Global Climate Pledges: A Progress Report

This report by the World Resources Institute evaluates the progress of major global climate commitments across energy, forestry, finance, food systems, urban action, transport, and super pollutants. It concludes that while ambitious pledges have been made, most are currently off-track, with significant gaps between stated goals and measurable implementation.

• The world is at risk of failing to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030. Although capacity grew by 473 gigawatts in 2023 (a 14% increase), this is below the 16.4% annual growth rate required to meet the target.
• Global energy efficiency improvements are stagnating at 1% per year for 2023 and 2024, whereas a 4% annual improvement is necessary to achieve the goal of doubling energy efficiency.
• Global forest loss is currently higher than it was in 2021, indicating a lack of progress toward the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration goal to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030.
• Financial sector commitments to net-zero are failing to translate into action. A study of two dozen top banks found that none of their net-zero plans would actually achieve net-zero emissions, and political pressure in the U.S. has led some institutions to scale back or exit net-zero alliances.
• Fossil fuel subsidies have increased despite pledges to phase them out. Global explicit fossil fuel subsidies more than doubled between 2020 and 2022, reaching a record $1.3 trillion.
• Urban climate action remains limited in national planning; only 27% of current Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) contain strong urban initiatives, and only 7% of G20 cities and regions have at least one target aligned with the 1.5 degrees C warming limit.
• While electric car sales are appearing to be on track, the world is failing to meet targets for public buses and freight vehicles. To limit warming to 1.5 degrees C, electric car sales must rise from 10% in 2021 to over 85% by 2030.
• Methane emissions from the energy sector reached near-record highs in 2023, despite 158 countries signing the Global Methane Pledge to reduce emissions by 30% by 2030 compared to 2020 levels.

APA

World Resources Institute (2024). Global Climate Pledges: A Progress Report. https://www.wri.org/insights/climate-commitment-tracker

Chicago

World Resources Institute. Global Climate Pledges: A Progress Report. 2024. https://www.wri.org/insights/climate-commitment-tracker.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=Global Climate Pledges: A Progress Report |date=11 November 2024 |url=https://www.wri.org/insights/climate-commitment-tracker |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitute2024global, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{Global Climate Pledges: A Progress Report}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, year = {2024}, month = nov, url = {https://www.wri.org/insights/climate-commitment-tracker}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }