The world “must change track”, warns the latest “emissions gap” report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
If it fails to do so, adds the increasingly exasperated UN agency, “we will be saying the same thing next year – and the year after, and the year after, like a broken record”.
The report, which is the latest in a regular series published annually since 2013, charts the “gap” between where emissions are headed under current policies and commitments over the coming decade compared to what is needed to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to “well below” 2C and pursuing efforts to stay under 1.5C.
It highlights both the record-breaking temperatures of 2023 and the record levels of greenhouse gas emissions, noting that “humanity is breaking all the wrong records when it comes to climate change…yet the world fails to cut emissions (again)”.
The report provides an assessment of global action on climate change over the past year. It finds that, while there has been some progress both in stronger climate policies and the falling costs of low-carbon energy, the world remains on track for around 2.7C warming by 2100.
The world is also getting close to passing the 1.5C “aspirational” target of the Paris Agreement, says the report, with the vanishingly small remaining carbon budget for 1.5C and the fact that 2023 has already seen more than 86 days exceeding 1.5C above preindustrial levels.
While the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C target refers to multidecadal average temperatures, the fact that the world is already occasionally exceeding it is a “signal that we are getting closer”.
COP28, which starts next week in Dubai, will mark the conclusion of the first global stocktake under the Paris Agreement and set the scene for the next round of climate pledges by nations, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
The UNEP report concludes that the possibility of meeting the Paris temperature target now hinges on “relentlessly strengthening” mitigation measures this decade and narrowing the emissions gap.
(For previous reports, see Carbon Brief’s detailed coverage in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022).
Continued rise in greenhouse gas emissions
Despite falling clean-energy costs and more ambitious climate policies adopted by some countries, global greenhouse gas emissions increased by 1.2% from 2021 to 2022, setting a new all-time record of 57.4 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e).
This reflects a full rebound of global emissions from the declines seen during the Covid-19 pandemic (with the exception of the transportation sector).
The figure below shows global GHG emissions between 1990 and 2022, broken down by different contributing greenhouse gases. Overall GHG emissions have grown by 44% over the past 32 years, though the rate of growth has been slower over the past decade than over the 1990s and 2000s.
CO2 from fossil fuels is the main driver of the increase and is responsible for around two-thirds of current global GHG emissions.
Emissions of methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases account for around a quarter, with the remainder from land-use change (e.g. deforestation).
The growth of fossil-fuel emissions has been accompanied by increased investments in fossil-fuel extraction worldwide.
The UNEP report notes that governments are currently planning to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be possible in a pathway consistent with limiting warming to well-below 2C.
The report also takes stock of current GHG emissions broken down by country, both on a total and per-capita basis. The figure below shows both 2021 emissions by country and the change in emissions since 2000 across both metrics.
This reveals the complicated nature of GHG emissions; while some countries such as India have large absolute emissions, their per-capita emissions remain a small fraction of those of the US, China, or Europe. At the same time, emerging economies such as China and Brazil now emit more on a per-capita basis than the EU. Emissions have been rapidly growing in China, Russia and Indonesia, but are declining over time in the US, EU and Brazil.
However, the changes to the climate that the world has experienced to date are a result of our historic cumulative emissions rather than the emissions of the past few years.
The figure below shows the historical cumulative CO2 emissions by country, the contribution to historical warming from GHG emissions, the current GHG emissions, plus the current population.
While China is responsible for more GHG emissions today than any other country, it is still responsible for less warming to-date than the US (and only slightly more than the EU).
While this may change in the future if Chinese emissions do not decline, it reflects the fact that high-income countries remain responsible for an outsized portion of the warming the world is experiencing today.
The least developed countries, by contrast, are only responsible for 6% of current warming and 3% of current GHG emissions, despite representing 14% of the global population.
As the report notes, meeting Paris Agreement goals requires that high-income countries accelerate domestic emissions reductions and reach net-zero “sooner than the global average”, while providing support to help low- and middle-income countries meet their climate goals.
The report also calls out the importance of meeting pressing development needs in lower-income countries “alongside a transition away from fossil fuels”.
A persistently wide emissions gap
Only nine countries have submitted new or updated nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement over the past year, though 149 countries have since the 2015 Paris Agreement.
As the report notes, “progress since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015 has shown that the world is capable of change”, with future greenhouse gas emissions projected to only increase 3% by 2030 compared to 16% when the Paris Agreement was first struck.
While these NDCs – alongside other policies enacted by countries – have helped move the world away from some of the darkest climate futures that seemed plausible a decade ago, a large gap remains between the pathway the world is on today and what would be required to put the world on a path to meet its Paris Agreement targets.
The report finds an emissions gap in 2030 of around 14GtCO2e between where the world is headed if countries achieve their “unconditional” NDCs (that is, those not conditioned on “green finance” or other external assistance) – shown by the yellow line – and an emissions pathway that limits warming to below 2C (defined in the report as a >66% chance of avoiding 2C warming) – shown by as the dark blue line.
The gap is even larger – around 22GtCO2e – between unconditional NDCs and a scenario consistent with limiting warming to 1.5C by the end of the century (grey line). If conditional NDCs are fully implemented in addition to unconditional ones (light blue line), this emissions gap would shrink by around 3GtCO2e through to 2030 for both the 2C and 1.5C scenarios.
Median emission scenarios adapted from Figure 4.2 in the 2023 UNEP Emission Gap Report. Red line shows a scenario with no new climate policies after 2010, orange shows existing policies already implemented by governments, yellow and light blue lines show additional conditional and unconditional NDCs, respectively. The dark blue line shows emissions consistent with a below 2C trajectory, and grey line shows emissions consistent with a 1.5C trajectory. Chart by Carbon Brief.
However, countries are not necessarily even on track to meet their NDCs. The report suggests that a number of countries – including Australia, Brazil, Canada, the EU, Japan, Korea, the UK and US – are unlikely to meet their targets with existing policies in place today.
The emissions gap has shrunk slightly – by 1GtCO2e – across all scenarios since the prior 2022 UNEP report. The report also notes that the current policy pathway is now closer to that of unconditional NDCs than in last year’s report, reflecting some progress in countries adopting policies to get closer to achieving NDCs.
The report has also updated the global temperature outcomes associated with current policies and different levels of future climate commitments – including meeting unconditional NDCs, conditional NDCs and fully achieving ambitious net-zero pledges (which, the report notes, few if any countries are on track to achieve today). The figure below compares these estimates between the 2022 and 2023 versions of the UNEP report.
Global mean surface warming projections in 2100 relative to preindustrial levels from the 2022 and 2023 UNEP Emissions Gap report. Bars show the central (50th percentile) estimate, while 90th percentile uncertainties are shown in the label. Chart by Carbon Brief.
While temperature outcomes are slightly higher in the 2023 report than the 2022 one for each mitigation scenario, these represent changes to the UNEP modelling framework rather than retrenchment or weakening of commitments by countries.
Grappling with current policy uncertainty
There has been increasing interest in the scientific community in recent years in exploring current policy pathways – what is likely to happen both to emissions and 21st century warming under policies in place today.
This has always represented something of a challenging exercise, both because determining emissions implied by current policies is inherently uncertain and because it represents a moving target in a world where countries are increasingly adopting more ambitious climate policies. As such, the range of future warming projected under current policies has moved noticeably downward over the past few years.
When determining future warming associated with current policy, modellers have to account for two different uncertainties: what range of future emissions might occur under current policies; and how the climate might respond to those emissions (as determined by climate sensitivity and carbon cycle feedbacks).
The new UNEP report takes an important step in more clearly exploring the range of possible current policy outcomes that might occur. It also emphasises that, while we tend to focus on a single central outcome (e.g. 2.4C in the new IEA World Energy Outlook and 2.7C in this new UNEP report), these numbers mask a huge amount of uncertainty.
The figure below shows both the range of climate outcomes under the best estimate of future emissions for current policies, unconditional NDCs, and net-zero pledges (bars), as well as the maximum and minimum emissions projection consistent with those scenarios.
This illustrates that, while 4C warming is extremely unlikely under the central estimate of current policy emissions, it is much harder to rule it out under the range of possible emissions in a current policy world.
In other words, future emissions under current policies (as well as NDCs) remain poorly constrained, particularly in the latter part of the century, and it is important not to underestimate the risks of higher emissions futures if the pace of mitigation is not accelerated.
The rapidly shrinking carbon budget
There is a relatively small amount of allowable carbon emissions – known as the “carbon budget” – remaining for warming to be limited to 1.5C.
As of the start of 2023, there is only around 250GtCO2 – or approximately six years of current emissions – remaining that can be emitted before the world has a 50-50 chance of exceeding 1.5C warming. This represents a notable reduction from the carbon budget assessed in the prior UNEP report, reflecting a recent downward reassessment in the literature.
While this carbon budget can, in theory, be expanded through the widespread use of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) later in the century – as occurs in the 1.5C scenarios in the recent IPCC 6th Assessment Report – these technologies remain relatively nascent and expensive.
The figure below shows emission trajectories to limit warming to below 1.5C with a 50-50 chance in the absence of net-negative emissions. The different lines show the emissions reductions that would be required if emissions had peaked in each year, between 2000 and 2030, with the current year (2023) highlighted in grey.
Emission reduction trajectories associated with a 50% chance of limiting warming below 1.5C, without a reliance on net-negative emissions, by starting year. Solid black line shows historical emissions, while dashed black line shows emissions constant at 2023 levels. Source: Historical CO2 emissions from the Global Carbon Project. 1.5C carbon budgets based on Lamboll et al 2023. Chart by Carbon Brief, adapted from a figure originally designed by Robbie Andrews.
If emissions had peaked and begun to decline after 2000, the 1.5C target would have been much easier to achieve, only requiring reductions of around 3% per year.
By contrast, limiting warming to below 1.5C starting in 2023, without the use of net-negative global emissions, would require a roughly 18% cut each year through to 2033.
Each year that passes without global emission reductions puts the 1.5C target further out of reach, says the UNEP report. While the Paris Agreement’s “well below” 2C target is easier to achieve than 1.5C, delays will make it increasingly difficult, too.
Carbon Brief’s interactive chart below shows the emission reductions needed, by peaking year, to meet the 2C target without the use of net-negative emissions.
Emission reduction trajectories associated with a 66% chance of limiting warming below 2C, without a reliance on net-negative emissions, by starting year. Solid black line shows historical emissions, while dashed black line shows emissions constant at 2023 levels. Source: Historical CO2 emissions from the Global Carbon Project. 2C carbon budgets based on Lamboll et al 2023. Chart by Carbon Brief, adapted from a figure originally designed by Robbie Andrews.
If the world had started reducing emissions in the year 2000, emissions would have to fall 1% a year to stay below 2C (with a >66% chance).
From 2023, emissions now need to fall 4% a year to stay below 2C – and, if emissions fail to drop, then the 2C carbon budget will be used up within 22 years.
It is worth noting that the remaining carbon budget for 1.5C will be fully exhausted simply by the existing infrastructure in place today, as will most of the remaining budget for 2C.
The figure below shows the emissions commitment associated with both existing extraction infrastructure (coal mines and gas and oil wells), as well as by the existing consuming infrastructure (e.g. everything that uses fossil fuels today).
As the report notes, achieving our climate targets requires that much of the existing capital stock will need “to be retired early, retrofitted with carbon capture, and/or operated below capacity”. It also stresses that there is no room for new fossil fuel infrastructure globally unless an even greater quantity of existing fossil infrastructure is prematurely retired.
Every year of delay increases dependence on future CO2 removal
For the first time, the UNEP report contains a dedicated chapter on carbon dioxide removal technologies, reflecting the increased likelihood that the world will “overshoot” its most ambitious climate goals and require net-negative emissions to reduce global temperatures in the latter half of the 21st century.
As the report notes, any delay in emissions reductions will “likely increase future dependence on carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere”. However, it warns that “the availability of large-scale CDR options in the future cannot be taken for granted” given the early stage and high cost of many of these technologies.
The figure below shows the report’s assessment of the feasibility, scalability, ease of monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV), potential environmental consequences, public perception and cost of a wide range of carbon removal technologies under development or actively deployed today. It also includes an assessment of the “permanence” of each, which is important in determining how effective they can be at effectively reversing the warming associated with CO2 emissions over the long term.
The report notes that relying on large-scale CDR to reduce global temperatures in the future involves significant risks to biodiversity, water resources, food security and livelihoods. Even a relatively short period of “overshoot” of global temperatures is associated with significant risks.
The post UNEP: Humanity is still ‘breaking all the wrong records’ in fast-warming world appeared first on Carbon Brief.
UNEP: Humanity is still ‘breaking all the wrong records’ in fast-warming world
In 2026, the dangers of fossil fuel dependence have been laid bare like never before. The illegal invasion of Iran has brought pain and destruction to millions across the Middle East and triggered a global energy crisis impacting us all. Communities in the Pacific have been hit especially hard by rising fuel prices, and Australians have seen their cost-of-living woes deepen.
Such moments of crisis and upheaval can lead to positive transformation. But only when leaders act with courage and foresight.
There is no clearer statement of a government’s plans and priorities for the nation than its budget — how it plans to raise money, and what services, communities, and industries it will invest in.
As we count down the days to the 2026-27 Federal Budget, will the Albanese Government deliver a budget for our times? One that starts breaking the shackles of fossil fuels, accelerates the shift to clean energy, protects nature, and sees us work together with other countries towards a safer future for all? Or one that doubles down on coal and gas, locks in more climate chaos, and keeps us beholden to the whims of tyrants and billionaires.
Here’s what we think the moment demands, and what we’ll be looking out for when Treasurer Jim Chalmers steps up to the dispatch box on 12 May.
1. Stop fuelling the fire
2. Make big polluters pay
3. Support everyone to be part of the solution
4. Build the industries of the future
5. Build community resilience
6. Be a better neighbour
7. Protect nature
1. Stop fuelling the fire
In mid-April, Pacific governments and civil society met to redouble their efforts towards a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific. Moving beyond coal, oil and gas is fundamental to limiting warming to 1.5°C — a survival line for vulnerable communities and ecosystems. And as our Head of Pacific, Shiva Gounden, explained, it is “also a path of liberation that frees us from expensive, extractive and polluting fossil fuel imports and uplifts our communities”.
Pacific countries are at the forefront of growing global momentum towards a just transition away from fossil fuels, and it is way past time for Australia to get with the program. It is no longer a question of whether fossil fuel extraction will end, but whether that end will be appropriately managed and see communities supported through the transition, or whether it will be chaotic and disruptive.
So will this budget support the transition away from fossil fuels, or will it continue to prop up coal and gas?
When it comes to sensible moves the government can make right now, one stands out as a genuine low hanging fruit. Mining companies get a full rebate of the excise (or tax) that the rest of us pay on diesel fuel. This lowers their operating costs and acts as a large, ongoing subsidy on fossil fuel production — to the tune of $11 billion a year!
Greenpeace has long called for coal and gas companies to be removed from this outdated scheme, and for the billions in savings to be used to support the clean energy transition and to assist communities with adapting to the impacts of climate change. Will we see the government finally make this long overdue change, or will it once again cave to the fossil fuel lobby?
2. Make big polluters pay
While our communities continue to suffer the escalating costs of climate-fuelled disasters, our Government continues to support a massive expansion of Australia’s export gas industry. Gas is a dangerous fossil fuel, with every tonne of Australian gas adding to the global heating that endangers us all.
Moreover, companies like Santos and Woodside pay very little tax for the privilege of digging up and selling Australians’ natural endowment of fossil gas. Remarkably, the Government currently raises more tax from beer than from the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT) — the main tax on gas profits.
Momentum has been building to replace or supplement the PRRT with a 25% tax on gas exports. This could raise up to $17 billion a year — funds that, like savings from removing the diesel tax rebate for coal and gas companies, could be spent on supporting the clean energy transition and assisting communities with adapting to worsening fires, floods, heatwaves and other impacts of climate change.
As politicians arrive in Canberra for budget week, they will be confronted by billboards calling for a fair tax on gas exports. The push now has the support of dozens of organisations and a growing number of politicians. Let’s hope the Treasurer seizes this rare window for reform.
3. Support everyone to be part of the solution
As the price of petrol and diesel rises, electric vehicles (EVs) are helping people cut fuel use and save money. However, while EV sales have jumped since the invasion of Iran sent fuel prices rising, they still only make up a fraction of total new car sales. This budget should help more Australians switch to electric vehicles and, even more importantly, enable more Australians to get around by bike, on foot, and on public transport. This means maintaining the EV discount, investing in public and active transport, and removing tax breaks for fuel-hungry utes and vans.
Millions of Australians already enjoy the cost-saving benefits of rooftop solar, batteries, and getting off gas. This budget should enable more households, and in particular those on lower incomes, to access these benefits. This means maintaining the Cheaper Home Batteries Program, and building on the Household Energy Upgrades Fund.
4. Build the industries of the future
If we’re to transition away from fossil fuels, we need to be building the clean industries of the future.
No state is more pivotal to Australia’s energy and industrial transformation than Western Australia. The state has unrivaled potential for renewable energy development and for replacing fossil fuel exports with clean exports like green iron. Such industries offer Western Australia the promise of a vibrant economic future, and for Australia to play an outsized positive role in the world’s efforts to reduce emissions.
However, realising this potential will require focussed support from the Federal Government. Among other measures, Greenpeace has recommended establishing the Australasian Green Iron Corporation as a joint venture between the Australian and Western Australian governments, a key trading partner, a major iron ore miner and steel makers. This would unite these central players around the complex task of building a large-scale green iron industry, and unleash Western Australia’s potential as a green industrial powerhouse.
5. Build community resilience
Believe it or not, our Government continues to spend far more on subsidising fossil fuel production — and on clearing up after climate-fuelled disasters — than it does on helping communities and industries reduce disaster costs through practical, proven methods for building their resilience.
Last year, the Government estimated that the cost of recovery from disasters like the devastating 2022 east coast floods on 2019-20 fires will rise to $13.5 billion. For contrast, the Government’s Disaster Ready Fund – the main national source of funding for disaster resilience – invests just $200 million a year in grants to support disaster preparedness and resilience building. This is despite the Government’s own National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) estimating that for every dollar spent on disaster risk reduction, there is a $9.60 return on investment.
By redirecting funds currently spent on subsidising fossil fuel production, the Government can both stop incentivising climate destruction in the first place, and ensure that Australian communities and industries are better protected from worsening climate extremes.
No communities have more to lose from climate damage, or carry more knowledge of practical solutions, than Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The budget should include a dedicated First Nations climate adaptation fund, ensuring First Nations communities can develop solutions on their own terms, and access the support they need with adapting to extreme heat, coastal erosion and other escalating challenges.
6. Be a better neighbour
The global response to climate change depends on the adequate flow of support from developed economies like Australia to lower income nations with shifting to clean energy, adapting to the impacts of climate change, and addressing loss and damage.
Such support is vital to building trust and cooperation, reducing global emissions, and supporting regional and global security by enabling countries to transition away from fossil fuels and build greater resilience.
Despite its central leadership role in this year’s global climate negotiations, our Government is yet to announce its contribution to international climate finance for 2025-2030. Greenpeace recommends a commitment of $11 billion for this five year period, which is aligned with the global goal under the Paris Agreement to triple international climate finance from current levels.
This new commitment should include additional funding to address loss and damage from climate change and a substantial contribution to the Pacific Resilience Facility, ensuring support is accessible to countries and communities that need it most. It should also see Australia get firmly behind the vision of a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific.
7. Protect nature
There is no safe planet without protection of the ecosystems and biodiversity that sustain us and regulate our climate.
Last year the Parliament passed important and long overdue reforms to our national environment laws to ensure better protection for our forests and other critical ecosystems. However, the Government will need to provide sufficient funding to ensure the effective implementation of these reforms.
Greenpeace has recommended $500 million over four years to establish the National Environment Agency — the body responsible for enforcing and monitoring the new laws — and a further $50 million to Environment Information Australia for providing critical information and tools.
Further resourcing will also be required to fulfil the crucial goal of fully protecting 30% of Australian land and seas by 2030. This should include $1 billion towards ending deforestation by enabling farmers and loggers to retool away from destructive practices, $2 billion a year for restoring degraded lands, $5 billion for purchasing and creating new protected areas, and $200 million for expanding domestic and international marine protected areas.
Conclusion
This is not the first time that conflict overseas has triggered an energy crisis, or that a budget has been preceded by a summer of extreme weather disasters, highlighting the urgent need to phase out fossil fuels. What’s different in 2026 is the availability of solutions. Renewable energy is now cheaper and more accessible than ever before. Global momentum is firmly behind the transition away from fossil fuels. The Albanese Government, with its overwhelming majority, has the chance to set our nation up for the future, or keep us stranded in the past. Let’s hope it makes some smart choices.
The 2026 budget test: Will Australia break free from fossil fuels?
Anne Jellema is Executive Director of 350.org.
The war on Iran and Lebanon is a deeply unjust and devastating conflict, killing civilians at home, destroying lives, and at the same time sending shockwaves through the global economy. We, at 350.org, have calculated, drawing on price forecasts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Goldman Sachs, just how much that volatility is costing us.
Even under the IMF’s baseline scenario – a de facto “best case” scenario with a near-term end to the war and related supply chain disruptions – oil and gas price spikes are projected to cost households and businesses globally more than $600 billion by the end of the year. Under the IMF’s “adverse scenario”, with prolonged conflict and sustained price pressures, we estimate those additional costs could exceed $1 trillion, even after accounting for reduced demand.
Which is why we urgently need a power shift. Governments are under growing pressure to respond to rising fuel and food costs and deepening energy poverty. And it’s becoming clearer to both voters and elected officials that fossil dependence is not only expensive and risky, but unnecessary.
People who can are voting with their wallets: sales of solar panels and electric vehicles are increasing sharply in many countries. But the working people who have nothing to spare, ironically, are the ones stuck with using oil and gas that is either exorbitantly expensive or simply impossible to get.
Drain on households and economies
In India, street food vendors can’t get cooking gas and in the Philippines, fishermen can’t afford to take their boats to sea. A quarter of British people say that rising energy tariffs will leave them completely unable to pay their bills. This is the moment for a global push to bring abundant and affordable clean energy to all.
In April, we released Out of Pocket, our new research report on how fossil fuels are draining households and economies. We were surprised by the scale of what we found. For decades, governments have reassured people that energy price spikes are unfortunate but unavoidable – the result of distant conflicts, market forces or geopolitical shocks beyond anyone’s control. But the numbers tell a different story.
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Santa Marta: Ministers grapple with practicalities of fossil fuel phase-out
Around 60 governments that want to make progress on transitioning away from coal, oil and gas are meeting in Colombia to work out how they can do it an equitable way -
Why the transition beyond fossil fuels depends on cities and collective action
Cities will help identify concrete pathways for an equitable shift to clean energy at the Santa Marta conference, with C40 members aiming to halve their fossil fuel use by 2030
What we are living through today is not an energy crisis. It is a fossil fuel crisis. In just the first 50 days of the Middle East conflict, soaring oil and gas prices have siphoned an estimated $158 billion–$166 billion from households and businesses worldwide. That is money extracted directly from people’s pockets and transferred, almost instantly, into fossil fuel company balance sheets. And this figure only captures the immediate impact of price spikes, not the permanent economic drain of fossil dependence. Fossil fuels don’t just cost us once, they cost us over and over again.
First, through our bills. Every time there is a war, an embargo or a supply disruption, fossil fuel prices surge. For ordinary people, this means higher costs for energy, transport and food. Many Global South countries have little or no fiscal space to buffer the shock; instead, workers and families pay the price.
Second, through our taxes. Governments around the world continue to pour vast sums of public money into fossil fuel subsidies. These are often justified as a way to protect the most vulnerable at the petrol pump or in their homes. But in reality, the benefits are overwhelmingly captured by wealthier households and corporations. The poorest 20% receive just a fraction of this support, while public finances are drained.
Third, through climate impacts. New research across more than 24,000 global locations gives a granular account of the true costs of extreme heat, sea level rise and falling agricultural yields. Using this data to update IMF modelling of the social cost of carbon, we found that fossil fuel impacts on health and livelihoods amount to over $9 trillion a year. This is the biggest subsidy of all, because these massive and mounting costs are not charged to Big Oil – they are paid for by governments and households, with the poorest shouldering the lion’s share.
Massive transfer of wealth to fossil fuel industry
Adding up direct subsidies, tax breaks and the unpaid bill for climate damages, the total transfer of wealth from the public to the fossil fuel industry amounts to $12 trillion even in a “normal” year without a global oil shock. That’s more than 50% higher than the IMF has previously estimated, and equivalent to a staggering $23 million a minute.
The fossil fuel industry has become extraordinarily adept at profiting from instability. When conflict drives up prices, companies do not lose, they gain. In the current crisis, oil producers and commodity traders are on track to secure tens of billions of dollars in additional windfall profits, even as households face rising bills and governments struggle to manage the fallout.
Fossil fuel crisis offers chance to speed up energy transition, ministers say
This growing disconnect is impossible to ignore. Investors are advised to buy into fossil fuel firms precisely because of their ability to generate profits in times of crisis. Meanwhile, ordinary people are told to tighten their belts.
In 2026, unlike during the oil shocks of the 1970s, clean energy is no longer a distant alternative. Now, even more than when gas prices spiked due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, renewables are often the cheapest option available. Solar and wind can be deployed quickly, at scale, and without the volatility that defines fossil fuel markets.
How to transition from dirty to clean energy
The solutions are clear. Governments must implement permanent windfall taxes on fossil fuel companies to ensure that extraordinary profits generated during crises are redirected to support households. These revenues can be used to reduce energy bills, invest in public services, and accelerate the rollout of clean energy.
Second, we must shift subsidies away from fossil fuels and towards renewable solutions, particularly those that can be deployed quickly and equitably, such as rooftop and community solar. This is not just about cutting emissions. It is about building a more stable, fair and resilient energy system.
Finally, we need binding plans to phase out fossil fuels altogether, replacing them with homegrown renewable energy that can shield economies from future shocks. Because what the current crisis has made clear is this: as long as we remain dependent on fossil fuels, we remain vulnerable – to conflict, to price volatility and to the escalating impacts of climate change.
The true price of fossil fuels is no longer hidden. It is visible in rising bills, strained public finances and communities pushed to the brink. And it is being paid, every day, by ordinary people around the world.
It’s time for the great power shift.
Full details on the methodology used for this report are available here.
The Great Power Shift is a new campaign by 350.org global campaign to pressure governments to bring down energy bills for good by ending fossil fuel dependence and investing in clean, affordable energy for all
The post What fossil fuels really cost us in a world at war appeared first on Climate Home News.
Computer models that use artificial intelligence (AI) cannot forecast record-breaking weather as well as traditional climate models, according to a new study.
It is well established that AI climate models have surpassed traditional, physics-based climate models for some aspects of weather forecasting.
However, new research published in Science Advances finds that AI models still “underperform” in forecasting record-breaking extreme weather events.
The authors tested how well both AI and traditional weather models could simulate thousands of record-breaking hot, cold and windy events that were recorded in 2018 and 2020.
They find that AI models underestimate both the frequency and intensity of record-breaking events.
A study author tells Carbon Brief that the analysis is a “warning shot” against replacing traditional models with AI models for weather forecasting “too quickly”.
AI weather forecasts
Extreme weather events, such as floods, heatwaves and storms, drive hundreds of billions of dollars in damages every year through the destruction of cropland, impacts on infrastructure and the loss of human life.
Many governments have developed early warning systems to prepare the general public and mobilise disaster response teams for imminent extreme weather events. These systems have been shown to minimise damages and save lives.
For decades, scientists have used numerical weather prediction models to simulate the weather days, or weeks, in advance.
These models rely on a series of complex equations that reproduce processes in the atmosphere and ocean. The equations are rooted in fundamental laws of physics, based on decades of research by climate scientists. As a result, these models are referred to as “physics-based” models.
However, AI-based climate models are gaining popularity as an alternative for weather forecasting.
Instead of using physics, these models use a statistical approach. Scientists present AI models with a large batch of historical weather data, known as training data, which teaches the model to recognise patterns and make predictions.
To produce a new forecast, the AI model draws on this bank of knowledge and follows the patterns that it knows.
There are many advantages to AI weather forecasts. For example, they use less computing power than physics-based models, because they do not have to run thousands of mathematical equations.
Furthermore, many AI models have been found to perform better than traditional physics-based models at weather forecasts.
However, these models also have drawbacks.
Study author Prof Sebastian Engelke, a professor at the research institute for statistics and information science at the University of Geneva, tells Carbon Brief that AI models “depend strongly on the training data” and are “relatively constrained to the range of this dataset”.
In other words, AI models struggle to simulate brand new weather patterns, instead tending forecast events of a similar strength to those seen before. As a result, it is unclear whether AI models can simulate unprecedented, record-breaking extreme events that, by definition, have never been seen before.
Record-breaking extremes
Extreme weather events are becoming more intense and frequent as the climate warms. Record-shattering extremes – those that break existing records by large margins – are also becoming more regular.
For example, during a 2021 heatwave in north-western US and Canada, local temperature records were broken by up to 5C. According to one study, the heatwave would have been “impossible” without human-caused climate change.
The new study explores how accurately AI and physics-based models can forecast such record-breaking extremes.
First, the authors identified every heat, cold and wind event in 2018 and 2020 that broke a record previously set between 1979 and 2017. (They chose these years due to data availability.) The authors use ERA5 reanalysis data to identify these records.
This produced a large sample size of record-breaking events. For the year 2020, the authors identified around 160,000 heat, 33,000 cold and 53,000 wind records, spread across different seasons and world regions.
For their traditional, physics-based model, the authors selected the High RESolution forecast model from the Integrated Forecasting System of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. This is “widely considered as the leading physics-based numerical weather prediction model”, according to the paper.
They also selected three “leading” AI weather models – the GraphCast model from Google Deepmind, Pangu-Weather developed by Huawei Cloud and the Fuxi model, developed by a team from Shanghai.
The authors then assessed how accurately each model could forecast the extremes observed in the year 2020.
Dr Zhongwei Zhang is the lead author on the study and a researcher at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He tells Carbon Brief that many AI weather forecast models were built for “general weather conditions”, as they use all historical weather data to train the models. Meanwhile, forecasting extremes is considered a “secondary task” by the models.
The authors explored a range of different “lead times” – in other words, how far into the future the model is forecasting. For example, a lead time of two days could mean the model uses the weather conditions at midnight on 1 January to simulate weather conditions at midnight on 3 January.
The plot below shows how accurately the models forecasted all extreme events (left) and heat extremes (right) under different lead times. This is measured using “root mean square error” – a metric of how accurate a model is, where a lower value indicates lower error and higher accuracy.
The chart on the left shows how two of the AI models (blue and green) performed better than the physics-based model (black) when forecasting all weather across the year 2020.
However, the chart on the right illustrates how the physics-based model (black) performed better than all three AI models (blue, red and green) when it came to forecasting heat extremes.
The authors note that the performance gap between AI and physics-based models is widest for lower lead times, indicating that AI models have greater difficulty making predictions in the near future.
They find similar results for cold and wind records.
In addition, the authors find that AI models generally “underpredict” temperature during heat records and “overpredict” during cold records.
The study finds that the larger the margin that the record is broken by, the less well the AI model predicts the intensity of the event.
‘Warning shot’
Study author Prof Erich Fischer is a climate scientist at ETH Zurich and a Carbon Brief contributing editor. He tells Carbon Brief that the result is “not unexpected”.
He adds that the analysis is a “warning shot” against replacing traditional models with AI models for weather forecasting “too quickly”.
The analysis, he continues, is a “warning shot” against replacing traditional models with AI models for weather forecasting “too quickly”.
AI models are likely to continue to improve, but scientists should “not yet” fully replace traditional forecasting models with AI ones, according to Fischer.
He explains that accurate forecasts are “most needed” in the runup to potential record-breaking extremes, because they are the trigger for early warning systems that help minimise damages caused by extreme weather.
Leonardo Olivetti is a PhD student at Uppsala University, who has published work on AI weather forecasting and was not involved in the study.
He tells Carbon Brief that “many other studies” have identified issues with using AI models for “extremes”, but this paper is novel for its specific focus on extremes.
Olivetti notes that AI models are already used alongside physics-based models at “some of the major weather forecasting centres around the world”. However, the study results suggest “caution against relying too heavily on these [AI] models”, he says.
Prof Martin Schultz, a professor in computational earth system science at the University of Cologne who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief that the results of the analysis are “very interesting, but not too surprising”.
He adds that the study “justifies the continued use of classical numerical weather models in operational forecasts, in spite of their tremendous computational costs”.
Advances in forecasting
The field of AI weather forecasting is evolving rapidly.
Olivetti notes that the three AI models tested in the study are an “older generation” of AI models. In the last two years, newer “probabilistic” forecast models have emerged that “claim to better capture extremes”, he explains.
The three AI models used in the analysis are “deterministic”, meaning that they only simulate one possible future outcome.
In contrast, study author Engelke tells Carbon Brief that probabilistic models “create several possible future states of the weather” and are therefore more likely to capture record-breaking extremes.
Engelke says it is “important” to evaluate the newer generation of models for their ability to forecast weather extremes.
He adds that this paper has set out a “protocol” for testing the ability of AI models to predict unprecedented extreme events, which he hopes other researchers will go on to use.
The study says that another “promising direction” for future research is to develop models that combine aspects of traditional, physics-based weather forecasts with AI models.
Engelke says this approach would be “best of both worlds”, as it would combine the ability of physics-based models to simulate record-breaking weather with the computational efficiency of AI models.
Dr Kyle Hilburn, a research scientist at Colorado State University, notes that the study does not address extreme rainfall, which he says “presents challenges for both modelling and observing”. This, he says, is an “important” area for future research.
The post Traditional models still ‘outperform AI’ for extreme weather forecasts appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Traditional models still ‘outperform AI’ for extreme weather forecasts
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