Press release For immediate release Low-carbon transition improving on ten of fourteen measures, fast enough on four
Perigon Partners publishes the first edition of its Low-Carbon Transition Index, with the full dataset, methodology and benchmark sources released under an open licence
EDINBURGH, United Kingdom, 25 August 2026. Ten of the fourteen indicators tracked by Perigon Partners’ Low-Carbon Transition Index are moving in the right direction, but only four are moving fast enough to keep pace with what current government policy implies. Measured against what alignment with net zero by 2050 would require, that falls to three.
The index, published 25 August 2026 in its first edition, scores the global transition at 65.2 out of 100 against a Stated Policies pathway and 58.1 against a Net Zero pathway, using data to year-end 2024.
The transition is happening. Whether it’s happening fast enough depends on where you look.
- Direction is settled, pace is not. Ten of the fourteen indicators improved in 2024. Only four are moving fast enough to deliver current policy, and three for net zero by 2050.
- The cheapest technologies are moving fastest. Battery storage tops the index against both pathways, with global storage additions set to grow 23% in 2025.
- The hardest problems are the ones price can’t solve alone. Dietary change, reforestation and carbon capture are the weakest indicators in the index.
- Current policy is least ambitious on industrial electrification and low-carbon fuels. Both score a full 40 points lower against Net Zero than against Stated Policies, the largest gap anywhere in the index. Even delivered in full, today’s policy settings leave these two furthest short of what net zero requires.
- Commitment is running ahead of delivery. Policy, investment and corporate targets score 66.7 out of 100 against both pathways, ahead of what’s actually happening in the real economy: 64.8 against current policy, 55.8 against Net Zero.
Not stalling, and not fast enough
“The question is no longer whether the transition is happening. It is. Ten of our fourteen indicators moved the right way this year. The question now is pace. Only four indicators are moving fast enough to deliver current policy; only three are fast enough for a balanced pathway to 2050 net zero.”
Policy retreat does not appear to be the constraint. All 37 jurisdictions tracked by the Oxford Climate Policy Monitor, covering more than 85% of global emissions, have increased climate policy ambition since 2020, with the United States the only one to have recorded a formal rollback. Global energy transition investment reached nearly $2.1 trillion in 2024. What has changed is the rate of increase: annual growth slowed to 11%, against a 22% average since 2020.
Six of the seven energy-related indicators are improving. The shortfall is concentrated in four indicators moving the wrong way: low-carbon fuels, dietary change, reforestation and carbon capture. Announced carbon capture projects would deliver around 615 million tonnes of CO₂ a year by 2030, roughly 40% short of the billion tonnes a net zero pathway requires.
What has been released
Perigon has released the full indicator dataset, the benchmark source for every indicator and a nine-page methodology report under a Creative Commons Attribution licence, archived with a DOI.
Eight of the fourteen indicators are benchmarked against International Energy Agency scenarios; the rest use the most credible published pathway or reference available for each.
Readers can also interrogate the research directly. Ask the Data, a tool on the index page, answers questions using only the published research and returns the sources with each answer.
Perigon Partners is a strategy and sustainability consultancy working with CEOs and Boards of mid-sized UK businesses. It is a certified B Corporation, registered in Scotland (SC716835). The Low-Carbon Transition Index is published as part of its open research programme. No sponsor or client influences the findings.
media@perigonpartners.co.uk
Media pack, print-resolution charts and the full dataset available on request.
perigonpartners.co.uk/lcti
- What the index measures. Fourteen real-economy low-carbon transition indicators across energy systems, non-energy sectors and enabling conditions. Each indicator gets two scores. Direction of travel (40% of that metric's overall score) asks whether the metric improved on the previous year. Pace, weighted more heavily at 60%, asks whether that year's rate of change is fast enough to reach the 2035 benchmark. So an indicator can be improving and still fall short. Six of the ten that improved are not moving fast enough. Total progress scores are an unweighted mean of all indicators.
- Score bands. Above 75 is on track. 50 to 75 is below the required pace. Below 50 is off track.
- The two pathways. Stated Policies is the carbon reduction pathway implied by the policies governments have actually adopted. Net Zero is the pathway to net zero by 2050 that results in limited overshoot of a 1.5°C temperature rise this century.
- Pathway benchmarking. Eight of the fourteen indicators are benchmarked against the IEA World Energy Outlook 2025 scenarios. The other six use the most credible published reference available for each: the Glasgow Leaders' Declaration, NGFS scenarios, SBTi criteria, the IEA investment requirement, and for dietary change a UK Climate Change Committee recommendation rescaled to a global baseline (as no global pathway currently exists). For four indicators (deforestation, dietary change, reforestation, and commitments), there is no available distinction between the two pathways so scores are consistent across stated policies and net zero.
- Dates. Edition 1. Data coverage to year-end 2024. Analysis completed December 2025.
- Available on request. The full report as PDF, the fourteen indicator scores as CSV, the six benchmark frames as CSV, a two-page media pack, and print-resolution charts.
- Citation. Perigon Partners (2026). The Low-Carbon Transition Index [Data set and report]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22094542
- Interviews. Emma Walford, CEO and Co-founder of Perigon Partners, is available for interview.