The agriculture sector holds a lot of power within the European Union, receiving around one-third of the bloc’s total budget.
But, amid rising production costs and lower incomes, farmers have been voicing their frustrations on streets across the EU over the past few months.
These protests have resulted in promises for more funding and loosened rules from both the EU and individual countries.
Agriculture has become a “particularly sensitive subject” among EU politicians ahead of the European parliamentary elections in June, says Politico.
Earlier this month, Carbon Brief travelled to Amsterdam and Brussels to discuss these issues as part of a reporting trip organised by Clean Energy Wire, an EU-focused news service for climate and energy journalists.
Reporters spoke to academics, policymakers and farmers about the upcoming European elections and the future of farming across the bloc.
In this Q&A, Carbon Brief explores what these elections could mean for EU agricultural policy, the impact of the recent farmer protests and the possible pathways for farming in Europe.
- How important are climate and farming in the European parliament elections?
- What concessions have been made in response to the EU farmer protests?
- What does the future look like for EU agriculture?
How important are climate and farming in the European parliament elections?
The European parliamentary elections occur every five years. Voters across the EU will head to the polls over 6-9 June to elect 720 members of the European parliament (MEPs).
Each EU country is allocated a certain number of seats in parliament based on population size, from a minimum of six MEPs (Cyprus, Luxembourg and Malta) to a maximum of 96 (Germany). Candidates in each country are elected based on proportional representation.
The centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) won 189 out of 705 seats in 2019 – the highest portion of any group. The Greens/European Free Alliance (Greens/EFA) boosted their number of seats from 50 in 2014 to 74 in 2019.
This so-called “green wave” was particularly notable in Germany, where the Greens/EFA received more than 20% of the vote.
Climate change and the environment were key issues for voters in 2019, according to Eurobarometer surveys after the elections. Agriculture, on the other hand, was not listed as a main priority issue for people casting their ballots across the bloc.
Analysis of opinion polls and previous EU election results by the European Council on Foreign Relations, a foreign and security policy thinktank, suggested that this year’s results will “see a major shift to the right in many countries”.
The analysis, released in January, said that anti-European populist parties could top the polls in nine countries, including France, Italy and Poland. They could rank second or third in other places, such as Germany, Spain and Sweden.
Similar polls emerged ahead of the last election.
In the early days of 2019, Der Spiegel reported that public opinion researchers “believe that right-wing populists could end up with 20% of the EU-wide vote”.
These parties made gains in some countries in 2019, including Hungary, Italy and France, but, as the Guardian noted after the election, “a promised populist surge turned out to be more of a ripple” across the EU.
Recent analysis from the Jacques Delors Centre, a European thinktank, suggests that the “notion of a broad green backlash” in this year’s parliament election is “largely overblown”.
Based on an online survey of 15,000 people in Germany, France and Poland, they found that the majority of voters want more ambitious climate policy and would support “a raft of concrete measures” to cut emissions.
But a “sizeable minority” of people said they are against more ambitious climate policies – around 30% of people surveyed in Germany and Poland and 23% of those surveyed in France.
The chart below shows the percentage of people in each country who believe that the negative effects of climate change already affect them and their family, will do so in the future or will not affect them at all.
Rightwing parties have seen an increase in support in some recent national European elections. In Portugal’s parliamentary elections earlier this month, the centre-right won and support for the far-right also surged, the Financial Times reported.
There are a wide range of other votes happening in Europe this year, including legislative elections in Austria and federal elections in Belgium.
In the Dutch general election last November, the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) won the highest number of seats in parliament. Coalition talks have been strained, with unresolved issues around finance and policy differences dividing the parties, but discussions remain ongoing.
The party gained support by “harnessing widespread frustration about migration”, according to BBC News. The housing crisis was also a key issue for voters, while farmers and people living in rural areas were concerned about proposed nitrogen-reduction plans.
Following a court ruling in 2019 that previous plans to tackle nitrogen emissions were not sufficient, the Dutch government re-developed these plans. In 2022, the government set targets to cut nitrogen pollution by as much as 70% in some parts of the country by the end of this decade.
Most of the country’s nitrogen emissions come from livestock and the construction sector and a voluntary “buy-out” scheme for farms is among the measures aimed to cut emissions. This would compensate farmers who choose to close their farms if they are located near nature reserves.
Protests kicked off in 2019 in response to the possible nitrogen-reduction measures and demonstrations have continued over the past few years. These frustrations were among the reasons the populist Farmers-Citizen Movement (BBB) won the biggest share of seats in the Dutch provincial elections last March.
This party was set up in 2019 after a surge in farmer protests over nitrogen-reduction plans and fears of the impact they would have on farming.
Months out from the European parliament elections, it is still unclear how these issues will affect the final results.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has voiced support for farmers in her campaign to continue leading the commission. She recently said that her party, the EPP, “will always be by the side” of farmers.
The Guardian reported that von der Leyen “has made climate concerns a lower priority” since announcing the re-election bid in February. But the EU’s climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, recently told Politico that the bloc must “focus just as much, and probably more” on climate action in the years ahead.
Hoekstra’s comments followed a climate risk report from the European Environment Agency that outlined the “major challenges” the continent faces from extreme heat, drought and floods.
Bas Eickhout, a Dutch MEP in the Greens/EFA party, tells Carbon Brief that he believes the next parliament’s five-year term is “quite crucial, [with] this rise of right-wing populism and, at the same time, the attacks on the green deal” – the EU’s climate policy package.
Mohammed Chahim, the vice-president of the Social and Democrats Group and another Dutch MEP, tells Carbon Brief that he is “very concerned” about the future strength of EU environmental policy, but believes that parties can “find common ground under which we can continuously improve competitiveness” for farmers at the same time.
What concessions have been made in response to the EU farmer protests?
Since the end of last year, farmers have been protesting in several countries across the EU.
The protesters have many concerns, including competition from cheaper imports, environmental regulations and the rising costs of energy and fertiliser.
The complaints from farmers differ from country to country, as highlighted in Carbon Brief’s recent analysis of the key demands from farmer groups in 12 countries.
Many relate to environmental issues such as climate change, biodiversity and conservation, but others relate more to trade policy. Farmers in several countries are protesting against proposed measures, such as a trade agreement that is still being finalised between the EU and several South American countries.
In some countries, protesters are calling for more action on climate adaptation. For example, in Greece, farmers are asking the government to implement measures to prevent farmland from being damaged by flooding and other extreme weather.
In other countries, farmers are calling for fuel subsidies to continue and for fertiliser and pesticide restrictions to be reconsidered.
In several eastern European countries, farmers have raised concerns about Ukrainian grain imports. Farmers in countries surrounding Ukraine have been arguing for months that they “can’t compete” with the price of these imports.
The protests in France were largely halted in February after the government promised more “cash support” and withdrew a planned agricultural fuel tax increase, said Le Monde.
The French government also suspended national efforts to halve the use of pesticides by the end of this decade, the Daily Telegraph reported, which environmentalists described as a “major step backwards”.
On 31 January, the European Commission pushed back rules requiring farmers to set aside some land for biodiversity. This measure, which was due to take effect this year, was postponed.
Earlier this month, the commission proposed to review some terms of the EU farmer subsidies, including making this now-postponed land measure voluntary instead of mandatory when it takes effect.
The review is aimed to reduce paperwork for farmers and allow “greater flexibility for complying with certain environmental conditionalities”, the commission said.
Von der Leyen said in a statement that the EU’s agricultural policy “adapts to changing realities”, but continues to focus on “the key priority of protecting the environment and adapting to climate change”.
The commission president also scrapped a proposal to halve pesticide use.
This was an “absolute symbolic act” considering it was already “killed in parliament”, Dutch MEP Mohammed Chahim tells Carbon Brief. Last November, MEPs rejected the pesticide proposal, leaving it with an uncertain future.
What does the future look like for EU agriculture?
Agriculture generates around 25-30% of global emissions; in the EU, the figure averages about 10%. Global livestock emissions alone account for almost one-third of human-caused methane emissions, according to the UN Environment Programme.
At the same time, agriculture is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Drought can wither crops, extreme heat can kill livestock and floods can damage soil quality.
The EU has put forward plans to both reduce agricultural emissions and make the sector more resilient and sustainable for the future.
The “farm-to-fork” strategy, a policy plan forming part of the wider green deal, was proposed in 2020 as a way to make food systems “fair, healthy and environmentally friendly”. The plans under this strategy include measures to reduce fertiliser use, increase organic farming and provide more consumer information on “healthy, sustainable” food choices.
However, around half of the actions promised under this strategy have fallen by the wayside, Euronews reported on 19 February.
The next European parliament term will have a number of key agricultural issues to tackle including a reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, the EU farmer subsidy system, before 2027.
Earlier this year, the EU launched a “strategic dialogue” to bring together farmers, retailers and other stakeholders to discuss the future of EU agriculture. A report on the outcome of these talks will be given to the commission president this summer outlining a “common ground for the future of the union’s agri-food sector”.
Looking more globally, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization last year released a “roadmap” to change agrifood systems and end hunger without exceeding the 1.5C global temperature limit.
There is an “urgent need” to reform agrifood systems, the report said, in order to meet climate goals and improve food security.
It listed a number of global targets, including reducing livestock methane emissions by one-quarter by 2030, halving food loss and waste at retail and consumer level by 2030 and reaching net-zero deforestation around the world by 2025. A recent Nature Food comment piece criticised elements of this report.
Given that the future of agriculture is still being resolved on an EU and global level, Dutch MEP Bas Eickhout says it is not surprising to see farmers protesting over their concerns. He believes, however, that the protesting farmers “throwing manure on the street” are the “extreme voices” being amplified. He told Carbon Brief in Brussels:
“There are a lot behind who are not putting their manure here on the Berlaymont building. They are not happy, but they’re not protesting.”
He said that farmers need to receive more profits from the wider food chain, adding:
“[There are] a lot of producers, a lot of consumers and a couple in the middle that have the power. That’s where the profits are. There are enough profits in the food chain, but they are not ending up at the farms…[it is a] fundamental economic problem that is happening.”
John Arink, an organic farmer, recently spoke to Carbon Brief and other media outlets on his farm near the village of Lievelde, in the east of the Netherlands. (Read Carbon Brief’s Cropped newsletter from last week for more on Arink’s farm.)
He wants to see a future with less intensive farming and more outdoor space for animals to grow. He said:
“In Holland, we have some kind of a mantra that says the intensive way of producing milk and meat is very efficient. But it is not when you calculate all of the indirect dues of materials and energy, it shows that the intensive way of farming is very inefficient.
“Maybe from the financial point of view it can be efficient, but we have to look at it in the ecological way. And from that point of view, it’s very inefficient to produce so intensively.”
The post Q&A: The impact of farmer protests on the EU’s upcoming parliamentary elections appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: The impact of farmer protests on the EU’s upcoming parliamentary elections
Starting on Monday, about 10,000 government negotiators, scientists, journalists and campaigners will gather at a purpose-built venue in a national park in Mongolia’s capital Ulaanbaatar to discuss how to stop land turning into desert as the world warms.
Drought is currently sweeping much of the Northern hemisphere, leaving normally green urban parks looking like dry savannah, causing crops to fail, food prices to rise and billions to be shaved off economic output.
On Wednesday, Britain’s prime minister chaired an emergency meeting of the government’s Cobra committee. These are usually reserved for wars, terrorist attacks, riots and pandemics – but this one was on the extreme heat and drought the UK has been suffering since May.
With many countries facing far worse with fewer resources than the UK, the issues to be discussed at the UN’s COP17 summit in Mongolia – often overlooked – should be nearer the top of policy-makers minds.
But what is COP17? What will be decided and announced there over the next two weeks? How does it relate to climate change and how will it help restore the lands on which we all rely for our food, water and other essential resources? Climate Home News explains all below.
What is COP17?
It is the conference of parties (COP) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). The parties are 196 governments, which includes all of the countries recognised by the UN.
The convention was conceived at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, at the same time as the other two larger “Rio trio” conventions on climate and biodiversity.
While the climate convention’s COP takes place every year, the UNCCD COP happens only once every two years. COP17 will be its seventeenth gathering.
What is desertification?
It is the process by which land degrades and becomes more like a desert, making it harder – and sometimes impossible – to grow crops or graze livestock there.
Climate change and other human activities – like excessive irrigation which depletes ground water – are making this process worse, causing poverty, hunger, health problems, forced migration and loss of species.
It’s a widespread problem. The UN estimates that half a billion people live within areas that have experienced desertification since the 1980s and that two-fifths of the world’s land is degraded.
What has it got to do with climate change?
The planet’s climate is heating up, mainly due to humans burning fossil fuels, and drying out its land. This kills plants and exposes the soil which can then be blown away by wind and washed away by water.
Without a top layer of soil, plants struggle to grow again and the land gets closer to being a desert. So combating desertification is a way of adapting to climate change.
It is also a way of lessening the pace of climate change, as land degradation releases carbon dioxide previously stored in healthy soils and plants.
What will be negotiated at COP17?
The main issue is what form a new initiative to tackle drought could take. The last COP saw Africa push hard for this to be a protocol – a kind of binding sub-treaty to the UNCCD.
But the US, Europe, Argentina and others argued that would take too long to set up, cost too much and take money away from what can be spent on the ground. They prefer a legally weaker alternative – a framework instead of a protocol.
Negotiations went late into the last night of talks in Riyadh, with the Saudis hosting informal consultations, but eventually governments had to agree to disagree and pick up talks again in Ulaanbaatar.
As Earth dries out, countries fail to reach drought agreement
Governments will also negotiate a new policy on protecting rangelands and pastoralists from degradation. Rangelands are areas where animals graze. They cover around half the Earth’s land and include almost everything other than forest, deserts, farms, glaciers and cities. Pastoralists are people who herd animals on these rangelands, often moving from place to place to find fresh pasture.
COP17 host country Mongolia has a lot of both – and pushed successfully for the UN to declare 2026 the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists. It is keen to agree a decision at COP17 bringing those issues more to the forefront of the UNCCD.
Negotiators will also debate the UNCCD’s post-2030 strategic framework, which they hope to adopt at COP18 in 2028. Campaign groups like the World Wildlife Fund want a stronger focus on biodiversity and nature-positive food systems.
What will happen when?
The COP will formally open with a ceremony on Monday August 17, followed by opening statements by governments and the adoption of the agenda.
Negotiations will begin, mostly behind closed doors for two weeks until the closing plenaries on Friday August 28.
While talks rumble on in the background, the second week will see senior government representatives including ministers get involved, with a “high-level segment” running from August 24-26.
They will discuss issues like drought resilience, finance and pastoralist communities. This is likely to be when any announcements – of new funding, for instance – are made.
On Monday August 24, there will also be an open dialogue between government officials and civil society members. Here, local practitioners are likely to share stories of how they are helping their communities reverse land degradation. UNCCD prides itself on being a bottom-up convention.
Unlike climate COPs, which often end a day or two over time, UNCCD COPs usually finish on the evening of their last day and – while they have gone late into the night – have never run into the next day.
What else should we watch out for?
At the last COP two years ago, host Saudi Arabia led the creation of an initiative called the Riyadh Global Drought Resilience Partnership to help 80 of the poorest nations deal with drought.
It received $12 billion in pledges, mainly from Gulf-based development finance institutions. Saudi Arabia is expected to report back on whether these pledges have been delivered and how the money will reach those in need now.
There are also hopes that governments will announce financial support for Mongolia’s Rangelands Flagship Initiative, which aims to mobilise investment in projects to fight land degradation.
Who will preside over COP17?
While the last five and the next two climate COPs have been or will be presided over by men, COP17 will be woman-led with Mongolia’s foreign minister, Battsetseg Batmunkh, as president.
This will also be the first COP for the UNCCD’s new executive director Yasmin Fouad. Before being appointed environment minister in her native Egypt, Fouad was a scientist and lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s special report on desertification. She played a key role at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt in 2022.
Although Saudi Arabia’s UNCCD COP presidency is ending, the Gulf power house will likely continue to be influential. It has supported the COP financially as part of the Riyadh-Ulaanbaatar action agenda and will be following up on initiatives announced two years ago.
While Saudi Arabia is often blamed for obstructing progress at climate talks, as a desert nation it is generally thought to have played a constructive role at UNCCD COPs.
What are the negotiating dynamics?
The UNCCD has six main negotiating groups: Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Northern Mediterranean, Central and Eastern Europe, and developed donor countries. Governments can also speak in their own capacities.
While divisions between the Global North and Global South do exist at UNCCD COPs, they are not as stark as at climate COPs. The Global South’s umbrella group – the G77 and China – usually only speaks on finance issues, on which developing countries tend to be united.
-
When taps run dry in the Caribbean, it’s not enough to blame El Niño
Climate change means El Niño is heating already hotter land and sea, causing devastation across the region and the world -
“We’ve gone backwards” – new plastics treaty text dims hopes for production curbs
During troubled talks, fossil fuel-producing nations have pushed for a global pact to tackle only plastic waste rather than reducing the size of the problem -
China’s coal power rebounds as record clean energy goes to waste
Long-term contracts guarantee coal plants buyers regardless of demand, crowding out renewables, report finds
Civil society groups are present but not as vocal or as confrontational as at climate COPs. There are generally no protests and campaigners tend to try to hold governments accountable more quietly. There are likely to be far fewer journalists than at climate COPs too.
What role will the US play?
While the US has left the UN’s climate convention, it remains in the UNCCD and is expected to bring a delegation of officials from its departments of agriculture and state. It is likely to resist any renewed push from Africa for a drought protocol.
The post Will the world’s drying lands get relief from COP17 in Mongolia? appeared first on Climate Home News.
Will the world’s drying lands get relief from COP17 in Mongolia?
Helen Phillips’ book, ‘Hum’, is set in a dystopian near future, in a city suffering the effects of climate breakdown and with dire air quality. Robots (the Hums) press advertising messages during conversations, meetings and even as they carry out medical procedures.
The Hums are vehicles for these ad messages, which are often for products like cosmetics, sweets or anything that might be relevant during interactions with humans. This advertising is poorly disguised, and merges with sentiments that lean towards concerns of well-being, convincing people how much better off they’ll be if they make a purchase.
While the novel is futuristic, the insidious way advertising permeates daily life is resonant of how adverts show up in our world today. And these ads are directly contributing to the worsening future climate Phillips describes in her book.
-
As fires burn and temperatures soar, it’s time to imagine a world beyond GDP
Environmental destruction, like clear-cutting a forest, can boost gross domestic product but it reduces a country’s real wealth
Already by the summer of 2026, Europe had seen a 57% increase in wildfires in just four years with western Europe recording the hottest ever June and July on record. We’re facing droughts and floods, as well as predicted hikes in food costs or even chronic food shortages – and that’s before the expected additional effects of a strong El Niño later this year.
Frequent flying and bigger burgers
A portion of this climate breakdown is fuelled by over-consumption in richer countries, particularly of products that are high carbon – for which advertising can take some of the blame. Research shows that adverts drive citizens to consume about a third more goods and services in general, over and above what they might have purchased.
Yet despite a clear link between promoting high-carbon behaviours and climate breakdown, little advertising regulation exists in the UK. Take frequent flying for instance, one of the most carbon-intensive activities we can partake in.
EasyJet’s latest ad campaign is called “Drop Everything”. It encourages consumers to book cheap flights departing within the next 48 hours for presumably short or weekend getaways. Rather than promoting a specific destination, “Drop Everything” promotes a mindset that encourages indiscriminate consumption of flying. The ads were shown on billboards with clever creative slogans, as well as on digital media and through influencer campaigns.
Overall, flight numbers are increasing. The UK Civil Aviation Authority reported the highest number of UK passengers in the first quarter of 2026 (more than 61 million, breaking previous records for travel between January and March). It seems we’re still not joining the dots between flying and a worsening climate.
And how about meat consumption? Scientists advocate for less meat-eating, especially beef which has the highest carbon footprint of nearly all foods. Yet adverts from McDonald’s proliferate, helping make it one of the highest-volume sellers of fast-food chain beef burgers. In 2024, the outdoor advertising budget for McDonald’s UK rose to £86 million, an increase of 71% on previous years.
Small share for sustainability
While over half of UK ad professionals feel increasingly queasy about their profession and its effects on the climate crisis, the people running the show – the UK trade bodies – prefer to focus on the growth advertising brings.
In the first three months of 2026, they stated that UK advertising spend increased by 9.3%, reaching a total of £11.7 billion for that quarter, fuelling consumption and market growth.
But how many of those adverts actually promote low carbon goods and services? Kantar’s Sustainable Ads Tracker shows the percentage of ads featuring sustainability messaging in 2026 is around 4.3%. That’s woefully low, and much of this is made up of messaging that promotes recycling.
Additionally, the ad industry continues to happily produce adverts for the large oil and gas corporations that are fuelling climate breakdown. These adverts only narrowly pass the Advertising Standards Authorities’ advertising codes, allowing the continued greenwashing of the world’s most polluting brands.
There is essentially no leadership from the UK trade bodies, likely because they are directly funded by the brands and advertisers themselves. They are essentially ‘ad shushing’ – pushing for indiscriminate growth and directing attention to their sustainability awards, while confusingly denying that adverts drive higher consumption overall.
Let’s ‘un-shush’
Where does this leave us as we are subjected to hundreds, if not thousands, of persuasive advertising messages every day that support high-carbon lifestyles? Most ad professionals are unable to push back against this agenda at work, often due to the threat of job loss. The advertising trade bodies won’t take the lead as they work in service to big brands and advertisers.
NGOs urge Brazil to prevent fossil fuel capture of COP30 climate summit
So, who can push for the changes we need? Members of the public.
Through pressuring our city officials and governments, we can force through restrictions, such as the watershed bans on unhealthy foods on TV before 9pm in the UK. Through supporting the efforts of organisations such as Ad Free Cities and others, we can help achieve bans on outdoor advertising for fossil fuels, aviation, meat and even single-use plastics in cities and regions such as Amsterdam, The Hague, Edinburgh, Florence, Uppsala and many more.
If we’re serious about climate change and stopping big global brands pushing their high-carbon products onto us, then advertising restrictions are one of the best ways to achieve this. If we don’t want a world like the one Phillips describes in her book, we need to make our voices heard above the advertising noise.
The post Pushing the climate crisis: How advertising fuels high-carbon lifestyles appeared first on Climate Home News.
Pushing the climate crisis: How advertising fuels high-carbon lifestyles
An upcoming UK government consultation on weakening targets for electric vehicles (EVs) could cost consumers as much as £3bn a year by 2030, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
It could require the UK to import an extra 17m barrels of oil in 2030, raising expected net imports by 8%, as well as adding 2.5% to national emissions that year, the analysis shows.
After years of fierce lobbying by parts of the car industry – and despite the significant savings on offer for EV drivers – media reports suggest that EV targets could be “watered down”.
Under current rules, battery EVs – BEVs, those which run only on electricity – must make up a rising share of new car sales in the UK.
This policy, known as the “zero-emission vehicles” (ZEV) mandate, was introduced by the previous Conservative government and sets a goal for 33% BEV sales in 2026, rising to 80% in 2030.
(Carmakers are able to use “flexibilities” to help meet their targets, which reduces the effective target under the ZEV mandate to an estimated 25% of sales in 2026.)
Now, the government under new Labour prime minister Andy Burnham is reported to be considering a cut in the BEV target for 2030 to just 50% of new car sales, alongside options for 60% or 70%.
Carbon Brief understands that a consultation on weakening the ZEV mandate is being reviewed by the prime minister’s office in Number 10, ahead of being formally released.
If the mandate is weakened to 50% by 2030 – and if carmakers make more use of “flexibilities” – there could be up to 3m fewer BEVs on UK roads by 2030, according to the NGO T&E.
Previous Carbon Brief analysis found that BEVs are around £1,100 cheaper to run per year than a petrol car, thanks to far lower fuel costs.
Overall, BEVs are more than £1,000 per year cheaper to own than either petrol cars or plug-in hybrids (PHEVs, which can run on petrol or electricity).
This is according to analysis of the “total cost of ownership” by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), including purchase price, fuel costs, insurance and proposed pay-per-mile charges.
In total, Carbon Brief analysis shows that UK drivers could be hit with an extra £3bn in annual ownership costs by 2030, if the ZEV mandate is weakened, as shown below.
A weaker ZEV mandate could “put billions of pounds of committed investments at risk”, reports BusinessGreen, including in the EV charging network and battery supply chains.
Industry group Energy UK says that the mandate is “working in the way it was designed to work” and that it is the “single biggest driver of emissions reductions” in government climate plans.
However, Carbon Brief analysis shows that a weaker ZEV mandate could result in an extra 7.4m tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions (MtCO2) in 2030. This would add the equivalent of 2.5% to national emissions in 2030, under the UK’s international climate goal for that year.
In addition, a weaker ZEV mandate could result in the UK needing to import an extra 17m barrels of oil in 2030, equivalent to 8% of projected net imports that year.
Energy UK says that shifting to EVs will help to reduce household energy bills “for everyone”. This is not only through direct cost-of-ownership savings for EV drivers, but also by spreading the costs of upgrading the electricity system across a wider user base.
Car industry group the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders claims that its members are spending “blilions…on discounts, finance incentives and marketing support” and that “natural” EV demand is below the level required to meet the current ZEV mandate. Its claims are disputed.
related
Q&A: Does the world need ‘carbon capture and storage’ to reach net-zero?
UK withdraws millions in funding from world’s second-largest rainforest in Congo
28 quotes from new UK leader Andy Burnham on climate, net-zero and fossil fuels
Analysis: UK newspapers have already printed 63 editorials in 2026 backing North Sea drilling
The post Analysis: Weaker EV targets could cost UK consumers £3bn a year by 2030 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Weaker EV targets could cost UK consumers £3bn a year by 2030
-
Climate Change1 year ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases1 year ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Renewable Energy10 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
-
Greenhouse Gases1 year ago
嘉宾来稿：探究火山喷发如何影响气候预测
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits