The Rhodium Climate Outlook provides probabilistic projections of the likely evolution of greenhouse gas emissions and associated temperature rise through the end of the century, and insights into what will matter most for decarbonization in the coming decades.
Shortly before the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated that without additional efforts to reduce emissions, global temperatures would increase between 2.5 and 7.8°C (very likely range, i.e. 90% confidence interval) by the end of the century. Policy and technological progress over the past ten years has significantly reduced the global temperature outlook.
If current trends in policy and technology development continue, we project a likely (67% confidence) range of 2.3–3.4°C of temperature rise and an average outcome of 2.8°C by the end of the century, absent a meaningful acceleration of policy or technology innovation. While the world has likely avoided the dire predictions of a decade ago, if current trends persist, the probability of limiting warming below 2°C before the end of the century—the Paris Agreement target—remains below 5%.
Decades of policy and innovation have driven down the costs of wind, solar, electric vehicles, and batteries, which continue to decarbonize power generation and on-road transportation in the decades to come. We anticipate steep declines in global emissions from the power sector— declining by 54% on average by 2050 relative to today’s levels, with a likely range of 35-73%. These global trends in the power sector hide important regional differences. Today, OECD countries and China lead in generating power from variable renewable energy like wind and solar. However, as costs continue to fall, deployment in the rest of the world is expected to narrow this gap by 2050. At the same time, the surge in clean electricity is expected to coincide with persistent fossil fuel use—particularly in countries outside of the OECD and China where much of the electricity demand growth through 2050 occurs.
As in the power sector, the world is making steady progress in scaling the technologies needed to decarbonize on-road transport. Decades of targeted policies and investment have lowered the cost of electric vehicle (EV) batteries and accelerated EV adoption globally. As a result, the emissions intensity of global passenger vehicles very likely (90% chance) falls through 2050. However, while low-carbon road transport technologies are increasingly competitive, tackling emissions from aviation and marine shipping will require further innovation and scale to reduce costs.
While clean mature technologies help bend the emissions curve in power and transport, the industrial sector—including steel, cement, chemicals, and refining—faces stronger headwinds on its path to decarbonization. In the absence of additional policy and innovation, global emissions in the sector remain closely tied to overall economic and population growth. The result is a wide spread of potential emission futures, ranging from a 12% decline to 16% growth by 2050 from today’s levels in our likely range. What is clearer, however, is that the regional distribution of industrial emissions is set to change substantially. While OECD countries and China have been responsible for most of the world’s industrial growth and related emissions, most future emissions growth is expected to come from Africa, the Middle East, India, and other non-OECD countries in Asia.
In the full report, we provide an overview of the results of the 2025 Rhodium Climate Outlook, including a deeper dive into the regional and sectoral dynamics. The Rhodium Climate Outlook is the starting point for assessing what additional action is needed to go above and beyond what the world is already on track to achieve, and specifically:
All of the underlying data from the RCO is available on the ClimateDeck, our free interactive data platform.
