Specialist climate change and energy policy newsbrand Carbon Brief is launching a paid membership offering built around a Reddit-style forum rather than paywalled content.
The primary part of the CB+ membership is a new forum called CB Connect designed to allow “evidence-based, good-faith dialogue” around climate change and the global energy transition.
Carbon Brief editor Leo Hickman told Press Gazette that Carbon Brief readers want to “drill down deeper and have a more constructive and nuanced discussion”.
“Our sense is that that can’t really be done, to be honest, in many places within the public sphere…
“We felt that social media is to a large extent useless now for this kind of high-quality nuanced discussion, whether it’s AI trolls, bad faith actors, algorithms messing things up, it just feels like you can’t have a human to human, genuine, good faith discussion on any of this stuff anymore on social media, so our feeling was why don’t we try and build that space for our audience?”
Hickman added that he hoped it would be a “sort of sanctuary of sanity amid a raging storm of information chaos” and become a daily habit for people to check.
Digital-only Carbon Brief was founded in 2010 and is funded by philanthropy, namely through the European Climate Foundation and the Meliore Foundation (totalling £1.9m in 2025). Readers can also choose to make ongoing or one-off donations to support its journalism.
Hickman said this funding model is why the newsbrand has never had a paywall or run advertising or sponsorships.
“Why we’re funded the way we are to date is because there’s a feeling there’s a need for high-quality journalism around climate change which is free to read, free to view, can be read anywhere in the world, and isn’t behind paywalls.”
But he said Carbon Brief’s readership has shown it wants to “get closer to our journalism and be deeper, if you like, with the community of our audience”.
Hickman described the core Carbon Brief audience as “climate concerned”, typically working on climate change in some way whether in policy, academia, business, NGOs or other media.
He said their main metric is active newsletter subscribers, because these are the people connecting with the brand most directly, which is around 100,000 people.
Carbon Brief has used a platform called Discourse to build CB Connect, a Reddit-style forum where members can take part in threaded discussions as well as join CB Live events such as webinars and ‘Ask Me Anything’ (AMA) style Q&As with journalists and other experts. There will also be a Noticeboard for job adverts, new research papers and other relevant community posts. Carbon Brief does not currently have any commenting facility under its articles.
The launch also involves a Whatsapp group, something Carbon Brief has already tried out several times including at last year’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Brazil when it charged $10 for two weeks for access (along with a daily email).
Some 1,500 people paid to enter that Whatsapp group, which was run by journalists sharing updates, videos and tips from the conference (meaning it wasn’t flooded with members posting).
The CB+ membership has two tiers: the Supporter tier, costing £5 a month, includes a login to CB Connect to take part in the discussions and online events, as well as a new monthly email called The Radar where the Carbon Brief team look ahead at what’s coming up in the next month.
The Pro tier, which costs £10 per month, adds the ability to post in the CB Connect Noticeboard (Supporters can only read it), online registration for Carbon Brief’s annual quiz night, and access to the Whatsapp group.
Carbon Brief currently has a morning newsletter called Daily Briefing which is a summary of global news and commentary on climate and energy from the previous 24 hours. Hickman said they are adding a Daily Briefing+ element to the Whatsapp group where they will send an extra breaking news round-up in the afternoon (UK time).
An initial offer will reduce the initial prices to £1 or £2 per month for three months. Carbon Brief will also have a group offer for multiple accounts.
Alongside Discourse for the CB Connect forum, Carbon Brief is using the Memberful membership platform, payment provider Stripe and its existing newsletter provider Mailerlite, which can all connect with each other as well as the Carbon Brief website which is on WordPress.
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