Methodology Underpinning the State of Climate Action Series: 2024 Update

This Technical Note is part of Systems Change Lab within Climate, Energy, Food, Forests, WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities, Finance, Clean Energy, Buildings, Forest and Landscape Restoration and Tracking Climate Action. Reach out to an Initiative Expert for more information.

Limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C requires transformational change across power, buildings, industry, transport, forests and land and food and agriculture as well as the immediate scale-up of carbon removal technologies and climate finance. The State of Climate Action series provides an overview of the world's collective efforts to accelerate these far-reaching transitions. We first translate each sectoral transformation into a set of actionable, 1.5°C-aligned targets for 2030, 2035 and 2050, with associated indicators and datasets. Annual installments of the report then compare recent progress made toward (or away from) these mitigation goals with the pace of change required to achieve 2030 targets to quantify the global gap in climate action. While a similar effort is warranted to evaluate adaptation efforts, we limit this series' scope to tracking progress made in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

This technical note accompanies the State of Climate Action series, with the latest installment published in 2023. It describes our methods for identifying sectors that must transform, translating these transformations into global mitigation targets primarily for 2030, 2035 and 2050 and selecting indicators with datasets to monitor annual change. It also outlines our approach for assessing the world's progress made toward near-term targets and categorizing recent efforts as on track, off track, well off track, heading in the wrong direction or insufficient data. Finally, it details how we compare trends over time, as well as limitations to our methodology.

This year's technical note features several changes to the technical note we published alongside the State of Climate Action 2023. Key updates include the following: the addition of global, 1.5°C-aligned targets for 2035 for 16 indicators, bringing the total number of indicators with targets for this year to nearly two-thirds of the 43 indicators; clarification on the methods used to filter scenarios from the integrated assessment models included in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Sixth Assessment Report; the inclusion of a new indicator on the share of wind and solar power in electricity generation; and revisions to 2030 and/or 2050 targets for four transport sector indicators to account for analysis from more recent modelling and literature.