UK chancellor Rachel Reeves has unveiled the first spending review under the current Labour government, announcing funding for nuclear power, energy efficiency and carbon capture and storage (CCS).
A spending review establishes each ministry’s spending limits and priorities for the rest of the parliamentary term.
The Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) received one of the largest jumps in capital spending, despite energy secretary Ed Miliband reportedly being one of the last to agree to a spending settlement.
Before the final details had been announced, the Times was describing Miliband as one of the “biggest winners” from the process.
High-profile funding announcements in the Treasury’s spending review include £14.2bn for the Sizewell C new nuclear power plant in Suffolk, the first state-backed nuclear power station for decades.
Elsewhere, two new CCS clusters – Acorn and Viking – were allocated funding and railways across the nation were given a boost.
Below, Carbon Brief runs through the key announcements.
- Departmental spending
- Energy efficiency
- Energy infrastructure investment
- Transport
- Other announcements
Departmental spending
Spending reviews are an opportunity for governments to stake out their priorities by setting the budgets for departments over the rest of this parliament.
Reeves’ spending review has been viewed by experts and media commentators as an opportunity to boost Labour’s flagging popularity and pursue some of its key manifesto commitments, including net-zero.
It covers plans for departmental “resource” spending – including day-to-day running costs – out to 2028-29 and “capital” spending out to 2029-30.
The latter includes injections of funding for infrastructure and public services, such as major clean-energy and transport projects.
In her speech launching the review, Reeves did not specifically mention the terms net-zero or climate change, but stressed the importance of achieving energy security via domestic, low-carbon power. “Clean energy” also featured prominently in the review document itself.
Overall, total departmental budgets are set to grow by 2.3% in real terms across the spending review period.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) is expected to see a 16% increase in overall departmental spending, reaching £12.6bn in 2028-29.
(This does not include the boost in funding for Sizewell C nuclear plant, which will see a 15.6% increase thanks to a £14.2bn investment over the next five years. See: New nuclear.)
The chart below – taken from the spending review document – shows that while the absolute increase in spending on areas such as health, defence and education is higher, DESNZ is among the most highly prioritised in relative terms.
The review document emphasises that this increase in public money is necessary to mobilise private investment and “secure the UK’s electricity system with homegrown, clean power by 2030”.
Other departments that are also relevant for climate action have not seen the same overall increases in budget.
The Department for Transport (DfT) is set to see its overall departmental spending drop by 0.4%. However, the review notes that capital spending will increase, including more money for local low-carbon transport options and major rail projects.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) budget is also expected to fall overall, but support for “nature-friendly farming” is set to more than double over the review period.
Energy efficiency
Leading up to the spending review, there had been speculation that the government might cut plans to invest £13.2bn on upgrading the nation’s homes under its “warm homes plan”, which had been a manifesto commitment ahead of last year’s election.
Such a move could have cost households more than £1.4bn a year in avoidable energy bills, according to analysis from thinktank the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU).
However, the spending review confirmed the pledged £13.2bn in funding for the scheme, covering spending between 2025-26 and 2029-30.
The government says this will help to cut bills by up to £600 per household through energy efficiency measures, heat pumps, solar panels and batteries. It will also help support tens of thousands of jobs across the country, the spending review adds.
According to innovation agency Nesta, the warm homes funding is roughly double the previous government’s commitment, amounting to a £6.6bn increase in government spending on home upgrades over the current parliament, compared with the previous one.
It will see around one-fifth of the nation’s housing stock upgraded by 2029, although to a varying degree.
Responding to the announcement, trade association Energy UK’s chief executive Dhara Vyas said in a statement:
“It’s also very important that millions of customers will see a direct benefit from today’s announcements. By reaffirming the funding to improve the energy efficiency of millions of homes and supporting the switch to cleaner heating alternatives, customers can expect warmer and more comfortable homes, cleaner air and cheaper bills – showing how the energy transition can improve their daily lives.”
Funding for the warm homes plan in the spending review follows £3.4bn in investment announced for the scheme at the autumn budget in 2024. At the time, Labour had said that this was just the “first step” in investment for decarbonisation and household energy efficiency within the scheme.
Further details for the warm homes plan will be confirmed in October, the spending review says.
Beyond energy efficiency, Reeves announced what she called the “biggest boost to investment in social and affordable housing in a generation”, confirming £39bn in funding for a 10-year affordable homes programme.
This will nearly double government spending on affordable housing, according to reporting earlier this week.
Miliband recently announced changes to the “future homes standard” that will mean almost all new homes will have to be built with rooftop solar as a default, high levels of energy efficiency and low-carbon heating, such as heat pumps.
As such, new properties built under the affordable homes programme will largely have to include energy efficiency measures and low-carbon energy technologies.
Energy infrastructure investment
GB Energy
The spending review also confirms that it will allocate £8.3bn in funding for Great British Energy (GB Energy) and the linked GB Energy – Nuclear, another manifesto commitment.
It says this has been achieved by allocating £9.6bn in “additional financial transactions, such as loans and equity investments, to support growth”.
(It explains that “financial transactions” are designed to “allow government to invest alongside the private sector, through equity investments, loans and guarantees”. The document also says that GB Energy will be designated as a “public financial institution”.)
In addition to this top-line confirmation for GB Energy, the spending review also gives it an extra £300m in support for offshore wind supply chains.
This forms part of the “government’s investment in resilient and clean energy security, boosting domestic jobs, mobilising additional private investment and securing manufacturing facilities for critical clean energy supply chains such as floating offshore platforms”, it notes.
The spending review confirms up to £80m for port investment to support floating offshore wind deployment in Port Talbot in Wales, subject to final due diligence.
GB Energy funding follows on from Labour’s manifesto, promising investment into technologies such as floating offshore wind, as well as partnering with local authorities and the private sector to support the deployment of mature technologies.
New nuclear
Ahead of the spending review, the chancellor announced a £14.2bn investment in the planned Sizewell C new nuclear power plant in Suffolk.
The plant is being jointly developed by the UK government with French state-owned utility firm EDF Energy, which is already building the Hinkley C plant in Somerset.
Each new plant will have a capacity of 3.2 gigawatts (GW), enough to power six million homes. During its construction, Sizewell C will provide 10,000 jobs, including 1,500 apprenticeships, according to the government.
In a statement earlier this week, energy secretary Ed Miliband said new nuclear was needed for energy security, lower bills and to help cut emissions. He said:
“We need new nuclear to deliver a golden age of clean-energy abundance, because that is the only way to protect family finances, take back control of our energy, and tackle the climate crisis.
“This is the government’s clean energy mission in action- investing in lower bills and good jobs for energy security.”
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme following the investment announcement, Miliband stated that China would not be able to invest in the new nuclear plant in Suffolk. He further clarified that, while the majority of the investment would come from the UK government, there will also be private investment announced at a later date.
Sizewell C will be one of the first new nuclear power stations in the UK in decades, with no new nuclear power plants having opened since 1995 and all but one of the existing fleet expected to retire by the early 2030s.
The under-construction plant at Hinkley Point C is also being developed by EDF and is expected to serve as a “blueprint” for Sizewell C.
The Hinkley C plant is being funded via a “contract for difference” (CfD), under which EDF is responsible for the upfront investment costs, but will receive £92.50 per megawatt hour (MWh, 2012 prices) for each unit of electricity generated. (This will drop to £89.50/MWh in 2012 prices as a result of the Sizewell C project going ahead.)
EDF has reportedly accepted that Hinkley C will cost more than £40bn to complete, but has “rejected claims” that the Sizewell C scheme would cost a similar amount.
Sizewell C is due to be funded under the “regulated asset base” (RAB) model and so will not receive a CfD, but the details of this deal are not yet available. The final investment decision on the project is due later this summer, according to reports.
Additionally, the government announced Rolls-Royce has been selected to build small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) following a “rigorous” two-year competition.
Rolls-Royce will partner with Great British Energy – Nuclear as part of the government’s industrial strategy, which will see £2.5bn invested over the spending review period.
The firm is expected to build three SMRs, with the first connecting to the grid “in the mid-2030s”, according to Rolls-Royce.
The spending review also included over £2.5bn for nuclear fusion. This will include support for the design and build of a prototype energy plant in Nottinghamshire.
The document notes that the government is providing a “pathway for privately led advanced nuclear technologies”, although details are not elaborated.
Great British Energy – Nuclear will shortly publish a new framework with the National Wealth Fund for exploring further investment opportunities for viable nuclear projects.
The spending review includes £13.9bn for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, to keep “former nuclear sites and facilities safe and secure as it decommissions sites and manages nuclear waste”.
Carbon capture and storage
The UK has already pledged “up to” £21.7bn of funding over 25 years to support five carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects, involving “clusters” of connected facilities.
Most of this funding will come from levies on consumers, but the government has also been gradually announcing chunks of public investment to get these initiatives off the ground.
The spending review allocates another £9.4bn of capital spending by 2029. This will partly go towards “maximis[ing] deployment to fill the [CO2] storage capacity” of the first two funded clusters.
At the same time, the government also confirmed its support for the next two clusters – Acorn in north-east Scotland and Viking in the Humber in the spending review. These projects are set to be up and running in the 2030s.
The review states that the government is providing the “development funding to advance [the] delivery” of these clusters, with a final investment decision expected “later this parliament, subject to project readiness and affordability”.
Pathways set out by government advisors at the Climate Change Committee (CCC) suggest CCS is required to meet the UK’s net-zero targets.
However, the government has faced intense scrutiny over its investments in CCS. A report by the influential Public Accounts Committee earlier this year said investing public funds in this relatively undeveloped technology was a “high risk” approach.
Transport
The spending review includes a number of commitments for regional transport projects that could help cut UK emissions, including rail upgrades, bus lanes and cycleways.
Overall, the Department for Transport (DfT) settlement will reach total funding of £31.5bn in 2028-29, a slight increase from current levels. This includes support for the HS2 high-speed rail project.
HS2, which had its second phase out to Manchester cancelled under the Conservatives in 2023, will see its funding drop over the spending period.
Meanwhile, capital spending on transport projects around the country is set to experience a 4% real-terms growth rate each year out to 2029-30.
Regional transport projects receiving funding include the TransPennine Route Upgrade between York and Manchester, with £3.5bn, as well as £2.5bn for East-West Rail between Oxford and Cambridge and £300m for rail investment in Wales.
(For comparison, despite the declining funds, HS2 will receive £25.3bn over the period.)
Other relevant investments in the spending review include a commitment to “more than double” city region transport spending per year by 2029-30, by providing a total of £15.6bn for elected mayors across England. The review says this could go towards local transport priorities, including “zero-emission buses, trams and local rail”.
Additionally, there is another £2.3bn allocated for investment in local transport grants to support “bus lanes, cycleways and congestion improvement measures” for areas outside the larger regions with mayors.
The review includes a relatively small sum – £2.6bn – of capital investment that is set aside to “decarbonise transport” as “part of the government’s clean energy mission”.
This is made up of £1.4bn to “support continued uptake” of electric vehicles, in particular vans and heavy goods vehicles (HGVs), as well as £400m for charging infrastructure and £616m for walking and cycling infrastructure.
Some of these funds will also support the production of “sustainable” aviation fuel (SAF) in the UK by extending the government’s advanced fuels fund.
The spending review also includes funding for transport projects that may not help to decarbonise the nation’s transport. Notably, there is £24bn of funding by 2030 to “maintain and improve motorways and local roads across the country”.
Also, while the project is not mentioned in the spending review document itself, Reeves’s speech mentioned “backing Doncaster airport” alongside “investment to connect our cities and our towns”. (The airport is currently closed, but there has been a local political effort to reopen it.)
Other announcements
R&D funding
The government is increasing research and development (R&D) funding to £22.6bn per year by 2029-2030.
This will include funding for the UK’s science base, the spending review says, such as the non-departmental public body UK Research and Innovation and research initiative Horizon Europe.
Part of this funding will go to the government’s new R&D missions accelerator programme. Some £500m of public funds are intended to leverage a further £1.5bn of private investment in innovation that supports the government’s “missions”.
(One of the five key “missions” announced by the Labour government in its manifesto is to “make Britain a clean-energy superpower”.)
Additionally, R&D funding will include up to £750m for a new supercomputer at Edinburgh University, the largest in the UK. This will be used to support a broad range of fields, including climate and weather predictions and research into fusion power.
In a statement, secretary of state for Scotland Ian Murray welcomed the funding for the supercomputer, adding:
“This will see Scotland playing a leading role in creating breakthroughs that have a global benefit – such as new medicines, health advances and climate change solutions.”
Ahead of the publication of the delayed UK industrial strategy, the spending review lists relevant R&D commitments.
It says over £3bn in R&D and capital funding over the next four years will go to advanced manufacturing across the UK, “anchoring the supply chain of zero emission vehicles, batteries and ultra-low and zero-carbon emissions aircraft[s]”.
Clean-energy industries will also receive “significant additional funding”, it adds.
Flood defences and farming funds
As part of the spending review, the government announced investment in climate adaptation and the natural environment to “increase the UK’s resilience to the effects of climate change and protect the ecosystems that underpin the economy and food security”.
This includes £2.7bn in sustainable farming and nature recovery funding until 2028-29, as well as £4.2bn to build and maintain flood defences from 2026-27 to 2028-29.
According to the spending review, farmers will benefit from £2.3bn through the farming and countryside programme and up to £400m from additional nature schemes
There will be increasing support for “nature-friendly farming” through environmental land management schemes, which will grow from £800m in 2023-24 to £2bn by 2028-29. This will be sustained by “rapidly winding down” other subsidy payments.
The spending review states that this will make a “significant contribution” to the Environment Act targets, including improvements to water and air quality and creating spaces for wildlife to support biodiversity.
Funding for both flood defences and farm schemes follows the government stating that it was facing “significant funding pressures” of almost £600m in 2024-25 in the autumn budget.
Foreign aid and climate finance
The government announced in February that it would further cut aid spending to 0.3% of gross national income (GNI) by 2027 in order to fund higher defence spending.
This came just three months after the UK, alongside other developed countries, had committed to raising at least $300bn a year for climate action in developing countries at the COP29 climate summit.
Developed countries have traditionally used their aid budgets to meet such “climate finance” goals.
But observers have noted that scaling up climate finance to meet this new target will be difficult, as nations cut back their overseas spending and the world faces overlapping humanitarian crises.
When announcing the cut earlier this year, prime minister Keir Starmer said that the UK would retain its focus on “tackling climate change” in its aid spending. The government also acknowledged that the decision to cut aid would require “many hard choices”.
The government has a pledge to spend £11.6bn over five years on climate finance in developing countries, which ends in 2025-26. Beyond that, it is expected to announce a new pledge to feed into the $300bn goal.
The spending review does not provide details of precisely what this goal will be, or whether it will be more ambitious as other aid programmes undergo swingeing cuts.
It states that the funding plan “prioritises UK multilateral investment across issues where the international system needs to deliver at scale and to reform”, including the “climate and nature crisis”.
It also says the three departments that provide nearly all UK climate finance – the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, DESNZ and Defra – will “maintain progress” on the nation’s international climate goals.
However, the amounts of aid channelled via all three of these departments will be lower in the coming years than they are now, according to the government’s figures.
Response to climate-risks report
In a separate document published alongside the spending review, the government also set out its response to the latest “fiscal risks and sustainability” (FRS) report, published by the Office for Budget in September 2024.
Within this, the government reiterates its intention to “accelerate to net-zero”, including via its target for clean power by 2030.
The response adds that, alongside this, the government recognises that it “must also take action to build resilience and ensure the UK is well-prepared for the changing climate”.
It says that FRS identified flooding and extreme heat as areas that need particular attention, before setting out its spending commitments in these areas.
The response also confirms two important dates for UK climate-policy watchers.
First, the response says the government will, in October 2025, publish its “carbon budget delivery plan”. This will set out the plans and policies the government will put in place in order to meet the first six carbon budgets, covering the years out to 2037.
Second, it says that the government will legislate for the seventh UK “carbon budget” by June 2026. This is a legally binding limit on emissions covering five years from 2038 to 2042. The CCC has recommended an 87% reduction below 1990 levels.
The post UK spending review 2025: Key climate and energy announcements appeared first on Carbon Brief.
UK spending review 2025: Key climate and energy announcements
Frustration about slow progress at the United Nations Climate Conference boiled over last week, when on Tuesday, Indigenous activists pushed past security at the entrance of the main conference hall, called the Blue Zone, and briefly occupied the space. The action was meant to draw attention to the exclusivity that happens at the COPs. Danielle Falzon, a sociologist at Rutgers University, who researches the climate talks, says, “In the UNFCCC setting, success is measured by how long you stay in the room, how polished your presentation is, how fluent you are in bureaucratic English — and how well you can pretend that the world isn’t burning outside.”
Sônia Guajajara, Brazilian minister of the Indigenous peoples, stated in an interview that nearly 5,000 Indigenous people were participating in various events around the city, with about 900 granted official accreditation to participate in events inside the Blue Zone. Analysis finds 1,600 fossil fuel representatives at UN climate summit in Brazil, outnumbering almost every country delegation aside from Brazil. “There is no solution to avoid climate change without the participation of Indigenous people; they need to be here,” said Guajajara.
On Friday morning, dozens of Indigenous activists blocked the front of the COP30 summit venue, staging a sit-in that forced delegates to use a side entrance to resume their negotiations on tackling climate change. Security has increased checks, and lines to enter are getting longer.
Meanwhile, a parallel event, called the People’s Summit, was inaugurated on Wednesday at the Federal University of Para, after a flotilla of more than 5,000 people aboard around 200 vessels sailed together in the waters around Belem to arrive at the venue. The People’s Summit has been convening alongside the official COP since 1992, making space for frontline communities to raise voices together. You can read their manifesto here.
International activists are calling for a treaty to phase out fossil fuels and address the root cause of the climate crisis. “If we continue to extract hydrocarbons from the Earth, we will exterminate ourselves,” said Olivia Bissa, president of the Chapra Nation in the Peruvian Amazon.
Transparency International’s examination of the list of registered participants found that 54% of participants in national delegations either did not disclose the type of affiliation they have or selected a vague category such as “Guest” or “Other.” The UNFCCC still lacks a conflict of interest policy for attendees. This enables fossil fuel businesses to use the space to unduly influence negotiations, strike side deals, and spread climate disinformation.
On Thursday, Brazil launched the Belém Health Action Plan, a blueprint to help health ministries respond to the effects of climate breakdown. It also identifies children as a uniquely vulnerable group for the first time.
There has been much speculation about the Trump administration’s leaving the Paris Agreement and the absence of the US in this COP’s negotiations. The US Climate Action Network held a press conference on Thursday to make it known that frontline communities and climate justice organizations from the US have not retreated. Christiana Figueres, a Costa Rican diplomat who played an essential role in the Paris Agreement, commented, “What the US has done is a choice; it is a sad choice, but it does not stop the advance of all others who are on the [clean energy] track,” Figueres says. “All it has done is open up the space hugely for China, which is completely delighted that they don’t have any substantial competition.”
Indeed, China is leading the world in renewable energy. In 2022, China installed roughly as much solar capacity as the rest of the world combined, then doubled its additional solar capacity in 2023. On Tuesday, the Climate Action Network gave a Ray of the Day Award to the G77 + China negotiating bloc for calling for the establishment of a Just Transition Mechanism under the UNFCCC — a proposal that mirrors many of the core elements civil society and trade unions have been advancing through the Belém Action Mechanism (BAM):
- Integrating fairness and equity into all levels of implementation;
- Promoting coordination and knowledge-sharing across sectors and institutions;
- Supporting non-debt-creating finance for transitions;
- Strengthening social dialogue; and
- Ensuring that people, not profits, remain at the heart of climate action.
On Saturday, thousands took to the streets outside the conference for the People’s Summit March. The joyous and defiant demonstration was the first major protest outside the annual climate talks since COP26 four years ago in Glasgow, as the last three gatherings were held in petrostates headed by authoritarian governments with questionable human rights records and little tolerance for demonstrations — Egypt, Dubai, and Azerbaijan.
Negotiations around finance, especially for adaptation and loss and damage, will likely heat up in this second week. The absence of meaningful finance at COP30 has been striking. Richer nations have repeatedly shirked their responsibilities and are dragging their feet on new commitments, despite being the primary contributors to global warming emissions. Some are even resorting to creative accounting. Canada’s repackaging of the final portion of its existing commitments as “new” funding is especially disappointing. Relying on uncertain private sector funds or loans leaves lower-income nations exposed to further economic risks and debts, rather than delivering the climate justice they deserve.
The post Your Summary of Negotiations: Nov. 17 appeared first on Climate Generation.
Standing in the Blue Zone in Belém, Brazil, surrounded by thousands of negotiators, activists, scientists, and Indigenous leaders, I’m struck by how profoundly location shapes conversation. This is the first COP held in the Amazon rainforest—not symbolically nearby, but actually within it.
Through Climate Generation’s support, I’m able to spend two weeks here building strategic relationships and supporting mission-driven organizations. Their partnership — rooted in a mission to ignite and sustain the ability of educators, youth, and communities to act on systems perpetuating the climate crisis — enables Terra40 to deliver strategic event campaigns that include comprehensive Event Planning, Marketing, and Delegation Management to organizations like HBCU Green Fund at COP30.
Here’s what the first week has taught me.
The Beautiful Congregation
One of my favorite aspects of global forums is the congregation itself: diverse nations, peoples, and languages weaving together in one space. You hear Portuguese, Spanish, French, Chinese, Indigenous languages, Arabic — all at once. It’s a powerful reminder that we’re interconnected yet unique, each bringing something distinct to the table, yet all here for the same urgent purpose. But that diversity isn’t just poetic — it’s strategic. Different cultures approach negotiation, relationship building, and decision-making in fundamentally distinct ways. Understanding these differences determines whether you can build coalitions that actually drive policy change. For Climate Generation’s work with educators and youth, teaching students about these diverse approaches prepares them to be more effective climate advocates.
Indigenous Leadership Takes Center Stage
The most significant shift at COP30 is the centrality of Indigenous voices. In previous COPs, Indigenous peoples often felt relegated to side events. Here in Belém, they’re in the negotiating rooms, leading pavilions, and setting the agenda.
Indigenous leaders from Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and beyond are presenting traditional ecological knowledge that challenges and complements Western scientific frameworks. They’re not asking for a seat at the table — they’re reminding everyone that this is their table, their land, their knowledge systems that have sustained these ecosystems for millennia.
This directly connects to acting on systems perpetuating the climate crisis—one of those systems is the marginalization of Indigenous knowledge in climate solutions. For Minnesota classrooms, this means teaching students that climate solutions already exist in communities worldwide. Our job is to listen, learn, amplify, and support.
The Unglamorous Reality
Let me be honest about what Week One actually looked like: jet-lagged client meetings, navigating a massive venue, negotiations stretching past midnight, building relationships over coffee in crowded corridors, and adjusting strategy in real-time. Global forums look polished from the outside. Inside, they’re an organized chaos that requires flexibility, cultural competence, strategic thinking, and stamina. But this is also where the magic happens — where an environmental justice leader from Louisiana connects with an Indigenous forest guardian from Acre, where relationships form that outlast the two-week conference.
This messiness matters for climate education. Real climate action isn’t always tidy. It’s a mix of coalition-building, compromise, setbacks, breakthroughs, exhaustion, and hope. Preparing young people for this reality — while sustaining their ability to act — is precisely what Climate Generation’s mission describes.
Connecting Global to Local
What does COP30 mean for Climate Generation’s work with Minnesota educators, youth, and communities?
- Local solutions matter globally. Minnesota’s work on agricultural climate adaptation and renewable energy transition is part of conversations happening here. Small-scale innovations can influence international policy.
- Relationship-building is a strategy. Just like at COP30, meaningful climate work requires cultural intelligence, trust-building, and long-term relationship investment—not just data and messaging.
- Diverse voices strengthen solutions. Climate Generation’s vision of ‘a just and abundant world beyond climate crisis’ requires centering voices often marginalized: Indigenous communities, communities of color, rural communities, and young people.
- Personal connection drives action. The most effective negotiators here connect abstract targets to individual experience. This transforms information into action—exactly what Climate Generation does in Minnesota classrooms and communities.
Looking Ahead
As we head into Week Two, negotiations intensify. I’ll continue sharing insights through this partnership — because understanding how global climate policy happens should be accessible to everyone, from international negotiators to teachers in Minnesota. The climate crisis is global. But so are the solutions, relationships, and movements being born here in Belém. When educators, youth, and communities in Minnesota learn from these global convenings, they’re better equipped to act on the systems perpetuating the crisis — right where they are.
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Fuzieh Jallow is the Founder & CEO of Terra40. This blog was written in partnership with Climate Generation
About This Partnership: Climate Generation provided COP30 credentials to Terra40 in exchange for on-the-ground insights and educational content. Learn more at climategen.org. Follow Terra40 @terra40global for real-time COP30 updates.
The post Week One at COP30: Reflections from the Amazon appeared first on Climate Generation.
Unions in Spain are calling for a new just transition strategy that goes beyond plant closures to revive the fabric of life in affected regions, linking public services with jobs and investment.
“When a power plant closes in a rural area, you don’t just lose jobs,” said Manuel Riera of UGT, one of Spain’s largest unions. “You risk losing the life of the place – the families, the neighbours, the school, the bus line. To keep people rooted, we have to rebuild whole economies.”
The end goal is to safeguard workers, diversify rural economies, and keep families rooted.
Spain’s breakthrough: dialogue and territorial pacts
Spain is among the few countries to have managed coal closures through negotiated territorial pacts. Since 2018, 15 agreements have been signed between national, regional and local governments in areas hit by mine and power plant shutdowns. The government also reached tripartite accords with unions and coal companies, guaranteeing solutions for affected workers.
“For the first time, workers and their communities had a seat at the table. It demonstrated that a just transition is possible and that social dialogue with trade unions must be the first step” Riera said. “That gave people dignity in a moment of loss.”
These frameworks funded retraining, supported job-creating projects and ensured public participation. They became an international reference for how social dialogue can guide decarbonisation.
A just transition for renewables: Why COP30 must put people before power
Lessons learned: from energy to social transition
But the experience has also exposed key limits. Job creation alone has not been enough to sustain rural life.
“Again and again we heard: in addition to employment, what decides if families stay is whether there is transport, housing, health care, education,” Riera said. “That is what keeps a territory alive. We have to move from an energy transition to a social transition.”
Judit Carreras Garcia, director of the Instituto para la Transición Justa (ITJ), reflected on the government’s efforts to respond to these challenges:
“Over the years, we have sought to make the just transition a reality through concrete policies and actions — walking the talk through a wide range of measures that include employability schemes, training, funding lines for job-creating business initiatives, just transition energy tender grids, municipal support programmes and environmental restoration,” she explained.
“All of them aim at minimising the impacts of decarbonisation and optimising outcomes based on participation and social dialogue. This effort has come with its own challenges — from managing timing gaps to addressing very different territorial starting points — but our commitment remains firm.”
Both unions and government acknowledge that anticipation is crucial: closures must be aligned with new opportunities, and support must adapt to vastly different territorial realities – from regions facing depopulation to those with stronger infrastructure.
The next phase for just transition
UGT is now working with its federations to shape Spain’s next Just Transition Strategy (2026–2030). Visits to pact areas, including Aragón, where a coal plant closed in 2020, reveal a rising sense of frustration.
“People are tired of waiting,” Riera said. “We have projects on paper, but they don’t see them materialising. Without effective coherent planning, workers retrain and then have to move to Madrid or Barcelona. That is not territorial justice.”
The unions’ demand: keep the territorial approach, but expand it across ministries and sectors, ensuring that services and infrastructure grow alongside jobs.
For Indian women workers, a just transition means surviving climate impacts with dignity
Behind the technical debates lies a deeper fear: the hollowing out of rural Spain, where thousands of villages have already lost their young people and their future. A mishandled transition could accelerate that trend.
“This is not only about jobs,” Riera said. “It is about whether towns survive at all. When a power station shuts, it’s not just the jobs inside the gates that disappear. The bus stops running, the school risks closing, the clinic can’t keep going, housing starts to deteriorate. Families leave, and a town empties. And once they leave, they rarely come back.”
Sharing lessons internationally
In September, Riera met unions from around the world to share Spain’s experience. His message was simple: we must fight for social dialogue and territorial agreements, but these are the beginning — not the end — of a just transition.
“If decisions are only made in the capital, they miss what life is like in a village. What Madrid sees as energy policy, a small town sees as survival: will there still be a bus, a clinic, a school? That is why workers and communities must always be in the room.”
For Riera, the work that goes into the just transition is also a chance to imagine something new.
“We can use this moment not just to protect people from loss, but to renew rural life — to make villages places where families want to stay, where children can imagine their future. This is about dignity, but also about love: love of place, love of community, love of life itself.”
“Water is worth more than lithium,” Indigenous Argentine community tells COP30
A call for Belém – and beyond
Now in Belém for COP30, Riera is bringing a clear message to world leaders: Spain’s experience shows that the just transition must be built from the ground up. The Belém Action Mechanism that has been proposed, he argues, should require cross-sector transition plans – not just energy policies; guarantee participation from workers and communities; and secure public finance capable of delivering not only jobs but the services that sustain life around them.
“The Global South faces the same challenge: how to transition without abandoning people. Without public finance, that is impossible,” he said. “If we treat the just transition as a bargaining chip, we betray them. But if we take it seriously, we can create hope — from Spain to Brazil, from Santander to Belém.”
“This is not only about closing coal or opening renewables,” he added. “It is about whether people can imagine a future for their children. That is what the just transition means.”
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COP30: Spain’s unions say just transition means renewing communities beyond jobs
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