A temporary breach of the critical 1.5C global-warming limit is now completely inevitable following decades of insufficient climate action, according to a sobering new annual assessment from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

In its latest report, titled “The point of return,” UNEP warns that exceeding the Paris Agreement’s ambitious 1.5C temperature limit is both imminent and unavoidable. Because the world has failed to curb emissions rapidly enough over the past several decades, the primary task for global policymakers is no longer preventing an overshoot entirely. Instead, the focus must shift to minimizing the size and scale of a temporary temperature overshoot and establishing a credible, scientifically sound return path to 1.5C by the end of the century.

Even under the absolute lowest possible overshoot scenario modeled by the report, global warming would first peak at around 1.7 to 1.8C in the middle of the century before beginning a gradual decline. Achieving this optimistic pathway—which the report stresses remains aligned with the long-term temperature goals of the Paris Agreement—would require unprecedented global action. Nations would need to slash global greenhouse gas emissions by 18% by 2030 and by 45% by 2035, while simultaneously ramping up industrial-scale removals of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

In stark contrast, current climate pledges submitted by countries worldwide fall drastically short. Even if these existing national promises are fully and faithfully implemented, they would only reduce global emissions by 5% to 8% by 2030, and by 11% to 15% by 2035, relative to 2025 levels.

Despite these grim projections, the UNEP assessment identifies ample opportunity to accelerate action. The report concludes that countries can still limit peak warming, shorten the duration of any temperature overshoot, and keep the core goals of the Paris Agreement within reach if they dramatically scale up their ambitions.

Emissions Remain Comparable Between 2024 and 2025

Examining the recent trajectory of global pollution, the report notes that greenhouse gas emissions in 2025 were broadly comparable to those recorded in 2024. Total global emissions for 2025 reached approximately 58.4 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent (GtCO2e), marking a marginal decrease of about 0.16 GtCO2e compared to the previous year, though these figures carry high levels of uncertainty. Because the 2025 figures are currently provisional, the report emphasizes that it is not yet possible to definitively conclude the overall long-term direction of annual emissions.

Nevertheless, a broader look at recent history reveals that the overall emissions growth rate has slowed down significantly in recent decades. Between 1990 and 2015, global emissions grew by an average of 1.7% per year, whereas the growth rate has slowed to an average of 0.8% per year since 2016.

A breakdown of the numbers shows that fossil fuel emissions increased slightly in 2025, rising by between 0.4% and 1.1%. Emissions of nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases grew at even higher rates, though their relatively small share of total greenhouse gas emissions means their overall contribution to the macro trend remains modest. Meanwhile, global methane emissions remained largely steady throughout the year.

These modest increases were slightly overcompensated for by a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions originating from land use, land-use change, and forestry. This drop in land-use emissions was partially driven by a widespread decline in global wildfire activity, particularly across regions in Africa, South America, and parts of southeast Asia. Researchers note these decreases were likely connected to the fading of El Niño conditions, warning that an ongoing super El Niño cycle could easily cause land-use emissions to rebound upward in 2026.

When analyzing the contributions of individual nations—excluding land-use data due to reporting lags—the report highlights that among the world’s top six emitters, only the United States saw a notable increase in emissions in 2025. Emissions in China, the European Union, India, Russia, and Indonesia remained relatively flat. US emissions grew by 133 million tonnes of CO2e over the course of the year, driven by a combination of higher electricity demand, a colder winter that increased heating needs, shifting gas prices, and a short-term rebound in coal-fired power generation.

Across the wider global economy, progress toward deep decarbonisation across various sectors remains modest. The most notable reductions have occurred within the power and transport sectors, largely catalyzed by the explosive global growth of solar power and electric vehicles. However, overall transport emissions have continued to climb due to surging demand for international aviation and shipping. Furthermore, while electricity demand from rapidly expanding data centres is projected to double by 2030, data centres currently account for less than 1% of total global emissions.

New National Pledges Fall Far Short of What Is Needed

Under the framework of the Paris Agreement, all participating nations were expected to submit new climate pledges for 2035—known as their third nationally determined contributions (NDCs)—by February 2025. However, roughly 95% of countries missed this initial deadline.

A significant wave of countries subsequently came forward with their third NDCs during a high-level UN climate summit in New York in September 2025 and at the COP30 climate talks held in Brazil in November 2025. By the conclusion of COP30, 122 countries—representing 63% of the global total—had formally submitted their updated pledges. By September 2026, that figure ticked up to 124 countries, with pledges now covering roughly 75% of global emissions.

While this represents more than double the number of available third NDCs compared to the previous year’s assessment, the actual substance of the pledges remains deeply inadequate. Although the first global stocktake under the Paris Agreement explicitly called on countries to submit targets covering all greenhouse gases, there has only been a modest increase in the number of nations doing so. Only eight additional countries included comprehensive greenhouse gas targets for the first time in their third NDCs, bringing the total number of participating parties with such targets to 155.

If fully implemented, these third NDCs would lower global emissions in 2035 by 3.5 GtCO2e compared to 2030 targets. However, the report cautions that this achievement is far from the deep global reductions required to align with the Paris Agreement’s long-term temperature goals. In fact, projected global emissions for 2035 resulting from these third NDCs are roughly 3 GtCO2e higher than projected in last year’s report. This upward revision is primarily driven by the formal withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement, alongside the harmonization of projections with newer historical emissions data.

The global implementation gap for 2030—the difference between projected emissions under current national policies and emissions expected if NDCs are met in full—has technically narrowed compared to the previous year. Yet, researchers point out that this narrowing is purely the result of policy changes stemming from the US withdrawal rather than genuine policy progress by remaining nations. Furthermore, the implementation gaps for both 2030 and 2035 remain remarkably similar in size, suggesting that the collective ambition of the 2035 NDCs is profoundly weak.

While 14 of the 17 G20 member entities have submitted new 2035 NDCs, the emissions trajectories of the vast majority of G20 nations remain fundamentally misaligned with their stated long-term net-zero targets. With the exception of Japan, the European Union, and the United Kingdom, every other G20 member would need to drastically accelerate their current rate of emission reductions based on existing policies to stand any chance of meeting their net-zero commitments.

The Emissions Gap Remains Vast

The report evaluates the persistent emissions gap—the chasm between projected global emissions if all NDCs are fulfilled and the emissions levels required to achieve the Paris Agreement’s temperature targets. Because historical emissions have continued to rise while climate action stalled, previous modeling scenarios developed around 2015 to 2020 that assumed immediate, early emissions cuts have become obsolete. Emissions today sit roughly 80% above the level that would have been required by 2030 to limit warming to 1.5C with little or no overshoot.

Consequently, the UNEP report explicitly states that the possibility of limiting warming to 1.5C with limited or no overshoot has now been permanently lost due to decades of insufficient reductions. Instead, the 2026 assessment utilizes a new generation of modeling pathways that acknowledge this failure and assume ambitious mitigation action begins in earnest from 2025.

Under the updated lowest 1.5C overshoot scenario, global greenhouse gas emissions must fall sharply—dropping by 18% by 2030, 45% by 2035, and 69% by 2040, relative to 2025 levels—with global net-zero CO2 emissions reached around 2050. These new benchmarks effectively replace older figures from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, providing an updated and urgent roadmap for limiting the duration and height of the coming temperature peak. For a 2C trajectory, global emissions would need to drop by 11% by 2030, 24% by 2035, and 37% by 2040 relative to 2025 levels.

Placing the world on track for the lowest 1.5C overshoot scenario would demand an average annual emissions reduction of 5.7% over the coming decade. This is an even steeper and more rapid drop than the 5% annual decline that would have been necessary had aggressive cuts commenced back in 2019.

Every Five Years of Delay Adds 0.1C of Warming

Utilizing a climate model known as FaIR to project future temperature outcomes, the report estimates that current national policies will lead to roughly 2.8C of global warming over the course of the century, based on a central 66% probability range. Under this baseline, there is also a 10% chance that warming could exceed 3.4C.

If countries fully implement their unconditional NDCs, century-end warming could reach 2.7C. Fulfilling all NDCs completely could lower that figure slightly to 2.6C by 2100. In the most optimistic scenario modeled—where nations fully implement both their NDCs and their long-term net-zero pledges—there is a 66% chance that warming could be limited to 2.1C by the end of the century.

Compared to previous assessments, the central warming estimates for 2100 are roughly 0.2 to 0.3C higher, largely reflecting the upward revisions in projected emissions following the US departure from the Paris Agreement and updated historical baselines. While fully realizing all current pledges could shave 0.6C off projected warming, this outcome would still sit 0.25C higher than the lowest 1.5C overshoot pathways.

The report issues a stark warning regarding the severe cost of procrastination. Researchers calculate that for every five years of delay in implementing deep emission cuts, approximately another 0.1C of permanent warming will be locked into the Earth system. Continued insufficient emission reductions over the coming decade risk making a catastrophic 2.6C to 2.8C world inevitable, placing the entire architecture of the Paris Agreement in mortal jeopardy.

Uneven and Insufficient Progress on Global Stocktake Goals

Evaluating performance against the nine core mitigation action areas established during the first global stocktake at COP28 in Dubai, the report characterizes global progress as deeply uneven and insufficient.

The single shining exception is renewable energy deployment, which has far exceeded initial expectations. The growth in global renewable capacity over the past decade has outpaced 2015 projections by a factor of three, resulting in energy-generation-related CO2 emissions growing 40% slower than anticipated. Currently, renewables represent the only major sector firmly on track to meet necessary 2030 milestones, provided supportive policies are sustained.

Conversely, the world is lagging severely behind in the two critical areas required to minimize 1.5C overshoot: transitioning away from fossil fuels and halting global deforestation. While coal usage may peak globally by 2030 under current policies, consumption of oil and gas continues to rise. Simultaneously, efforts to halt deforestation by the end of the decade remain severely off track, requiring an acceleration in the slowdown of forest loss by more than a factor of ten.

To achieve the lowest overshoot scenario and return global temperatures to 1.5C by 2100, the report outlines the minimum collective effort required across key energy sectors. Coal energy must be reduced by 15% by 2030, 55% by 2035, 75% by 2040, and 90% by 2050 compared to 2025 levels. For oil and gas, the required short-term cuts are more modest—5% and 0% by 2030, respectively—followed by steep structural declines that would see oil energy reduced by 65% and gas by 75% by mid-century.

Without an immediate and dramatic ratcheting up of ambition across all economic sectors, the international community faces a narrow and rapidly closing window to prevent the worst consequences of climate change.