The UN's NDC Synthesis Sees Global Emissions About 10% Below 2019 by 2035 on the Widest Available Count

The UN climate secretariat published its 2025 Nationally Determined Contributions Synthesis Report on 28 October, two weeks before COP30 opens in Belém. The report assesses the new national climate plans, covering targets for 2035, that parties to the Paris Agreement had formally submitted by 30 September. To give a wider view, the secretariat carried out additional calculations that also capture new NDCs and targets submitted or announced up to the report's publication, including those announced at the UN Secretary-General's Climate Summit in New York in September.

Stiell said the new generation of NDCs showed a step change in quality, credibility and economic breadth. Stiell also said that humanity is now clearly bending the emissions curve downwards for the first time, while adding that progress is still far too slow. The submissions included in the core synthesis come from countries that filed by 30 September. The European Union had not submitted its NDC by the cut-off, as member states were still negotiating the 2040 climate target from which the 2035 figure is to be derived.

The UNFCCC's figures differ from those produced by other organisations because of differences in coverage, baseline years and methods. A 10% reduction from 2019 levels by 2035 is well short of the cuts that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change associates with limiting warming to 1.5°C or 2°C. The global stocktake at COP28 noted that limiting warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot requires cuts of 60% from 2019 levels by 2035. For energy markets, the synthesis report is a summary of signals rather than a forecast.

The report also notes that new NDCs increasingly include elements on Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which governs international carbon markets. For energy projects in developing countries, Article 6 can provide an additional revenue stream, for example for renewable generation, methane capture or efficient cookstoves, if the host government authorises the transfer of the resulting credits. Many of the new NDCs include language on a just transition, the management of social and economic effects on workers and regions that depend on fossil fuel industries.