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Under the Paris agreement, nearly 200 nations agreed to a goal to limit dangerous climate change by keeping the global mean temperature rise to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and . To reduce the danger, the aim should therefore be to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases to net zero as fast as possible.

It will not be possible to eliminate all CO₂ emissions by 2050. Any remaining emissions will need to be captured or removed from the atmosphere and used or stored,

Governments, businesses and individuals need to take more ambitious action now to reduce the risks of dangerous climate change, while preserving and restoring nature:

• To halt temperature rise, the world has to reach net zero.
• There is no fixed line between safety and danger. Every tenth of a degree of warming leads to additional impacts and increasing risk of crossing dangerous thresholds in the climate system. 
• To have a good chance of keeping temperature rise within the limits set in the Paris agreement, greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced rapidly, and reach net zero (any remaining emissions balanced by removals) by about 2050.

We must also continue to improve scientific understanding of climate change and its impacts.

In the UK, the Government is committed, in law, to reach net zero by 2050.To meet the commitment to net zero by 2050, at home and internationally, the UK must:

• Transform the production and use of energy, away from fossil fuel dependence towards renewable and sustainable alternatives through research and development, investment in technology and infrastructure and regulation across the public and private sectors.

Action areas that would contribute to reaching net zero include:

• Removing technical barriers to switching to renewables such as grid connectivity and energy storage
• Exploring the role nuclear energy has in decarbonising the UK
• Developing and implementing the technology to capture and store or use carbon emissions that cannot be eradicated by 2050
• Reducing energy demand, including improving energy efficiency

• Transition to net zero across other high-emitting sectors including agriculture, industry and transport.

Technologies and practices can enable this, including:

• Electrification
• The production and use of green hydrogen, defossilised chemicals and net zero ammonia and aviation fuels
• Synthetic biology
• Sustainable soil management, precision agriculture, new breeding technologies and livestock management
• A switch to more sustainable diets
• Waste reduction from the personal to the societal level

• Develop technology roadmaps to net zero that are informed and continuously updated by bringing together scientists, economists and social and behavioural scientists from across the public and private sectors. The roadmaps should recommend the technologies to deploy, develop and research in order to mitigate the impact of greenhouse gas emissions.
• Collaborate with international partners to share best practice and support low- and middle-income countries to achieve a climate resilient, net zero future. 

Adapting to the impacts of climate change is also essential, even if the rise in global temperatures is kept to 1.5°C. The climate change felt today is already having severe impacts on societies and the environment across the world. However fast emissions are reduced, there will remain impacts, and adaptation measures are already needed in addition to emissions reductions. 

To facilitate adaptation, the UK will need to:

• Use detailed, location-specific climate information to help climate-proof current and future infrastructure in line with projected climate change impacts
• Adopt nature-based solutions to deliver adaptation solutions, alongside other policy objectives and broader socioeconomic and ecological benefits
• Facilitate international cooperation and investment in next-generation climate models to revolutionise the quality of climate information to better understand global and regional impacts and risks of extreme weather
• Develop standardised metrics and accessible data to enable improved monitoring and evaluation of adaptation actions 

Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ funds research, hosts events, and produces summary reports with the aim of ensuring that the best scientific and technological knowledge is available to national and international policymakers. 

Key areas include:

• Quantifying the risks associated with our ongoing carbon emissions,
• Developing scientific and technological solutions to reach net zero by mid-century,
• Finding ways to make global society as resilient as possible to inevitable climate change, 
• Helping find ways to reduce loss of biodiversity resulting from climate change.

Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ funds research in these fields, with an active Fellowship working in these broad areas.

What we are doing

Funding research: As of October 2026, we are funding more than 50 researchers and their teams working in climate and sustainable technologies, with grants worth over £70 million. 

Examples include research projects on:

• Combining advanced climate science with AI and machine learning techniques to identify links between large-scale climate drivers;
• Investigating how to use microalgae to naturally absorb the carbon dioxide released in biomethane production and convert it to other useful products;
• Understanding how extreme weather events, such as droughts and heatwaves, and elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide levels influence tree ecophysiology.

You can read more about the people we fund in the 2025/26 Trustees’ report.

Influencing at home: Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ's work on climate change draws on the best available scientific evidence to inform policy and public understanding. Alongside communicating the science of climate change, the Society has examined a range of approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, meeting future energy needs and adapting to climate impacts. This includes assessing the opportunities, challenges and uncertainties associated with existing and emerging technologies, to support evidence-informed decisions on climate and energy policy.

In recent years, the Society has:

• Updated Climate change: evidence and causes in 2026, providing accessible, authoritative answers to frequently asked questions about climate change, drawing on the latest scientific evidence.
• Published Adapting to international climate risks (2025), summarising a workshop exploring how the UK can better understand and respond to climate risks originating overseas, and informing the Climate Change Committee's work on the Fourth Climate Change Risk Assessment.
• Published accessible summaries of reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) including Climate change in the critical decade (November 2022), which summarised the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report and its implications for UK policy.
• Published reports in 2021 examining the co-benefits and trade-offs between climate change and air pollution, and between climate change and health.
• Published authoritative reports and policy briefings on a range of climate and energy technologies, including:
  • Large-scale electricity storage (2023): Examining the need for long-duration electricity storage to ensure a reliable and secure electricity supply as the UK transitions towards a net zero electricity system increasingly reliant on wind and solar power.
  • Net zero aviation (2023): Examining the scientific and technological challenges and opportunities associated with developing sustainable aviation fuels.
  • Defossilising the chemical industry (2024): Exploring alternative sources of carbon, including biomass, plastic waste and carbon dioxide, to replace fossil-based feedstocks in chemical manufacturing.
  • Natural ('white') hydrogen (2025): Assessing its potential as a low-carbon energy resource and the scientific and practical challenges of locating and extracting it.
  • Solar radiation modification (2025): Assessing the potential benefits, risks, uncertainties and governance challenges of techniques intended to reflect more sunlight into space, while emphasising that these cannot replace emissions reductions.
  • Thermal energy efficiency (2026): Exploring opportunities to capture, transport, store and reuse industrial waste heat to reduce energy demand and support industrial decarbonisation.

In addition

• Our Tomorrow’s climate scientists programme gives students not only a voice but an opportunity to take action themselves to address climate and biodiversity issues. We also have teaching resources based on the latest scientific evidence.
• Our Transforming our futures conferences have highlighted topics covering innovation in agriculture, sustainability in the water and fashion industries and in scientific research.
• Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ has also worked with BBC Ideas to produce a range of short films including; Can planes be made greener?, What happens when the permafrost thaws?, How the humble battery can help save the world, Is the Amazon worth more than Amazon? and Bold ideas to cool the planet. 
• Royal Society content such as Is net zero by 2050 necessary in the UK? continues to reach a large audience via traditional and AI search.

Influencing internationally: Making a science-based case for dealing with climate change, and promoting research and technologies that address climate issues, is a key part of our international programme. The Society has held a number of scientific meetings on climate issues with partner academies in China, the USA, Germany, France and others covering topics from climate modelling to health impacts of climate change. Our Fellows have also provided expert input into statements from the science academies of the G20 and G7 nations to ensure political leaders are informed by the best available scientific evidence when discussing climate policy. Recent science policy discussions have also included a conference on climate tipping points held jointly with the US National Academy of Sciences and on planetary health held with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The Fellowship: Royal Society Fellows are highly active in progressing our understanding of the science of climate change, in developing science and technology for mitigation and adaptation, and in interacting with policy makers and with the public.  

Some of the areas of research include; technologies that will help create longer lasting and cheaper batteries that are needed to power electric vehicles and to store electricity from intermittent renewable energy; the predictability and dynamics of weather and climate to support pre-emptive action ahead of possible extreme weather events; the influence of the Sun on the Earth’s climate, using satellite data and modelling to help untangle the warming effects of greenhouse gases from those of natural variations in solar energy; and developing our understanding of carbon sinks to support negative emissions technologies.