Production Gap Report

The Production Gap Report tracks the discrepancy between the volume of coal, oil, and gas that national governments plan to produce and the levels that would be consistent with the Paris Agreement's temperature goals of holding warming well below 2°C and pursuing 1.5°C. First published in 2019, it is produced by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), ODI (formerly the Overseas Development Institute), E3G, and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with contributions from dozens of academic researchers.

The report is a deliberate counterpart to UNEP's older Emissions Gap Report. While the Emissions Gap Report measures the shortfall in pledged greenhouse-gas reductions, the Production Gap Report focuses on the supply side of the climate problem — extraction plans embedded in national energy strategies, state-owned enterprise budgets, licensing rounds, and public finance.

Key findings across editions have included:

• Governments collectively plan to produce roughly double the fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with a 1.5°C pathway.
• The gap is largest for coal, but oil and gas plans also exceed 1.5°C-aligned trajectories.
• Major producing states profiled include the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, India, Australia, Canada, Brazil, Indonesia, Norway, the United Arab Emirates, and others.

The report assesses national plans against IPCC-derived benchmark scenarios, drawing on government documents, state-owned company disclosures, and modelling. It also tracks public finance flows to fossil fuel production and policies such as exploration subsidies, export credit support, and just-transition frameworks.

For MUN delegates and researchers, the Production Gap Report is a standard citation in debates on Article 2 and Article 4 of the Paris Agreement, fossil fuel subsidy reform under the G20 and WTO, and proposals such as the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty initiative. It is frequently referenced in UNFCCC negotiations on the global stocktake and the "transition away from fossil fuels" language adopted at COP28 in Dubai (2023).