Current national climate action plans will only deliver half of the renewable energy growth needed to meet global climate goals, according to a recent report from the International Renewable Energy Agency.
IRENA’s 2024 World Energy Transitions Outlook found that the emission reduction plans set through the Paris Agreement’s nationally determined contributions (NDCs) won’t be enough to keep the global temperature from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius by midcentury.
“We have reached crunch time,” said Francesco La Camera, the director-general of IRENA, in a press release. “A robust global finance deal and the next NDCs in 2025 are ‘make or break’ moments to keep 1.5°C alive.”
IRENA’s report comes as the U.N. climate summit known as COP29 begins in Azerbaijan, where the U.S. and other countries seek to assure the world that climate action will continue after President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and pledged to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.
