The Climate Change Performance Index: Background and Methodology

Three years after the adoption of the Paris Agreement, global climate action is not yet sufficient to limit global warming to well below 2°C and to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C. In order to achieve the Paris targets, more ambitious climate action is needed. In the context of the newly released special report Global Warming of 1.5°C by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it is ever more urgent to act now. 

The CCPI is an instrument designed to enhance transparency in international climate politics. Its aim is to put political and social pressure on those countries, which have, up until now, failed to take ambitious action on climate protection. It also aims to highlight those countries with best practice climate policies.

For the CCPI 2018, we evaluated and revised the CCPI methodology to demonstrate existing measures more accurately and to encourage steps towards effective climate policy. Since last year’s edition, the CCPI is monitoring the development of all GHG emissions of the 56 countries and the EU that are assessed in the index. The index now is even better suited to measure how well countries are on track to meet the global goals of the Paris Agreement. It does this not only by comparing countries by their development and current status in the three categories “GHG Emissions”, “Renewable Energy” and “Energy Use”, but also on the Paris-compatibility of their current status and targets set for the future in each of these categories. With its globally unique policy section, the index also continues to evaluate countries' ambition and progress in the field of climate policy.