A much-discussed “return to coal” by some countries in the wake of the Iran war is likely to be far more limited than thought, amounting to a global rise of no more than 1.8% in coal power output this year.
The new analysis by thinktank Ember, shared exclusively with Carbon Brief, is a “worst-case” scenario and the reality could be even lower.
Separate data shows that, to date, there has been no “return to coal” in 2026.
While some countries, such as Japan, Pakistan and the Philippines, have responded to disrupted gas supplies with plans to increase their coal use, the new analysis shows that these actions will likely result in a “small rise” at most.
In fact, the decline of coal power in some countries and the potential for global electricity demand growth to slow down could mean coal generation continues falling this year.
Experts tell Carbon Brief that “the big story isn’t about a coal comeback” and any increase in coal use is “merely masking a longer-term structural decline”.
Instead, they say clean-energy projects are emerging as more appealing investments during the fossil-fuel driven energy crisis.
‘Return to coal’
The conflict following the US-Israeli attacks on Iran has disrupted global gas supplies, particularly after Iran blocked the strait of Hormuz, a key chokepoint in the Persian Gulf.
A fifth of the world’s liquified natural gas (LNG) is normally shipped through this region, mainly supplying Asian countries. The blockage in this supply route means there is now less gas available and the remaining supplies are more expensive.
(Note that while the strait usually carries a fifth of LNG trade, this amounts to a much smaller share of global gas supplies overall, with most gas being moved via pipelines.)
With gas supplies constrained and prices remaining well above pre-conflict levels, at least eight countries in Asia and Europe have announced plans to increase their coal-fired electricity generation, or to review or delay plans to phase out coal power.
These nations include Japan, South Korea, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan, Germany and Italy. Many of these nations are major users of coal power.
Such announcements have triggered a wave of reporting by global media outlets and analysts about a “return to coal”. Some have lamented a trend that is “incompatible with climate imperatives”, while others have even framed this as a positive development that illustrates coal’s return “from the dead”.
This mirrors a trend seen after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which many commentators said would lead to a surge in European coal use, due to disrupted gas supplies from Russia.
In fact, despite a spike in 2022, EU coal use has returned to its “terminal decline” and reached a historic low in 2025.
Gas to coal
So far, the evidence suggests that there has been no return to coal in 2026.
Analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air found that, in March, coal power generation remained flat globally and a fall in gas-fired generation was “offset by large increases in solar and wind power, rather than coal”.
However, as some governments only announced their coal plans towards the end of March, these figures may not capture their impact.
To get a sense of what that impact could be, Ember assessed the impact of coal policy changes and market responses across 16 countries, plus the 27 member states of the EU, which together accounted for 95% of total coal power generation in 2025.
For each country, the analysis considers a maximum “worst-case” scenario for switching from gas to coal power in the face of high gas prices.
It also considers the potential for any out-of-service coal power plants to return and for there to be delays in previously expected closures as a result of the response to the energy crisis.
Ember concludes that these factors could increase coal use by 175 terawatt hours (TWh), or 1.8%, in 2026 compared to 2025.
(This increase is measured relative to what would have happened without the energy crisis and does not account for wider trends in electricity generation from coal, which could see demand decline overall. Last year, coal power dropped by 63TWh, or 0.6%.)
Roughly three-quarters of the global effect in the Ember analysis is from potential gas-to-coal switching in China and the EU.
Other notable increases could come from switching in India and Indonesia and – to a lesser extent – from coal-policy shifts in South Korea, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
However, widely reported policy changes by Japan, Thailand and the Philippines are estimated to have very little, if any, impact on coal-power generation in 2026. The table below briefly summarises the potential for and reasoning behind the estimated increases in coal generation in each country in 2026.
Dave Jones, chief analyst at Ember, stresses that the 1.8% figure is an upper estimate, telling Carbon Brief:
“This would only happen if gas prices remained very high for the rest of the year and if there were sufficient coal stocks at power plants. The real risk of higher coal burn in 2026 comes not from coal units returning…but rather from pockets of gas-to-coal switching by existing power plants, primarily in China and the EU.”
Moreover, Jones says there is a real chance that global coal power could continue falling over the course of this year, partly driven by the energy crisis. He explains:
“If the energy crisis starts to dent electricity demand growth, coal generation – as well as gas generation – might actually be lower than before the crisis.”
‘Structural decline’
Energy experts tell Carbon Brief that Ember’s analysis aligns with their own assessments of the state of coal power.
Coal already had lower operation costs than gas before the energy crisis. This means that coal power plants were already being run at high levels in coal-dependent Asian economies that also use imported LNG to generate electricity. As such, they have limited potential to cut their need for LNG by further increasing coal generation.
Christine Shearer, who manages the global coal plant tracker at Global Energy Monitor, tells Carbon Brief that, in the EU, there is a shrinking pool of countries where gas-to-coal switching is possible:
“In Europe, coal fleets are smaller, older and increasingly uneconomic, while wind, solar and storage are becoming more competitive and widespread.”
In the context of the energy crisis, Italy has announced plans to delay its coal phaseout from 2025 to 2038. This plan, dismissed by the ECCO thinktank as “ineffective and costly”, would have minimal impact given coal only provides around 1% of the country’s power.
Notably, experts say that there is no evidence of the kind of structural “return to coal” that would spark concerns about countries’ climate goals. There have been no new coal plants announced in recent weeks.
Suzie Marshall, a policy advisor working on the “coal-to-clean transition” at E3G, tells Carbon Brief:
“We’re seeing possible delayed retirements and higher utilisation [of existing coal plants], as understandable emergency measures to keep the lights on, but not investment in new coal projects…Any short-term increase in coal consumption that we may see in response to this ongoing energy crisis is merely masking a longer-term structural decline.”
With cost-competitive solar, wind and batteries given a boost over fossil fuels by the energy crisis, there have been numerous announcements about new renewable energy projects since the start of war, including from India, Japan and Indonesia.
Shearer says that, rather than a “sustained coal comeback” in 2026, the Iran war “strengthens the case for renewables”. She says:
“If anything, a second gas shock in less than five years strengthens the case for renewables as the more secure long-term path.”
Jones says that Ember expects “little change in overall fossil generation, but with a small rise in coal and a fall in gas” in 2026. He adds:
“This would maximise gas-to-coal switching globally outside of the US, leaving no possibility for further switching in future years. Therefore, the big story isn’t about a coal comeback. It’s about how the relative economics of renewables, compared to fossil fuels, have been given a superboost by the crisis.”
The post World ‘will not see significant return to coal’ in 2026 – despite Iran crisis appeared first on Carbon Brief.
World ‘will not see significant return to coal’ in 2026 – despite Iran crisis
A new World Meteorological Organization report estimated 13,000 annual heat-related deaths across 17 countries in the region.
If the 2025 climate year in Latin America and the Caribbean showed anything, it was that floodwaters can’t erase long-term drought, that temperatures will continue to soar past livable limits and that once-unprecedented storms are part of the region’s new climate reality.
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Climate Change
Health risks from climate change spur stronger public support for action, research finds
Informing people about the health risks linked to climate change is twice as likely to spur public support for government-led climate action than messages focused on economic or environmental impacts, an international study has found.
Based on a survey of around 30,000 respondents in Brazil, India, Japan and South Africa carried out in late 2025, the report published this month by the Climate Opinion Research Exchange (CORE) and the Wellcome Trust reveals strong public support for climate action.
Over 80% of respondents said they are concerned about the impacts from climate change, the survey shows. A majority also back government measures to prevent public health impacts associated with the climate crisis.
“Humanitarian emergencies” are already increasing around the world due to human-caused rising temperatures, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). More than a third of the global population is exposed to climate threats like wildfires, extreme heatwaves, and tropical storms and floods, it says. These threats are amplified by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.
Dustin Gilbreath, a researcher at CORE and one of the study’s lead authors, said that communicating these risks to the general public can be an effective way to inspire climate action, given that health is a basic concern for everyone across the political spectrum.
“If you suddenly find out that climate change is hurting your health and your children’s health, more people are rightfully more open to that argument,” he said. “At the end of the day, we all care about our health, regardless of our political inclinations.”
At COP28 in Dubai, more than 150 countries issued a declaration “expressing grave concern” over climate-fuelled health impacts, and pledged to strengthen policies that can cut carbon emissions and benefit people’s health in the process – for example by reducing air pollution from cars or factories.
More than 80 nations also endorsed a plan to improve the health sector’s resilience to climate impacts at the COP30 summit in Belém last year. The initiative received $300 million in philanthropic backing to help governments identify health risks, improve monitoring of climate threats, and strengthen emergency responses to extreme weather events, among other measures.
Despite these pledges, health has not been at the top of the agenda at key meetings like the recent conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia. The Global Climate and Health Alliance, which represents 250 health organisations, said leaders in Santa Marta “did not address the importance of protecting people’s health”.
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Health priorities vary by country
To gain insights into people’s attitudes towards climate change, researchers tested 16 different messages with respondents in a survey-based randomised trial, comparing their reactions to messages on health-related issues like extreme heat or infectious diseases, and non-health issues related to jobs, the cost of living or nature. They also compared the participants’ reactions to a control group in each country who were not shown any messages.
While a majority were concerned about the health impacts from climate change, the types of effects that caused the strongest reaction varied depending on the country.
In South Africa, for example, public opinion resonated very strongly with messages related to children’s health. Messages linked to food and water insecurity also chimed well with South Africans, who recognised widely that climate change is a threat to people’s health.
The study’s authors say that context is key to understanding the effectiveness of messaging. South Africa, for example, has a young population with a median age of 28 years – compared to Europe’s 45 years – and has faced severe water shortages in cities like Cape Town, which was close to a “Day Zero” event after a major drought between 2016 and 2018. This term refers to the threat of municipal services running out of water.
Brazilians, on the other hand, reacted strongly to messages related to mental health impacts, which performed better than other messages by a wide margin. These types of impacts include, for example, severe anxiety or stress caused by losses after a flood or hurricane. In total, 93% of Brazilians said they are somewhat, or very concerned about, climate change.
Neha Dewan, senior advisor at the Wellcome Trust, a health-focused charitable foundation, said this finding was “counter-intuitive”, given that mental health is often seen as less of a priority. “This really helps us see what’s unexpected and find newer ways of reaching different audiences,” she added.
In Japan, extreme heat was the top-performing message, while in India it was air pollution and access to healthcare. Dewan said the India results confirm what people already discuss informally. “Every time I’m back home seeing family in India, everybody talks about air pollution. It’s the living, breathing reality.”
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Commission urges government action
Dewan said she hoped the findings “go beyond journals” and instead can “actually end up in society”, with the goal of helping “empower policy conversations”. Respondents across countries firmly supported government action to prevent or protect them from the health impacts of a warming climate.
In Brazil and South Africa, emissions-cutting measures such as building solar capacity to produce clean energy had more than 90% support, while in India and Japan respondents strongly backed adaptation measures like investments in allowing air-conditioned public buildings to be used during heatwaves.
Ahead of the May 18-22 World Health Assembly, the WHO’s highest decision-making body, experts highlighted the urgency of implementing such steps. The Pan-European Commission on Climate and Health, composed of former global leaders and chaired by former Icelandic Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir, called on governments “to take forward climate action that delivers benefits for human health”.
The commission issued a 17-point plan to address health impacts from the climate crisis, which includes declaring climate change a “global health emergency” and bringing it to the agenda of national security councils, as well as scaling up “climate-health investment”.
“The climate crisis is a threat to our safety and security, social cohesion, human rights and health,” Jakobsdóttir said in a statement. “Climate action is not merely a necessity. It is a high-return investment for a more just and resilient society.”
The Wellcome Trust’s Dewan said the survey provides data-backed insights showing policymakers that the public supports stronger action on climate change. “It’s beyond anecdotal now. Here’s the evidence telling us that constituents really care about these issues,” she said.
Fresh approach to climate dialogue
The findings of the study suggest that a focus on health could become an effective way for policymakers and activists to draw in new audiences and inspire action on climate change, the authors of the report said.
“The cost-of-living message or the jobs and economy messages have been used over and over again. People have been saying this for a good decade. Probably the people that are convinced by this already would’ve said they’re concerned about climate change,” said Gilbreath of CORE.
He added that the health angle is probably a newer approach for some audiences, but the hypothesis based on the survey findings would need to be tested with further research. He also noted that economic messages still serve a purpose in some contexts and should not be abandoned.
Dewan said health messaging could become a “missing piece” in climate communications. “Health is personal, proximal, relevant and – politically speaking – it’s depolarising,” she said.
“It gives us an inroad to talk about climate differently in a way that feels very relevant,” she explained. “It’s about figuring out what’s the next insight to unpack and make these communications and engagements even stronger and relevant.”
The post Health risks from climate change spur stronger public support for action, research finds appeared first on Climate Home News.
Health risks from climate change spur stronger public support for action, research finds
Many right-leaning figures have tried to push the idea that the UK is an outlier on net-zero.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has claimed that other countries are “not following us” in aiming to cut emissions to net-zero, while GB News owner Paul Marshall said in March that the UK is “pursuing a path of unilateral economic disarmament”.
Both are among those on the right of UK politics who have falsely claimed that the UK’s net-zero target is “unilateral” and that this is a reason why the goal should be abandoned.
However, these claims ignore that 140 of the world’s 198 countries (71%) have net-zero targets.
In fact, Iran and the US are the only two of the world’s top 20 carbon dioxide (CO2) emitters that lack a net-zero target, as shown in the map below.
If the UK were to scrap its net-zero target, as called for by both the opposition Conservatives and hard-right Reform UK, this is the group of major emitters it would be joining.
The latest assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s foremost authority on climate science, said the only way to stop global warming was to reach net-zero CO2 emissions.
The UK was the first major economy to set a net-zero target in 2019.
Since then, almost all of the world’s major emitters have followed suit, with China announcing a net-zero target in 2020 and India, Saudi Arabia and Russia launching goals in 2021.
Around 74% of global emissions are now covered by some kind of national net-zero target, according to data from the Net Zero Tracker, a consortium tracking net-zero policies.
According to the Net Zero Tracker, 34 nations – including the UK – have set a net-zero target into law, signifying the highest possible level of commitment.
In addition, 63 nations have stated their goal in a policy document, 16 nations have made a net-zero “pledge” and 23 nations have a net-zero “proposal”. (Four nations have declared that they have already reached net-zero.)
The US, the world’s largest historical emitter when counting its cumulative climate impact since the start of the industrial revolution, had a net-zero target under former president Joe Biden. However, it was abandoned by the current Trump administration.
Despite this, some 18 regions and 43 cities in the US still have some form of net-zero commitment, according to the Net Zero Tracker.
John Lang, lead of the Net Zero Tracker, tells Carbon Brief:
“Ironically, of the world’s 20 largest emitters, only the US and Iran lack net-zero targets – precisely as the Iran crisis exposes the risks of dependence on fossil fuels and volatile oil markets.
“Arguing against net-zero is arguing for greater exposure to geopolitical instability and energy price shocks. The UK has already shown that cutting fossil-fuel dependence can go hand in hand with economic growth, reducing emissions by 54% since 1990 while almost doubling the size of the economy.”
The post Factcheck: US and Iran are world’s only major emitters without net-zero targets appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Factcheck: US and Iran are world’s only major emitters without net-zero targets
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