NCQG

The New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance is the post-2025 climate finance target agreed at the 29th UN Climate Change Conference (CoP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan on November 24, 2024. It commits developed countries to mobilise at least USD 300 billion per year by 2035 for developing-country climate action, with a broader aspirational target of USD 1.3 trillion per year from all public and private sources. The NCQG succeeds the original USD 100 billion per year goal set at Copenhagen (2009) — which was meant to flow from 2020 but was achieved only in 2022 by OECD accounting. The NCQG covers both adaptation and mitigation, and aims to be primarily grant-based and highly concessional. Developing-country negotiating blocs — G77 + China, African Group, AOSIS, BASIC — had pushed for a USD 1.3 trillion floor (per IHLEG Singh-Stern Report estimates of need) and criticised the USD 300 billion outcome as insufficient. The NCQG is the central financial pillar of the post-Paris-Agreement climate architecture and a major arena of Global South politics.

• 1 Agreed: CoP29 Baku, November 24, 2024
• 2 Target: USD 300 billion/year by 2035
• 3 Aspirational: USD 1.3 trillion/year from all sources
• 4 Predecessor: USD 100 billion/year goal (Copenhagen 2009)
• 5 Achieved by 2022 (OECD accounting) — 2-year delay
• 6 Coverage: mitigation + adaptation
• 7 Push for grant-based + concessional
• 8 G77 + China, African Group, AOSIS, BASIC pushed for higher floor
• 9 IHLEG Singh-Stern Report estimated need: USD 1.3 trillion/year

Down to Earth's May 26, 2026 editorial argued that NCQG flows must shift from financing African renewable generation to financing African industrial capacity — otherwise the energy transition will fail in the Global South.