A keenly awaited plan to mobilise $1.3 trillion a year in climate finance for developing nations by 2035 could spark a “positive tipping point” that drives an exponential shift in global climate funding, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago said on Wednesday as the document was unveiled.
The 81-page “Baku to Belém Roadmap” offers a shopping list of potential measures that, if put into practice, could deliver on a promise made at last year’s UN COP29 summit to boost the provision of climate cash for poorer vulnerable nations from a range of public and private sources.
That deal came after developing countries in Azerbaijan were disappointed by wealthy governments offering an annual $300 billion by 2035 under a new UN climate finance goal, known as the NCQG.
Reaching the wider $1.3-trillion target, which includes the $300 billion, would require “significant effort” from traditional climate finance providers – including rich countries and development banks – as well as innovative sources, such as new taxes, the report says, adding that the goal is “achievable”.
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In a foreword to the roadmap, the two presidents of COP29 and COP30, which takes place in Brazil over the next two weeks, say the $1.3 trillion “must power the next leap in climate implementation”, to make the Paris Agreement work faster and mainstream it across economies, societies and international finance.
The roadmap presents ideas on five elements of the global financial architecture: public concessional finance, fiscal and debt-related measures, private capital, multilateral climate funds and supervisory bodies, like regulators and central banks. The COP presidents say in their foreword that the roadmap “transforms scientific warning into a global blueprint for cooperation and tangible results”.
Not on the COP30 agenda
Yet it remains unclear how – or even whether – its recommendations will be taken forward.
Corrêa do Lago told journalists “there is no plan” for the roadmap to be formally discussed at the COP30 summit or reflected in its final outcomes. “There is no priority absolutely in having it approved or acknowledged at COP,” he added.
The roadmap was never meant to be a negotiated outcome at the UN climate talks. But the two COP presidencies took on the task of crafting a plan to scale up climate finance, with many developing countries viewing the new NCQG target for government funding as insufficient to meet their needs.
The non-binding report issued just before COP30 in the Amazon city of Belém offers a list of practical short-term actions that could guide the roadmap’s early implementation.
For example, it says developed countries could work together on a plan by the end of 2026 that explains how they will reach their goal of providing at least $300 billion a year. Amid cuts in overseas aid spending and tightening government budgets, the report says this step could improve “predictability” of finance flows.
Multilateral development banks – seen as central to the roadmap’s delivery – could outline how they would reach a new “aspirational” climate finance target for 2035, possibly by changing some of their lending rules and adding more capital.
The report also suggests that the world’s 100 largest companies and its 100 largest institutional investors could report each year on how they are contributing towards the implementation of countries’ national climate plans.
In a statement on the roadmap, UN climate chief Simon Stiell said that “by scaling climate finance to match the scope of the climate crisis, we can turn ambition into momentum, making climate action a driver of economic growth, stability and shared prosperity”.
“The task is ambitious, but achievable,” he added. “The tools exist – what’s been missing is coordination and shared commitment.”
Campaigners disappointed
While welcoming some of the roadmap’s recommendations, climate campaigners said it had failed to live up to its promise and did not confront tricky subjects such as continued government subsidies for fossil fuels. Many also criticised it for relying too heavily on finance coming from the private sector.
Rebecca Thissen, global advocacy lead at Climate Action Network International, said the roadmap “feels more like a sketch than a compass”, adding that while pointing in the right direction, “it fails to chart a clear route or provide the tools” to reach the $1.3-trillion target.
Harjeet Singh, founding director of India’s Satat Sampada Climate Foundation, said the roadmap “correctly identifies the symptoms of our broken financial system” yet “fundamentally fails to prescribe the cure” or present “the transformation we have been demanding”.
There were hopes among climate justice experts that the roadmap would show how to raise more money for helping climate-vulnerable countries adapt to more extreme weather and rising seas – an area of climate action that is severely underfunded, with little prospect of rich nations raising their contributions.
Debbie Hillier, global climate policy lead for Mercy Corps said that while the roadmap calls for greater attention to adaptation, “it places too much weight on the mobilisation of private finance” which can cover at most 15–20% of global adaptation needs, according to recent research from the Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance.
Other suggestions in the roadmap focus on insurance against extreme weather events and earmarking spending in national budgets that can be released to help people prepare ahead of climate disasters.
Friederike Roder from the Solidarity Levies Task Force noted that the roadmap supports more debt-free financing, in particular for adaptation, which could be delivered at scale by solidarity levies, such as that supported by a new coalition of countries that aim to tax premium flyers.
Hillier said the report recognises the importance of public and grant-based resources to address adaptation and respond to climate-driven loss and damage, but does not follow the UN climate convention principle that countries that caused the climate crisis have a greater responsibility to meet the finance gap. “As such, it falls far short of what is needed,” she added.
In contrast to COP30’s disappointing outcomes on finance, adaptation and fossil fuel transition, governments in Belém agreed to an ambitious Just Transition package. It combines the strongest language on rights and inclusion yet seen in the UN climate process with a new global mechanism to support countries reshaping their economies in a cleaner and fairer way.
Delegates described the win as a rare convergence of political will, technical facilitation and years of groundwork by civil society.
“This decision brings the highest level of commitment we’ve ever seen on rights, inclusion and cooperation in climate planning,” said Anabella Rosemberg, Just Transition lead at Climate Action Network International.
“In a COP where many other rooms were struggling, this shows what is possible when the people who have been carrying Just Transition for years finally get heard.”
Civil society kept the issue alive
The work programme on Just Transition, launched in 2022, remained low-profile across several COP cycles. During that time, unions, youth networks, feminist groups, Indigenous advocates and NGOs continued refining their proposals and pushing negotiators even when political attention was limited.
As momentum built toward COP30 this year, these groups began referring to their proposal as the Belém Action Mechanism – the “BAM” – signalling the level of institutional ambition they believed the process required. “There would be no Just Transition mechanism without civil society,” Rosemberg said.
She noted how different groups kept the issue alive over the past three years – drafting text, feeding ideas into consultations, and staging actions – from June’s ‘picketnic’ in Bonn to demonstrations in Belém.
“The strongest rights and inclusion language ever agreed at a COP comes directly from that sustained work,” she added.
Governments shifted faster than expected
A key moment arrived on day two of COP30, when the G77+China group of developing countries signalled its support for establishing a Just Transition mechanism. Negotiators from several regions described this as the turning point that made an ambitious outcome possible.
This was followed by the EU at the end of the first week and then by the UK. Behind the scenes, civil society groups in Canada, Australia and Switzerland pushed their governments to align with the emerging consensus.
The technical co-facilitators of talks on the Just Transition Work Programme, Joseph Teo (of Singapore) and Federica Fricano (Italy), were credited with producing a clear, workable draft text that helped bridge divides. Delegates said its readability – unusual for UNFCCC text – helped maintain trust.
Last year at COP29 in Baku, the Just Transition track of the negotiations ended without an outcome, partly because no ministers were mandated to land one.
Belém took a different approach: Mexico’s Alicia Bárcena and Poland’s Krzysztof Bolesta were appointed as ministerial leads and played a central role in balancing strong rights language with the institutional detail needed to implement it.
UNFCCC secretariat staff supported the process with rapid revision work through the second week.
Brazil’s presidency and the significance of place
As the COP host nation, Brazil made Just Transition one of its three priorities, ensuring the track remained visible amid wider disputes. The presidency directed parties toward “institutional arrangements” – the diplomatic route that made a mechanism possible.
Belém’s context also mattered. The region is a long-standing focal point for debates around livelihoods, extractivism of natural resources and environmental protection, grounding the negotiations in a real-world context.
“Brazil was the right place for this breakthrough,” Rosemberg said. “Here the tension between social protection and environmental protection is lived, not abstract. A mechanism agreed in the land of trade unionist and environmentalist Chico Mendes – that means something.”
What the Just Transition decision changes
The final text approved at COP30 sets out principles for rights-based, inclusive transitions and decides to develop a global mechanism to support countries in implementing those principles – elevating it to a structural component of how climate action will be delivered in the Paris Agreement era. The mechanism is due to be operationalised at COP31 next November.
The COP30 agreement also reinforces the expectation that social and economic dimensions must be central to national climate plans, not appended to them.
The work starts now
The mechanism’s impact will depend on the operational details agreed by governments in the months ahead. Key questions include the design of the mechanism’s committee, what form secretariat support will take, and whether civil society and trade unions will have a formal role in its work.
Parties also need to decide whether the mechanism should help convene a wider network of practitioners. Its first workplan, the identification of support needs, and clarification of how it will interact with existing UNFCCC bodies will shape how effective it becomes – decisions that are expected to be taken at COP31.
“What comes next is making sure this mechanism speaks to reality,” Rosemberg said.
“It has to work for workers facing job loss, for communities left out of climate decisions, and for governments trying to shift economies away from extractivism. If those voices shape it, this can be an eye-opener rather than a repetition of old conversations.”
Social justice at the forefront
COP30 will likely be remembered for its unresolved debates and for outcomes that fell short in areas many countries consider essential. Against that backdrop, the Just Transition decision stands out as a rare instance of coordination between civil society, governments and the presidency.
It marks the first time the UN climate process has created an institutional structure dedicated to ensuring that social and economic justice is embedded in the shift away from fossil fuels and other high-carbon sectors that must change.
The Just Transition outcome may not resolve the broader challenges faced by the UN climate process, but it establishes a foundation that many negotiators and observers say could shape climate policy for the better in the years to come.
Over the past few weeks, over a thousand of you took the time to write to the Senate Inquiry on the overhaul of our national nature law. I read every single submission.
It was genuinely inspiring to see the heart, clarity and courage you poured into your messages. You came from every age group and from communities all over the country. You are students, farmers, grandparents, bushfire survivors and scientists. Many of you told stories of the places you love, the wildlife you want to protect and the future you want for the next generation.
Your submissions showed that when we act together, shoulder to shoulder, we are powerful. You are part of a community that refuses to accept the destruction of our forests as normal. You reminded decision makers that environmental protection laws have one job: to protect the environment.
In reading your submissions, one theme stood out. Our shared love for forests runs deep, and the care you expressed for wildlife, a safe climate, and future generations was clear. You spoke of powerful owls, quolls and gang-gang cockatoos. You spoke of the loss of old growth forests and the heartbreak of watching them destroyed for low value products like toilet paper and woodchips.
Near my own home, ancient trees continue to fall and threatened species lose what little habitat remains. Our current nature law allows agricultural deforestation and native forest logging to continue without proper oversight. With your support, we are hopeful that will finally change.
Your messages to decision makers
Here are just a few of your powerful submissions:
Please have the foresight and the courage to improve the laws protecting our environment.
Younger generations are losing faith in their future, and who can blame them? We have shown them that inaction is acceptable, and that profit outweighs protection. If we are to restore hope, we must model it through positive action and courageous, prosocial policymaking.
I cannot expect everything to go our way, but I do expect change. I do expect the extinction rates to go down, even by a bit. And I do expect you to review the reform and help not just us, but the koalas, the corroboree frog, and the famous tazzie devil.
The consequences of deforestation are far greater than any short term rewards. Please take urgent action to protect our forests and the wildlife that depend on them. I speak on behalf of my generation and the generations to come when I ask you to put an end to deforestation and its destructive impacts.
Your voices matter
Australia remains a global deforestation hotspot with one native animal killed every single second due to deforestation. Closing the loopholes that allow deforestation is essential if we want laws that actually protect nature. Parliament must now work together to fix the significant shortcomings in the proposed nature law reforms and deliver an environmental law that lives up to its name.
Thank you for everything you do for people and the planet. Your submissions showed leadership, compassion and determination. They reminded us that change is possible when communities refuse to stay silent.
Stay tuned for the outcome of the final reforms to the nature law. Greenpeace will continue to hold the government accountable in their implementation of these reforms, and we will keep pushing for strong nature protection in every forum and every avenue we can: on the streets and in the halls of parliament.
Together, we can keep forests standing, wildlife thriving and the Great Barrier Reef protected. Taking action to halt the climate and nature crises will help secure a safe and liveable future for all of us.
UK chancellor Rachel Reeves has announced new measures to cut energy bills alongside a “pay-per-mile” electric-vehicle levy as part of Labour’s second budget.
The policy changes are expected to cut typical household bills by around £134 per year, amid intense political scrutiny of energy prices and a government pledge to reduce them.
This cut is achieved through a combination of moving a portion of renewable-energy subsidies from bills to general taxation and ending a support scheme for energy-efficiency measures.
Reeves has also retained a long-standing freeze on fuel-duty rates on petrol and diesel, albeit with a plan to “gradually” reverse the extra cuts introduced under the previous government.
With fuel-duty receipts set to fall as people opt for electric vehicles, the government has also laid out its plan for an “electric vehicle excise duty” from 2028, to replace lost revenue.
The government has also announced new “transitional energy certificates” to allow new oil and gas production at or nearby to existing sites, as part of its plan for the future of the North Sea.
Below, Carbon Brief runs through the key climate- and energy-focused announcements from the budget.
The chancellor used her budget speech to announce two major changes that will cut dual-fuel energy bills for the average household by £134 per year from April 2026.
The first is to bring the “energy company obligation” (ECO) to an end, once its current programme of work wraps up at the end of the financial year. This will cut bills by £63 per year, according to Carbon Brief analysis of the forthcoming energy price cap, which will apply from 1 January 2026.
The second is for the Treasury to cover three-quarters of the cost of the “renewables obligation” (RO) for households, for three years from April 2026. This will cut bills by £70 per year.
The total impact for typical households – those using gas and electricity – will be to cut bills by an average of £134 per year over the three-year period to April 2029.
(As explained in footnote 77 of the budget “red book”, this rises to an average of £154 per year, when including households that use electric heating and are not connected to the gas grid. This figure is then rounded to £150 per year in government communications around the budget.)
Notably, given the political attention on energy prices, this three-year period of discounted bills runs through to just before the next general election, which must be held by August 2029.
There has been furious debate over the past year over the causes and the most effective solutions to the UK’s high energy bills. A Carbon Brief factcheck published earlier this year showed that it was high gas prices, rather than net-zero policies, which has been keeping bills high.
Nevertheless, a politicised debate has continued and there has also been increasing attention on the factors that will put pressure on bills in the near future, such as efforts to strengthen the electricity grid.
At the same time, the advisory Climate Change Committee (CCC) has repeatedlyadvised the government that it should make electricity cheaper, as so much of the UK’s climate strategy depends on getting homes and businesses to use electricity for heat and transport.
The changes in the budget will go some way to addressing this.
Carbon Brief calculations show that they would cut unit prices for domestic electricity users by around 4p per kilowatt hour (kWh) – roughly 16% – from 28p/kWh under the next price-cap period from the start of 2026, down to around 23p/kWh.
However, the red book says the government wants to further “improve” the price of electricity relative to gas, often referred to as “rebalancing”. It explains:
“The government is committed to doing more to reduce electricity costs for all households and improve the price of electricity relative to gas…The government will set out how it intends to deliver this through the ‘warm homes plan’.”
Under ECO, which has been in place since 2013, utility firms must install energy efficiency measures in fuel-poor homes, funded by a levy on energy bills.
It replaced two earlier schemes, known as CERT and CESP, with reduced funding after then-prime minister David Cameron reportedly told ministers to “get rid of the green crap”. This shift coincided with a precipitous decline in the number of homes being treated with new efficiency measures.
The ECO scheme has been hit by a series of scandals, with a recent National Audit Officereport citing “clear failures” in its design, resulting in “widespread issues with the quality of installations”.
Pre-budget media reports had speculated that the government would pay for ongoing energy efficiency initiatives after scrapping ECO, using funding from the forthcoming “warm homes plan”. This speculation had suggested that subsidies for heat pumps would be cut as a result.
Instead, the budget includes an extra £1.5bn of funding for the warm homes plan, to cover the additional cost of taking over from ECO. (The total cost of ECO was around £1.7bn.)
Adam Bell, head of policy at the consultancy group Stonehaven and the government’s former head of energy policy, tells Carbon Brief that, while this £1.5bn is not the total cost of ECO, the scheme had been “terribly inefficient”. He adds that a government-run alternative that tackles home upgrades on an area-by-area basis was “likely to be cheaper”.
Contrary to much pre-budget speculation in the media, the chancellor did not reduce the already-discounted 5% rate of VAT on energy bills. Nor did she scrap the “carbon price support”, a top-up carbon tax on electricity generators.
Finally, the budget red book says that the government “recently confirmed” an increase in the level of relief for certain industrial users, from electricity network charges.
The budget confirmed the introduction of a new “pay-per-mile” charge for electric vehicles, to raise more than £1bn in additional tax revenue by the end of this decade.
It has long been expected that fuel-duty receipts will begin to fall as electric vehicles start making up a rising share of cars on the road.
In its report accompanying the budget, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasts a decline to around half of current levels in the 2030s in real terms, before falling to near-zero by 2050.
As such, the new charge on EVs will help maintain road infrastructure, the budget states. The “red book” notes that the new tax will see EV drivers paying a “fair share”. It adds:
“All vehicles contribute to congestion and wear and tear on the roads, but drivers of petrol and diesel vehicles pay fuel duty at the pump to contribute their fair share, whereas drivers of electric vehicles do not currently pay an equivalent.”
The electric vehicle excise duty (eVED) will come into effect in April 2028 at a rate of 3p per mile for battery electric vehicles and 1.5p per mile for plug-in hybrid cars, according to the OBR report.
The budget red book says this will mean the average driver of a battery electric vehicle paying “around £240 per year”. This is roughly half of the rate of fuel duty paid per mile by petrol and diesel car owners. (See: Fuel duty.)
Currently, there is no equivalent to fuel duty for electric vehicles. Excise duty was brought in for EVs for the first time in April 2025, costing £10 for the first year and then rising to a standard rate of £195 per year – an increase announced in last year’s budget.
The introduction of the eVED is expected to raise £1.1bn in 2028-29 and £1.9bn in 2030-31, dependent on electric-vehicle uptake in the coming years.
Impact of introducing a mileage-based charge for electric vehicles, showing both tax revenue as a share of GDP (left) and electric and non-electric cars as a share of total car stock (right). Source: OBR.
The revenue generated by the eVED will “support investment in maintaining and improving the condition of roads”, the budget adds, with the government committing to £2bn in annual investment by 2029-30 for local authorities to repair and renew roads.
A consultation will be published seeking views on the implementation of eVED, the budget notes. It adds that there will be no requirement to report where or when the miles are driven, or to install trackers in cars.
The OBR report states that the additional charge of the eVED “is likely” to reduce demand for electric cars, due to increasing their lifetime costs.
Overall, it estimates that there will be around 440,000 fewer electric car sales across the forecast period relative to its previous forecast.
New support for EV buyers and manufacturers also announced in the budget could help offset 130,000 of this impact, the report notes.
This includes a boost to the electric car grant, which was launched in July and currently offers up to £3,750 off eligible vehicles.
The budget announces an increase of £1.3bn in funding for the programme, as well as an extension out to 2029-30.
Additional measures include an increase in the threshold at which EV owners have to pay the “expensive car supplement” from £40,000 to £50,000 from April 2026. This is expected to cost the government £0.5bn in 2030-31, the OBR notes.
The government will delay changes to “benefit-in-kind” (BIK) rules for employee car-ownership schemes until April 2030. This is a continuation of a policy announced in Reeve’s first budget as chancellor in 2024, which delayed the previously planned increase in BIK rates to 9% per year for electric vehicles by 2029, instead increasing them to just 2% per year out to 2029-30.
EV manufacturers will see the research and innovation Drive35 programme extended, with a further £1.5bn allocated to the project to 2035. This takes total funding for the project to £4bn over the next 10 years, according to the government.
Beyond the vehicles, the budget includes investment for EV charging infrastructure – also partly funded through the eVED revenues, it notes – with an additional £100m allocated. This builds on the £400m announced in the spending review in June.
Additionally, funding will be allocated to local authorities to support the rollout of public chargepoints, a consultation will be launched on permitting rights for cross-pavement EV charging and a 10-year 100% business-rates relief for eligible EV chargepoints will be introduced.
Former Conservative governments repeatedly cancelled inflation-linked increases in fuel duty – a tax paid on petrol and diesel – every year since 2010.
Fuel duty was cut by an additional 5p per litre in 2022 by then-Conservative chancellor Rishi Sunak in response to the energy crisis.
Successive freezes in fuel duty have substantially increased the UK’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by lowering the cost of driving and, therefore, encouraging people to use their cars more and low-carbon transport options less.
Last year, Reeves opted to maintain the existing freezes and cuts introduced by her predecessors.
In the new autumn budget, she has once again announced a freeze on fuel-duty rates for an additional five months from April until September 2026.
Beyond that, the government says the 5p additional cut introduced in 2022 will be reversed – “gradually returning to March 2022 levels by March 2027”. However, the planned increase in fuel-duty rates in line with inflation for 2026-27 will be cancelled.
Then, from April 2027 onwards, the government says that fuel-duty rates will increase annually to reflect inflation.
In total, the 16 years of delays to expected increases in fuel duty rates – plus the “temporary” 5p cut – will have cost the Treasury £120bn by 2026-27, compared to the expected rise in line with inflation from 2010 onwards, according to the OBR.
Increasing fuel duty is very unpopular. However, research by the Social Market Foundation thinktank suggests persistent freezes have “done little for average Brits”, with the wealthiest in the country disproportionately benefiting.
Meanwhile, the government is also responding to the long-term decline in fuel-duty receipts “as more people choose to switch to cleaner, greener electric cars” by introducing a new per-mile charge on electric-vehicle use from 2028. (See: Electric vehicles.)
Much of the environmentally focused coverage previewing the budget centred on government plans to allow for new oil and gas production on or near existing field sites in the North Sea.
This was formally announced in the North Sea future plan, a 127-page document outlining the government’s approach to put the region “at the heart of Britain’s clean energy and industrial future” and “deliver the next generation of good, new jobs”.
(The plan was published in response to a consultation held earlier this year on the North Sea’s future, involving nearly 1,000 responses from stakeholders, including oil and gas companies and environmental groups.)
The future plan outlines that the North Sea is an ageing oil and gas basin, “much more so than other areas of the world”, and that production has been “naturally declining over the past 25 years”.
It includes the chart below, showing past and projected oil and gas production.
It adds that the decline of the basin caused direct jobs in oil and gas production to fall by a third between 2014 and 2023, according to official statistics.
The plan also has a section on the UK’s “proud history” of international climate leadership.
It notes that the UK is committed to the Paris Agreement, which has the aim to keep global warming to well-below 2C, while pursuing efforts to keep it at 1.5C, by the end of the century.
The plan says that the UK “now has the opportunity to lead in clean energy”, which “is both a national and global imperative”.
With this backdrop, the plan reaffirms Labour’s manifesto commitment to not issue any new oil and gas licences.
However, the plan says that the government will introduce “transitional energy certificates” to allow new oil and gas drilling on or near to existing fields, as long as this additional production does not require exploration.
An analysis by the North Sea transition charity Uplift found that the amount of oil and gas that could be produced by such certificates is “relatively small”.
It suggested that new discoveries within a 50km radius of existing productions contain just 25m barrels of oil and 20m barrels of oil equivalent of gas.
(By comparison, the Rosebank oil field, which is currently seeking development consent from the government, would produce nearly 500m barrels of oil and gas equivalent in its lifetime.)
In a footnote on page 36, the plan says that these certificates will have no effect on the process for giving development consent to new oil and gas projects.
Last year, Carbon Brief reported that several large oil and gas projects are currently seeking development consent from the government.
Because they already have a license, these projects are able to get around Labour’s policy on not issuing any new oil and gas licenses and still seek final approval.
However, a landmark legal case in 2024 means that all of such projects, including Rosebank, will now have to present the government with information about how much emissions will come from burning the oil and gas they plan to produce, before they can be approved.
Responding to today’s budget news, Tessa Khan, executive director of Uplift, said that the “government is right to end the fiction of endless drilling”, but should “put an end to all new fields, including the huge Rosebank oil field”.
The North Sea future plan also says that the government will change the objectives of the North Sea Transition Authority, the government-run company that controls and regulates offshore oil and gas production.
Before the change, the NSTA was in the awkward position of being responsible for both ensuring the oil and gas sector reaches net-zero and maximising the economic recovery of oil and gas reserves from the North Sea.
Now, the government wants the NSTA to balance three objectives: to “maximise societal economic value”; support the energy secretary in meeting net-zero goals; and consider the long-term benefits of the transition for North Sea workers, communities and supply chains.
In addition, the North Sea future plan also announces that the government will establish the “North Sea jobs service”, a national employment programme offering support for oil and gas workers seeking new opportunities in clean energy, defence and advanced manufacturing.
Nuclear, ‘green finance’, critical minerals and rail
The section in the budget about “investing in the UK’s energy security” largely focuses on the government’s plans for nuclear power.
At the last spending review, the government announced £14.2bn of investment in the planned Sizewell C nuclear-power plant in Suffolk.
The plant is set to be supported under the “regulated asset base” (RAB) model, which levies an extra charge on consumer energy bills to support the cost of the development. OBR analysis concludes this will generate £0.7bn in receipts in 2026-27, doubling to £1.4bn in 2030-31.
The budget also says the prime minister is issuing a “strategic steer” on the “safe and efficient delivery” of nuclear developments through “proportionate regulation and stronger collaboration”.
It says the government will additionally issue an “implementation plan”, within three months, in response to the recently published report on nuclear regulation. It says it will “complete implementation within two years”.
The government has also updated its “green financing framework”, which sets guidelines for the type of expenditures that can raise funding from investors under the UK’s green financing programme. It has now added nuclear power to the list of eligible expenditures.
Other climate-related measures mentioned in the budget include regional funding, such as £14.5m for a new low-carbon industrial centre in Grangemouth, Scotland, and support for “critical minerals, renewable energy and marine innovation” in Cornwall.
This builds on the government’s “critical mineral strategy” released last week, which specifically highlights Cornwall as a site of “mineral wealth”, where mining for lithium, tin and tungsten is being undertaken.
The government has also announced a one-year freeze on rail fares, which it states could save commuters taking expensive routes “more than £300 per year”.
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