State of Climate Action 2023

• To support the Global Stocktake, this report translates the Paris Agreement’s temperature limit into 1.5°C-aligned targets across sectors and offers a frank assessment of recent progress toward them.
• This sectoral report card shows that transformations are not occurring at the required pace and scale. Only 1 of 42 indicators assessed—the share of electric vehicles in passenger car sales—is on track to reach its 2030 target. And while change is heading in the right direction for nearly three-quarters of the indicators, the pace remains promising but insufficient for 6 and at well below the required speed for another 24. For 6, recent trends are heading in the wrong direction entirely, and data are insufficient to evaluate the remaining 5.
• But even when change is heading in the right direction, getting on track for 2030 will require an enormous acceleration in effort. Coal-fired power, for example, needs to be phased out seven times faster. Deforestation rates must decline four times faster. And increases in the ratio of investment in low-carbon to fossil fuel energy supply need to occur more than ten times faster.
• Progress made in adopting zero-carbon technologies—solar and wind power, heat pumps, and electric vehicles, for example—shows that, fortunately, rapid, nonlinear change is not only possible but already underway in some sectors. And this assessment accounts for such change.
• Nearly halfway through this decisive decade, leaders must pick up the pace and shift into emergency mode. They must nurture rapid, nonlinear growth, accelerate progress, and expand much-needed support to all sectors, especially those lagging furthest behind.