The Global Energy and Climate Outlook (GECO) 2025 presents an updated view on the implications of energy and climate policies worldwide on energy trends and emissions, and what they imply about reaching the goals of the Paris Agreement. GECO 2025 presents a set of 1.5°C-aligned indicators in the context of the updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
Related datasets:
- GECO 2025 - energy, GHG and air pollutant emissions balances, projected with an energy-emissions model
- GECO 2025 - macroeconomic baseline consisting of multi-regional input-output tables (coming soon)
- GECO country-level visualisations for regional and global results
Competitiveness of clean technologies
Current market conditions hold back the progress of key technologies over the coming decades. Several low-carbon technologies, such as solar, wind and electric vehicles, are broadly competitive with the incumbent fossil fuel technologies in many world markets. These technologies are expected to achieve high levels of deployment with little to no additional policy support.
Several other low-carbon technologies, such as synthetic fuels and CO2 capture, are not expected to achieve the levels of deployment foreseen in a scenario aligned with the 1.5°C climate target without additional policy support.
Implementation and ambition gaps
Announced NDCs fail to show an increase in climate change mitigation ambition. Under current legislated policies, global emissions peak immediately and decrease gradually to 2005 levels by 2050.
The long-term emissions trajectory under currently-enacted policies shows a similar evolution compared to last year, where emission reductions resulting from continuing rapid deployment of renewables and electric vehicles globally has been offset by a reversal of climate action in the US.
Trade vs Climate policy
GECO 2025 finds that there is overall minimal interaction between climate and trade policy when considering the effect on global GDP. Fragmentation of global trade causes only limited GHG emission reductions and hampers deep decarbonisation. Fragmentation has a negative effect on global production volumes, which puts some limited downward pressure on GHG emissions.
However, fragmentation also makes the global economy more emissions intensive, by fracturing global patterns of specialisation and encouraging domestic production where this might be less efficient. In a deep decarbonisation scenario, this increase in emission intensity dominates the output effect. As a result, fragmentation hampers the deep decarbonisation that is necessary in a 1.5°C scenario.