G20 countries are not on track to meet their Paris agreement pledges (UNEP)

According to an advance chapter of the 2019 Emissions Gap Report produced by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), G20 economies, which account for 80% of GHG emissions, are not on course to achieve their Paris Agreement commitments. Indeed, those countries would need to reduce their emissions by an extra 2.5 GtCO₂eq/year by 2030 to meet their unconditional NDCs and by 3.5 GtCO₂eq/year to reach the targets of their conditional NDCs. So far, too few countries have committed to net-zero GHG emission targets and national commitments to fully decarbonise power supplies account for less than 1% of global CO₂ emissions from power generation.

However, G20 country can rapidly ramp up action when they submit their next round of NDCs in 2020, by taking advantage of technological and economic developments to decarbonize their economies, maximizing the synergies between climate action and development objectives, and building on a surge of climate action commitments by non-state actors. Concrete options for G20 economies to consider include among others policy recommendations by UNEP, a ban on all new coal-fired power plants in China, regulations to refrain from investment in fossil fuel infrastructure in the European Union, a commitment to full decarbonisation of the energy supply by 2050 in Brazil, as well as vehicle and fuel economy standards that target zero emissions from new cars in 2030 in the United States.