The UK government has released its long-awaited “warm homes plan”, detailing support to help people install electric heat pumps, rooftop solar panels and insulation in their homes.
It says up to 5m households could benefit from £15bn of grants and loans earmarked by the government for these upgrades by 2030.
Electrified heating and energy-efficient homes are vital for the UK’s net-zero goals, but the plan also stresses that these measures will cut people’s bills by “hundreds of pounds” a year.
The plan shifts efforts to tackle fuel poverty away from a “fabric-first” approach that starts with insulation, towards the use of electric technologies to lower bills and emissions.
Much of the funding will support people buying heat pumps, but the government has still significantly scaled back its expectations for heat-pump installations in the coming years.
Beyond new funding, there are also new efficiency standards for landlords that could result in nearly 3m rental properties being upgraded over the next four years.
In addition, the government has set out its ambition for scaling up “heat networks”, where many homes and offices are served by communal heating systems.
Carbon Brief has identified the key policies laid out in the warm homes plan, as well as what they mean for the UK’s climate targets and energy bills.
- Why do homes matter for UK climate goals?
- What is the warm homes plan?
- What is included in the warm homes plan?
- What does the warm homes plan mean for energy bills?
- What has been the reaction to the plan?
Why do homes matter for UK climate goals?
Buildings are the second-largest source of emissions in the UK, after transport. This is largely due to the gas boilers that keep around 85% of UK homes warm.
Residential buildings produced 52.8m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) in 2024, around 14% of the nation’s total, according to the latest government figures.
Fossil-fuel heating is by far the largest contributor to building emissions. There are roughly 24m gas boilers and 1.4m oil boilers on the island of Great Britain, according to the National Energy System Operator (NESO).
This has left the UK particularly exposed – along with its gas-reliant power system – to the impact of the global energy crisis, which caused gas prices – and energy bills – to soar.
At the same time, the UK’s old housing stock is often described as among the least energy efficient in Europe. A third of UK households live in “poorly insulated homes” and cannot afford to make improvements, according to University College London research.
This situation leads to more energy being wasted, meaning higher bills and more emissions.
Given their contribution to UK emissions, buildings are “expected to be central” in the nation’s near-term climate goals, delivering 20% of the cuts required to achieve the UK’s 2030 target, according to government adviser the Climate Change Committee (CCC).
(Residential buildings account for roughly 70% of the emissions in the buildings sector, with the rest coming from commercial and public-sector buildings.)
Over recent years, Conservative and Labour governments have announced various measures to cut emissions from homes, including schemes to support people buying electric heat pumps and retrofitting their homes.
However, implementation has been slow. While heat-pump installations have increased, they are not on track to meet the target set by the previous government of 600,000 a year by 2028.
Meanwhile, successive schemes to help households install loft and wall insulation have been launched and then abandoned, meaning installation rates have been slow.
At the same time, the main government-backed scheme designed to lift homes out of fuel poverty, the “energy company obligation” (ECO), has been mired in controversy over low standards, botched installations and – according to a parliamentary inquiry – even fraud.
(The government announced at the latest budget that it was scrapping ECO.)
The CCC noted in its most recent progress report to parliament that “falling behind on buildings decarbonisation will have severe implications for longer-term decarbonisation”.
What is the warm homes plan?
The warm homes plan was part of the Labour party’s election-winning manifesto in 2024, sold at the time as a way to “cut bills for families” through insulation, solar and heat pumps, while creating “tens of thousands of good jobs” and lifting “millions out of fuel poverty”.
It replaces ECO, introduces new support for clean technologies and wraps together various other ongoing policies, such as the “boiler upgrade scheme” (BUS) grants for heat pumps.
The warm homes plan was officially announced by the government in November 2024, stating that up to 300,000 households would benefit from home upgrades in the coming year. However, the plan itself was repeatedly delayed.
In the spending review in June 2025, the government confirmed the £13.2bn in funding for the scheme pledged in the Labour manifesto, covering spending between 2025-26 and 2029-30.
The government said this investment would help cut bills by up to £600 per household through efficiency measures and clean technologies such as heat pumps, solar panels and batteries.
After scrapping ECO at the 2025 budget, the treasury earmarked an extra £1.5bn of funding for the warm homes plan over five years. This is less than the £1bn annual budget for ECO, which was funded via energy bills, but is expected to have lower administrative overheads.
In the foreword to the new plan, secretary of state Ed Miliband says that it will deliver the “biggest public investment in home upgrades in British history”. He adds:
“The warm homes plan [will]…cut bills, tackle fuel poverty, create good jobs and get us off the rollercoaster of international fossil fuel markets.”
Miliband argues in his foreword that the plan will “spread the benefits” of technologies such as solar to households that would otherwise be unable to afford them. He writes: “This historic investment will help millions seize the benefits of electrification.” Miliband concludes:
“This is a landmark plan to make the British people better off, secure our energy independence and tackle the climate crisis.”
What is included in the warm homes plan?
The warm homes plan sets out £15bn of investment over the course of the current parliament to drive uptake of low-carbon technologies and upgrade “up to” 5m homes.
A key focus of the plan is energy security and cost savings for UK households.
The government says its plan will “prioritise” investment in electrification measures, such as heat pumps, solar panels and battery storage. This is where most of the funding is targeted.
However, it also includes new energy-efficiency standards to encourage landlords to improve conditions for renters.
Some policies were notable due to their absence, such as the lack of a target to end gas boiler sales. The plan also states that, while it will consult on the use of hydrogen in heating homes, this is “not yet a proven technology” and therefore any future role would be “limited”.
New funding
Technologies such as heat pumps and rooftop solar panels are essential for the UK to achieve its net-zero goals, but they carry significant up-front costs for households. Plans for expanding their uptake therefore rely on government support.
Following the end of ECO in March, the warm homes plan will help fill the gap in funding for energy-efficiency measures that it is expected to leave.
As the chart below shows, a range of new measures under the warm homes plan – including a mix of grants and loans – as well as more funding for existing schemes, leads to an increase in support out to 2030.
One third of the total funding – £5bn in total – is aimed at low-income households, including social housing tenants. This money will be delivered in the form of grants that could cover the full cost of upgrades.
The plan highlights solar panels, batteries and “cost-effective insulation” for the least energy-efficient homes as priority measures for this funding, with a view to lowering bills.
There is also £2.7bn for the existing boiler upgrade scheme, which will see its annual allocation increase gradually from £295m in 2025-26 to £709m in 2029-30.
This is the government’s measure to encourage better-off “able to pay” households to buy heat pumps, with grants of £7,500 towards the cost of replacing a gas or oil-fired boiler. For the first time, there will also be new £2,500 grants from the scheme for air-to-air heat pumps (See: Heat pumps.)
A key new measure in the plan is £2bn for low- and zero-interest consumer loans, to help with the cost of various home upgrades, including solar panels, batteries and heat pumps.
Previous efforts to support home upgrades with loans have not been successful. However, innovation agency Nesta says the government’s new scheme could play a central role, with the potential for households buying heat pumps to save hundreds of pounds a year, compared to purchases made using regular loans.
The remaining funding over the next four years includes money assigned to heat networks and devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which are responsible for their own plans to tackle fuel poverty and household emissions.
Heat pumps
Heat pumps are described in the plan as the “best and cheapest form of electrified heating for the majority of our homes”.
The government’s goal is for heat pumps to “increasingly become the desirable and natural choice” for those replacing old boilers. At the same time, it says that new home standards will ensure that new-build homes have low-carbon heating systems installed by default.
Despite this, the warm homes plan scales back the previous government’s target for heat-pump installations in the coming years, reflecting the relatively slow increase in heat-pump sales. It also does not include a set date to end the sale of gas boilers.
The plan’s central target is for 450,000 heat pumps to be installed annually by 2030, including 200,000 in new-build homes and 250,000 in existing homes.
This is significantly lower than the previous target – originally set in 2021 under Boris Johnson’s Conservative government – to install 600,000 heat pumps annually by 2028.
Meeting that target would have meant installations increasing seven-fold in just four years, between 2024 and 2028. Now, installations only need to increase five-fold in six years.
As the chart below shows, the new target is also considerably lower than the heat-pump installation rate set out in the CCC’s central net-zero pathway. That involved 450,000 installations in existing homes alone by 2030 – excluding new-build properties.
Some experts and campaigners questioned how the UK would remain on track for its legally binding climate goals given this scaled-back rate of heat-pump installations.
Additionally, Adam Bell, policy director at the thinktank Stonehaven, writes on LinkedIn that the “headline numbers for heat pump installs do not stack up”.
Heat pumps in existing homes are set to be supported primarily via the boiler upgrade scheme and – according to Bell – there is not enough funding for the 250,000 installations that are planned, despite an increased budget.
The government’s plan relies in part on the up-front costs of heat pump installation “fall[ing] significantly”. According to Bell, it may be that the government will reduce the size of boiler upgrade scheme grants in the future, hoping that costs will fall sufficiently.
Alternatively, the government may rely on driving uptake through its planned low-cost loans and the clean heat market mechanism, which requires heating-system suppliers to sell a growing share of heat pumps.
Rooftop solar
Rooftop solar panels are highlighted in the plan as “central to cutting energy bills”, by allowing households to generate their own electricity to power their homes and sell it back to the grid.
At the same time, rooftop solar is expected to make a “significant contribution” to the government’s target of hitting 45-47 gigawatts (GW) of solar capacity by 2030.
As it stands, there is roughly 5.2GW of solar capacity on residential rooftops.
Taken together, the government says the grants and loans set out in the warm homes plan could triple the number of homes with rooftop solar from 1.6m to 4.6m by 2030.
It says that this is “in addition” to homes that decide to install rooftop solar independently.
Efficiency standards
The warm homes plan says that the government will publish its “future homes standard” for new-build properties, alongside necessary regulations, in the first quarter of 2026.
On the same day, the government also published its intention to reform “energy performance certificates” (EPCs), the ratings that are supposed to inform prospective buyers and renters about how much their new homes will cost to keep warm.
The current approach to measuring performance for EPCs is “unreliable” and thought to inadvertently discourage heat pumps. It has faced long-standing calls for reform.
As well as funding low-carbon technologies, the warm homes plan says it is “standing up for renters” with new energy-efficiency standards for privately and socially rented homes.
Currently, private renters – who rely on landlords to invest in home improvements – are the most likely to experience fuel poverty and to live in cold, damp homes.
Landlords will now need to upgrade their properties to meet EPC ratings B and C across two new-style EPC metrics by October 2030. There are “reasonable exemptions” to this rule that will limit the amount landlords have to spend per property to £10,000.
In total, the government expects “up to” 1.6m homes in the private-rental sector to benefit from these improvements and “up to” 1.3m social-rent homes.
These new efficiency standards therefore cover three-fifths of the “up to” 5m homes helped by the plan.
The government also published a separate fuel poverty strategy for England.
Heat networks
The warm homes plan sets out a new target to more than double the amount of heating provided using low-carbon heat networks – up to 7% of England’s heating demand by 2035 and a fifth by 2050.
This involves an injection of £1.1bn for heat networks, including £195m per year out to 2030 via the green heat network fund, as well as “mobilising” the National Wealth Fund.
The plan explains that this will primarily benefit urban centres, noting that heat networks are “well suited” to serving large, multi-occupancy buildings and those with limited space.
Alongside the plan, the government published a series of technical standards for heat networks, including for consumer protection.
What does the warm homes plan mean for energy bills?
The warm homes plan could save households “hundreds on energy bills” for those whose homes are upgraded, according to the UK government.
This is in addition to two changes announced in the budget in 2025, which are expected to cut energy bills for all homes by an average of £150 a year.
This included the decisions to bring ECO to an end when the current programme of work wraps up at the end of the financial year and for the treasury to cover three-quarters of the cost of the “renewables obligation” (RO) for three years from April 2026.
Beyond this, households that take advantage of the measures outlined in the plan can expect their energy bills to fall by varying amounts, the government says.
The warm homes plan includes a number of case studies that detail how upgrades could impact energy bills for a range of households. For example, it notes that a social-rented two-bedroom semi-detached home that got insulation and solar panels could save £350 annually.
An owner-occupier three-bedroom home could save £450 annually if it gets solar panels and a battery through consumer loans offered under the warm homes plan, it adds.
Similar analysis published by Nesta says that a typical household that invests in home upgrades under the plan could save £1,000 a year on its energy bill.
It finds that a household with a heat pump, solar panels and a battery, which uses a solar and “time of use tariff”, could see its annual energy bill fall by as much as £1,000 compared with continuing to use a gas boiler, from around £1,670 per year to £670, as shown in the chart below.
Ahead of the plan being published, there were rumours of further “rebalancing” energy bills to bring down the cost of electricity relative to gas. However, this idea failed to come to fruition in the warm homes plan.
This would have involved reducing or removing some or all of the policy costs currently funded via electricity bills, by shifting them onto gas bills or into general taxation.
This would have made it relatively cheaper to use electric technologies such as heat pumps, acting as a further incentive to adopt them.
Nesta highlights that in the absence of further action with regard to policy costs, the electricity-to-gas price ratio is likely to stay at around 4.1 from April 2026.
What has been the reaction to the plan?
Many of the commitments in the warm homes plan were welcomed by a broad range of energy industry experts, union representatives and thinktanks.
Greg Jackson, the founder of Octopus Energy, described it as a “really important step forward”, adding:
“Electrifying homes is the best way to cut bills for good and escape the yoyo of fossil fuel costs.”
Dhara Vyas, chief executive of the trade body Energy UK, said the government’s commitment to spend £15bn on upgrading home heating was “substantial” and would “provide certainty to investors and businesses in the energy market”.
On LinkedIn, Camilla Born, head of the campaign group Electrify Britain, said the plan was a “good step towards backing electrification as the future of Britain, but it must go hand in hand with bringing down the costs of electricity”.
However, right-leaning publications and politicians were critical of the plan, focusing on how a proportion of solar panels sold in the UK are manufactured in China.
According to BBC News, two-thirds (68%) of the solar panels imported to the UK came from China in 2024.
In an analysis of the plan, the Guardian’s environment editor Fiona Harvey and energy correspondent Jillian Ambrose argued that the strategy is “all carrot and no stick”, given that the “longstanding proposal” to ban the installation of gas boilers beyond 2035 has been “quietly dropped”.
Christopher Hammond, chief executive of UK100, a cross-party network of more than 120 local authorities, welcomed the plan, but urged the government to extend it to include public buildings.
The government’s £3.5bn public sector decarbonisation scheme, which aimed to electrify schools, hospitals and council buildings, ended in June 2025 and no replacement has been announced, according to the network.
The post Q&A: What UK’s ‘warm homes plan’ means for climate change and energy bills appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: What UK’s ‘warm homes plan’ means for climate change and energy bills
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Absolute State of the Union
‘DRILL, BABY’: US president Donald Trump “doubled down on his ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda” in his State of the Union (SOTU) address, said the Los Angeles Times. He “tout[ed] his support of the fossil-fuel industry and renew[ed] his focus on electricity affordability”, reported the Financial Times. Trump also attacked the “green new scam”, noted Carbon Brief’s SOTU tracker.
COAL REPRIEVE: Earlier in the week, the Trump administration had watered down limits on mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, reported the Financial Times. It remains “unclear” if this will be enough to prevent the decline of coal power, said Bloomberg, in the face of lower-cost gas and renewables. Reuters noted that US coal plants are “ageing”.
OIL STAY: The US Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments brought by the oil industry in a “major lawsuit”, reported the New York Times. The newspaper said the firms are attempting to head off dozens of other lawsuits at state level, relating to their role in global warming.
SHIP-SHILLING: The Trump administration is working to “kill” a global carbon levy on shipping “permanently”, reported Politico, after succeeding in delaying the measure late last year. The Guardian said US “bullying” could be “paying off”, after Panama signalled it was reversing its support for the levy in a proposal submitted to the UN shipping body.
Around the world
- RARE EARTHS: The governments of Brazil and India signed a deal on rare earths, said the Times of India, as well as agreeing to collaborate on renewable energy.
- HEAT ROLLBACK: German homes will be allowed to continue installing gas and oil heating, under watered-down government plans covered by Clean Energy Wire.
- BRAZIL FLOODS: At least 53 people died in floods in the state of Minas Gerais, after some areas saw 170mm of rain in a few hours, reported CNN Brasil.
- ITALY’S ATTACK: Italy is calling for the EU to “suspend” its emissions trading system (ETS) ahead of a review later this year, said Politico.
- COOKSTOVE CREDITS: The first-ever carbon credits under the Paris Agreement have been issued to a cookstove project in Myanmar, said Climate Home News.
- SAUDI SOLAR: Turkey has signed a “major” solar deal that will see Saudi firm ACWA building 2 gigawatts in the country, according to Agence France-Presse.
$467 billion
The profits made by five major oil firms since prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago, according to a report by Global Witness covered by BusinessGreen.
Latest climate research
- Claims about the “fingerprint” of human-caused climate change, made in a recent US Department of Energy report, are “factually incorrect” | AGU Advances
- Large lakes in the Congo Basin are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from “immense ancient stores” | Nature Geoscience
- Shared Socioeconomic Pathways – scenarios used regularly in climate modelling – underrepresent “narratives explicitly centring on democratic principles such as participation, accountability and justice” | npj Climate Action
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
The constituency of Richard Tice MP, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of Reform UK, is the second-largest recipient of flood defence spending in England, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Overall, the funding is disproportionately targeted at coastal and urban areas, many of which have Conservative or Liberal Democrat MPs.
Spotlight
Is there really a UK ‘greenlash’?
This week, after a historic Green Party byelection win, Carbon Brief looks at whether there really is a “greenlash” against climate policy in the UK.
Over the past year, the UK’s political consensus on climate change has been shattered.
Yet despite a sharp turn against climate action among right-wing politicians and right-leaning media outlets, UK public support for climate action remains strong.
Prof Federica Genovese, who studies climate politics at the University of Oxford, told Carbon Brief:
“The current ‘war’ on green policy is mostly driven by media and political elites, not by the public.”
Indeed, there is still a greater than two-to-one majority among the UK public in favour of the country’s legally binding target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, as shown below.
Steve Akehurst, director of public-opinion research initiative Persuasion UK, also noted the growing divide between the public and “elites”. He told Carbon Brief:
“The biggest movement is, without doubt, in media and elite opinion. There is a bit more polarisation and opposition [to climate action] among voters, but it’s typically no more than 20-25% and mostly confined within core Reform voters.”
Conservative gear shift
For decades, the UK had enjoyed strong, cross-party political support for climate action.
Lord Deben, the Conservative peer and former chair of the Climate Change Committee, told Carbon Brief that the UK’s landmark 2008 Climate Change Act had been born of this cross-party consensus, saying “all parties supported it”.
Since their landslide loss at the 2024 election, however, the Conservatives have turned against the UK’s target of net-zero emissions by 2050, which they legislated for in 2019.
Curiously, while opposition to net-zero has surged among Conservative MPs, there is majority support for the target among those that plan to vote for the party, as shown below.
Dr Adam Corner, advisor to the Climate Barometer initiative that tracks public opinion on climate change, told Carbon Brief that those who currently plan to vote Reform are the only segment who “tend to be more opposed to net-zero goals”. He said:
“Despite the rise in hostile media coverage and the collapse of the political consensus, we find that public support for the net-zero by 2050 target is plateauing – not plummeting.”
Reform, which rejects the scientific evidence on global warming and campaigns against net-zero, has been leading the polls for a year. (However, it was comfortably beaten by the Greens in yesterday’s Gorton and Denton byelection.)
Corner acknowledged that “some of the anti-net zero noise…[is] showing up in our data”, adding:
“We see rising concerns about the near-term costs of policies and an uptick in people [falsely] attributing high energy bills to climate initiatives.”
But Akehurst said that, rather than a big fall in public support, there had been a drop in the “salience” of climate action:
“So many other issues [are] competing for their attention.”
UK newspapers published more editorials opposing climate action than supporting it for the first time on record in 2025, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Global ‘greenlash’?
All of this sits against a challenging global backdrop, in which US president Donald Trump has been repeating climate-sceptic talking points and rolling back related policy.
At the same time, prominent figures have been calling for a change in climate strategy, sold variously as a “reset”, a “pivot”, as “realism”, or as “pragmatism”.
Genovese said that “far-right leaders have succeeded in the past 10 years in capturing net-zero as a poster child of things they are ‘fighting against’”.
She added that “much of this is fodder for conservative media and this whole ecosystem is essentially driving what we call the ‘greenlash’”.
Corner said the “disconnect” between elite views and the wider public “can create problems” – for example, “MPs consistently underestimate support for renewables”. He added:
“There is clearly a risk that the public starts to disengage too, if not enough positive voices are countering the negative ones.”
Watch, read, listen
TRUMP’S ‘PETROSTATE’: The US is becoming a “petrostate” that will be “sicker and poorer”, wrote Financial Times associate editor Rana Forohaar.
RHETORIC VS REALITY: Despite a “political mood [that] has darkened”, there is “more green stuff being installed than ever”, said New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells.
CHINA’S ‘REVOLUTION’: The BBC’s Climate Question podcast reported from China on the “green energy revolution” taking place in the country.
Coming up
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean, Brasília
- 3 March: UK spring statement
- 4-11 March: China’s “two sessions”
- 5 March: Nepal elections
Pick of the jobs
- The Guardian, senior reporter, climate justice | Salary: $123,000-$135,000. Location: New York or Washington DC
- China-Global South Project, non-resident fellow, climate change | Salary: Up to $1,000 a month. Location: Remote
- University of East Anglia, PhD in mobilising community-based climate action through co-designed sports and wellbeing interventions | Salary: Stipend (unknown amount). Location: Norwich, UK
- TABLE and the University of São Paulo, Brazil, postdoctoral researcher in food system narratives | Salary: Unknown. Location: Pirassununga, Brazil
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Greenhouse Gases
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
The Lincolnshire constituency held by Richard Tice, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of the hard-right Reform party, has been pledged at least £55m in government funding for flood defences since 2024.
This investment in Boston and Skegness is the second-largest sum for a single constituency from a £1.4bn flood-defence fund for England, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
Flooding is becoming more likely and more extreme in the UK due to climate change.
Yet, for years, governments have failed to spend enough on flood defences to protect people, properties and infrastructure.
The £1.4bn fund is part of the current Labour government’s wider pledge to invest a “record” £7.9bn over a decade on protecting hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses from flooding.
As MP for one of England’s most flood-prone regions, Tice has called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
He is also one of Reform’s most vocal opponents of climate action and what he calls “net stupid zero”. He denies the scientific consensus on climate change and has claimed, falsely and without evidence, that scientists are “lying”.
Flood defences
Last year, the government said it would invest £2.65bn on flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) schemes in England between April 2024 and March 2026.
This money was intended to protect 66,500 properties from flooding. It is part of a decade-long Labour government plan to spend more than £7.9bn on flood defences.
There has been a consistent shortfall in maintaining England’s flood defences, with the Environment Agency expecting to protect fewer properties by 2027 than it had initially planned.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has attributed this to rising costs, backlogs from previous governments and a lack of capacity. It also points to the strain from “more frequent and severe” weather events, such as storms in recent years that have been amplified by climate change.
However, the CCC also said last year that, if the 2024-26 spending programme is delivered, it would be “slightly closer to the track” of the Environment Agency targets out to 2027.
The government has released constituency-level data on which schemes in England it plans to fund, covering £1.4bn of the 2024-26 investment. The other half of the FCERM spending covers additional measures, from repairing existing defences to advising local authorities.
The map below shows the distribution of spending on FCERM schemes in England over the past two years, highlighting the constituency of Richard Tice.
By far the largest sum of money – £85.6m in total – has been committed to a tidal barrier and various other defences in the Somerset constituency of Bridgwater, the seat of Conservative MP Ashley Fox.
Over the first months of 2026, the south-west region has faced significant flooding and Fox has called for more support from the government, citing “climate patterns shifting and rainfall intensifying”.
He has also backed his party’s position that “the 2050 net-zero target is impossible” and called for more fossil-fuel extraction in the North Sea.
Tice’s east-coast constituency of Boston and Skegness, which is highly vulnerable to flooding from both rivers and the sea, is set to receive £55m. Among the supported projects are beach defences from Saltfleet to Gibraltar Point and upgrades to pumping stations.
Overall, Boston and Skegness has the second-largest portion of flood-defence funding, as the chart below shows. Constituencies with Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs occupied the other top positions.
Overall, despite Labour MPs occupying 347 out of England’s 543 constituencies – nearly two-thirds of the total – more than half of the flood-defence funding was distributed to constituencies with non-Labour MPs. This reflects the flood risk in coastal and rural areas that are not traditional Labour strongholds.
Reform funding
While Reform has just eight MPs, representing 1% of the population, its constituencies have been assigned 4% of the flood-defence funding for England.
Nearly all of this money was for Tice’s constituency, although party leader Nigel Farage’s coastal Clacton seat in Kent received £2m.
Reform UK is committed to “scrapping net-zero” and its leadership has expressed firmly climate-sceptic views.
Much has been made of the disconnect between the party’s climate policies and the threat climate change poses to its voters. Various analyses have shown the flood risk in Reform-dominated areas, particularly Lincolnshire.
Tice has rejected climate science, advocated for fossil-fuel production and criticised Environment Agency flood-defence activities. Yet, he has also called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
This may reflect Tice’s broader approach to climate change. In a 2024 interview with LBC, he said:
“Where you’ve got concerns about sea level defences and sea level rise, guess what? A bit of steel, a bit of cement, some aggregate…and you build some concrete sea level defences. That’s how you deal with rising sea levels.”
While climate adaptation is viewed as vital in a warming world, there are limits on how much societies can adapt and adaptation costs will continue to increase as emissions rise.
The post Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
Greenhouse Gases
Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter.
Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Food inflation on the rise
DELUGE STRIKES FOOD: Extreme rainfall and flooding across the Mediterranean and north Africa has “battered the winter growing regions that feed Europe…threatening food price rises”, reported the Financial Times. Western France has “endured more than 36 days of continuous rain”, while farmers’ associations in Spain’s Andalusia estimate that “20% of all production has been lost”, it added. Policy expert David Barmes told the paper that the “latest storms were part of a wider pattern of climate shocks feeding into food price inflation”.
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NO BEEF: The UK’s beef farmers, meanwhile, “face a double blow” from climate change as “relentless rain forces them to keep cows indoors”, while last summer’s drought hit hay supplies, said another Financial Times article. At the same time, indoor growers in south England described a 60% increase in electricity standing charges as a “ticking timebomb” that could “force them to raise their prices or stop production, which will further fuel food price inflation”, wrote the Guardian.
‘TINDERBOX’ AND TARIFFS: A study, covered by the Guardian, warned that major extreme weather and other “shocks” could “spark social unrest and even food riots in the UK”. Experts cited “chronic” vulnerabilities, including climate change, low incomes, poor farming policy and “fragile” supply chains that have made the UK’s food system a “tinderbox”. A New York Times explainer noted that while trade could once guard against food supply shocks, barriers such as tariffs and export controls – which are being “increasingly” used by politicians – “can shut off that safety valve”.
El Niño looms
NEW ENSO INDEX: Researchers have developed a new index for calculating El Niño, the large-scale climate pattern that influences global weather and causes “billions in damages by bringing floods to some regions and drought to others”, reported CNN. It added that climate change is making it more difficult for scientists to observe El Niño patterns by warming up the entire ocean. The outlet said that with the new metric, “scientists can now see it earlier and our long-range weather forecasts will be improved for it.”
WARMING WARNING: Meanwhile, the US Climate Prediction Center announced that there is a 60% chance of the current La Niña conditions shifting towards a neutral state over the next few months, with an El Niño likely to follow in late spring, according to Reuters. The Vibes, a Malaysian news outlet, quoted a climate scientist saying: “If the El Niño does materialise, it could possibly push 2026 or 2027 as the warmest year on record, replacing 2024.”
CROP IMPACTS: Reuters noted that neutral conditions lead to “more stable weather and potentially better crop yields”. However, the newswire added, an El Niño state would mean “worsening drought conditions and issues for the next growing season” to Australia. El Niño also “typically brings a poor south-west monsoon to India, including droughts”, reported the Hindu’s Business Line. A 2024 guest post for Carbon Brief explained that El Niño is linked to crop failure in south-eastern Africa and south-east Asia.
News and views
- DAM-AG-ES: Several South Korean farmers filed a lawsuit against the country’s state-owned utility company, “seek[ing] financial compensation for climate-related agricultural damages”, reported United Press International. Meanwhile, a national climate change assessment for the Philippines found that the country “lost up to $219bn in agricultural damages from typhoons, floods and droughts” over 2000-10, according to Eco-Business.
- SCORCHED GRASS: South Africa’s Western Cape province is experiencing “one of the worst droughts in living memory”, which is “scorching grass and killing livestock”, said Reuters. The newswire wrote: “In 2015, a drought almost dried up the taps in the city; farmers say this one has been even more brutal than a decade ago.”
- NOUVELLE VEG: New guidelines published under France’s national food, nutrition and climate strategy “urged” citizens to “limit” their meat consumption, reported Euronews. The delayed strategy comes a month after the US government “upended decades of recommendations by touting consumption of red meat and full-fat dairy”, it noted.
- COURTING DISASTER: India’s top green court accepted the findings of a committee that “found no flaws” in greenlighting the Great Nicobar project that “will lead to the felling of a million trees” and translocating corals, reported Mongabay. The court found “no good ground to interfere”, despite “threats to a globally unique biodiversity hotspot” and Indigenous tribes at risk of displacement by the project, wrote Frontline.
- FISH FALLING: A new study found that fish biomass is “falling by 7.2% from as little as 0.1C of warming per decade”, noted the Guardian. While experts also pointed to the role of overfishing in marine life loss, marine ecologist and study lead author Dr Shahar Chaikin told the outlet: “Our research proves exactly what that biological cost [of warming] looks like underwater.”
- TOO HOT FOR COFFEE: According to new analysis by Climate Central, countries where coffee beans are grown “are becoming too hot to cultivate them”, reported the Guardian. The world’s top five coffee-growing countries faced “57 additional days of coffee-harming heat” annually because of climate change, it added.
Spotlight
Nature talks inch forward
This week, Carbon Brief covers the latest round of negotiations under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which occurred in Rome over 16-19 February.
The penultimate set of biodiversity negotiations before October’s Conference of the Parties ended in Rome last week, leaving plenty of unfinished business.
The CBD’s subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) met in the Italian capital for four days to discuss a range of issues, including biodiversity finance and reviewing progress towards the nature targets agreed under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
However, many of the major sticking points – particularly around finance – will have to wait until later this summer, leaving some observers worried about the capacity for delegates to get through a packed agenda at COP17.
The SBI, along with the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA) will both meet in Nairobi, Kenya, later this summer for a final round of talks before COP17 kicks off in Yerevan, Armenia, on 19 October.
Money talks
Finance for nature has long been a sticking point at negotiations under the CBD.
Discussions on a new fund for biodiversity derailed biodiversity talks in Cali, Colombia, in autumn 2024, requiring resumed talks a few months later.
Despite this, finance was barely on the agenda at the SBI meetings in Rome. Delegates discussed three studies on the relationship between debt sustainability and implementation of nature plans, but the more substantive talks are set to take place at the next SBI meeting in Nairobi.
Several parties “highlighted concerns with the imbalance of work” on finance between these SBI talks and the next ones, reported Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB).
Lim Li Ching, senior researcher at Third World Network, noted that tensions around finance permeated every aspect of the talks. She told Carbon Brief:
“If you’re talking about the gender plan of action – if there’s little or no financial resources provided to actually put it into practice and implement it, then it’s [just] paper, right? Same with the reporting requirements and obligations.”
Monitoring and reporting
Closely linked to the issue of finance is the obligations of parties to report on their progress towards the goals and targets of the GBF.
Parties do so through the submission of national reports.
Several parties at the talks pointed to a lack of timely funding for driving delays in their reporting, according to ENB.
A note released by the CBD Secretariat in December said that no parties had submitted their national reports yet; by the time of the SBI meetings, only the EU had. It further noted that just 58 parties had submitted their national biodiversity plans, which were initially meant to be published by COP16, in October 2024.
Linda Krueger, director of biodiversity and infrastructure policy at the environmental not-for-profit Nature Conservancy, told Carbon Brief that despite the sparse submissions, parties are “very focused on the national report preparation”. She added:
“Everybody wants to be able to show that we’re on the path and that there still is a pathway to getting to 2030 that’s positive and largely in the right direction.”
Watch, read, listen
NET LOSS: Nigeria’s marine life is being “threatened” by “ghost gear” – nets and other fishing equipment discarded in the ocean – said Dialogue Earth.
COMEBACK CAUSALITY: A Vox long-read looked at whether Costa Rica’s “payments for ecosystem services” programme helped the country turn a corner on deforestation.
HOMEGROWN GOALS: A Straits Times podcast discussed whether import-dependent Singapore can afford to shelve its goal to produce 30% of its food locally by 2030.
‘RUSTING’ RIVERS: The Financial Times took a closer look at a “strange new force blighting the [Arctic] landscape”: rivers turning rust-orange due to global warming.
New science
- Lakes in the Congo Basin’s peatlands are releasing carbon that is thousands of years old | Nature Geoscience
- Natural non-forest ecosystems – such as grasslands and marshlands – were converted for agriculture at four times the rate of land with tree cover between 2005 and 2020 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Around one-quarter of global tree-cover loss over 2001-22 was driven by cropland expansion, pastures and forest plantations for commodity production | Nature Food
In the diary
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean | Brasília
- 5 March: Nepal general elections
- 9-20 March: First part of the thirty-first session of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) | Kingston, Jamaica
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz.
Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org
The post Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate
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