Climate policies assessed by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) cut electricity-sector emissions by 9% on average, but national pledges remain far short of the reductions needed to bring warming back to 1.5°C.
The finding appears in UNEP’s 2026 Emissions Gap Report, released Wednesday. The agency examined more than 220 policy evaluations overall. Among the electricity-sector policies studied, emissions averaged 9% below a baseline without those measures during the periods assessed.
Economic measures, including carbon taxes and cap-and-trade programs, produced reductions of 5% to 13% across the sectors studied. UNEP cautioned that the evidence comes from particular countries, sectors and time periods, limiting how broadly those results can be applied.
The report also found that renewable energy has expanded, while energy supply from coal and oil has grown more slowly than projections made around the time of the Paris Agreement anticipated. Even so, UNEP said emissions trends in energy systems, road transport and methane are moving too slowly to meet its climate pathway.
The gap between national pledges and the 2035 pathway remains substantial. If countries fully implement their plans, UNEP estimates global emissions will fall 5% to 8% by 2030 and 11% to 15% by 2035, measured against 2025 levels. Its pathway for returning warming to 1.5°C or lower by 2100 requires cuts of 18% by 2030, 45% by 2035 and 69% by 2040 from the same baseline.
UNEP expects warming to exceed 1.5°C before any return to that level. In its pathway with the smallest overshoot, temperatures peak at 1.7°C to 1.8°C around mid-century, with roughly a 50% chance of falling to 1.5°C or lower by 2100. That outcome requires roughly 320 gigatons of carbon dioxide to be removed from the atmosphere and stored permanently over the century, a scale UNEP says faces socioeconomic and technological challenges.
UNEP assigns a 66% chance of warming staying at or below 2.6°C by 2100 if countries deliver their pledges and sustain comparable efforts afterward. Under current policies, the corresponding threshold is 2.8°C, with warming continuing beyond 2100. UNEP linked part of the worsened pledge-based outlook to the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and revisions to historical emissions estimates.
Governments are scheduled to meet for the COP31 climate conference in Antalya, Türkiye, Nov. 9-20.
