TRACKING PROGRESS OF THE 2020 CLIMATE TURNING POINT

The document evaluates the world's collective progress toward six climate milestones in energy, transport, land use, industry, infrastructure, and finance. It concludes that while some progress has been made, the global community is generally not on track to achieve the 2020 climate turning point. The report highlights significant data gaps that hinder accurate tracking and urges governments, businesses, and financial institutions to increase ambition and fulfill commitments to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

• Overall progress toward the six 2020 climate milestones is uneven, with most outcomes currently insufficient or off track.
• The energy sector shows demonstrated progress toward renewables making up 30% of the world's electricity supply, reaching 25% in 2017, but progress on phasing out coal-fired power plants is insufficient or off track.
• Transport milestones are largely off track, with electric vehicles accounting for only 1.4% of global new vehicle sales in 2017 and projected to reach only 3% by 2020.
• Land use progress is critical but insufficient; while net natural forest loss has declined, gross tree cover loss has increased, and direct agricultural emissions rose from 4.6 GtCO2eq in 2000 to 5.3 GtCO2eq in 2016.
• Heavy industry is not on track to halve emissions by 2050, and progress on developing and implementing decarbonization roadmaps is insufficient.
• Infrastructure decarbonization is hindered by insufficient data on investment and a low rate of zero-energy building construction, which accounts for less than 5% of construction in most markets.
• Climate finance shows mixed results: public investment is on track, but philanthropic funding and green bond issuance are not growing fast enough to meet 2020 targets, and fossil fuel subsidies are not decreasing rapidly enough.
• Carbon pricing has expanded, with 52 national and subnational taxes or emission trading schemes covering 19.5% of global GHG emissions as of late 2018, though this is still considered insufficient progress.

APA

GE, M., LEBLING, K., LEVIN, K., & FRIEDRICH, J. (2019). TRACKING PROGRESS OF THE 2020 CLIMATE TURNING POINT. World Resources Institute. https://wriorg.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2020-turning-point-progress-executive-summary.pdf

Chicago

GE, MENGPIN, KATIE LEBLING, KELLY LEVIN, and JOHANNES FRIEDRICH. TRACKING PROGRESS OF THE 2020 CLIMATE TURNING POINT. World Resources Institute, 2019. https://wriorg.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2020-turning-point-progress-executive-summary.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=GE |first1=MENGPIN |last2=LEBLING |first2=KATIE |last3=LEVIN |first3=KELLY |last4=FRIEDRICH |first4=JOHANNES |title=TRACKING PROGRESS OF THE 2020 CLIMATE TURNING POINT |publisher=World Resources Institute |date=January 2019 |url=https://wriorg.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2020-turning-point-progress-executive-summary.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{ge2019tracking, author = {GE, MENGPIN and LEBLING, KATIE and LEVIN, KELLY and FRIEDRICH, JOHANNES}, title = {{TRACKING PROGRESS OF THE 2020 CLIMATE TURNING POINT}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, year = {2019}, month = jan, url = {https://wriorg.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2020-turning-point-progress-executive-summary.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }