2025 Global Carbon Neutrality Report highlights implementation gap at Tsinghua University forum
BEIJING, Sept. 27, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- At Tsinghua University today, global experts and policymakers gathered to confront a pressing challenge: the widening gap between climate pledges and real-world progress. The event, held on the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement, featured the launch of the 2025 Global Carbon Neutrality Annual Progress Report, a comprehensive study on the world's climate transition.
Framed around the theme "Global Progress and China's Practice," the forum opened with a dialogue featuring Liu Yang, Deputy Director General, Department of Climate Change, Ministry of Ecology and Environment, China, who outlined China's latest progress toward its "dual carbon" goals and its newly announced NDC. Her remarks were followed by international perspectives, including a call to action from Patricia Espinosa Cantellano, former UNFCCC Executive Secretary.
The centerpiece was the launch of the third annual progress report, led by Professor Wang Can of Tsinghua. The study offers one of the most wide-ranging, science-based assessments of global climate progress, notable for:
- Tracking 198 countries and regions with 217 indicators across technology, finance, and policy.
- Adopting an equity lens to evaluate the justice of the global transition.
- Committing to a continuous, long-term evaluation to inform global climate governance.
For the first time, the report is guided by a 13-member international Advisory Committee, co-chaired by He Kebin of Tsinghua and Erik Solheim, former UNEP Executive Director, underscoring its mix of Chinese leadership and global perspective.
This year's report identifies a "profound structural imbalance": while ambition and innovation are driving progress, they are being severely undermined by bottlenecks in climate finance and international cooperation. This has created a critical "implementation gap" between stated goals and tangible results.
The report's rigorous methodology has earned praise from international climate leaders. "This is the type of research into climate that reinforces our sense of purpose and our sense of hope," said Patricia Espinosa Cantellano. She added, "What stands out is the four-part framework — target, policy, action, effectiveness — a game-changer for tracking climate progress."
The findings and dialogues from the forum are intended to provide a scientific basis for shaping stronger NDCs and informing the critical discussions at the upcoming COP30 in Brazil. By highlighting both the irreversible momentum of the green transition and the urgent need to close the implementation gap, the event concluded with a strong call for renewed international efforts to translate commitments into concrete action.
SOURCE Tsinghua University
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