The past year marked a key milestone in the Paris Agreement’s ratcheting mechanism, under which countries update their climate pledges every five years. As of 27 March 2026, more than 130 countries had submitted new NDCs out of the 194 parties to the Paris Agreement that had previously submitted NDCs under the UNFCCC framework, with the vast majority setting new targets for 2035. In total, these submissions cover close to 75% of today’s energy-related greenhouse gas emissions.

Some regions have not yet submitted, or have withdrawn, their updated commitments. In January 2025, the United States initiated the process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, effective from January 2026. The withdrawal implies the abandonment of the commitments made in April 2021 and December 2024, and this is reflected in the methodology and aggregate figures in this report. Countries accounting for around 85% and 45% of regional emissions in North Africa and the Middle East, respectively, also remain poorly covered by new NDCs.

The annual pace of mitigation in the new NDCs is, in aggregate, not significantly higher than in the revised 2030 NDCs submitted around COP26 in Glasgow. The IEA estimates that the new round of NDCs implies global energy-related CO₂ emissions continuing to increase by an average of 0.4% per year from 2024 to 2035, and declining slightly by 0.3% if conditional commitments are met in full and on time. This represents a net deceleration from historical levels of annual emissions growth, which have hovered around 1.1% since 2010, and from the first round of 2030 NDCs submitted in 2016 (0.6%). However, it also implies a slower pace of abatement than the previous round of revised 2030 NDCs set at Glasgow, which included targets implying annual emissions reductions of about 1% until 2030.

Advanced economies’ new NDCs imply the sharpest decrease in energy-related emissions, at 5.5% annually to 2035. They also represent the largest share of countries that have NDCs with mitigation rates aligned with their long-term climate pledges: 38 of the 41 advanced economies with a net zero emissions target have NDCs implying annual energy emissions reductions equal to, or greater than, the pace required to meet their long-term goals. The European Union has put forward a 66‑73% reduction target by 2035 relative to 1990 levels, in line with its 90% reduction target for 2040 and its net zero goal by 2050. Japan’s latest NDC also sets a target of 73% emissions reduction by 2040 relative to 2013 levels, consistent with the annual reductions required to meet its net zero target for 2050.

Most emerging markets and developing economies have pledged to reduce emissions against a baseline of faster growth, while still implying a net increase in energy sector emissions over the next decade. Emerging markets’ conditional NDCs point to slightly negative annual emissions growth of 0.03% to 2035, while developing economies indicate positive annual growth of 2.6%. For the latter group, this is a slight improvement relative to historical growth (3.1%) and the previous round of NDC updates (2.7%). Few developing economies have put forward ambitious pledges aligned with their long-term emissions reduction targets. One notable example is Nigeria, which has shifted away from a baseline approach to an absolute emissions reduction target, pledging to cut emissions by 32.2% by 2035 relative to 2018 levels.

Overall, the energy component of NDCs remains misaligned with the ambition of limiting the rise in global surface temperature to 1.5 °C by the end of the century.