Governments, corporations, and communities around the world are pursuing climate action on multiple fronts simultaneously: shifting energy systems to renewables, electrifying transportation, pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, restoring forests, and holding each other to binding emission targets. No single strategy is enough on its own, but together these efforts form an increasingly coordinated global response. Here’s where things stand.
The Paris Agreement and National Targets
The backbone of international climate policy is the Paris Agreement, signed by nearly every country on Earth. Its central goal is to hold global warming well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, with a more ambitious target of limiting warming to 1.5°C. To stay within that 1.5°C threshold, greenhouse gas emissions need to drop 43% by 2030 compared to recent levels.
The agreement works on a five-year cycle. Every few years, each country submits an updated climate action plan, called a nationally determined contribution, that’s supposed to be more ambitious than the last one. The idea is a ratcheting mechanism: collective ambition increases over time as technology improves and political will grows. Major economies have set long-term net-zero targets. The European Union aims for climate neutrality by 2050. The United States set a federal target of net-zero emissions from government operations by 2050, with a 65% reduction by 2030. China has pledged carbon neutrality by 2060, and India by 2070.
Whether these pledges translate into real-world results is the central tension of climate policy. Current national plans, taken together, still fall short of what’s needed to limit warming to 1.5°C. But the framework exists, and the pressure to strengthen commitments is constant.
Renewable Energy Is Scaling Fast
The shift away from fossil fuels in electricity generation is arguably the most visible area of progress. Solar panels and wind turbines together accounted for about 15% of global electricity generation in 2024, up from just 4% a decade earlier. That share is expected to reach 17% in 2025 and surpass 19% in 2026. To put the growth in perspective, the additional electricity from wind and solar projected for 2026 alone is roughly equivalent to the entire annual electricity consumption of Japan.
This growth is driven largely by economics. Solar panel costs have plummeted over the past decade, making solar the cheapest source of new electricity in most parts of the world. Countries are building renewable capacity not only to meet climate targets but because it makes financial sense. The challenge ahead is less about generating clean electricity and more about storing it, upgrading power grids to handle variable supply, and extending clean energy into sectors like heating and heavy industry that still rely heavily on fossil fuels.
Electric Vehicles Are Going Mainstream
Transportation accounts for a large share of global emissions, and electrifying cars is the primary strategy for cutting them. More than one in four cars sold worldwide in 2025 is expected to be electric. By 2030, that figure is on course to exceed 40%, or roughly two in five cars sold.
China is the clear leader: electric cars accounted for almost half of all car sales there in 2024. In the United States, electric vehicle sales grew about 10% year over year, reaching more than one in ten cars sold. Europe’s market share held around 20%, though growth stalled as some countries pulled back subsidies and supportive policies. The trend is unmistakable globally, though, and falling battery prices are making electric vehicles increasingly competitive with gasoline cars even without government incentives.
Beyond passenger cars, electrification is spreading to buses, delivery trucks, and two-wheelers in many countries. Charging infrastructure remains a bottleneck in some regions, but investment is accelerating.
Pulling Carbon Out of the Air
Even with aggressive emission cuts, most climate models show that some amount of carbon dioxide will need to be actively removed from the atmosphere. Direct air capture is the most talked-about technology for doing this. These facilities use chemical processes to filter CO₂ directly from ambient air, then store it permanently underground or in mineral form.
The technology works, but it’s still small in scale. The world’s first and largest operational direct air capture plant, run by a company called Climeworks, operates in Iceland using entirely renewable energy. The industry’s stated ambition is to reach billion-ton-scale removal by 2050, but current capacity removes only a tiny fraction of that. Costs remain high, and scaling up requires enormous amounts of clean energy. New facilities are being proposed and built, including expansions in the United States, but direct air capture is best understood as a complement to emission reductions, not a substitute.
Restoring Forests and Natural Landscapes
Nature already has its own carbon removal system: photosynthesis. Trees, wetlands, and soils absorb billions of tons of CO₂ every year, and restoring degraded ecosystems can significantly increase that absorption. Reforestation is consistently ranked among the most effective and cost-efficient strategies for reducing atmospheric CO₂.
How much carbon a reforested area absorbs depends on tree species, climate, and soil conditions, but estimates for U.S. reforestation projects range from about 1.1 to 7.7 metric tons of CO₂ per acre per year. A mature stand of Ponderosa Pine, for example, can store up to 175 metric tons of CO₂ per hectare over its lifetime. Countries around the world have committed to large-scale reforestation and forest protection programs, and initiatives to restore peatlands, mangroves, and grasslands are expanding as well. These ecosystems store carbon for decades or centuries when left intact, but release it rapidly when destroyed, which is why preventing deforestation is just as important as planting new trees.
Cutting Methane Emissions
Carbon dioxide gets the most attention, but methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas in the short term, trapping roughly 80 times more heat than CO₂ over a 20-year period. It leaks from oil and gas infrastructure, rises from landfills, and is released by livestock and rice farming.
Over 150 countries have joined the Global Methane Pledge, agreeing to work toward reducing global methane emissions at least 30% from 2020 levels by 2030. The actions are voluntary, but the pledge has focused attention on relatively straightforward fixes: detecting and repairing leaks at oil and gas wells, capturing methane from landfills, and changing practices in agriculture. Because methane breaks down in the atmosphere much faster than CO₂, cutting methane emissions delivers quicker cooling effects than almost any other climate intervention.
Decarbonizing Heavy Industry
Steel, cement, and chemical manufacturing are among the hardest sectors to decarbonize because they require extremely high temperatures and use fossil fuels as raw materials, not just energy sources. Green hydrogen, produced using renewable electricity to split water, is one of the leading solutions. It can replace coal in steelmaking and serve as a clean feedstock in chemical production.
Progress here has been uneven. The International Energy Agency reports that tenders for low-emission hydrogen in the European steel sector were delayed or paused in 2024, while projects tied to refining and fertilizer production moved forward with final investment decisions in both Europe and India. Most firm agreements for low-emission hydrogen so far involve refining, chemicals, and shipping fuel rather than steel. Indonesia and Vietnam are seen as major opportunities for green hydrogen in steel production to meet growing regional demand. The technology is proven at pilot scale, but bringing costs down and building supply chains at industrial scale remains a significant challenge.
Corporate Commitments and Accountability
Climate action isn’t only driven by governments. Over 10,000 companies worldwide now have validated science-based emission reduction targets through the Science Based Targets initiative, with nearly 13,000 total businesses holding targets or commitments. These targets are independently assessed to confirm they align with the pace of reductions needed to meet Paris Agreement goals.
Corporate commitments cover everything from switching to renewable electricity and electrifying vehicle fleets to redesigning supply chains and sourcing materials differently. The credibility of these pledges varies. Some companies have made deep operational changes, while others rely heavily on carbon offsets or push their most meaningful targets far into the future. Investor pressure, regulatory requirements for climate-related financial disclosures, and consumer expectations are all tightening the screws on corporate accountability, making it harder to announce ambitious targets without following through.
How It All Fits Together
No single policy, technology, or project will solve climate change. What’s happening instead is a shift across every major sector of the global economy, happening at different speeds in different places. Renewable energy and electric vehicles are scaling rapidly because they’ve become economically competitive. Carbon removal and industrial decarbonization are earlier in their development and need more investment and policy support. International agreements set the framework, but actual progress depends on national laws, corporate decisions, and the price of clean alternatives compared to fossil fuels.
The gap between current efforts and what’s needed to meet 1.5°C remains significant. But the direction is clear, the tools exist, and the pace of change in key sectors like electricity and transportation has consistently exceeded predictions from just a few years ago.