence of crop monocultures.
Where are genetically modified and gene-edited crops grown around the world?
Genetically modified crops are widely grown in some parts of the world, such as the US and parts of South America, and are more restricted in the EU and many African countries.
In 2019, more than 190m hectares of genetically modified crops were planted around the world – an area roughly the size of Mexico – according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications.
In 1996, around the time GM crops were being approved for commercial use in several countries, this figure stood at 1.7m hectares.
The US grows the most GM crops of any country, followed by Brazil, Argentina, Canada and India – as shown in the figure below.
Almost all soya beans, cotton and maize now planted in the US are genetically modified, often to resist pests or deal with herbicide use, according to the FDA.
Alongside feeding people, GM maize and soya beans are frequently used to feed animals. More than 95% of livestock and poultry in the US eat genetically modified crops, the FDA says.
In the EU and other parts of the world, GM crops are not widely grown. The EU’s rules require GMO foods to be labelled as such for consumers and permit individual EU countries to ban genetically modified crops, if they choose. Most EU countries do not grow GMO crops.
The EU’s GMO rules still apply in the UK. But, in 2023, the rules in England were eased to allow the development of plants that are genetically edited using modern methods such as Crispr.
Further laws are needed to allow these gene-edited plants – and, later, animals – to be sold in England. The legislation for plants is set to be brought in this summer.
Rules around whether these gene-edited plants should be treated the same as, or differently to, GMOs are still being assessed by many governments around the world.
In some countries, such as the US, they are essentially treated the same as non-GMO products. Since they do not contain “foreign” genes, they are seen as indistinguishable from conventional plants.
The EU could be moving in a similar direction with a proposal from the European Commission to loosen its stringent GMO requirements for plants that have been made using newer gene-editing technologies.
The changes would “better reflect the different risk profiles” of the way in which gene-edited plants are made compared to genetically modified ones, the commission said.
Dr Ludivine Petetin, a reader in law and expert in agri-food issues at Cardiff University, says the proposal marks a significant change from the EU’s previous attitude to genetically altered foods.
If approved, the EU would create two categories of plants that have been altered by new genomic techniques. One category of plants would be considered comparable to conventional plants and would not require any GMO labelling for consumers.
Plants that have been made using these newer techniques, but do not meet this criteria, would fall into the second category. This would require stricter assessment and mandatory labelling, similar to how GMOs are currently regulated in the EU. Petetin tells Carbon Brief:
“That’s a massive, massive difference to the precautionary principle used before, where it was all about the need to inform the public – the need to tell them whether there is [genetic modification] or not in what we are all eating.”
The “precautionary principle” approach is used to apply caution to issues that have uncertain levels of scientific evidence about a risk to environmental or human health. It is used in the EU’s directive on GMOs.
The debate around the EU’s proposal is on hold until after the European parliament elections in June.
Earlier this year, more than 1,500 scientists and 37 Nobel Prize winners signed an open letter calling on EU politicians to support gene-editing techniques and “consider the unequivocal body of scientific evidence supporting” new genomic techniques.
What are the perceived benefits and concerns of genetically engineered foods?
Proponents of GMOs highlight that they can boost crop yields and help feed the expanding global population. Critics point to human and environmental concerns.
A 2022 study found that the “right use” of GM crops could potentially “offer more benefit than harm, with its ability to alleviate food crises around the world”, based on a review of different impacts of GM crops on “sustainable agriculture” systems.
The main concerns laid out by the World Health Organization are triggering allergens, raising antibiotic resistance and spillover of GM plants into land that is growing conventional crops.
This spillover could reduce the diversity of crops being grown and lead to monocultures of plants, which can degrade soils and reduce biodiversity.
Other concerns focus on the use of pesticides and herbicides. A 2023 review study said that some areas growing herbicide-tolerant crops sometimes use more of the plant-killing chemical due to the emergence of herbicide-resistant weeds.
Nonetheless, the study found that, overall, genetically modified crops have had a positive impact on crop yields, pest and disease resistance and tolerance to stresses such as high temperatures or drought.
A 2017 study said there is evidence that GM crops can have negative environmental impacts, such as harming biodiversity. But this – and other studies – have concluded that further research is still needed on the human and environmental health risks of GM plants.
Other criticisms around GMOs and gene-edited crops centre around how they are regulated. Patenting is one of these concerns.
In the US, Brazil and other countries, GMO seeds can be patented. The global seed market, in general, is dominated by a small number of companies, such as Bayer and Corteva. The chart below shows that these two companies control 40% of the global seed market.
Petetin says that if seed patenting is permitted under the EU’s gene-editing rules, as currently proposed, it could lead to “more concentration of the seeds and the plant business”.
Experts tell Carbon Brief that the patenting of these seeds impacts farmers as they often have to re-purchase GM seeds each year from a company which has complete control over the cost.
The price of GM seeds rose by more than 700% between 2000 and 2015. A number of large seed companies have taken farmers to court for infringing on patent rights by growing GM crops without payment.
Patenting can also pose problems for small-scale seed developers, as similarities with patented crops can also lead to infringement claims. This can apply to both genetically modified and conventional crops.
Eva Corral, a GMO campaigner at Greenpeace EU, is calling for more information on the climate, health and environmental impacts of gene-edited foods and for labelling to remain in place in the EU’s rules.
She tells Carbon Brief that gene-edited crops are not a “panacea” to “miraculously solve all the problems in the world”, adding:
“We have to be really very, very cautious, which I think is something very much missing in the debate about new GMOs.”
Could gene-editing and GMOs benefit food security?
Whether through traditional breeding or by scientists in a lab, crops are often altered to make them more resistant to drought, better able to fight off disease or to improve their nutritional value.
All of these elements could be helpful for farmers around the world whose crops are being damaged by extreme weather conditions fuelled by human-caused climate change.
Disasters – such as floods, droughts and wildfires – have caused about $3.8tn worth of lost crops and livestock production over the past three decades, according to a report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
Genetically modified crops can increase the amount of food grown in a certain amount of space – which is significant given that the amount of arable land around the world is declining.
Global crop production grew by more than 370m tonnes between 1996 and 2012. Genetically modified crops in the US accounted for one-seventh of this boost.
Increased crop yields and reduced losses due to extreme weather can be particularly attractive for countries hit by high levels of hunger and facing severe impacts of climate change.
Between 691 and 783 million people faced hunger in 2022, according to the UN’s 2023 report on food security and nutrition. The issue is particularly acute in Africa, where around one in five people face hunger – a “much larger” amount than the rest of the world, the report says.
Several experts tell Carbon Brief that scientists have long-hoped that Crispr’s relatively low cost and simpler technology would enable more gene-edited crop development in developing countries.
In African countries, GM and gene-edited crops could be part of the solution, but are not the only fix to problems facing agriculture, such as drought and poor crop yields, says Prof Ademola Adenle, a guest professor of sustainability science at the Technical University of Denmark. He tells Carbon Brief:
“Just like GMOs, gene-editing is not a silver-bullet solution to hunger or food security problems or climate change. But it could be part of a solution to a wide range of problems in the agricultural sector and [have] the potential to create crops that are resistant to diseases.”
Adenle, who is from Nigeria, has researched the progress in regulation and development of GM crops in different parts of Africa. GM crops are commercially grown in South Africa and a small number of other countries on the continent, such as Kenya and Nigeria.
He tells Carbon Brief that more research is needed to inform ongoing GMO and gene-editing discussions in African countries:
“Without investment in research and development programmes, Africa will be left behind…in terms of applying new technologies to solve some of the problems we have in the agricultural sector.
“Before gene-editing can be accepted in Africa, just like GMO, [countries] have to have the scientific capacity, they have to have the policy in place and, of course, they need to raise the level of awareness about the advantages and perhaps disadvantages that may be associated with the application of gene editing.”
Dr Joeva Sean Rock, an assistant professor in development studies at the University of Cambridge, has researched the politics of GM foods in Africa, particularly Ghana.
She says there is “a lot of hype” around the potential uses of gene-editing to develop crops that can “improve climate resilience and food security”. But she urges caution, telling Carbon Brief:
“An important question becomes how that hype compares with present reality…We are in a moment where there’s a real opportunity to ask not necessarily whether this technology could be a panacea, but rather if and how it might be able to benefit people at different scales and with different needs.”
A recent study found that a relatively small number of gene-editing crop projects focus on benefitting smallholder farmers in the global south. These farmers are “exceptionally vulnerable to climate change and food insecurity”, Rock says, adding:
“Farmers have diverse needs and so an important question is whether genome editing is an appropriate tool to address those needs and whether it is being used to do so.”
Do genetically modified crops benefit climate mitigation and adaptation?
There have been a lot of claims – and counter-claims – about the climate benefits of GMOs, both in terms of making crops more resistant to extreme weather and in helping plants to absorb more carbon from the atmosphere.
Dr Emma Kovak is a senior food and agriculture analyst at the Breakthrough Institute – a controversial thinktank in California that claims it “promotes technological solutions to environmental and human development challenges”.
Kovak was the lead author of a 2022 study which said that growing more GM crops, such as wheat, in the EU could lead to reduced land-use emissions in other parts of the world. The researchers estimated the extent that greenhouse gas levels would be impacted by the EU growing similar levels of genetically modified maize, soya beans, cotton, canola and sugar beet as the US.
The study claimed that this increase in EU GMOs would boost crop yields, which would allow the bloc to provide more of its own crops, Kovak tells Carbon Brief. This could lead to emissions cuts equivalent to more than 7% of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, the study found. Kovak says:
“Expansion of crop production through yield increases in the EU can decrease farmland expansion in other places in the world, which means less deforestation and emissions from deforestation.”
Agriculture drives at least three-quarters of deforestation around the world, with forests cleared to raise animals and grow crops such as soya beans.
Another study published in 2018 looked at the environmental impacts of GM crops, such as maize, cotton and soya beans, on pesticide use and CO2 emissions across different countries over 1996-2016.
The study combined previous studies on fuel use and tillage systems – that is, preparing the land for crops – along with evidence on the impact of GM crop usage on these practices. It also looked at farm-level and national pesticide usage surveys.
It found that the use of GM insect-resistant and herbicide-tolerant technology reduced pesticide spraying by 8%. This, as a result, reduced the environmental impacts of herbicide and insecticide use.
It further led to cuts in fuel use and tillage changes, resulting in a “significant reduction” in emissions from areas growing GM crops. Combining figures from reduced fuel use and increased soil carbon storage, the researchers said the emissions reduction would be equivalent to taking almost 17m cars off the road for one year.
A 2011 review study found that GM crops could reduce the impacts of agriculture on biodiversity in a number of ways, such as by reducing insecticide use and boosting crop yields to ease the pressure to transform more land to grow crops.
A 2021 study found a correlation between GM crop growth and use of the herbicide glyphosate with an increase in soil carbon sequestration in a province of Canada. However, herbicide use decreased soil biodiversity in banana fields in Martinique, a Caribbean island, a different study found.
When it comes to gene-edited plants, experts tell Carbon Brief that more research is needed to determine the possible climate benefits or negative impacts.
Studies on gene-edited crops remain in the early stages of development.
In terms of boosting carbon sequestration through soils, whether it is through gene-editing or conventional breeding, Pett-Ridge says that definitive results are still some distance away. She tells Carbon Brief:
“There is a lot of hype…there are folks out there saying that this can solve everything or we can fix our climate issues with soils. I would push back on that, while still saying it’s a significant opportunity.”
Targeting certain traits through gene-editing will “take some time before we can really assess whether those have a net benefit on the amount of carbon put in soil”, she adds:
“As much as I’m an optimist and excited about it… I don’t know anyone who has got traits focused on carbon capture really being applied even in a field trial.”
Petetin believes gene-editing may “provide some answers” to help the agriculture sector deal with extreme weather and other issues, but adds:
“They’re not the only answers to all the issues agriculture is facing with biodiversity and climate change emergencies. Putting all your eggs in this one basket is not the solution.”
The post Q&A: The evolving debate about using genetically modified crops in a warming world appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: The evolving debate about using genetically modified crops in a warming world
Mariana Paoli, from Brazil, is the Global Advocacy Lead at Christian Aid and Iskander Erzini Vernoit, from Morocco, is the Executive Director at the IMAL Initiative for Climate and Development.
Government negotiators in Bonn will discuss in the coming two weeks how to put into practice an idea that emerged from the corridors of the COP29 climate talks: “the Baku to Belém Roadmap to $1.3 Trillion”.
This exercise, that aims to propose approaches for scaling climate finance flows for developing countries to over a trillion dollars per year by 2035, is due to be presented at COP30 in Brazil this November. The origins of its mandate offer insights into its perils – as well as its promise.
Brazil seeks early deals on two stalled issues at Bonn climate talks
Initially, negotiators from the G77+China countries united behind Africa’s call for $1.3 trillion as the replacement for the $100-billion goal for annual mobilisation of climate finance by developed countries for developing nations, set 15 years ago. Faithful to this, some G77 countries originally called for a roadmap to indicate actions that developed countries might take to raise public finance resources for this provision and mobilisation for the Global South.
There were, however, those in the Global North who pushed for a broader, less well-defined $1.3 trillion target that would include other sources and types of finance. These forces ultimately won the day, resulting in a final decision on $1.3 trillion that calls for “all finance” from “all … sources”, establishing a “roadmap” process toward this.
Exceedingly disappointing for the Global South, this new formulation obfuscates the responsibility of wealthy historical emitters to pay their fair share of public finance to tackle a proble they have caused and risks shifting the burden to developing countries.
Loss and damage threat
In this context, the Roadmap to 1.3T has the potential to be a milestone in the global governance of climate finance. Yet it faces risks and opportunities, being essentially at the discretion of Azerbaijan and Brazil as the COP29 and COP 30 presidencies.
There is a very real risk that the Roadmap will fall short of sending a strong signal of what level of ambition is required, in terms of public finance from contributor countries. If that happens, the Roadmap could entrench injustice, increase debt burdens, and delay urgent action on climate change.
In terms of injustice, poorer countries, while largely not responsible for climate change, could face loss and damage of $450 billion-$900 billion per year before 2030, not including the costs of reducing emissions and adapting to global warming.
Loss and damage fund to hand out $250 million in initial phase
Within this, Africa’s nomadic pastoral communities are one real-life example of those whose livelihoods and way of life are being destroyed by the choices of others. The COP29 decision on the new climate finance goal disregarded their needs by not including a target for loss and damage funding, but the Roadmap need not.
Heavy debt burden
The Roadmap must not ignore that external debts are at record highs, with repayment costs now higher than capacities for repayment in two-thirds of developing countries, according to UNCTAD.
In 2023, African governments paid around 17% of their revenues on servicing debts, the highest levels in decades, equalling 15% of African export earnings. By comparison, after the Second World War, inspired by the work of Keynes and others, it was decided to cap Germany’s debt repayments at 3% of its exports earnings, to allow recovery.
In this context, Global South countries may lack the fiscal space to invest in essential climate action – or may prioritise other areas, such as healthcare or education.
COP30 President-designate Andrea Corrêa do Lago is correct in his assertion that there is too often a denial of the economic benefits of climate action – yet Global South countries are not always able to pursue economically beneficial investments. Markets are not always efficient, economic benefits do not always equal revenues for investors , and the cost of capital is higher in Global South countries, heightening the need for support, especially with upfront costs.
Framework to scale up finance
Of course, in addition to underscoring the necessity of rich countries increasing their provision of grant-equivalent public funds for poorer countries, for the reasons cited above, the Roadmap can point to opportunities to build the architecture for scaling finance.
Reforming the international financial architecture is important, but, to achieve this, wealthy countries must relinquish their current hegemony and drop their resistance to reform in the negotiations for a UN tax convention and in those around the potential UN sovereign debt workout mechanism that could be agreed at the upcoming Financing for Development (FFD) Conference in Seville.
Climate shocks and volatile currencies hike debt burden for poor countries
Further additions to the financial architecture could include country platforms, aimed at unlocking finance, particularly private investment – but these require resourcing to administer and will only reaffirm the need for catalytic public resources, whether for technical assistance, project preparation, or making finance more affordable.
Of course, current politics are not conducive to increasing international provision of grant-equivalent finance, with recent short-sighted decisions taking overseas aid even further away from the global target for countries to provide assistance equal to 0.7% of their gross national income, established over fifty years ago, despite public support.
Naturally, Global South countries should not hold their breath waiting for others to come to their senses, but should do what they can, including South-South cooperation.
Bold signal needed
And yet, if global temperature goals are not to slip out of reach, if climate action is to be enhanced and injustice and indebtedness curtailed, richer countries must step up on finance. Will the Roadmap affirm this? The COP presidencies have yet to give a firm indication, though have called for inputs from finance ministers and other key groupings through ongoing consultations.
To be successful, there must be a willingness to depart from the status quo — just as was demonstrated with the Paris Agreement and the UAE Consensus, which set ambitious goals to limit global temperature rise and accelerate energy transition, respectively. Even amid uncertainty, these agreements raised the standard for ambition instead of passively allowing low expectations to go unchallenged.
A comparable approach is now needed for international public finance – the Baku-to-Belem Roadmap must send a bold signal of what is required, lest a key opportunity be lost.
The post A COP30 roadmap to inaction or ambition on climate finance? appeared first on Climate Home News.
Climate Change
DeBriefed 13 June 2025: Trump’s ‘biggest’ climate rollback; UK goes nuclear; How Carbon Brief visualises research
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Trump’s latest climate rollback
RULES REPEALED: The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has begun dismantling Biden-era regulations limiting pollution from power plants, including carbon dioxide emissions, reported the Financial Times. Announcing the repeal, climate-sceptic EPA administrator Lee Zeldin labelled efforts to fight climate change a “cult”, according to the New York Times. Politico said that these actions are the “most important EPA regulatory actions of Donald Trump’s second term to date”.
WEBSITE SHUTDOWN: The Guardian reported that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Climate.gov website “will imminently no longer publish new content” after all production staff were fired. Former employees of the agency interviewed by the Guardian believe the cuts were “specifically aimed at restricting public-facing climate information”.
EVS TARGETED: The Los Angeles Times reported that Trump signed legislation on Thursday “seeking to rescind California’s ambitious auto emission standards, including a landmark rule that eventually would have barred sales of new gas-only cars in California by 2035”.
UK goes nuclear
NEW NUCLEAR: In her first spending review, UK chancellor Rachel Reeves announced £14.2bn for the Sizewell C new nuclear power plant in Suffolk, England – the first new state-backed nuclear power station for decades and the first ever under a Labour government, BBC News reported. The government also announced funding for three small nuclear reactors to be built by Rolls-Royce, said the Times. Carbon Brief has just published a chart showing the “rise, fall and rise” of UK nuclear.
MILIBAND REWARDED: The Times described energy secretary Ed Miliband as one of the “biggest winners” from the review. In spite of relentless negative reporting around him from right-leaning publications, his Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) received the largest relative increase in capital spending. Carbon Brief’s summary has more on all the key climate and energy takeaways from the spending review.
Around the world
- UN OCEAN SUMMIT: In France, a “surge in support” brought the number of countries ratifying the High Seas Treaty to just 10 short of the 60 needed for the agreement to become international law, according to Sky News.
- CALLING TRUMP: Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said he would “call” Trump to “persuade him” to attend COP30, according to Agence France-Presse. Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported that the country’s environmental agency has fast tracked oil and highway projects that threaten the Amazon.
- GERMAN FOSSIL SURGE: Due to “low” wind levels, electricity generation from renewables in Germany fell by 17% in the first quarter of this year, while generation from fossil-fuel sources increased significantly, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
- BATTERY BOOST: The power ministry in India announced 54bn rupees ($631m) in funding to build 30 gigawatt-hours of new battery energy storage systems to “ensure round-the-clock renewable energy capacities”, reported Money Control.
-19.3C
The temperature that one-in-10 London winters could reach in a scenario where a key Atlantic ocean current system “collapses” and global warming continues under “intermediate” emissions, according to new research covered by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- A study in Science Advances found that damage to coral reefs due to climate change will “outpace” reef expansion. It said “severe declines” will take place within 40-80 years, while “large-scale coral reef expansion requires centuries”.
- Climatic Change published research which identified “displacement and violence, caregiving burdens, early marriages of girls, human trafficking and food insecurity” as the main “mental health” stressors exacerbated by climate change for women in lower and middle-income countries.
- The weakening of a major ocean current system has partially offset the drying of the southern Amazon rainforest, research published in Environmental Research has found, demonstrating that climate tipping elements have the potential to moderate each other.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Aerosols – tiny light‑scattering particles produced mainly by burning fossil fuels – absorb or reflect incoming sunlight and influence the formation and brightness of clouds. In this way they have historically “acted as an invisible brake on global warming”. New Carbon Brief analysis by Dr Zeke Hausfather illustrated the extent to which a reduction in aerosol emissions in recent decades, while bringing widespread public health benefits through avoided deaths, has “unmasked” the warming caused by CO2 and other greenhouse gases. The chart above shows the estimated cooling effect of aerosols from the start of the industrial era until 2020.
Spotlight
How Carbon Brief turns complex research into visuals
This week, Carbon Brief’s interactive developer Tom Pearson explains how and why his team creates visuals from research papers.
Carbon Brief’s journalists will often write stories based on new scientific research or policy reports.
These documents will usually contain charts or graphics highlighting something interesting about the story. Sometimes, Carbon Brief’s visuals team will choose to recreate these graphics.
There are many reasons why we choose to spend time and effort doing this, but most often it can be boiled down to some combination of the following things.
Maintaining editorial and visual consistency
We want to, where possible, maintain editorial and visual consistency while matching our graphical and editorial style guides.
In doing this, we are trying to ease our audience’s reading experience. We hope that, by presenting a chart in a way that is consistent with Carbon Brief’s house style, readers will be able to concentrate on the story or the explanation we are trying to communicate and not the way that a chart might have been put together.
Highlighting relevant information
We want to highlight the part of a chart that is most relevant to the story.
Graphics in research papers, especially if they have been designed for a print context, often strive to illustrate many different points with a single figure.
We tend to use charts to answer a single question or provide evidence for a single point.
Paring charts back to their core “message”, removing extraneous elements and framing the chart with a clear editorial title helps with this, as the example below shows.
Ensuring audience understanding
We want to ensure our audience understands the “message” of the chart.
Graphics published in specialist publications, such as scientific journals, might have different expectations regarding a reader’s familiarity with the subject matter and the time they might be expected to spend reading an article.
If we can redraw a chart so that it meets the expectations of a more general audience, we will.
Supporting multiple contexts
We want our graphics to make sense in different contexts.
While we publish our graphics primarily in articles on our website, the nature of the internet means that we cannot guarantee that this is how people will encounter them.
Charts are often shared on social media or copy-pasted into presentations. We want to support these practices by including as much context relevant to understanding within the chart image as possible.
Below illustrates how adding a title and key information can make a chart easier to understand without supporting information.
When we do not recreate charts
When will we not redraw a chart? Most of the time! We are a small team and recreating data graphics requires time, effort, accessible data and often specialist software.
But, despite these constraints, when the conditions are right, the process of redrawing maps and charts allows us to communicate more clearly with our readers, transforming complex research into accessible visual stories.
Watch, read, listen
SPENDING $1BN ON CLIMATE: New Scientist interviewed Greg de Temmerman, former nuclear physicist turned chief science officer at Quadrature Climate Foundation, about the practicalities and ethics of philanthropic climate-science funding.
GENDER HURDLES: Research director Tracy Kajumba has written for Climate Home News about the barriers that women still face in attending and participating in COPs.
OCEAN HEATWAVES: The New York Times presented a richly illustrated look at how marine heatwaves are spreading across the globe and how they affect life in the oceans.
Coming up
- 16-26 June: Bonn climate talks, Bonn, Germany
- 16 June: 79th meeting of the World Meteorological Organization executive council, Geneva, Switzerland
- 17 June: International Energy Agency (IEA) Oil 2025 report launch
Pick of the jobs
- Inside Climate News, California environmental reporter | Salary: Unknown. Location: Southern California
- Natural Resources Wales, lead marine and energy policy advisor | Salary: £45,367-£50,877. Location: Wales
- Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, senior manager, climate | Salary: £82,000. Location: London/hybrid
- Green Party,social media and digital content officer | Salary: £33,211. Location: London/remote
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 13 June 2025: Trump’s ‘biggest’ climate rollback; UK goes nuclear; How Carbon Brief visualises research appeared first on Carbon Brief.
The UK’s chancellor Rachel Reeves gave the green light this week to the Sizewell C new nuclear plant in Suffolk, along with funding for “small modular reactors” (SMRs) and nuclear fusion.
In her spending review of government funding across the rest of this parliament, Reeves pledged £14.2bn for Sizewell C, £2.5bn for Rolls-Royce SMRs and £2.5bn for fusion research.
The UK was a pioneer in civilian nuclear power – opening the world’s first commercial reactor at Calder Hall in Cumbria in 1956 – which, ultimately, helped to squeeze out coal generation.
Over the decades that followed, the UK’s nuclear capacity climbed to a peak of 12.2 gigawatts (GW) in 1995, while electricity output from the fleet of reactors peaked in 1998.
The chart below shows the contribution of each of the UK’s nuclear plants to the country’s overall capacity, according to when they started and stopped operating.
The reactors are dotted around the UK’s coastline, where they can take advantage of cooling seawater, and many sites include multiple units coded with numbers or letters.
Since Sizewell B was completed in 1995, however, no new nuclear plants have been built – and, as the chart above shows, capacity has ebbed away as older reactors have gone out of service.
After a lengthy hiatus, the Hinkley C new nuclear plant in Somerset was signed off in 2016. It is now under construction and expected to start operating by 2030 at the earliest.
(Efforts to secure further new nuclear schemes at Moorside in Cumbria failed in 2017, while projects led by Hitachi at Wylfa on Anglesey and Oldbury in Gloucestershire collapsed in 2019.)
The additional schemes just given the go-ahead in Reeves’s spending review would – if successful – somewhat revive the UK’s nuclear capacity, after decades of decline.
However, with the closure of all but one of the UK’s existing reactors due by 2030, nuclear-power capacity would remain below its 1995 peak, unless further projects are built.
Moreover, with the UK’s electricity demand set to double over the next few decades, as transport, heat and industry are increasingly electrified, nuclear power is unlikely to match the 29% share of generation that it reached during the late 1990s.
There is an aspirational goal – set under former Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson – for nuclear to supply “up to” a quarter of the UK’s electricity in 2050, with “up to” 24GW of capacity.
Assuming Sizewell B continues to operate until 2055 and that Hinkley C, Sizewell C and at least three Rolls-Royce SMRs are all built, this would take UK capacity back up to 9.0GW.
Methodology
The chart is based on data from the World Nuclear Association, with known start dates for operating and retired reactors, as well as planned closure dates announced by operator EDF.
The timeline for new reactors to start operating – and assumed 60-year lifetime – is illustrative, based on published information from EDF, Rolls-Royce, the UK government and media reports.
The post Chart: The rise, fall and rise of UK nuclear power over eight decades appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Chart: The rise, fall and rise of UK nuclear power over eight decades
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