Scaling the Industrial Transition: Hard-to-Abate Sectors and Net-Zero Progress in 2025

Scaling the Industrial Transition: Hard-to-Abate Sectors and Net-Zero Progress in 2025 provides an assessment of progress across eight heavy industrial and transport sectors – aviation, shipping, trucking, steel, cement, aluminium, primary chemicals, and oil and gas – which together account for nearly 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The 2025 edition, based on the Net-Zero Industry Tracker framework, finds that while technologies to reduce emissions are available, progress is increasingly constrained by the systems needed to scale them, and focus is needed on deeper innovation, stronger policy signals and enabling infrastructure. The paper emphasizes that the transition is not only about reducing emissions but about building competitive and productive industries.

It identifies five strategic priorities: creating standards-based demand, building shared infrastructure, lowering the cost of capital, prioritizing market-ready solutions and balancing top-down policy with bottom-up innovation.

To explore the dashboards that present sector profiles and cross-sector insights, please click here.