Emissions Gap Report 2025 — SDGCounting Document Briefs

Publisher: United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Nairobi
Edition: Sixteenth annual edition, subtitled “Off target”; cut-off date 30 September 2025
Focus: SDG 13 (Climate Action): the gap between current pledges and the 1.5°C and 2°C pathways
Related: State of the Global Climate 2025, the physical record behind the same verdict

Each year UNEP measures the distance between what nations have pledged and what the Paris Agreement requires, and calls it the emissions gap. Ten years after Paris, the 2025 edition finds that a new round of pledges barely moved that gap: emissions set another record in 2024, and the world remains on course to overshoot 1.5°C.

The headline

Global greenhouse gas emissions reached a record 57.7 GtCO₂e in 2024. Only about a third of parties submitted new nationally determined contributions (NDCs) by the cut-off date, and those that did left projected warming well above target. On current policies the world is heading for warming of up to 2.8°C this century; even full delivery of all NDCs points to roughly 2.3–2.5°C. The multi-decadal average is now very likely to exceed 1.5°C within the next decade.

Inger Andersen, UNEP Executive Director: “The bottom line is that nations have had three attempts to hit the mark with their Paris Agreement pledges, and each time they have landed off target.”

The numbers

Emissions. 57.7 GtCO₂e in 2024, a 2.3% rise on 2023, more than four times the average annual growth rate of the 2010s (0.6% a year).
Current-policy trajectory. Warming held below 2.8°C (range 2.1–3.9) over the century, with a 66% chance.
NDC trajectory. Full unconditional NDCs point to about 2.5°C and conditional NDCs to about 2.3°C (range 1.9–3.3), only slightly below last year’s projection.
The 2030 gap. Full unconditional NDCs still leave a gap of about 20 GtCO₂e (range 17–23) against 1.5°C pathways, and about 12 GtCO₂e (range 9–15) against below-2°C pathways.
The 2035 gap. About 23 GtCO₂e (range 21–27) against 1.5°C, and about 12 GtCO₂e (range 10–16) against below-2°C.
Required cuts. Aligning 2035 emissions with the pathways would take reductions of 35% (2°C) and 55% (1.5°C) below 2019 levels; the new NDCs deliver about 12%.
Coverage. 64 parties covering 63% of global emissions had submitted or announced new NDCs by 30 September 2025; net-zero pledges now cover about 70% of global emissions.

The counting angle

The gap only exists because it is measured. The report is an accounting exercise: it re-estimates emissions, pledges and pathways every year, and this year’s edition is candid about how much of the apparent improvement is bookkeeping rather than mitigation. 2023 emissions were revised down from 57.1 to 56.2 GtCO₂e; methodological updates account for about 0.1°C of the lower warming projection; and the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement will cancel roughly another 0.1°C. Half of the 2024 emissions jump came from land-use change, a category UNEP flags as carrying significant measurement uncertainty. Reading the trend requires separating what nations did from how the ledger was recalculated.

Our read: Strip out the revisions and the new pledges have barely moved the needle. The honest signal is that emissions are still rising, the 1.5°C gap for 2030 is close to unchanged, and every year of delay makes the required cuts steeper. Progress on paper is not the same as progress in the atmosphere.

Watch & read

Emissions Gap Report 2025: Off target, the full report (UNEP).
State of the Global Climate 2025, the measured physical indicators behind the same SDG 13 verdict.

Figures are as reported by UNEP; gap estimates are medians with the report’s own ranges, and all estimates would rise by about 2 GtCO₂e once the United States’ NDC becomes void.