The Emissions Gap Report 2026 warns that the 1.5°C warming threshold is now unattainable, intensifying climate risks.
Fossil fuel emissions continue to rise despite a slight decline in global GHG emissions.
This highlights the urgent need for accelerated mitigation efforts to minimize overshoot and return to safer levels by the century's end.
The world will continue to live with the perilous impacts of global warming fuelled by uncontrolled release of greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere.
“The chance of holding global warming to below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels with no or limited overshoot is gone,” flags the Emissions Gap Report 2026: The Point of Return, the 17th edition of the global assessment of GHGs emission published by the United nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
Crossing the 1.5°C guardrail set under the Paris Agreement would further intensify the climate emergency.
The UNEP warns that “every additional fraction of a degree and additional year of warming above 1.5°C raises climate risks.” The cap of 1.5°C, anyway, has never been considered safe.
The “Emission Gap Report” comes at a time when countries across the world are breaching historic temperature records. In 2024, the world for first time recorded temperature rise above 1.5°C.
September 2026 was the second hottest month on record. The global average temperature for the month was 16.27°C — 0.82°C above 1991-2020 average & 1.63°C above pre-industrial levels. August 2026 has been one of the hottest months ever recorded, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Services.
The annual assessment of UNEP shows that global GHGs emissions have registered a slight decline in 2025 from 2024 levels. “Global GHG emissions reached a total of 58.4 gigatons of CO₂ equivalent (Gt CO₂e) (range: ±5.5) in 2025,” according to the assessment. This is a decline of 0.1 Gt CO₂e from 2024 levels.
More than two-thirds of all GHGs emissions are from fossil sources; rest being CO₂ from the land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF), methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gas emissions (F-gases).
The marginal decline in overall emissions, however, masks a worrying trend: CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels continued to rise in 2025.
“CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel combustion of oil, coal and gas, and nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases emissions continued to increase in 2025, while methane emissions remained almost the same as in 2024,” says the “Emission Gap Report 2026”.
These increases (in fossil CO₂ emissions) were offset by a decrease in CO₂ emissions from LULUCF sector of about 0.5 Gt CO₂e, says the assessment adding, “The decrease in LULUCF CO₂ emissions was partially driven by a decline in biomass-burning emissions, including a decline in global wildfire carbon emissions in 2025, compared with the exceptionally active 2024 season.”
Global emissions are not peaking or plateauing, warns the assessment, noting, “Collectively, G20 members, excluding the African Union, account for 76 per cent of global emissions, and their emissions excluding LULUCF increased by 0.7 per cent in 2025.”
Sixty-three countries have decreased their GHGs emissions over the past decade. However, 124 countries have increased emissions. “Several countries with high per capita and historical emissions have still to peak their emissions,” says the assessment.
The definitive conclusion from the assessment is that the goal should now be accelerate mitigation to achieve 1.5°C target by the end of the 21st century. “The task now is to minimize the duration and magnitude of overshoot and return to 1.5°C by the end of the century.”
In its scenario of “lowest possible 1.5°C overshoot” articulation, the assessment says, “to get onto this pathway, global GHG emissions would have to be cut by 18 per cent by 2030, 45 per cent by 2035 and 69 per cent by 2040, relative to 2025 levels. Large-scale removals of CO₂ from the atmosphere will be required to return to or below 1.5°C.”
“The main takeaway is simple - governments need to get on with enacting policies that cut fossil fuel use as soon as possible," says Climate Analytics, Bill Hare, CEO of the global science and policy institute. "Our own analysis shows that if governments act with the highest possible ambition, we can halt global warming by mid-century close to 1.7°C and bring it back significantly below 1.5°C by the end of the century,” he adds.
