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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.

Energy bills

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 repeatedly advised 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 Office report 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.

It says that, in total from 2027, the “British industrial competitiveness scheme” will cut electricity costs for affected businesses by £35-40 per megawatt hour.

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Electric vehicles

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.)

(EVs will remain significantly cheaper to run than their combustion-engine equivalents. According to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank, EVs would still be £1,000 cheaper to run per year than petrol equivalents, even after the new eVED charge.)

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).
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.

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Fuel duty

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.)

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North Sea oil and gas

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.

Past and projected oil and gas production in the North Sea.
Past and projected oil and gas production in the North Sea. Credit: UK Department for Energy Security and Net-Zero

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.

It continues:

“Scientific evidence from the International Energy Agency, UN Environment Programme and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows that new fossil fuel exploration risks exceeding the 1.5C threshold. The IPCC warns that emissions from existing fossil fuel infrastructure alone could surpass the remaining global carbon budget, reinforcing the urgency to phase out fossil fuels.”

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.

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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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Climate Change

What would Trump’s Venezuela oil plans mean for climate change?

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January 7, 2026

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Announcing the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a raid by US military forces at the weekend, Donald Trump made no secret of his ambitions to revive the South American nation’s ailing oil industry.

“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure … and start making money for the country,” the US president told a press conference on Saturday, saying the US would “run” Venezuela.

Venezuela has the largest proven crude oil reserves of any country in the world, but production in the largely state-controlled industry has fallen sharply over the past decade amid rampant corruption, mismanagement and crippling sanctions. 

What are the climate risks of an oil production boost?

A significant production boost would unleash vast amounts of planet-heating greenhouse gases, particularly because Venezuela’s tar-like heavy oil requires energy-intensive extraction and processing techniques.

The Venezuelan oil industry’s methane emissions are also among the highest in the world per unit of oil produced, as excess gas is routinely burned rather than captured. Additionally, the country’s abandoned oil wells released at least 3 million metric tons of methane last year, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

“If oil production goes up, climate change will get worse sooner, and everybody loses, including the people of Venezuela,” John Sterman, an expert in climate and economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Climate Home News.

“The climate damages suffered by Venezuela, along with other countries, will almost certainly outweigh any short-term economic benefit of selling a bit more oil,” Sterman said.

    How likely is a new Venezuelan oil boom?

    Venezuela’s distinctive dense and sticky oil, coupled with wider energy market dynamics, mean experts do not expect a surge in output in the short, or even longer, term. 

    Getting the oil out of the ground would require eye-watering levels of investment to bring in the necessary technology and expertise. Restoring Venezuela’s oil production to its late-1990s peak of 3 million barrels a day would require $20 billion more in capital investment than the top five US oil majors combined spent globally in 2024, according to consultancy Rystad Energy. 

    What’s on the climate calendar for 2026?

    US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told journalists “we are pretty certain that there will be dramatic interest from Western companies”, without naming any specific firms. By Tuesday, the three biggest US oil companies, ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips, had not yet held any discussions with the Trump administration about Maduro’s removal, Reuters reported, but a meeting was expected by the end of the week. 

    According to a BloombergNEF analysis, the three US companies have cheaper and more stable investment options in Guyana, which borders Venezuela, along with Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. It said the companies would need “stronger incentives” to lift production in Venezuela.

    Does the world need more oil from Venezuela?

    Oil majors might need a lot of convincing to pour cash into projects that could take years to yield results, especially when the world is in the midst of an oil glut. In 2025, crude oil production significantly outpaced demand, pushing prices down to the lowest level since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), a US federal agency.

    Data source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Short-Term Energy Outlook, December 2025

    Data source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Short-Term Energy Outlook, December 2025

    With oil demand expected to peak around 2030 under a scenario based on governments’ stated climate policies, as outlined by the IEA, any increase in Venezuelan oil output risks entering a market that may be smaller and more competitive by the time new supplies come online.

    In China, currently the biggest importer of Venezuelan crude, oil demand for fuel production has already flatlined due to the strong adoption of electric vehicles.

    Does the US have other reasons to control Venezuela’s oil?

    Geopolitics, rather than economics, might have played a bigger role in the US intervention.

    Rubio said that while the US did not need Venezuela’s oil, it would not let the country’s oil industry be controlled by US adversaries, such as China, Russia and Iran.

    “This is where we live, and we’re not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operation for adversaries, competitors, and rivals of the United States,” Rubio said. “It’s as simple as that”.

    “New era of climate extremes” as global warming fuels devastating impacts in 2025

    In response, Colombia’s environment minister Irene Vélez said on X that the US “attack” on Venezuela paved the way for “a new fossil colonialism and the end of peaceful multilateralism”.

    A group of Latin American countries including Brazil, Mexico and Chile issued a statement expressing concern over “any attempt at governmental control, administration, or external appropriation of natural or strategic resources, which would be incompatible with international law”.

    How can the world protect itself from militarism over fossil fuels?

    Climate advocates say the lesson that countries reliant on fossil fuel imports should draw from Trump’s actions in Venezuela is to shift away from oil and gas as fast as possible.

    Mads Christensen, executive director at Greenpeace International, said “the only safe path forward is a just transition away from fossil fuels, one that protects health, safeguards ecosystems, and supports communities rather than sacrificing them for short-term profit”.

    At COP30, more than 80 countries publicly endorsed the creation of a fossil fuel transition roadmap. The initiative will move its first steps this year under the Brazilian presidency, in partnership with the Colombian government, which will host the first global conference dedicated to the issue.

    “This weekend’s events should be a nudge to them all to get to work this January and start drafting emergency plans to implement this,” said Mike Davis, chief executive of the Global Witness campaign group. “The longer they delay – and the fossil fuel lobbying machine will try and delay – the weaker their strategic positions will be.”

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    Climate Change

    Indian law enforcement targets climate activists accused of opposing fossil fuels

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    January 7, 2026

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    Indian police have raided the homes and offices of high-profile Indian climate activists, on the orders of the government’s Enforcement Directorate, accusing them of jeopardising India’s energy security by campaigning against fossil fuels.

    The Delhi home and offices of Harjeet Singh and his partner Jyoti Awasthi, who are co-founders of Satat Sampada Private Limited (SSPL) and Satat Sampada Climate Foundation, were searched on Monday in an operation that led to Singh’s arrest, according to a press release by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

    A statement issued on Wednesday by Satat Sampada, which promotes organic farming, sustainable development, climate action and environmental friendly solutions, said Singh had been granted bail on Tuesday by the District Court of Ghaziabad “on the merits of the case”.

    The Hindustan Times reported, based on conversations with anonymous officials, that the ED had also searched the home of Sanjay Vashisht, director of Climate Action Network South Asia.

      While the ED has not publicly announced its raid on Vashisht’s residence, it said that Satat Sampada was investigated on suspicion of illegally using around $667,000 in funding from outside India “to promote the agenda of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (FF-NPT) within India”.

      Singh’s social media profiles state that he is a strategic advisor to the FFNPT Initiative. It is a non-governmental campaign that advocates for a “concrete, binding plan to end the expansion of new coal, oil and gas projects and manage a global transition away from fossil fuels”. Eighteen countries – mainly small islands – have so far backed the idea, along with 145 cities and subnational governments including India’s Kolkata.

      India’s ED said on the FFNPT that while “presented as a climate initiative, its adoption could expose India to legal challenges in international forums like the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and severely compromise the nation’s energy security and economic development”.

      The FFNPT Initiative declined to comment on the reports of Singh’s arrest.

      In the statement issued by Satat Sampada on their behalf, Singh and Aswathi, who serves as its CEO, highlighted media reports about the raid and arrest, saying: “We categorically state that the allegations being reported are baseless, biased, and misleading.”

      Warning of further crackdown

      The Hindustan Times cited an anonymous ED official saying: “We received intelligence around the COP30 [climate summit] that some climate activists were campaigning against fossil fuels at the behest of some foreign organizations…This is when we decided to look at [Singh’s] foreign funding”. Another officer added that “similar activists or organisations whose climate campaigns may be inimical to India’s energy security are under the scanner”.

      The ED said it suspected that Satat Sampada had received money from campaign groups like Climate Action Network and Stand.Earth, which in turn had received funds from “prior reference category” NGOs like Rockefeller Philanthrophy Advisors. Indian individuals and organisations are supposed to obtain permission from India’s Ministry of Home Affairs to receive funds from foreign donor agencies included in this “prior reference category”.

      The ED’s statement did not mention finding any evidence in the search that Satat Sampada breached this requirements. But it said that bottles of liquor were discovered at Singh’s home which were “beyond the permissible limits”.

      Singh was arrested on suspicion of breaching excise laws for the state of Uttar Pradesh. The ED’s statement and the Hindustan Times do not state that Awasthi and Vashisht were arrested.

      Singh and Aswathi said in their statement that, during the ED search, “we fully cooperated and provided all relevant information and documentary evidence. We remain willing to extend complete cooperation and furnish any further information required by the competent authorities.”

      “We urge media organisations to report responsibly and avoid speculation. We reiterate our faith in due process and the rule of law,” they added.

      Climate Action Network International and its South Asia branch have been contacted for comment.

        Climate justice advocate

        Singh is a veteran international climate campaigner who has been particularly vocal on the responsibility of rich countries with historically high emissions to provide finance to help developing nations like India cut their emissions, adapt to climate change and deal with the loss and damage caused by global warming.

        At COP30, Singh praised the Indian government for turning the “pressure back on wealthy nations, making it clear that the path to 1.5C requires the Global North to reach net zero far earlier than current target dates and finally deliver the trillions in finance owed”.

        In 2020, India passed the Indian Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill which restricted foreign funding for Indian civil society groups. A December 2025 research paper in environmental politics pointed to this as an example of a growing trend among governments to repress climate activists by restricting funding.

        In 2021, the Indian government arrested young climate activist Disha Ravi on suspicion of sedition for supporting protests by farmers against government policies. Nearly five years later, she remains on bail with conditions preventing her from travelling abroad.

        India has yet to publish its latest national climate action plan, which it was due to submit to the United Nations climate body in 2025 along with other countries, around 70 of which have yet to do so.

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        Climate Change

        India, Vietnam and Argentina fail to submit climate plans in 2025

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        January 6, 2026

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        India, Vietnam and Argentina are among the roughly 70 nations that did not submit updated climate plans to the United Nations in 2025, despite the 2015 Paris Agreement’s requirement that countries do so every five years.

        According to Climate Action Tracker, about three-fifths of countries have submitted their latest nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to the UN climate body. Most of them landed in late 2025 and outline targets and measures to cut planet-heating emissions and adapt to climate impacts through to 2035.

        Those countries that have formally submitted new NDCs include all G20 nations except India and Argentina. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has indicated it will not deliver on the US’s Biden-era NDC as it pulls the world’s second-largest emitting country out of the Paris Agreement. Saudi Arabia submitted its NDC, which does not contain any firm emissions reduction targets, on December 31.

        Many of the governments that have not submitted NDCs are low-emitting small or poorer nations, especially in Africa. But major economies that have not submitted an NDC – some of which also have energy transition deals with donors – include Egypt, the Philippines and Vietnam.

        Climate Action Tracker’s map of countries that had filed NDCs (blue and green) and those that had not (grey), as of December 19, 2025

        The United Nations tried to encourage on-time submission of this third round of NDCs by setting soft deadlines. Just 13 countries met a first February 10 deadline and around 60 of the 195 signatories to the Paris Agreement met a September deadline, allowing them to be included in a key UN synthesis report.

        The UN’s Paris Agreement Compliance Committee – made up of climate negotiators from different governments – has expressed concern about governments not submitting NDCs, or doing so late, and asked them to explain themselves.

        After talking to governments that missed the February deadline, it found a host of obstacles including insufficient financial support; technical challenges like a lack of data or problems coordinating across sectors and including different groups; and other issues like political instability or genocide.

        India keeps world guessing

        The Indian government has been tight-lipped on its NDC, although an unnamed official told the Indian Express back in February that it was in “no hurry”.

        The official added that the NDC would reflect India’s disappointment at the new global climate finance goal for 2035, agreed at COP29 in 2024. India has repeatedly argued that without sufficient climate finance, developing countries cannot be as ambitious as they would like to be in reducing emissions.

        Some media outlets and analysts were expecting India to announced its NDC at COP30 in November. Instead, the Indian government said only during the summit that it would submit an NDC “on time”, with environment minister Bhupender Yadav telling reporters it would be “by December”.

        Argentina sets emissions caps but no NDC

        The right-wing government of Argentina, which has considered leaving the Paris Agreement, unveiled caps on the country’s emissions for 2030 and 2035 in an online event on November 3, but has yet to formalise those targets in an NDC.

        At the event and in subsequent communications with Climate Home News, Undersecretary of the Environment Fernando Brom said the country would present its NDC during the first week of COP30. But that did not happen, although Argentinian negotiators participated in the climate summit.

        Some local experts have pointed to November’s trade deal with the US as one of the reasons for the delay in submitting the NDC, while others cited the government’s disinterest in the climate agenda.

        In contrast, the governments of Egypt and Vietnam have faced less scrutiny and have not publicly commented on whether and when their NDCs will be released.

        In August, the Vietnamese government said it was “actively advancing the update” of its NDC. The country has a Just Energy Transition partnership with rich nations, but the International Energy Agency predicts coal use will continue to grow there until at least 2030, driven by power-hungry manufacturing.

        The Philippines government has organised consultation events on its new NDC but has not said when it will be released.

        This article originally said that Saudi Arabia had not submitted its NDC in 2025. Climate Home News later learned that the Saudi NDC was submitted to the UN climate body on December 31 by email but not published on the UNFCCC website until the start of 2026. The article has been amended to reflect this information.

        The post India, Vietnam and Argentina fail to submit climate plans in 2025 appeared first on Climate Home News.

        India, Vietnam and Argentina fail to submit climate plans in 2025

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