Connect with us

Published

on

China’s Third Plenum, an important five-yearly meeting traditionally associated with major economic reforms, concluded on 18 July in Beijing.

Observers have been eagerly anticipating signals from the meeting about the leadership’s plans for economic growth and wider development, including on climate action.

The official readout from the meeting of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party calls on policymakers to pursue a range of relevant reforms.

These include a focus on “high-quality economic development” (高质量发展), as well as “supporting all-around innovation” (支持全面创新) and “deepening reform in ecological conservation systems” (深化生态文明体制改革), among other areas.

It also urges officials to “make concerted efforts to cut carbon emissions” and “actively respond to climate change”. This is the first time carbon emissions have been mentioned in a plenum document. 

A key step to achieve this, it adds, is through “improving institutional mechanisms for developing new quality productive forces” (NQPF, 新质生产力).

Since its first appearance in official rhetoric in September last year, this term has featured in Chinese state media in numerous high-level policy documents and commentaries about industrial development and low-carbon growth.

According to Chinese president Xi Jinping, one important element of NQPF is “green development”, which he has described as the “base colour of high-quality development”. In comments made in January 2024, he added that “new quality productivity itself is green productivity” (新质生产力本身就是绿色生产力).

This encapsulates both the development of low-carbon technologies, such as electric vehicles (EVs), and the “green transformation” of the economy.

However, there is significant debate as to whether the concept, which can also be translated as “new productive forces” or “new quality productivity”, will result in concrete policy outcomes and support further development of industries critical to China’s energy transition.

In this article, Carbon Brief unpacks the concepts underpinning new quality productive forces, and what it means for China’s climate, energy and industrial policy.

What does ‘new quality productive forces’ mean?

The phrase was first mentioned by Xi during a visit to Heilongjiang province, located in the “rust belt” of northeast China, in 2023. 

In January 2024, he further defined it as innovation-led development that creates “a break with traditional economic growth models and development pathways”, resulting in a “high level of technology, efficiency and quality” (高科技、高效能、高质量) as well as an “in-depth transformation and upgrading of industry” (产业深度转型升级).

This has led to a “ubiquitous” focus on innovation across official discussions about NQPF, according to the University of Cambridge-affiliated thinktank Cambridge Industrial Innovation Policy.

Unleashing this innovation, according to official interpretations, will lead to a cascade of changes across China’s industrial system – “both technological and institutional” – that will improve China’s advanced manufacturing capabilities.

Nevertheless, innovation and advanced technology are not the only focus. Analysis by the Council on Geostrategy says the framing of NQPF “suggests that, while scientific and technological innovation is essential, [China recognises there] needs also to be deeper reforms of the…economic model”.

Chinese president Xi Jinping inspects a forest farm in Mohe in the Dahinggan Mountains, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province on 6 September 2023.
Chinese president Xi Jinping inspects a forest farm in Mohe in the Dahinggan Mountains, northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province on 6 September 2023. Credit: Yin Bogu / Alamy Stock Photo

Priority areas for reform include the market-based economy; state owned enterprises (SOE); and China’s fiscal, household registration and healthcare systems.

These economic reforms, driven both by “the government’s ‘visible hand’ and the market’s ‘invisible hand’”, are necessary for China’s continuous prosperity, according to the Xinhua Institute, a thinktank affiliated with state news agency Xinhua.

The institute links NQPF with Marxism, arguing this is in line with improving “means of production” – an important force in Marxist theory for production, reform and human development. 

Most official explanations of the concept are relatively broad and unspecific. However, low-carbon development is one of the few named priorities. 

Back to top

How significant is this for low-carbon development? 

NQPF will provide an “important support for green development”, according to a commentary in the Communist party-affiliated People’s Daily, which was reposted on the website of China’s National Energy Administration

“Protecting the ecological environment is to protect productivity and improving the ecological environment is to develop productivity,” it adds.

Some analysis takes this further. Prof Zhang Yunfei, from the Marxism studies department at Renmin University in Beijing and researcher at its National Institute of Development and Strategy, tells the government-affiliated newspaper China Environment News that NQPF represents a development model specific to China.

This contrasts with “traditional productive forces in Western societies”, or “black productivity” (黑色生产力), which saw “high consumption of resources and energy, and high pollution of the ecological environment”, he says.

Instead, NQPF signifies “green productivity”, which will help China “shift from conforming to leading globalisation, and promote the country’s healthy and green development”.

“Green productivity”, Zhang adds, is sustainable productivity that focuses both on increasingly productive “ecologicalisation” (生态化) and increasingly ecological productive forces driving wider development. 

These forces are fundamentally provided by and rooted in nature, he explains. Driving forces include “sustainable resources such as information”, a “new generation of workers” that understand the concept of ecological civilisation and an enhanced “level of sustainable development” based on “green science and technology”.

Back to top

Why is the concept important?

This concept of NQPF is a holistic approach “designed to address complex, interrelated challenges faced by China and to create a more resilient and dynamic economy that will bring long-term prosperity”, Dr Muyi Yang, senior electricity policy analyst for China from the thinktank Ember, tells Carbon Brief. 

Arthur Kroeber, founding partner and head of research at research firm Gavekal Dragonomics, tells Carbon Brief that NQPF is “the latest iteration of a long-running trend towards industrial policy, technology and intensive growth”.

This is “essentially a new bottle for old wine”, Kroeber adds. “I think what it does do is emphasise the point that there is a national mission” to build China into a technological superpower.

“It is a big deal”, Bill Bishop, author of the Sinocism newsletter, told Bloomberg, as Xi “putting a stamp” on the idea will “send a powerful signal” to stakeholders across the system.

The idea addresses specific anxieties facing China’s leadership. As well as supporting economic growth, some argue that strengthening the country’s ability to innovate provides China with a greater sense of security. 

Workers inspect battery products at a lithium battery factory in Tangshan, China.
Workers inspect battery products at a lithium battery factory in Tangshan, China. Credit: Yang Shiyao / Alamy Stock Photo

According to the Chinese Communist party’s leading theoretical journal Qiushi, for example, Xi believes that China is “still reliant on others for some core technologies…our industry is still not strong enough in spite of its size and falls short of excellence…and we face significant pressure in making the transition to green and low-carbon production modes”. 

Prof Yao Yang, liberal arts chair professor at the China Center for Economic Research and the National School of Development at Peking University in Beijing, echoes this, writing in a comment for China Daily that the “significance” of the concept is the overarching aim of “laying a solid foundation for the future of the Chinese economy”.

Kroeber tells Carbon Brief that this is also driven, in part, by historical parallels between China’s fear of being cut off from US technological advancements and the rupture with the Soviet Union in the Mao era. He says:

“After the Sino-Soviet split, Soviet advisors who went [to China] to help build steel plants and develop the petrochemical industry, for example, all left. China was left [to develop its economy] on its own…Xi Jinping has drawn a specific connection [to that].”

Back to top

What does this mean for China’s low-carbon technology industries?

A primary aim of NQPF is to expand “strategic emerging industries” and “nurture future industries”, Deng Zhou, associate research fellow at the Institute of Industrial Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, writes in the state-run newspaper China Daily

“Strategic industries” include “new energy”, “new energy vehicles” and “energy conservation and environmental protection”. Recent analysis for Carbon Brief found that “clean energy” sectors contributed 11.4tn yuan ($1.6tn) to China’s economy in 2023.

“Future industries”, according to a policy document issued in January, include nuclear energy, nuclear fusion, hydrogen, biomass, crystalline silicon solar cells, thin-film solar cells and new energy storage such as batteries, among other areas.

These are “implied to be the major sectoral targets” for the NQPF, according to Kroeber.

In his January speech, Xi said that successful deployment of NQPF requires “accelerating green science and technology innovation…promoting application of advanced green technology…strengthening the green manufacturing industry…growing the green energy industry…[and] developing green and low-carbon industrial and supply chains”.

Much of this will be driven by state-coordinated efforts. China Daily says that efforts to cultivate NQPF “will encourage its centrally administered state-owned enterprises [SOEs] to deploy more resources toward developing strategic emerging industries”.

Kroeber believes that this will lead to “national resources [being] mobilised through a ‘new national system’ (新型举国体制)”.

He tells Carbon Brief that the system is an attempt to “create better coordination mechanisms” between the central and local governments in order to better achieve policy goals, such as through research consortiums focused on technological innovations.

This is inspired by the success of China’s electric vehicle (EV) industry, which benefited both from significant state support and from the emergence of innovative and intensely competitive businesses.

Several commentaries and articles highlight EVs as a key example of NQPF working in practice.

Wang Yiming, vice chairman of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges and former vice minister of the Development Research Center of the State Council, wrote in the state-sponsored Guangming Daily that “the rapid development of China’s EVs is a vivid case of NQPF, formed by the deep transformation and upgrading of industry”.

Using innovation to foster leading expertise across different industries, China hopes, will allow the country to replicate its achievements in the EV sector in other industries.

For example, a blog post on Yuyuan Tantian, a WeChat account affiliated with state broadcaster CCTV, draws a link between China’s experience in manufacturing LCD televisions and its later success in developing solar technologies, which require similar manufacturing technologies and processes.   

Prof Zhang tells China Environment News:

“New quality productive forces are not simply a process of transformation from old productivity to new productivity…It is a qualitative leap in productivity based on the achievements of the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, which is characterised by green, intelligent and ubiquitous (绿色、智能、泛在) trends.”

Back to top

What are the concerns over NQPF? 

China’s use of state resources to support strategically important industries, such as EVs, has recently fuelled anxieties about “overcapacity” in some countries.

Both the US and the EU have imposed tariffs on China-made EV imports. The EU’s tariff rate for individual automakers is based on the amount of state subsidies, including R&D grants, that the bloc determined those companies to have received. 

There are also concerns around overcapacity domestically. A March Reuters article quoted an anonymous Chinese policy adviser saying: “The direction of promoting tech innovation is right, but my worry is how to achieve it – what path and what institutional mechanisms should we rely on?”

To a point, these concerns are also shared by the leadership. In an article translated by the Pekingology newsletter, Han Wenxiu, a top economic policy planner, cautioned against “campaign-style” implementation of NQPF policies that lead to “neglecting or abandoning traditional industries”, as well as “blind conformity and bubbles”.

Some analysts have linked NQPF to a broader push for faster economic growth and challenges tackling “deep-seated difficulties” in economic reform, which has led to a “lack of more radical action on consumption”.

Michael Pettis, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, is quoted by the Financial Times saying that “the exit strategy has to be, at the end of the day, consumption – there’s no point producing all this stuff if no one’s going to buy it”. 

But given current tensions with the US, Kroeber tells Carbon Brief, China “can’t rely on imports of technology in the same way…It must have an all-of-nation effort to develop its own alternatives for the technologies it used to import.”

France's President Emmanuel Macron, Chinese President Xi Jinping and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the Elysee Palace in Paris, on 6 May 2024.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron, Chinese President Xi Jinping and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the Elysee Palace in Paris, on 6 May 2024. Credit: Eliot Blondet / Alamy Stock Photo

In his view, efforts to foster NQPF “could” lead to the creation of more capacity – although he finds concerns around overcapacity to be overly “politicised”.

He says that any spikes in capacity may be “unintentional” as “the Europeans and Chinese are actually starting discussions on [resolving concerns around] EVs”.

Yang tells Carbon Brief that “innovative technologies are often not commercially viable and struggle to compete with mature technologies in the market”, highlighting the need for government support to make the EV industry viable. He adds:

“The world needs to achieve rapid and deep decarbonisation within a very short timeframe. The market often drives incremental change. But what is required now is more radical, fundamental change.”

Back to top

Will NQPF translate into concrete climate policy?

At a press conference on 24 June, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) announced that it will release a ‘1+N’ policy on NQPF, which will “promote the accelerated development of NQPF” and “thicken” the “green-ness” of high-quality development (​​厚植高质量发展的绿色底色).

This followed an article in Qiushi by MEE minister Huang Runqiu and party secretary Sun Jinlong, who wrote that “ecology is itself the economy – if you protect ecology, ecology will give you returns”.

The ‘1+N’ framework is well-established in Chinese environmental policymaking, forming the basis for China’s climate policy. 

It refers to “1” policy setting overarching objectives, which guides numerous (“N”) action plans and policy measures that include more concrete targets.

The MEE said that NQPF “can help promote the significant decline of pollutants and carbon emissions, and radically improve the quality of the ecological environment”.

An article on 'green productive forces' by MEE minister Huang Runqiu and party secretary Sun Jinlong.
An article on ‘green productive forces’ by MEE minister Huang Runqiu and party secretary Sun Jinlong. Source: Qiushi

On 11 July, it released one of the first “N” policies in the system – regulations to update “management of ecological environment zoning control”.

Analysis by consulting firm Trivium China questions whether this “will directly contribute” to development of NQPF, but adds that it could signal the MEE “leveraging” the concept to “push through reforms that might otherwise be stymied” by other stakeholders.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) announced on 17 July that it will establish a centre for promoting NQPF. This may improve MOST’s “autonomy” in policy planning for science and technology innovation, an analyst told finance newspaper 21st Century Business Herald

Kroeber says that “every document the government comes out with now has to have some reference to NQPF. It’s just a way for bureaucrats to say ‘we have heard the signal [from Beijing] and we are pursuing [those goals]’”.

He adds that one area in which China may issue more concrete policies is power market reform.

China has been trying to “introduce more competition” into its power market to address a range of challenges inherent to the old grid system, including increasing the share of renewable power in overall power generation. 

It is “an area where this idea of coordination and the state playing a more leading role in getting everyone to move together” is crucial, Kroeber says, given the importance of access to abundant, low-cost electricity to power development of more technology.

Seeing further progress “would be the litmus test of whether the government is pursuing its aims [around NQPF] in an effective way”, he adds.

However, Yang tells Carbon Brief that while NQPF “has theoretical underpinnings, it is far from being purely conceptual”.

He says: “I believe more actions in various sectors will come soon to translate it into concrete initiatives and programs.” 

The post Q&A: What China’s push for ‘new quality productive forces’ means for climate action appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Q&A: What China’s push for ‘new quality productive forces’ means for climate action

Continue Reading

Climate Change

UN asks AI companies to reveal full environmental impacts

Published

on

The head of the United Nations has launched an initiative aimed at holding artificial intelligence companies accountable for their exploding environmental impacts, including their carbon emissions, the amount of water and land used for data centres, and the energy they consume.

During a speech at London Climate Action Week on Tuesday, António Guterres noted that AI can accelerate climate solutions, among other key challenges, and said its potential must be harnessed.

“But AI is also hungry for land, water and power,” he emphasised, adding that the data centres needed to run AI models already consume more electricity than most countries.

The UN Secretary-General repeated a call he first made in July 2025 for all big AI companies to commit to power every data centre with renewable energy by 2030.

Some tech firms have announced they are sourcing or building out clean energy to run their hubs, but growing power demand is also contributing to gas-fired generation in the US, according to data from Global Energy Monitor.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that data centres are set to more than double the emissions from the electricity they use between 2024 and 2030 in a high-growth scenario. But AI’s use could lead to far larger reductions in the energy sector through efficiency gains if adopted widely.

    ‘No more hidden costs’

    Proposing the new “AI Environmental Transparency Initiative” on Tuesday, Guterres also urged big AI firms companies to measure and publicly disclose the full environmental impact of their systems, including their carbon, water, and land footprints.

    “No more hidden costs. No more shifting the burden onto those least able to bear it. It is time to come clean,” he said in a major speech on responding to the world’s twin climate and energy crises. “If AI is to help build a better future, it must be honest about what it costs us now.”

    A report issued earlier this month by the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health noted that most current assessments of AI’s environmental cost focus on carbon emissions from training models. But, it added, this misses a substantial part of the picture.

    Every kilowatt-hour of electricity for AI also carries a water footprint, from cooling and generation, and a land footprint, from infrastructure and supply chains, it said.

    Explainer: Will AI data centres make or break the energy transition?

    The report estimated that AI data centres globally could consume 945 terawatt-hours of electricity annually by 2030 – more power than all but five countries and roughly twice France’s 2025 consumption.

    Offsetting this carbon footprint by 2030 would require growing some 6.7 billion trees over 10 years, it calculated. Producing power for the data centres would consume water equal to the basic needs of 1.3 billion people in sub-Saharan Africa for a year and take up land of more than 14,500 square kilometers, roughly twice the Jakarta metropolitan area.

    The European Union said earlier this month it will develop minimum energy-efficiency standards for both new and existing data centres, with a “needs assessment” ​due by 2027, Reuters reported. It’s also planning ⁠a sustainability label for data centres, covering criteria including water use and clean energy supply – but that has been delayed.    

    US community push-back 

    Asked after his speech what the response had been, the UN chief said “we’ll see”, without giving more details.

    But, he argued that, in his view, the push for transparency “is perfectly reasonable and even positive for the AI industry, because eventually some people will say that they consume much more than they really do”. “I think the truth is essential,” he added.

    Concerns about the environmental impacts of AI and the infrastructure needed to run the technology have led to growing opposition in some communities, especially in the US.

    This month, Monterey Park in Los Angeles County was the first city in the United States to enact a citywide prohibition on data centres through a voter-approved ballot measure. The developers behind a proposed centre in the area had already pulled the project in April amid an increasingly hostile local environment and regulatory uncertainty.

    The vote that stopped a data center: US communities query resource-hungry AI

    According to nonprofit Data Center Watch, around $64 billion-worth of data centre projects nationwide were delayed or blocked between May 2024 and March 2025 as communities pushed back against them.

    Industry lobby groups argue that data centres can provide economic benefits in their host communities. According to the US-based Data Center Coalition, which represents big operators and developers, data centres generate tax revenue, support construction and technical jobs, and provide infrastructure needed for cloud computing, scientific research and AI development.

    The industry has also challenged claims that data centers necessarily raise electricity costs for households.

    Force for good?

    The UN chief said benefits can be few in the places that are home to the data centre, while “communities are often left in the dark about the environmental impact of the infrastructure rising around them”.

    Guterres said companies have an “obligation” to be clear and open about the services they are offering but also the level of resources they require. 

    “Transparency is essential for the decisions that communities must make – and transparency is essential even for the future of artificial intelligence, and to make sure that artificial intelligence is essentially a force for good,” he told an audience of climate professionals in London

    A senior UN official told journalists ahead of Tuesday’s announcement that the AI industry has started to talk about and disclose some of their impacts, but those efforts are not yet comprehensive enough.

    The hope is that the new initiative will “encourage the industry to come together and take further action on it”, the official said.

    The post UN asks AI companies to reveal full environmental impacts appeared first on Climate Home News.

    UN asks AI companies to reveal full environmental impacts

    Continue Reading

    Climate Change

    Prof Philippe Ciais: The world’s most highly cited climate scientist

    Published

    on

    Phillipe Ciais has spent almost four decades researching the planet’s carbon cycle – and the ways in which humans have been impacting its balance.

    Based at the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement (LSCE) on the outskirts of Paris, Ciais (pronounced “see-es”) has been listed as an author on more than 1,300 peer-reviewed studies.

    In fact, analysis of Carbon Brief’s Cosmos database reveals that – by some distance – he is the most highly cited climate scientist in the world.

    In a wide-ranging interview, he discusses:

    The post Prof Philippe Ciais: The world’s most highly cited climate scientist appeared first on Carbon Brief.

    https://www.carbonbrief.org/prof-philippe-ciais-the-worlds-most-highly-cited-climate-scientist/

    Continue Reading

    Climate Change

    Cited 23 June 2026: Project Cosmos launch | Science ‘under attack’ at Bonn | Emissions inequality

    Published

    on

    Welcome to Cited, your essential guide to new climate research.

    In the news

    SCIENCE ‘UNDER ATTACK’: Climate Home News reported that “dozens” of countries called out “coordinated attacks” aimed at “undermining the role of climate science” at UN climate talks in Bonn, Germany, last week. According to the outlet, the countries said that UN decision-making had to remain based on the “best available science”, including the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. One negotiator said that India and Saudi Arabia “opposed calls in draft texts to encourage scientific work on scenarios that would minimise the magnitude and duration of any overshoot of 1.5C”, the article noted. For more, read Carbon Brief’s summary of the negotiations.

    REPORT OPPOSITION: “Oil industry allies” in the US are targeting a report on extreme weather attribution, due to be published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, according to Politico. The outlet reported that the “heightened scrutiny – which involves a secretive opposition research group scouring scientists’ emails – has prompted two people to leave the 15-person panel tasked with producing the report”. Separately, the Guardian reported that the Trump administration has “reversed its decision” to dismantle the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a $368m deep-sea observation system.

    SUPER EL NIÑO: BBC News reported that the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that El Niño had “officially begun”. Forecasts suggest the event could be among the “strongest ever recorded”, it added. Meanwhile, a “vigorous debate” is taking place about whether climate change is making the El Niño phenomenon more intense, according to the New York Times. The outlet explained that some scientists see the run of “comparatively strong” El Niño events in recent decades as an indication that “climate change is supercharging El Niño”. However, it added that “others say there is no clear evidence to support that theory”.

    Research picks

    Water

    • Global sea level rise has nearly tripled the number of days since the 1970s when coastal water levels have surpassed average tide gauge readings | Science Advances
    • As the Arctic warms, increased iceberg activity could “reshape” deep-sea habitats and “elevate” navigational hazards as maritime traffic expands | Nature
    • Sea level rise has quadrupled the frequency of extreme coastal sea-level events since the year 1900 | Nature Climate Change

    Inequality

    • The top 10% of consumers are responsible for $1.7-5.7tn of environmental damage each year, surpassing international climate and biodiversity financing gaps | Communications Sustainability
    • Calculating an individual’s emissions based on their asset ownership suggests that wealthier people are responsible for an even higher share of global greenhouse gas emissions than indicated by past studies | Nature Climate Change
    • A plan that places equity at the “centre” of climate adaptation efforts in cities is needed to address the “stark disparities” between “affluent” and “disadvantaged” urban communities’ ability to prepare for extreme heat | PLOS Climate

    Extremes

    • In the western US, 42% of burned area over 2001-24 occurred during, and immediately following, heatwaves | Science Advances
    • “Hot-to-wet” whiplash events have become more frequent across Australia over the past century, with south-eastern Australia emerging as a hotspot | Journal of Climate
    • Rapid urbanisation, combined with more intense rainfall from tropical cyclones, have increased people’s exposure to “extreme” rainfall from tropical cyclones across China | Journal of Hydrometeorology

    Captured

    Chart showing that population growth and a warming world have driven up the number of people exposed to extreme heat since the 1970s

    One billion additional people face at least one day of “extreme heat stress” every year compared to the 1970s, according to research published in Nature Climate Change.

    The chart shows changes in “strong” (top), “very strong” (middle) and “extreme” (bottom) heat stress, defined as a “universal thermal climate index” above 32C, 38C and 46C, respectively. The grey bar shows the percentage of the global population exposed to at least one, 30 or 90 days of heat stress in 1970. The light and dark blue bars show the number of additional people experiencing heat stress over 2015-24 due to population growth and rising global temperatures, respectively.


    10%

    Equivalent damage to the UK’s GDP caused by climate change if global warming reaches 4C by 2100, according to new research in Nature Climate Change. The study estimates a range of 2-20%.


    Spotlight

    Introducing: Project Cosmos

    Carbon Brief explains how it built a major new database of climate science research and unveils a new ranking of the 500 most highly cited publications, authors and institutions in climate science.

    This week, Carbon Brief launched Project Cosmos – the world’s largest and most complete database of climate change research.

    The database features more than 1.8m academic papers, books and reports, capturing the vast body of human knowledge about climate change that has accumulated over more than a century of academic study.

    The climate science “universe” is based on reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which are recognised as the world’s most authoritative summaries of the latest climate science.

    Since its first report was published in 1990, humanity’s knowledge about human-caused climate change has ballooned. The IPCC has published six sets of reports in total – each one longer than the last.

    In total, IPCC reports reference more than 100,000 other papers, books and reports. This is the core of our climate science universe. Carbon Brief then built on this core, by looking at four other sources of data. Read more about how the Cosmos database was created here.

    Every single publication in the Cosmos database is linked to at least one other through references. Visualising these links reveals a “galaxy” of references. In the image above, each colour and cluster reveals different topics and densities of research. Explore the galaxy in an interactive map here.

    Cosmos 500

    As part of an initial wave of preliminary analysis to demonstrate the scope of the Project Cosmos database, Carbon Brief has ranked the 500 most highly cited publications, authors and institutions in the database.

    The most highly cited climate scientist is Prof Philippe Ciais, who has spent almost four decades researching the planet’s carbon cycle – and the ways in which humans have been impacting its balance. Carbon Brief recently interviewed Ciais in Paris.

    The US tops the tables for the most highly-cited authors and institutions. Almost half of the 500 most highly-cited authors are from US institutions. This raises particular concerns for the future of climate science, as American climate scientists and institutions are coming under attack under the Trump administration.

    Experts from global south countries account for only 4% of all authors in the Cosmos 500. China stands out as the most highly-cited global south country. Meanwhile, only 10% of authors in the Cosmos 500 are women.

    There are many possibilities for future avenues of research using the Cosmos database. Over time, the database could be used to reveal, for example, how interest in different areas of climate science has changed over time, plus identify potential knowledge gaps and, thus, opportunities for future research.

    Carbon Brief invites researchers – including academics, journalists and analysts – to submit their own proposals for co-authored studies, literature reviews and analytical projects.

    Preprints to watch

    Carbon Brief’s pick of new papers still going through peer review

    • Regional reductions in aerosol emissions can “temporarily amplify” the likelihood of record-breaking heat events | Environmental Research: Climate
    • Analysis of Reddit posts suggests the Fridays for Future movement has created “wider awareness” of global warming by drawing attention to climate change and “climate actions” | npj climate action
    • Periods of simultaneous low wind and solar power generation, known as “renewable energy droughts”, will “intensify progressively” as the planet warms | Nature portfolio

    Noticeboard

    • 28-30 June: Seventh global conference on climate and sustainable development goal synergies, Bangkok, Thailand
    • 29 June-1 July: Exeter climate conference, Exeter, UK
    • 29 June-1 July: National Academy of Sciences hybrid workshop on seabed critical mineral resources, Irvine, US
    • 30 June: Submission deadline for abstracts for MedCLIVAR conference, scheduled for 21-25 September in Limassol, Cyprus 
    • 30 June: Application deadline for postdoctoral position in ice-ocean interactions at the Physics Laboratory of Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon | Salary: €3,071-4,714 per month. Location: Lyon, France
    • 30 June: Submissions open for abstracts for the pan-African conference on environment, climate change and health, scheduled for 21-24 October in Nairobi, Kenya 
    • 8 July: Application deadline for position as research officer in climate science and law at the Grantham Research Institute | Salary: £43,277-51,714. Location: London, UK
    • 10 July: Application deadline for position as associate or senior editor at Nature Water | Salary: Unknown. Location: Shanghai, Beijing or Milan

    Cited is researched and written by Cecilia Keating, Robert McSweeney, Ayesha Tandon, Daisy Dunne and Dr Giuliana Viglione.

    Please send tips, feedback and upcoming climate research to cited@carbonbrief.org

    This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cited email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

    The post Cited 23 June 2026: Project Cosmos launch | Science ‘under attack’ at Bonn | Emissions inequality appeared first on Carbon Brief.

    Cited 23 June 2026: Project Cosmos launch | Science ‘under attack’ at Bonn | Emissions inequality

    Continue Reading

    Trending

    Copyright © 2022 BreakingClimateChange.com