More ambitious climate regulations are sparked by the clean energy race

According to a new evaluation, recent climate policy announcements are getting more ambitious and most aim for a rise in global temperatures of no more than 1.8C (3.1F).

Since a United Nations climate summit in November 2021, The Inevitable Policy Response (IPR), which presents itself as a climate transition forecasting consortium, has tracked public and private sector climate initiatives and evaluated them based on their credibility and ambition.

The organisation declared on Wednesday that the three-month period from October to January was the most ambitious yet, following a surge of green subsidies from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in the United States and plans by the European Union to promote greener energy sources.

These programs have served as a "new stimulus for climate action," according to IPR, as other significant economies compete with China to be the global leader in renewable energy.

The majority of policies, according to IPR's tracker, do not seem to be in line with keeping the rise in global temperatures to 1.5C (2.7F) over pre-industrial levels. According to the UN, going over that line runs the risk of causing much more drastic climate change repercussions.

The 2015 Paris Agreement binds nations to keep the rise in the global average temperature this century well below 2C and to strive for 1.5C.

Around 1.1C above pre-industrial levels, the temperature of the planet has already increased. Since 1850, no decade has been hotter than the last four.

In comparison to recent expectations, clean energy deployment is accelerating, according to IPR Project Director Mark Fulton. "The race to the top in clean energy unleashed by the US IRA and being followed up by the EU Green Industrial Plan combined with other positive policy announcements since COP27 point to an acceleration in clean energy deployment," Fulton said. The UN climate summit from November is referred to as COP27.

IPR said that 89 of the 117 worldwide policy announcements it tracked in the most recent quarter had enough credibility to be included. According to the group, of them, 68 backed or confirmed a projection for an increase in temperature of 1.8C, 20 suggested more ambition, and two predicted a reduction in temperature.

The IPR has analyzed 331 policy announcements since it started monitoring policies in late 2021, and 162 of them have confirmed IPR predictions of a 1.8C rise.