There’s a $10 Trillion Antidote to Trump’s Climate Backlash
A decade-long effort to steer the world away from the most severe impacts of climate change has seemingly flunked its most ambitious target and seen green momentum crumble.
Yet an influx of at least $10 trillion in clean technology investment is offering promise that progress can still rapidly accelerate.
Since the Paris Agreement was finalized in 2015 and triggered a wave of climate commitments from governments, companies and Wall Street, a combination of spluttering global growth, a rush for energy security and the backlash against science under US President Donald Trump has slowed, and threatened to reverse, the push to decarbonize.
The pact’s most ambitious objective, to limit the rise in planetary warming at the end of the century to 1.5C above the pre-industrial era, looks out of reach, with that threshold likely to be breached this decade, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. And dozens of major nations have failed to meet this year’s deadlines to set new, more stringent emissions-cutting strategies.
World leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, are meeting Thursday in Brazil for two days of climate talks in the Amazonian city of Belém, ahead of the COP30 UN summit that opens next week. They’ll do so without dozens of other national heads, and most notably Trump — whose latest withdrawal of the US from the Paris accord has removed crucial political and economic heft.
Even so, the flow of investment into green technologies continues to advance and is beginning to trigger changes to less polluting processes in sectors from energy to road transportation and agriculture.
“No one can solve climate change, it is too late for that. But we can avoid the worst,” Christiana Figueres, the Costa Rican diplomat who is regarded as among the principal architects of the Paris Agreement, said in an interview. “Technology is working. It is increasing its market deployment and its efficiency exponentially.”
Energy Transition Investment Has Soared, But Not Far Enough
Global energy transition investment and projected investment needs
Source: BloombergNEF
Note: Projected investments are annualized. Investment since 2020 includes additional categories.
Annual energy transition investment surpassed $2 trillion for the first time in 2024, more than double the rate in 2020, according to research by BloombergNEF examining the deployment of net zero-aligned technologies and infrastructure.
Investment between 2014 and last year totalled $10.3 trillion, though the scope of the analysis has been widened since 2020 to capture additional categories. Spending on renewable energy alone hit a record in the first half, jumping 10% on the same period a year earlier.
Additions of clean power generation like solar and wind farms are finally beginning to catch accelerating demand for electricity, meaning carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector — the most significant man-made contributor to global warming — may have peaked last year and already be in decline, BNEF analysis suggests. That outlook could be challenged, however, if forecasts of continued stronger-than-anticipated demand for coal, oil and gas prove correct.
Road transport emissions are on track to peak around 2029, and one in every four passenger vehicles sold this year will be a plug-in hybrid, a range-extended electric, or fully electric, the BNEF data shows. China, the source of almost 30% of all global emissions, has potentially already begun to lower its climate footprint from this year, after pollution growth slowed to less than 1% in 2024.
In a new assessment ahead of COP30 negotiations that begin Nov. 10, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change made its first ever forecast for total global emissions to decline, projecting a 10% reduction from 2019 levels by 2035.
“We are running late against the climate crisis. This delay of course is worrying,” said Laurence Tubiana, a second pivotal figure in brokering the Paris Agreement and who was serving as France’s climate change ambassador in 2015. Yet “the green transition, the development of technologies, the progressive lowering of the cost is really, really very impressive,” she said.
Global Emissions Could Peak Soon
Historical and projected emissions in gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent
Source: UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2025
Note: Current promises scenario shows an emissions pathway under which countries unconditionally implement their Nationally Determined Contributions
While those indicators point to some signs of progress, the pace of the world’s decarbonization remains woefully slow. The world is heading for warming of 2.8C by 2100, according to a new UNEP report. Limiting the so-called overshoot and ultimately reducing warming to 1.5C by the end of the century would require emissions cuts of 46% by 2035, compared to 2019 levels.
And no one expects to meet those targets. Current projections based on mostly lackluster or nonexistent emissions strategies released by countries ahead of COP30 make the prospect of warming the world by less than 2C a stretch. It’s enough to raise deep doubts about what the last decade of climate diplomacy has wrought.
Even the billionaire and climate philanthropist Bill Gates, while hailing the impact and potentially transformative effect of clean technologies, last week urged a shift away from short-term emissions targets and acknowledged that the world is “going to fall far short” of climate goals through 2040.
His concession drew a gleeful response from Trump. “I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue,” he said in a post on Truth Social.
“We are faced with a conflict of models,” Tubiana said. “One side wants to go back to fossil fuels. When you look at the evolution of the technology, of the real economy, the transition is underway.”
Activists left disappointed by the sluggish pace of climate action not only point fingers at recalcitrant polluters but at the COP process itself. The Paris Agreement marked a rare highpoint in the series of annual negotiations, which began with an initial 1995 meeting in Berlin, presided over by Angela Merkel, then Germany’s environment minister.
Efforts to use the forum to craft sweeping global commitments have more frequently descended into acrimony, chiefly because major decisions require consensus agreement between a group that includes almost 200 countries and the European Union. That’s a task that’s become increasingly difficult, particularly as developing nations that are bearing the impact of extreme weather push richer economies harder to accelerate funding.
Delegate numbers at COP surged more than two-and-a-half times between 2015’s Paris talks and the COP28 forum two years ago in Dubai, a period when attendees seemed as likely to run across BlackRock Inc.’s Larry Fink or Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods as negotiators or ecologists. Woods is expected in Belém, his third consecutive climate summit; high-level financial executives will largely skip it.
This year, some countries have downsized delegations, citing the high costs triggered by limited accommodation in Belém, a city of roughly 1.3 million people. Enthusiasm has waned too among the wider business community as green strategies have been put into retreat, or removed from public view. This pullback has been fueled by hostility from Trump’s administration, geopolitical turmoil, and rising public skepticism.
“The Paris Agreement is relevant because it’s working. It’s not working fast enough, and it’s not working far enough for too many, but it’s clearly working,” Rachel Kyte, the UK climate envoy, said in an interview at the Bloomberg Green at COP30 conference in São Paulo on Tuesday. Multilateralism, she added, “is the best and only way we have to work together on a global problem.”
Just as continued investment in clean technologies is seen as a potential catalyst for accelerated decarbonization, so too is a future COP system that shifts emphasis away from global rulemaking, and toward better delivery on existing objectives.
“It is the No. 1 convening moment of the year, in which stakeholders come together to show each other what they’re doing, to learn from each other, to take a temperature gauge of who has the best technology, who has the best financial structure that allows for better decarbonization,” said Figueres, executive secretary at the UNFCCC until 2016.
And a list of looser agreements in recent years, along with pacts brokered on the sidelines of formal COP negotiations, already point to a potentially more effective model for cooperation. Pledges among clusters of governments or industrial polluters have included drives to lift capacity in nuclear power, accelerate electric vehicle adoption, boost energy efficiency and tame methane emissions. Many are already showing a greater degree of progress than the flagship climate targets.
“You can actually start to break through, and that’s what we’re trying to do in these smaller coalitions,” said Ralph Regenvanu, climate change adaptation minister for Vanuatu, the Pacific Island nation that’s already among the world’s most vulnerable countries to the hazards of global warming.
Scroll down to see some of those initial signs of success, from the rise of renewables in Poland, to an influx of EVs across Vietnam and the project that quelled one of the world’s most notorious methane plumes in Algeria.
Goal: Triple global renewable capacity by 2030
Progress: Heading in the right direction
Renewable energy is taking off in the most surprising places — just look at rooftops in Poland. One of Europe’s most coal-dependent nations is expected to roughly triple its renewable energy capacity between 2023 and 2030, according to BNEF. In many Polish homes that means solar panels have been already added, heat pumps are being installed and residents are contemplating splashing out on storage batteries.
Marian Kedzierski, an 83-year-old veterinarian in Suchorze, in northern Poland, installed a rack of panels in his garden last year after noticing a sharp rise in electricity bills. “It was the moment when I realized I had to install solar panels. I simply got scared,” he said.
Accelerating momentum could help nations make good on a pledge among about 200 countries during COP28 in Dubai to triple the world’s renewables fleet by 2030 to about 11,500 gigawatts.
Solar Capacity Across Poland
Source: BNEF
A trajectory based on current policies and cost trends should deliver about 9,530 gigawatts of capacity by that date, the International Energy Agency forecasts. Action to quickly resolve challenges with permitting, financing and grid connections would help accelerate that total to at least 10,400 gigawatts — far closer to the intended goal.
Two major challenges are domestic policy changes in the US that threaten to drastically slow additions of solar and wind, and the shift in China to market-based electricity pricing which could dampen the world-beating pace of its renewables rollout.
Goal: Transition away from fossil fuels
Progress: It’s complicated
Candidates are jostling to succeed Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro, the leftist leader who in 2023 added the fossil fuel producing nation to a small coalition committed to phasing out coal, oil and gas. At a recent event in Bogotá, presidential hopefuls showed how sentiment has shifted: five pledged to allow fracking, and only one signalled their opposition.
For Petro, and other advocates of faster efforts to end the role of fossil fuels, there are few signs of immediate success. None of the roughly 60 countries that have submitted an updated climate strategy have included targets to reduce oil and gas production, or to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, according to the UNEP.
Electricity generation at both coal-fired plants and from renewables rose in the first half in the US, while solar, coal and gas were all higher in the European Union, as hydropower and wind declined, according to the International Energy Agency.
Colombia’s Clean Power Growth
Operational, planned and under construction solar plants, natural gas plants and natural gas terminals
Sources: BNEF
Those trends underscore the difficulty of quickly leaving behind staple energy sources, an objective outlined at a COP meeting for the first time in 2023 in oil-rich Dubai, when diplomats agreed to a carefully-crafted pledge to “transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner.”
In Colombia, solar installations — virtually non-existent a decade ago — are slowly beginning to supplement the country’s abundant hydropower. Yet the additions are still less than half of Petro’s targets for the end of his term next year.
Fossil fuels continued to account for about 30% of electricity generation last year, showing that even for a rare leader who foreswears expansions in oil and gas the energy transition is proving complex and slow.
Goal: Cut global methane emissions 30% by 2030
Progress: Potential, but little progress
Since last November, the UN’s International Methane Emissions Observatory — a monitoring body set up under a global drive to curb the pollutant — has verified 19 cases in which its warnings have prompted releases to be curtailed.
Plumes spotted by satellite in nations including Argentina, Turkmenistan and Iraq have been reduced or halted, the organization said in a report published last month.
It follows success last year in stemming methane pollution at the Hassi Messaoud oil field in Algeria, where releases had been observed since at least 2013 and potentially as far back as 1999. Emissions ended there in October 2024, weeks after IMEO officials met with representatives of the government and the site’s operator.
Satellite-Detected Methane Leaks Plugged
Methane releases in Algeria observed for years ended in late 2024
Sources: UN, Sentinel-2, Landsat, Carbon Mapper
While the response rate to IMEO’s global warning system — which raises the alarm with country officials or companies when satellite observations are able to pinpoint emissions from oil and gas facilities — has jumped from just 1% to 12% in the past year, the vast majority of alerts, covering hundreds of cases, are still being ignored.
“We cannot celebrate wins without seeing the big picture,” said Marcelo Mena-Carrasco, chief executive officer of the Global Methane Hub, a nonprofit dedicated to combatting the greenhouse gas with far more short-term warming impact than carbon dioxide.
A coalition of world leaders made a pledge at the 2021 Glasgow COP to cut global methane pollution generated by human activity — which includes agriculture, fossil fuels and landfills — by at least 30% by 2030 from 2020 levels. Since then, total atmospheric levels of the pollutant, which also encompasses natural sources like wetlands and wildfires, have continued to increase, and are more than 2.6 times higher than the pre-industrial era.
Goal: Triple the world’s nuclear capacity by 2050
Progress: Slow outside China
The AI boom and accelerating growth in electricity demand mean an increasing number of countries are finding nuclear power — able to provide uninterrupted power supply with near zero emissions, though typically at higher costs than renewables and with the complication of radioactive waste — is at least part of the answer.
Electricity generation from atomic power plants is on track to set a record this year, according to the IEA, and dozens of new reactors are under construction. About three-quarters are in emerging economies, and roughly half in China.
Nuclear capacity is forecast to jump to as much as 992 gigawatts by 2050 under a high-growth scenario, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a September report.
China Fastest and Cheapest Reactor Development
Time and costs of completion of various nuclear reactors
Sources: International Atomic Energy Agency, International Energy Agency and World Nuclear Association
To speed up, Western nations will need to replicate China’s rush. Asia’s top economy — which isn’t a signatory to the tripling pledge — has roughly 30 reactors under development and in April approved a 200 billion yuan ($28 billion) program to add a further 10.
The nation’s homegrown Hualong One reactor is enabling plants to be built faster and at dramatically lower costs than elsewhere, though European countries have been reluctant to adopt Chinese technology amid national security concerns.
Goal: All sales of new cars and vans zero-emissions by 2040
Progress: Accelerating in some markets, not in others
Vietnam’s streets are starting to sound a little different. The familiar growl of gas-powered motorbikes and cars is slowly giving way to a quiet hum of electric engines.
The Southeast Asian nation is already the third-largest global market for electric two-wheelers, according to data compiled by BNEF. Electric models, including plug-in hybrids, accounted for a quarter of all new passenger vehicle sales in 2024, and that rate has jumped to more than 36% through the first eight months of this year.
Rapid development of the nation’s EV sector shows how adoption of emissions-free vehicles is taking root beyond traditionally flagship markets such as China or Norway. The experience of VinFast Auto Ltd., a unit of conglomerate Vingroup JSC, also indicates there are opportunities for local electric automakers to grab market share.
VinFast is the largest supplier of battery electric vehicles across Southeast Asia, and expanding from its home market, BNEF data shows.
EVs Will Make Up Over 30% of Vietnam’s Sales in 2025
Passenger vehicles sales by type
Source: BNEF
Note: Forecast updated June 18, and based on Net Zero Scenario.
Despite the rising adoption of EVs in multiple markets, the prospects of meeting targets discussed during COP26 in 2021 look dim. A coalition of nations and companies set an aspiration for all sales of new cars and vans to be zero-emissions by 2040, and no later than 2035 in leading markets.
Electric options will account for 56% of new passenger vehicle sales in 2035, and 70% by 2040, BNEF analysts said in a June report, based on its Economic Transition Scenario, which assumes policymakers offer no new financial support for low-carbon technologies.
Goal: Halt and reverse deforestation by 2030
Progress: Slowing down, not stopping
Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has spent years rallying leaders in South America — and elsewhere — to halt and reverse forest loss. Yet this year’s COP host and the country that’s home to the largest chunk of the Amazon rainforest shows the challenge of meeting those commitments.
The Amazon lost 5,796 square kilometers (2,238 square miles) of forest in Brazil in the 12 months to the end of July, the country’s National Institute for Space Research, known as INPE, said last week. That matches a global trend of a continuing — though slowing — pattern of deforestation.
More than 140 signatories backed a headline goal at COP26 in Glasgow to halt and reverse deforestation and land degradation by 2030. Even with current advances, meeting the target would require a major acceleration.
Net forest loss — the difference between deforestation and forest expansion — had an annual rate of about 4.12 million hectares between 2015 and this year, down from 10.7 million hectares between 1990 and 2000, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations said in its most recent report on forests.
Brazil Deforestation Has Accelerated
Sources: Global Forest Watch, Hansen Global Forest Change
“The economic logic of forests goes against preservation,” COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago said in an interview. “We must change the economic logic.” While wildfires, like the record blazes Brazil experienced last year, are a contributor to deforestation, so too are agriculture, logging and mining.
Lula hopes to stimulate progress by using COP30 to win backing for a $125 billion new fund, the Tropical Forests Forever Facility, which would pay nations a fee for every hectare of forest they maintain.
Goal: Eliminate plastic pollution by 2040
Progress: Not going to happen
Even modest rains can flood streets in Lagos. Not because Nigeria’s largest city is uniquely susceptible to downpours, but because plastic pollution is so pervasive that drains are often blocked with the litter.
Earlier this year, authorities attempted to fully enforce a ban on single-use plastics, but the drive already faces pushback from industry and consumers.
Efforts to combat plastic pollution are struggling globally too. Production doubled between 2000 and 2019 to 460 million tons, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Without more ambitious policies, that volume will reach 736 million tons by 2040. That means the aspiration of at least 70 nations to eradicate plastic pollution by then is almost certainly unachievable.
“It’s not just about the environment, people’s lives are at risk,” said Doyinsola Ogunye, the founder of the Lagos-based Recycling Scheme for Women and Youth Empowerment.
UN-convened talks in Geneva in August — the latest in an arduous series of negotiations — failed to deliver a global treaty to limit the proliferation of the material. While many nations favor new rules that would cap plastic production and set limits on certain toxic chemicals, a smaller group led by oil-producing countries including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait pushed instead for an agreement focused on waste collection and better recycling.
Microplastics Pollution Is Ubiquitous
Average estimated ocean microplastics concentration in September
Source: CYGNSS Level 3 Microplastic Concentration Retrievals Version 3.2 via NASA Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center
For some fossil fuel producers, plastics are a chance to offset a portion of projected weaker long-term demand for oil and gas as renewable energy and electric vehicles crimp consumption of the fuels. It’s a powerful constituency whose interests are aligned against eliminating plastic pollution.