How can climate pledges capture digital impact?

Digital technologies have become a defining feature of national climate strategies, as countries integrate data systems, artificial intelligence (AI), and early-warning capabilities into their plans to meet 2035 climate targets.

The analysis examines how countries aim to leverage digital technologies for climate action across other sectors, as well as capturing the impact of the digital sector itself.

The stocktake brief reviews 53 NDCs submitted between 1 January and 29 September 2025, finding that nearly 90 per cent reference digital technologies. They span energy, agriculture, forestry, water management, transport, and disaster risk reduction, with countries seeking digital solutions to strengthen climate mitigation, adaptation, and loss-and-damage assessments.

Key examples include:

Monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) systems enhancing the accuracy and transparency of GHG inventories.

Digital decision-support tools strengthening climate planning and adaptive policy design.

Early-warning systems, referenced by 34 countries, that can bolster preparedness and risk management for climate-related hazards.

AI-enabled applications, noted in around 20 per cent of digital-referencing NDCs, used for climate modelling, forecasting, optimization, and land-use monitoring.

Despite this momentum, the digital sector’s environmental footprint remains largely unaddressed in national climate commitments. The sector currently accounts for between 1.5 per cent and 4 per cent of global GHG emissions, driven by energy-intensive data centres, device manufacturing, and growing demand for AI-related processing.

This makes digital impact hard to isolate, track and regulate. Only a few countries explicitly acknowledge the digital sector itself in their NDCs.