A decade after the Paris Agreement, here’s where we’re at globally:

BAD: global emissions have reached record highs, driven by increases from China and India;^{Endnote -12}

GOOD: in 2022, absolute emissions were lower in the United States, the European Union, Japan, Germany, Mexico and Canada, relative to 2015;^{Endnote -13}

GOOD: over the decade, global clean tech investment (including renewables, storage, hydrogen, carbon capture) reached US$2.2 trillion;^{Endnote -14}

GOOD: EV sales for the first nine months of the year were close to 15 million, up 26% from 2024, with nine-million vehicles sold in China, three million in Europe and 1.5 million in the U.S.;^{Endnote -15}

BAD: global temperatures are on course to be 2.6 degrees Celsius warmer in 2100 than they were in pre-industrial times. The Paris Agreement goal was to limit that increase to “well below” 2.0 degrees, with an aspirational goal of 1.5 degrees;^{Endnote -16}

BAD: the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since the Paris Agreement, making 2015-2024 the hottest decade in recorded human history.^{Endnote -17}

Success or failure? Or a lot of both?

Since the Paris Agreement was reached on December 12, 2015, the world has been transformed. The erosion of international trade, rise of populism, spread of war, global pandemic, acceleration of artificial intelligence—all these make it possible to wonder if global climate action reflects a different time.

Moreover, the retreat on several climate policies in 2025, led by the United States, might signal a shift from a Paris spring for climate action to an American autumn.

• No single nation can drive climate action ….
  … but the energy powers will be critical. The Paris Agreement, by geography and politics, was European-driven, and didn’t fully factor some of the mega-shifts underway in energy production and consumption—notably the rise of U.S. shale oil and gas and surging Asian demand. In the coming year, the U.S. and China will be critical in determining where we go from here. They are not only the biggest sources of emissions; they are the world’s twin engines of innovation, including for clean tech. Other energy producers and consumers, including Canada, Russia, the Persian Gulf states and India, are also likely to play oversized roles as emitters, and therefore may need to play an oversized role in future climate action. This will be all the more challenging for a growing number of climate-shy governments.
• Consumers can still drive change …
  … but won’t pay for it. Any notion that consumers would embrace new technologies or change lifestyles was challenged in the first decade of Paris. While EV and heat pump sales rose significantly around the world, they required significant subsidies to entice consumers. We’ve seen that when the price is right, and designs are appealing, consumers will adopt lower-emissions products. But that may be more challenging in the mid-‘20s, as the shadows of stagflation hang over most major economies. Our annual Climate Action consumer survey shows Canadian are less interested in climate issues, given growing concerns over economic security. That aside, Canadians continue to want to reduce their carbon footprint, especially through low-cost measures like recycling and home-energy usage. Another big shift is the growing concern over wildfires, with 60% of respondents now placing greater emphasis on climate action if extreme weather events come closer to home.
• Investors may still support change …
  ... but aren’t demanding it as much. Plenty of Paris-inspired efforts, especially after the Glasgow Climate Summit (COP 26) in 2021, suggested investors might drive corporate climate policy more than actually happened. This wasn’t just an American phenomenon. Leading investors and financial institutions in Asia, as well as Europe, pulled back from collective efforts and commitments—in part because of regulatory pressures in some markets, notably the U.S., but largely because of pressure to meet other shareholder needs. Our annual Climate Action survey of Canadian business leaders shows they feel the least pressure from investors; those taking climate action in their companies said the primary driver was corporate strategy, followed by regulations and consumers and clients. Investor pressure was fourth. Executives appear to be acutely mindful of the role corporations can play, with 77% suggesting industry participation is central to Canada getting to net-zero. Nearly two-thirds said tax credits would be the best way to drive more corporate action.
• Industrial technologies are having an effect …
  … just not as fast as anticipated. Shifts of industrial production, with emerging technologies like carbon capture^{Endnote -19} and biofuels,^{Endnote -20} could help reduce net emissions. But investment in those technologies is going slower than some had hoped, in part because of lower global economic growth, as well as investor pressures for near-term returns. Trade pressures may further diminish industrial climate action. Resistance in Western countries to large-scale imports from China may even hamper the trade of major industrial inputs like wind turbines and critical minerals.
• Government subsidies remain fundamental— but can’t be scaled
  The Paris Agreement came during a time of low interest rates and fiscal expansion, when many governments were trying to spur economic growth coming out of the global financial crisis and ensuing U.S. recession. That fiscal capacity was strained by pandemic spending, and growing deficits across much of the West in the 2020s. Governments and companies borrowed $25 trillion in 2024, triple what they did in 2007, before the financial crisis. Emerging market countries have increased sovereign debt levels even faster. In the global North and South, governments may not be able to borrow, or tax, enough to maintain climate-related spending. This year, our analysis of Canadian government spending and policies used a ChatGPT model to better understand such political shifts away from climate. The results illustrated a decline in emphasis on policy measures, a reduction in new funding commitments, and more emphasis on “narrative”—particularly to reframe climate as a nature issue, with a secondary value of job creation, and less emphasis on emissions reduction.

Paris 2.0

As the world looks to the year ahead, and the next decade of post-Paris climate action, a reckoning is slowly taking shape. Some countries have recognized that emissions reductions will take a bit longer, even as they see net-zero by 2050 still possible. They may find hope in the “slow, slow, fast” school of innovation, in which adoption curves shift from gradual to sudden.

A renewed commitment to the Paris agenda may require greater recognition of this new global energy imperative, with its complex economics and fraught geopolitics. Such a commitment may also need to recognize that in the coming years we may see less global cooperation, and therefore require more regional approaches and allyships. It’s even possible the Paris consensus could give way to a Beijing consensus, a Berlin consensus and a Washington consensus—and instead of one path to 2050, there could be several.

The climate for constructive change may indeed be harsher in the mid-2020s than it was in the mid-2010s. But in the intervening decade, the world has also seen an explosion of advanced technologies, private capital and human ingenuity. Those may be just the engines of climate innovation that the world needs to propel itself into the decade ahead.