Transportation is the connective tissue of our society. It brings us prosperity, but also rapidly rising greenhouse gas emissions and other air pollutants, threatening the health of the planet and its people.
We must dramatically increase fossil fuel-free transport to avert a deepening climate crisis.
Globally, transportation causes over a fifth of all carbon emissions and at the current growth rate, this will rise to two-fifths within a decade.
And yet, a concrete target for clean transport is absent from the upcoming UN climate summit, Cop28, in Dubai.
Saudi Arabia, Russia urge World Bank to keep funding fossil fuels
It is time the EU took the driver’s seat – both by cleaning up its own transportation system and leading the push at Cop28 to get all countries to shift away from fossil-fuel powered vehicles.
Within Europe, road transport accounts for almost one-fifth of greenhouse gas emissions and is increasing.
Heavy-duty vehicles (trucks, vans and buses) are responsible for 28% of those emissions, despite only accounting for 2% of vehicles on the road.
Vehicle emission targets
Next week’s EU Council of Environment Ministers will discuss new emission targets for such vehicles as well as Europe’s negotiating objectives for the upcoming UN climate conference in Dubai.
It will be a first test for the new EU Commissioner for Climate, Maroš Šefčovič, to safeguard an ambitious EU Green Deal as currently the transport sector is a major stumbling block of the EU’s climate and zero pollution objectives for 2030 and 2050.
Furthermore, a concrete global goal to significantly lower the use of fossil fuels for the transportation sector is lacking in the international climate negotiations.
The Council should support a target on doubling the share of fossil-fuel free transport by 2030. To put the world on track to limit warming to 1.5C, a multi-solutions mobility strategy is needed; more efficiency in vehicles and systems, a shift to public transport, cycling and innovative urban planning to avoid short rides in the first place, and more electrification.
Going electric
There are three approaches to achieve such ambition:
First, all global sales of new vehicles need to be electric for buses and two- and three-wheelers by 2030, cars by 2035, and trucks by no later than 2040.
Translating this to the EU means it would need to end the sale of all new trucks and buses with combustion engines by 2035 to reach its own target of climate neutrality by 2050, as heavy-duty vehicles have an average life span of 15 – 18 years.
The proposal discussed at the upcoming EU Environment Council sets out a CO2 emission reduction target for trucks of 45% by 2030 (compared to 2019 levels) and a 90% reduction for 2040.
These emission targets are significant but fall short of what is needed to put the heavy-duty sector on track with Europe’s climate commitments.
Green Climate Fund ambition at risk after ‘disappointing’ pledges
The European Parliament, as co-legislator, can spearhead a more ambitious clean vehicle amendment later in the year.
Promote alternatives to cars
Second, governments need to bend the curve on the growth of vehicle travel in this decade, by moving more trips to electric public transport, walking, biking, and micro-mobility by 2030.
This will require constructing bicycle networks, dramatically scaling up the quality and provision of public transport and smarter urban planning.
While several EU countries are leading on many of these points, Europe could still do better.
With the EU’s motorization rate growing by 18% between 2010-2020, the car is still often the default option. Metro rails and electric buses emit one-fifth the carbon of a private car while bicycling is inherently fossil fuel free, next to many other benefits such as road safety and a low-cost mode of transportation.
Decarbonising electricity
Third, countries also need to enhance these efforts by tripling renewable energy by 2030 and decarbonising the electricity grid which transport will increasingly rely upon.
Transport emissions are veering alarmingly off course, demanding immediate action at Cop28, with the EU leading the way by setting an ambitious goal for negotiators in Dubai.
Simultaneously, Europe must intensify its efforts on the home front, aligning its domestic agenda with its climate objectives. The EU Environmental Council must seize this opportunity to act on both fronts.
Stientje van Veldhoven is vice-president of World Resources Institute and a former minister and state secretary for the environment and infrastructure of the Netherlands
The post The EU must take the driver’s seat in fossil fuel-free transport appeared first on Climate Home News.
The EU must take the driver’s seat in fossil fuel-free transport
Fifty-six years after the first one rallied 20 million people across America, “we need to do things that make us feel more powerful.”
From our collaborating partner Living on Earth, public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by host Steve Curwood with environmental historian Adam Rome.
It was the second defeat for the Trump administration’s unusual litigation to stop states from acting on climate change.
In a setback to the Trump administration’s extraordinary legal campaign against state climate action, a federal judge threw out the Justice Department’s lawsuit seeking to prevent the state of Hawaii from suing oil companies for damages.
Judge Dismisses Trump Administration’s Bid to Block Hawaii Climate Lawsuit
Climate Change
DeBriefed 17 April 2026: Fossil-fuel power slumps | ‘Super’ El Niño warning | Afghanistan’s climate struggle
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Oil prices rebound
OIL UP AGAIN: Oil prices surged by more than 7% and back above $100 a barrel on Monday after US-Iran peace talks faltered and US president Donald Trump ordered the blockading of Iranian ports, reported BBC News. The jump came after prices fell last week in the wake of the announcement of a conditional two-week ceasefire, it said.
RESCUE PLANS: European countries unveiled plans to protect citizens and businesses from rising energy prices. Ireland announced a support package worth €505m, reported BBC News, while Germany agreed on measures worth €1.6bn, said Bloomberg. Meanwhile, Reuters reported on a draft EU proposal due to be unveiled next week that would see the bloc reduce electricity prices and roll out clean energy more quickly in response to the crisis.
UNSOLICITED ADVICE: Trump renewed his criticism of UK energy policy and called on the government to “drill, baby drill”, reported the Independent. Via social media, the president said: “Europe is desperate for energy, and yet the United Kingdom refuses to open North Sea oil, one of the greatest fields in the world. Tragic!!!” (See Carbon Brief’s recent factcheck of various false claims about the North Sea.)
Around the world
- C-WORD: Faced with pressure from the US, countries attending spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank were urged to “not mention the climate”, reported the Guardian. It added that plans to agree a new “climate change action plan” for the World Bank “may be shelved, along with substantive discussion of the climate crisis”.
- NEW DIRECTION: Péter Magyar’s landslide victory over Victor Orbán in Hungary’s elections “presents new opportunities for the country to reduce emissions and invest in clean energy”, reported Time. Carbon Brief explored what it means for European climate action.
- ‘FURNACE’ SUMMER: There was widespread coverage – including in the Boston Globe, ABC News, CNN, Euro Weekly News, Guardian and New Scientist – of warnings from meteorologists of the development of a “super” El Niño phenomenon that could ramp up temperatures and drive extreme weather.
- ANTALYA COP: The Turkish government unveiled the dates and venues for the “leaders’ summit” segment of November’s COP31 conference, according to Climate Home News.
- PACIFIC PRE-COP: Meanwhile, the Guardian reported that Tuvalu will host a special meeting of world leaders before the climate summit in Antalya.
€10bn a year
The amount of state support that French prime minister Sébastien Lecornu has pledged for electrification through to 2030 in a bid to reduce the country’s dependence on fossil fuels. In a speech late on Friday 10 April, Lecornu noted the figure amounted to a “doubling” of existing support.
Latest climate research
- Over a four-month period of 2023, more than 70% of editorials discussing net-zero in four right-leaning UK newspapers included “at least one misleading statement” | Climate Policy
- Air pollution from global transport currently has a net cooling effect that offsets 80% of the warming impact of the sector’s CO2 emissions | npj Climate and Atmospheric Science
- The incorporation of “observational constraints” into climate-model projections suggests that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation could weaken by 50% by 2100 in a medium-emissions scenario | Science Advances
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) found that global electricity generation from fossil fuels fell in the first month of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Across all countries with real-time electricity data outside of China, coal-fired power generation fell 3.5% and gas-fired power generation fell 4.0%, according to CREA. This was offset by a rise in solar power and wind generation, which increased by 14% and 8%, respectively. Hydropower generation also saw a small increase, the analysis showed, but this was “more than offset” by a drop in nuclear power generation.
Spotlight
How climate change affects Afghan lives
This week, Carbon Brief reports on the impact of climate change in Afghanistan, following deadly floods this year.
Earlier this month, heavy rains, flash floods and landslides struck large parts of Afghanistan, damaging thousands of homes, destroying crops, bridges and roads and taking nearly 100 lives.
The flooding – reported to have affected 74,000 people in 31 of 34 provinces – is the latest weather-related catastrophe to afflict the nation, whose communities have suffered the brunt of repeated flash floods, droughts and landslides in recent years.
Hameed Hakimi, non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center, told Carbon Brief the recent floods would hurt livelihoods and food security, noting reports of destroyed wheat and rice crops in the most affected eastern parts of the country. He said:
“This is common. For at least a decade now, [we have seen] these flash floodings and the damage that happens to rural life, farming, the disruption to crops…Flash flooding physically eats up the land. So, it not only damages where people live, but also people’s livelihoods, based on what they grow.”
The damage to crops will be felt acutely, he explained, given that food security in the landlocked nation is already strained by the blockage of its main transit trade artery through Pakistan and international sanctions that have frozen long-term development aid.
Speaking to Carbon Brief, Abdulhadi Achakzai, founding CEO of the Environmental Protection Trainings and Development Organization (EPTDO), an Afghan NGO, described flooding in Afghanistan as a “chronic situation”.
Achakzai, whose organisation runs projects that help urban and rural communities adapt to climate impacts, says climate change hurts the country in four key ways: extreme drought; extreme temperature; “natural hazards”, including landslides and dust storms; and, finally, flash flooding. He said:
“Climate change is a serious matter in Afghanistan. Every nation and every corner within this country is severely affected.”
Ranked 176 of 187 on the University of Notre Dame “global adaptation index”, Afghanistan is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change.
Average temperature across the country has increased from 12.2C in 1960 to 14.2C in 2024, according to the World Bank’s climate change knowledge portal. Drought is widespread, severe and persistent – harming food and water security in a nation of subsistence farmers.
Meanwhile, extreme weather events are the leading driver of internal displacement in the country. More than three-quarters of the 710,000 people who relocated within Afghanistan in 2024 did so driven by “environmental hazards”, such as drought and flood, according to a recent climate vulnerability assessment from the International Organization for Migration.
Finance struggles
Despite feeling the impacts of extreme weather, Afghanistan has been barred from UN climate negotiations and had limited access to climate finance since 2021. (The government attended COP29 in Baku as guests of the Azerbaijan hosts, but did not take part in formal negotiations.)
This is because the international community does not recognise the Taliban government, which resumed power in 2021, due to its record on human rights and its repression of women and girls in particular.
Almost all financing from key climate funds has been suspended, with the exception of a few projects where UN agencies and NGOs act simultaneously as a “requesting” and “implementation” partner.
Aid from UN climate funds fell from $5.9m annually over 2014-20 to $3.9m annually over 2021-24, according to recent analysis by the Berghof Foundation. Multilateral development banks provided a further $337m of funds badged as “climate finance” over 2021-23, it said.
By comparison, Afghanistan’s national climate plan, submitted to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2016, requested $17.4bn in climate finance over 2020-30. An updated national climate plan seen by Carbon Brief – completed in 2021 and later endorsed by the Taliban government, but not accepted by member governments of the UNFCCC – called for $20.6bn through to 2030.
Achakzai, whose organisation attends the COP climate summit each year in an observer capacity, has in the past been the sole delegate from Afghanistan to the conference.
He is calling on the UNFCCC to accept the country’s latest climate plan – and to find an “alternative solution” that would give the people of the country a voice in negotiations. He said:
“Every year we are losing hundreds, thousands of people because of climate change-related matters. Every year we are losing hundreds, thousands of hectares of crops. We are affected by [the decisions of] other countries. Why are we not part of this process?”
Watch, read, listen
BLOSSOM WATCHER: The Guardian reported on the successful search to find a researcher to continue Japan’s 1,200-year cherry blossom record.
COP OUT: Deutsche Welle spoke to experts to understand why India walked away from its bid to host COP33 in 2028.
‘BOMBS AND PORN’: The New Republic looked at who is set to benefit from the rapid build-out of energy-intensive AI datacentres.
Coming up
- 20-24 April: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) working group one report author meeting, Santiago, Chile
- 22 April: Earth day
- 22 April: Launch of third edition of the Lancet Countdown’s Europe report
- 24-29 April: First conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels, Santa Marta, Colombia
Pick of the jobs
- International Organization for Migration, senior thematic associate (climate action) | Salary: UN G-6 salary grade | Location: Dakar, Senegal
- Climate Action Network UK, several board member roles | Salary: Unknown. Location: Unknown
- UK Department for Energy, Food and Rural Affairs, G7 science lead | Salary: £56,375. Location: Bristol, London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne or York, UK
- Save the Children UK, senior climate change advisor | Salary: £62,000-£65,000. Location: London
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 17 April 2026: Fossil-fuel power slumps | ‘Super’ El Niño warning | Afghanistan’s climate struggle appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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