U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is aggressively rolling back climate protection policies. What will this mean for international net-zero emissions targets and the global energy transition?
Since Donald Trump was elected U.S. president for the second time, the prospect of achieving a point of net-zero carbon emissions by midcentury has worsened.
Given Trump’s systematic attacks on emissions targets and environmental regulations, concerns about the future of climate policy are justified. At the same time, it is clear that the targets set within the Paris climate agreement were already largely unrealistic when it was signed in 2015.
Where will things go from here? The NZZ has looked at three aspects of the net-zero debate.
1. 2025 will be a critical year for international climate targets
The year 2025 plays a particularly important role in the logic of the Paris climate targets. Under the terms of the agreement, governments were required to formulate new emissions-reduction goals for the period ending in 2035, with the new targets due by February 2025. These goals are intended be based on current climate research.
The next decade’s emissions reductions will be critical in determining how close we come to the goal of limiting total global warming to well below an average of 2 degrees Celsius. «We need a rapid decline in emissions starting now – not in five years’ time – if net zero by midcentury is to remain a possibility,» says David Hostert, a senior analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Under current trends, the global community is heading toward global warming of around 3 degrees.
To date, progress toward the Paris agreement’s targets has been disappointing. The vast majority of signatory states missed the official February deadline to submit new climate plans. The U.S. can no longer be counted on to do so. But the EU has not yet presented its new plan, either. Instead, officials in Brussels are negotiating a new emissions-reduction target with member state governments – this time of 90% by 2040, compared with 1990 levels.
Brazil, which will lead the climate negotiations in November 2025, already presented its revised climate plan for 2035 in November 2024. Nongovernmental organizations have criticized its targets as not being ambitious enough. But by presenting these emissions goals, Brazil is trying to put pressure on other major and emerging economic powers, thus ensuring that they too formulate new ambitions. Together, China, the United States, India, the EU, Brazil and Indonesia produce more than half of all annual global greenhouse gas emissions.
The degree to which Brazil is successful in these efforts will determine whether the country is ultimately viewed as a successful leader in this year’s climate negotiations. It will also indicate whether the global community is heading toward the climate targets – or away from them.
2. Green politics are losing traction
The past few months have already served to confirm the concerns of many activists and climate researchers. Trump’s anticlimate policies are wearing down the fragile support for net-zero targets and feeding the opportunism of politicians skeptical of climate-change mitigation efforts.
For example, under libertarian President Javier Milei, Argentina has already toyed with the idea of withdrawing from the Paris agreement. In late March, the Conservatives in the United Kingdom took sharp aim at their country’s net-zero goals, labeling them as «fantasy politics» with respect to their economic and social impact. This was despite the fact that the U.K.’s target was introduced under Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May, and that former Prime Minister Boris Johnson used the climate negotiations in Glasgow as a diplomatic showcase for a new, global Britain. Moreover, even a study published by former Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government stated that the targets would promote economic growth over the long term.
It comes as little surprise that Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement is giving the green light to climate-policy skeptics and procrastinators to scale back their own climate-protection commitments. In recent years, many government leaders have regularly adorned their speeches with stirring green rhetoric. But the fact that climate policy requirements can come at the expense of local economies, regional jobs and competitiveness has always weakened the will of many governments to enforce them
This has been evident even in Brussels, where European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen declared the so-called Green Deal to be the core policy program of her first term in office. In fact, representatives of the EU’s member-state governments fought fiercely over the carbon prices that would be imposed for emissions associated with heating oil and fuels. Concerns over potential cost-of-living increases for citizens are curbing most politicians’ enthusiasm for robust climate policies.
The EU continues to resist the United States’ course of climate policy rollbacks. Leading EU politicians have reaffirmed the intention to reach a point of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. But the political sales pitch has changed. The message today is that the energy transition will be a key lever for enhancing the EU’s growth, competitiveness and energy security over the long term.
China has been pursuing this strategy for years. For this reason, experts say the government is unlikely to waver on its goal of reaching a point of net-zero emissions by 2060. «China has announced the goal of CO2 neutrality out of self-interest,» says Yan Qin, an analyst at carbon-market consultancy ClearBlue Markets. One of Beijing’s primary aims is to restructure the country’s energy-intensive manufacturing industry, she adds.
China today is still the world’s largest source of carbon emissions. It continues to burn more coal and build more coal-fired power plants than any other country in the world. At the same time, no other country is pursuing more renewable energy projects. China even accounted for more than half of the global increase in solar and wind power generation in 2024, according to data recently published by Ember, a think tank focusing on the energy transition. In addition, China already dominates the global production and supply chains for almost all the green technologies that will be crucial for the energy transition.
However, this does not mean that the world should expect big announcements from Beijing, Yan notes. She points to the current geopolitical situation, trade conflicts with the U.S. and the pressure on China’s growth as factors introducing new difficulties. «. Economic factors are driving the energy transition, not environmental awareness
The energy transition is progressing worldwide. Even Trump can’t change that. Moreover, climate policy dictates have long since ceased to be the driving force behind this trend. Instead, economic factors have taken over, above all the increasing competitiveness of many green technologies, as well as the rising global demand for electricity. On the one hand, this is good news for all those who support the energy transition. But the current path is still not enough to meet the Paris agreement’s climate targets.
In mid-April, analysts from Bloomberg New Energy Finance published a new scenario examining how the global energy transition could progress further in the current geopolitical environment – meaning without the impetus provided by new climate policies.
The findings? Shares of renewables and electric cars are increasing rapidly worldwide. However, hydrogen and other sustainable fuels, as well as technologies to capture and store CO2, are struggling to establish themselves in the market without additional support. Instead, demand for natural gas is growing, while the use of coal and oil is decreasing as a share of total energy consumption. As a result, overall emissions could be reduced by 22% by 2050, the analysts wrote.
What does this mean for the world’s climate goals? Under the analysts’ scenario – which also assumes that existing barriers to the use of green technologies are lifted – the world is heading for global warming of 2.6 degrees Celsius by 2100. Although this is better than the current prospect of 3 degrees, it is far beyond the target of limiting global warming to below 2 degrees, which is necessary to mitigate climate change’s dangerous consequences for people and nature.
