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The Financial Times has created a searchable dashboard of 193 countries’ historical emissions and future climate targets, providing information on the energy mix that indicates their progress on renewable energy.
The database is in its fifth iteration, after being first published at the time of the UN COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021. It uses data from Climate Watch, the International Energy Agency and the UN. The top five emitters are spotlighted — but typing any country name will yield its data.
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Legally-binding country targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are formally called nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and are recorded on the UN global registry.
These national commitments were to be updated by February 10, 2025, ahead of the ten year anniversary of the Paris climate agreement to limit global warming.
Only a handful of countries made that deadline but the remainder were put under pressure to submit plans by the time of the COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil. Still outstanding by the time of the summit was India — a big emitter on an overall basis, although not on a per capita basis.
The agreement has been undermined by the withdrawal of the US under President Trump from the Paris accord for the second time, combined with his pledge to expand oil and gas production.
China, the world’s largest emitter, has also disappointed with an emissions reduction goal which was at the bottom of the expected range. Although it boasts an unparalleled surge into renewable energy and electric vehicles, it remains heavily dependent on coal power for its expanding economy.
The slow progress by the biggest polluters comes despite the need for deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to limit the global average long term temperature rise ideally to 1.5C from pre-industrial levels, or to well below 2C, as agreed under the Paris accord in 2015.
Already the temperature rise is estimated at 1.3C, according to the UN. This is measured over a period of more than two decades.
Measured over the past year alone, the temperature rise has exceeded 1.5C. The latest UN report warned that the world was on course for a rise of 2.8C by the end of the century based on existing government policies. This is fractionally below its previous annual assessment.
Globally, the only decline in emissions since the Paris agreement came in 2020 as a result of the pandemic shutdowns interrupting human activity, when they fell about 7 per cent.
China accounts for about 27 per cent of the world’s CO2e emissions, followed by the US, India, Russia and Brazil. Combined these five nations account for half of the world’s annual emissions.
The choice of different baseline years by a country in setting its goals is another of the complexities, making direct comparisons difficult. Baseline years often coincide with historical peaks in national emissions.
The less stringent measure of carbon intensity is also used by developing countries, such as India, to design targets that allow for economic growth. It is calculated per unit of GDP, to take into account the rise of emissions through economic expansion.
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