COP31 climate report: warming set to pass 1.5C irreversibly, 2.7C by 2100

Warming path

The Climate Action Tracker (CAT) report, released on Wednesday, 11 November during COP31 in Antalya, Turkey, warns that the world is heading for an "irrecoverable overshoot" of the 1.5C limit set in the Paris Agreement unless governments cut emissions faster and stop supporting the fossil fuel industry. Policies currently in force put the world on course for 2.7C of warming by 2100, up slightly from the 2.6C estimated last year. Even if governments meet their 2030 and 2035 targets, warming would still reach 2.6C by the end of the century. Only an optimistic scenario, in which countries deliver all their pledges to cut emissions to zero overall, brings the figure down to 1.9C. Because the 1.5C threshold is expected to be exceeded within the next few years, the report says the priority is now to limit the size and duration of the overshoot and bring temperatures back below that level by 2100.

Current policies, last year2.6

Current policies2.7

2030 and 2035 targets met2.6

Optimistic scenario1.9

Current policies, last year

2.6 °C

Current policies

2.7 °C

2030 and 2035 targets met

2.6 °C

Optimistic scenario

1.9 °C

Data from the article text

Bill Hare, chief executive of Climate Analytics, a CAT partner organisation, urged governments not to treat the overshoot as a reason to give up.

“The imminence of breaching 1.5C cannot be an excuse to open the door to defeatism”

Stalled global action

Global climate action has flatlined for five years, the report finds, because positive and negative moves have cancelled each other out. The positive signs are real. In 2025 clean electricity covered all the extra global power demand, China and India deployed renewables at a record pace, electric vehicle uptake reached new highs, and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell sharply. Rising energy demand and new fossil fuel infrastructure, however, still push emissions up. The report notes that the five years after the 2015 Paris Agreement lowered projected warming by about one degree Celsius, while nothing has shifted since. Sarah Heck, the report's lead author, said the new set of pledges made last year has failed to change the projections. Niklas Höhne of the NewClimate Institute, another CAT partner, argued that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has exposed countries to geopolitical shocks, strengthening the case for renewables and electrification.

Cities push further than nations

The annual report of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (GCoM), presented at COP31, covers 14,139 cities and local governments from 150 countries, including 188 Portuguese participants. The alliance has doubled in size since 2016 and marks ten years of existence. Some 58% of its signatories have emission targets more ambitious than their national government's, and another 28% aim to meet them earlier. Over the past decade, 95% of new city targets exceeded the national ambition in force when they were set. If the cities' plans are delivered, annual emissions could fall by 4.8 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2050, and close to 7,500 signatories already have a climate action plan. Anne Hidalgo, GCoM global ambassador and former mayor of Paris, said in a statement that city ambition has not declined and that it was national commitments that went up.

Emissions reduction67%

Energy access and energy poverty12%

Emissions reduction

67 %

Energy access and energy poverty

12 %

Data from the article text

Energy poverty lags behind

The sharpest gap concerns households. Only 12% of GCoM signatories have recognised work on energy access and energy poverty, compared with 67% for emissions reduction. Energy poverty actions reported by cities rose 34% in a year to 3,711, outpacing the 21% growth in climate action overall. Actions focused solely on energy poverty, such as household support and housing improvements, grew by about 138%, but most of the total still concerns the energy efficiency of buildings. Energy poverty is also the smallest of the three recognition categories, although it grew by almost 10% over the last year.