Global Energy and Climate Outlook 2024: Updating NDCs and closing the ambition gap – indicators for 1.5°C alignment

This edition of the Global Energy and Climate Outlook (GECO 2024), in its 10th year of publication, presents an updated view of the implications of energy and climate policies worldwide, finding that the world is still not on track to achieve its climate targets, as both implementation gaps (between current policies and pledges) and ambition gaps (between current pledges and a 1.5°C trajectory) remain. Whilst emissions peak in the coming years in all scenarios, the world is currently on track for 2.6°C of warming by the end of the century.

Updated NDCs are due in 2025, to support the UNFCCC NDC update cycle GECO 2024 presents a set of 1.5°C-aligned indicators for 2035

along 4 main decarbonisation strategies:

i) producing clean electricity ii) Electrifying

end-uses and improving energy efficiency iii) decarbonisation of hard-to-abate sectors iv) scaling-up negative emissions.

The current decade is key for keeping the 1.5°C target possible, and aligning NDC targets with a Paris Agreement compatible trajectory represents an indispensable step in this direction. Accelerating the power sector transition towards renewable energy sources is crucial to decarbonise the whole energy sector via simultaneous electrification of end uses. Decarbonising remaining sectors that are more costly to electricity requires ramping up the production of low-carbon fuels such as biomass, hydrogen and e-fuels, alongside deploying more mature technologies such as carbon capture and storage, among other. Despite ambitious efforts to mitigate emissions, it is increasingly clear that the world’s 1.5°C pathway is likely to result in global temperature overshoot, and therefore negative emissions from both land-use sinks and the energy sector are required. The indicators presented in GECO 2024’s Country Sheets follow these main decarbonisation strategies, with the aim to guide negotiators during the forthcoming NDC update cycle.