Despite commitments from many countries to limit the impacts of climate change, the clean energy transition is moving far slower than is necessary to meet global targets.

Released ahead of COP29, the United Nations Environment Programme’s 2024 Emissions Gap report concluded that global temperatures could rise to 3.1°C above preindustrial levels by 2100 with today’s policies — blowing far past the 1.5°C target established under the Paris Agreement. And even with greater levels of clean energy deployment, the International Energy Agency projected in its 2024 World Energy Outlook that global demand for coal, oil, and natural gas will grow until 2030.

Highlighting the widening gap between the ambitions and reality of the clean energy transition, Chris Greig, the Theodora D. ’78 & William H. Walton III ’74 Senior Research Scientist in the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, argued in a recent Nature Communications perspective for a reconsideration of how to navigate the risks of transforming the world’s energy systems in only a handful of decades.