Ukraine GHG emissions and NDC targets

Last October, Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers adopted the country’s Second Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC2) under the Paris Agreement. The NDC2 targets a 65% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and “more than 65%” by 2035, compared with 1990 levels.

Although this might appear ambitious, the target is less stringent than it seems: because Ukraine’s emissions have already fallen sharply, it would still allow emissions to rise back to roughly 2021 pre-war levels by 2030–2035—around 45% above 2023 levels. However, Ukraine has also committed to climate neutrality by 2050, in line with the European Green Deal. If emissions follow the NDC2 pathway, this would require relatively steep reductions after 2035, averaging around seven percentage points per year (blue dashed line).

Given Ukraine’s EU accession ambitions, we also consider a pathway aligned with EU climate targets. This would imply emission cuts of 66.25–72.5% by 2035 and 90% by 2040, relative to 1990 levels (turquoise dashed line). Such an EU-compatible trajectory would require very rapid decarbonisation after 2035, with annual reductions up to 13 percentage points, if emissions rise back to 2021 pre-war levels by 2030.

A more gradual alternative is a green post-war recovery pathway: no rebound in emissions until 2030, but a slower, linear decline to net zero by 2050 instead (green dashed line). This path would require annual reductions of around three to four percentage points from current levels. For comparison, Ukraine’s historical decarbonisation rate was around six percentage points annually in 1990–2000, during and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but only around one percentage point per year between 2000 and 2021.