UK chancellor Rachel Reeves has delivered Labour’s first budget since 2009, promising to “fix the foundations” of the economy through increased investment in areas including clean energy.
Announcing the budget in parliament, Reeves became the UK’s first-ever female chancellor to lift the “red box”.
The “historic” budget confirms new “fiscal rules” that Reeves says will enable increased government investment, to support priorities including making the UK a “clean-energy superpower”.
Despite speculation ahead of the budget, Reeves extended a 14-year freeze in fuel-duty that has cost the exchequer a cumulative total of £100bn and left overall UK carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions as much as 7% higher than they would have been.
Elsewhere, the budget hiked taxes on private jets, extended incentives for electric vehicles, confirmed an increase in the rate of windfall tax on oil and gas companies and pledged investment in technologies including “green hydrogen” and carbon capture and storage.
Below, Carbon Brief runs through the key announcements.
- ‘Fixing the foundations’
- Transport and fuel duty
- Electric-vehicle incentives
- Clean-energy investment
- North Sea tax
- Other announcements
‘Fixing the foundations’
Reeves presented Labour’s first autumn budget in 14 years, following its sweep to victory in the general election in July.
Much of the framing in the run-up focused on how the Labour government would go about tackling the “slow growth, stagnant living standards and crumbling public services” they put down to 14 years of Conservative rule.
A few days before the budget, a government release stated that prime minister Keir Starmer would “reject austerity, chaos and decline in favour of economic stability, investment and reform”. The release said the budget would look to “fix the foundations” of the UK.
One key announcement trailed before the budget was a change to the government’s self-imposed “fiscal rules”, which are supposed to ensure that the balance of public revenue, spending and borrowing remains on a stable footing.
This change in the way public debt is measured will allow the government to fund extra investment in infrastructure and public services.
The budget “red book” says that the government’s new “investment rule” is to reduce “public-sector net financial liabilities” as a proportion of the overall size of the UK economy, within three years of each budget forecast. It explains: “This rule keeps debt on a sustainable path while allowing the step change needed in investment.”
In an interview with BBC News in the week before the budget, Reeves had said the change was being done “so that we can grow our economy and bring jobs and growth to Britain”.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned last week that public investment in new technologies and the energy transition is “badly needed”, in order to drive growth in the UK.
Speaking in Washington at the IMF annual meeting earlier in October, Reeves had said she would target investment to drive innovation in the transition to clean energy and upgraded infrastructure as part of the budget.
She reiterated this message in her budget speech, saying that her plans would help in “delivering our [government’s] mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower”.
Transport and fuel duty
Reeves announced a bundle of measures concerning transport, ranging from a tax hike on private jets to the confirmation of improved regional train lines.
One of the chancellor’s most high-profile and controversial moves was maintaining the freeze on fuel duty paid by motorists on petrol and diesel.
Successive Conservative-led governments have cancelled planned inflation-linked fuel duty increases every year since 2010, meaning rates have been slashed in real terms.
In 2022, fuel duty was also cut by 5p per litre in response to the global energy crisis – a temporary measure that was subsequently extended in the spring budget in 2023.
As such, thinktank the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) found that fuel duty was already 37% lower in real terms in 2023 than the rate planned in 2010.
Successive cuts and freezes in fuel duty have increased the UK’s CO2 emissions by as much as 7%, according to Carbon Brief analysis in 2023.
Moreover, the fuel-duty cuts and freezes have cost the Treasury a cumulative total of some £100bn since 2010, according to the official Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).
Fuel duty is the “only major tax that persistently fell” in recent years, the OBR says. It adds that if fuel duty remains frozen, it would cost the Treasury a further £5bn a year by 2030.
In the lead-up to the autumn statement, speculation had grown that Reeves might end the temporary 5p cut in fuel duty and reinstate inflation-linked increases, which could have seen an overall hike of 8p per litre, from the current rate of 53p
However, in the end, the government decided to once again freeze fuel duty and extend the “temporary” 5p cut “for one year, at a cost of £3bn next year”. It justifies this as a measure to support “hard-working families and businesses”.
Increasing fuel duty is very unpopular and there has been a strong lobbying effort to block it. The Sun, which is the UK’s most widely read newspaper, has sustained a “14-year campaign”, promoted by climate-sceptic motoring lobbyists and applauded by senior Conservatives, to keep fuel duty frozen.
As Carbon Brief analysis shows, the newspaper has significantly ramped up its efforts under the new Labour government – more than doubling the number of editorials urging the government not to end the freeze. The newspaper describes the idea as “unthinkable” and a “masterpiece of self-harm” that would harm “working people”.
Despite the framing by both the government and the Sun, analysis by thinktank the Social Market Foundation shows that the poorest households benefit far less from lower fuel duty than the richest, who tend to drive more and own more vehicles.
Ahead of the budget, Starmer announced that the single bus fare cap in England will be raised to £3. This is an increase from the current limit of £2, introduced under the Conservative government and set to expire in December.
The government says this higher price will allow it to “develop a more sustainable model of government support for the bus sector that is better value for taxpayers and bus passengers”.
However, the choice came under fire from Green MPs and climate NGOs, particularly in light of the fuel-duty freeze. They noted that the cost of low-carbon transport, such as buses, has increased by far more than the cost of driving cars in recent years. It would have cost £300m per year to extend the £2 bus fare cap, according to the New Economics Foundation.
The budget also commits to investing in a handful of new rail lines and upgrades, including the Transpennine Route Upgrade between York and Manchester and East West Rail to connect Oxford, Milton Keynes and Cambridge. There is also money for electrifying some lines.
Notably, the government also confirmed plans to fund the tunnelling of the HS2 line to central London. (The previous Conservative government significantly scaled back the HS2 project and said the final section going into central London would be dependent on private investment.)
The budget also includes adjustments to taxes on flights, with air passenger duty increased to “correct for below-inflation uprating in recent years” – equating to an extra £2 on short-haul flights in economy class. (In 2021, the Conservative government cut air passenger duty in half for domestic flights.)
A more dramatic change was a 50% increase in duty for “larger private jets”, which Reeves said would amount to £450 per passenger. The budget documents note that the government “will consult on extending this rate to all private jets within the air passenger duty regime”.
Finally, the government commits to extending the “advanced fuels fund” for an extra year to support the production of “sustainable aviation fuels”.
Electric-vehicle incentives
The budget contains a number of commitments to support the rollout of electric vehicles, in line with the government’s target of ending the sale of pure petrol and diesel cars by 2030, and extending this target to vans by 2035.
Among these measures are tax incentives to encourage people to purchase electric vehicles.
The rapid growth in UK electric cars sales in recent years has been driven partly by company-car purchases, which have benefited from generous tax breaks for low-carbon models.
The budget confirms that benefit-in-kind (BIK) tax rates for company cars will continue to favour electric cars, increasing by 2% per year out to 2029-20.
However, plug-in hybrid vehicles will no longer benefit, with rates increasing far more “to align more closely with rates for internal combustion engine vehicles”.
Another change in the budget involves increasing the gap between the rate of vehicle excise duty paid in the first year by electric vehicles relative to other cars. (First-year vehicle excise duty payments are based on a new car’s CO2 emissions.)
The first-year rate will remain frozen until 2029-30 for zero-carbon vehicles, while hybrids and internal combustion engine vehicles will see increases. Cars emitting more than 76g of CO2 per km will see their first-year rates doubling from 1 April 2025.
The budget also confirms that the government will extend, for a further year, “green” first-year allowances – which can be deducted from the full cost of profits before tax – for “qualifying expenditure” on zero-emission cars and plants or machinery for electric vehicle charging points.
Other measures in the budget include investing over £200m in 2025-26 to accelerate the rollout of electric vehicles charging points. There is also £120m to support people in purchasing electric vans through the plug-in vehicle grant scheme, and to support the manufacture of wheelchair accessible electric vans.
Looking more broadly at electric vehicle manufacture, the government has also committed £2bn in support for the automotive sector, “including the zero-emissions vehicle manufacturing sector and supply chain”.
Clean-energy investment
Measures in the budget supporting clean energy and net-zero include funding for investment in carbon capture and storage (CCS), nuclear and “green hydrogen” made with renewable electricity.
In addition, the budget documents tout the government’s “national wealth fund” as a route to supporting private-sector investment in clean energy:
“[T]he government will take further measures to catalyse private investment in the economy. This includes creating the national wealth fund to catalyse over £70bn of private investment in the UK’s clean energy and growth industries.”
In her speech, Reeves said the budget confirmed plans to capitalise the national wealth fund, which would “invest in the industries of the future, from gigafactories [for batteries or electric vehicles] to ports to green hydrogen”.
Responding to the budget, Ed Matthew, campaigns director for thinktank E3G, said in a statement:
“After years of flatlining investment, the government must now seize the opportunity of the ‘investment rule’ to make the UK a clean-energy superpower and boost green homes investment further. It is clean technology where our future prosperity lies, boosting productivity, making us competitive and weaning us off expensive and volatile fossil fuels. It’s the economic opportunity of the century.”
Funding announcements include £3.9bn for CCS projects between 2025-2026. These will help “decarbonise industry, support flexible power generation, and capitalise on the UK’s geographic and technical strengths”, the budget notes.
This follows the government pledging up to £21.7bn to support getting the UK’s first CCS projects up and running over the next 25 years, in an announcement at the beginning of October. The nearly £22bn funding is designed to support the development of two undersea carbon storage sites and pipelines, with the capacity to store more than 8.5m tonnes of CO2 per year.
The budget also includes support for the “first round of electrolytic [green] hydrogen production contracts, harnessing renewable energy to decarbonise industry across the length and breadth of the UK”. This will support 11 green hydrogen producers across the country.
Other key technologies to win support in the budget include nuclear, with a £2.7bn settlement announced to continue the development of Sizewell C through 2025-26.
In August, the government announced it would provide up to £.5bn, as part of a new subsidy scheme for the planned new nuclear power plant in Suffolk.
The equity and debt-raise process for Sizewell C is set to move into its final stages and conclude in spring 2025. Following this, a final investment decision will be made.
Separately, the budget announces “significant support” for UK fusion energy research, “to build on the UK’s position as a global leader in sustainable nuclear energy”.
Great British Energy will receive £125m in funding for 2025-26, the budget notes. This follows news in July that the publicly owned energy company would receive an initial capitalisation of £8.3bn of new money over this parliament.
The budget also confirms £163m in funding to continue the “industrial energy transformation fund” from 2025-26 to 2027-28.
The budget states that the government will help accelerate grid connections and build new network infrastructure. The government is working with the new National Energy System Operator (NESO) and energy regulator Ofgem to develop a “robust grid connection” process.
As part of the commitment to “securing the UK’s place as a global leader in clean energy, protecting consumers and driving economic growth” the budget also notes that the government has commissioned advice from NESO on reaching net-zero electricity by 2030. This will feed into the government’s own “clean-power 2030 action plan”.
Other key upcoming documents, noted in the budget and expected over the coming year, include a response to the annual progress report from the government’s advisory Climate Change Committee, an updated “carbon budget delivery plan” setting out how it will meet legally-binding climate goals and a new industrial strategy.
North Sea tax
The budget also confirms an increase in the windfall tax on oil and gas companies. The energy profits levy (EPL) will rise by three percentage points to 38% from 1 November.
Established in May 2022 in response to record profits enjoyed by oil and gas companies during the global energy crisis, the government announced the increase to 38% in July.
The budget confirms that an “investment allowance” of 29% will be abolished, but the rate of the “decarbonisation allowance” will be set at 66%. No additional changes to the tax relief available through the EPL will be made, which has also been extended by a year to 31 March 2030.
Further to this, the budget says the government will publish a consultation in early 2025 on how the taxation of oil and gas profits will respond to price shocks in the future.
Oil and gas company shares rose in response to the budget, according to the Financial Times, which says the changes to the EPL were “less tough than feared”. For example, Harbour Energy’s stock climbed 4.5% to 277p, according to the newspaper.
At the same time as the budget, the government announced a consultation into “scope 3” emissions from offshore oil and gas production, meaning the emissions associated with burning resulting fuels.
This follows a “landmark” Supreme Court ruling earlier this year, which found that Surrey County Council had acted unlawfully by granting planning permission to the Horse Hill oil project without considering the environmental impact of burning the oil it would produce.
The consultation will be part of efforts to develop new guidance for assessing the end-use emissions of oil and gas projects, as well as help “provide stability for the oil and gas industry, support investment, protect jobs and ensure a fair, orderly and prosperous transition”, the budget document says.
Other announcements
The budget includes a number of other announcements relating to climate and energy.
One such measure is £3.4bn in investment towards a “warm homes plan” for heat decarbonisation and household energy efficiency over the next three years.
In its manifesto, Labour committed to £13.2bn of funding for these issues over the course of this parliament and the budget describes the £3.4bn investment as “the first step”.
The government says this money includes £1.8bn to support fuel-poverty schemes. It adds that it will increase funding for the “boiler upgrade scheme” – which supports the rollout of heat pumps in England and Wales – this year and next.
The budget also confirms £5bn over two years to support a “more productive and environmentally sustainable agricultural sector in England” and more than £400m for tree-planting and peatland restoration.
It adds that the government is “facing significant funding pressures” of almost £600m in 2024-25 for flood defences and farm schemes. The budget states that, “while the government is meeting those commitments this year, it is necessary to review these plans from 2025-26 to ensure they are affordable”.
The government also states that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) is forecast to spend more than £2bn on international climate action in 2024-25. (The previous Conservative government had forecast a total international climate finance spend of £2.5-2.8bn in that year.)
The post UK autumn budget 2024: Key climate and energy announcements appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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.
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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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