Emissions Gap Report

The Emissions Gap Report is a flagship annual assessment published by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) since 2010. It quantifies the difference between where global greenhouse gas emissions are projected to be in a given target year (typically 2030) under current policies and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and where they would need to be to keep warming within the Paris Agreement's limits of well below 2°C and ideally 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

The report draws on modelling teams worldwide and is typically released shortly before the annual UN Climate Change Conference (COP), giving negotiators a common scientific baseline. It tracks several variables:

• Current emissions trajectories and historical trends across major emitters (G20 economies in particular).
• Conditional and unconditional NDC pledges submitted under the Paris Agreement.
• Net-zero commitments and their credibility.
• The "gap" itself — measured in gigatonnes of CO₂-equivalent (GtCO₂e) — between pledged action and required action.

Successive editions have consistently found that pledges fall short of the 1.5°C pathway. The 2023 edition, titled Broken Record, found that fully implementing unconditional NDCs would still put the world on track for roughly 2.9°C of warming this century. The 2024 edition, No more hot air … please!, reported that global GHG emissions reached a new high in 2023.

For Model UN delegates and IR researchers, the report is a standard citation when arguing about climate ambition, equity in burden-sharing, and the credibility of mitigation pledges. It is distinct from the IPCC Assessment Reports (which synthesise peer-reviewed climate science) and the UNFCCC NDC Synthesis Report (which aggregates only submitted pledges). The Emissions Gap Report combines both perspectives to produce a single policy-relevant gap figure.