Countries have submitted more than 100 new climate plans in the past year, but these will not deliver the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions cuts required to reach global warming limits set out in the Paris climate agreement, the UN Environment Programme (Unep) said today in its Emissions Gap 2026 report.
If current policies continue, there is a 66pc chance that global warming will reach 2.8°C by 2100, and increase after that, Unep found. The most optimistic scenario would limit warming to 2.1°C this century, but it relies on all climate plans — known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs) — being achieved and "similar efforts maintained", Unep said.
The Paris agreement seeks to curb the global rise in temperature to "well below" 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and pursues a 1.5°C limit.
A total of 124 countries, accounting for around 76pc of global GHG emissions, had submitted new NDCs as of 1 September, Unep said. This is up from 57 submissions covering 63pc of global emissions last year. The most recent round of NDCs would only cut global GHG emissions to 5-8pc below 2025 levels by 2030, Unep said. They would reduce GHGs by 11-15pc by 2035 and by 20-27pc by 2040, from the 2025 baseline, it added. The range refers to the conditionality of the NDCs — whether countries will implement the plans with no outside help or whether they need external technical and financial support.
There is a "large and expanding emissions gap" of 5bn t/CO2 equivalent (CO2e) in 2030 and of 16bn t/CO2e in 2035 between the "full implementation of current conditional and unconditional NDCs and the lowest 1.5°C overshoot scenario", Unep said. The emissions gap refers to the distance between projected emissions from countries' NDCs and the reduction needed to hit Paris agreement goals. The gaps are 1bn t/CO2e and 5bn t/CO2e for 2030 and 2035, respectively, between NDCs and the "below 2°C scenario", Unep found. The gaps are wider if only unconditional NDCs are put into practice.
But, owed to "decades of insufficient climate action", the world will overshoot the 1.5°C Paris goal, Unep said. "The opportunity to bridge the 1.5°C emissions gap with ‘no or limited' overshoot has been lost", it added.
Unep cautioned that the emissions gaps outlined in this year's report "are not directly comparable with last year's report, which was benchmarked against scenarios that are now unachievable". There is an "unbridgeable gap" of 9bn t/CO2e between the lowest "overshoot" scenario and the level of emissions that would have met a 1.5°C target, it said.
Global GHG emissions in 2025 stood at 58.4bn t/CO2e, with a range of 5.5bn t, preliminary data show, Unep said. This may be a decline on the year of 100mn t, but the "high uncertainty range" makes this difficult to conclude, Unep said. It does diverge from a decade-long trend of global emissions growth of 0.8pc/yr, Unep added.
But CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion rose in 2025, with estimates ranging from an increase of between 0.4pc to 1.1pc on the year, Unep said. Countries agreed at the UN Cop 28 climate summit in 2023 to "transition away" from fossil fuels in energy systems. "Progress in transitioning away from fossil fuels and other emissions-intensive activities is lagging particularly far behind", Unep said. It expects the use of oil and gas to continue to increase this decade, but noted that "the implementation of current policies is set to trigger a peak and decline in coal before 2030".
