Net Zero Targets Hold Firm Despite Political Headwinds

Net zero targets held firm across the world in 2026, according to the annual assessment from Net Zero Tracker, published on 6 November, days before negotiators gather in Antalya for COP31. Of the 4,062 countries, regions, cities and companies the research group tracks, 47 per cent now hold a net-zero or similar target, unchanged from last year and up from 18 per cent in 2020.

New target-setting stalled over the past year, the report found, but there was little evidence of widespread abandonment. More than 90 per cent of governments and companies kept the same target, or a similar one, year on year. Pledges made in earlier years have mostly survived a year of geopolitical strain and economic pressure.

Large companies are furthest ahead. Sixty-four per cent of the world's largest companies have made a net-zero pledge, representing about forty trillion dollars in annual revenue. Among the companies that have made the pledge, 78 per cent have begun publishing plans to put it into practice, up from 69 per cent last year. The rise in published plans is the clearest sign of progress in the report, suggesting that pledges are turning into working documents.

The United States provides the clearest test of that resilience. Despite Washington's rollback of climate commitments, 51 per cent of American companies still hold a net-zero pledge, down from 52 per cent last year. John Lang of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, a British think tank that helps run Net Zero Tracker, said: "it's remarkable how many US firms have stuck with net zero." European firms continued to take the lead, while Chinese firms were catching up, Lang said, as reported by Reuters.

The gaps in the data are still wide. A total of 384 of the world's biggest companies, a fifth of those monitored, have no mitigation targets at all, and the financial sector lags the most, the report said. That leaves a large share of global corporate revenue outside any public commitment to cut emissions to net zero, even as the majority of big companies have now made one.

Cities and regions lag behind

Subnational governments are furthest behind in the figures. Only 28 per cent of cities and 29 per cent of states and regions have set a net-zero target, despite running large numbers of high-emitting transport and energy systems. Net Zero Tracker described cities and regions as the missing middle of the effort, a gap that matters because those governments control much of the infrastructure that has to change, from bus networks to building codes.

The shortfall at city and regional level has persisted for years. National governments and large companies moved first, and the machinery of local government has been slower to follow. Without targets from the level of government that runs transport and planning, national pledges are harder to deliver.

What the findings mean for COP31

The assessment lands days before COP31 opens in Antalya on 9 November, where nearly 200 countries will spend two weeks negotiating climate finance and the next round of national plans. The conference also marks the tenth anniversary of the Paris Agreement entering into force, and it is the first such summit held since the United States withdrew from the agreement at the start of the year. COP31 president Murat Kurum has said the summit will focus on implementing existing commitments rather than announcing a fresh round of broad promises.

Negotiators in Antalya will be working from a base of commitments that has largely survived the past year, rather than rebuilding one that collapsed. Published implementation plans are rising, but one in five of the largest companies still has no target at all, and the cities and regions that must deliver much of the change are still mostly without one.

Net Zero Tracker is run by a consortium that includes the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, the NewClimate Institute, Oxford Net Zero and Data-Driven EnviroLab. Its database covers all countries, the states and regions of the 25 highest-emitting nations, cities with more than 500,000 residents and the world's 2,000 largest listed companies. The full findings were published in the group's annual stocktake, reported by edie.