The system that we live in is showing serious cracks. The global coronavirus pandemic may be exposing these cracks most vividly at the moment, but the system-wide instability linked to global climate change, environmental stress and social inequities was showing significant strain before 2020. The value of systems analysis is increasingly evident.

Our work around these topics provides one model for thinking about some of the challenges ahead in the 2020s: how can we understand the linkages between carbon emissions, energy markets, investment and employment in terms of past performance and the future opportunities to reshape them towards a more sustainable future? This 2020 paper presents recent outputs from our work related to the 11 countries tracked through our modeling, highlighting the following:

• What progress has each country realized between 2015 and 2018 and what are the levels of future ambition required to reach 2030 NDCs?
• What improvements has each country made in the emissions intensity of their economy between 2015 and 2018 and how must these efforts evolve considering future GDP growth in the 2020s to reach 2030 NDCs?
• What are the unique challenges and opportunities in each country in the 2020s and what are the policy and market interventions that can further progress?