In a post on LinkedIn on 28 October, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said: ‘Ten years ago in Paris, we were designing the future – aiming to bend the curve of emissions downwards. Today an update to our NDC Synthesis Report shows the emissions curve is being bent downwards.’

The report includes information from 64 new NDCs recorded from 1 January 2024 and 30 September 2025. Since then, 22 more new NDCs have been sent in. With the additions, 69% of total GHG emissions in 2019 were represented.  

On a more pessimistic note, Inger Andersen, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), has said that the new NDC pledges are ‘not strong enough’. She was speaking to launch the UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2025: Off Target.  

‘Global warming projections over this century are now 2.3–2.5°C compared to 2.6–2.8°C in last year’s report – far from the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C and well-below 2°C targets,’ she said.

‘As a result, we still need unprecedented cuts to greenhouse gas emissions – now in an ever-compressing timeframe and amid a challenging geopolitical context. And let us not forget that the world is not even on track to meet 2030 pledges. Policies currently in place are pointing the world towards up to 2.8°C of warming.’

‘This situation means we must accept a hard truth: the multi-decadal average of global temperatures will exceed 1.5°C, very likely within the next decade. The task is to make this overshoot minimal and temporary. To get on a path to limit overshoot to about 0.3°C we would need to cut 2030 emissions by 26% and 2035 emissions by 46%.’

But there is a possible way forward, she continued: ‘The mitigation potential in wind, solar and forestry remains sufficient to bridge the 2°C gap in 2035. For the first time, renewable energy sources surpassed coal as the world’s largest source of electricity in the first half of 2025. As renewable costs continue to plummet, we have – with the right policies – the chance for this to become the new norm. And, as UNEP data shows, action is growing to tackle short-lived climate pollutants like methane, which can bring temperatures down quickly.’  

Meanwhile, according to BNEF’s latest Climatescope report, since 2015 renewable energy investment in emerging markets, excluding mainland China, has nearly tripled, rising from $49bn in 2015 to $140bn in 2024.

Despite this progress, however, developing economies’ share of global clean energy spending has averaged just 18% over the past decade. In contrast, developed economies and mainland China have captured 42% and 40% of total funding, respectively. The report blames political instability, currency environments and high capital costs for the gaps.  

Where there has been investment, it has been primarily solar. Over 47% of the investment in emerging markets was driven by small-scale solar last year, compared with just 5% in 2015.

The report also ranks developing economies in terms of their attractiveness for investment. Top for the third year running was India, which has experienced 30% year-on-year increase in clean energy investment, from $17bn in 2023 to $23bn in 2024. This year, Romania climbed to second place, followed by Chile, and Pakistan entered the top five for the first time, spurred by a surge in solar installations.

Turning to established economies, a new Wood Mackenzie report predicts that the world is on track to hit a 2.6°C increase by 2050. It also found that few countries in total, and no major G7 countries, are on track to meet 2030 emissions goals. On the other hand, a significant investment increase could still limit the average temperature increase to within 2°C warming by reaching global net zero emissions by around 2060. Of major economies, the US faces the steepest investment challenge, but Europe still requires a 36% increase to $619bn annually.

The study predicts that renewables will rise from 20% of generation today to 60% by 2050, with solar alone doubling by 2030 and overtaking gas in 2033 and coal in 2034. Battery storage and nuclear will provide flexibility to renewable-heavy grids.

It also predicts that the peak in oil demand has shifted from 2030 to 2032, reflecting sluggish EV sales in the US and Europe, and continued momentum in petrochemicals.

‘The energy system is becoming more complex, interconnected and volatile,’ comments Prakash Sharma, Vice President, Head of Scenarios and Technologies for Wood Mackenzie. ‘As power demand surges due to the expansion of technologies such as AI and electrification, what was once a mostly aspirational shift towards decarbonisation is now facing the hard trade-offs of scale, system integration, capital allocation and geopolitics.’