Global Energy and Climate Outlook 2025

Enhancing competitiveness became a key priority for policymakers in 2025. Decarbonisation efforts hinge on the relative competitiveness of clean energy technologies compared to high-emitting counterparts. GECO 2025 assesses the competitiveness of a range of key clean energy technologies globally, within the context of meeting global temperature targets. The report finds that a few technologies are already able to compete with their high-emitting counterparts, a few others are close to be able to do so, but many important clean energy technologies are far from maturity and require more support to reach the deployment levels required in the 1.5°C scenario. In a world where tariffs and trade barriers are increasingly on the rise, GECO 2025 also investigates the impact of global trade patterns on economic growth and decarbonisation, finding minimal interaction between climate and trade policy at global GDP level. International trade fragmentation may cause a limited reduction in GHG emissions but also hampers deep decarbonisation. Against this framework of structural change, climate mitigation reshapes international trade flows, where the scale of energy carrier transactions is set by the ambition of climate policies, and the volume of manufacturing commerce is driven by trade policy.