The first Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement, which concluded one year ago, cautioned that the world was not on track to keep warming well below 2°C of temperature rise and called on countries to come forward with ambitious nationally determined contributions (NDCs) for reducing greenhouse gas emissions for the coming decade. It encouraged countries to set economy-wide emission reduction targets covering all greenhouse gases and sectors and aligned with nationally-determined pathways to net-zero emissions around mid-century.
As countries prepare to announce these 2035 NDCs in early 2025, it will be important to consider what each country is currently on track for, as a starting point for assessing what additional ambitious action can be taken to get on a pathway to net-zero emissions. There are two main obstacles to setting expectations for countries’ 2035 NDCs: first, a lack of consistent and transparent baseline emissions projections across all major economies; and second, an inability to capture the uncertainty inherent in projecting the future of the global economy and its underlying energy dynamics. Without these, the international community has nothing against which to assess the level of ambition of proposed NDCs.
To fill this gap, the Rhodium Climate Outlook (RCO) provides a comparable and consistent measure of the likely evolution of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy trends in the world’s major economies. RCO results are reported as a full probability distribution of outcomes against which to assess not only the most likely future, but the full range of potential outcomes given the inherent uncertainty in future economic growth, fossil fuel prices, and clean energy technology costs.
This year’s edition of the RCO provides economy-wide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions projections for all regions of the world and each of the G20 economies under four scenarios:
1. The RCO Baseline illustrates what climate future the world is likely on track for absent a major acceleration in the pace of climate policy ambition or accelerated innovation in emerging technologies beyond their current trajectory. It is the starting point for assessing what additional action is needed to reach the global temperature goals in the Paris Agreement.
2. The Current NDC Scenario explores a future in which countries all meet their unconditional NDCs by 2030, but countries’ post-2030 levels of climate policy ambition largely follow the path they are on today.
3. The Current Mid-Century Commitments Scenario illustrates the outlook for global emissions and temperature if all countries meet their 2030 NDCs and all countries achieve emission reductions consistent with a straight-line path to their current nationally-determined targets of net-zero emissions or carbon neutrality by mid-century.
4. The Expanded Net-Zero Commitments Scenario goes even further by adding 2070 net-zero emissions commitments for all remaining countries and expanding commitments by those countries that have only set carbon neutrality commitments to cover all GHGs.
In the full report, we provide an overview of the results of our second annual Rhodium Climate Outlook. In Chapter 2, we outline the outlook for global emissions and global mean surface temperature rise under our four global emissions scenarios. Chapter 3 dives deeper into the regional and sectoral dynamics in our RCO Baseline scenario. Chapter 4 provides a framework for assessing baseline emissions of G20 economies through 2035 and compares that to a straight-line path to reaching each economy’s own mid-century targets.