Plans to Accelerate Solutions: How Climate Action Gets Done

For more than a decade, global climate summits have been measured by the scale of their promises. Countries announced targets. Companies pledged net zero. Cities signed declarations. The language of ambition grew louder – and more crowded – even as global emissions continued to rise.

Today, as governments, investors, and industries confront the narrowing window to keep climate goals within reach, the question has shifted. It is no longer what needs to be done. It is how to organize action so that it actually happens – at speed and at scale.

That shift is reshaping the Global Climate Action Agenda, the UN-backed framework designed to mobilise the parts of the economy that do not negotiate at COPs but work alongside governments to determine success: businesses, investors, cities, regions, and civil society.

At the centre of this recalibration is a tool that sounds technical but is deliberately practical: Plans to Accelerate Solutions. Since the UN Climate Conference (COP30) hosted in Brazil in November 2025, 120 of these plans have been published on the UNFCCC’s Global Climate Action Portal (known as NAZCA), spanning sectors across the global economy.

How do Plans to Accelerate Solutions Fit Within the Action Agenda?

The first Global Stocktake – the UN’s official assessment of global climate progress – delivered an uncomfortable verdict: the world is not on track to prevent global warming. The problem is not a lack of ideas: climate solutions exist across energy, land use, cities, industry, and finance. The problem is execution.

In response, the Global Climate Action Agenda is focused on turning the outcomes of the COP negotiations into real world delivery. Thirty ‘Activation Groups’ now coordinate more than 480 climate initiatives across six areas that shape daily life and economic activity: energy, forests and nature, agriculture and food, cities and infrastructure, human development, and finance.

Instead of hundreds of initiatives working in parallel, they work toward the same reference points – the gaps identified by the Global Stocktake itself. But coordination alone does not move markets, ensure supply matches demand, funnel capital in the right direction, or retrain workers.

That requires concrete plans for delivery.

What are Plans To Accelerate Solutions?

‘Plans to Accelerate Solutions (PAS) are practical, time-bound roadmaps that bring together policy, finance, and delivery around specific challenges. Currently, 120 PAS are available through the UNFCCC’s Global Climate Action Portal, covering sectors from buildings, and power grids, to health, nature-based solutions, water access, steel, and fertiliser – and beyond.

Unlike traditional climate pledges, these plans start from a more grounded question: What is stopping this solution from scaling today?

Each plan examines the practical levers that determine whether solutions move or stall – including policy and regulation, market supply and demand, access to finance, technical capacity, and skills. Plans are designed to produce real progress on the ground: partners sharing results, new alliances forming, and capital being committed. Routes to overcoming common obstacles – whether regulatory, financial, or technical – are showcased through case studies and practical solutions in the Granary of Solutions.

What are the Five Levers of Change?

Each Plan to Accelerate Solutions is built around five core levers.

Markets: Price signals and demand create the economic conditions for solutions to scale. For example, the Sustainable Fuels Action Plan creates buyer coalitions across aviation, shipping, and industry to aggregate demand for clean hydrogen and biofuels.

Policy: Regulations can either enable or block progress. Well-designed frameworks, such as building codes, minimum energy efficiency standards and mandates unlock investment and innovation.

Finance: This means designing instruments that blend public and private money, de-risk early-stage projects, and connect investors with implementers. For example, the Industrial Transition Accelerator uses government guarantees and subsidies to cover the extra cost of producing clean steel and cement instead of dirty alternatives, making it financially viable for companies to build the 800+ clean industrial plants needed by 2030.

Technical capacity: Expertise and infrastructure don't appear automatically. Countries and companies need systems, knowledge, and resources to implement solutions effectively.

Skills and workforce: Training workers, supporting communities, and creating good jobs determines whether change happens smoothly or not at all. For example, training programmes to upskill workforces in installing and maintaining solar PV systems helps communities to capture the opportunities of the energy transition.

What are Some Examples of Plans to Accelerate Solutions?

RAIZ: Turning Land Restoration into Investable Action

The Resilient Agriculture Investment for Net Zero Land Degradation RAIZ plan tackles one of the biggest threats to our global food system – more than 20% of the world’s agricultural land – around a billion hectares – is degraded, putting food security, biodiversity, and climate stability at risk.

Planned solutions are well-known and ready to scale. Nature-based approaches can restore land cost-effectively, but high upfront costs and slow early returns have left a USD 105 billion funding gap. RAIZ is designed to close that gap by making restoration investable: supporting countries to map degraded land, identify viable projects, assess financing needs, and design blended finance models that bring together public, private, and multilateral capital. By connecting governments and investors, RAIZ turns global ambition into action in the field.

Jobs and Skills for the New Economy: Putting People First

Climate action ultimately depends on people. While clean industries are growing rapidly, job creation and skills planning have lagged behind. Fewer than 40% of national climate plans address workforce development, and existing training systems are struggling to keep up with the transition ahead.

The Engagement Community on Jobs and Skills for the New Economy brings governments, businesses, educators, unions, and international institutions together to close that gap. It focuses on improving data on jobs and skills, helping countries build clear workforce strategies, and aligning public and private investment in training and job transitions. By embedding jobs and skills into climate and development plans, the initiative aims to deliver better jobs, support workers and communities as industries change, and deliver a fairer transition by 2030.

Promoting Information Integrity On Climate Change

Another barrier to progress is less visible but increasingly powerful: misleading and false information about climate change. From exaggerated green claims to deliberate disinformation, poor-quality information erodes trust, confuses decision-makers, and wastes precious time. The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2026 recently ranked misinformation and disinformation as the second-most severe short-term global risk, underscoring the urgent need to prevent untrustworthy information undermining cooperation and delaying action.

The Plan to Accelerate the Promotion of Information Integrity on Climate Change tackles this challenge head-on. By 2028, it aims to expand global cooperation, strengthen research — especially in the Global South — and support governments to develop policies that improve transparency, media literacy, and accountability, while protecting free expression. It also plans to fund journalism and public communication to counter misinformation, support scientists and communicators, and strengthen corporate responsibility for sustainability claims.

The Next Five Years

Taken together, these plans show how the Action Agenda is pivoting climate action from aspiration to execution. Beyond just individual plans, the Action Agenda is driving system-wide progress. As governments, businesses, cities, workers, and communities walk this shared path, the next five years will be decisive. With ‘Plans to Accelerate Solutions’ at its core, the Global Climate Action Agenda is no longer about announcing ambition. It is about organizing delivery, measuring progress, and scaling what works.