2023 Report
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Summary of Key Findings
Governments, in aggregate, still plan to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C. The persistence of the global production gap puts a well-managed and equitable energy transition at risk.
Both global CO2 emissions — and fossil fuel production and consumption — need to peak and swiftly decline to keep the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal within reach. Informed by the latest scientific evidence, the 2023 Production Gap Report identifies global pathways for coal, oil, and gas production from now until 2050 that are consistent with this goal. It then assesses governments’ plans, projections, and policies for fossil fuel production and how aligned — or misaligned — they are with respect to these pathways.
Taken together, government plans and projections would lead to an increase in global coal production until 2030, and in global oil and gas production until at least 2050. This conflicts with government commitments under the Paris Agreement, and clashes with expectations that global demand for coal, oil, and gas will peak within this decade even without new policies.
Global levels of coal, oil , and gas estimated under the government plans and projections pathways would be 460%, 29%, and 82% higher than tjpse under the respective 1.5°C-consistent pathways. The global levels of fossil fuel production implied by governments’ plans and projections, taken together, also exceed those implied by their stated climate mitigation policies and implied by their announced climate pledges as of September 2022, as modelled by the International Energy Agency.
An equitable transition away from fossil fuel production must recognize countries’ differentiated responsibilities and capabilities. Governments with greater transition capacity should aim for more ambitious reductions and help finance the transition processes in countries with limited capacities.
However, the combined levels of coal, oil, and gas production being planned/projected by 10 high-income countries alone would already exceed 1.5°C-consistent pathways for each fuel by 2040. Similarly, the trajectories of oil and gas production being planned and projected by 12 countries with relatively lower levels of economic dependence on their production would exceed the respective 1.5°C-consistent pathways by 2040.
Major producer countries have pledged to achieve net-zero emissions and launched initiatives to reduce emissions from fossil fuel production, but none have committed to reduce coal, oil, and gas production in line with limiting warming to 1.5°C.
In addition to government plans and projections for fossil fuel production that inform the global production gap analysis in Chapter 2, this report also reviews, in Chapter 3, the climate ambitions and fossil fuel production policies and strategies of 20 major producer countries. Altogether, these countries account for 82% of production and 73% of consumption of the world’s fossil fuel supply. The status of discourses and policies towards a managed and equitable transition away from fossil fuel production in these countries is also evaluated.
In recent years, many governments have launched initiatives to reduce emissions from fossil fuel production activities. 14 of the 20 countries profiled in Chapter 3 have signed onto the Global Methane Pledge to collectively reduce global methane emissions from all sources by 30% by 2030 compared to 2020 levels. Six major oil- and gas-producing countries, all of which are among the 20 profiled in Chapter 3, have also launched the Net Zero Producers Forum aimed at reducing emissions from the sector. Such efforts, while important, are also deeply insufficient. In the pathways consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C explored in this report, global methane emissions from the energy sector decline by more than 60% between 2020 and 2030. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, these initiatives fail to recognize that reducing fossil fuel production itself is also needed to limit warming to 1.5°C.
Many countries are promoting gas as a “bridge” or “transition” fuel, but with no apparent plans to transition away from it. Eight countries profiled in the report project relatively flat or increasing gas production from 2021 until 2035–2050. However, gas could hinder or delay the transition to renewable energy systems by locking in fossil-fuel-based systems and institutions.
Governments should be more transparent in their plans, projections, and support for fossil fuel production and how they align with national and international climate goals.
Credit: Kiara Worth, IISD
At the same time, many fossil fuel projects planned and under development are now at risk of becoming stranded assets as the world decarbonizes and global demand for coal, oil, and gas are expected to peak and decline within this decade, even without additional policies.
There is a need for governments to adopt both near- and long-term reduction targets for fossil fuel production and use to complement other climate mitigation benchmarks and reduce the risks of stranded assets. Countries with greater transition capacity should aim for faster reductions than the global average.
Ultimately, the global energy landscape is shaped by both demand and supply. Combining targets and policies to actively phase out fossil fuel production with other important climate mitigation and just transition measures — such as reducing fossil fuel consumption, expanding renewable energy, reducing methane emissions from all sources, and targeting investments and social protection for affected communities — can reduce the costs of decarbonization, promote policy coherence, and ensure that renewables replace, rather than add to, fossil fuel energy.
Given risks and uncertainties of CCS and CDR, countries should aim for a near total phase-out of coal production and use by 2040 and a combined reduction in oil and gas production and use by three-quarters by 2050 from 2020 levels, at a minimum. The potential failure of these measures to become sufficiently viable at scale, the non-climatic near-term harms of fossil fuels, and other lines of evidence, call for an even more rapid global phase-out of all fossil fuels.
While the above reduction targets are derived from 1.5°C-consistent scenarios that align with taking a precautionary approach to limiting reliance on CCS and CDR, they still assume that these measures will become available at scale to some degree (see details in Sections 2.3–2.4).
There are additional compelling reasons to strive for an even faster global phase-out of all fossil fuels. Research has found that the committed emissions of CO2 expected to occur over the lifetime of existing fossil-fuel-producing infrastructure already exceed the remaining carbon budget for a 50% chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C by 2100.
Fossil fuel extraction and burning are also associated with many near-term and localized non-climatic social, economic, and environmental harms that are rarely accounted for in climate mitigation scenarios, including the ones analysed in this report
Continued production and use of coal, oil, and gas are not compatible with a safe and livable future. Achieving net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050 requires governments to commit to, plan for, and implement global reductions in the production of all fossil fuels alongside other climate mitigation actions, beginning now.