The United Nations Environment Programme says 1.5C with limited overshoot is no longer achievable. What is left is a deep overshoot that has to be clawed back. Test your own sense of the gap first.
Index, 2025 = 100. Lines between milestones are straight lines I drew (own interpolation); only 2030, 2035 and 2040 are reported figures. No pledge figure for 2040 appears in the coverage I read, so the pledge band ends at 2035.
Projected warming by 2100 under each scenario (UNEP via PBL). The overshoot pathway peaks at 1.7 to 1.8C around mid-century and returns to 1.5C by 2100 with a 50% chance.
Own calculation: UNEP reports that every five years of CO2 emissions at current levels adds about 0.1C to peak warming. I scale that linearly and add it to the 1.7 to 1.8C overshoot peak. It is an illustration, not a UNEP projection.
| Item | Figure |
|---|---|
| CO2 to remove and store permanently this century to return to 1.5C | about 320 Gt |
| Equal to years of 2024 global CO2 emissions | about 8 years |
| Implied emissions per year (my division, 320 / 8) | about 40 Gt |
| Average yearly cut needed, 2025 to 2035 | 5.7% per year |
| Yearly cut implied by full NDCs, 2025 to 2035 (own compounding of 11 to 15%) | 1.2 to 1.6% per year |
| Renewable electricity capacity growth since Paris vs expected | 3x faster |
| Solar PV build-out since Paris vs expected | 7x faster |
| Reduction from carbon pricing and emissions trading, sectors examined | 5 to 13% |
| Why projections got worse than last year | US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and revised historical emissions |
Other 2035 targets in the pathway versus 2025: renewable capacity at least 3x, energy intensity of GDP at least 30% lower, methane at least 25% lower. By 2040: renewables 4.5x, coal supply down 75%, oil 30%, gas 35%, methane 40%.
The UNEP website (unep.org) returned HTTP 403 to my tools, so I could not open the report itself. All figures come from two secondary sources I did open on 27 Oct 2026, both summarising the report published 21 Oct 2026: PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, a modelling contributor to the report, and Renewable Matter. Check the numbers against the UNEP report page when it is reachable. Calculations marked "own" are mine. Reference year for all cuts is 2025.