WASHINGTON (October 22, 2025) – A major new assessment finds that the world is stalling on progress to limit warming to 1.5°C, with none of the 45 indicators of climate action on track for 2030.
While most are heading in the right direction, the State of Climate Action 2025 report warns that the pace and scale of progress are alarmingly inadequate — exposing communities, economies and ecosystems to unacceptable risks. From protecting forests to phasing out coal and ending public finance for fossil fuels, the world is failing to act fast enough to combat the climate crisis and secure a livable future.
“All systems are flashing red,” said Clea Schumer, Research Associate at WRI and co-lead author of the report. “A decade of delay has dangerously narrowed the path to 1.5°C. Steady progress isn’t enough anymore — every year we fail to speed up, the gap widens and the climb gets steeper. There's simply no time left for hesitation or half measures.”
Published under Systems Change Lab, the report is a joint effort of the Bezos Earth Fund, Climate Analytics, ClimateWorks Foundation, the Climate High-Level Champions, and World Resources Institute. It provides the most comprehensive roadmap yet for closing the global gap in climate action across key sectors. The analysis offers a guide for countries to follow through on their new national climate commitments, the Global Stocktake and announcements made at COP30.
The report translates the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit into clear, actionable targets for 2030, 2035, and 2050, and tracks global progress toward them across the sectors responsible for most emissions — power, buildings, industry, transport, forests and land, and food and agriculture. It also grades efforts to scale up carbon removal technologies and climate finance.
Of the 45 indicators assessed:
- Six are “off track,” moving in the right direction but not quite fast
- Twenty-nine are “well off track,” moving in the right direction but far too slowly
- Five are headed in the wrong direction entirely, demanding an urgent course correction
- Five lack sufficient data to even assess progress
Since the 2023 edition of the State of Climate Action report, several key trends have changed. Electric vehicles (EVs) are still growing rapidly and made up a record 22% of global passenger car sales in 2024, up from 4.4% in 2020, but growth has slowed in some major markets such as Europe and the United States. As a result, EVs’ share of global passenger car sales — previously the only indicator “on track” — has been downgraded to “off track.”
Private climate finance, on the other hand, rose so sharply that this year’s report upgraded progress from “well off track” to “off track". These funds climbed from roughly $870 billion in 2022 to a record $1.3 trillion in 2023, with individuals, businesses and investors, particularly in China and Western Europe, driving much of the gains.
Alarmingly, progress on some of the world’s most consequential indicators has not budged across multiple consecutive reports. Public finance for fossil fuels has increased by an average of $75 billion per year since 2014, reaching more than $1.5 trillion in 2023. Deforestation, which had declined earlier in the decade, is once again rising, and coal as a share of electricity generation has fallen only slightly in recent years, as it has been unable to keep pace with record-high electricity demand.
“We’re not just falling behind — we’re effectively flunking the most critical subjects,” said Sophie Boehm, Senior Research Associate at World Resources Institute and co-lead author of the report. “As this global report card shows, we have barely moved the needle on phasing out coal or halting deforestation, while public finance still props up fossil fuels. These actions aren’t optional; they’re the bare minimum needed to combat the climate crisis and protect humanity.”
Keeping the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal within reach demands tremendous acceleration in climate action across every sector. Warming beyond 1.5°C, even temporarily, will only intensify already devastating impacts and increase the risk of irreversible damage. For example, by 2030, the world must:
- Phase out coal more than ten times faster — equivalent to retiring nearly 360 average-sized coal-fired power plants each year and halting all projects in the pipeline.
- Reduce deforestation nine times faster. Current levels are far too high — roughly equivalent to permanently losing nearly 22 football (soccer) fields of forest every minute in 2024.
- Expand rapid transit networks five times faster — equivalent to building at least 1,400 km (870 miles) of light rail, metro, and bus lanes annually.
- Reduce beef and lamb consumption in high-consuming regions five times faster — equivalent to reducing consumption by 2 or fewer servings per week in North and South America, Australia and New Zealand.
- Scale technological carbon removal more than ten times faster — equivalent to building nine of the largest direct air capture facilities currently under construction each month.
- Increase climate finance by nearly $1 trillion annually — equivalent to roughly two-thirds of public fossil fuel finance in 2023.
Amid these sobering findings, the report also highlights encouraging pockets of progress. Beyond the jump in private climate finance, the global share of electricity from solar and wind has more than tripled since 2015, making solar the fastest-growing source of power in history. Clean energy investment exceeded fossil fuel investment for the second consecutive year in 2024. Emerging technologies that were no more than ideas or small-scale pilot projects a decade ago, such as green hydrogen and technological carbon dioxide removal, saw some of the most significant one-year gains, and with the right support, could approach mainstream breakthrough. Green hydrogen production, for example, more than quadrupled in a single year.
“Ten years after the Paris Agreement, the data show both how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go,” said Kelly Levin, Chief of Science, Data and Systems Change at the Bezos Earth Fund and Co-Director of Systems Change Lab. “It’s hopeful that clean energy investment is now outpacing fossil fuels and new technologies are taking off — proof that progress is possible when ambition and investment align. The challenge is to scale these successes and reverse the setbacks.”
That momentum is encouraging, but it’s still far from enough. Even maintaining current growth rates will fall short for 2030. For example, while the share of solar and wind power has grown at an impressive annual rate of 13% since 2020, that rate must more than double — to 29% annually — to reach its 2030 target. The report warns that each year that progress fails to accelerate, the climate action gap widens.