With long-term goals and sectoral targets established in many countries, the focus of international energy and climate collaboration has shifted. The primary priority of collaboration is no longer articulating new commitments, but delivering outcomes within this decade. This shift has been most prominent in recent international processes, including the Conference of the Parties (COP), where the focus has moved towards mechanisms and initiatives intended to support delivery across sectors of the global economy.

In addition to emissions reductions, many governments are considering energy transitions for reasons of energy security, affordability and job creation. Against this backdrop, there is growing interest in how practical international collaboration can help advance these objectives. The Global Climate Action Agenda reflects this shift, placing greater emphasis on mobilising co-operation, aligning efforts and supporting action across key areas of the global climate and energy system through an approach that enables countries to collaborate without requiring universal consensus. The period leading up to the next Global Stocktake concluding in 2028 – when countries assess collective progress towards the Paris Agreement goals – represents a critical window to drive efforts across sectors and places a premium on delivery-oriented collaboration.

The collaboration landscape spans hundreds of initiatives, platforms and coalitions, involving governments, businesses and civil society. This reflects broad recognition that many energy system challenges cannot be addressed through national action alone. At COP 30 last year, hundreds of such initiatives came together to create Plans to Accelerate Solutions (PASs) intended to translate high‑level objectives into more concrete actions by identifying priority technologies, policy enablers and areas for collaboration across sectors and value chains. This report reviews a subset of the nearly 120 plans, examining how they translate shared objectives into actions, how they incorporate appropriate priorities for international collaboration, and how they can be strengthened to better support near-term implementation across the energy system.

Overall, the plans largely demonstrate a strong alignment with key levers for international collaboration that can address the challenges facing each sector. For example, hydrogen, steel, cement and concrete, and fertilisers are all sectors where strong international signals for investment are important for market growth for clean energy options. The related plans appropriately identify aggregated demand creation and standards interoperability as priority levers for international collaboration. In the road transport sector, plans identify international assistance with financing and investment in emerging markets as an area of focus, reflecting the importance of investment in charging infrastructure in emerging markets and developing economies. In the buildings sector, plans identify capacity and skills as an important lever, highlighting the importance of institutional capacity in order to update building codes and regulations. However, not all forms of international collaboration are equally well represented. Trade stands out as a lever that may be especially important to the transitions in sectors that are particularly exposed to international competition, such as steel and fertilisers, and that is not well addressed in current plans.

Three challenges are particularly apparent that will determine the extent to which these plans contribute to mobilising investment, deploying clean technologies, and advancing the transition. These are: i) the participation and leadership of governments; ii) clarity about the related roles of national action and international collaboration; and iii) alignment between desired outcomes and planned actions.  

The participation and leadership of governments in international initiatives is essential for the strongest forms of international co-operation to be realised. Similarly, government participation and leadership will be required for PASs to realise their potential as effective co-ordination frameworks that materially support implementation. Government leadership will be critical to ensure that identified actions in this new co-ordination mechanism translate into concrete policy, investment, and market signals, while working in partnership with private sector and other non-state actors that play a central role in implementation.

To date, national government involvement in the development of Plans to Accelerate Solutions has been limited and uneven across sectors. Many plans have been primarily shaped by international organisations and other non-government actors. Effective implementation depends on actors with decision-making authority, particularly governments, that can set policy frameworks, create demand, and mobilise and direct finance. Governments need to consider what role they are able to play in agreeing future iterations of these plans; ideally, the plan for a particular sector should be developed with the involvement of countries most able to positively influence the global transition in that sector, as well as those that may have less influence but much at stake.

Governments also need to consider which specific collaboration initiatives they can most usefully participate in, to advance both national interests and global transitions. Over the past 4 years, governments participating in the Breakthrough Agenda process have met regularly in sector-focused groups to discuss the state of international collaboration in each sector, and to identify the priority areas where further or different collaboration is needed. Ensuring that substantive, effective collaboration takes place will benefit from maintaining and strengthening such engagement processes. The Global Green Industrialization Agenda, as set out under the Belém Declaration on Global Green Industrialization, has been designed as a platform to continue this mode of engagement in some sectors. The governments that supported this declaration at COP 30 expressed their intention to work together in close alignment with the relevant Plans to Accelerate Solutions. If successful, this could help strengthen coherence across initiatives, strengthen government engagement, and support more co-ordinated delivery across sectors.

The effectiveness of the next phase of international collaboration will depend in large part on whether governments take a more active role in shaping, endorsing and implementing these plans. This report highlights areas where additional focus, co-ordination or sequencing at the international level could help unlock progress during this decisive phase of the transition.

Given that most policies that advance energy transitions are implemented at national and subnational levels, international collaboration adds value only when it is well-targeted and focused on opportunities that cannot be addressed through domestic action alone. These opportunities include the greater efficiency in global markets that can come from harmonised or interoperable standards, stronger investment signals that can be generated by aligned policies on procurement and trade, and greater finance mobilisation supported by international concessional lending. They can also include greater cross-border functioning of clean technologies through infrastructure connections (such as electricity interconnectors or electric truck charging networks) and faster policy and technology innovation that can come from the sharing of best practice.

Some parts of the Plans to Accelerate Solutions lack clarity about the respective roles of national and international action. This carries the risk of missing opportunities for an international process to play a helpful role. In the domestic policy-making process, governments have many other sources of advice to which they can turn. In this international process, with which most governments have relatively little capacity to engage, it is essential to be as specific as possible about the form of collaboration and the unique contribution that it can provide.

Many of the plans show a mismatch between the ambition of the intended outcomes stated, and the ability of proposed actions to deliver them. While many PASs articulate outcomes that clearly describe the desired transformation of a sector, the actions associated with those outcomes are often insufficient in scale, scope or authority to produce the implied level of change, particularly within the near‑term implementation window.

This outcome-action misalignment most commonly arises where actions remain focused on preparatory activities. Such preparatory activities typically involve studies, dialogues, frameworks or pledges, while intended outcomes assume the mobilisation of finance, deployment of infrastructure or establishment of bankable projects. Foundational activities are necessary for long‑term transition pathways, but on their own they do not constitute delivery mechanisms capable of shifting investment or deployment decisions at scale.

To go further, there is a need to sharpen the connection between intended outcomes and planned actions. This includes ensuring that high‑impact outcomes are supported by at least some actions that go beyond preparatory steps, clarifying the roles and authority of participating actors, and grounding expectations of international collaboration in its feasible practical effects rather than in the achievement of high-level targets.

As a first iteration of this approach, the Plans to Accelerate Solutions provide a useful foundation. Their design, governance and role in supporting delivery are likely to evolve as experience grows. The review in this report highlights a set of recurring design features that could strengthen the role of PASs in facilitating and prioritising international collaboration on sectoral transitions. These principles are drawn directly from observed practice across sectors and are intended as practical guidance rather than prescriptive requirements. Clear alignment between intended outcomes and actions, explicit allocation of roles, appropriate use of international collaboration levers, attention to sequencing, and well-resourced facilitators to ensure multi-year continuity between COPs will all be critical for translating collective intent into effective action.