A further acceleration of clean energy is needed for global CO2 emissions to peak and decline

Efforts to tackle climate change are taking place amidst a background of profound changes, with wars leading to upheavals in global energy markets, a shift in government priorities towards defence, high capital costs, barriers to trade, the boom in artificial intelligence (AI) and new data centres and also a retrenchment in some places from climate targets. The global transition to cleaner energy continues despite this1, with the rapid expansion of renewable energy2, batteries for storage1 and electrified transport3, supported by self-reinforcing feedback loops between falling costs and deployment4,5.

The acceleration in the energy transition has contributed to widespread decreases in fossil CO 2 emissions6,7,8. With data up to 2025 now available9, 59 countries emitted less in 2025 than before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019, while their economies grew (Fig. 1), 51% more than during 2004–2010 (39 countries; Extended Data Fig. 1). Although a decrease in emissions over such a short 6-year period does not necessarily mean that country emissions have peaked, the growing number of countries illustrate the geographical expansion of the energy transition across Europe, North America, parts of South America, Japan, South Korea, Australia and several middle-income countries such as South Africa, Thailand, Colombia and Mexico. Even in countries where total emissions have increased over the 2019–2025 period, growth in emissions has slowed in all regions including in China, India and other emerging economies10, and certain sectors appear to have arrived at or be near their peak, such as the road transport sector in China. Notably, CO 2 emissions in China—the largest contributor to global emissions (32% in 2025)—are projected to decrease 0.9% in 2026 (Fig. 1) and to be comparable to their 2023 levels.

Fig. 1: Annual trend in fossil CO 2 emissions by country over 2019–2025 (percentage per year, calculated as compound rate). Full size image Only countries with growing GDP are shown. The projected growth in emissions for the year 2026 is also shown for selected regions, with likely range in parenthesis. Equivalent maps for coal, oil and gas emissions are provided in Extended Data Fig. 2. Emissions data are from the 2026 update of the Global Carbon Budget10.

Despite the expansion of the energy transition1,2,3, global fossil CO 2 emissions continued to rise in 2025 (1.2%)10, but they are projected to decrease by 0.4% in 2026 (Fig. 1 and Methods). The 2026 decrease is driven by 1.9% and 0.3% decreases in emissions from oil and gas, respectively, which are partly offset by a 0.6% increase in emissions from coal (Fig. 2 and Extended Data Fig. 2). Here we quantify the effect of the recent and likely near-term trends in the energy transition and other drivers on global fossil CO 2 emissions to assess how they might influence the timing of global peak emissions.

Fig. 2: Annual fossil CO 2 emissions and projected underlying drivers (GtCO 2 ). Full size image a–d, Results show total emissions (a) and emissions from coal (b), oil (c) and gas (d) use. Historical emissions and the 2026 projection are from the 2026 update of the Global Carbon Budget10. The projected 2025–2028 contributions of clean technologies (in blue) are anchored in the year 2025. It includes the contributions of EVs (battery and hybrids) and solar and wind renewable energies (with a small contribution from EVs displacing diesel vehicles for gas). The present-deployment scenario holds annual EV sales and solar and wind capacity additions at their 2026 levels, whereas the accelerated-deployment scenario projects EV sales shares and solar and wind generation shares using logistic curves fitted to data from 2019 to 2026. The ranges around the EV and renewable energy projections reflect their sensitivity to key model assumptions. The contribution of demand factors is scaled to GDP projections. The ranges around the demand projections combine uncertainty from projected GDP growth and in the trend in counterfactual CO 2 intensity. The ranges in the combined drivers are the sum of the ranges of the separate drivers. Methods gives details and data sources.

We estimated the effects of electric vehicles (EVs) and solar and wind power renewable energy on global fossil CO 2 emissions as the emissions avoided at the country level, assuming that in their absence the same service would have been supplied by fossil fuels. All other drivers are represented by global gross domestic product (GDP) as a proxy for underlying demand growth and by a counterfactual CO 2 intensity of GDP, defined as actual plus avoided emissions divided by GDP, calculated separately for coal, oil and gas. The contributions of EVs, solar and wind power, GDP and counterfactual intensity sum exactly to the actual change in fossil CO 2 emissions (Methods).

We estimated the effect of EVs (including battery, plug-in hybrid and hybrid vehicles) by assuming that EV sales replace internal combustion vehicles and calculating the emissions avoided from 2010 to 2026 on the basis of available statistics11 (Methods). The effect is growing rapidly but remains small because the vehicle stock takes time to turn over, with only about 10% of the car fleet electrified in 2025 (6% excluding non-plug-in hybrids) and far less for vans and heavy-duty vehicles. Emissions avoided by EVs rose from 0.03 GtCO 2 in 2019 to 0.19 GtCO 2 in 2025 and a projected 0.24 GtCO 2 in 2026 (Extended Data Fig. 3). Despite their low numbers, other EVs account for 30% of the emissions avoided by EVs, because each replaces a vehicle with much higher fuel use. Avoided emissions in China (97 MtCO 2 ), the USA (30 MtCO 2 ) and the European Union (EU27; 27 MtCO 2 ) account for 82% of the 2025 total. Emissions avoided were large enough to slow the growth of global oil emissions, which rose by 0.38 GtCO 2 , compared with about 0.53 GtCO 2 in the counterfactual without EVs. However, the 0.05 GtCO 2 increase in avoided emissions in 2026 above 2025 accounts for only about 20% of the projected decrease in oil emissions, with most of the oil decrease probably reflecting the higher oil prices and supply constraints driven by conflicts in Iran and elsewhere (Methods).

We estimated the effect of renewable energy for solar and wind only, assuming that they displace coal and gas in electricity generation and using available statistics from Ember1 (Methods). Emissions avoided by renewable energy rose from 0.28 GtCO 2 in 2010 to 4.1 GtCO 2 in 2025 and a projected 4.6 GtCO 2 in 2026 (Extended Data Fig. 3). China accounts for half the 2025 total (2.1 GtCO 2 ), followed by the USA and EU27 (0.5 GtCO 2 each) and India (0.3 GtCO 2 ). In 2025, renewable energy accounted for about 95% of the total avoided emissions (renewable energy plus EVs). About three-quarters of the estimated avoided emissions come from displaced coal and one-quarter from displaced gas. The projected increase in coal emissions in 2026 (0.6%; 0.09 GtCO 2 ) occurs despite the continued growth in renewable energy, which, all else being equal would reduce coal emissions by 0.38 GtCO 2 and probably reflects underlying demand drivers. For gas, the effect of renewable energy (0.11 GtCO 2 ) more than accounts for the projected decrease in emissions (0.3%; 0.03 GtCO 2 ).

Many factors besides avoided emissions influence the growth of CO 2 emissions, including energy demand primarily associated with development4, but also new demand sources (such as the production of batteries, the electricity used by EVs and new data centres), energy efficiency and changes in the fossil fuel mix (for example, from coal to gas) and in the wider energy mix (for example, year-to-year variability in hydro and nuclear output). We estimated the combined influence of these other drivers by comparing the growth rate of CO 2 emissions with that of GDP, following a Kaya Identity approach12 (Methods and Extended Data Fig. 4). Without the emissions avoided by EVs and renewable energy, we estimate that global CO 2 emissions would have grown by 1.9% per year on average during 2019–2025 driven by economic growth and changes in the CO 2 intensity of the economy. This is more than double their actual growth of 0.8% per year. The AI-driven expansion of data centres plays only a minor role in the growing demand in 2025 (0.03 GtCO 2 , which is 2% of the demand-related emissions; Methods).

We then project the contributions of each driver between 2025 and 2028. Emissions avoided by EVs and renewable energy are projected by fuel type under present- and accelerated-deployment scenarios, both using available statistics for the year 2026 (Methods). For years 2027 and 2028, the present-deployment scenario holds annual EV sales and solar and wind capacity additions at their 2026 levels, while the accelerated-deployment scenario projects EV sales shares and solar and wind generation shares using logistic curves fitted to data from 2019 to 2026 (Extended Data Tables 1 and 2). For the demand-related drivers, we extrapolate the counterfactual CO 2 intensity of GDP for each fuel and multiply it by projected GDP (International Monetary Fund (IMF)13). Projected emissions for each fuel are then the product of GDP and counterfactual fuel-specific intensity, minus the projected avoided emissions (Fig. 2). The envelope of projections reflects the plausible ranges of GDP growth, the intensity trend and the deployment of EVs and solar and wind power, but it does not account for short-term fluctuations such as the expected recovery from the 2026 energy shock, which would come on top of these trends.

The near-term projection to 2028 shows that energy transition drivers are not yet strong enough to overcome the anticipated emissions from demand growth (Fig. 2). Between 2025 and 2028, GDP and intensity trends alone would increase emissions by 2.59 GtCO 2 , of which EVs and solar and wind power offset 1.64 GtCO 2 (63%) in the present-deployment scenario and 2.04 (79%) in the accelerated-deployment scenario. For year 2026 alone, EVs and renewable energy offset about two-thirds (69%) of the demand-related growth (Extended Data Figs. 5 and 6). For coal, in the accelerated case, the rapid growth of solar and wind power offsets the strong underlying growth from demand and projected emissions fall slightly by 2028. For gas, solar and wind power offset about half the underlying increase, so that emissions continue to grow in both scenarios when all drivers are combined. For oil, EVs offset more than half the underlying (pre-Iran) increase from demand growth, but only because this increase is itself small. The effect of EVs is now small relative to total oil emissions because of the slow turnover of the vehicle fleet and the concentration of EV adoption in passenger cars, but it is expected to grow over time. Those trends are consistent with the International Energy Agency (IEA) World Energy Outlook 202514 (Stated Policies Scenario), in which coal demand peaks and declines before 2030, gas demand keeps growing into the 2030s and oil demand flattens by the end of this decade. The envelope of scenarios shows that decreasing emissions could occur already from 2026, but this would require an unlikely combination of low GDP growth, low CO 2 intensity of GDP, accelerated clean technology deployment and the high range of assumptions used in this calculation (Extended Data Tables 3 and 4).

The underlying drivers projected here take into account trends that are mostly before the Iran war, which has led to increases in oil prices and supply constraints that probably explain the large decrease in oil emissions in 2026. The associated energy shock masks the underlying structural drivers of emissions. This conflict has had widespread consequences, from governments cutting fuel taxes to increases in supply elsewhere (particularly US crude and products) to shifts to EVs and renewables as governments attempt to reduce dependence on volatile international energy markets. Some of these responses push emissions up and others down, adding to the strong opposing drivers that mask the timing of peak emissions.