In 2017 the increase in global greenhouse gas emissions resumed at a rate of 1.3% per year, reaching 50.9 gigatonnes in CO₂ equivalent, excluding those from land-use change. This was mainly due to emissions of CO₂ and methane (CH₄), which increased by 1.2%, after two years of almost no growth.

The UN Climate Change Conference in Katowice (COP24) is the next step for governments to implement the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency contributes to this process with several studies and reports on climate change that not only support policy-making but also expand the knowledge base.

Current climate policies are inconsistent with the objectives of the Paris Agreement, but model-based scenario analyses also show that there are several opportunities to strengthen current climate policies. The findings will be presented at the UN Climate Change Conference in Katowice (Poland) in December 2018 (COP24).