Promising climate progress: How close do net-zero ambitions take us towards the Paris Agreement goals?

The Paris Agreement aims to limit the increase of global mean temperature to well-below 2°C and preferably 1.5°C. This study provides a multi-model analysis of global projections of current policies and pledges, and climate pathways to implement the Paris Agreement’s overall goals. In this exercise, current policies and NDCs scenarios are updated. Additionally, three main scenarios are analysed: i) a long-term strategies (LTS) scenario, which assumes the full implementation of the NDCs and the announced net-zero pledges from COP26 (in Glasgow, 2021); ii) an Expanded LTS scenario, which expands the net-zero pledges to all countries/regions; and iii) an Accelerated LTS scenario, which sees climate targets being brought forward by 5–10 years. Our findings indicate that the current net-zero pledges bring the world close to a well-below 2°C pathway, but a gap remains. Increasing ambition proves crucial to dealing with the climate challenge: expanding the global coverage of net-zero pledges and speeding up action increases consistency with the Paris goals (1.5 to 2.0°C range in model mean, 50th percentile). However, reaching the 1.5°C goal without overshoot seems increasingly unlikely, and dedicated policies are needed to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels and increase renewable energy capacity.