The Production Gap Report

The Production Gap Report – produced by leading research organizations and the UN – is the first assessment of the gap between the targets of the Paris Agreement and countries’ planned production of coal, oil and gas.  It provides a new metric for assessing the world’s current pace of fossil fuel extraction and details the steps countries can take to align fossil fuel supply with Paris Agreement goals. This new report finds that the world is on track to produce far more coal, oil and gas than is consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C or 2°C, creating a “production gap” that makes climate goals much harder to reach.  It is a report that calls for a sharpened, and long overdue, focus on fossil fuels.  

The Report assesses the discrepancy between government plans for fossil fuel production and global production levels consistent with 1.5°C and 2°C pathways. This production gap tells us the magnitude of the challenge.

The report reviews, across 10 fossil-fuel-producing countries, the policies and actions that expand fossil fuel production and, in turn, widen the gap. It also provides policy options that can help countries better align production with climate goals. This is especially relevant over the next year, as countries prepare new or updated nationally determined contributions (NDCs), which set out their new emission reduction plans and climate pledges under the Paris Agreement.