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Solving Climate Change
A guide for learners and leaders

Online at: https://doi.org/10.1088/978-0-7503-4032-8

Solving Climate Change
A guide for learners and leaders

Jonathan Koomey
Koomey Analytics, Bay Area, CA, USA

Ian Monroe
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

IOP Publishing, Bristol, UK

ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, or as expressly permitted by law or
under terms agreed with the appropriate rights organization. Multiple copying is permitted in
accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, the Copyright
Clearance Centre and other reproduction rights organizations.

Permission to make use of IOP Publishing content other than as set out above may be sought
at [email protected].

Jonathan Koomey and Ian Monroe have asserted their right to be identified as the authors of this
work in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN 978-0-7503-4032-8 (ebook)

ISBN 978-0-7503-4030-4 (print)
ISBN 978-0-7503-4033-5 (myPrint)
ISBN 978-0-7503-4031-1 (mobi)

DOI 10.1088/978-0-7503-4032-8

Version: 20221201

IOP ebooks

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from the British Library.

Published by IOP Publishing, wholly owned by The Institute of Physics, London

IOP Publishing, No.2 The Distillery, Glassfields, Avon Street, Bristol, BS2 0GR, UK

US Office: IOP Publishing, Inc., 190 North Independence Mall West, Suite 601, Philadelphia,
PA 19106, USA

Image credit: Violet Kitchen 2022

From Jon: For my friend and colleague Florentin Krause, who started me down the
path that led to this book.

From Ian: To Kai for his joy and curiosity, Susan for her resilience and support, my
family for championing sustainability long before it was cool, and friends everywhere
working on a better climate future for all of us.
 Contents

Foreword xv
Preface xvii
Acknowledgement xxiv
Author biographies xxvi

1 Introduction to the climate problem (short form) 1-1

Chapter overview 1-1
1.1 Introduction 1-2
1.2 It’s warming 1-2
1.3 It’s us 1-4
1.4 We’re sure 1-7
1.5 It’s bad 1-9
1.6 We can fix it (but we’d better hurry) 1-13
1.6.1 What is a warming limit? 1-14
1.6.2 An evolution in thinking 1-15
1.6.3 Can it be done? 1-16
1.6.4 Keeping carbon in the ground 1-18
1.6.5 The economics of climate action 1-19
1.6.6 Climate action, equity, and justice 1-20
1.6.7 Speed trumps perfection in climate solutions 1-21
1.7 Chapter conclusions 1-22
Further reading 1-23
References 1-24

2 Introduction to climate solutions 2-1

Chapter overview 2-1
2.1 Chapter introduction 2-2
2.2 Treat climate like the moral issue it is 2-2
2.3 Climate change as an adaptive challenge 2-3
2.4 Building new fossil infrastructure makes solving the problem harder 2-4
2.5 Speeding up the energy transition 2-5
2.6 The false choice between innovation and immediate, rapid emissions 2-6
reductions
2.7 The folly of delay 2-7

vii
 Solving Climate Change

2.8 Learning by doing only happens if we do! 2-9

2.9 How fast should we reduce emissions? 2-11
2.10 What we must do 2-12
2.10.1 Ending fossil-fuel use 2-12
2.10.2 Minimizing non-fossil GHGs 2-15
2.10.3 What does ‘climate positive’ mean? 2-16
2.10.4 The eight pillars of climate action 2-17
2.11 Visualizing successful climate action 2-20
2.12 We have to do it all 2-20
2.13 Who’s responsible? 2-22
2.14 Chapter conclusions 2-22
Further reading 2-23
References 2-23

3 Tools of the trade 3-1

Chapter overview 3-1
3.1 Beginning the journey 3-1
3.1.1 Emissions inventories 3-1
3.1.2 Mapping emissions onto human activities (tasks) 3-3
3.2 Rethinking the design process 3-4
3.3 Understanding capital stocks 3-5
3.4 Understanding key drivers of emissions 3-6
3.5 Creating structured scenario comparisons 3-8
3.6 More detailed breakdowns of savings from key options 3-8
3.7 A useful way to summarize total emission savings 3-9
3.8 Understanding technology cost curves 3-11
3.9 Scenario simulation tools 3-13
3.10 Life-cycle assessment 3-13
3.11 Understanding energy systems 3-16
3.12 Following good analytical practice 3-17
3.13 Chapter conclusions 3-17
Further reading 3-17
References 3-19

4 Electrify (almost) everything 4-1

Chapter overview 4-1
4.1 Introduction 4-1

viii
 Solving Climate Change

4.2 Creating or adopting a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario 4-3

4.2.1 Creating a base-year emissions inventory 4-3
4.2.2 Projecting base-year emissions to mid-century 4-9
4.3 Analyzing electrification for a climate-positive scenario 4-9
4.3.1 Understanding key technologies 4-9
4.3.2 Understanding key policies 4-12
4.4 Data sources 4-12
4.5 Assessing increases in electricity demand 4-14
4.6 What activities can’t be easily electrified now? 4-15
4.7 A different type of electrification 4-16
4.8 Chapter conclusions 4-17
Further reading 4-17
References 4-18

5 Decarbonize electricity 5-1

Chapter overview 5-1
5.1 Introduction 5-1
5.2 Bringing the future into focus 5-2
5.3 What about system reliability? 5-4
5.4 What about 100% renewables? 5-4
5.5 Creating or adopting a business-as-usual scenario 5-5
5.6 Creating the climate-positive scenario 5-6
5.6.1 Understanding key technologies 5-6
5.6.2 Understanding key policies 5-6
5.7 Data sources 5-6
5.8 Chapter conclusions 5-8
Further reading 5-8
References 5-10

6 Minimize non-fossil warming agents 6-1

Chapter overview 6-1
6.1 Introduction 6-2
6.2 Sources of non-fossil emissions 6-2
6.2.1 Base-year emissions by human activity 6-3
6.3 Summary of non-fossil emissions by major category 6-6
6.3.1 Ecosystems disruptions 6-7
6.3.2 Food and agriculture 6-10

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 Solving Climate Change

6.3.3 Industrial processes 6-12

6.3.4 Aviation contrails 6-13
6.3.5 Hydrogen 6-13
6.4 Creating or adopting a business-as-usual scenario 6-14
6.4.1 Projecting base-year emissions to mid-century 6-14
6.5 Creating the climate-positive scenario 6-14
6.6 Data sources 6-15
6.7 Chapter conclusions 6-15
Further reading 6-16
References 6-16

7 Efficiency and optimization 7-1

Chapter overview 7-1
7.1 Introduction 7-2
7.2 Creating or adopting a business-as-usual scenario 7-4
7.3 Creating the climate-positive scenario 7-4
7.3.1 Moving to zero-emission technologies 7-7
7.3.2 Improving end-use efficiency 7-8
7.3.3 Redefining tasks 7-9
7.3.4 Direct electricity used by ICT 7-11
7.4 Chapter conclusions 7-12
Further reading 7-12
References 7-13

8 Remove carbon 8-1

Chapter overview 8-1
8.1 Introduction 8-1
8.2 Understanding carbon removal 8-3
8.3 Carbon removal is not a silver bullet 8-4
8.4 Carbon capture and storage is not the same as carbon removal 8-5
8.5 Carbon removal options 8-5
8.5.1 Protecting ecosystems 8-6
8.5.2 Reforestation and afforestation 8-7
8.5.3 Increased soil carbon sequestration 8-7
8.5.4 Blue carbon 8-7
8.5.5 Enhanced weathering 8-8
8.5.6 Biomass processing with carbon capture and storage 8-8
8.5.7 Direct-air capture with storage 8-9

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 Solving Climate Change

8.6 Potentials and costs for carbon removal 8-9

8.7 Creating or adopting a BAU scenario 8-11
8.8 Creating the climate-positive scenario 8-11
8.9 Chapter conclusions 8-12
Further reading 8-12
References 8-14

9 Align incentives 9-1

Chapter overview 9-1
9.1 Introduction 9-1
9.2 Making it easy 9-2
9.2.1 Make climate-friendly options the most convenient 9-2
9.2.2 Make climate action normal good behavior 9-3
9.2.3 Make the invisible visible 9-3
9.2.4 Tighten regulations, mandate solutions, ban polluting 9-4
technologies
9.3 Changing the game 9-4
9.3.1 Make a stable climate a core right and principle 9-4
9.3.2 Restructure property rights 9-5
9.3.3 Harness learning effects, economies of scale, and spillovers 9-5
9.3.4 Harness social incentives 9-6
9.4 Fixing the rules 9-6
9.4.1 Rationalize regulations 9-6
9.4.2 Change laws, rules, and regulations 9-7
9.4.3 Make polluters liable for climate damages 9-8
9.4.4 Make companies liable for failure to disclose and prepare 9-9
for climate risks
9.5 Building your scenarios 9-9
9.5.1 Creating or adopting a business-as-usual scenario 9-9
9.5.2 Creating the climate-positive scenario 9-9
9.6 Chapter conclusions 9-10
Further reading 9-10
References 9-11

10 Mobilize money 10-1

Chapter overview 10-1
10.1 Introduction 10-2

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 Solving Climate Change

10.2 Context 10-2

10.2.1 How much money needs to shift into climate solutions? 10-2
10.2.2 Shifting off fossil fuels can pay for getting to zero emissions 10-4
10.2.3 Speeding up innovation in finance and business models 10-6
10.2.4 Greater wealth = greater climate responsibility 10-7
10.2.5 Helping power sector market structures evolve 10-9
10.3 Price pollution 10-9
10.3.1 Price carbon pollution 10-9
10.3.2 Understand the limits of carbon pricing 10-10
10.3.3 Price other GHGs 10-12
10.3.4 Price other fossil pollutants 10-12
10.4 Subsidize investments and innovation 10-13
10.4.1 Defray capital costs with rebates 10-13
10.4.2 Invest in climate tech R&D 10-13
10.4.3 Pay for performance 10-14
10.5 Redirect capital 10-14
10.5.1 Equitably distribute pollution revenues 10-14
10.5.2 End pro-pollution subsidies 10-15
10.5.3 Donate to climate action 10-16
10.5.4 Get polluter money out of politics 10-16
10.5.5 Factor climate into spending decisions 10-18
10.5.6 Redirect fossil profits to climate infrastructure 10-18
10.5.7 Re-allocate banking and investment portfolios 10-19
10.5.8 Align central banking and monetary policy with 10-22
climate targets
10.5.9 Make new money for carbon removal + all climate solutions? 10-22
10.6 Building your scenarios 10-24
10.6.1 Creating or adopting a business-as-usual scenario 10-24
10.6.2 Creating the climate-positive scenario 10-24
10.7 Chapter conclusions 10-24
Further reading 10-24
References 10-25

11 Elevate truth 11-1

Chapter overview 11-1
11.1 Introduction 11-1
11.2 Public understanding about climate lags the science 11-3

xii
 Solving Climate Change

11.3 What we must do 11-3

11.3.1 Tell the truth about climate 11-3
11.3.2 Engage the public with climate truths through information 11-6
campaigns
11.3.3 Require climate education 11-7
11.3.4 Root out fossil-funded corruption 11-8
11.3.5 Mandate transparency and accurate climate disclosures 11-9
11.3.6 Ban advertising and sponsorships for fossil fuel technologies 11-10
11.3.7 Deplatform climate misinformation and disinformation 11-11
11.3.8 Hold the fossil fuel industry and other bad actors 11-11
accountable for climate lies
11.4 Chapter conclusions 11-12
Further reading 11-12
References 11-13

12 Bringing it all together 12-1

Chapter overview 12-1
12.1 Introduction 12-2
12.2 Telling a good story 12-2
12.3 The end of the journey 12-5
12.4 Big models or simpler spreadsheets? 12-7
12.5 Solving climate is a team sport 12-7
12.6 Cross-cutting issues 12-8
12.6.1 Balancing costs, benefits, and tradeoffs 12-8
12.6.2 Interactions between measures 12-11
12.6.3 Equity and climate justice 12-12
12.6.4 Energy security, food/water security, and geopolitics 12-12
12.6.5 Population, health, and education 12-13
12.6.6 Adaptation and resilience 12-14
12.6.7 Making governance work 12-14
12.7 Focus on what matters most 12-15
12.8 Key pieces of the puzzle 12-15
12.9 Chapter conclusions: creating a climate-positive world 12-17
Further reading 12-17
References 12-18

xiii
 Solving Climate Change

13 Our climate-positive future 13-1

Chapter overview 13-1
References 13-4

Appendix A: Introduction to the climate problem (long form) A-1

Appendix B: Modeling capital stock growth and turnover B-1

Appendix C: How we know that much existing fossil capital C-1

will need to retire

Appendix D: Expanded Kaya decomposition D-1

Appendix E: Proper treatment of primary energy E-1

Appendix F: Estimated annual revenues from fossil fuel companies F-1

and tobacco companies in 2019

Appendix G: The effect of carbon prices on existing coal-fired G-1

electricity generation and retail gasoline prices

xiv
 Foreword

It’s warming. It’s us. We’re sure. It’s bad. We can fix it.
I first heard these words1 on a sunny winter day at Stanford. Jon Krosnick was
speaking at a memorial service2 celebrating the life of Steve Schneider, who first
inspired me to study climate impacts and solutions. I have used this ‘climate haiku’
(if you don’t count syllables too carefully) ever since: in my teaching, research3,
writing4, and on a footnoted protest sign5. Research6 shows that understanding these
key points drives support for strong climate policy.
In Solving Climate Change, Jonathan Koomey and Ian Monroe have focused on
the most critical piece of the climate haiku: ‘We can fix it’, adding rightly, ‘But we’d
better hurry!’
This book is a valuable guide for students and practitioners to understand the
principles and crunch their way through the numbers behind how to ‘fix it’—how to
stop global warming and start healing the damages it has caused.
Drawing from Jonathan and Ian’s extensive experience in practice, and in
teaching these concepts to generations of students, Solving Climate Change offers
clear guidance for how to eliminate emissions by using fewer fossil fuels (decarbon-
ize), as well as practical milestones to aim for along the path to ending fossil fuels
altogether.
After decades of inaction, the authors urge us to ‘move as quickly as we can’ to
retire polluting cars, factories, and ideologies. Rather than trying to map out the one
perfect path to a fossil-free world (which doesn’t exist), it’s far better to focus on
meeting our needs with the fossil-free options that are ready today. While a few of us
can specialize in researching how to decarbonize the tricky last 10%–20%, almost all
of us should instead be focused on putting what already works to work. This book
will help you do that.
A key skill you’ll develop is to use systems thinking to understand where fossil
greenhouse gases come from, what’s needed to eliminate them, and how to get
started. Combining tools such as emissions inventories and scenarios will help you
prioritize, so that you focus on the most effective actions to reduce emissions fast
and fairly. You’ll also understand how to align incentives and mobilize money to put
those actions into practice. (Fortunately, since climate action offers so many co-
benefits for health and equality, this work can go faster than many think!)
As the authors point out, we need many more climate solvers who can build
simple spreadsheet models to quickly inform effective decarbonization decisions
everywhere. The approach in this book will help you roll up your sleeves and get to

1
https://www.kimnicholas.com/climate-science-101.html
2
https://stanforddaily.com/2010/12/01/memorial-for-stephen-schneider-set-for-sunday/
3
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0218305
4
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/665274/under-the-sky-we-make-by-kimberly-nicholas-phd/
5
https://twitter.com/billmckibben/status/808791393569243140?s=20&t=WDkZSn7ptnFE9en2qqHCPA
6
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0118489

xv
 Solving Climate Change

work, leading the way to make your home, school, company, industry, or city fossil-
free.
Alongside the unassailable case from physics for why fossil fuels must be left in
the ground, Jonathan and Ian make a compelling moral case for elevating truth, and
against continuing to rely on the fossil fuel industry to make the changes needed to
avoid climate catastrophe.
We are alive at an absolutely critical moment for humanity and life on planet
Earth. Our task is to lead a transformation from our current world with a
destabilizing climate and a fraying web of life, to a world where we succeed at
halting warming, then go beyond net zero to climate positive, while benefitting
people and nature.
We desperately need more citizens armed with the urgency, clarity, and skills to
help build the bridge between these two worlds. This book can help you build that
bridge. Thank you for picking it up. You are essential to doing the work that the
world needs right now!

Kimberly Nicholas, PhD

Associate Professor of Sustainability Science, Lund University,
Sweden
Author of Under the Sky We Make: How to Be Human in a Warming World

xvi
 Preface

There’s one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically
than any other, and that is the urgent threat of a changing climate.
—Barack Obama

We’ve both been working on understanding and scaling climate solutions for
most of our lives. Our paths first crossed while teaching courses on energy systems
and climate solutions at Stanford University. The ensuing collaboration led us to
write this book.
Jon first studied climate change in his graduate program at the UC Berkeley’s
Energy and Resources group in the mid-1980s, under interdisciplinary Professors John
Holdren, John Harte, Mark Christensen, and Anthony Fisher. At the same time, he
joined the Energy and Environment Division at Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory (LBNL) and began to collaborate with energy systems thinkers such as
Mark D Levine, James E McMahon, Ashok Gadgil, Joe Eto, Ed Kahn, Arthur H
Rosenfeld, and, most importantly for his climate journey, Florentin Krause.
Florentin invited Jon to work with him on two climate-related projects, one of
which led to the first comprehensive analysis of a 2 °C warming limit, published in
1989 [1, 2]. He’s been working on climate solutions ever since, until 2003 doing
research full time at LBNL, after that as a visiting professor at Stanford (twice), at
Yale University (once), and at UC Berkeley (once). He was also a researcher at
Stanford and a visiting lecturer at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.
Ian’s climate journey started by witnessing elevated threats from drought and wildfires
around his family’s small farm, which led to an international career in climate solution
science and engineering, while co-founding a climate technology startup (Oroeco) and a
climate investing firm (Etho Capital). Ian has taught climate solution courses in the Earth
Systems Program at Stanford for over a decade, and he has worked in over 30 countries,
including advising on climate accounting and decarbonization strategies for United
Nations programs, governments, Fortune 500 companies, startups, nonprofits, and over
$100 billion in investor assets. Ian’s childhood climate nightmares came true when his
farm and surrounding community were leveled by wildfire in 2017.
When we started working on this issue, climate change was mostly discussed as an
issue for future generations, while now hardly a week goes by without new climate-
related disasters in the news. Now even those who continue to misunderstand the
certainties of climate science have a hard time denying the realities of unprecedented
events around them. Renewable energy, electric vehicles, and efficiency technologies
were niche products a couple decades ago, now they are readily available and
becoming the cheapest options in many parts of the world. Nearly every major
government, company, and investor now acknowledges the grave dangers posed by a
warming world while taking steps to mitigate risks and shift towards climate solutions,
with many adopting ‘Net Zero by 2050’ targets for eliminating climate pollution.

xvii
 Solving Climate Change

Figure 0.1. The Redwood Valley wildfire on October 9, 2017, burned through Ian’s family farm in the middle
of the night, fueled by drought and hurricane-force ‘diablo’ winds. Over 1000 people lost homes that night,
including over a dozen in Ian’s family, and nine people died from the flames. Wildfires are increasing in
frequency and intensity around the world due to climate change, which will continue until we turn the Earth
climate positive. Copyright Nathan Chance Franck, 2017.

Much has changed from when we started working on this book a couple years
ago. The United States has now passed comprehensive climate legislation for the first
time, joining Europe, China, and most of the world’s other major economies to
subsidize dozens of different climate solution technologies to tipping points that can
catalyze scale. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also highlighted the geopolitical and
economic risks of fossil fuel dependency, driving record demand for electric vehicles,
renewables, and energy efficiency technologies. Real climate progress is finally being
made, in many cases spurred on by tragic events and suffering, but there are still major
gaps between rhetoric and realities, and global emissions continue to rise. As we’ll
discuss in more detail ‘Net Zero by 2050’ is likely at least a decade too late to reach Paris
Agreement targets, and it is still far from the climate-positive targets needed to stop and
reverse the climate damages from which millions of people are already suffering.
There is also increasing awareness that our climate crisis is not primarily an
environmental problem, it is first and foremost a human problem, and a problem
enmeshed in tremendous social and economic inequity. While we’re both scientists
and technologists at heart, our climate solution work around the world has
highlighted that climate inequities are everywhere, and are often the roots of the
problem. Denying the links that climate pollution and climate impacts have to
structural classism, racism, and colonialism is as wrong as denying the fundamentals

xviii
 Solving Climate Change

of climate science. Climate solutions that fail to incorporate climate justice

considerations are often not real or saleable solutions. Understanding and address-
ing climate justice issues is essential for scaling technologies and policies that move
climate in the right direction, while solving climate is also essential for achieving
every one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Climate change is the biggest collective challenge humanity has ever faced. The
problem is difficult in part because temperature changes are driven by changes in
cumulative greenhouse gas emissions. The longer we wait to fix the problem, the
more difficult fixing it becomes, and the faster our rate of change needs to be to
stabilize global temperatures. It is more complicated still because almost every
human activity generates greenhouse gas emissions, so the needed scope of change is
unlike anything that has come before.
We’re already committed to some warming from past emissions of greenhouse
gases, so as Professor John Holdren has said for years, humanity’s choices for
response are threefold: mitigation, adaptation, and suffering. The world will do
some of each of these in coming decades, but how much of each we do is up to us.
The more mitigation we do, the less adaptation and suffering we’ll impose on our
descendants. Adaptation is hard to do unless you know exactly what’s going to
happen, and the current path we’re on is likely to be so disruptive that we will have a
hard time adapting fast enough. In addition, ecosystems can’t adapt as rapidly as
we’re currently changing the climate, and there’s little we can do for them except
mitigate as rapidly as we can. Suffering, of course, is what remains if we fail.
For all these reasons, the main focus of this book is on climate mitigation
(reducing emissions), although we touch on aspects of climate adaptation and
resilience as well. Preserving a stable climate will require unprecedented and rapid
changes around the globe, but most people have no idea just how big and fast these
changes need to be.
Another reason the climate problem is complicated is because the fossil fuel
industry and other large polluters have had more than a century to rig systems in
their favor. Most technical treatments of climate solutions ignore or gloss over this
reality, but we make it central to our analysis.
Stoddard et al [3] addresses this question head on in their 2021 article ‘Three decades
of climate mitigation: why haven’t we bent the global emissions curve?’ That article
shows the power of status quo interests to frame the debate and stymie progress on an
important problem, using myriad techniques to delay climate action. Related to that
power is deep-seated (but often invisible) corruption and regulatory capture enabled by
the vast revenues of the most powerful industry in human history (about $5T US/year
at last count). Perverse incentives from small but powerful groups that profit from
climate pollution continue to spread disinformation, deliberately obscuring climate
truths from the public while blocking policy progress. Confronting this corruption is
central to stabilizing the climate, a theme to which we return later in the book.
This book grew out of a class we developed and taught at Stanford University’s
Earth Systems Program in 2017 and 2018 titled ‘Implementing Climate Solutions at
Scale’. It had as its primary goal teaching students quantitative and qualitative
methods for understanding the rate and scope of change needed to truly face the

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 Solving Climate Change

climate challenge. Each student (or group of students) produced and presented a
project for a state, region, or country that achieved net-zero emissions by the middle of
the twenty-first century, assessing potential emissions reductions in different sectors,
based on the resources and characteristics of the geographic unit under study.
Our class didn’t focus on estimating total costs of emissions reductions, as that is
a complicated task not well suited to a one-quarter class (the students had their
hands full with the emissions reductions side of the equation). We did encourage
students to use cost-effectiveness assessments in choosing emissions reduction
options, we just didn’t require that they add up all the costs and benefits, because
that would have been too much to ask for this introductory class.

Our intended audience

This book introduces tools for understanding how to reduce emissions rapidly,
hitting net-zero emissions no later than 2040, then pushing beyond to remove carbon
from the atmosphere and reduce carbon dioxide concentrations to those of the
stable climate in which human civilization developed. We’ve written this book first
and foremost as a resource for professors and advanced undergraduate and graduate
students ready to teach and learn the key analytical tools needed to create a climate-
positive world. We hope self-motivated students, investors, entrepreneurs, policy-
makers, climate solution practitioners, and others who want to learn these skills on
their own will also find this book useful.

What will readers learn?

This book goes beyond our original courses to provide a more comprehensive
framework for solving climate change than we’ve found elsewhere. We include an
overview of climate solution technologies, as well as the analytical tools necessary to
identify solutions that really work. We also explore what’s needed to align
incentives, mobilize money, and elevate truth in climate conversations, key pillars
of climate action that are often overlooked by techno-centric discussions of global
emissions reductions.
Some of the tools we cover include:

• Emissions inventories and country-wide energy balances.

• Decomposition tools to understand historic and future scenarios.
• Technology costing studies for emissions reductions.
• Climate ‘wedges’.
• Life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodologies.
• Financial modeling tools that integrate and assess sustainability.
• Whole-system, clean-slate integrated design.
• Social and environmental tradeoff analysis.
• Climate adaptation and resilience strategies.

Learning by doing only happens if you DO, so the book focuses on how to put
these tools and associated data to work in student projects.

xx
 Solving Climate Change

The structure of the book

As explained in chapter 2, we organize the book around the overarching goal of
achieving net-zero emissions by 2040, making the world climate positive thereafter.
We present three key high-level ideas for stabilizing the climate: ending fossil fuels,
minimizing non-fossil emissions, and creating a climate-positive biosphere. We then
elaborate on eight pillars of climate stabilization, laid out in detail in chapters 4–11.
This book is divided into thirteen chapters and seven appendices:
Chapter 1—Introduction to the climate problem (short form): The continued
orderly development of human civilization requires that the world reduce greenhouse
gas emissions to zero as fast as possible, starting now. This chapter explains the
evidence and rationale for that point of view, in a shorter form than in appendix A.
Chapter 2—Introduction to climate solutions: This chapter offers a comprehen-
sive vision of how to stabilize the climate and describes the eight pillars of climate
action, which we use to structure the book.
Chapter 3—Tools of the trade: This chapter summarizes how to create emissions
reduction plans using emissions inventories, then how to turn those inventories into
projections of future emissions for different scenarios.
Chapter 4—Electrify (almost) everything: This chapter draws upon the latest
research and field experience to describe how to electrify virtually all energy end-
uses, which is the single most important measure to end fossil fuels.
Chapter 5—Decarbonize electricity: This chapter describes the technologies,
policies, and business practices needed to move electricity generation to zero
emissions, while increasing total generation three- to four-fold in coming decades.
Chapter 6—Minimize non-fossil emissions: The often neglected non-fossil emis-
sions really need to be tackled for climate stabilization, and addressing the short-
lived non-fossil pollutants is a way to slow increases in global warming in the near
term.
Chapter 7—Efficiency and optimization: This chapter focuses on efficiency in the
broadest sense, that of optimizing energy, capital, and materials flows while
reducing emissions to zero.
Chapter 8—Remove carbon: This chapter discusses the prospects and pitfalls of
technologies that promise to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Chapter 9—Align incentives: We’ll need to re-design markets and re-align
incentives throughout society to reflect the goal of getting to zero emissions as
soon as possible.
Chapter 10—Mobilize money: Solving the climate problem means replacing high-
emissions infrastructure with capital and technology. Financial innovation can help
smooth that transition.
Chapter 11—Elevate truth: Elevating truth and fighting disinformation, apathy,
and cynicism are critical to a successful transition to a climate-positive society.
Chapter 12—Bringing it all together: Planning for a climate-positive future involves
complex tradeoffs of timing, logistics, and economics. This chapter introduces students
to some of those tradeoffs and how to think rigorously about them.

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 Solving Climate Change

Chapter 13—Truly facing the climate challenge: This concluding chapter

describes reasons for hope in the face of a truly daunting societal problem, and
describes the best practices for solving and discussing the climate problem.
Appendix A—Introduction to the climate problem (long form): The continued
orderly development of human civilization requires that the world reduce green-
house gas emissions to zero as fast as possible, starting now. This chapter explains
the evidence and rationale for that point of view, including more graphs and detail
than in chapter 1.
Appendix B—Detailed example on modeling capital stock growth and turnover:
This appendix presents an example you can copy for your own model of capital
stocks.
Appendix C—Why much existing fossil capital will need to retire: This appendix
explains why we can’t stabilize the climate without retiring existing fossil capital.
Appendix D—Expanded Kaya decomposition: This appendix presents the
expanded Kaya decomposition shown in chapter 3.
Appendix E—Proper treatment of primary energy: This appendix explains why
some conventions for calculating primary energy are misleading when the world is
transitioning to non-combustion generation.
Appendix F—Revenues from top fossil fuel companies and the tobacco industry:
This appendix documents revenues from fossil fuel and tobacco industries in 2019.
Appendix G—The effect of carbon prices on existing coal-fired electricity
generation and retail gasoline prices: This appendix shows the effect of a $10/tonne
carbon dioxide charge on electricity generation and retail gasoline prices to illustrate
why carbon taxes are far more effective at changing the utility sector generation mix
than in affecting small consumer behavior.
The material in each chapter supports a lecture or two in our class. We
incorporate figures for each topic area into power point slides for teachers to
incorporate into their own lectures as they see fit. We also create spreadsheets
showing example emissions scenarios from which students can learn. Each chapter
gives suggested readings. References and footnotes lead to more detailed sources for
those who want to learn more. At the beginning of each chapter is a summary of key
conclusions to introduce what readers will learn. We also post a template and some
advice about student projects at http://www.solveclimate.org, alongside a collection
of climate solution action checklists for government, company, investor, donor, and
community decision makers.

How to use this book

Professors who want to build a course around this book can use the material in each
chapter as the basis for lectures, supplemented by examples drawn from their own
experience.
General readers can read the book straight through. Those in a hurry should read
chapters 1 and 2 then the summary at the beginning of each succeeding chapter.
They can conclude by reading chapters 12 and 13.

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 Solving Climate Change

How to contact us
We encourage readers to contact us with their comments, ideas, and thoughts about
how the book could be improved for a second edition. You can contact Jon via
http://www.koomey.com, Ian via LinkedIn, and both of us via http://www.solvecli-
mate.org.
Jonathan Koomey and Ian Monroe
Bay Area, CA, and Redwood Valley, CA, USA
30 August 2022

We are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it GDP.
—Paul Hawken

References
[1] Krause F, Bach W and Koomey J 1989 From Warming Fate to Warming Limit: Benchmarks
to a Global Climate Convention (El Cerrito, CA: International Project for Sustainable Energy
Paths) http://www.mediafire.com/file/pzwrsyo1j89axzd/Warmingfatetowarminglimitbook.pdf
[2] Krause F, Bach W and Koomey J G 1992 Energy Policy in the Greenhouse (New York: Wiley)
[3] Stoddard I et al 2021 Three decades of climate mitigation: why haven’t we bent the global
emissions curve? Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 46 653–89

xxiii
 Acknowledgement

Climate change is an interdisciplinary challenge, and few universities have the

faculty or inclination to address this problem inside or outside of traditional
disciplinary departments. There are more and more exceptions to this rule, but
most universities have in the past not addressed climate change in a wholistic fashion
because of its interdisciplinary nature. We are grateful to Professor Pamela Matson,
formerly Dean of Earth Sciences at Stanford University, as well as Deana Fabbro-
Johnston from Stanford’s Earth Systems Program, who both supported our
interdisciplinary class and allowed it to reach its current state of development.
We’d also like to thank the students who’ve taken this class for helping us develop
our arguments and for challenging us when we weren’t clear about important issues.
Kimberly Nicholas has our gratitude for writing a lovely foreword that summa-
rizes the essence of the book in a compact and compelling form.
Jon and Ian are both grateful to their families for their support throughout the
long process of writing this book.
We are also thankful for others along the way who have supported our
intellectual development. One of the most important of these for both Jon and
Ian is Gil Masters, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University who has been for
decades an inspirational pioneer in clean energy and green building education.
Jon is grateful to his friend and colleague Zachary Schmidt, whose research, data
analysis, and programming skills have contributed in many ways to the tables,
graphs, and appendices in this book.
Many friends and colleagues have helped and supported our writing and teaching
efforts, and we are lucky to have them as part of our intellectual community. These
supporters gave comments, suggested ideas, gave guest lectures, and supplied
quotations about the book. For these and other contributions, we are grateful.
These supporters include (in alphabetical order by last name): Allison Archambault,
Drew Baglino, Drianne Benner, Bruce Biewald, Lukas Biewald, Carl Blumstein,
Adam Brandt, Marilyn Brown, Karl Burkart, Ben Caldecott, Chris Calwell, Mark
Campanale, Ralph Cavanagh, Dan Chu, Moya Connelly, Danny Cullenward,
Laura D’Asaro, Noah Deich, Amanda Denney, Tim Duane, Georges Dyer,
Delphine Eyraud, Chris Field, Leslie Field, Nathan Chance Franck, Benjamin
Franta, Amberjae Freeman, Allison Gacad, Gil Friend, Ashok Gadgil, Michel
Gelobter, Ashley Geo, Margot Gerritsen, Kenneth Gillingham, Justin Gillis, Peter
Gleick, David Goldstein, Eban Goodstein, Deborah Gordon, Saul Griffith, Arnulf
Grübler, Genevieve Guenther, Juliana Gutierrez, Corwin Hardham, Chante Harris,
John Harte, Hal Harvey, Karl Hausker, Thomas Hayden, Gang He, R Paul
Herman, Richard Hirsh, Katie Hoffman, John Holdren, Nate Hultman, Holmes
Hummel, Soh Young In, Stacy Jackson, Mark Z Jacobson, Dan Kammen, Bob
Keefe, Julie Kennedy, Min Kim, Ryder Kimball, Paul Komor, Florentin Krause,
Saumya Krishna, David Kroodsma, Bård Lahn, Skip Laitner, Dan Lashof, Doug
Duckjun Lee, Michael Lepech, Mark Levine, Alvin Lin, Dawn Lippert,
Scott Loarie, Amory B Lovins, Katherine Mach, Lisa Mandle, Eric Masanet,

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 Solving Climate Change

Kieren Mayers, Andrew McAllister, Ed McCullough, James E McMahon, Michael

Mann, Vineet Mehta, Evan Mills, Robert Munro Monarch, Rebekah Moses,
Dustin Mulvaney, Gregory Nemet, Eliza Nemser, Jenna Nicholas, Wendy Ong,
Robbie Orvis, Richard Plevin, Robert Perkowitz, Sian Proctor, Jean Ann Ramey,
Richard Reiss, Lisa Renstrom, Joe Romm, Abe Schneider, Gia Schneider, Alicia
Seiger, Gianluca Signorelli, Susan Su, Joel Swisher, Auriane Tang-Subtil, Melissa
Vallejo, David Victor, Diana Vorsatz, Amy Guy Wagner, Gernot Wagner, Vance
Wagner, Rose Wang, Michael Webber, Bill Weihl, John Weyant, Sheldon
Whitehouse, Austin Whitman, Jim Williams, and Eva Woo.

xxv
 Author biographies

Jonathan Koomey
Jonathan Koomey is a researcher, author, lecturer, and entrepreneur
who is one of the leading international experts on the economics of
climate solutions and the energy and environmental effects of
information technology. Dr Koomey holds MS and PhD degrees
from the Energy and Resources Group at the University of
California at Berkeley, and an AB in History and Science from
Harvard University. He is the author or coauthor of ten books and
more than two hundred articles and reports on energy efficiency and
supply-side energy technologies, energy economics, energy policy, environmental
externalities, and global climate change. He has also published extensively on critical
thinking skills. Solving Climate Change: A Guide for Learners and Leaders is his
latest book.
For more on Dr Koomey’s research, writing, and accomplishments go to
Koomey.com.

Ian Monroe
With a career spanning climate science, technology, policy, and
finance, Ian Monroe has taught at Stanford University for over a
decade and worked on climate challenges in over 30 countries. A
pioneer in climate solution investing, Ian is the CIO of Etho
Capital, which runs the ETHO ETF and some of the world’s first
and best performing deeply decarbonized index strategies.
Working directly with family offices and institutional investors,
Etho has helped decarbonize over $100 billion in assets, and Ian is
now helping move even more capital into climate solutions by co-founding the new
Climate+Positive Investing Alliance (C+PIA). Ian is also a Founder of Oroeco, a
pioneering personal climate solution technology platform, and Ian has advised the
United Nations, World Bank IFC, governments, companies, investors, and the
creation of several international sustainability standards, including Climate Neutral
and Science Based Targets (SBTi). Beyond his work and graduate degrees in Earth
Systems science from Stanford and the University of Oxford Artificial Intelligence
Programme, Ian has also been educated by climate-fueled droughts and wildfires on
his family’s small farm in Mendocino County, California.

xxvi
 IOP Publishing

Solving Climate Change

A guide for learners and leaders
Jonathan Koomey and Ian Monroe

Chapter 1
Introduction to the climate problem (short form)

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or
the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
—John Adams
Chapter overview

• Following Nicholas [4], we summarize the current state of knowledge about the
climate problem in a few phrases:
– It’s warming.
– It’s us.
– We’re sure.
– It’s bad.
– We can fix it (but we’d better hurry).
• These conclusions are based on some of the most well-established principles in
physical science, corroborated by the work of thousands of scientists and many lines
of independent evidence, measurements, and analysis. Every reputable academy of
science, the United Nations, and the vast majority of the world’s national govern-
ments and multinational corporations agree with these core climate truths.
• Keeping Earth’s average temperature from rising much more than 1.5 °C from
pre-industrial levels will require immediate, rapid, and sustained greenhouse gas
emissions reductions. It will also almost certainly require the removal of carbon
pollution from the atmosphere.
• Society should aim to hit ‘net zero’ greenhouse gas emissions globally by 2040 at
the latest, sooner if possible, and every year thereafter should be ‘net climate
positive’ until enough climate pollution is removed to reverse climate damages.
• Governments, companies, investors, and communities that can move faster should
do so, and their early action will drive deployment-related cost reductions associated
with learning-by-doing and economies of scale that will benefit the entire world.

doi:10.1088/978-0-7503-4032-8ch1 1-1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

 Solving Climate Change

1.1 Introduction
Climate change is a complex issue, but the basic outlines of the problem are well
known. In her book Under the Sky We Make sustainability scientist and author
Kimberly Nicholas summarizes the climate issue in a few simple phrases [4]:

• It’s warming.
• It’s us.
• We’re sure.
• It’s bad.
• We can fix it.

Michael E Webber, a professor of energy resources at the University of Texas at

Austin, rightly adds: ‘But we’d better hurry’1.
This chapter explains in a compact way why aggressive climate action is urgent,
using Nicholas’s framing (with Webber’s addition) to structure the discussion of
climate solutions. We provide a more elaborate version of these arguments in
appendix A, with lots more graphs, which you can use as a resource when challenged
on some of these key points by purveyors of misinformation. However, given the
overwhelming scientific evidence pointing to the causes and magnitude of our
climate crisis, much of the honest debate has shifted to how we should solve our
climate challenges and who should be responsible for doing the solving. With that
said, it’s important to understand the basics of these core climate truths, as these
facts underpin the urgency of action.

1.2 It’s warming

Scientists have used many methods to estimate global average temperatures.
Reliable and comprehensive direct measurements began around 1850, but proxy
methods, using tree rings, ratios of isotopes, and other techniques, can yield
estimates going back thousands or even millions of years. Of course, the further
back we look, the more complicated it is to do accurate assessments, but even the
proxy estimates are based on well-established principles of physical science.
Figure 1.1 shows a summary of the instrumental temperature record since 1850,
created by researchers at the University of Oxford [5] and continually updated.
These data combine four well accepted time-series of temperatures into what they
call a climate change index. Such temperature data are expressed relative to a base
year (or an average over a set of years).
This graph is expressed as a change in temperature relative to a 1850–1900
baseline, which is one way to characterize what we call a pre-industrial baseline.
The industrial revolution, which was the beginning of large-scale exploitation of
fossil fuels, started in the late 1700s, but didn’t really gather steam until the late
1800s. That fact combined with widespread instrumental temperature data only

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 Solving Climate Change

Figure 1.1. Global average temperatures, 1850–2020. Source: Based on data through 2020 from https://
globalwarmingindex.org, first assessed and presented in [5].

extending back to about 1850 have led scientists to use the 1850–1900 baseline in the
most recent research.
Temperature changes in the 1800s were mostly driven by volcanoes and other
natural forces. The effect of Krakatoa in 1883 was particularly dramatic, with
volcanic ash cooling the Earth by more than 0.1 °C over a year or two.
Temperatures in the 1900s were also affected by such events but increased by
more than 1 °C by 2020 due mainly to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases
during this period (see below). Each decade since the 1970s has been hotter than the
last, and almost all of the hottest years ever recorded have occurred in the past two
decades2.
Warming since pre-industrial times has pushed the Earth out of the
comfortable and stable temperature range in which human civilization developed
[6, 7]. The rate of temperature change in the last century (as well as the rate of
change in the underlying drivers of temperature change) is also much more rapid
than humanity and the Earth have experienced in thousands of years, which is
another reason for concern, as we discuss below.
This warming is reflected in other indicators. Northern Hemisphere summer
sea-ice extent has reached historically low levels in recent years, while Antarctic sea
ice saw significant declines in the early to mid-twentieth century [8] with Antarctic
sea-ice extent falling below long-term averages from 2015 onwards3. Sea levels keep
increasing as land-based glaciers melt [9] and a warmer ocean expands [10, 11].

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 Solving Climate Change

Sea level rise has also been accelerating in recent years [12, 13], at the same time as
global average upper ocean heat content has increased rapidly [14]. Finally, satellite
measurements of Earth’s energy balance have confirmed that greenhouse gases are
trapping heat, just as scientists expected [15].
It’s important to understand that global warming does not mean that everywhere
is breaking temperature records all the time. Natural cycles and fluctuations still
exist, and places can still experience record cold temperatures on a given day. Many
places are experiencing extremes in both directions from climate change, particularly
the weakening of the jet stream in the Northern Hemisphere linked to melting Arctic
sea ice [16], which can allow hot air to move further north and cold air to move
farther south (contributing to localized polar vortex cold snaps). However, despite
localized variability, average annual and daily high temperatures are increasing
almost everywhere we look.
We have even longer-term data for historical temperatures going back millions of
years, as shown in Burke et al [17]. The uncertainties grow as we move back in time,
but it is clear Earth was a lot cooler (−3 °C to −5 °C from our 1850 to 1900 baseline)
for most of the 300 000 years before the present, with kilometers-deep ice sheets
covering much of Earth’s land masses.
Temperatures about 3 million years ago were about at about current levels, and
before that (50–60 million years ago) temperatures were much hotter (10 °C to 15 °C
above 1850–1900). Sea levels in that warmer period were more than one hundred
meters higher than they are today [18].
Multiple independent lines of evidence are consistent with a rapidly warming
Earth. The world’s foremost climate science authority, the United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded in 2021 [19] that
‘global surface temperature has increased faster since 1970 than in any other 50 year
period over at least the last 2000 years’.

1.3 It’s us
We know why average temperature have increased over the past century: emissions
of greenhouse gases (GHGs) related to human activity have increased substantially
since pre-industrial times, leading to increasing concentrations of these gases in the
atmosphere. GHGs such as carbon dioxide (CO2) trap energy from the Sun that
otherwise would radiate to space, acting like a blanket that has been getting thicker
for more than two centuries. To first approximation, warming to date is 100% driven
by human activities.
Global temperature changes have historically corresponded very closely with
atmospheric GHG concentrations [19]. The basic science behind how greenhouse
gases warm the Earth through the greenhouse effect has been understood since the
1800s, and pre-industrial levels of atmospheric GHGs have been instrumental in
keeping Earth warm enough for life to evolve. But while GHG levels have naturally

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 Solving Climate Change

fluctuated over millennia, the rapid rise in greenhouse gases since 1900, driven by
human activities, is unprecedented in Earth’s history.
Figure 1.2 shows man-made emissions of all greenhouse gases from 1850 to 2020,
which have increased rapidly and exponentially. There are four major categories of
greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and
other gases (mostly what are called ‘F-gases’ that contain fluorine). The non-CO2
gases are converted to what’s called CO2 equivalent (CO2e), which is the equivalent
amount of CO2 that would result in the same warming effect as emissions of these
other gases over a 100 year period. This technique allows us to approximate the total
warming effect for all gases over time.
Total greenhouse gas equivalent emissions have increased at a rate of 2.2%/year
from 1850 to 2020, with the emissions from fossil energy use growing at a 3.1%/year

Figure 1.2. Greenhouse gas emissions expressed as CO2 equivalent 1850 to 2020. Source: Fossil, cement, and
net land-use CO2 emissions 1850 to 1958 from CDIAC archives: https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/trends/emis/
tre_glob_2013.html. Fossil, cement, and net land-use CO2 emissions 1959 to 2020 from [20]. Fossil CO2
emissions include combustion from flaring, solids, liquids, and gases. Methane, N2O, and F-gas emissions from
1850 to 2019 from PIK, taken from https://www.climatewatchdata.org/data-explorer/historical-emissions.
Global warming potential values for methane and N2O adjusted to reflect AR6 100 year values in table 2.1
(PIK data use AR4 values as described in [21]). Emissions of methane, N2O, and F-gases for 2020 estimated
assuming emissions stay at 2019 levels (just like they did during the 2009 recession).

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 Solving Climate Change

rate over that period. There have been periods of modest declines, but the overall
upward trend has been inexorable.
The most important warming gas is carbon dioxide, which comes mainly from
combustion of fossil fuels for energy, but also from deforestation and production
processes for cement, steel, aluminum, and other materials. The burning of fossil
fuels and land-use changes are the main sources adding CO2 to the biosphere. The
ocean and land have historically taken up about half of these emissions, but what
remains goes into the atmosphere and stays there for centuries. As these emissions
continue over time, the concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere go up, climate
feedback loops (such as wildfires and melting permafrost) can further accelerate
GHG emissions and associated warming.
Scientists have different methods to assess past concentrations of trace gases over
time. One way is to drill for ice cores and extract and analyze air samples from
bubbles in the ice. For more recent times (since 1959) we have detailed direct
measurements of atmospheric concentrations from the observatory on Mauna Loa
in Hawaii and other locations.
Over the last 800 000 years, Earth’s atmosphere never held more than about 300
parts per million of CO2 [22] corresponding to significantly cooler temperatures than
in the Holocene (the twelve thousand year period before recent rapid human-caused
warming) as shown in Burke et al [17]. In 2020 we hit 414 parts per million, and in
May of 2022 we hit 421 parts per million. The increase over historical levels has
occurred mostly in the span of about one and a half centuries. When it comes to CO2
concentrations, we’ve moved rapidly into uncharted territory [23], driven by the
increasing CO2 emissions shown in figure 1.2.
Total CO2 equivalent concentrations (including all warming agents) reached just
over 500 parts per million (ppm) in 20204. For comparison, concentrations in 1850
were about 305 ppm. That means current concentrations are now about 1.6 times
pre-industrial levels.
The IPCC in 2021 tallied the main drivers of warming to the 2010 to 2019 period,
relative to the 1850 to 1900 period [19]. Those results are shown in figure 1.3. Higher
positive numbers mean more warming effect, and negative numbers mean that
factor causes cooling, mainly by reflecting sunlight back to space rather than
trapping it as heat.
The most important driver of increases in global surface temperatures since
pre-industrial times has been increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide, mostly
from combustion of fossil fuels, with a significant additional contribution from
changes in land-use patterns (such as deforestation). Next is methane, driven by
land-use changes, energy production, and agriculture, followed by non-methane
volatile organic compounds and carbon monoxide, halogenated gases (such as the
chlorofluorocarbons being phased out under the Montreal Protocol for ozone
depleting chemicals, plus some others), nitrous oxides (also mainly from agricul-
ture), black carbon, and airplane contrails. The cooling agents are sulfur dioxide

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 Solving Climate Change

Figure 1.3. Contributors to warming in 2010 to 2019 compared to the 1850 to 1900 baseline. Source: ICPP
Working Group I, Summary for Policy Makers, Sixth Assessment Report [24].

aerosols (small particles that reflect sunlight), nitrogen oxides, land-use reflectance
and irrigation, organic carbon, and ammonia.
The cooling effects just about cancel out the effect of other factors than CO2 and
half of the warming associated with methane, but that doesn’t mean that we can
ignore the other warming agents. As we start to phase out fossil fuels, the cooling
effects from the aerosols will also be reduced, so we’ll need to compensate by also
rapidly minimizing the shorter-lived warming agents such as methane, some
fluorinated gases, and black carbon.

1.4 We’re sure

Uncertainties always exist in science, but when we confirm scientific findings by
multiple, independent lines of evidence, we call them ‘facts’. There may still be
uncertainty about some details, but the preponderance of the evidence points
towards these facts accurately describing how the physical world operates. Every
credible scientific organization now agrees that burning fossil fuels and other human
activities are almost entirely responsible for current climate change, based on
decades of research from thousands of scientists. Human-caused climate change is
now as much of a settled scientific fact as gravity.
The US National Academy of Sciences [25], which is not known for its wild
speculation, concluded in 2010:

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 Solving Climate Change

A strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is

occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for
a broad range of human and natural systems….
Some scientific conclusions or theories have been so thoroughly examined
and tested, and supported by so many independent observations and results,
that their likelihood of subsequently being found to be wrong is vanishingly
small. Such conclusions and theories are then regarded as settled facts. This is
the case for the conclusions that the Earth system is warming and that much of
this warming is very likely due to human activities.

The academies of science for 80 other countries (including China, India, Russia,
Germany, Japan, Brazil, and the UK) have released comparable statements about
the science of climate [26]. The IPCC, the global scientific body charged with
investigating this issue, stated with uncharacteristic bluntness in 2007, that ‘warming
of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of
increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of
snow and ice and rising global average sea level’ [27]. IPCC reports in 2013 [28] and
2021 [19] were even more emphatic, as was the World Meteorological Association in
2021 [29].
That greenhouse gases warm the Earth is a finding based on some of the most
well-established principles in physical science, as well as extensive measurements.
The largest historical source of warming is carbon dioxide, and we know for a fact
that the increase in carbon dioxide concentrations after the industrial revolution
(particularly after the mid-1800s) was fueled predominantly by human activity.
One reason that we know that fossil fuels and land-use changes are the cause of
the measured increases in CO2 concentrations is because the total carbon emitted
since the dawn of the industrial age is about twice as large as the total amount that
remains in the atmosphere nowadays (the other half was absorbed by the oceans and
land-based biota), and there are no other known sources of carbon that could
account for such an increase in the atmosphere’s CO2 content.
In addition, scientists can measure the prevalence of different isotopes of carbon
in the atmosphere to understand the sources of CO2. Carbon from recent biological
activity (such as deforestation) contains a different mix of carbon isotopes than
carbon from fossil fuels and other geological sources, and scientists have measured
changes in the concentrations of those isotopes in the atmosphere that are consistent
with the additional carbon coming from human-linked sources [30]. So it’s virtually
certain that humans are the cause of elevated CO2, as well as causing similar
increases in the past two centuries in concentrations of methane, nitrous oxides, and
other GHGs [19].
These changes are warming the planet, as shown in figures 1.1 and 1.3, and as
predicted with surprising accuracy as early as 1975 in Science [31] and in 1982 by
scientists at Exxon [32]. The best current estimates are that global average surface
temperatures have increased 1.1 °C–1.2 °C since 1900.
The physical science results supporting these conclusions go back at least a
century to the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius, who calculated in 1896 the first

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 Solving Climate Change

climate sensitivity of 4 °C to 5 °C for a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations.

Arrhenius’s analysis was supported by earlier measurements made by Eunice Foote
and John Tyndall that demonstrated the heat trapping abilities of CO2 [33]. The idea
that greenhouse gases could warm the Earth is not a new one, and in fact the first
informed speculation about this topic was by the mathematician Joseph Fourier in
the 1820s [34].
These concerns are also validated by actual measurements of the climate system
that corroborate theoretical predictions [35]. Satellite measurements show, for
example, that as greenhouse gases have built up in the atmosphere, the heat emitted
from the Earth has been declining at wavelengths that exactly correspond to those
absorbed by various GHGs [36]. Similar measurements show that thermal radiation
back to Earth’s surface from the atmosphere, which we’d expect to increase if
greenhouse gases trap heat, has been increasing exactly as we thought it would [37].
And the amount of heat stored in the oceans over the past few decades has been
rising rapidly, which is consistent with a warming planet [24, 38, 39]5.
We can also examine data on some key indicators of warming, which by most
accounts are changing at rates equaling or exceeding our worst-case predictions of
just a few years ago [19, 40, 41]. These measurements are one of the main reasons
why scientists are so alarmed about humanity’s effect on the planet’s temperature.
In summarizing these and other measurements, the IPCC [27] concluded in 2007
that ‘observational evidence from all continents and most oceans shows that many
natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temper-
ature increases’. By 2021, the IPCC [24] was even more explicit: ‘Human-induced
climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every
region across the globe. Evidence of observed changes in extremes such as heat
waves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their
attribution to human influence, has strengthened since AR5 [in 2013]’.
The observations cited above are powerful evidence for a warming world, but
they are not the only ones [19]. Glaciers are melting [9, 11], wildfires are more
frequent and more destructive [42, 43], agricultural growing seasons are changing
[44], agricultural productivity is down [45], wildlife are altering their long-established
patterns [46], and billions of people are (or will soon be) experiencing new heat
extremes [47, 48]. Something’s clearly happening to the climate, and these indicators
are consistent with what the last one and a half centuries of science has been saying
about this problem all along.

1.5 It’s bad

If we continue on our current trajectory, we’ll push Earth’s climate into uncharted
territory [49]. Figure 1.4 shows the result from one widely cited ‘current trends
continued’ case (also known as SSP-2) created around 2015 or so [50]. For
comparison, we also plot the instrumental record from figure 1.1 and the current
best estimates for temperatures over the past twelve thousand years, from [6, 7].

5
Also see https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-ocean-heat-content.

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Figure 1.4. Historical temperatures contrasted with the reference-case projection from a prominent 2017
study. Source: Kaufman et al [6] for the past 12 000 years [6], https://globalwarmingindex.org for the
instrumental record [5], and Fricko et al [50] for the reference-case, SSP-2 marker scenario [59].

That emissions trajectory for greenhouse gas emissions (and thus, global temper-
atures) results in an increase of about 3.6 °C above pre-industrial levels by 2100. This
result is typical for assessments of a ‘current trends continued’ path circa 2015,
which fall in the range of 3 °C to 4 °C above pre-industrial times. In the past few
years, with significant climate action in some major countries, the ‘current trends
continued’ case has improved even more [51–54] to more like 2.5 °C to 3.5 °C.6
In 2012 when one of us (Koomey) wrote a book assessing the options for reducing
emissions [55], the current path at that time implied an increase of about 5 °C by
2100. Since 2012 we’ve made great progress in bringing down the cost of clean
technology, we’ve shut down many coal plants, we’ve implemented and strength-
ened policies to reduce emissions, and we’ve realized that some of the more dire
projections circa 2010 were based on overestimates of exploitable reserves of coal
[56]. Of course, there is great uncertainty in any projection into the future, but we
need a benchmark against which to measure progress, and 2.5 °C to 3.5 °C by 2100
is as good an estimate as any.
That improvement is small comfort, however. Even our current trajectory would
be a disaster for the Earth and most other species [49, 57]. It would raise Earth’s
average temperature to a level not seen for about four million years [17], and to do
so with unprecedented speed.
The most important direct effect of increasing temperatures is stress on natural
and human systems [49]. Greenhouse gases keep more energy in the climate system,

6
Also see https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/3c-world

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and that energy must go somewhere. Where it goes is into extreme rainfall and
temperature events, which will become increasingly difficult or impossible for
humans to manage, and ever more devastating for natural systems (whose ability
to adapt is even more limited) [58].
Figure 1.5 illustrates how a warming climate ‘loads the dice’ and makes extreme
temperature events more likely and the extremes more extreme, just as more
moisture in the air makes high precipitation events more likely (and oddly enough,
makes droughts in some places more likely and more intense as well) [24, 48, 60–64].
It also makes wildfire much more likely [43].
This concern is not a theoretical one. In a NASA report published in 2012, James
Hansen and his colleagues examined distributions of measured temperatures for the
period 1951 to 1980, comparing them to those from the 1980s, the 1990s, and the
2000s [65]. In each succeeding decade, the shifting of the distribution to towards
higher temperatures became more pronounced as the climate warmed.
As we showed in figure 1.4, the current global environment is accustomed to a relatively
narrow temperature range, one that has prevailed for thousands of years. Ecosystems can
sometimes migrate slowly (over many millennia, not decades or centuries), but that
migration is limited by geography and other constraints. For example, a forest biome can
gradually move up the mountainside as the climate warms (soil and geography
permitting), but once it reaches the peak there’s nowhere else to go, and extinction is
the result. On our current path, thousands of plant and animal species that have existed for
eons will be driven to extinction in the span of a century or so [66–68].
Humans and their support systems are also vulnerable to a warming climate.
Heat waves will become ever more frequent [69], and people in locations without

Figure 1.5. Increasing temperatures load the dice and make extreme temperatures more likely (and the
extremes more extreme). Source: Adapted from a graph made by the University of Arizona, Southwest
Climate Change Network, http://www.southwestclimatechange.org. Reproduced with permission from [55].

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air conditioning will either add it (which will worsen climate change), suffer,
or even die (as tens of thousands of Europeans did during the heat wave of 2003).
Our wastewater treatment and water supply systems are designed to handle current
conditions but will be difficult and expensive to adapt to a warming world’s rapidly
rising sea level and increasingly intense rainstorms. Wildfires will become more
frequent and more intense [43]. Pollen and its associated respiratory effects will
worsen [70]. Climate change will also increase risks of cross-species viral trans-
mission [71, 72].
With even small increases in sea level, low lying coastal areas will become
increasingly vulnerable to storm surges, putting millions of lives at risk, particularly
in the developing world. Those areas will also suffer from increased saltwater
intrusion into groundwater supplies. A ‘current trends continued’ path implies more
than 0.5 m rise in sea level by 2100 [24, 73–75], which would represent significant
challenges to human society, and sea level rise will continue for centuries, barring
substantial carbon removal from the atmosphere.
There are also indirect effects. One of the most important is an increase in the
acidity of the oceans, caused by more dissolved CO2 (which creates carbonic acid).
This development will make life increasingly difficult for many types of aquatic life,
with rates of acidification proceeding more rapidly than at any time in the past
65 million years [76]. The acidification effect (plus the increase in ocean temper-
atures) means that coral reefs will likely be a thing of the past by the end of the
twenty-first century, and will pose increasing challenges to marine life of all types
[77, 78]. It also is one reason why schemes such as those proposed to inject particles
into the atmosphere to cool the Earth are ultimately chimerical—as long as more
CO2 dissolves into the oceans, the acidification effect will intensify, and just
reflecting more sunlight won’t fix it.
Remember also that the climate sensitivity measures the average temperature
change for a doubling of greenhouse gas concentrations. Changes at the Earth’s
poles have been [79] and will be much larger (that’s just how the system works). The
most likely case for climate sensitivity combined with the reference-case emissions
forecast would ultimately lead to an ice-free planet Earth and sea level rises much
bigger than even recent projections. It also means that large releases of carbon
trapped in the permafrost and in methane hydrates beneath the ocean floor are much
more likely, and that would amplify the warming effect.
Perhaps the most worrying aspect of climate change is the unknowable but
non-zero probability that pushing the Earth’s climate out of its recent equilibrium
might lead to ‘tipping points’, discontinuous change, and catastrophic disruptions of
weather and climate [80–82]. One example that has preoccupied scientists for
decades is the possibility that melting ice could disrupt the Gulf Stream in the
North Atlantic [83], and there has been evidence of a weakening of those currents in
recent decades [84–86]. The rapid release of carbon and methane from melting
permafrost and methane from warming oceans are two more. The probability and
consequences from catastrophic events are inherently unknowable, and that reality
disrupts the standard benefit–cost model for assessing the economics of climate
mitigation [82, 87–90].

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1.6 We can fix it (but we’d better hurry)

Let’s start by defining what we mean by ‘fixing’ climate change. Solving climate
change starts with stabilizing global surface temperatures at the lowest possible level
above pre-industrial times, and that means reducing emissions to zero as soon as
possible [91].
Many climate action plans now focus on getting climate pollution to net zero, the
point where GHG emissions are reduced far enough that any remaining remissions
are counterbalanced by GHG emission removals from natural and engineered
systems [92]. Net zero by 2050 (or sooner) targets have now been adopted by many
governments, as well as many of the world’s largest companies and investors,
catalyzed by goals of the United Nation’s 2015 Paris Agreement.
Unfortunately, net zero is not enough. Even if Earth gets to net zero GHG
emissions tomorrow, without additional action we’re still locked into at decades of
additional warming, and a new climate equilibrium that leaves the world worse off
than it is today. Droughts, floods, heat waves, wildfires, rising seas, crop failures,
and other climate-linked disasters will continue to get worse. Many more lives and
livelihoods will be lost, and some once thriving places may become unlivable.
To truly solve climate change, we must view net zero as a transition point rather
than an end goal. We should aim instead to get our planet to net climate positive,
sometimes also called carbon negative, where there is a net removal of carbon from
the atmosphere every year. Our collective goal should be to make Earth climate
positive until we have returned the climate to a state that’s as close as possible to the
pre-industrial range for which human civilization and the ecosystems around us have
evolved. We should also aim to repair the damages caused by climate change as
much as we can and compensate those who have suffered when damages can’t be
repaired. Fixing climate change requires our best efforts to not just stop the bleeding,
but also heal the wounds.
This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t aim to reach (and surpass) net zero as soon
as possible, but net zero by 2050 is not soon enough, as we discuss below. Because of
the long residence time of the most important greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,
warming is to first approximation proportional to cumulative emissions [93, 94].
That means every molecule emitted matters, and that if we stop emitting greenhouse
gases, warming will eventually stop [95, 96]. This makes the climate problem
different from other types of air pollution, which generally stay in the atmosphere
for a much shorter time than do emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and
many of the other gases.
The importance of cumulative emissions means we have no time to lose in
reducing our emissions, a fact that is not widely enough appreciated. We’ve already
dithered for more than three decades as emissions kept increasing, and every day we
delay getting to climate positive makes the situation worse [91].
The good news is that we already have almost all the climate technologies we
need, and these solution technologies are improving every day. The same technol-
ogies that can get us to net zero can propel us beyond to climate positive and a
regenerative climate future. The biggest climate challenges are sociological, political,

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and economic rather than technological. Society has plenty of money to pay for the
transition but shifting this money out of climate pollution and into solutions requires
navigating powerful entrenched interests, perverse incentives, bureaucratic barriers,
and outdated ways of thinking. Solving climate change will also require much better
communications about our climate impacts and solutions, engaging all levels of
society in shifting to a climate-positive economy. We can do it, but we need to decide
to do it. We’ll get into specific recommendations in the following chapters.

1.6.1 What is a warming limit?

The warming limit approach has its origins in the realization that stabilizing the
climate at a certain temperature to minimize climate risks (e.g. a warming limit of
1.5 °C or 2 °C above pre-industrial times) implies a particular emissions budget,
which represents the total cumulative greenhouse gas emissions compatible with that
temperature goal [97]. That budget also implies a set of emissions pathways that are
well defined and tightly constrained (particularly now that we’ve squandered the past
three decades by not reducing emissions). This risk-minimization approach, which
can also be described as ‘working toward a goal’, also involves assessing the cost
effectiveness of different paths for meeting the normatively determined target [55].
A warming limit is more than just a number (or a goal to be agreed on in
international negotiations). It embodies a way of thinking about the climate problem
that yields real insights [98]. A warming limit is also a value choice that is informed
by science. It should not be presented as solely a scientific ‘finding’, but as a value
judgment that reflects our assessment of societal risks and our preferences for
addressing them.
The warming limit approach was first suggested for externalities more generally in
[99] and was explored (then quickly dismissed) by the climate economist William
Nordhaus [100, 101]. It had its first fully developed incarnation in 1989 in [1] (which
was subsequently republished in 1992 [2]). It was developed further in [102] and
[103], and served as the basis for the International Energy Agency’s analysis of
climate options in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2020 [104–107].
This way of thinking was developed as a counterpoint to the prevailing ‘benefit–
cost’ approach favored by the economics community, and it has many advantages
[98]. It encapsulates our knowledge from the latest climate models on how
cumulative emissions affect global temperatures, placing the focus squarely on
how to stabilize those temperatures. It places the most important value judgment
up-front, embodied in the normatively determined warming limit, instead of burying
key value judgments in economic model parameters or in ostensibly scientifically
chosen concepts such as the discount rate. It gives clear guidance for the rate of
emissions reductions required to meet the chosen warming limit, thus allowing us
to determine if we’re ‘on track’ for meeting the temperature goal and allowing us to
adjust course if we’re not hitting those near-term guideposts.
The warming limit approach also allows us to estimate the costs of delaying
action or excluding certain mitigation options and provides an analytical basis for
discussions about equitably allocating the emissions budget. Finally, instead of

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pretending that we can calculate an ‘optimal’ technology path based on guesses at

mitigation and damage cost curves decades hence, it relegates economic analysis to
the important but less grandiose role of comparing the cost effectiveness of currently
available options for meeting near-term emissions goals [98].
The warming limit approach shows that delaying action is costly, required
emissions reductions are rapid, and most proved reserves of fossil fuels will need
to stay in the ground, and large amounts of carbon will need to be removed from the
atmosphere if we’re to stabilize the climate and repair the damage. These ideas are
familiar to some, but many still don’t realize that they follow directly from the
warming limit framing:
• Delaying emissions reductions forecloses options and makes achieving
climate stabilization much more difficult [108]. ‘Wait and see’ for the climate
problem is foolish and irresponsible, which is obvious when considering
cumulative emissions under a warming limit. The more fossil infrastructure
we build now, the faster we’ll have to reduce emissions later. If energy
technologies changed as fast as computers there could be justification for
‘wait and see’ in some circumstances, but they don’t, so it’s a moot point.
• Absolute global emissions will need to turn down immediately and approach
climate-positive territory in the next few decades [109] if we’re to have a good
chance to keep global temperatures ‘well below 2 °C’, as many in the scientific
community advocate [110]. The emissions pathways given the current carbon
budgets are tightly constrained. Even if the climate sensitivity is at the lowest
end of the range included in IPCC reports (1.5 °C), that only buys us another
decade in the time of emissions peak [111], which indicates that the findings
on emissions pathways are robust, even in the face of uncertainties in climate
sensitivity.
• The rate of emissions reductions, which is a number that can be measured, is
one way to assess whether the world is on track to meet the requirements of a
particular warming limit. We know what we need to be doing to succeed, and
if we don’t meet the tight time constraints imposed by that cumulative
emissions budget in one year, we need to do more the next year, and the next,
and the next. It’s a way of holding policy makers’ proverbial feet to the fire.
• The concept of ‘stranded fossil fuel assets’ that can’t be burned, popularized
by Bill McKibben [112] and Al Gore [113], follows directly from the warming
limit framing. In fact, Krause et al’s 1989 book, Energy Policy in the
Greenhouse [1] had a chapter titled ‘How much fossil fuel can still be
burned?’, so the idea of stranded assets is not a new insight (but it is a
profound one).

1.6.2 An evolution in thinking

The warming limit approach continues to be helpful in building the case for urgent
action on climate [114–116] but its original policy usefulness rested on the over-
arching assumption that there was still time left to address the crisis. As time has
passed and climate damages continue to mount it has become clear to us that the

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world is running out of time [117], and given uncertainties in estimating the carbon
budget [118, 119], it is in our judgment better to focus on concrete emissions
reductions goals instead of worrying too much about how much carbon budget is
left.
The IPCC completed its report on scenarios based on a 1.5 °C warming limit in
2018 [110]. That study found, after reviewing many studies that meet the 1.5 °C
warming limit, that cutting global greenhouse gas emissions at least in half from
2020 to 2030 (with subsequent reductions to follow at a similar pace) is a critically
important milestone for success. This rough rule of thumb, which was enshrined as a
‘carbon law’ by Johan Rockstrom and his colleagues in a seminal article in Science
in 2017 [109], describes the minimum level of effort needed to hit a 1.5 °C warming
limit. Rockstrom’s ‘law’ implies halving of absolute emissions in each decade
starting in 2020, reaching close to net zero emissions by 2050.
When talking about rapid emissions reductions it is customary to refer to rates of
change as a percentage of base year emissions, instead of often-used exponential
rates of decline [55]. This convention is used because rates of decline reach
astronomical levels in percentage terms as emissions approach zero, and percentages
of a base year maintain an intuitive physical meaning throughout the analysis
period. With this convention, a 5%/year decline in emissions relative to 2020 would
result in a halving of annual emissions by 2030 (5%/year × 10 years).
A strong case can be made for an even more aggressive goal than implied by
Rockstrom et al achieving net zero global emissions by 2040. That goal implies
a rate of emissions reduction of 5%/year relative to 2020 continuing to 2040.
We explain the rationale for such an aggressive goal in the next chapter.
When evaluating long-term goals such as these, it’s important not to place too
much emphasis on precise numbers, particularly many decades hence. It is valuable,
however, to look at broader lessons from such scenarios, and the most important
lesson is the rapid rate of change embodied in all scenarios that put a 1.5 °C warming
limit in reach. We’ll need to build zero emissions energy and industrial process
technologies at high rates and retire existing high-emissions capital on a rapid
schedule.
Achieving such speedy emissions reductions will require unprecedented changes
in how the global economy generates value. In coming decades, many processes in
our economy will need to be re-evaluated and re-designed from scratch to minimize
or eliminate emissions.

1.6.3 Can it be done?

The question of whether a modern society can achieve such rapid reductions is one
we’ll explore in the rest of this book, but it cannot be answered precisely by modeling
or analysis. We’ll only actually know how far we can reduce emissions once we start
trying to do so in earnest, and we really haven’t started yet.
Every tenth of a degree matters. If we overshoot 1.5 °C, so be it, but 1.6 °C is
much better than 1.7 °C, which is much better than 1.8 °C, and by getting to a
climate-positive state we can start to bring temperatures back down and reduce

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damages from temporarily overshooting climate targets. Even if we are daunted by

the challenge of keeping warming below 1.5 °C, we need to try, and we need to act as
quickly as we can.
For climate change, ‘moving in the right direction’ isn’t enough, as Solomon
Goldstein-Rose points out in his excellent book The 100% Solution:

There’s a lot of rhetoric about ‘moving in the right direction’ on climate

change. But because of its difference from other issues (impacts being caused
not by each year’s emission but by cumulative emissions until we start
removing them from the atmosphere), there’s not really such a thing as
‘moving in the right direction.’ Climate change impacts get exponentially
worse until we solve the problem 100%. That’s why it is so much scarier and
more urgent than other problems…

The idea of ‘doing what we can’ is dangerous when it comes to climate

change because it implicitly accepts that the maximum viable action is less
than the minimum needed action.

‘Can it be done?’ is therefore the wrong question, and worrying about feasibility is
the wrong framing. The right question is ‘How can we change society to do what is
necessary?’
Nobody knows what’s likely or even possible until we start down the path of
aggressively reducing emissions by deploying technology, capital, communications,
and institutional innovations at the requisite scale. If we choose to do so, many
things will become possible that wouldn’t be possible if we didn’t.
Feasibility also depends on context, and on what we are willing to pay and
prioritize to minimize risks. What if we finally decide (as we should) that it’s a real
emergency (like World War II)? In that case we’d make every effort to fix the problem,
and what would be possible then is far beyond what we could imagine today.
It is therefore a mistake for analysts to impose an informal feasibility judgment
when considering a problem such as this one, and instead we should aim for what we
think is the best outcome from a risk-minimization perspective, and if we don’t quite
get there, then we’ll have to deal with the consequences. But if we aim too low, we
might miss possibilities that we’d otherwise be able to capture.
History shows that under the right conditions, societies and industries can move
quickly. In the beginning of World War II, the US retooled much of its heavy
industry over the span of about 6 months [120], and some other nations engineered
similarly rapid change. We now have some technology advantages over industrial
firms of that era [121], especially information technology, which is our ‘ace in the
hole’ [122].
We also know that existing technology offers opportunities to reduce emissions
substantially right now, and maximizing immediate emissions reductions is where
we should be focused, not on worrying about whether we’ll be able to get to zero
emissions by 2040. Do the obvious things: shut down fossil fuel power plants
(starting with coal), mandate electrification where possible, install much more wind,

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solar, and energy storage, and deploy all other existing emissions reduction
technology at scale everywhere we can. Our choices now create our options later
because deployment drives costs down, creating new opportunities for reducing
emissions elsewhere.

1.6.4 Keeping carbon in the ground

Another way to think about how fast emissions need to come down is by comparing
projected fossil fuel consumption to the latest estimates of proved reserves of fossil
fuels. In geology parlance, proved reserves are those stocks of fossil fuels that are
known to exist with high confidence and that can be extracted using current
technology at current prices. Resources are fossil deposits known with less
confidence and/or are not extractable using current technology and current prices.
The first bar in figure 1.6 shows proven fossil reserves for 2018 from [123]. They
total about 900 billion tonnes of carbon (not carbon dioxide). The second bar
shows emissions from a widely cited reference case [50] from 2015, which shows
about 1300 billion tonnes of carbon combusted from 2020 to 2100. That result
implies that a small fraction of the remaining resources (which are more than tenfold
bigger than reserves) would need to be converted to reserves through exploration or
using new technology to meet that demand.
The more important bar for our narrative, however, is the one for the low energy
demand case [59], which is a scenario that would keep global temperatures from
increasing no more than 1.5 °C from pre-industrial times. In that scenario, the world
can burn less than one tenth of the fossil carbon implied in the reference case, and
only one eighth of the proved reserves. That means we’ll either need to keep almost
90% of global fossil reserves in the ground unburned or identify some way to
sequester the carbon from burning it, which will be a heavy lift at the required scale.

Figure 1.6. Comparing reference and low energy demand cases to proved fossil reserves. Source: BGR [123],
Fricko et al [50], Grubler et al [59].

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These exact numbers are dependent on some key assumptions in this scenario, but
the main point is the same for all aggressive mitigation scenarios that keep the 1.5 °C
warming limit in reach: We’ll need to keep a substantial fraction of proved fossil
reserves in the ground or find another safe way to sequester that carbon.

1.6.5 The economics of climate action

In the early years of studying the economics of climate, economists were concerned
about the economic costs of moving too quickly [100, 101, 124–126]. As the problem
became better understood, a different picture emerged, indicating that the benefits of
at least modest climate action should significantly exceed costs from the societal
perspective. Subsequent analyses showed that substantially reducing emissions
would come at gross societal costs of at most a few percent of GDP in coming
decades, resulting in the loss of roughly a single year’s growth in GDP [127–134].
Further, these analyses showed that delaying action had serious downside risks, as
discussed below.
Over time, economic assessments became more sophisticated and started to
include important factors that the earliest simple models omitted—factors whose
inclusion generally showed that achieving lower emissions would be cheaper, easier,
and more beneficial for society than the earlier assessments indicated [135–139].
Models often omitted air quality and other health co-benefits, which are often big
enough to fully offset the gross costs of reducing emissions, justifying significant
climate action even before considering greenhouse gas externalities [140–145]. Many
models omitted bottom-up analysis of market reforms and technology programs,
which are important sources of negative net cost (i.e. societally profitable) emissions
reduction options [129, 136, 137, 146–151].
Many benefit–cost models ignored climate damages for reference cases, assuming
economic growth rates in those cases would be unaffected by unrestricted climate
change [152]. Many also relied on flawed estimates of climate damages that vastly
underestimate the benefits of reducing emissions [153–156]. Standard calculations of
discount rates by Nordhaus and others also included a term for business-as-usual
economic growth unencumbered by potential climate damages [157], and that
assumption led to higher discount rates that make future benefits of climate action
appear less valuable than in reality.
Virtually all models ignored the ‘long-tail’ risks of catastrophic climate change,
which lay bare the weaknesses of the benefit–cost framing like no other issue
[87, 158]. Benefit–cost models also often ignored the lessons from financial
economics on pricing risk and uncertainty [159] and almost always ignored potential
cost reductions associated with economies of scale, learning effects, spillovers,
network externalities, and irreversibilities [138, 160–167], although sometimes these
effects were studied in specific cases [162, 168]. They also almost always ignore
people’s asymmetrical treatment of losses versus gains (prospect theory), which
again biased the results toward delaying mitigation [156].
Some models also omitted benefits from using carbon tax revenues to reduce
inefficiencies in the tax system [169], failed to distinguish between endogenous and

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directed or induced technical change [166, 170, 171], and included only local or regional
emissions trading and focused only on carbon dioxide rather than all greenhouse gases
[135, 172]. In almost every case, including these factors in the analysis would have
shown emissions reductions to be cheaper for society than in the original analysis.
Prematurely excluding cost-competitive mitigation options from analyses like
these can raise the apparent cost of reducing emissions. For example, in many places
excluding the option of extending the useful life of existing nuclear plants would
make achieving emissions goals appear to be more expensive than they would be if
this option was kept on the table. How this constraint nets out for a particular
technology, policy, or scenario depends on the cost for each option.
Conversely, including options as ‘backstop’ technologies with optimistic costs and
potentials, as has happened in the past, for example, in the case of biomass energy
with carbon capture, can make achieving emissions reduction goals appear cheaper
than they really would be in practice. On balance, however, the models historically
have erred more on the side of making the costs of emissions reductions appear to be
more expensive than they really are.

1.6.6 Climate action, equity, and justice

While the costs of climate change fall on all of us, a disproportionate share of those
costs will continue fall on the poorest countries, the poorest people, and generations
yet to be born [173–176]. The pursuit of equity and justice is central to action on
climate, a fact that is uncomfortable for many economists. The economics field has
traditionally focused on economic efficiency, not on disparities in income and power
relationships, but these issues cannot be ignored in facing the climate challenge.
Climatologist Michael E Mann, writing in his book, The New Climate War,
wrote:

…social justice is intrinsic to climate action. Environmental crises, including

climate change, disproportionately impact those with the least wealth, the fewest
resources, and the least resilience. So simply acting on the climate crisis is acting
to alleviate social injustice. It’s another compelling reason to institute the
systemic changes necessary to avert the further warming of our planet [177].

Some climate policies are more justice-enhancing than others. Unless policies are
designed with existing inequities in mind, they risk exacerbating inequality and
injustice, so it is not always true that ‘acting on the climate crisis is acting to alleviate
social injustice’ [175, 176, 178]. What is true is that those with the fewest resources
will be hit the hardest by climate change [175, 176], climate change is already
increasing inequality [176, 179, 180], and society has an obligation to reduce those
harms by rapidly reducing emissions and structuring climate policies to address (or
at a minimum not exacerbate) existing inequities.
There is some empirical work supporting the differential effects of climate
change and other environmental issues on less advantaged groups, for example
[176, 181–183], but it’s also an intuitively reasonable conclusion. Marginalized

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people have fewer resources to manage unexpected crises and often live in places
susceptible to extreme weather events and environmental pollution. Structural
racism exacerbates these inequalities [184, 185].
For example, when extreme temperatures hit, economically disadvantaged
communities have less access to well-conditioned private or public spaces. When
flooding or hurricanes hit, poorer families have less ability to move to safer ground,
either because they are tied to low wage jobs for survival or don’t have access to
affordable transportation. Communities of color and low-income communities are
exposed to more outdoor air pollution than less diverse and more affluent
neighborhoods [186], and exposure to air pollution may also be related to increased
mortality from COVID-19 and other infections [187]. Many poorer countries are
also significantly affected by air and water pollution, and correctly accounting for
co-benefits to greenhouse gas emissions reductions should feature prominently in
international negotiations on climate targets and commitments [145]. Air pollution
from fossil fuels kills millions of people every year [141, 188], and those deaths are
borne disproportionately by poorer people.
Climate change is also deeply intertwined with intergenerational justice [69, 189–
191]. Those likely to be most affected by a world with a rapidly changing climate are
not yet born, while powerful economic interests make their preference for delayed
action known loudly in public proceedings and news media around the world.
Another dimension to the question of justice and the climate is the dispropor-
tionate effects the wealthy have on emissions [192–194]. The primary beneficiaries of
fossil fuel wealth have been rich countries, and rich people everywhere, but they’ve
privatized benefits while socializing costs. That disparity makes it incumbent upon
the wealthy to take the lead on climate action. They can afford it, they are
historically more to blame for the climate problem than those people who are less
well off, and their prominence in society gives them greater ability to influence the
opinions of others [195, 196].
As discussed above, humanity’s choices for response are threefold: mitigation,
adaptation, and suffering. Our decisions on balancing climate mitigation with
adaptation and suffering are at their core moral choices. How fast and how far we
mitigate are not solely questions of economics and are inseparable from questions
about equity and justice [173]. The faster and more deeply we reduce emissions and
the more we center the correction of existing inequities in our solutions, the less
adaptation and suffering we’ll do, and the more rapidly justice will be served.

1.6.7 Speed trumps perfection in climate solutions

The seriousness of the climate problem has been obvious to informed observers for
at least three decades, but our delay in facing it has virtually guaranteed that little
about humanity’s response will be optimal. The most important lesson is that we
need to get started on rapid emissions reductions as soon as possible. There’s no
more time to waste.
The IPCC [49], writing in early 2022, emphasized the urgency of responding to
the climate problem without delay:

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 Solving Climate Change

The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to

human well-being and planetary health. Any further delay in concerted antici-
patory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly
closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.

The IPCC assigned Very High Confidence to this statement, meaning there is little
doubt that the statement is true, with multiple, independent, and consistent lines of
evidence supporting it [197]. The quotation itself is scientist-speak for ‘It’s an
emergency, so get cracking!’ and ‘It’s warming, it’s us, we’re sure, it’s bad, we can fix
it (but we’d better hurry)’.
There are lessons for climate solutions from responding to other kinds of
emergencies. Dr Michael Ryan, Executive Director of the World Health
Organization, in talking about pandemic response in early 2020, said this:

Be fast. Have no regrets. You must be the first mover… In emergency

response, if you need to be right before you move, you will never win…
Speed trumps perfection…The greatest error is not to move. The greatest error
is to be paralyzed by the fear of failure7.

We conclude from this advice:

• Don’t obsess about optimality, just move as quickly as you can.

• Don’t obsess about feasibility, just move quickly as you can.
• Don’t obsess about obstacles, just move quickly as you can.

For climate, just like for pandemic response, speed trumps perfection, and that’s
the attitude we need to take in addressing this problem now, because it’s a real
emergency [198, 199].

1.7 Chapter conclusions

We are in a climate emergency, but most people and institutions aren’t acting like it.
We need to treat climate like the crisis that it is. That means moving more quickly
than in normal times, getting started on rapid emissions reductions immediately.
There’s no more time to waste.
Keeping global surface temperatures from exceeding 1.5 °C above pre-industrial
times will not be easy, nor will drawing down GHGs into climate-positive territory.
On the contrary, climate change is the biggest collective challenge modern humanity
has ever faced.
We’ll need to cut absolute global greenhouse emissions in half by 2030, reaching
net zero emissions no later than 2040, then remove emissions with climate-positive
processes for many decades thereafter. Industrialized nations, including China,
should move even more quickly. Aggressive early action in these nations will drive

7
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 Solving Climate Change

the cost of zero emissions and climate-positive technologies down substantially,

benefitting the entire world.
The vast majority of proved fossil fuel reserves will need to be kept in the ground
to stabilize the climate. No fossil fuel companies’ business plans currently reflect this
reality [200], creating what Al Gore called a ‘carbon asset bubble’ [113]. When this
bubble bursts, as it inevitably will, fossil investors will be left holding the bag.
For climate, just like for pandemic response, speed trumps perfection, and that’s
the attitude we need to take in addressing this problem now. There will always be
social and environmental tradeoffs as we scale up climate solutions, but the direct
benefits and co-benefits of scaling solutions generally far outweigh the costs, and we
already have techniques for minimizing harm while maximizing benefits for nearly
everyone. The rest of this book explores tools needed to speed up climate action and
truly face the climate challenge.

I’m skeptical that a problem as complex as climate change can be solved by any
single branch of science. Technological measures and regulations are important,
but equally important is support for education, ecological training and ethics—a
consciousness of the commonality of all living beings and an emphasis on
shared responsibility.
—Vaclav Havel (New York Times 27 September 2007)

Further reading
Burke K D, Williams J W, Chandler M A, Haywood A M, Lunt D J and Otto-Bliesner
B L 2018 Pliocene and Eocene provide best analogs for near-future climates Proc.
Natl Acad. Sci. 115 13288 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1809600115. This article
summarizes current knowledge about past climates going back millions of years.
Dessler A E 2022 Introduction to Modern Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press). An excellent summary of the latest climate science.
Duane T, Koomey J, Belyeu K and Hausker K 2016 From risk to return: investing
in a clean energy economy Risky Business 6 December http://riskybusiness.org/
fromrisktoreturn/. A business-focused study of reducing emissions in the US
energy sector.
Goldstein-Rose S 2020 The 100% Solution: A Plan for Solving Climate Change (New
York: Melville House). A terrific introduction to the climate problem for non-
technical audiences.
Grubler A et al 2018 A low energy demand scenario for meeting the 1.5 °C target
and sustainable development goals without negative emission technologies Nat.
Energy 3 515–27 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-018-0172-6. An exemplary
aggressive emissions reduction scenario focusing on changes in energy service
demands and efficiency.

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 Solving Climate Change

IPCC 2018 Global Warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the Impacts of
Global Warming of 1.5°C Above Pre-industrial Levels and Related Global
Greenhouse Gas Emission Pathways, in the Context of Strengthening the
Global Response to the Threat of Climate Change, Sustainable Development,
and Efforts to Eradicate Poverty (Geneva: IPCC) https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15. An
interim IPCC report on aggressive emissions scenarios.
IPCC 2021 Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of
Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change ed V Masson-Delmotte et al (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press) https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-
group-i/. The latest IPCC report on the science of climate change.
IPCC 2022 Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability–The Working
Group II contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press) https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-
group-ii/. The latest IPCC report on impacts of and adaptation to climate change.
IPCC 2022 Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of
Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change DUE OUT MARCH 2022 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press) https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-
group-3/. The latest IPCC report on mitigation of climate change.
Mann M E and Toles T 2016 The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial is
Threatening our Planet, Destroying our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy (New
York: Columbia University Press). An entertaining introduction to the climate
problem from one of the world’s top climate scientists and one of the world’s top
editorial cartoonists.
Mann M E 2021 The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet (New
York: PublicAffairs) 12 January. The latest summary of the climate issue from a
top climate scientist.
Rockstrom J, Gaffney O, Rogelj J, Meinshausen M, Nakicenovic N and
Schellenhuber H J 2017 A roadmap for rapid decarbonization Science 355
1269 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aah3443. A widely cited article defining the
‘carbon law’ benchmark of halving emissions every decade.
Sovacool B K, Burke M, Baker L, Kumar Kotikalapudi C and Wlokas H 2017 New
frontiers and conceptual frameworks for energy justice Energy Policy 105 677–91
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2017.03.005

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 IOP Publishing

Solving Climate Change

A guide for learners and leaders
Jonathan Koomey and Ian Monroe

Chapter 2
Introduction to climate solutions

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

—Alan Kay

Chapter overview

• Unrestricted climate change threatens human civilization and the global environ-
ment. It’s an emergency, and society needs to act at a scale and a pace
commensurate with such an enormous threat.
• We’ll need to treat climate change as the ‘adaptive’ challenge it is, experimenting
and changing course as needed.
• Acting with requisite urgency by deploying technology rapidly will drive down
mitigation costs through learning by doing, economies of scale, spillover effects,
and network externalities, and open up new opportunities for reducing emissions
at even lower costs. Actions now create options later.
• Delaying action is folly, and the longer we delay the sooner we need to get to zero
greenhouse gas emissions. That’s the inexorable math of temperatures being
dependent on cumulative greenhouse gas emissions and it’s one reason why we
advocate hitting net-zero emissions by 2040 at the latest.
• To stabilize the climate we need to do three things, all as soon as possible: end
fossil fuels, minimize emissions of high potency GHGs, and create a climate-
positive biosphere.
• Fossil-fuel combustion kills millions every year and injures millions more. The
pollution resulting from fossil fuels is a powerful argument for ending combustion
virtually everywhere, and it makes reducing greenhouse gas emissions much cheaper
than it would be if there were no such negative side effects of fossil combustion.
• Our data, models, and analysis tools all need to improve if we’re to truly face the
climate challenge, and we need to use appropriate problem framing (abandoning
the idea of a unique ‘optimal’ path for climate stabilization, once and for all).

doi:10.1088/978-0-7503-4032-8ch2 2-1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

 Solving Climate Change

2.1 Chapter introduction

The climate solutions literature is vast and growing all the time. Informed observers
have known for many years that greenhouse gas emissions need to get to zero as
quickly as possible, but acceptance of this reality is not widespread in the broader
society even now.
Most treatments of climate solutions have focused on energy-related CO2
emissions, treating individual sectors (buildings, transportation, industry, electricity)
in isolation. This focus is understandable: CO2 emissions from energy are the most
important driver of historical warming and will be the biggest driver of expected
future warming, but that is not the complete picture.
A comprehensive approach to emissions reductions must also tackle emissions
reductions for other warming agents (e.g. methane, nitrous oxide, black carbon, and
F-gases) and emissions reductions outside the energy sector. The drivers of change,
the available levers for change, and the impediments to rapid action are quite
different for these other sectors and warming agents than for the energy sector, so
they must be treated separately.
This chapter describes a comprehensive framework for thinking about climate
solutions that includes all sectors and all warming agents. It also describes at a high
level the technical and institutional changes needed to help the world transition to
zero emissions. We explore insights available from this framework in subsequent
chapters.

2.2 Treat climate like the moral issue it is

Humans are no longer small compared to the Earth. Because of our numbers, our
wealth, and most importantly our technology, we are able to affect Earth’s life-
support systems in irreversible ways [4].
That new-found power raises profound moral and ethical questions [37, 38].
Benefit–cost analysis tries and ultimately fails to boil down these complex issues into
a simple calculus of dollars and cents [38–40]. Because the effects of climate change
and the costs of eliminating it most often fall on people far apart in time and space
[41], because human impacts of climate change are (and will be) unequally
distributed [34], because the probability of climate-induced catastrophe is non-
zero but unknowable [7–11], and because it’s impossible to precisely assess costs and
benefits decades hence [4, 42–44], addressing this problem is not solely a question of
calculating the most economically efficient path forward [35].
Instead, the focus should be on questions often ignored by the economic
discipline: What don’t we know? What can’t we know? Who benefits? Who loses?
How do we choose? What is our responsibility to future generations and to other
species? How should we evaluate small but real (and unknowable) risks of
catastrophic, civilization-destroying outcomes? Ethical questions like these aren’t
amenable to economic calculations but addressing them is central to responding
responsibly to the climate problem.

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 Solving Climate Change

2.3 Climate change as an adaptive challenge

Climate change is a messy, open-ended, and ill-defined problem, and is an
archetypal example of what some have called an ‘adaptive challenge’. To meet
such a challenge requires an evolutionary and experimental approach, because not
all parts of the solution can be known precisely in advance.
In their book Moments of Impact Chris Ertel and Lisa Kay Solomon [45], citing
Ronald Heifetz, describe two types of challenges:

• Technical challenges are those we can solve using well-known tools and
existing institutions. Such problems are well defined and well understood
• Adaptive challenges, on the other hand, are ‘messy, open-ended, and ill
defined’. The tools needed to address them may not yet exist. Such problems
require different kinds of leadership and problem-solving skills and cry out
for interactive engagement among all the people needed to solve them. They
also require institutions to learn, adapt, and evolve.

Climate change is the ultimate adaptive challenge [46], because the rate and scope
of the changes needed to solve the problem will stretch us to the limit. In addition,
the solutions involve changes in behavior and institutional structure, not just
technology [3]. As Koomey argued in Cold Cash, Cool Climate back in 2012:

Climate change is probably the biggest challenge modern humanity has ever
faced. It’s bigger than World War II because it will take decades to vanquish
this foe. It’s harder than ozone depletion, whose causes were far less
intertwined with industrial civilization than fossil fuels and other sources of
greenhouse gases. And it’s more intractable than the Great Depression (or our
current economic malaise) because financial crises eventually pass, assuming
we learn from past mistakes and fix the financial system (again!). [4]

We have many options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but we’ll need new ones,
too. Existing options will only get us so far. That’s why we must both deploy existing
technology and research new ones aggressively. We’ll also need to take an evolutionary
approach to this problem, one that embraces the adaptive nature of the challenge before us.
That means planning and active management of the transition, integrating
planning with markets, using markets to drive costs down, developing a portfolio
approach to zero-emissions investments, and guiding markets towards the end goal
of a zero-emissions society. That end goal won’t happen by itself, but the necessity of
planning to help shepherd that process is hard for some to accept.
There are tradeoffs to consider and resources to be allocated. Markets can play
a big role, but they also have limits, and someone’s got to balance competing
factors. That means planning by government, business, and civil society, but that
planning needs to be nimble and adaptive to reality as it evolves. It also means the
development of new tools that allow for more rapid testing of alternative
scenarios. One example is the online analysis tool for the US referenced in

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 Solving Climate Change

Harvey et al [47]1. Another is the global tool called EN-Roads, developed by

Climate Interactive, MIT, and Ventana Systems2.

2.4 Building new fossil infrastructure makes solving the

problem harder
The recognition that constraints on the construction of new fossil infrastructure can
contribute to a rapid energy transition is a recent one, but it’s gained many converts
in the past decade [48–51]. The more high-emission infrastructure we build in the
next few years the more we’ll have to scrap in the next decade or two, so we need to
stop building such infrastructure as soon as we can.
In May 2021, the International Energy Agency released a report analyzing the
implications of achieving a net-zero-emissions energy system globally by 2050 [52].
The report states:

Beyond projects already committed as of 2021, there are no new oil and gas
fields approved for development in our [net zero by 2050] pathway, and no
new coal mines or mine extensions are required.

The IEA report doesn’t give clarity on whether other kinds of new fossil
infrastructure will be needed (such as fossil power plants, pipelines, or coal shipping
terminals), so that’s an area worthy of further analysis. In any case, the faster we
move to zero-emission fuels and electricity, the fewer new investments in fossil-fuel
infrastructure will be stranded by necessary climate action (of course, that means
more existing assets will be stranded sooner, but there’s no escaping that outcome at
this point).
The IPCC, in the Technical Summary for the latest Working Group III report
[12] made this point even more strongly:

Estimates of future CO2 emissions from existing fossil-fuel infrastructures

already exceed remaining cumulative net CO2 emissions in pathways limiting
warming to 1.5 °C with no or limited overshoot.

If emissions from existing infrastructure will use up the entire remaining carbon
budget, there is no scope for additional fossil infrastructure, even if existing fossil
capital is retired.
Stopping infrastructure from being built is always easier than shutting
profitable facilities down, because owners of those facilities will fight to prevent
their facilities from becoming stranded assets. Better to not allow them to operate in
the first place.
The fossil-fuel industry has not yet internalized this reality. Recent estimates show
plans for almost $1 trillion US for development of new oil and gas resources by 2030

1
https://us.energypolicy.solutions
2
https://www.climateinteractive.org/en-roads/

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for twenty large oil companies who claim to be committed to the goals of the Paris
Agreement [53]. The global banking industry allocated more than $700 billion US to
the fossil-fuel industry in 2021 alone [54]. Currently planned fossil-fuel developments
would lead to a factor of two more emissions than would be allowed under a 1.5 °C
limit [36].

2.5 Speeding up the energy transition

One of the most widespread misconceptions in this field is the idea that because
energy transitions have taken many decades in the past that they must therefore take
just as long in the future [37: section 2.5.2, 38, 39]. This superficially sensible idea is
flawed for at least three reasons: (1) the new power of information technology;
(2) the lack of policy guiding and accelerating previous energy transitions by
promoting early retirement of pre-existing capital; and (3) increasing understanding
of the power of learning effects on mass-produced technologies.
Innovation in modern industrial societies has been driven in the past two centuries
by a series of what economists call ‘general purpose technologies’ or GPTs, which
have far ranging effects on the way the economy produces value. The most
important of these were the steam engine, the telegraph, the electric power grid,
the internal combustion engine, and, most recently, computers and related commu-
nications technologies [55]. Brynjolfsson and McAfee [56] write:

GPTs…not only get better themselves over time (and as Mooreʼs law shows,
this is certainly true of computers), they also lead to complementary innova-
tions in the processes, companies, and industries that make use of them. They
lead, in short, to a cascade of benefits that is both broad and deep…

Digitization…is not a single project providing one-time benefits. Instead, it’s

an ongoing process of creative destruction; innovators use both new and
established technologies to make deep changes at the level of the task, the job,
the process, even the organization itself. And these changes build and feed on
each other so that the possibilities offered really are constantly expanding.

The result is that the pace of innovation across virtually all industries is accelerating,
which is a direct result of the use of information and communications technology
(ICT) to improve production and business processes. And it’s not just computers that
are improving, it’s all businesses that use computers to increase efficiency, improve
organizational effectiveness, and reduce costs of manufactured products.
Information and communication technologies have the potential to speed up the
energy transition significantly [4, 22, 57, 58]. These technologies allow us to collect
data, do real-time analysis and control, replace parts with smarts, move bits instead
of moving atoms, 3D print parts from computer designs, and transform institutions
and processes more rapidly than we ever could before.
Past energy transitions occurred in an organic way with little policy intervention,
and incumbent technologies used their market power and low marginal costs to slow

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penetration of new technologies. These tactics can be especially effective when

industries are natural monopolies and regulators are ‘captured’ by the industry, but
they also apply to technologically sophisticated industries with economies of scale
like oil and gas.
To accelerate the energy transition, we can force existing fossil capital to retire
rapidly as we accelerate deployment of new technologies. For example, a strong case
can be made for the retirement of all coal-fired power plants in advanced nations by
2030, or earlier if possible [59]. The economics of these existing plants (just based on
direct costs) have deteriorated sharply in recent years [60], and from society’s
perspective they haven’t been economic for a very long time.
In 2011 three eminent economists [61] declared that coal and oil-fired electricity
delivered negative value added to the economy, because the societal costs associated
with pollution were so high. Epstein et al [62] provide more support for this view for
coal plants. The evidence for even higher pollution costs from fossil-fuel and other
combustion has accumulated rapidly in the past decade [27, 29, 63–77]. Millions of
people die prematurely every year because of fossil combustion, and millions more
are injured [27]. Wildfires, which are also big contributors to air pollution [2], will
become vastly more common the longer reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are
delayed. So will pollen and its associated respiratory effects [6].
There will often be localized transition costs, and we need to help workers and
communities affected by the transition to zero emissions [59], but those costs should
not stand in the way of action to reduce harm from pollution. The argument against
such retirements usually is framed from the perspective of direct costs and losses to
incumbent economic actors, ignoring pollution costs. When evaluating alternative
policies, however, we should instead be focused most intently on the costs to society
of continuing to burn fossil fuels. When we center that perspective, the imperative to
retire existing fossil capital becomes even more clear and compelling.
Another difference between the current energy transition and previous ones is
more widespread understanding of the power of learning effects and other forms of
increasing returns to scale for mass-produced granular technologies [91: sec-
tion 2.5.3.3]. The importance of these effects was recognized as early as the 1970s
[78, 79] but the experience of the past few decades has made the power of these
effects even more clear, for both supply and demand-side technologies [33, 80].

2.6 The false choice between innovation and immediate, rapid

emissions reductions
A common belief is that the US should prioritize innovation and R&D in climate-
friendly technologies over immediate emission reductions using current technology.
For example, an Atlantic article about Bill Gates’ views on climate solutions [81]
concluded:

This is the Gates Rule: If given a choice of cutting emissions directly or

reducing the cost of net-zero technology, the US should choose the latter.

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This is a false choice: we can and should do both. Cumulative emissions are what
matter to global temperatures and rapid immediate deployment reduces cumulative
emissions. Deployment is a key late-stage element of the innovation process. It
drives costs down through learning effects, scale, spillovers, and network external-
ities, and creates new possibilities even without research and development. In
addition, we won’t get those cost reductions unless we deploy existing technology.
Breakthrough technologies that may result from R&D in a decade or two will not
replace the need to deploy existing technology immediately. Some or all technologies
under development may come to fruition, but they are a supplement to immediate
emissions reductions, not a replacement. There is no substitute for deploying existing
zero-emissions technology as quickly as we can.
Some potentially promising technologies are at an earlier stage of development.
Technologies with minimal societal side effects, high-emissions reduction potential,
and reasonable and declining costs are good prospects for research and development
followed as quickly as possible by prototype demonstrations and deployment. Speed
is of the essence, but some options still need time to mature, and others may never
reach the market. We should be supporting the development of promising longer-
term options aggressively even as we deploy off-the-shelf technologies at a rapid
pace. Not all technologies will make the cut, but we’re not lacking for options in
most sectors.

2.7 The folly of delay

To solve the climate problem, we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero as
quickly as we can [13]. As William Nordhaus said in 2008 [82] ‘There is no case for
delay’ in starting to reduce emissions.
Delay is costly because cumulative emissions are what matter (waiting means we
just need to move more quickly later) [14–16, 20, 83]. It is costly because delay
means we don’t gain the benefits of learning by doing, scale, spillovers, and network
externalities from deploying zero-emissions technology [31, 33, 84–86]. It is costly
because it adds to the stock of ‘stranded assets’, fossil-fuel-using capital that will
need to be retired before the end of its useful life to meet emissions targets [18, 20,
87–89]. And it is costly because it adds to climate (and other) damages already being
incurred by society if we continue to fail to act [20, 90, 91].
These conclusions are not new. Over a decade ago, the International Energy
Agency concluded in its 2009 World Energy Outlook [92]:

…each year of delay before moving onto the emissions path consistent with a
2 °C temperature increase would add approximately $500 billion to the global
incremental investment cost of $10.5 trillion for the period 2010–2030.

In its 2010 World Energy Outlook [17], IEA increased that estimate of losses for
each year of delay to $1 trillion.
The White House Council of Economic Advisors under President Obama
declared in 2014 [90]:

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…a delay that results in warming of 3° Celsius above pre-industrial levels,

instead of 2°, could increase economic damages by approximately 0.9 percent
of global output. To put this percentage in perspective, 0.9 percent of
estimated 2014 US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is approximately $150
billion [per year].

…net mitigation costs increase, on average, by approximately 40 percent for

each decade of delay. These costs are higher for more aggressive climate goals:
each year of delay means more CO2 emissions, so it becomes increasingly
difficult, or even infeasible, to hit a climate target that is likely to yield only
moderate temperature increases.

The IPCC’s special report on 1.5 °C scenarios [20] concluded in 2018:

...every year’s delay before initiating emission reductions decreases by approx-

imately two years the remaining time available to reach zero emissions on a
pathway still remaining below 1.5 °C...

and

The challenges from delayed actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

include the risk of cost escalation, lock-in in carbon-emitting infrastructure,
stranded assets, and reduced flexibility in future response options in the
medium to long term.

Daniel et al [30], after applying standard treatments of risk and uncertainty to

William Nordhaus’s DICE integrated assessment model [23], found:

...delaying implementation by only 1 y costs society approximately $1 trillion.

A 5-y delay creates the equivalent loss of approximately $24 trillion,
comparable to a severe global depression. A 10-y delay causes an equivalent
loss in the order of $10 trillion per year, approximately $100 trillion in total.

This analysis also found that the cost of delay increases quadratically over time,
so that a five-year delay costs the world twenty-four times as much as a one-year
delay and delaying action by ten years instead of five years increases societal costs
four-fold.
Delay is costly, and the faster we move to reduce emissions the easier and cheaper
it will be to do so. Conversely, the longer we delay, the more it will cost to fix the
problem, and the longer society will incur the huge and avoidable societal costs of
pollution from fossil-fuel combustion [27–29, 93]. Delay also means we need to get to
zero emissions earlier to stay under a fixed warming limit.
As an example, consider fossil energy carbon dioxide emissions in Grubler et al’s
low energy demand (LED) intervention case [5], which we show in figure 2.1.

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Figure 2.1. Fossil energy CO2 emissions in the low energy demand scenario compared to a delayed action case.
Source: Grubler et al [5], calculations from Koomey et al [94].

We chose to highlight this scenario because it has no carbon capture from the energy
system, simplifying the story related to delaying emissions reductions.
Energy sector carbon dioxide emissions in this scenario decline 5.6% per year (as a % of
2020 emissions) from 2020 to 2030, reaching 56% below 2020 emissions by 2030
(it reaches the ‘carbon law’ goal of halving emissions a year early, by 2029). The area
under that emissions curve equals the cumulative emissions through 2100, which is the
‘budget’ that we need to meet if we’re to keep temperatures from rising more than 1.5 °C.
Figure 2.1 also shows what happens if we don’t start reducing emissions until
2025 (the delayed action case). The area under this curve for the delayed action case
is the same as for the LED intervention case, so these two cases emit the same
amount of carbon from the energy sector through 2100.
Delay makes it harder to solve the problem. Starting later eats up more of the carbon
budget, and the needed rate of emissions decline goes up to 8.8% per year from 2025 to
2030 (as a % of 2020) if emissions reductions begin right after emissions peak in 2025.
This emissions path halves emissions from 2020 by 2031, representing about a two-year
delay compared to the LED intervention case. The delayed action case also reaches
zero emissions much earlier, as the inexorable math of cumulative emissions requires.

2.8 Learning by doing only happens if we do!

One of the most important lessons from history is the power of learning by doing for
mass-produced products. Consider the last decade or so of technology costs for solar
photovoltaics (PVs), onshore wind turbines, and battery packs as shown in figure 2.2.
According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, PV module lithium-ion battery pack

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Figure 2.2. Global technology costs over time (2010 to 2020) for solar photovoltaics, onshore wind turbines,
and Li-ion battery packs. Source of data: BNEF 2021 (personal communication, Jenny Chase BNEF,
28 January 2021). Used with permission.

prices are down about 90% and onshore wind turbine prices are down more than
50% since 2010, corresponding to learning rates (the percentage change in per unit
costs for a doubling of cumulative production experience) from −14% (for wind) to
−29% for solar PV modules.
The main reason for these stunning cost reductions is a rapid increase in the
deployment of these technologies [85, 95, 96]. Business economists have known for
many decades that the cost per unit of mass-produced devices falls between 10% and
30% for each doubling of cumulative production experience [84, 85, 95, 97–102].

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This effect is colloquially known as ‘learning by doing’, but it is often a mixture of

economies of scale, learning effects, spillovers, network externalities, induced
innovation, and general technological progress in the economy [26, 32, 86]. The
total effect on cost is normally treated as a function both of the learning rate per
doubling of cumulative production and the total production over time.
Learning by doing creates a powerful argument for a ‘deployment-first’ strategy
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions [33], and it’s another reason why ‘wait and see’ is
a terrible approach to solving the climate problem. Of course, we need new
technologies and should therefore invest heavily in research and development, but
there are vast opportunities for emission reductions using current technologies
[24, 25], and cost reductions for these technologies are dependent on implementing
them on a large scale (learning by doing only happens if we do). The focus in the next
few decades should be on aggressive deployment of current low-emissions technol-
ogies, bringing new technologies into the mix as they emerge.
We’ll also need to focus on improving how fast-changing mass-produced
technologies are represented in our analysis tools. For some key technologies (e.g.
solar PVs) recent reviews have shown significant lags between recent rapid cost
declines and those declines being incorporated into modeling cost data. For
example, many global models include costs for solar photovoltaic technologies for
2050 that are much higher even than current costs [103] and a strong case can be
made that virtually all recent modeling exercises have underestimated the potential
contributions of solar PVs to reducing emissions [104–109].
Another implication from acknowledging the importance of learning effects and
economics of scale is that until deployment starts in earnest, we won’t know
precisely how much climate action will cost or how much we can achieve in total.
We do know that these learning effects are powerful and rapid, and we know that
almost all conventional economic models assessing climate solutions treat these
effects cursorily or not at all. That gives us confidence that the costs of reducing
emissions will be a lot lower than most people now think.

2.9 How fast should we reduce emissions?

Many studies in the past decade have focused on 2050 as the date for achieving net-
zero global emissions [19, 52]. Unfortunately, inadequate emissions reductions to
date (and the recent jump in emissions in 2021 from 2020 pandemic lows) have
forced even more aggressive action [110, 111].
That’s the reality of the climate problem. Warming is driven by cumulative
greenhouse gas emissions [110], so the longer we wait to reduce emissions, the faster
we must reduce emissions to zero in the future, as we discuss above.
We argue instead for net-zero emissions by 2040. Why are we so aggressive
compared to previous analyses?

• Unrestricted climate change is an emergency that threatens the continued

orderly development of human civilization, but existing efforts have not
reflected that urgency.

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• After decades of inadequate global action, we’re out of time.

• A closer deadline focuses the mind.
• It’s consistent with the latest research on carbon budgets for 1.5 °C [21].
• The nature of path dependent technological systems dominated by increasing
returns is that we can’t know what’s possible until we try, and we haven’t
tried yet.
• If we shoot for an aggressive goal and fail to meet it, at least it won’t be for
lack of trying. If we shoot for a less aggressive goal we might miss emissions
reductions opportunities that we might otherwise have captured if we were
more aggressive.
• There’s a fair chance that climate stabilization will be easier than we think.

We are also strong proponents of converting longer-term goals into annual

interim goals. Many politicians find it easy to embrace goals to be met decades after
they’ll leave office but converting long-term goals into annual ones allows us to
determine if we’re on track to meet the temperature goal. If we fall short in one year,
we’ll need to do more the next year to catch up. That’s part of what we mean when
we say climate change is an ‘adaptive challenge’.
There are those who will say that net-zero emissions by 2040 is not feasible, but they
say that about virtually every target, and then proceed to do nothing. If we had acted
to reduce emissions three decades ago, as we should have, we could have phased out
fossil fuels at a leisurely pace but having dithered for so long we now have no other
choice. We must change political and other constraints so we can do what is necessary.

2.10 What we must do

The overarching goal of climate policy at this juncture is to stabilize global
temperatures, and that means getting to zero net emissions as soon as possible,
pulling carbon from the air as technology and policy allow. We summarize this goal
as net zero by 2040, climate positive thereafter, as shown in figure 2.3.
There are three key elements for achieving this goal, all three to be accomplished
as soon as possible:

1. Ending fossil-fuel use.

2. Minimizing emissions of high potency GHGs.
3. Creating a climate-positive biosphere.

These three elements are the essence of climate stabilization.

2.10.1 Ending fossil-fuel use

The most important single driver of greenhouse gas emissions is the production and
use of fossil fuels. Many analyses focus on carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels
but solving the climate problem is about more than just cutting carbon dioxide.
It is common for analyses of climate change solutions to talk about carbon
dioxide and ‘other gases’ but we focus instead on splitting greenhouse gases into

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Figure 2.3. What we must do. Source: Copyright 2022 Violet Kitchen.

‘fossil’ and ‘non-fossil’ categories. This convention splits emissions of methane and
nitrous oxide into those directly associated with fossil fuels (which will be reduced as
we reduce and eventually eliminate fossil-fuel use) and those emissions linked to
other activities.
Consider figure 2.4, which shows greenhouse gas emissions in 1990 and 2020 for
the US [112], split into fossil and non-fossil categories, assuming 100 year global
warming potentials (see below).
Carbon dioxide emissions associated with fossil fuels are the biggest single
category, but emissions of the other gases are big enough to matter.
Figure 2.5 shows two ways of aggregating emissions, the first bar showing the
fossil versus non-fossil split and the second bar showing the more conventional split
of fossil plus industrial process carbon dioxide compared to ‘other gases’. For the
US, land-use carbon dioxide emissions are negative, because forests are growing
back after earlier centuries of deforestation, and we exclude the effects of that
carbon sink to focus on positive emissions. For the world as a whole, the land-use
sector is currently a source of carbon emissions to the atmosphere [113].
Fossil emissions are about 80% of total US emissions, with non-fossil emissions
around 20%. Carbon dioxide emissions, including fossil combustion and industrial
processes comprise about 80% of the total, with the rest allocated to ‘other gases’
such as methane, nitrous oxide, and F-gases.
The advantage of the aggregation in the first bar is that it is much clearer and
easier to operationalize. Everything in the ‘fossil’ bin is associated with the

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Figure 2.4. US Greenhouse gas emissions in 1990 and 2020 by category (100 year GWPs). Source: US EPA
[112]. GWPs from table 7.SM.7 in IPCC [1]. Categories ranked by 2020 emissions using 100 year GWPs.

Figure 2.5. US greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 (100 year GWPs). Source: US EPA [112]. GWPs from
table 7.SM.7 in IPCC [1].

production and use of fossil fuels, and everything in the ‘non-fossil’ category
represents emissions from industrial processes and other human activities. If we
use fewer fossil fuels, everything in the fossil category will go down.
The second aggregation approach (which is still widely used) lumps fossil related
‘other gases’ (such as methane leakage from coal mines and oil drilling) in with non-
fossil emissions of those gases (from industrial processes and agriculture). Carbon
dioxide from industrial processes (non-fossil related) is included with fossil CO2
emissions. We use the aggregation approach embodied in the first bar where data

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permit to avoid the conceptual confusions embedded in the approach used for the
second bar.

2.10.2 Minimizing non-fossil GHGs

Scientists characterize the warming effects of different warming agents in different
ways, but it is common to calculate what’s called a global warming potential (GWP)
for each warming agent. The GWP represents the cumulative warming power of each
agent as a ratio compared to carbon dioxide over some period. CO2, by definition, has
a GWP of 1.0. Other warming agents, depending on their warming power and
residence time in the atmosphere, can have GWPs of many times that of CO2.
GWP also varies over time. The IPCC calculates GWPs for 20 year, 100 year, and
500 year periods, as shown in table 2.1.
Many greenhouse gases have GWPs much greater than 1.0, which is why we call
them high potency GHGs. It is particularly important to focus on high potency
GHGs with shorter lifetimes, such as methane, black carbon, and HFC-134a
because reducing their emissions can have an almost immediate effect on near-
term warming trends.
Figure 2.6 shows what happens to the data for the two aggregation methods when
20 year GWPs are used instead of the 100 year values. Because the 20 year GWPs for
methane and HFC-134a are a lot higher than the 100 year values, the importance of
‘other gases’ goes up a lot (this effect is somewhat offset by the lower 20 year GWP
values for PFCs, SF6, and NF3). Non-fossil emissions also go up as a percentage of
the total using these GWPs.

Table 2.1. Characteristics of selected warming agents.

Mean lifetime GWP GWP GWP

Name Formula years 20 yrs 100 yrs 500 yrs

Carbon dioxide CO2 Multiple 1.00 1.00 1.00

Methane CH4 12 81 28 8
Nitrous oxide N2O 109 273 273 130
Chlorofluorocarbon-11 (CFC-11) CCl3F 52 7430 5560 1870
Chlorofluorocarbon-12 (CFC-12) CCl2F2 102 11 400 11 200 5100
Hydrofluorocarbon-23 (HFC-23) CHF3 228 12 400 14 600 10 500
Hydrofluorocarbon-32 (HFC-32) CH2F2 5.4 2690 771 220
Hydrofluorocarbon-134a CH2FCF3 14 4140 1530 436
(HFC-134a)
Carbon tetrafluoride (PFC-14) CF4 50 000 5300 7380 10 600
Sulfur hexafluoride SF6 3200 18 300 25 200 34 100
Nitrogen trifluoride NF3 569 13 400 17 400 18 200
Black carbon C Days to weeks 3200 910 280
Hydrogen H2 2 32.2 10.8 NA

1. Black carbon data from Bond et al [114].

2. H2 data from table 11 in Warwick [115]. NA = not available.
3. All other data from IPCC [1] table 7.SM.7.

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Figure 2.6. US greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 (20 year GWPs). Source: US EPA [112]. GWPs from table 7.
SM.7 in IPCC [1].

A strong case can be made for examining results using both 100 year and 20 year
GWPs, because the next few decades of climate action are so critical. Examining the
20 year values for scenarios that reach net zero by 2050 can reveal critical
information about near-term warming from high potency GHGs.
In the rest of this book, we report greenhouse gas equivalent emissions using 20
year GWPs, referencing 100 year GWPs as appropriate. We also split emissions into
‘fossil related’ (for which electrification is the main solution) and ‘non-fossil related’
because this categorization method is conceptually clearer and more useful.

2.10.3 What does ‘climate positive’ mean?

Because of deforestation and other human activities, the biosphere is currently a source
of carbon emissions into the atmosphere. A climate-positive biosphere is one that
removes carbon from the atmosphere over time, which would make it a carbon sink.
There are scientists who are optimistic about engineering solutions to remove carbon
from the atmosphere and store it underground that fall under the rubric of ‘direct air
capture’ of CO2 [116]. Unfortunately, the logistics, economics, and thermodynamics of
such schemes remain daunting [116–121], and even if some of these technologies
become available it will be decades before they can reach the needed scale.
While we support researching, demonstrating, and deploying such technologies,
we are convinced that many well-known techniques for enhancing biospheric sinks
are ready for deployment now and should be the focus of initial efforts to turn the
biosphere ‘climate positive’ [122–124]. Such methods include:

• Stopping industrial-scale deforestation everywhere, while creating alternative

ways to deliver energy services for those harvesting biomass for subsistence.
• Reforesting and reclaiming denuded land.
• Implementing regenerative farming.

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• Creating vast ocean sanctuaries.

• Farming seaweed.
• Weathering of minerals.

The exact mix of techniques for enhancing natural sinks will emerge through rapid
deployment and learning by doing, which is why we need to get started immediately.

2.10.4 The eight pillars of climate action

Williams et al [25] describe a suite of deep decarbonization scenarios for the United
States energy system, and propose four pillars of deep decarbonization:

• Electrify end-uses and fuels

• Decarbonize electricity
• Increase efficiency
• Capture carbon emissions for use or safe storage

To this we add another pillar because it’s not just about energy or carbon dioxide:

• Minimize non-fossil GHGs (including land-use, industrial processes, and

other gases beyond carbon dioxide).

These five pillars are broadly parallel with those presented in Goldstein-Rose
[125] and characterized in great detail in IPCC [12]. Because Williams et al focused
on the energy sector, they thought of efficiency as energy efficiency, but we think of it
more broadly as ‘optimizing energy and materials flows’, so we call it ‘efficiency and
optimization’. It can also apply to non-fossil emissions, so we move it to be after the
‘reduce non-fossil emissions’ pillar in our framework. We rename ‘capture carbon
emissions’ to be ‘remove carbon’ and move it to number five.
We call these first five pillars ‘technical pillars’ since they organize thinking about
ways to reduce emissions based on their technical characteristics. We also add pillars
six, seven, and eight to highlight the importance of economics, investments, and
framing/communications to accelerating the transition to a zero-emissions world:

• Align incentives
• Mobilize money
• Elevate truth

We call these ‘institutional pillars’ because they involve institutional change to

implement them. By institutional change we mean changes in government, business,
and civil society practices, norms, and rules that will be needed to accelerate the
transition to zero emissions.
Table 2.2 shows the complete set of pillars, which we rename as ‘the eight pillars
of climate action’. We organize this book around these eight pillars, discussing under
chapters for each pillar how different sectors will be affected by society’s shift to net-
zero emissions. We summarize each of the eight pillars in turn.

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Table 2.2. The eight pillars of climate action.

Technical pillars Examples

1. Electrify (almost) (a) Energy end-uses.

everything (b) Industrial processes.
(c) Electrical fuels (H2, synthetic methane, ammonia).

2. Decarbonize (a) Zero-emissions generation sources.

electricity (b) Flexible demand/price response.
(c) Flexible industrial loads such as the creation of electrical fuels (e.g. H2,
synthetic methane).
(d) Storage of electricity and heat.
(e) Increased transmission infrastructure.
(f) Diversity + ‘overbuilding’ of generation sources.
(g) Improved forecasting of variable generation and loads.
(h) Carbon capture from fossil-fuel + biomass combustion.

3. Minimize non-fossil (a) F-gases.

GHGs (b) Methane (manure, food, fossil production/distribution).
(c) Soil and forest carbon.
(d) N2O.
(e) Black carbon.
(f) CO2 from cement and other industrial processes.

4. Efficiency and (a) Efficiency/waste reduction.

optimization (b) Real-time demand response.
(c) Changes in service demand/intensities.
(d) Changes in structure of economic activity.
(e) Reduce primary energy supply losses.
(f) Develop and use new materials to displace old ones.

5. Remove carbon (a) Stop deforestation and increase afforestation/reforestation.

(b) Weathering.
(c) Ocean sanctuaries, seaweed farming.

Institutional pillars Examples

6. Align incentives (a) Make emissions reductions the easy choice.
(b) Re-design institutions and reform property rights.
(c) Rationalize and tighten regulations.
(d) Harness learning effects and social incentives.
(e) Make companies liable for climate damages and risks.

7. Mobilize money (a) End pro-pollution subsidies.

(b) Price carbon, other GHGs, and other pollutant damages.
(c) Re-deploy fossil spending to build zero-emissions alternatives.
(d) Subsidize climate-friendly investments and R&D.

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(e) Use government borrowing/printing money at low interest rates to

invest in infrastructure and resilience.
(f) Get pro-pollution money out of politics.

8. Elevate truth (a) Debunk misinformation.

(b) Deplatform disinformation.
(c) Vote.
(d) Educate.
(e) Disrupt propaganda campaigns.
(f) Ban polluter advertising.
(g) Hold polluters accountable for lies.

Source: Adapted from Williams et al [25] and Goldstein-Rose [125] with modifications by Koomey and
Monroe.

The first pillar in our framework is Electrify (almost) everything, basing our
choices on the latest research and field experience, and funding RD&D for hard-to-
electrify end-uses. In combination with a rapidly decarbonizing electricity grid this
effort will reduce emissions more cheaply and quickly than is possible by keeping
fuel-fired end-uses in place. It also means expanding access to electricity to the
hundreds of millions of people in Africa and Asia who now lack such access.
Pillar number two is Decarbonize electricity. To accomplish this goal, we’ll need
to deploy technologies, policies, and business practices to move electricity generation
to zero emissions, while increasing total generation three- to four-fold in coming
decades. Key factors include alternative generation technologies, power system
controls, increased transmission investments, thermal and electricity storage, carbon
sequestration for natural gas and biomass generation, improved forecasting, and
‘overbuilding’ of key generation investments.
Pillar three is Minimize non-fossil emissions. Addressing the short-lived non-fossil
pollutants is one way to quickly slow increases in global warming. Agriculture
produces non-fossil emissions from fertilizer, deforestation, and changes in land-use
patterns. That sector’s emissions are also affected by what people chose to eat.
Industrial process and some appliances also emit non-fossil greenhouse gases, and
these need focused attention.
Pillar four is Efficiency and optimization. This chapter focuses on whole system
efficiency in the broadest possible sense, that of optimizing energy and material
flows. For electric end-uses that means promoting the highest efficiency devices, but
it also means enabling information flows and technologies that can better match
energy use to times of day when electricity is most plentiful and inexpensive. In
addition, it means reducing food waste, improving industrial process controls, and
minimizing material flows.
Pillar five is Remove carbon. Carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for centuries
after it’s emitted. There are unproven and complicated technical solutions that may
help with this effort, but the most likely options involve making the land and seas
‘climate positive’. That means stopping industrial-scale deforestation everywhere,

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aggressively reforesting where it makes sense, creating vast ocean sanctuaries,

‘farming’ seaweed, and slowing warming in any ways we can (because a warming
ocean can hold less carbon dioxide).
Pillar six is Align incentives. The fossil-fuel industry has had more than a century
to rig the system, privatizing profits and socializing costs. The real costs of pollution
are invisible to most market participants, and structural subsidies (like weak
regulations, non-existent enforcement, and inadequate bonding requirements for
oil and gas wells) fly under the radar. We’ll need to re-design markets and re-align
incentives throughout the society to reflect the goal of getting to zero emissions as
soon as possible.
Pillar seven is Mobilize money. Solving the climate problem means replacing high-
emissions infrastructure with capital and technology, facilitated by financial
incentives. That shift almost always means movement away from periodic expenses
for fuel and maintenance to more capital investments. Financial innovation (such as
new kinds of standardized loans for homes and small businesses) can help smooth
that transition. In addition, significant capital continues to be allocated to fossil-fuel
investments, mainly for historical reasons, and that needs to stop immediately, with
that money re-allocated to building zero-emissions capital.
Pillar eight is Elevate truth. Reducing emissions means confronting the most powerful
industry in human history and unwinding the many ways the economy has been tilted
towards fossil fuels over more than a century. Those who question the findings of
climate science and argue against immediate and rapid emissions reductions are no
longer engaged in the scientific process, but in a propaganda exercise. For too long,
scientists have taken objections to climate science as good faith arguments from other
scientists, but that has enabled the forces of denial and delay. Elevating truth and
fighting propaganda are critical to a successful transition to a zero-emissions society.

2.11 Visualizing successful climate action

Our idealized vision for climate action is well characterized by figure 2.7, taken from
analysis in [126], which illustrates what we mean by net zero by 2040, climate
positive thereafter. By 2035, deforestation and destruction of other undisturbed
ecosystems is entirely halted, with afforestation, reforestation, changing agricultural
practices, and coastal restoration yielding up to 10 Gt CO2 uptake per year just after
2040. At the same time, fossil-fuel related emissions decline rapidly and drop to zero
just after 2050. Net zero by 2040 is not the end of the journey, it’s just an important
milestone along the way to a climate-positive world.

2.12 We have to do it all

Under normal circumstances pushing hard on some options would allow us to push
less hard on others. For example, shouldn’t we be able to worry less about aggressive
emissions reductions if we can scale up adaptation, geo-engineering, or direct air
capture of carbon? Shouldn’t we be able to accept slower reductions in carbon
dioxide if we can rapidly scale up reductions in emissions of other warming agents?
The answer, unfortunately, is no. We’ve dithered so long that we now need to push

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 Solving Climate Change

Figure 2.7. Successful climate action means net zero by 2040, climate positive thereafter. Source: Taken from
[126: figure 9]. Net zero is achieved in 2040, with carbon removal increasing to 2050, then gradually declining.
The biosphere starts offgassing carbon around 2050 when fossil emissions stop, which somewhat diminishes
the effects of carbon removal. Reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
(CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Design by Karl Burkart.

forward on all options as rapidly as we can. We need to do everything that’s feasible

and effective, and we need to start immediately.
For example, planting trees and other ways of removing carbon from the
atmosphere are treated by some companies as ‘offsets’, to ‘compensate’ for emissions
elsewhere. This way of thinking conveys the pernicious idea that carbon removal can
substitute for emissions reductions. Removing carbon will always be harder, slower,
and more expensive than not emitting carbon in the first place, and while we should
scale up carbon removal options as fast as we can (as we discuss in chapter 8) they
are no substitute for immediate, rapid, and sustained direct emissions reductions.
We must choose alternatives strategically, learning as we go. Focusing on short-
lived high potency warming agents (such as methane, HFC-32, HFC-134a, and
black carbon) can result in immediate benefits in short run warming [127–129]. That
doesn’t mean we can slack off on carbon dioxide emissions reductions, we need to
reduce ALL emissions quickly. The effects of carbon emission reductions will just
take longer to show up in global temperatures, so moving quickly on the other
warming agents can pay quicker dividends.
Short-lived warming agents with high GWPs offer the possibility of slowing
warming in the near term. We must continue to pursue rapid reductions in carbon
dioxide emissions but reducing emissions of other warming agents rapidly must be a
strategic priority because of their short-term benefits.

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 Solving Climate Change

‘Doing it all’ also doesn’t mean throwing money at technologies and policies that
are proven not to work. As discussed above, ‘adaptive challenges’ such as climate
change require an experimental and evolutionary approach. The National Research
Council [130] calls such a strategy ‘iterative risk management’, implying that we
must try many options, fail fast, and do more of what works and less of what
doesn’t. It’s also an approach consonant with Bayesian updating [131, 132].
Technologies that fail to scale and achieve cost reductions after many attempts
must be abandoned, because we can’t afford to waste talent, time, money, and effort
on things that don’t work. It’s an emergency and we need to prioritize our efforts for
maximal effect. So ‘all of the above’ for zero-emissions options doesn’t mean
continuing to invest in failed technologies, it means trying everything and determin-
ing what path is quickest and most efficacious, discarding what isn’t working.
Some widely cited ‘alternatives’ also don’t address all aspects of the problem.
Take ‘solar radiation management’, which involves increasing the reflectivity of the
planet by injecting particles in the atmosphere or other means [133]. While efforts
like these might temporarily reduce global temperatures, they do nothing about
ocean acidification as increasing CO2 is absorbed by the oceans.
Of course, there are also other good reasons for avoiding such geo-engineering
shenanigans, which could have unfortunate side effects on weather and human
health [134] and create what’s called ‘moral hazard’ if policy makers falsely think
that these efforts are a substitute for emissions reductions [135]. The picture becomes
even more complicated once we accept that our power to change the natural
environment far exceeds our ability to predict the effects of those changes, and
always will, as David Bella pointed out in the late 1970s [136].
Geo-engineering may ultimately be necessary as an emergency option but they
are treated by some as an alternative to immediate, rapid, and sustained emissions
reductions, which they most certainly are not. We do not consider them further here.

2.13 Who’s responsible?

At http://www.solveclimate.org, we present Action item checklists for government,
businesses, investors and donors, and individuals, communities, and non-profits.
These are concrete actions to jump-start emissions reductions, and many of them
will feature prominently in plans to get to climate positive.
Each country, state, or company is different, and not all action items will apply to
your situation. That’s where your research is needed, to customize recommendations
and findings from other studies to the unique context under study.

2.14 Chapter conclusions

We offer a comprehensive vision of solving the climate problem that embraces
previous work but expands the focus to include non-fossil emissions, market design,
financial innovation, and the fight against propaganda and misinformation. We also
identify concrete ‘action items’ for key actors to start the transition to a zero-
emissions society.

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Further reading
Davis S J et al 2018 Net-zero emissions energy systems Science 360 eaas9793 https://
doi.org/10.1126/science.aas9793. A widely cited article on achieving net-zero
emissions by some of the top researchers in the field.
Dessler A 2022 How greed and politics are slowing the switch to renewable energy
Bull. Atom. Sci. 17 January https://thebulletin.org/2022/01/how-greed-and-pol-
itics-are-slowing-the-switch-to-renewable-energy/. A compact and clear sum-
mary of the climate problem and impediments to potential solutions.
Goldstein-Rose S 2020 The 100% Solution: A Plan for Solving Climate Change (New
York: Melville House). This book is a terrific summary of climate solutions for
non-technical audiences. It lists five pillars that have some overlap with our
pillars, but is not as comprehensive as our complete list.
Hawken P (ed) 2017 Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to
Reverse Global Warming (New York: Penguin Books). Project Drawdown lays
out an extensive list of solutions to the climate problem, and the work is
ongoing. Their current list of solutions is here https://drawdown.org/solutions/
table-of-solutions.
IPCC 2022 Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of
Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) https://ipcc.
ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-3/. The latest IPCC consensus
report on mitigation of climate change.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2021 Accelerating
Decarbonization of the US Energy System (Washington, DC: The National
Academies Press) https://nap.edu/catalog/25932/accelerating-decarbonization-
of-the-us-energy-system. High-level view of technology and policy changes
needed to speed up decarbonization of the US energy system.
Williams J H, Jones R A, Haley B, Kwok G, Hargreaves J, Farbes J and Torn M S
2021 Carbon-neutral pathways for the United States AGU Adv. 2
e2020AV000284 https://doi.org/10.1029/2020AV000284. An exemplary recent
study of carbon emissions reductions in the US energy sector.

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 IOP Publishing

Solving Climate Change

A guide for learners and leaders
Jonathan Koomey and Ian Monroe

Chapter 3
Tools of the trade

Data, Data, Data! I can’t make bricks without clay!

—Sherlock Holmes

Chapter overview

• Creating an emissions reduction plan always starts with an emissions inventory.

• For the energy system, build an emissions inventory from an energy balance.
• Next, create a business-as-usual projection for every sector and human activity
from the base-year emissions inventory.
• Reviewing previous studies helps in designing the climate-positive scenario.
• Whole-systems integrated design is the way to achieve significant and rapid
emissions reductions.
• Following the project template posted at http://www.solveclimate.org gives
structure to projects and helps guide students in the right direction.

3.1 Beginning the journey

The first step in assessing how to make society climate positive is always the same:
creating an inventory of greenhouse gas emissions associated with the country,
community, or company you’re analyzing. Such inventories tally emissions from all
sources to help decisionmakers decide how best to reduce them.
3.1.1 Emissions inventories
The process of creating an emissions inventory helps organize efforts to reduce
emissions, but if you’re focused on a well-studied state, province, country, or

doi:10.1088/978-0-7503-4032-8ch3 3-1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

 Solving Climate Change

company, an emissions inventory may already exist [1]. The US [2], California [3],
and Europe [4] all have reasonably current official inventories that are periodically
updated. The UN reports data from each country, typically at a higher level of
aggregation than what the best individual country inventories show1. Data avail-
ability for companies is dependent on historical attention paid to these issues.
Standards for creating emissions inventories for companies, cities, and individual
projects are managed by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol) group,
which is a joint effort of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development
and the World Resources Institute2. For a recent discussion of data and method-
ology issues around creating and understanding emissions inventories, see [5].
Boundary choices are critical, particularly for smaller institutions and geogra-
phies. The analysis in [6] found that 48 US cities undercounted their emissions on
average about 18% mainly because of boundary choices. They also found that self-
reporting of emissions without consistent standards limits the reliability of emissions
data and calls into question the emissions reduction targets that rely upon them.

3.1.1.1 Energy balances

For fossil fuel combustion, estimating emissions starts with flows of fuel (natural
gas, oil, and coal), data for which are typically easily available in what are called
‘energy balances’, in which all energy flows are tracked from production through to
consumption. The canonical source of energy balances is available for virtually all
countries from the International Energy Agency [7]. The normal assumption is that
carbon in fuels is almost completely (99%) converted to CO2 through combustion.
There are important special cases where fossil fuels are not completely com-
busted, with fossil gas venting from oil wells and methane leakage from fossil gas
transport and distribution infrastructure being two obvious examples [8–10].
Assessing such leakage is an important part of an emissions inventory. In fact,
every molecule of each fuel and their associated emissions need to be tracked and
counted.

3.1.1.2 Industrial processes

Industrial processes are another important source of emissions. The manufacture of
steel and aluminum, for example, use carbon that results in CO2 process emissions
unrelated to fossil fuel combustion. Redesign of such processes can eliminate the use
of carbon and associated emissions but replacing current infrastructure with new
plant and equipment can require significant investment. Assessing these options
requires detailed technical knowledge of each process and potential alternatives.

3.1.1.3 Agriculture and food systems

Agriculture and food systems are important sources of emissions of methane and
nitrous oxide, and tracking these emissions are often more complicated than for
fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes. The data are less available and the

1
https://unfccc.int/ghg-inventories-annex-i-parties/2021
2
https://ghgprotocol.org

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 Solving Climate Change

chemical and biological processes more complicated than for fuel combustion, but
reasonable estimates are still possible in these sectors.

3.1.1.4 Land-use change

Land-use change is another important source of emissions that can be difficult to
track precisely, in part because of the dispersed and diverse sources for these
emissions. Most often it’s CO2 from deforestation and other land-use changes that
are highlighted, but methane and other emissions are associated with such changes
as well.

3.1.2 Mapping emissions onto human activities (tasks)

The emissions inventory should map emissions onto human activities (tasks),
helping assess the best ways to reduce those emissions. Figure 3.1, shown in the
IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report [11], from [12], uses the term ‘service’ for what we
call tasks and ‘fuel’ for what we call primary energy, but the concept is the same. It
shows total anthropogenic emissions in 2010 from all sources mapped onto tasks,
sectors, equipment types, device types, final energy, and primary fuel consumption
in what is called a Sankey diagram.

Figure 3.1. Sankey diagram for global emissions circa 2010. Source: Bajželj et al [12]. Reproduced under
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by/4.0/. An interactive online version with 2014 data is posted at https://www.refficiency.org/projects/green-
house-gas-emission-map. Original caption: A Sankey diagram showing the system boundaries of the industry
sector and demonstrating how global anthropogenic emissions in 2010 arose from the chain of technologies
and systems required to deliver final services triggered by human demand. The width of each line is
proportional to GHG emissions released, and the sum of these widths along any vertical slice through the
diagram is the same, representing all emissions in 2010.

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 Solving Climate Change

The detailed data needed to create such an assessment are not always available, and
there are often time lags in creating Sankey diagrams (because of data availability
issues), but they offer a wonderful high-level map of an emissions inventory.
Because of the nature and urgency of the climate problem, virtually every activity
in society will need to be re-engineered to minimize emissions. That’s why a
comprehensive map like the Sankey diagram in figure 3.1 is so important.
Understanding how emissions result from human activities suggests further
inquiries. What activities are the largest sources of emissions? What value does
each activity bring? Are there alternative zero-emission ways to generate the same or
greater value? What people and institutions are responsible for accomplishing each
task? For companies, what is their business model? For individuals, what do they
value?
Focusing on tasks makes much bigger improvements possible than would a narrow
focus on total emissions. Consider a simple example. If an engineer thinks of her job as
burning fossil gas efficiently to reduce CO2 emissions from operation of a home
furnace, physics puts constraints on just how efficient that system can get and how
much emissions can be reduced. The first law of thermodynamics says that we can’t get
more energy out of the furnace than we put in, and there will inevitably be losses.
For a basic new furnace installed in the US nowadays the efficiency as measured
by the first law is about 80%. For every unit of energy that flows into the furnace as
natural gas, 0.8 units of heat exits the furnace and flows into the heating ducts (some
of that heat is lost by the ducts and never makes it to the rooms). The best new gas
furnaces are so-called ‘condensing’ units, and they are around 95% efficient (0.95
units of heat from the furnace for every unit of gas input), but that’s about the best
we can do. 100% efficiency is an upper limit (according to the first law of
thermodynamics) that we can never quite reach.
President Dwight D Eisenhower once famously said ‘If you cannot solve a
problem, make it bigger’, and that dictum applies in this case as well. If the engineer
defines the task more broadly as ‘keeping rooms warm’, more possibilities emerge.
The engineer could tighten the duct work to reduce heat losses so that more hot
air gets to the rooms. She could design a super-insulated house that needs little heat
to keep it comfortable, including a heat recovery ventilation system to bring in fresh
air while recapturing heat from the warmed inside air. She could install active
shading to allow sunlight to enter the windows when heat is needed and block the
Sun when it’s hot outside. She could also replace the gas furnace with a heat pump,
which uses one unit of electricity to move three to five units of heat into the house.
Redefining tasks enables us to identify more and better opportunities for emissions
reductions. This insight comes from a deep understanding of the second law of
thermodynamics [13] and the discipline of whole-systems integrated design [14].

3.2 Rethinking the design process

Whole-systems integrated design encourages engineers to design new systems from
scratch to accomplish the task at hand, ignoring constraints imposed by legacy
hardware or archaic assumptions, while substantially reducing or eliminating

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 Solving Climate Change

emissions [14, 15]. Amory Lovins is the modern champion of this approach, and he
coined the phrase ‘factor ten engineering’ to describe it [16].
This focus on the task (keeping rooms warm) is essential to achieving emissions
reductions and efficiency improvements far beyond what is possible for an engineer
working with a much narrower definition of the task (such as burning fossil gas in a
furnace to heat a house).
The core insights driving whole-systems integrated design are four-fold:
• New technology only captures existing markets when it is much better than
what it replaces. Incremental improvements of ten to twenty percent won’t
cut it.
• Redesigning the whole system helps new innovations capture multiple
benefits, beyond what an incremental analysis would indicate, making it
easier to achieve factors of ten or more improvements in the service delivered
and associated emissions.
• The focus on dramatic improvements is a way to overcome arbitrary and
imagined constraints to achieving such emissions reductions.
• Rapid changes in markets, technologies, and materials open up new possi-
bilities for system design, even months after a product or service is released.

Whole-systems integrated design is a key tool to achieve the rapid emissions

reductions we need to stabilize the climate.

3.3 Understanding capital stocks

One of the core concepts needed to understand how energy- and emissions-related
systems change is that of capital stocks. An investment in equipment lasts years. In
the US, cars typically last about 15 years, furnaces 25 years, building shells 50 to 100
years. Over time, old equipment retires and new equipment takes its place.
Retirements can happen because of accidents, breakage, fires, or renovations, and
new equipment is typically more efficient than the existing device it replaces.
Capital stock grows to meet increasing service demand. When population grows,
the housing stock expands to meet that demand. New homes are constructed to meet
that growth as well as to replace existing homes that have retired.
Assessments of emissions reduction potentials need to explicitly represent capital
stock turnover. To do so, analysts begin with projections of growth in service
demand (such as population, commercial building floor area, or numbers of water
heaters) and inventories of existing capital stocks in a base year. They then apply a
retirement function to the existing capital stocks. Growth in service demand minus
the remaining stock from the base year gives the number of new buildings or devices
sold in each year.
Average efficiency or emissions in any year is a function of growth in service
demand, retirements, and the difference in efficiency or emissions intensity between
the existing stock and new devices or buildings. Appendix B works through a more
detailed example of capital stock turnover to help you design simple models for your
own use.

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 Solving Climate Change

3.4 Understanding key drivers of emissions

For understanding the key drivers of changes in greenhouse gas emissions from the
energy sector over time, researchers often use the Kaya identity. This identity
decomposes carbon emissions as a product of aggregate wealth, energy intensity of
economic activity, and carbon intensity of the energy supplied. We show the familiar
‘four-factor’ Kaya identity in equation (3.1):
GNP PE C
CFossil Fuels = P∙ ∙ ∙ (3.1)
P GNP PE
where CFossil Fuels represents carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels
combusted in the energy sector;
P is population;
GNP is gross national product, a measure of economic activity;
PE is primary energy, including conversion and energy transmission losses;
C is total net carbon dioxide emitted from the primary energy resource mix;
GNP
is the average income per person;
P
PE
is the primary energy intensity of the economy; and
GNP
C
is the net carbon dioxide intensity of supplying primary energy.
PE
The Kaya identity reflects a more general identity that expresses impact (I) as the
product of human population (P), affluence (A), and technology (T) [17, 18], referred
to as the IPAT identity. Population is the same in both the Kaya and IPAT
identities, GNP/person represents affluence, and the other two terms characterize
technology.
This formulation implies that a larger number of people with a higher income
and more extensive use of certain technologies will have a greater impact on the
environment. The role of technology can be ambiguous—technologies that
produce and combust fossil fuels are the primary anthropogenic source of carbon
dioxide, while technologies for harnessing renewable energy and nuclear power,
sequestering carbon, and improving efficiency can reduce net anthropogenic
carbon emissions.
Because we care about all emissions that cause warming, decomposing key drivers
requires the more comprehensive relationship summarized in equation (3.2), which
includes all emissions in terms of carbon dioxide equivalent:
C eq eq
Total = CFossil Fuels + CIndustry + CLand-use + C Non-CO 2gases − CSBiomass (3.2)

where
CFossil Fuels is defined in equation (3.1);
CIndustry represents carbon dioxide emissions from industrial processes (non-
energy uses of fossil fuels that result in emissions, such as cement and aluminum
production), some models combine these emissions with fossil fuel combustion
emissions, but they should be split out for clarity and internal consistency
checks;

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 Solving Climate Change

CLand-use represents net carbon dioxide emissions from changes in agriculture and
land use that are not associated with emissions reductions from biomass CCS, this
term can be negative if there is significant reforestation;
C eq
Non-CO2gases represents emissions of other greenhouse gases converted to CO2
equivalent using relative factors of global warming potential (GWP); and
CSBiomass represents net negative emissions from sequestering carbon emissions
associated with biomass combustion (in effect, such sequestration removes carbon
from the biosphere), the emissions reductions from this source must be carefully
distinguished from those land-use changes.
If direct air capture of CO2 is present in future scenarios (as seems likely) an
additional term would be needed in equation (3.2).
As many researchers have realized over the years, the Kaya identity as it was
originally introduced is incomplete. Appendix D presents an expanded version of
that identity to be included in a more comprehensive decomposition. This expanded
version was first laid out in detail by Koomey et al in 2019 [19] and expanded further
by Koomey et al in 2022 [20]. In some cases, the original Kaya identity is
appropriate, but often the more detailed version is necessary.
Decomposing the key drivers of emissions and emission reductions allows us to
make a graph that looks like figure 3.2 (created from the data in van Vuuren et al
[21], using methods taken from Koomey et al [19, 20, 22]). Because of the duration
of these projections, this graph uses 100-year GWPs. It shows the effect on emissions
over time of all the levers included in the fully expanded decomposition explained in
appendix D.

Figure 3.2. Sources of emissions reductions for van Vuuren et al’s most aggressive reductions scenario. Source:
Scenario results from [21], decomposed using methods from [19, 22]. There are no savings from biomass CCS
and a tiny increase in emissions from economic activity per person (not shown) in this scenario.

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 Solving Climate Change

3.5 Creating structured scenario comparisons

Many comparisons of scenario outputs are done in an ad hoc basis, which in our
experience can muddle key findings. We have been strong advocates for more
structured comparisons using the decomposition methods highlighted in the
previous section and described further in Koomey et al [19] and Koomey et al [20].
Policy makers should demand such structured comparisons and encourage
modeling teams supporting their decision making to produce them. Modeling teams
should adopt these methods as a matter of course, to promote sanity checking during
scenario creation, improve transparency, speed up the analysis process, and make
their results more useful to policy makers. They should also continually improve
these methods over time.
We are also strong advocates for focused comparisons of small numbers of well-
chosen scenarios, to supplement analyses that analyze dozens or hundreds of
scenarios and present the results in aggregate form (such as, for example, in IPCC
[23, 24]). Scenario modelers are partial to assessing many models and scenarios as
one way of addressing uncertainty [25], but our experience is that key storylines can
easily be lost when so many scenarios are presented together. Assessing a handful of
scenarios, as we do in Koomey et al [20] can yield insights that are just as valuable as
those conveyed by analyses covering more scenarios.

3.6 More detailed breakdowns of savings from key options

The analyses of emissions reductions presented in the previous two sections are
highly aggregated. More granularity is often required for credible zero emissions
scenarios but creating menus of potential savings from different options is situation
dependent and requires detailed analysis. Such analysis often draws upon analyses of
options from other sources, but these must be adapted and modified for each
application.
One high-profile assessment of emissions reductions options for the globe comes
from Project Drawdown. The original work was presented in 2017 [26] but it has
been updated significantly since then. It presents quantitative assessments for dozens
of emissions reductions options with documentation for each.
Another great source is the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project, which
analyzed business-as-usual and deep decarbonization scenarios (with extensive
electrification) for the energy sectors of more than a dozen major countries,
including the US, China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil3.
An interesting recent effort [27] translates the aggregated results of integrated
assessment model scenarios into country-specific household level lifestyle changes
compatible with those scenarios, which is an area of increasing recent research
activity [28]. A focus on service demand and activity levels can help policy makers
understand multiple pathways for achieving aggressive emissions reductions.
The latest IPCC Working Group III report on mitigation is another great source,
but it is huge, so prepare to search for what you need [23]. A keyword search on

3
https://ddpinitiative.org

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 Solving Climate Change

single chapters can be quick and will often reveal dozens of relevant references and
helpful summary materials.

3.7 A useful way to summarize total emission savings

In analyzing potential climate solutions, it is often convenient to summarize the
sources of potential emissions reductions in a simple way. One the most well-known
methods is the concept of climate wedges, as popularized by Pacala and Socolow [29]
and further refined in [30]. It is often referred to as the stabilization wedges method.
Most analyses of the climate problem project a business-as-usual (BAU) case that
extends current trends into the future, and then compile a list of policies and
technologies that would reduce emissions, ranked based on costs and effectiveness
(as per the McKinsey cost curve discussed below). Figure 3.3 summarizes what
Pacala and Socolow call the stabilization triangle, which would keep emissions
constant over 50 years4. The triangle is the area between the line representing
constant emissions and the business-as-usual case.
Figure 3.4 shows that the stabilization triangle is made up of wedges, each of
which avoids 25 billion tons of carbon emissions over 50 years. One wedge could be
something like doubling the efficiency of all of the world’s light duty vehicles from 30
to 60 miles per gallon, or increasing wind generated electricity by 100 billion kWh
per year every year for 50 years. Using the business-as-usual assumptions in their
analysis (carbon emissions growth of 1.5% per year), it would take seven or eight
wedges to keep emissions constant for 50 years, and more to actually make
emissions decline.

Figure 3.3. The stabilization triangle. Source: Reproduced with permission from Pacala and Socolow [29].

4
http://cmi.princeton.edu/wedges/ has this graph available for download, as well as course materials and other
helpful resources.

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 Solving Climate Change

Figure 3.4. The stabilization triangle split into wedges. Source: Reproduced with permission from Pacala and
Socolow [29].

The wedges approach has immense heuristic value because it allows people
without much technical knowledge to increase their understanding of the problem
and potential solutions. It also forces us to confront the enormity of the task ahead
in a quantitative way. It was instrumental in convincing many that substantial
strides towards a low carbon world were possible with existing technologies.
However, one downside to this and all other conventional approaches is that the
number of wedges we’ll need to accomplish any specific goal is dependent on the
baseline (i.e. the BAU case). If the underlying drivers of emissions are growing more
rapidly than we first estimated, we’ll need to implement more wedges than we
initially expected to achieve any particular level of emissions reductions. The focus
on savings (or emissions reductions) instead of absolute emissions levels is a
weakness of this type of analysis.
The follow-on analysis in [30] discusses another important failing of the way
wedges were initially presented. As we know from chapter 1 and appendix A, it is
not enough to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, we need to stabilize
greenhouse gas concentrations, and that means getting to zero net emissions as
quickly as we can, making the stabilization triangle look a bit different, as shown in
figure 3.5 (from [30]).
The ‘hidden wedges’ represent the natural progress in technology and markets
compared to a ‘frozen technology’ baseline. ‘Stabilization wedges’ are like the ones
defined in the original Pacala and Socolow article, needed to stabilize emissions. The
‘phase-out wedges’ are the ones that actually get us to zero emissions by mid-
century. This way of looking at the problem shows that it requires much more effort
to truly solve the problem than Pacala and Socolow initially posited.
In any case, this simple way of representing emissions reduction options at a high
level can be helpful in explaining scenario results after you’ve done your analysis. If
you understand its limitations, it is a useful heuristic. Given that we’re now past

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Figure 3.5. Full climate solutions triangle split into wedges. Source: Davis et al [30]. Reproduced under
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License (CC BY 3.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
3.0/. Original caption: Idealization of future CO2 emissions under the business-as-usual SRES A2 marker
scenario. Future emissions are divided into hidden (sometimes called ‘virtual’) wedges (brown) of emissions
avoided by expected decreases in the carbon intensity of GDP by ∼1% per year, stabilization wedges (green) of
emissions avoided through mitigation efforts that hold emissions constant at 9.8 GtC y−1 beginning in 2010,
phase-out wedges (purple) of emissions avoided through complete transition of technologies and practices that
emit CO2 to the atmosphere to ones that do not, and allowed emissions (blue). Wedges expand linearly from 0
to 1 GtC y−1 from 2010 to 2060. The total avoided emissions per wedge is 25 GtC, such that altogether the
hidden, stabilization and phase-out wedges represent 775 GtC of cumulative emissions.

2020, another revisit of wedges is probably appropriate, with an eye toward

shortening their duration to match the time to 2040.

3.8 Understanding technology cost curves

A common way to represent emission reduction potentials is what’s called a supply
curve [31–36]. Figure 3.6 shows an example from the management consulting firm
McKinsey for global emission reduction potentials [37, 38]. The Y-axis is the cost
per saved tonne of greenhouse gas emissions equivalent, with the bars ranked left to
right in order of increasing cost per tonne saved. On the X-axis is the total savings
for each option relative to the reference case in some year, in this case 2030.
Some measures save money, deliver other benefits, and reduce emissions, so those
are ‘negative cost options’. One example would be light-emitting diode (LED) lamps
that last tens of thousands of hours (saving labor) and deliver better light that helps
employees be more productive. Another is the recent trend toward installing solar
panels on farms where crops are being grown [39]. The panels generate electricity,
but also shade the plants and help them grow better during hot weather.
Options above the zero line have positive cost. In principle society should
implement the cheapest options first, but that simple idea fails in practice.

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 Solving Climate Change

Figure 3.6. McKinsey cost curve. Source: Enkvist et al [38]. Exhibit 6 from ‘Impact of the financial crisis on
carbon economics: Version 2.1 of the global greenhouse gas abatement cost curve’, January 2010, McKinsey
and Company, www.mckinsey.com. Copyright 2022 McKinsey and Company. Original caption: The curve
presents an estimate of the maximum potential of all technical GHG abatement measures below €80 per tCO2e
if each lever was pursued aggressively. It is not a forecast of what role different abatement measures and
technologies will play.

Some of these measures are dependent on each other and we need to do everything
we can think of (and more) if we’re to stabilize the climate at safe levels, so we can’t
afford to be too choosy about the order in which options are implemented.
Graphs like these are constructed by estimating the capital cost of an option,
annualizing it using the capital recovery factor5 (like for a mortgage) and dividing that
annual cost by the measure’s annual greenhouse gas emissions savings in 2030. For
options that save money (like many energy-efficiency measures that save energy AND
reduce emissions) the present value of the energy savings is subtracted from the initial
cost and the resulting annualized net cost is divided by annual carbon savings.
Gillingham and Stock [31] discuss the McKinsey cost curve and its limitations.
Such cost curves are useful for summarizing the broad picture for costs of emissions
reductions, but they almost always reflect a static view of current costs rather than
an accurate assessment of what costs will prevail decades hence.
One of the key issues raised by Gillingham and Stock is that aggressive implementation
of emissions reduction options will drive down costs through learning by doing, economies
of scale, network externalities, and other factors that fall under the category of ‘increasing
returns to scale’, as discussed in chapter 1. Such cost curves (as well as virtually all
simulation and optimization models of future emissions) usually ignore such factors.

5
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_recovery_factor

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 Solving Climate Change

Another limitation of such cost curves is that making accurate future cost
predictions for path dependent systems dominated by increasing returns to scale is
impossible [15, 40–42]. They can still be useful in representing the cost assumptions
embodied in modeling exercises but it’s important to always keep their limits in
mind.

3.9 Scenario simulation tools

Learning about the multidimensional complexity of the climate problem sometimes
means experimenting using well-designed scenario creation tools. One of our
favorites is from Energy Innovation for the US6. This open-source tool allows
you to create your own scenario by changing assumptions, save alternative
scenarios, and compare scenarios to each other. It includes all sectors and warming
agents.
Users can choose assumptions for each sector or end-use and can rapidly see
which choices have small or large effects. It runs it through a web browser or
natively on a Mac or PC (input data can even be modified on the Mac/PC versions).
The tool has also been adapted for some other countries and US states, including
China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Poland, Saudi Arabia, California,
Colorado, Virginia, Louisiana, Nevada, and Minnesota.
A similar tool giving the global picture is EN-ROADS, developed by Climate
Interactive, MIT, and Ventana Systems7. It helps facilitate group learning about
climate change solutions for policy makers and business leaders.
A more microsimulation board game is called Energetic8. This game teaches
about physical and political constraints to reaching the goals embodied in the Paris
Climate Agreement in the energy system, focusing on New York City. Players must
keep the lights on and win elections to maintain momentum for decarbonization,
and it isn’t easy to win!

3.10 Life-cycle assessment

Life-cycle assessment (LCA), sometimes also called life-cycle analysis, is a way to
characterize emissions for products, services, and larger systems, with LCAs
typically quantifying climate impacts from mining materials through manufactur-
ing, use, and disposal or recycling [43]. There are two basic approaches, the first is
called process LCA (and sometimes product LCA), which tracks all energy use,
materials, and emissions from cradle to grave for specific products. The other
common type of LCA is economic input–output life-cycle assessment (abbreviated to
EIO-LCA or IO LCA) which uses whole economy or sectoral input–output analysis
to track emissions based on categorized expenditures. Many LCA climate footprints
also use a hybrid of process LCA and EIO-LCA, since detailed process LCA data

6
https://us.energypolicy.solutions
7
https://www.climateinteractive.org/en-roads/
8
https://newyork.thecityatlas.org/energetic/

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 Solving Climate Change

are often difficult to find for entire product supply chains, and EIO-LCA can be used
to fill in data gaps with reasonable approximations.
For analyses related to emissions reductions, process LCAs are most useful for
quantifying climate impacts related to a specific product, while EIO-LCA and
hybrid LCA approaches are most useful for calculating the climate impacts of larger
systems, including households, communities, companies, governments, and invest-
ment portfolios. LCA can be a powerful tool to help with climate decision-making,
but caution is always needed to ensure that data are complete and comparable. The
most important issues with LCAs are choice of functional unit, choice of system
boundaries, and avoiding time lags in available data.
A typical LCA starts by defining the goal and scope of the analysis (figure 3.7),
including selecting the functional unit that will serve as the basis of comparison. The
functional unit can be a physical product (such as a T-shirt or vehicle), or it could
be a service (such as a kWh of electricity or unit of transportation distance), or the
functional unit can be something much larger and more aggregated (such as the
entire annual climate footprint for a company, or the GHGs connected with every
$1 invested in a company).
System boundary choices matter because one LCA study may choose different
system boundaries than a similar LCA focused on different goals, which can lead to
dramatically different conclusions. For example, an LCA with the goal of reducing
climate pollution related to T-shirt production may use cradle-to-gate systems
boundaries that include all LCA impacts until a T-shirt is sold, and the results

Figure 3.7. Life-cycle assessment scope. Source: Reproduced with permission from http://www.oroeco.org.
Copyright 2015 Ian Monroe.

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 Solving Climate Change

from this analysis may indicate that growing cotton for the T-shirt is the biggest
source of climate pollution, but a more complete cradle-to-grave LCA analysis that
includes climate impacts from the product use and disposal may reveal that the
climate pollution from repeatedly washing and drying the T-shirt are even larger
than GHGs from the shirt’s cotton.
For LCAs related to climate impacts for companies and other complex entities
(governments, communities, households, etc), system boundaries are often described
in terms of Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 GHG emissions. Scope 1 emissions are
defined as direct climate pollution (e.g. burning natural gas in a company’s
factories), while Scope 2 emissions come from direct electricity use (e.g. pollution
linked to every kWh of power used by a company). Scope 3 emissions encompass all
other indirect GHGs linked with operations, including upstream embodied emissions
linked to every aspect of supply chains for products and services (e.g. raw material
extraction, processing, suppliers, and transportation) as well as downstream emis-
sions linked to product use and disposal.
While it has become increasingly common for companies and governments to report
climate emissions based on LCA data, GHG reporting often only includes Scope 1 and
Scope 2 emissions, leaving out Scope 3 GHGs even though these upstream and
downstream emissions are also often significant (figure 3.8). Analysis by Etho Capital
(of which Ian was a co-founder) has shown that Scope 3 emissions represent over 80% of

Figure 3.8. Climate-positive investment guide. Source: Reproduced with permission from http://www.
ethocapital.com. Copyright 2022 Etho Capital.

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 Solving Climate Change

the climate footprint for most companies, and Scope 3 GHGs can be nearly 99% of the
climate footprint for a technology company like Apple, where the vast majority of
emissions are linked to third party suppliers in Asia as well as downstream electricity
consumption when Apple’s products are used. Scope 3 lCA analysis can also help
quantify the climate benefits for companies that produce climate solutions, revealing
which companies are net climate positive when the emissions from producing their
products and services are weighed against their downstream climate benefits.
Another example of how important system boundaries can be comes from the oil
and gas sector. Often analyses of emissions for oil and gas have focused on
combustion emissions of fuel products, with the upstream emissions for explora-
tion/extraction and the midstream emissions from refining being tracked in the
industrial sector, disconnected from final combustion by consumers. When oil and
gas companies report their emissions, they generally only include Scope 1 and Scope
2 emissions, leaving out the Scope 3 emissions connected with burning the fuels they
produce after they’re sold. This choice of boundaries for oil and gas masks
differences in total life-cycle emissions that are big enough to matter [8–10, 44],
undercounting the full climate impacts from fossil fuels and hiding opportunities for
emissions reductions in the oil and gas sector that are only now becoming well
understood [9, 10, 45]. When Scope 3 upstream and downstream impacts are
included (including methane leakage and fuel product combustion), ExxonMobil’s
company-wide climate footprint is over 6 times higher than an LCA that only
include Scope 1–2 climate system boundaries.
Time lags matter because many LCAs require detailed product-specific data and
by the time the data become available, the products on which the analysis were
conducted can be five to ten years old. This isn’t as important for slow moving
industries, but for rapidly changing sectors like computing and electric vehicles,
using old data can result in outdated calculations and conclusions.
For example, figure 2.2, in chapter 2, showed that costs for lithium-ion battery
packs fell about 90% from 2010 to 2020. Those costs include all the energy and
materials costs for making that battery, so if total costs fell 90%, you can bet that
energy and materials use (and associated emissions) also fell substantially (although
probably not by exactly 90%). Process LCAs can be a useful supplement to the other
analytical tools described above, but like all tools, they need to be used with caution
and full awareness of their benefits and limitations.

3.11 Understanding energy systems

For background on energy systems concepts and terminology, there’s nothing better
than IIASA’s Energy Primer [46]. It’s a foundational work that provides true
conceptual understanding, enabling students to dig further. It has three goals:
• To present a systems perspective on energy, emphasizing interconnections
and relationships between different parts of the system,
• To explore the importance of energy service demand and how it affects
energy systems, and
• To present long-run historic context on energy systems and how fast they can
change.

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 Solving Climate Change

The focus on energy service demand (what we call tasks in chapter 2) is critically
important and provides the foundation for analysis of electrification.

3.12 Following good analytical practice

Early in our class we discuss good data analysis practices for student projects,
focusing on avoiding pitfalls in data acquisition and handling, digging into the
numbers, creating consistent comparisons, doing back-of-the-envelope calculations,
building simple models, telling good stories, making clear tables and graphs, and
creating adequate documentation, based on the material in Koomey [47]. We find
that explaining these expectations up front helps students do better projects and
saves time for the instructors. We encapsulate some of those expectations in the
project template posted at http://www.solveclimate.org.

3.13 Chapter conclusions

Most students who take our class have taken previous classes on energy systems, at a
minimum. Familiarity with the sources described in this chapter provides the addi-
tional core knowledge needed to assess the potential for reducing emissions to zero.

It is fashionable today to assume that any figures about the future are better than
none. To produce figures about the unknown, the current method is to make a guess
about something or other—called an ‘assumption’—and to derive an estimate from
it by subtle calculation. The estimate is then presented as the result of scientific
reasoning, something far superior to mere guesswork. This is a pernicious practice
that can only lead to the most colossal planning errors, because it offers a bogus
answer where, in fact, an entrepreneurial judgment is required.
—E F Schumacher

Further reading
CA ARB 2021 California Greenhouse Gas Emissions for 2000 to 2019: Trends of
Emissions and Other Indicators (Sacramento, CA: California Air Resources Board)
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/ghg-inventory-data. An emissions inventory for California,
the US state that has been among the most aggressive at reducing emissions.
EEA 2020 Trends and Drivers of EU Greenhouse Gas Emissions (Luxembourg:
European Environment Agency) https://eea.europa.eu/themes/climate/eu-green-
house-gas-inventory/eu-greenhouse-gas-inventory. A high level source for emis-
sions in Europe, a region that has led on reducing emissions.
Enkvist P-A, Nauclér T and Rosander J 2007 A cost curve for greenhouse gas
reduction McKinsey Quarterly 1 February https://mckinsey.com/business-func-
tions/sustainability/our-insights/a-cost-curve-for-greenhouse-gas-reduction. The
first iteration of the McKinsey cost curve.

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 Solving Climate Change

Enkvist P-A, Dinkel J and Lin C 2010 Impact of the financial crisis on carbon
economics: version 2.1 of the global greenhouse gas abatement cost curve
McKinsey Sustainability Report 1 January https://mckinsey.com/business-func-
tions/sustainability/our-insights/impact-of-the-financial-crisis-on-carbon-eco-
nomics-version-21. The second iteration of the McKinsey cost curve.
Gordon D 2022 No Standard Oil: Managing Abundant Petroleum in a Warming
World (New York: Oxford University Press) https://nostandardoil.com. Life-
cycle emissions for oil and gas are not well understood, but this book
summarizes the current state of knowledge, giving history and context for this
complex area.
Gordon D, Koomey J, Brandt A and Bergerson J 2022 Know Your Oil and Gas:
Generating Climate Intelligence to Cut Petroleum Industry Emissions (Boulder,
CO: Rocky Mountain Institute) https://rmi.org/insight/kyog/. This report
presents the latest research and practice on total life-cycle emissions for oil.
Grübler A N, Nakicenovic S, Pachauri H-H and Smith K R 2015 Energy Primer:
Based on Chapter 1 of the Global Energy Assessment (Laxenburg: International
Institute for Applied Systems Analysis) https://iiasa.ac.at/web/home/research/
Flagship-Projects/Global-Energy-Assessment/Chapter1.en.html. A founda-
tional text on energy systems.
IEA 2020 World Energy Balances: 2020 Edition (Paris: International Energy Agency)
http://wds.iea.org/wds/pdf/WORLDBAL_Documentation.pdf. Energy balances
for every country in the world.
IPCC 2022 Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of
Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) https://ipcc.
ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-3/. This report summarizes
consensus knowledge on climate solutions, but lags recent developments by
several years because of the time needed for the IPCC process.
Koomey J 2017 Turning Numbers into Knowledge: Mastering the Art of Problem
Solving 3rd edn (El Dorado Hills, CA: Analytics). A sourcebook for teaching
good analytical practice.
Krishnan M 2022 The Net-Zero Transition: What It Would Cost, What It Could
Bring (New York: McKinsey Global Institute) https://mckinsey.com/business-
functions/sustainability/our-insights/the-economic-transformation-what-would-
change-in-the-net-zero-transition. This report grew out of the McKinsey cost
curve work from 2007 and 2010.
Lovins A, Bendewald M, Kinsley M, Bony L, Hutchinson H A, Sheikh I and Acher Z
2010 Factor Ten Engineering Design Principles X10–10 (Old Snowmass, CO:
Rocky Mountain Institute) https://rmi.org/our-work/areas-of-innovation/office-
chief-scientist/10xe-factor-ten-engineering/. This report gives guidance on integrated
whole-systems design, which is a discipline that can be taught, but often isn’t.

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 Solving Climate Change

Mulvaney D 2020 Sustainable Energy Transitions: Socio-Ecological Dimensions of

Decarbonization (New York: Palgrave Macmillan) http://dustinmulvaney.com/
set. This exemplary interdisciplinary book discusses technical, social, economic,
and ecological issues related to energy transitions.
Rocky Mountain Institute Factor Ten Engineering http://rmi.org/rmi/10xE. More
guidance on integrated whole-systems design.
US EPA 2021 Inventory of US Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990—2019
(Washington, DC: US Environmental Protection Agency) https://epa.gov/ghge-
missions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-sinks-1990-2019. The offi-
cial emissions inventory for the US.

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[44] Gordon D, Brandt A, Bergeson J and Koomey J 2015 Know Your Oil: Creating a Global Oil-
Climate Index (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) http://goo.
gl/Jly9Op
[45] Brandt A R, Mohammad S M, Englander J G, Koomey J and Gordon D 2018 Climate-wise
choices in a world of oil abundance Environ. Res. Lett. 13 044027
[46] Grübler A, Nakicenovic N, Pachauri S, Rogner H-H and Smith K R 2015 Energy Primer:
Based on Chapter 1 of the Global Energy Assessment (Laxenburg: International Institute for
Applied Systems Analysis) https://iiasa.ac.at/web/home/research/Flagship-Projects/Global-
Energy-Assessment/Chapter1.en.html
[47] Koomey J 2017 Turning Numbers into Knowledge: Mastering the Art of Problem Solving 3rd
edn (El Dorado Hills, CA: Analytics)

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 IOP Publishing

Solving Climate Change

A guide for learners and leaders
Jonathan Koomey and Ian Monroe

Chapter 4
Electrify (almost) everything

We don’t just need to change our fuels; we need to change our machines.
—Saul Griffith

Chapter overview

• Electrifying everything is a cornerstone of achieving zero emissions quickly.

• Local air pollution and waste from combustion will become a thing of the past.
• Over time, emissions from electrified equipment will decline as the electricity
system decarbonizes.
• End-uses that are harder to electrify (such as long-haul aviation and shipping) in
the near term may require the use of fuels derived from electricity (‘electric fuels’)
such as hydrogen and synthetic methane.
• Electrifying everything also means bringing clean electricity to the hundreds of
millions of people in Africa and Asia who do not now have it.

4.1 Introduction
Solving the climate problem ultimately means the end of fossil fuels virtually
everywhere. The easiest and most effective way to accomplish this goal with almost
all energy end-uses is to electrify them at breakneck speed [1–7].
Electrifying everything is a daunting task, but will result in a cleaner, safer, and
more prosperous world than we have now. We need to choose electric technologies
at every opportunity and, in many cases, scrap existing fossil capital early.
Electrical storage technologies have progressed rapidly in the past decade [8] and
advances in computing, electric motors, and power controls have been dramatic.
The world is on the cusp of a rapid shift towards electrification [1].

doi:10.1088/978-0-7503-4032-8ch4 4-1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

 Solving Climate Change

For most heating applications, electrifying means switching to electric heat

pumps, for others (mainly high temperature heat) that means electric resistance or
induction heat. For light vehicles, trucks, small planes, snowmobiles, tractors, small
boats, and landscaping equipment, that means electric motors powered by batteries.
Some end-uses will be harder to electrify until new technologies become available,
such as long-haul aviation and big ships, but for virtually all the rest, there are
electrified options now that offer many advantages:

1. No local pollutant emissions of any kind.

2. Less noise than internal combustion engines.
3. Fewer moving parts and higher reliability.
4. Lower maintenance costs.
5. Lower operating costs.
6. More accurate control of processes.
7. (Increasingly) lower capital costs, especially after scaling up production.
8. Higher efficiency, both at the point of use and for the larger system.
9. Avoided energy use associated with discovering, refining, and transporting
fuels.

We listed avoided pollutant emissions first for a reason. Air pollution is one of the
largest causes of premature deaths globally [9–16]. In fact, outdoor air pollution
alone kills about nine million people every year, more than tobacco, obesity,
alcohol, and diseases such as TB/AIDS/malaria, and indoor air pollution kills
another three million people every single year [17]. Many of these deaths are
avoidable if we electrify everything and switch electricity generation to non-
combustion sources such as renewables and nuclear power. Correctly counting the
benefits of reducing such pollution makes climate action even more cost effective
than just considering the benefits of stabilizing the climate.
The many benefits of electrification are already driving adoption for some important
uses, such as electric vehicles. The International Energy Agency reports that global market
share for battery electric automobiles doubled from 2020 to 2021 to almost 9% of all cars
sold after increasing more than 50% from 2019 to 2020. The electric car market share in
China (the world’s largest automobile market) hit 20% in December 2021 [18].
Even with all the demonstrable benefits of electrifying, it won’t be easy. All
replacement equipment needs to be electric from now on. Displacing existing capital
stocks at the needed speed requires aggressive policies, changes in business models,
and new financing tools.
As Griffith [1, 19] explains, the climate problem in the energy sector, writ large, is
the problem of rapidly displacing fossil fuel use with electrified capital investments.
That means helping consumers and businesses finance those investments and (in
many cases) compensating them for the costs of early retirement (we discuss these
issues in the chapters titled ‘Align incentives’ and ‘Mobilize money’).
They key to enabling electrification is capital stock turnover. The natural retire-
ment rate for capital goods is often characterized by an average lifetime (see
appendix B). When equipment reaches the end of its useful life, there’s an

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opportunity to replace it with electric options, but this opportunity doesn’t come up
very often. Gas furnaces in homes typically last 25 years, gas water heaters 10–12
years, gas cooktops 15–20 years, residential buildings 50 to 100 years, and
commercial buildings and many industrial plants 30 to 50 years (but are often
renovated).
The urgency of the climate problem combined with long lifetimes for capital
equipment imply that we’ll need to encourage many consumers and businesses to
scrap their equipment even earlier than natural replacement cycles would suggest, if
we’re to stabilize the climate near 1.5 °C.

4.2 Creating or adopting a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario

Let’s begin by defining boundaries. Electrifying (almost) everything applies to
almost all current uses of fossil fuels, with the possible exceptions (at least in the
near term) of bulk shipping, long-haul aviation, and petrochemicals. At the end of
this chapter, we describe options for reducing emissions from those activities, but for
the rest, electrification is the best way to reduce emissions from fossil fuels.
Table 4.1 categorizes fossil emissions from various parts of the fuel cycle.
Combustion/use emissions are almost always dominant, but other parts of the life
cycle can contribute significant emissions. As fossil fuel-fired end-uses are electrified,
virtually all emissions identified in table 4.1 will decline, so we treat them as linked.
Fossil methane emissions from coal mines or oil and gas drilling, for example, are
part of ‘fossil emissions’ in our framework.

4.2.1 Creating a base-year emissions inventory

Developing a strategy for electrification starts with an ‘energy balance’ for a base
year, which is available for almost every country from the International Energy
Agency [20]. It is analogous to an emissions inventory, but for energy flows. Just as
for emissions, a Sankey diagram is the key to understanding the full system of energy
production through to energy end-use and services delivered (tasks performed).
Figure 4.1 shows a Sankey diagram for the US in 2021, from Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory (https://flowcharts.llnl.gov). A much more detailed interactive
online version for the US from Saul Griffith’s Otherlab can be accessed at http://
departmentof.energy, and summary Sankey diagrams by sector are contained in
Griffith’s recent book [1].
Another way to show electricity and fuel consumption is with a snapshot of
primary or final energy, as showing in figure 4.2 (taken from Jadun et al [21]).
Almost three quarters of primary energy in buildings in 2015 was supplied by
electricity, about one third in industry, and almost none in transportation.
From energy flows we can calculate fossil emissions. Figure 4.3 shows the same
data as figure 2.4 above but adjusted to 20 year GWPs for methane, nitrous oxides,
and F-gases. Fossil CO2 emissions are by far the biggest category, but fossil methane
and nitrous oxide emissions are big enough to matter. For the US, all categories but
F-gases and non-fossil nitrous oxides show emissions declining to 2020, but for
many countries in the developing world, emissions increased strongly over that

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Table 4.1. Anthropogenic fossil pollution by type and life-cycle stage.

Combustion/
Production Processing Transport use Disposal Petrochemicals

GHGs/warming agents
CO2 X X X X X X
CH4 X X X X X X
N2O X X X X X X
CO X X X X X X
Volatile organic X X X X X X
compounds
Black carbon X X X X X X
Cooling agents
Particulates X X X X X X
NOx X X X X X X
SO2 X X X X X X
Air Pollution
Particulates NOx SO2 XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX
Ozone X X X X X X
Benzene X X X X X X
Trace metals X X X X X X
Volatile organic X X X X X X
compounds
Other hydrocarbons X X X X X X
Water Pollution
Fracking water X
Coal ash X
Crude oil X X X
Trace metals X X X X X X
Land Pollution
Coal ash X
Gasoline leaks X X X
Crude oil X
Trace metals X X X X X X
Other pollution/effects
Noise X X X X X
Thermal X X X X
Explosions X X X X X
X implies it’s an issue for that pollutant and life-cycle stage.

period. In addition, the declines in US emissions are modest compared to what is

required for the world to achieve climate stabilization.
Figure 4.4 shows the same data as for figure 4.3 for 2020 but sliced a bit
differently, showing fossil, non-fossil, and non-fossil land use by gas. In these data,
non-fossil emissions are about 29% of positive emissions (excluding land use CO2)

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Figure 4.1. Sankey diagram for the US energy system in 2021. Quads = quadrillion(1015) Btus of energy.
Source: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Department of Energy.

Figure 4.2. US primary energy use by sector and task in 2015. Quads = quadrillion(1015) Btus of energy.
Source: Jadun et al [21]. National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

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 Solving Climate Change

Figure 4.3. US greenhouse gas emissions in 1990 and 2020 by category (20 year GWPs). Source: US EPA [22].
GWPs from table 7.SM.7 in IPCC [23]. Order of categories is the same as figure 2.4, which are ranked by 2020
emissions using 100 year GWPs.

Figure 4.4. US Fossil and non-fossil greenhouse gas emissions by warming agent for 2020 (20 year GWPs).
Source: US EPA [22]. GWPs from table 7.SM.7 in IPCC [23].

but recent work shows an even larger fraction of total emissions associated with non-
fossil sources [24] integrated over the next few decades.
CO2 emissions are dominated by fossil combustion while methane emissions are
about two thirds non-fossil and one third fossil related. N2O and F-gases are
dominated by non-fossil sources.
Figure 4.5 shows carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion broken
out by sector and fuel. Petroleum for transportation is the largest source of these

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Figure 4.5. US fossil combustion related carbon dioxide emissions by category for 1990 and 2020. Source: US
EPA [22]. GWPs from table 7.SM.7 in IPCC [23]. The GWP for carbon dioxide is the same for all analysis
periods by definition.

emissions, followed by coal combustion in the electric power sector. Coal use for
electricity generation declined by about half from 1990 to 2020 but ticked up again
in 2021 as the economy recovered after the pandemic and fossil gas prices spiked.
Natural gas use for electricity generation grew rapidly to 2020, reflecting the
importance of this resource for displacing coal (other major contributors to reducing
coal use included rapid growth in renewable power generation and declines in total
electricity use).
In the electric power sector, replacing combustion generation with non-combus-
tion zero-emissions generation is one pillar of climate stabilization. For direct fuel
use in industrial, buildings, and transportation, the solution is electrification, with
very few exceptions.
It’s also important to treat fossil methane and nitrous oxide emissions, shown for
1990 and 2020 in figures 4.6 and 4.7, respectively. Methane leakage from fossil fuel
extraction and use is responsible for virtually all fossil methane emissions. Almost all
fossil nitrous oxide emissions come from combustion in a nitrogen–oxygen atmos-
phere, but the total warming effect of these emissions is tiny compared to carbon
dioxide and methane.
Data availability will affect the level of detail possible for your BAU projection.
In most cases, reaching the disaggregation represented in the EPA data for the US
above is difficult, so you’ll need to determine what your data allow.
Information technology and some other industries move so quickly that you may
need to tweak your BAU case to reflect current developments [25]. A salient recent
example is that of cryptocurrency, which has created significant new electricity

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Figure 4.6. US fossil methane emissions by category for 1990 and 2020 (20 year GWPs). Source: US EPA [22].
GWPs from table 7.SM.7 in IPCC [23].

Figure 4.7. US fossil nitrous oxide emissions by category for 1990 and 2020 (20 year GWPs). Source: US EPA
[22]. GWPs from table 7.SM.7 in IPCC [23].

demands in the span of just a few years [26–28]. There is significant debate on the
value of that new technology in particular, but the local effects of new mining
facilities (or even new conventional data centers) can be big enough to matter and
are unlikely to be fully reflected in reference cases generated even a few years ago.

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4.2.2 Projecting base-year emissions to mid-century

Once you’ve found or created a base-year energy balance and emissions inventory,
you’ll need to create a projection of energy use by end-use and task into the future,
assuming current trends in technologies and policies continue. These projections
include current expectations about how growth in service demand (i.e. tasks) will
evolve over time.
Such projections are inherently uncertain, but you will need a baseline against
which to measure progress and assess options. Some common sources of baseline
projections include the International Energy Agency for the world and major
countries and regions [29], British Petroleum for the world and major regions [30],
and the US Energy Information Administration for the US [31]. Many countries,
non-governmental organizations, states, and local utilities create such business-as-
usual cases. You’ll need to find the one best suited to your chosen geography.
As an example, table 4.2 shows selected key indicators of projected US service
demand from the Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook
2022, which is the official business-as-usual projection for the US government. It is
updated annually. Note that cooling and heating degree days reflect a warming
climate, which changes heating and cooling demand.
Figure 4.8 shows an example of a business-as-usual (BAU) projection for natural
use in the US commercial sector from the Energy Information Administration’s
Annual Energy Outlook 2020. This level of detail is the minimum required to do
credible analysis of electrification in the commercial sector. The ‘Other uses’
category is often large enough that more analysis is needed to understand trends
in key end-uses and prospects for electrifying them.

4.3 Analyzing electrification for a climate-positive scenario

The next step is to characterize prospects for electrification, focusing on the largest
and fastest growing fossil fuel end-uses first. For each task we’ll need alternatives to
electrify fuel end-uses and to increase efficiency in electricity end-uses. We’ll also
need to specify how to accelerate stock turnover so that old equipment can be
replaced at a more rapid pace than standard retirement cycles would suggest.
The climate-positive scenario uses the same drivers by task used in the business-
as-usual case but sometimes policies and technologies affect them. An example
would be projections of vehicle miles traveled (VMT), which generally assume that
the structure of settlements will continue unchanged. We can change our settlement
patterns and use technology (such as telecommuting) to reduce VMT, so each key
driver should be assessed for ways to modify it in the future. We don’t need to
assume that the future needs to be the past writ large.

4.3.1 Understanding key technologies

As always, we begin with tasks. The three critical tasks for electrification, cutting
across sectors and activities, are delivering heat, moving people and goods, and

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Table 4.2. Selected indicators/drivers of projected US service demand, AEO 2022.

Units 2021 2030 2040 2050

Residential
Cooling degree days CDD (base 65F) 1480 1639 1767 1898
Heating degree days HDD (base 65F) 4072 3920 3757 3594
Average house area Square feet 1795 1846 1901 1953
Mobile homes Millions 7 7 7 6
Multifamily homes Millions 32 35 37 39
Single-family homes Millions 86 94 101 108
Total homes Millions 125 135 144 153
Commercial
Cooling degree days CDD (base 65F) 1480 1639 1767 1898
Heating degree days HDD (base 65F) 4072 3920 3757 3594
Total floorspace, new addition B square feet 2 2 2 3
Total floorspace, surviving B square feet 92 102 113 125
Total floorspace B square feet 94 104 116 127
Industrial
Combined heat and power capacity GW 29 31 33 36
Combined heat and power generation TWh/year 154 168 180 197
Value added, agriculture mining and construction B2012$/year 2683 2844 3128 3498
Value added, manufacturing B2012$/year 6592 7548 8608 9937
Value added, total B2012$/year 9275 10,392 11736 13435
Aircraft
Seat-miles demanded, narrow body aircraft B miles 662 1050 1349 1712
Seat-miles demanded, regional jets B miles 95 118 127 140
Seat-miles demanded, wide body aircraft B miles 128 328 402 492
Seat-miles demanded, total B miles 885 1497 1878 2344
Travel demand, revenue passenger miles, domestic B miles 536 864 1072 1321
Travel demand, revenue passenger miles, B miles 94 434 557 707
international
Travel demand, revenue passenger miles, total B miles 630 1299 1629 2028
Travel demand, revenue-ton miles, freight B miles 47 60 75 93

Source: US DOE [31].

real-time controls (with associated data collection). The most important advantage of
electricity is that it has high ‘exergy’ (the ability to do work), as described in [33, 34].

4.3.1.1 Heat
The three most important means to deliver heat using electricity are heat pumps
(such as an air conditioner running in reverse), electric resistance (such as your
toaster oven), and induction (which heats a pan directly by inducing currents in
ferrous metal). Each of these is applicable in different situations, but the most widely
used technology will be heat pumps, because they excel at moving heat across
relatively low temperature gradients. Most heat needed in modern societies is low

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Figure 4.8. Projected US natural gas consumption, current trends continued. Source: US DOE [32]. PJ = 1015
joules of final energy.

temperature heat (think heating and cooling of buildings and water heating).
Sensible application of building shell design, Passive House, and other low-energy
design principles can make application of heat pumps even easier [35].
Heat pumps are getting better at delivering medium temperature heat. There are
even heat pumps that use carbon dioxide as the refrigerant and can reach higher
temperatures than typical heat pumps, while avoiding the high warming impacts of
fluorine-based refrigerants.
Electric resistance and induction heating will also have uses, particularly when
very high temperatures are needed [36]. Efforts to improve the efficiency of heat
delivery and storage become increasingly important when electrifying, particularly
for high temperature heat [8].

4.3.1.2 Mobility
Electric motors are a key enabling technology for electrification. They have higher
power density, greater torque, instant response, no direct emissions, and no idling
losses compared to combustion engines. They are also available in a range of sizes,
from nanometer scale [37] to giant motors with output measured in tens of
megawatts1. Combined with energy storage (usually batteries) electric mobility is
cheaper, cleaner, and more performant than the internal combustion engines it
replaces.

4.3.1.3 Real-time controls and data collection

Another benefit of electrified heat and mobility is the ease of integrating those
technologies with precise electronic controls and sophisticated data collection. We’ll

1
https://www.gepowerconversion.com/news/ge-successfully-completed-no-load-testing-one-worlds-largest-80-
megawatt-induction

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talk more about these benefits in chapter 7, but for now suffice it to say that
electrified end-uses are far easier to control in a precise way, which creates new
possibilities for operating and optimizing power systems.

4.3.2 Understanding key policies

We list selected policies and other institutional actions needed to accelerate
electrification in the checklists of action items below at http://www.solveclimate.
org. Anything that accelerates adoption of electric technologies and accelerates
retirement of existing fossil capital is fair game, including banning sales of
combustion equipment by some date, banning expansion of the fossil gas grid,
removing subsidies for combustion equipment, giving rebates for electrification, and
setting purchase requirements for large institutions to only buy electrified
equipment.
They key is that the system is now rigged to favor fossil fuels, and we need to
unrig it and then push as hard as we can to get electrified equipment installed. Every
single rule and regulation needs to be evaluated with a view towards speeding up
electrification [1].

4.4 Data sources

The easiest way to create a climate-positive scenario is to find a pre-existing study
with summary results that you can apply to your project. Fortunately, many such
studies have been conducted around the world in recent years. The Deep
Decarbonization Project created decarbonization analyses of exemplary technical
specificity, including extensive electrification for more than a dozen major countries,
including the US, China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil2. Those analyses also include
business-as-usual scenarios that you can use, but these only cover the energy sector.
The International Energy Agency recently conducted a state-of-the-art study of
how the world’s energy sector could achieve net zero emissions by 2050 [38] that also
included extensive electrification. As with all such studies, there are limitations, but
it’s a well-constructed authoritative study that uses the working towards a goal
framing and gives significant detail.
Another important source for the US is the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory’s Electrification Futures Study3. That group has completed six reports
to date, covering demand-side and supply-side technology data as well as power
system design and operations.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is one of the world’s leading
centers for the study of energy and the environment, recently studied electrification
for overall electrification strategies [39], long-haul trucking [40–42], US industrial
boilers [43], and China’s building sector [44].
Other research groups have studied electrification for medium and heavy duty
shipping [45], electrification of European heat [46, 47], industrial heat [36], electricity

2
https://ddpinitiative.org
3
https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/electrification-futures.html

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based plastics [48], energy-intensive industries [49, 50], and industrial policy to
achieve net zero emissions in the industrial sector [51].
The recently completed IPCC Working Group III report on climate mitigation
[52] is another terrific source, but it will take some digging to find what you need. It
is thousands of pages long but the full report is a gold mine of references on different
aspects of decarbonization, including electrification of buildings, industry, and
transportation.
If you can’t find an already-completed study that applies to your country, state, or
company, you’ll need to create one yourself. Once energy uses are associated with
tasks, you’ll need to find ‘technology data’ describing the technologies embedded in
each system [21]. Such data characterize things like efficiency, operating hours per
year, equipment lifetime, and equipment size/capacity/service delivered.
Efficiency of energy-using devices is measured using test procedures. For most
equipment in buildings and industry in the US, those test procedures are defined by
the National Institutes of Standards and Technology4 in consultation with other
federal agencies. For light vehicles, those procedures are defined by the US
Department of Energy and the US Environmental Protection Agency5. Test
procedures describe the operating conditions under which equipment will be
measured and they are essential for ensuring that tests are conducted in a consistent
way.
Efficiency changes over time, even in the BAU case, and those changes need to be
explicitly characterized, for both the BAU case and the case where everything is
electrified. Efficiency over time can be driven by changes in fuel prices, efficiency
standards, labeling, and incentive programs.
Operating hours are usually calculated using consumer surveys or direct measure-
ments. Operating hours matter most for products such as lighting, where user
behavior has a huge influence on energy use. For appliances such as refrigerators,
which aren’t much affected by user behavior, these aren’t typically estimated at the
device level (although operating hours for individual components inside these
devices are sometimes collected). For some information technology equipment,
such as game consoles, manufacturers can collect usage data over the network for
virtually all existing devices.
Equipment lifetimes are important for understanding stock turnover. The average
lifetime embodies a distribution of equipment lifetimes. Some appliances retire early,
because of renovations or fires, while others last much longer than the average.
When the average lifetime is combined with what’s called a ‘retirement function’ it’s
possible to estimate how much of the stock existing in some base year will still exist
in some future year assuming ‘natural’ retirements (see appendix B for a specific
example of a retirement function and how to use it).
Equipment size, capacity, and service delivered are all measures related to the
task being performed. For heating and cooling equipment, capacity is measured

4
https://www.nist.gov
5
https://fueleconomy.gov/feg/how_tested.shtml

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based on how much heat or cool air a device can produce per hour. Freezer volume,
refrigerator through-the-door icemakers, and lighting quality are other examples.
Technology data are often available for energy used in buildings and related
equipment, but a handful of experts around the world also study industrial
equipment and processes. Once you identify these experts, case studies for industries
and technologies can help in your assessment of electrification and emissions
reduction options more generally. Tracking down the authors of recent studies,
such as Zuberi et al [43] and Silvia et al [53] often leads to other related work.
One of the most important sources of technology data for appliances and
equipment in the US is the Department of Energy’s page summarizing the state
of standards for dozens of different devices6. Implementing a standard in the US
follows a set process that involves creating what’s called a ‘technical support
document’ or TSD, which contains exhaustive analysis on the technology and
economics of improving efficiency in the device under study (after consultation with
industry and other stakeholders). TSDs can be a technology data gold mine. To
locate TSDs on the DOE’s site, click on the product of interest then click on the link
for ‘Ongoing Rulemaking for Standards’.
Another source of such data is ENERGY STAR, a set of voluntary labeling programs
run jointly by the US Environmental Protection Agency and the US Department of
Energy7. These programs, which are designed based on extensive technical and
economic analysis as well as industry consultations, typically apply the ENERGY STAR
label to products that are in the top quartile of efficiency for a given product. The
data and reports created by ENERGY STAR give a clear picture of what’s happening to
the most efficient products on the market.
Because the market for many products is global, the TSDs and data from ENERGY
STAR can often be useful outside the US. Product regulators in many countries collect
technology data applicable to those countries for designing efficiency standards and
labels.
Looking afresh at industrial processes can yield innovations that substantially
reduce or eliminate emissions while improving service and reducing costs [54]. For
example, process CO2 emissions for steel can be eliminated by using renewables to
create hydrogen that is used to directly reduce iron ore, skipping the process that
normally uses carbon and emits carbon dioxide [55, 56]. Another new process was
created by Apple and Alcoa to eliminate process emissions for aluminum, which
they expect ultimately to be cheaper than current processes [57]. Industries using
high emissions processes can almost always redesign them if given the right
incentives.

4.5 Assessing increases in electricity demand

Switching natural gas-fired energy uses to electricity will reduce natural gas
consumption and increase electricity consumption. One purpose of an end-use level

6
https://www.energy.gov/eere/buildings/standards-and-test-procedures
7
http://www.energystar.gov

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analysis of electrification is to get an accurate picture of just how much electricity

demand will go up, so we can plan to meet that demand.
In his book Electrify, Saul Griffith [1] estimates the US will consume three to four
times as much electricity as it now does if we electrify everything, and that means
building a lot more generating capacity. It also means changing the way we design,
expand, and operate the utility system, which we explore more in chapter 5. Each
country, state, or region varies in its resource endowments and energy demand,
which is why detailed analysis is needed to fully understand what steps are needed.
Both energy and capacity requirements need to be assessed for each end-use.
There’s recent work on energy and demand requirements for long-haul trucking
electrification [40], among other end-uses. There’s also work on increased electricity
demand for electrifying basic materials industries in Europe [58].
Because of the local and system efficiency benefits from electrification, total
primary energy use can be about half of current levels while delivering three times
the electricity and the same energy services (accomplishing the same tasks as we
would have otherwise). We can save about a quarter of current US primary energy
consumption by switching generation to non-combustion sources such as solar,
wind, hydro, and nuclear power. Electrifying transportation will save another 15%
of primary energy, and eliminating the extraction, processing, and transportation of
fossil fuels saves another 11% [1].

4.6 What activities can’t be easily electrified now?

The toughest activities to electrify, such as long-haul aircraft and large ships, will
require new technology and innovative thinking [54, 59, 60]. One possibility being
researched is biofuels, another is what you could call an electrical fuel, hydrogen
derived from non-combustion electricity generation, and still another is ammonia.
Even more exotic is the idea of ‘synthetic methane’, derived from carbon
extracted from the atmosphere combined with hydrogen. In principle, such synthetic
methane could allow for the creation of net zero methane, as long as the carbon
really is extracted from the atmosphere. It wouldn’t avoid other problems of such a
fuel, like methane leakage and other pollutant emissions from combustion.
All such fuels are problematic because of the large losses involved in creating
them. It is likely that only hydrogen will be a significant contributor to a fully
electrified system, to be used in creation of plastics, steel, fertilizer, and other
industrial processes. It can also store energy for the electric grid and may
(eventually) power ships and planes in a liquified state, although we’ll need to track
hydrogen emissions, because they have a warming impact more than ten times
greater than carbon dioxide per unit mass, according to the latest analysis [61–63] .
Global shipping is an interesting case, because roughly 40% of that shipping by
weight is fossil fuels [64], so in a zero-emissions world, all that shipping goes away.
This example shows why thinking about the whole system is critical for under-
standing options for electrifying and reducing emissions.
There’s also the petrochemical industry. Because fossil fuels emit greenhouse
gases throughout the supply chain, even fossil fuels used to create plastics, pesticides,

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 Solving Climate Change

herbicides, and other materials have a climate impact, even if those products don’t
create greenhouse gases when used or reach end-of-life (and even that last
assumption isn’t always true, because sometimes plastics are burned). That means
that our high-end goal of ‘ending fossil fuels’ really does mean ending fossil fuels in
all their applications.
The first step, of course, is to track sources of plastics by task, just as for other
sources of pollution [65–68], and to project uses for plastic into the future to assess
business-as-usual service demands [69]. We’ll ultimately need to create chemical
feedstocks from biological sources or directly from electrolyzed hydrogen and
recaptured carbon dioxide [48, 70], but that transition will take years. In the
meantime, the mantra of ‘reduce, re-use, recycle’ (plus shifting to more sustainable
materials) must be our first steps toward a more sustainable path for petrochemicals.

4.7 A different type of electrification

The word ‘electrification’, as we discuss it above, means fully electrifying an existing
energy system. It is also used to describe the process of bringing electricity to those
who don’t yet have easy or inexpensive access, and this effort must proceed in
parallel with electrifying existing energy systems. There is a great deal of historical
experience with rural electrification around the world [71–75], but this process hasn’t
proceeded nearly quickly enough for the 800 million people still without access to
electricity8.
The IPCC [52: Technical Summary] indicates with ‘high confidence’ that
‘providing access to modern energy services universally would increase global
GHG emissions by a few percent at most’. It’s a huge societal benefit for modest
cost, and it’s the right thing to do.
The most important lesson from our discussion of electrifying existing energy
systems is that building fossil infrastructure at this late date is a colossal error. Bringing
energy access those without it means bringing zero-emissions electricity to them, in
sufficient amounts at reasonable cost. There is no case for building additional natural
gas or oil pipelines to address energy access issues, and in fact such infrastructure is
counterproductive. The long lifetime of pipelines will make them stranded assets in
short order [76], and no one should fall for fossil fuel companies disingenuous use of
‘energy access’ as an excuse to build more fossil infrastructure.
For many end-uses, such as fuel-based lighting, electrification using distributed
solar photovoltaics, batteries, and LED lamps brings huge and immediate health,
safety, and economic benefits at low cost [77, 78]. The one short-term exception to
this rule may be the use of Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) for cooking in some rural
areas of Africa and Asia.
Indoor air pollution from cooking with traditional fuels takes a horrific toll on the
health of people in these regions, and LPG cooking is a fast way to eliminate traditional
fuels in cooking [79]. It also doesn’t require pipeline capacity, since it is delivered in

8
https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access, calculated using World Bank data: http://data.worldbank.org/data-
catalog/world-development-indicators

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 Solving Climate Change

trucks that are used to refill canisters, so the amount of likely stranded assets would be
low (repurposing a supply chain is a lot easier than repurposing a pipeline).
If this idea is implemented, it needs to be clearly understood that the use of LPG
will be temporary until electricity arrives in sufficient amount and quality to allow
for electric cooking. Electric induction hobs are also relatively cheap nowadays, so
the advent of electricity will likely displace traditional fuels for cooking more quickly
than many now think.
Promoting rural electrification is a complicated policy problem, but it has been
extensively studied in the modern context [80–82]. Because distributed renewables
have become so much cheaper in recent years, and because technology for smaller-
scale grids (micro-grids, mini-grids) has developed quickly, the options for bringing
electricity to every person on Earth have never been more attractive (the same
statement applies to clean water). As with many such issues, understanding local
context and mobilizing private capital are key to success.

4.8 Chapter conclusions

A cornerstone of reaching zero emissions in the energy sector is to electrify almost
everything. We need to accelerate turnover of capital stock, and every time we
replace equipment from now on, we need to make it electric. Over time, emissions
from electrified equipment will decline as the electricity sector decarbonizes, costs for
electrifying will decline as we scale up production of electric equipment, and the
wasteful thermal losses associated with combustion will become a thing of the past.
We also need to bring clean electricity (and clean water, for that matter) to every
human on the planet. Electrification will result in a better world for all who live in it,
and it is long past time to make it a priority.

Further reading
Griffith S 2021 Electrify: An Optimist’s Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). This book describes the case for electrification and
gives high level insight into shifting our economy from spending on fuels to more
spending on zero-emissions capital. This site, created by Saul Griffith and his
colleagues, gives practical advice for homeowners wanting to electrify:
https://www.rewiringamerica.org.
IEA 2020 World Energy Balances: 2020 Edition (Paris: International Energy
Agency) http://wds.iea.org/wds/pdf/WORLDBAL_Documentation.pdf. The
definitive source on energy balances by country.
Jacobson M Z 2020 100% Clean, Renewable Energy and Storage for Everything
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) https://www.cambridge.org/highere-
ducation/books/100-clean-renewable-energy-andstorage-for-everything/
26E962411A4A4E1402479C5AEE680B08#overview. A summary of
Jacobson’s work on 100% renewable energy systems, in which electrification
plays a critical role, updated from his earlier work.

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Jadun P, McMillan C, Steinberg D, Muratori M, Vimmerstedt L and Mai T 2017

Electrification Futures Study: End-Use Technology Cost and Performance
Projections through 2050 (Golden, CO: National Renewable Energy
Laboratory) NREL/TP-6A20-70485 https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/electrifica-
tion-futures.html. This report is an authoritative source of technology data on
end-use technologies for the US.
Lovins A B 2021 Decarbonizing our toughest sectors—profitably MIT Sloan
Manag. Rev Fall, 4 August https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/decarbonizing-
our-toughest-sectors-profitably/. Lovins has been ahead of the curve on ‘hard to
decarbonize’ sectors for years, and this article describes his latest work for a
business audience.
Lovins A B 2021 Profitably Decarbonizing Heavy Transport and Industrial Heat:
Transforming These ‘Harder-to-Abate’ Sectors Is Not Uniquely Hard and Can Be
Lucrative (Old Snowmass, CO: Rocky Mountain Institute) July https://www.
rmi.org/profitable-decarb/. This report gives more technical detail on decarbon-
izing heavy transport and industrial heat.
Mai T, Jadun P, Logan J, McMillan C, Muratori M, Steinberg D, Vimmerstedt L,
Jones R, Haley B and Nelson B 2018 Electrification Futures Study: Scenarios of
Electric Technology Adoption and Power Consumption for the United States
(Golden, CO: National Renewable Energy Laboratory) NREL/TP-6A20-71500
https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/electrification-futures.html. This study explores
electrification scenarios in great detail.
Project Drawdown (https://www.drawdown.org/solutions) gives significant detail on
fossil and emissions reduction options, focusing on end-use efficiency and
renewable electricity generation.

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 IOP Publishing

Solving Climate Change

A guide for learners and leaders
Jonathan Koomey and Ian Monroe

Chapter 5
Decarbonize electricity

Ever-cheaper renewable energy technologies give electricity the edge in the race
to zero.
—International Energy Agency, Net Zero by 2050, May 2021

Chapter overview

• Decarbonizing the electricity system reduces emissions from electrified end-uses over
time.
• We’ll need to increase total electricity generation several-fold if we are to electrify
everything, and the whole system needs to be nearly zero emissions.
• Most current scenarios show that east-cost power systems will incorporate 80%
or more variable renewable generation.
• We can create high-renewables systems now using existing gas generation as an
emergency backup, but we’ll need to change how those generators are paid to
minimize their emissions and only allow them to operate during emergencies.
• The reliability of a power system is a characteristic of the whole system and is not
just dependent on the details of individual generators.
• Power markets and operational heuristics will need to change to accommodate
the shift to variable renewables. These changes also increase the flexibility of the
power system and will make integration of all new resources easier over time,
while preserving reliability.

5.1 Introduction
Researchers have known for a long time that the potential for cheaply and rapidly
reducing emissions in the electricity sector has been greater than for other sectors. In

doi:10.1088/978-0-7503-4032-8ch5 5-1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

 Solving Climate Change

the past decade or so, researchers combined that knowledge with the realization that
electrifying currently non-electric end-uses can result in rapid efficiency improve-
ments and emissions reductions for those otherwise hard-to-abate sectors.
Electrifying all energy end-uses will require significantly more electricity gener-
ation than currently installed, by some estimates three to four times more [1, 2]. That
means building new zero-emissions generation well beyond replacing current power
plants while minimizing costs and ensuring system reliability. It also means changing
the design and operation of the power system (and associated institutions) to make
integrating lots of variable renewable generation easier and cheaper than it has been
in the past.

5.2 Bringing the future into focus

Designing a future power system is complicated. The key uncertainty for the next
couple of decades is how a zero-emissions system dominated by variable renewables
can meet system demands under extreme conditions.
Fortunately, we don’t need to have it all figured out now. The simplest way to
make a high-variable-renewables system work is to keep a lot of existing fossil gas
capacity around [3], maintain it well, and design incentive structures to that it
only runs in emergencies. You could call it a ‘strategic reserve’ of gas capacity
that is available to meet big swings in demand when solar and wind are less
available.
As we develop more zero-emission ways to balance the utility system in
extreme situations, the strategic reserve can be phased out, but in the interim,
it’s a simple and proven way to have a 95+% renewables system that would
respond well to periodic lulls in wind, for example. As long as the gas plants only
run a few percent of the year on average, the battle for zero-emissions electricity is
essentially won.
A key finding from Williams et al for the US (and corroborated by Victoria et al [4]
for Europe) is that although ‘carbon neutral pathways diverge in energy strategy,
resource use, and cost primarily after 2035’, a key set of actions are common across all
pathways over the next decade:
• Rapid construction (>500 GW by 2030) of new wind and solar generation
capacity.
• Phase out of coal generation by 2030.
• Maintaining current nuclear and fossil gas generation capacity.
• Electrification of light vehicles (>50% market share for electric vehicles by
2030).
• Electrification of residential heating (>50% market share for heat pumps by
2030).

The study concludes with an acknowledgment of the deep uncertainty about

future energy systems combined with the necessary first steps toward rapid emissions
reductions:

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…taking decisive near‐term action in the areas that are well understood,
combined with laying the necessary groundwork in the areas of uncertainty,
puts the United States on a carbon‐neutral pathway right away while allowing
the most difficult decisions and tradeoffs to be made with better information in
the future.

Knowing that a low-emissions future will involve high penetration of variable

renewable generation brings the future into focus [5]. The things that will enable
more variable renewables to operate successfully on the grid will create new
possibilities for whatever new sources of generation emerge in coming decades.
A high-renewables grid will likely rely on some or all of the following resources [6]:
• ‘Clean firm’ generation sources, such as nuclear power, fossil gas or biomass
with carbon capture and storage (CCS), hydropower, and geothermal [7, 8].
• Diversity of renewable generation sources.
• ‘Overbuilding’1 of renewable capacity to increase flexibility, reduce risk, and
ensure adequate supplies during seasonal periods of low generation.
• More transmission capacity to allow broader geographic aggregation of
variable renewables.
• Battery storage for individual buildings and at utility scale [9].
• Long-term electricity storage other than batteries, such as pumped hydro [10].
• Seasonal, weekly, and daily thermal storage for buildings and industry.
• Flexible/interruptible industrial loads.
• Creation of electrical fuels for energy storage, such as electrolysis of hydrogen
or creation of synthetic methane.
• Better load and supply forecasting.
• Real-time prices for large numbers of customers.
• Load aggregation and better price responsiveness of demand [11].

All these improvements will make it easier to operate and optimize a high-
renewables electricity grid, regardless of the mix of resources that end up supplying
power.
There will also be changes in more conventional technologies and practices so
that they will integrate better into a high-renewables grid. One example is changing
the design and operation of power markets [12, 13]. The economics of electricity
systems has for many decades been strongly influenced by the short run operating
costs (marginal costs) of fossil fuel generators [14]. Rate design and utility business
models have been structured around the idea of marginal costs being one of the
primary drivers of utility system dispatch and investments.

1
By overbuilding we mean building far more renewables capacity then a strict least-cost rule would indicate in
order to gain diversity benefits of spreading renewables out geographically and by resource type. This
technique has become commonplace in analyses over the past decade or so, and renewables are now cheap
enough that even if some of their generation is ‘spilled’ (i.e. not used) the economics of those investments are
still acceptable, and worth it to gain those diversity benefits.

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The shift to a system dominated by capital investment means that market designs
for the electricity system need to evolve [6, 12, 13, 15–28]. The end state of having a
large proportion of electricity generation being low or nearly zero marginal costs
with significant storage in the system [9, 10] will force system operators to develop
alternative heuristics, improved contracts, and new market structures for dispatch-
ing power plants, paying for the construction of new plants, and determining how
demand-size aggregators and storage resources will participate in these markets.
This will also mean developing new analytical methods for assessing the value
of different operating rules and power system investments, not just assessing costs
[29–31].
Another important aspect of shifting to non-combustion generation is that the
primary energy associated with combustion losses simply disappears. As Griffith [32]
points out, we don’t need to replace primary energy that was simply thrown away all
along. For fossil power plants, that’s half to two-thirds of the fuel input that heats
the surroundings without performing useful work.

5.3 What about system reliability?

A key concern about power systems is maintaining reliability. Outages are
expensive for customers, for the utility, and for society [33–37]2. Fortunately,
the innovations described above, properly implemented, can lead to higher-
reliability power systems.
Reliability can only be assessed by examining the grid as a whole system, not just
focusing on the characteristics of individual power plants. That is why the common
attention paid to ‘baseload’ resources is misguided (and is an artifact of the way
power systems used to operate). In fact, high-capacity-factor generation sources can
affect system reliability negatively in poorly designed systems, and their large size
creates other challenges for operating the system reliably [12, 28].

5.4 What about 100% renewables?

The question of whether a grid comprised 100% of renewable power is feasible or
economic has preoccupied many in recent years [5, 38–48, 51]. This acrimonious
debate has had the beneficial effect of pushing the discussion to better reflect recent
technological developments in a more accurate way. Renewables have come a long
way in the past decade.
Worrying too much about this question is a distraction, however. Getting to 80%
renewables is pretty clearly feasible almost everywhere [5, 47, 48], and we don’t have
to decide about the last 20% for years. We should unquestionably research, develop,
and deploy many options for integrating high-renewables generation fractions, but
we won’t know exactly how the system will evolve for years, and that’s fine.

2
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Interruption Cost Estimate calculator summarizes these data in
a convenient way: https://icecalculator.com/home.

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5.5 Creating or adopting a business-as-usual scenario

Just as for electrification, the first step is to understand base year emissions.
Figure 5.1 shows carbon dioxide emissions for the US power sector in 1990 and
2020, revealing dramatic changes over this period. Power-sector coal emissions fall
by about half while natural gas generation emissions go up by almost a factor of
four.
Natural gas power plants displaced coal plants over this period, but declining
electricity demand and rapid growth in renewable electricity generation (wind and
solar in particular) also had measurable effects.
The rate of decline in coal generation is about 1.7% per year expressed as a
percentage of 1990 emissions, but much of that decline occurred in the past decade.
From 2010 to 2020, US coal generation declined almost 6% per year as a percentage
of 2010 generation. In the UK, from 2012 to 2020, coal generation declined 12% per
year as a percentage of 2012 generation (which was the UK peak)3. Eliminating 2020
coal generation by 2030 (as climate stabilization requires) means declines of 10% per
year expressed as a percentage of 2020 emissions.
For every emissions segment we need a baseline projection that reflects current
trends or business-as-usual (BAU). For most countries, states, or utility systems, the
local authorities have already created such a scenario, but it may not have as much
detail as needed for your purposes. Just as for energy systems and emissions
inventories more generally, we want electricity use (and fuel use to be electrified)

Figure 5.1. Power-sector fossil combustion carbon dioxide emissions by fuel for 1990 and 2020. Source: US
EPA [49]. GWPs from table 7.SM.7 in IPCC [50]. The GWP for carbon dioxide is the same for all analysis
periods by definition.

3
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/solid-fuels-and-derived-gases-chapter-2-digest-of-united-kingdom-
energy-statistics-dukes

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 Solving Climate Change

to be mapped to human activities (tasks) and then projected to 2040 for each task,
based on expectations for changes in service demand. This yields a projection of
future demand and electricity generation if current trends continue (see chapter 4).
The fuel and generation mix for the BAU case allows us to calculate baseline
emissions for the electricity sector. Even the BAU case electricity generation will be
getting cleaner, because of the rapid drops in the costs of renewable generation
technologies in recent years (even subsidized fossil fuels can’t compete against solar
and wind at current prices in many cases). In the intervention case, case electricity
generation will get cleaner even more quickly.

5.6 Creating the climate-positive scenario

The climate-positive scenario from chapter 4 supplies future electricity demand with
nearly complete electrification by 2040. The projected future demand tells us how
much zero-emissions electricity generation we’ll need to build to meet the demand,
which helps us design the electrification scenario on the supply side.

5.6.1 Understanding key technologies

The key technologies for zero-emissions generation all involve non-combustion
technologies such as solar, wind, nuclear, and geothermal, combined with rapid
improvements in the efficiency of electrified end-uses. While these technologies
involve some emissions to build them and (sometimes) minor emissions to operate
them, they all have nearly zero emissions in operation. Key technologies involve
energy storage in many forms, load aggregation, price responsive demand, more
transmission, better forecasting, and creation of electrical fuels for storage and
manufacturing (in particular hydrogen).

5.6.2 Understanding key policies

As with electrification, we list key policies in the Checklists of Action Items at
http://www.solveclimate.org. The name of the game is rapid displacement of fossil
fuel generation—we need to do everything we can to speed up this process. These
policies include rapid retirement schedules for fossil plants, carbon pricing,
emissions targets, non-fossil generation targets market design, and streamlining
of regulatory approvals for power plants and transmission projects.

5.7 Data sources

As with all work of this type, researchers need to ensure that the data sources they
use are suitable and representative for their chosen geography. The data sources
below are widely cited and used but will almost always need to be checked and
tweaked to suit your needs.
The most important data sources on power systems tend to be local. Because of
the long-lived nature of their capital assets and because they are often regulated,
utilities usually collect data for resource planning and publish it in reports that are
publicly available. Their regulators often require certain data to be made public

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 Solving Climate Change

because utility resource plans affect electricity prices. Look for the utility’s business-
as-usual projection as a starting point.
More forward-looking utilities create alternative scenarios that reduce emissions,
although these are usually not as aggressive as climate stabilization requires. That
means you’ll need to alter assumptions in those scenarios and estimate potential
emissions reductions from more aggressive action.
US utilities are regulated at the state level, so look to the state’s public utility
commission or public service commission for data. The US Energy Information
Administration4 also compiles data at the utility, state, and national levels. Other
countries regulate utilities at either the state or national levels so you’ll need to find
available data sources that suit your chosen geography.
The International Energy Agency5 compiles electricity consumption and produc-
tion numbers for most countries around the world. Unfortunately, much of these
data are behind a paywall (at least for now).
EMBER6 is a terrific source for power system data in many countries in the
world. They compile and combine EIA, IEA, and local data to generate historical
data on power generation and emissions and make those data freely available.
The Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project7 has created climate stabilization
pathways for many countries around the world, and their modeling of the electricity
sector is generally detailed and well documented. Their work can inform both BAU
and climate stabilization scenario design.
The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has worked for many
years on electrification futures, with focus on both the supply and demand sides8.
The work is a treasure trove for researchers creating scenarios for a zero-emissions
power grid.
Another important data source from NREL is their life-cycle assessment (LCA)
harmonization project for electricity generation technologies9. The indirect emis-
sions for these technologies vary a great deal and can be big enough to matter, and
harmonized LCA results can be important when creating total emissions estimates
for electricity generation.
The state-by-state US scenario outputs from Christopher Clack at Vibrant Clean
Energy10 are another great data source, exploring different clean energy and clean
electricity scenarios to 2050.
Professor Mark Z Jacobson at Stanford has created detailed 100% renewable
electricity plans for US states11 and 145 countries around the world12.

4
http://www.eia.gov
5
http://www.iea.org
6
https://ember-climate.org/data/
7
https://ddpinitiative.org
8
https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/electrification-futures.html
9
https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/life-cycle-assessment.html
10
https://zero2050usa.com
11
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/WWS-USA.html
12
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/WWS-145-Countries.html

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5.8 Chapter conclusions

Decarbonizing electricity requires massive investments in non-combustion gener-
ation technology. Total generation must increase several-fold if we’re to electrify
everything. To make the decarbonized power system a reality, we’ll need to modify
how we build and operate the utility system, enhancing flexibility, encouraging
demand response, overbuilding renewables, creating more transmission, doing better
forecasting, increasing diversity of renewable generation, installing storage of
different durations, and building dispatchable zero-emissions generation when we
can.

Further reading
Blair N, Augustine C, Cole W, Denholm P, Frazier W, Geocaris M, Jorgenson J,
McCabe K, Podkaminer K, Prasanna A and Sigrin B 2022 Storage Futures
Study: Key Learnings for the Coming Decades (Golden, CO: National
Renewable Energy Laboratory) NREL/TP-7A40-81779, April https://www.
nrel.gov/analysis/storage-futures.html. Energy storage is a critical enabling
technology for the energy transition. This comprehensive study reviews key
insights on this technology.
Denholm P, Brown P, Cole W, Brown M, Jadun P, Ho J, Mayernik J, McMillan C
and Sreenath R 2022 Examining Supply-Side Options to Achieve 100% Clean
Electricity by 2035 (Golden, CO: National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
NREL/TP-6A40–81644 https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy22osti/81644.pdf. This
report describes the latest scenarios from NREL, including an electrification
scenario on the demand side combined with rapid changes in the electricity
generation system.
Faruqui A 2020 The coming transformation of the electricity sector: a conversation
with Amory Lovins Electr. J. 33 106827 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
tej.2020.106827. Lovins gives a high-level view of upcoming developments in
the electricity sector.
IPCC 2022 Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of
Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change. Section 6.2.2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press) https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-3/.
The IPCC process is often slow, but this IPCC report is a treasure trove, giving
summary findings and references on building zero-emissions power systems.
Jacobson M Z, von Krauland A-K, Coughlin S J, Palmer F C and Smith M M 2022
Zero air pollution and zero carbon from all energy at low cost and without
blackouts in variable weather throughout the US with 100% wind–water–solar
and storage Renew. Energy 184 430–42 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
renene.2021.11.067. This article summarizes Jacobson’s latest work on 100%
renewable power grids.

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 Solving Climate Change

Jacobson M Z 2020 100% Clean, Renewable Energy and Storage for Everything
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) https://doi.org/10.1017/
9781108786713. This book summarizes historical and recent research on
100% renewables power grids.
Jenkins J D, Luke M and Thernstrom S 2018 Getting to zero carbon emissions in
the electric power sector Joule 2 2498–510 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
joule.2018.11.013. This article summarizes the authors’ review of 40 electric-
ity-sector studies focusing on implications for zero-emissions power grids.
Lovins A B 2017 Reliably integrating variable renewables: moving grid flexibility
resources from models to results Electr. J. 30 58–63 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
tej.2017.11.006. Lovins summarizes the pitfalls and promise of high renewables
power grids.
Lovins A B 2017 Do coal and nuclear generation deserve above-market prices?
Electr. J. 30 22–30 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tej.2017.06.002. There has been
much confusion in the public policy debates around the role of large-scale
‘baseload’ plants in high-renewables power grids, and this article critically assess
some of the most common claims in that literature.
Luderer G et al 2022 Impact of declining renewable energy costs on electrification in
low-emission scenarios Nat. Energy 7 32–42 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-021-
00937-z. An analysis of how rapidly declining renewables costs affect
electrification.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2021 Accelerating
Decarbonization of the US Energy System (Washington, DC: The National
Academies Press) https://doi.org/10.17226/25932. A consensus report on how to
accelerate decarbonization, reviewing both technical and institutional changes
needed to make zero-emissions energy systems a reality.
Olson A, Hull S, Ming Z, Schlag N and Duff C 2021 Scalable Markets for the
Energy Transition: A Blueprint for Wholesale Electricity Market Reform (San
Francisco, CA: Energy and Environmental Economics) https://www.ethree.
com/scalable-markets-for-the-energy-transition-a-new-e3-report/. Market
design is critical for getting incentives right in the utility sector, and this report
delves deeply into the relevant issues.
Sepulveda N A, Jenkins J D, de Sisternes F J and Lester R K 2018 The role of firm
low-carbon electricity resources in deep decarbonization of power generation
Joule 2 2403–20 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2018.08.006. One of the key
sources exploring the need for and issues around firm low-emissions electricity
generation.
Sepulveda N A, Jenkins J D, Edington A, Mallapragada D S and Lester R K 2021
The design space for long-duration energy storage in decarbonized power
systems Nat. Energy 6 506–16 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-021-00796-8.
Long duration storage would make operating high renewables grids a lot easier,

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 Solving Climate Change

and this study explores the tradeoffs, constraints, and opportunities for known
technologies.
Williams J H, Jones R A, Haley B, Kwok G, Hargreaves J, Farbes J and Torn M S
2021 Carbon-neutral pathways for the United States AGU Adv. 2
e2020AV000284 https://doi.org/10.1029/2020AV000284. Detailed analysis of
many carbon neutral pathways for the US.
Williams J H, Jones R A and Torn M S 2021 Observations on the transition to a net-
zero energy system in the United States Energy Clim. Change 2 100050 https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.egycc.2021.100050. Useful summary of lessons for net-zero-
emissions energy systems.
Zhou E and Mai T 2021 Electrification Futures Study: Operational Analysis of US
Power Systems with Increased Electrification and Demand-Side Flexibility
(Golden, CO: National Renewable Energy Laboratory) NREL/TP-6A20-
79094 https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/electrification-futures.html. Useful analysis
of how to operate an increasingly electrified energy system.

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[36] Sanstad A H, Zhu Q, Leibowicz B, Larsen P H and Eto J H 2020 Case Studies of the
Economic Impacts of Power Interruptions and Damage to Electricity System Infrastructure
from Extreme Events (Berkeley, CA: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) https://eta-
publications.lbl.gov/publications/case-studies-economic-impacts-power
[37] Baik S, Hanus N L, Sanstad A H, Eto J H and Larsen P H 2021 A Hybrid Approach to
Estimating the Economic Value of Enhanced Power System Resilience (Berkeley, CA:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) https://eta-publications.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/
hybrid_paper_final_22feb2021.pdf
[38] Denholm P et al 2021 The challenges of achieving a 100% renewable electricity system in the
United States Joule 5 1331–52
[39] Zozmann E, Göke L, Kendziorski M, Angel C R D, Hirschhausen C V and Winkler J 2021
100% renewable energy scenarios for North America—spatial distribution and network
constraints Energies 14 658
[40] Clack C T M et al 2017 Evaluation of a proposal for reliable low-cost grid power with 100%
wind, water, and solar Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. 114 6722

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[41] Jacobson M Z, Delucchi M A, Cameron M A and Frew B A 2015 Low-cost solution to the
grid reliability problem with 100% penetration of intermittent wind, water, and solar for all
purposes Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. 112 15060–5
[42] Jacobson M Z et al 2017 100% clean and renewable wind, water, and sunlight all-sector
energy roadmaps for 139 countries of the world Joule 1 108–21
[43] Jacobson M Z, Delucchi M A, Cameron M A and Mathiesen B V 2018 Matching demand
with supply at low cost in 139 countries among 20 world regions with 100% intermittent
wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) for all purposes Renew. Energy 123 236–48
[44] Deason W 2018 Comparison of 100% renewable energy system scenarios with a focus on
flexibility and cost Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev. 82 3168–78
[45] Bistline J E 2017 Economic and technical challenges of flexible operations under large-scale
variable renewable deployment Energy Econ. 64 363–72
[46] Bistline J E T and Blanford G J 2020 Value of technology in the US electric power sector:
impacts of full portfolios and technological change on the costs of meeting decarbonization
goals Energy Econ. 86 104694
[47] Breyer C et al 2022 On the history and future of 100% renewable energy systems research
IEEE Access. 10 78176–218
[48] Hand M M, Baldwin S, DeMeo E, Reilly J M, Mai T, Arent D, Porro G, Meshek M and
Sandor D 2012 Renewable Electricity Futures Study (Golden, CO: National Renewable
Energy Laboratory) NREL/TP-6A20-52409 https://nrel.gov/analysis/re-futures.html
[49] US EPA 2022 Inventory of US Greenhouse Gas Emissions And Sinks: 1990—2020
(Washington, DC: US Environmental Protection Agency) https://epa.gov/ghgemissions/
inventory-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-sinks
[50] IPCC 2021 Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working
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assessment-report-working-group-3/

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 IOP Publishing

Solving Climate Change

A guide for learners and leaders
Jonathan Koomey and Ian Monroe

Chapter 6
Minimize non-fossil warming agents

You never change things by fighting existing reality. To change something, build
a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
—R Buckminster Fuller

Chapter overview

• The climate solutions literature has in general paid far less attention to non-fossil
emissions options than to energy-related carbon dioxide emissions.
• Methane emissions are the largest source of warming after fossil carbon dioxide
emissions, with more than half associated with the agricultural and food sectors,
about a third related to waste management (landfills and wastewater treatment),
and the rest to land-use change.
• Non-fossil carbon dioxide emissions from industrial production are significant
and require innovation in processes, which in many cases can reduce emissions to
zero or close to it.
• Non-fossil carbon dioxide and methane emissions from land-use change are
significant but vary greatly depending on location. Eliminating those emissions
requires halting industrial-scale deforestation immediately, changing land-use
practices, and accelerating reforestation projects.
• Non-fossil nitrous oxide emissions are mostly related to soil management and
agricultural practices, with small amounts associated with industrial processes.
Changing agricultural practices and capturing emissions from wastewater treat-
ment can substantially reduce those emissions, while industrial production-
related emissions will require innovation to fix.
• Non-fossil emissions of F-gases are all related to industrial production and will
require innovation to reduce them, just like when CFCs were phased under the
Montreal Protocol.

doi:10.1088/978-0-7503-4032-8ch6 6-1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

 Solving Climate Change

6.1 Introduction
The climate problem can’t be solved by focusing solely on carbon dioxide emissions
from fossil fuels. There are many emissions that contribute to warming, and while
CO2 from fossil fuels is the largest single factor, all sources of such warming agents
will need to be reduced or eliminated on the path to net-zero emissions [8]. This
chapter explores ways to reduce non-fossil emissions.

6.2 Sources of non-fossil emissions

Table 6.1 characterizes what we mean when we say ‘non-fossil emissions’ that affect
Earth’s temperature [1–3, 13, 14]. The dominant ones from a greenhouse gas
perspective are methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) from agriculture, carbon
dioxide from cement production for construction, and carbon dioxide and F-gases
from manufacturing processes. Other environmental impacts can also be important
(and won’t necessarily decline as the energy transition proceeds) but in general, a
world without fossil fuels will also have greatly reduced environmental impacts
compared to the current system.
X implies it’s an issue for that pollutant and activity.

Table 6.1. Anthropogenic non-fossil greenhouse gas pollution by type and major activity group.

Mobility/
Manufacturing/materials freight Food/land use

GHGs/warming agents
CO2 Cement, iron, steel, aluminum, X
ammonia, lime, urea, glass, soda
ash, ferroalloy, titanium dioxide,
ash, ferroalloy, titanium dioxide,
magnesium, and use of carbonates
CH4 Various (but small) X
N2 O Nitric acid, adipic acid, other X
CO X X
Volatile organic X X
compounds
F-gases Aluminum, magnesium
Contrails X
Hydrogen X X
Cooling agents
Particulates Brakes + tires X
NOx X
SO2 X

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In this chapter we focus on reducing the pollutants in table 6.1, which have either
warming or cooling effects but that are not directly the result of fossil fuel
consumption and use. For example, particulate emissions from brakes and tires
come from cars that mainly use fossil fuels now, but the associated emissions still
exist for electrified vehicles, so those are not fossil fuel related. Similarly, methane
and N2O emissions from food production and land use similarly would exist even if
agricultural machinery were fully electrified, so those are not fossil fuel related
either.
The main categories of interest for this chapter are non-fossil methane, fluori-
nated gases, non-fossil nitrous oxides, carbon dioxide from industrial processes, and
carbon dioxide from land-use changes. In each case, understanding emissions
sources at a fine level of detail makes creating an emissions reduction plan easier.
Each country or state varies in the sources of these warming agents, but we show
examples for the US below to illustrate the range of emissions drivers in a large,
diverse, developed economy.

6.2.1 Base-year emissions by human activity

Figure 6.1 shows fossil versus non-fossil emissions by warming agent for the US in
2020 using 20 year GWPs, slicing the data from figure 4.4 in a slightly different way.

Figure 6.1. US fossil and non-fossil greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 by warming agent (20 year GWPs).
Source: US EPA [6]. GWPs from table 7.SM.7 in IPCC [1].

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Figure 6.2. US non-fossil methane emissions in 1990 and 2020 by subcategory (20 year GWPs). Source: US
EPA [6]. GWPs from table 7.SM.7 in IPCC [1].

Fossil emissions and non-fossil land-use emissions are dominated by carbon dioxide
and methane. Non-fossil is split by warming agent, with methane being the most
important contributor.
Figure 6.2 shows details on non-fossil methane sources in the US, calculated as
carbon dioxide equivalent using 20 year GWPs, ranked from highest to lowest
emitting in 2020. Enteric fermentation is methane emitted from the digestive processes
of ruminant animals. Landfills, manure, wastewater treatment, rice cultivation, and
biogas all generate emissions from anaerobic decay of organic matter.
Figure 6.3 shows emissions of fluorinated gases, which are almost all associated
with electronics and electrical equipment manufacturing, as well as materials
production (mainly aluminum and magnesium). The most important exception is
HFCs needed to replace ozone depleting substances. Use of electrical equipment and
electronics manufacturing will no doubt continue to grow in a zero-emissions world,
but there are often ways to substitute for greenhouse gas-intensive processes if
emissions of some warming agents grow in importance.

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Figure 6.3. US F-gas emissions in 1990 and 2020 by subcategory (20 year GWPs). Source: US EPA [6]. GWPs
from table 7.SM.7 in IPCC [1].

Figure 6.4 shows non-fossil nitrous oxide emissions, which are dominated by
agricultural soil management. Most of the rest is associated with wastewater
treatment, manure management, and manufacturing.
Figure 6.5 shows non-fossil carbon dioxide emissions for the US, excluding land
use (which is treated separately below). The biggest category is ‘non-energy use of
fuels’, which include reducing agents and solvents (any use of fuels resulting in
sequestration of carbon in long-lived products, like some plastics derived from
petrochemicals, is not included in this category). Most of the rest is associated with
production of materials such as cement, iron and steel, ammonia, lime, urea, glass,
aluminum, soda ash, ferroalloy, titanium dioxide, zinc, phosphoric acid, lead,
carbide, magnesium, and process use of carbonates.
Figure 6.6 shows land-use change emissions, including CO2, CH4, and N2O.
Methane and nitrous oxide emissions are relatively small. The biggest effect by far is
from the net negative emissions of CO2, which result from regrowth of US forests
after several centuries of large-scale land clearing beginning in the seventeenth

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Figure 6.4. US non-fossil nitrous oxide emissions in 1990 and 2020 by subcategory (20 year GWPs). Source:
US EPA [6]. GWPs from table 7.SM.7 in IPCC [1].

century. This regrowth is recapturing carbon emitted when many US forests were
cleared, and the effects are large enough to significantly affect the total emissions
budget. For many other countries, particularly in the developing world, net CO2
emissions from land use are positive because of rapid deforestation.

6.3 Summary of non-fossil emissions by major category

Figure 6.7 shows non-fossil emissions by gas and major category. More than half of
methane emissions come from agriculture and food production, with modest
amounts associated with land use and the rest coming from waste management,
mainly anaerobic decay in landfills and sewage treatment plants. Almost all nitrous
oxide emissions are from agriculture and food production, and almost all non-fossil
emissions from F-gases and carbon dioxide (excluding land-use change) are related
to industrial production. We address the key drivers of warming in the following
sections, including ecosystem disruptions, food and agriculture, industrial processes,
aviation contrails, and (for future scenarios) the potential warming effects of green
hydrogen.

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Figure 6.5. US non-fossil carbon dioxide emissions (excluding land use) in 1990 and 2020 by subcategory.
Source: US EPA [6]. GWPs from table 7.SM.7 in IPCC [1]. GWPs for carbon dioxide equal 1.0 by definition
for both 20 and 100 year periods.

6.3.1 Ecosystems disruptions

For all life on Earth, CO2 is food. Carbon dioxide is first extracted from the
atmosphere by plants and algae through photosynthesis, which in turn feed nearly
every ecosystem along with all of humanity. Wherever there is life, ecosystems are
storing and cycling carbon, and our planet’s lands and seas still store much more
carbon than our atmosphere.
Nearly every ecosystem is now being disrupted by human activity, generally
through some combination of direct land conversion and less direct anthropogenic
forces, such as temperature and precipitation shifts from climate change. Human-
linked ecosystem disruptions often result in large near-term GHG emissions, as well
as a reduction in the rates biological systems can pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and
store carbon in biomass and soils.

6.3.1.1 Deforestation and land-use change

Many of the world’s most carbon-dense ecosystems are forests, and almost four
billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year still comes from deforestation, as trees

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Figure 6.6. US greenhouse emissions from land-use change in 1990 and 2020 by category (20 year GWPs).
Source: US EPA [6]. GWPs from table 7.SM.7 in IPCC [1]. GWPs for carbon dioxide equal 1.0 by definition
for both 20 and 100 year periods.

are cut for timber or burned to make way for livestock grazing livestock or
agricultural crops [2]. In the Amazon, Congo, and other forests, the path to
deforestation often starts with road construction, followed by commercial logging,
livestock grazing, and then row crop cultivation and urban development where
economically feasible. Many government policies have historically encouraged
deforestation as a means to claim land rights and achieve economic development,
and some governments continue to encourage deforestation by overlooking
violations of conservation boundaries or indigenous land rights, with some
government officials even profiting from deforestation through corrupt relation-
ships or official investments.
Peat swamp forests are especially large carbon sinks, as the waterlogged soil in
these tropical ecosystems prevents dead leaves and wood from fully decomposing,
building up layers of carbon-rich organic matter that can be 20 meters deep (about
the height of a four story building) [15]. Unfortunately, many of the world’s
remaining peat swamp forests are still being logged, burned and drained to convert
land to agriculture, resulting in some of world’s largest sources of climate pollution
beyond fossil fuels. Conversion to oil palm plantations has been the largest danger
for peat forests, driven by rising demand for palm oil and palm kernel oil (often
innocuously labeled ‘vegetable oil’) in a wide range of consumer products, from food
to beauty products. Grasslands, wetlands, permafrost, mangrove swamps, and other

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Figure 6.7. US non-fossil greenhouse emissions by gas and major category in 2020 (20 year GWPs). Source:
US EPA [6]. GWPs from table 7.SM.7 in IPCC [1]. GWPs for carbon dioxide equal 1.0 by definition for both
20 and 100 year periods.

coastal ecosystems can also store large amounts of carbon, yet these systems are also
still losing ground to agriculture, infrastructure and urban development in many
parts of the world.

6.3.1.2 Marine ecosystems

Oceans cover over 70% of Earth’s surface, and marine ecosystems store the vast
majority of the world’s carbon (over 90%), much more than the combined carbon in
our atmosphere, terrestrial ecosystems, and fossil fuel reserves. Earth’s oceans
absorb carbon in three ways: direct CO2 absorption from the atmosphere, storing
carbon-containing sediments from rivers, and biological carbon storage in ocean
ecosystems.
About a quarter of anthropogenic CO2 emissions are absorbed by our oceans
every year, as physics and chemistry push to balance the concentration of CO2 in
ocean water with the increasing concentration in the atmosphere, resulting in net
CO2 uptake as long as the gas concentration in air is higher than in water [2].
However, as CO2 is absorbed by seawater it converts into carbonic acid (H2CO3),
resulting in lower pH in the water and overall ocean acidification. This process is the
reason why higher CO2 pollution levels also make the oceans more acidic. The
acceleration of ocean acidification from manmade CO2 pollution is making it harder

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for many aquatic species to survive, especially corals, shellfish, other marine life with
calcium carbonate shells that dissolve in acidic waters. Warming waters from
climate change can compound the challenges from acidification, as well as add
additional survival challenges for many other aquatic species. These marine
ecosystem shifts can result in substantial biodiversity loss, alongside degradation
of the ability to store biological carbon in many marine ecosystems.
Humans are also directly affecting the carbon cycle in ocean environments
through fishing, with dredging and bottom trawling methods damaging seafloor
ecosystems and stirring up carbon-rich sediments. Over 100 million metric tons of
fish are taken out of oceans every year1, removing organic carbon that would
otherwise feed marine ecosystems and eventually be partially stored in ocean
sediments. Nutrient runoff from agricultural overfertilization also often flows
from rivers into seas, causing algae blooms and ocean ‘dead zones’ where decaying
organic matter depletes oxygen levels and drives away or suffocates other marine
life.

6.3.1.3 Climate feedbacks

Increasing impacts from climate change will likely accelerate GHG emissions from
disruption of many ecosystems, which in turn will accelerate climate change. For
example, climate-linked heat, pests, drought, and wildfires in many areas are causing
near-term GHG emissions while also decreasing the long-term carbon storage
capacity for many forests, which in turn makes our climate challenges worse. This
type of vicious cycle is known as a ‘positive feedback’, not because it is positive for
people or the planet, but because it accelerates the pace of a process such as climate
change. There are ‘negative feedbacks’ in our climate system as well, such as the fact
that higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations can make some plants grow faster and
absorb more carbon (an effect known as ‘CO2 fertilization’ or ‘carbon fertilization’),
but research has typically found many more feedbacks that accelerate warming than
feedbacks that slow it down [1, 16–19].
One particularly concerning feedback is the melting of arctic permafrost, which
may result in billions of tons of CO2 and methane released to the atmosphere from
the decay of organic matter that has been frozen for thousands of years [17, 20]. We
are still in the beginning stages of understanding other feedbacks, such as the long-
term climate implications of ocean acidification. Given the pace of current climate
change, most ecosystems are now experiencing shifts in decades that would have
previously happened over millennia. Many species aren’t equipped to handle these
changes, and opportunistic species that thrive in changed conditions can become
invasive and further disrupt ecosystem balance

6.3.2 Food and agriculture

What we eat and how we produce our food play an outsized role in our climate
challenge [21]. The climate cost of food starts with the land we use to make it, which

1
https://ourworldindata.org/fish-and-overfishing and https://www.ramlegacy.org

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 Solving Climate Change

generally has been converted to agriculture or livestock grazing from a higher

carbon ecosystem (such as forests, grasslands, or wetlands), whether this land-use
change happened a few years or a few centuries in the past. Then there is GHG
pollution linked to most parts of the food production process, from embodied GHG
emissions in fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, to fossil fuel use in farm
machinery, processing equipment, refrigeration, transportation, and cooking.
While many of the GHGs linked to food production can be almost fully eliminated
through an economy-wide shift to electrification and clean energy, there are also
substantial sources of non-combustion GHGs in our global food system that require
additional action.

6.3.2.1 Ruminant livestock

Livestock are a large source of anthropogenic methane emissions, second only to
methane leakage from fossil fuel infrastructure (see figure 4.6). Cows are the biggest
polluters, followed by sheep, goats, and other ruminants, which naturally burp out
CH4 as methanogenic bacteria in their rumens help these animals digest grasses and
other fibrous feed. For these animals, methane isn’t a problem, it’s a natural by-
product of their digestive system, but the sheer numbers of ruminant livestock make
it a big problem for climate [22].
The other climate problem with such livestock is the land that’s required to feed
animals before they can feed us [21]. Livestock graze on over a quarter of Earth’s ice-
free land surface, and an additional third of agricultural land grows livestock feed2.
Ruminant livestock are not very efficient at converting vegetable protein into meat
and dairy products, so while grazing and animal feed collectively takes up nearly
80% of agricultural land, these animals supply under 20% of global calories and less
than 40% of global protein3. Beyond the initial GHG emissions from converting
natural ecosystems to livestock grazing and feed crops, the inefficient use of land for
livestock is a large opportunity cost for climate. Reducing demand for beef and dairy
products and improving the efficiency of livestock husbandry [21] could free up
millions of hectares to shift back to carbon-storing natural ecosystems, or this land
could be used to produce feedstocks for biofuels, BECCs, or bioplastics. Another
strategy is to shift feedstuffs for livestock away from foods consumed by humans
[23]. Still another is to shift more grazing and agriculture to organic practices [24],
although that shift by itself is not a cure all.
Ruminant livestock may not always be detrimental to climate. Wild ruminants
have grazed Earth’s savannas and grasslands for millions of years, often grazing
intensely in large herds and constantly moving to protect from predators.
Researchers have started to consider the possibility that intensive rotational grazing
that mimics natural systems could actually enhance root growth and soil carbon
storage, though other research has cast doubt on whether soil carbon benefits can
outweigh increased methane emissions from grazers [25]. Grazing livestock can also
play a role in fire prevention, by eating understory plants to reduce the risk that fires

2
https://www.fao.org/3/ar591e/ar591e.pdf and https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture
3
https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets

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spread into tree canopies, thereby potentially reducing the size, intensity, and
associated GHG emissions from wildfires. If we can find ways to substantially
reduce methane emissions from ruminants then they may become a part of carefully
managed climate-positive land-use solutions, though it’s unlikely this can happen at
scale with the billions of ruminants that currently feed humanity [26–28].

6.3.2.2 Crop production

The invention of chemical fertilizer helped spark the Green Revolution in agricul-
ture, which has increased global food production enough to keep pace with
population growth since the 1950s. But our increasing use of fertilizer to boost
crop yields has also led to large increases in several sources of climate pollution.
First, the production of the most common nitrogen fertilizer, ammonia (NH3),
requires hydrogen, which is typically stripped from natural gas or coal, resulting in
both CO2 emissions from hydrogen production and additional GHG emissions from
the fossil fuels burned as heat for the process. More climate pollution happens after
nitrogen fertilizer is applied to crops, as some portion always converts into the high-
potency GHG nitrous oxide, which is 273 times more potent a warming agent than
CO2 (true for both GWP20 and GWP100 according to the latest IPCC Working
Group I report [1]). N2O emissions increase as more nitrogen fertilizer is applied,
and this is true for both chemical fertilizer and organic fertilizers such as manure and
compost, but other environmental factors also influence N2O emissions, including
soil moisture, temperature, pH, and microbial species [29].

6.3.2.3 Food waste

Poore and Nemecek [21] identify reducing food waste as one part of a compre-
hensive strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That effort can involve shifting
the supply chain to more processed/frozen foods as well as identifying more efficient
producers to allow consumers to choose them (analogously to ‘Fair Trade’ and
organic labeling standards). Potential savings from improving the supply chain are
likely lower than shifting consumer preferences to more plant-based products, but
every emissions reduction helps.

6.3.3 Industrial processes

Greenhouse gas emissions from industrial processes are almost all carbon dioxide
and F-gases. Methane and N2O have only tiny emissions associated with industrial
production

6.3.3.1 Carbon dioxide

Most non-fossil emissions of carbon dioxide (excluding land use) are from industrial
processes that produce materials and manufactured goods. Two of the biggest
segments are cement, and iron and steel, but their relative importance varies a lot by
locale.

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6.3.3.2 F-gases
All F-gas emissions are from industrial processes, and almost all of these are
associated with the displacement of ozone-depleting substances. The rest result from
manufacturing of electrical and electronic equipment.

6.3.4 Aviation contrails

Carbon dioxide emissions from long-haul aviation are significant and growing, but
the indirect warming effects from the creation of contrails in the upper atmosphere
are larger [30, 31]. In fact, Burkhardt [32] found that ‘net radiative forcing due to
contrail cirrus remains the largest single radiative-forcing component associated
with aviation’. This important effect is often not included in emissions inventories
but is worth tracking with aviation emissions projected to increase in coming
decades [33].
The indirect effects of combustion in the upper atmosphere ‘arise from emissions
of greenhouse gases, aerosols and nitrogen oxides, and from changes in cloudiness in
the upper troposphere’ [32]. The direct emissions of greenhouse gases fall into our
‘fossil’ category, as do aerosols (e.g. soot), but most nitrogen oxides come from
heated surfaces in contact with a nitrogen-rich atmosphere.
Nitrogen oxide emissions would result even from combustion of green hydrogen
derived from zero-emissions sources. Water vapor, which also is emitted from
residual water in jet fuel, is the main by-product of hydrogen combustion, and
injecting water into the upper atmosphere may also have warming effects. Jacobson
[34, section 2.2.3] analyzes these effects and finds a 70% reduction in contrail
thickness when hydrogen is combusted instead of jet fuel.

6.3.5 Hydrogen
Some future scenarios suggest that hydrogen will play an increasing role in the
world’s energy system [35, 36], but there has also been justifiable skepticism about
the feasibility of more widespread use of hydrogen [37, 38]. Hydrogen will play an
important role in industrial production in a zero-emissions world [10], will likely be
useful for energy storage for the power systems, and may be useful for long-haul
aviation and shipping, but the dream of a hydrogen economy that reaches small
consumers and light vehicles will almost certainly not be realized. The advantages of
battery storage and electricity delivery are too great (and are growing), while
hydrogen applications for small users have gained little traction in the past couple of
decades, even as batteries have plummeted in cost.
The potential effects of an increase in the use of hydrogen depend on uncertainties
about emissions rates, atmospheric chemistry, and warming effects (which depend
on complex interactive factors) [39–41]. Research in the past two decades has found
that hydrogen emissions do have a warming effect when all interactions are tallied.
Early work found 100 year GWPs of around 4 [11, 12] but the most recent research
shows 100 year GWPs around 11, while the 20 year GWP of hydrogen is about three
times the 100 year value [7].

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Better understanding of leakage rates and the complex interactions that lead to
warming from hydrogen emissions will become increasingly important as hydrogen
production increases. Hydrogen is a much smaller molecule than methane, so
preventing leakage is harder, but just as for methane, eliminating leaks is in the
interests of the producers (fuel that leaks can’t be sold).
If hydrogen replaces jet fuel for long-haul aviation, emissions of nitrogen oxides
and water vapor in the upper atmosphere may still create significant warming, even
if the hydrogen is created using zero-emissions energy sources [34, section 2.2.3].
This area is not well studied, and the most recent work in the UK explicitly excluded
the warming effects of use of hydrogen for aviation in their analysis [7].

6.4 Creating or adopting a business-as-usual scenario

Just as for fossil emissions, the first step is to create a business-as-usual (BAU)
scenario, which requires understanding emissions associated with human activities.
We can begin by splitting fossil and non-fossil emissions for each key greenhouse gas
in a base year, and then drilling down further into each category to understand the
key drivers.
Data availability will affect the level of detail possible for your BAU projection.
In most cases, reaching the disaggregation represented in the EPA data for the US
above is difficult, so you’ll need to determine what your data allow.

6.4.1 Projecting base-year emissions to mid-century

As discussed in the previous two chapters, the BAU scenario involves projecting
base-year emissions to the mid twenty-first century, using drivers by task like the
ones shown in table 4.1 above. Those drivers can change over time as technology
changes, and the best projections incorporate dynamic developments in a careful
way.

6.5 Creating the climate-positive scenario

Just as for electrification, the climate-positive scenario uses the same drivers by task
used in the BAU case. Examples for non-fossil emissions would include projections
of food consumption, industrial production, and materials use. Of course, the
climate-positive scenario can alter these trends to make emissions reductions easier,
by (for example) changing eating preferences or altering the types of materials
projected to be used by society in the future.
Most integrated assessment models account for feedbacks between scenario
drivers and industrial production imperfectly or not at all, so that is an important
area where those models could be improved [42]. Different zero-emissions technol-
ogies have different materials intensities and associated non-fossil emissions (such as
for cement, steel, and aluminum) and tracking these as a function of scenario
evolution would give policy makers insight into how ‘embedded emissions’ affect the
scenario results. In most cases, ‘use phase’ emissions will dominate, but that’s not
always true, and understanding when it isn’t true can yield policy insight.

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Changing patterns of material use by consumers and businesses affect industrial

process emissions associated with the production of those materials [43]. The
potential for such emissions reductions is often ignored but is clearly worthy of
more attention [44, 45]. The possibility of substituting information services for
materials use (‘dematerialization’) is another option with great possibilities [4, 46].
On land use, one subtlety is that it’s not enough to reforest after land is cleared,
we need to stop all industrial-scale deforestation first, in particular that affecting old-
growth forests and jungles. There must be no more destruction of these precious
habitats from now on, but it has been singularly difficult to prevent countries from
destroying them.
Just as countries continue to build new fossil infrastructure while claiming to
support climate stabilization, countries continue to destroy old-growth forests while
supporting reforestation projects. Stop industrial-scale deforestation immediately,
then reforestation makes sense, otherwise it’s a dangerous distraction from what
climate stabilization requires, and it enables extinction of myriad species that once
gone, cannot be replaced. Like many aspects of the climate problem, the moral
implications of continued industrial-scale deforestation are deeply troubling to us,
and that should be reason enough to stop it immediately.

6.6 Data sources

As shown above, climate change is not just an energy problem, and many new
options are being deployed or are now under development to reduce non-fossil
emissions. To the extent that these emissions can’t be eliminated with technological
changes, carbon capture will be needed to get to net zero [47], but for industrial
processes to produce cement4, steel5, aluminum6, lime, glass, and feedstocks there
are options for substantially reducing or eliminating those emissions [9, 10, 35, 44,
48–54]. Same for food [21], general ecosystem management [55], forests [56],
agricultural practices [57, 58], methane [59], nitrous oxide [60], black carbon [61],
and fluorinated gases [62]. The IPCC [5] and [3] reviewed options in a comprehensive
way.
For each of the categories for which data are available you’ll need to create a
BAU scenario and a pathway to zero emissions using data sources applicable to
your chosen geography. In many cases you’ll need to adapt previous work to suit
your analysis, but as long as you follow physical and engineering principles and
clearly document your assumptions in adopting that work, you’ll be on solid
analytical ground.

6.7 Chapter conclusions

Tracking non-fossil emissions separate from those associated with fossil fuel
extraction and use is critically important. These emissions are often ignored or

4
http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/news/cambridge-engineers-invent-world-s-first-zero-emissions-cement
5
https://www.hybritdevelopment.se/en/
6
https://elysis.com/en

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 Solving Climate Change

treated as an afterthought. Rigorous analysis of climate solutions requires that all

major sources of greenhouse gas emissions be reduced or eliminated and just
focusing on the energy sector (i.e. fossil-related emissions) is both insufficient and
detrimental to identifying opportunities for whole-system redesign.

Further reading
IPCC 2022 Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of
Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) https://www.ipcc.
ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-3/. Chapter 7 (land use/agricul-
ture), chapter 11 (industry), and chapter 5 (demand, services and social aspects of
mitigation), all have relevant insights and references for assessing non-fossil
emissions reduction potentials.
Friedlingstein P et al 2022 Global carbon budget 2021 Earth Syst. Sci. Data 14
1917–2005 https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-1917-2022. The most authoritative
source on stocks and flows of carbon in the biosphere.
Poore J and Nemecek T 2018 Reducing food’s environmental impacts through
producers and consumers Science 360 987–92 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.
aaq0216. A comprehensive and authoritative view of the food system’s environ-
mental effects.
Project Drawdown (https://www.drawdown.org/solutions) gives significant detail on
both fossil and non-fossil emissions reductions, focusing on land use, agriculture,
and industrial processes.
Saunois M et al 2020 The global methane budget 2000–2017 Earth Syst. Sci. Data
12 1561–623 https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-1561-2020. The most authoritative
source on stocks and flows of methane in the biosphere.
Sovacool B K, Griffiths S, Kim J and Bazilian M 2021 Climate change and
industrial F-gases: a critical and systematic review of developments, socio-
technical systems and policy options for reducing synthetic greenhouse gas
emissions Renew. Sust. Energy Rev. 141 110759 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
rser.2021.110759. The most authoritative source on flows of F-gases.
Tian H et al 2020 A comprehensive quantification of global nitrous oxide sources
and sinks Nature 586 248–56 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2780-0. The
most authoritative source on stocks and flows of nitrous oxides in the biosphere.

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report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-i/
[2] Friedlingstein P et al 2022 Global carbon budget 2021 Earth Syst. Sci. Data 14 1917–2005
[3] IPCC 2022 Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working
Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

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 Solving Climate Change

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[20] Walter Anthony K, Schneider von Deimling T, Nitze I, Frolking S, Emond A, Daanen R,
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[22] Hackmann T J and Spain J N 2010 Invited review: ruminant ecology and evolution:
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[28] Norton B E, Barnes M and Teague R 2013 Grazing management can improve livestock
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[30] Camero K 2019 Aviation’s dirty secret: airplane contrails are a surprisingly potent cause of
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[31] Lee D S et al 2010 Transport impacts on atmosphere and climate: aviation Atmos. Environ.
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[32] Burkhardt U and Kärcher B 2011 Global radiative forcing from contrail cirrus Nat. Clim.
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[33] Bock L and Burkhardt U 2019 Contrail cirrus radiative forcing for future air traffic Atmos.
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[35] Davis S J et al 2018 Net-zero emissions energy systems Science 360 6396
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[38] Plötz P 2022 Hydrogen technology is unlikely to play a major role in sustainable road
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[39] Tromp T K, Shia R-L, Allen M, Eiler J M and Yung Y L 2003 Potential environmental
impact of a hydrogen economy on the stratosphere Science 300 1740–2
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[41] Schultz M G, Diehl T, Brasseur G P and Zittel W 2003 Air pollution and climate-forcing
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assessment models Nat. Clim. Change 7 13–20
[43] Hertwich E G 2021 Increased carbon footprint of materials production driven by rise in
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[44] IEA 2019 Material Efficiency in Clean Energy Transitions (Paris: International Energy
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[45] D’Amico B, Pomponi F and Hart J 2021 Global potential for material substitution in
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with a focus on socioeconomic aspects Notiz. Politeia 17 13–28
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industrial carbon capture and storage (CCS) in emission mitigation Appl. Energy 300 117322
[48] Rissman J et al 2020 Technologies and policies to decarbonize global industry: review and
assessment of mitigation drivers through 2070 Appl. Energy 266 114848
[49] IEA 2018 Technology Roadmap: Low-Carbon Transition in the Cement Industry (Paris:
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transition-in-the-cement-industry
[50] Favier A, Wolf C D, Scrivener K and Habert G 2018 A Sustainable Future for the European
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[51] DECHEMA 2017 Low carbon energy and feedstock for the European chemical industry
Technology Study German Society for Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology
(DECHEMA) and released by the European Chemical Industry Council (Cefic)
https://dechema.de/en/Low_carbon_chemical_industry.html
[52] Fischedick, M, Marzinkowski J, Winzer P and Weigel M 2014 Techno-economic evaluation
of innovative steel production technologies J. Cleaner Prod. 84 563–80
[53] van Ruijven B J, van Vuuren D P, Boskaljon W, Neelis M L, Saygin D and Patel M K 2016
Long-term model-based projections of energy use and CO2 emissions from the global steel
and cement industries Resour., Conserv. Recycl. 112 15–36
[54] Allwood J M, Azevedo J, Cleaver C, Cullen J and Horton P 2022 Materials and
Manufacturing: Business Growth in a Transformative Journey to Zero Emissions
(Cambridge: UK Fires, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, University
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[55] Girardin C A J, Jenkins S, Seddon N, Allen M, Lewis S L, Wheeler C E, Griscom B W and
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[56] Agrawal A, Nepstad D and Chhatre A 2011 Reducing emissions from deforestation and
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Forecast. Soc. Change 63 313–34

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 IOP Publishing

Solving Climate Change

A guide for learners and leaders
Jonathan Koomey and Ian Monroe

Chapter 7
Efficiency and optimization

There is an even cleaner form of energy than the Sun, more renewable than the
wind: it’s the energy we don’t consume.
—Arthur H Rosenfeld

Chapter overview

• Efficiency and optimization mean optimizing energy, capital, and materials flows
while reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero.
• As always, we begin with understanding the tasks we want to accomplish and go
from there.
• The three components of efficiency and optimization, defined as ‘emissions
efficiency’ are
– Moving to zero-emissions energy sources.
– Improving end-use efficiency of accomplishing tasks for capital equipment
and operations.
– Altering the tasks we choose to accomplish.
• Information and communication technology is a key enabler of the shift to zero
emissions. It’s our ‘ace in the hole’.
• End-use strategies can substantially reduce emissions but combined with supply-
side shifts they enable even more sweeping change.
• Institutional change can be powerful because of increasing returns to scale, but it
requires systematic application of whole system design and iterative risk manage-
ment principles.

doi:10.1088/978-0-7503-4032-8ch7 7-1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

 Solving Climate Change

7.1 Introduction
The word ‘efficiency’ conveys the general notion of accomplishing human goals with
a minimum of effort. ‘Optimization’ conveys a similar idea, with the additional
nuance of continuous improvements.
Efficiency is defined as the ratio of some output (such as heat delivered to a room,
distance driven, or economic activity) to some input (such as fuel input to a furnace,
final energy, or materials use). In the climate solutions literature this term most often
is used in the context of energy efficiency, focusing on accomplishing human goals
with the least consumption of primary or final energy [6, 11, 13].
While energy efficiency and optimization are important components of stabilizing
the climate, it is only part of what we mean when we talk about efficiency in this
book. We use the concept of ‘emissions efficiency’ to capture the full range of
options, following the economic literature on ‘carbon efficiency’ [25–27]. We define
the problem more generally as optimizing energy, capital, and materials flows while
reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero.
At the highest level of abstraction, there are three ways of moving to zero
emissions, all of which fall under the category of ‘emissions efficiency’:
1. Move to zero-emissions energy sources:
• Demand-side: electrifying everything as described in chapter 4
• Supply side: shifting to renewable electricity generation or nuclear
power as described in chapter 5
2. Improve end-use efficiency of accomplishing tasks, including both technical
efficiency of equipment and efficiency of operations.
3. Alter the tasks we choose to accomplish, such as changing the structure of
cities to enable lower emissions living or choosing to eat fewer animal
products.

After a shift to zero-emissions energy sources, efficiency and task definition still
matter, because many of these zero-emissions sources are constrained in the near
term. Lower energy use means lower emissions for a given level of zero-emission
generation sources.
Reductions in end-use energy intensity can also make it possible to achieve
emissions reductions with less widespread deployment of carbon capture and other
supply side technologies. Hummel [28] called this a reduction in ‘mitigation pressure’
that allows for deeper emissions reductions than would be possible with accelerated
supply-side options alone. Grübler et al [2] also allude to intensity reductions as an
enabler of more rapid and more profound supply-side changes.
The concept of efficiency has a rich history in the energy literature [11, 13]. The
most common usage is to define efficiency by applying the First Law of
Thermodynamics:
Energy out
First Law efficiency = (7.1)
Energy in

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 Solving Climate Change

The First Law states that energy can be neither created nor destroyed, which
implies that for a closed system it is impossible to extract more energy from the
system than flows into it. For a gas-fired home furnace, that means we can’t extract
more heat from it than is contained in the fuel flowing in. The maximum First Law
efficiency is 100%, but in practice we can never quite reach that goal. Typical
furnaces in the US have First Law efficiencies of 80%–95%.
A less familiar metric is called Second Law efficiency, which is defined as follows:
Minimum energy use needed to accomplish a task
Second Law efficiency = (7.2)
Current energy use need to accomplish a task

This metric, also known as ‘exergy efficiency’, measures how efficient we are
compared to the most efficient possible way to accomplish that task [11, 13]. For
heat engines operating between two heat reservoirs, the maximum possible efficiency
(i.e. the minimum energy use) is given by the Carnot limit, which is a function of the
temperatures of the two reservoirs. Second Law efficiencies for the global economy
are typically much lower than First Law efficiencies, more like 5%–15%, and much
less than that for processes that are especially inefficient [11].
Second Law efficiencies provide a more accurate picture of the potential for
efficiency improvements than do First Law efficiencies, which are tied to a specific
process (such as a furnace) rather than the theoretical minimum energy needed to
accomplish the task. Second Law efficiencies also point to the possibility of
redefining the task and achieving even great energy savings. Our focus on linking
emissions with associated tasks in earlier chapters emerges from this way of looking
at the problem.
The full potential for energy efficiency and other demand-side actions has in
general not been reflected fully in large-scale climate mitigation studies [29],
although that situation has been improving in recent years. The most recent IPCC
Working Group III report, for the first time, focused on the potential for shifts in
end-use demands to reduce emissions [3: technical summary and chapter 5]. These
findings are also summarized in [30]. The IPCC report found that end-use
strategies affecting institutional and individual behavior (which fall squarely in
what we define as efficiency and optimization) could reduce emissions by 40%–70%
by 2050.
A key aspect of efficiency and optimization is tallying all societal costs and
benefits. Just focusing on energy use or carbon emissions is a mistake because there
are so many co-benefits of climate action. Optimizing efficiency in the societal sense
means accounting for these co-benefits, which can offset some or all of the costs of
reducing emissions [3, 7]. The societal perspective must always be primary when
setting climate mitigation goals but understanding cost perspectives of market actors
is important for designing effective policies.
One archetypal example is that of biomass cookstoves in the developing world.
Many of these are inefficient and polluting, killing millions of people every year [19].
More efficient cookstoves using cleaner fuels could substantially reduce the toll of
death and disease associated with combustion of biomass while also reducing

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 Solving Climate Change

operating costs, greenhouse gas emissions, and deforestation1. A narrow focus on

the energy savings benefits from more efficient stoves would miss the health and
quality of life benefits associated with solving this difficult problem.

7.2 Creating or adopting a business-as-usual scenario

Efficiency and optimization as discussed here may affect your business-as-usual
(BAU) case. As discussed above, it is important to reflect recent trends in efficiency
and energy intensity, and not all scenarios capture those trends accurately (historical
trends tend to lag developments). You may need to tweak a BAU case adopted from
another source.
For example, projections of energy use that relied on a fixed relationship between
primary energy and economic activity, which were common in the 1960s and 1970s,
were famously inaccurate when that relationship changed in the early 1970s [9, 31].
The relationship between electricity use and economic activity also changed around
the same time, and changed again in the mid-1990s for the US [31]. Projections that
missed those shifts in efficiency trends were way off the mark.
Changes in efficiency trends can affect the underlying drivers for your BAU
scenario. For example, vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is a commonly used driver of
light vehicle transportation emissions but shifting structural factors and clever use of
information technology can change those trends. One salient example emerged
during the COVID-19 pandemic: telecommuting, enabled by Internet connectivity,
became much more widely accepted [32]. That means that a BAU case that assumes
pre-COVID travel behaviors will likely be inaccurate (and overestimate VMT in the
future).

7.3 Creating the climate-positive scenario

The climate-positive scenario that embodies the twin goals of electrification and
shifting to non-fossil generation technologies needs to reflect the latest thinking on
efficiency and optimization. That means adopting the broader view of ‘emissions
efficiency’ rather than a narrow focus on energy efficiency (which is still important
but is only part of a more comprehensive strategy).
Creutzig et al [30] provide a comprehensive view of end-use strategies to improve
emissions efficiency, grouping actions into the major categories ‘avoid’, ‘shift’, and
‘improve’. Avoiding means reducing ‘unnecessary consumption’ (such as avoiding
food or plastic waste, extending product life span, improving materials efficiency,
reducing flying), shifting means moving to already existing technologies and systems
that reduce or eliminate emissions (such as electrification, reuse, and recycling), and
improving means adopting higher efficiency technologies and actions than people
would otherwise choose on their own.
There is a related literature on what has come to be called ‘circular economy’,
which describes methods of reducing environmental impacts of human activities
through reducing, reusing, recycling, and harnessing renewable energy and

1
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 Solving Climate Change

materials flows. It grew out of efforts to ‘close the loop’ in manufacturing [33]. This
way of addressing efficiency and optimization has its uses, but is not a panacea,
and only a focus on absolute emissions reductions and what we call emissions
efficiency will reliably achieve the desired results [34, 35]. Intermediate metrics
such as percentage of materials recycled say little about cumulative emissions
reductions, which are ultimately all the matters for climate, and inherent problems
with recycling plastic in particular limit the usefulness of this approach in
addressing certain materials [36].
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are key cross-cutting
drivers of greater efficiency and lower emissions [37]. They speed up our ability to
collect data, distribute data to consumers, manage complexity, and more rapidly
learn and adapt. That’s why we call these technologies our ‘ace in the hole’. They
allow us to (a) move bits instead of atoms, (b) substitute smarts for parts,
(c) dynamically control energy supply and demand, (d) collect high value data,
and (e) help us design better gadgets and systems, all of these in ways that we never
could before [1, 5].
The performance of electronic computers has shown remarkable and steady
growth over the past eight decades, a finding that is not surprising to anyone with
even a passing familiarity with computing technology [38]. What most folks don’t
know, however, is that the electrical efficiency of computing (the number of
computations that can be completed per kilowatt-hour of electricity) has doubled
at predictable rates since the dawn of the computer age [39, 40].
Figure 7.1 shows recent trends in computing efficiency relative to 1985. From
the mid-1940s to about the year 2000, computations per kWh at peak output
doubled every 1.6 years [39]. Around the year 2000, engineers started to hit
physical limits on their ability to shrink transistors while controlling power use,
which resulted in a slowing of the trend in computations per kWh to doubling
every 2.6 years [40].
The existence of laptop computers, cellular phones, and personal digital
assistants was enabled by these trends, which presage continuing rapid reductions
in the power consumed by battery-powered computing devices, accompanied by
new and varied applications for mobile computing, sensors, wireless communica-
tions, and controls.
The most important future effect of these trends is that the power needed to
perform a task requiring a fixed number of computations will fall by half every 2.6
years, enabling mobile devices performing such tasks to become smaller and less
power consuming, and making many more mobile computing applications
feasible. Alternatively, the performance of some mobile devices will continue to
double every 2.6 years while maintaining the same battery life (assuming battery
capacity doesn’t improve). Some applications (such as laptop computers) will
likely tend towards the latter scenario, while others (such as mobile sensors and
controls) will take advantage of increased efficiency to become less power hungry
and more ubiquitous.
Innovations in low power operation (particularly when computing devices are in
standby mode) [40], software design [41], and co-design of special purpose hardware

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 Solving Climate Change

Figure 7.1. Trends in peak output efficiency of computing over time. Source: Efficiency trends to 2000 from
[39]. Efficiency trends 2000 to 2009 from data in [39]. Trends 2008 to 2020 from data/analysis in [40].
‘Projected’ points from AMD post 2016 match actuals from more recent data.

and software [42] will allow engineers (for a time) to exceed historical trends in
improving peak output efficiency (which are derived from characteristics of general-
purpose computing devices such as those highlighted in figure 7.1). We are still not at
the physical limits but because these are approaching in the next few decades we will
eventually need to rethink our computing technology from the ground up [5].
Fortunately, even if progress in computing efficiency stopped tomorrow there would
be at least a couple of decades of benefits associated with applying current
technology to applications for which it hasn’t yet been used.
These technologies will allow us to better match energy services demanded with
energy services supplied, and vastly increase our ability to collect and use data in real
time. They will also help us minimize the energy use and emissions from accomplishing
human goals, a technical capability that we sorely need. The environmental implica-
tions of these trends are profound and only recently becoming clear [5, 43–45].

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As one of many examples of what is becoming possible using ultra low power
computing, consider the wireless no-battery sensors created by Joshua R Smith’s
team at the University of Washington [46]. These sensors scavenge energy from stray
television and radio signals, and they use so little power (tens of microwatts in this
example) that they don’t need any other power source. Stray light, motion, or heat
can also be converted to meet slightly higher power needs, perhaps measured in
milliwatts.
The contours of this design space are only beginning to be explored. Imagine
wireless temperature, humidity, or pollution sensors that are powered by ambient
energy flows, send information over wireless networks, and are so cheap and small
that thousands can be installed where needed. Imagine sensors scattered throughout
a factory so pollutant or materials leaks can be pinpointed rapidly and precisely.
Imagine sensors spread over vast areas of glacial ice, measuring motion, temper-
ature, and ambient solar insolation at very fine geographical resolution. Imagine
tiny sensors inside products that tell consumers if temperatures while in transport
and storage have been within a safe range. Imagine a solar powered outdoor trash
can/compactor that notifies the dispatcher when it is full, thus saving truck trips (no
need to imagine this one, it’s real2). In short, these trends in computing will help us
lower greenhouse gas emissions and allow vastly more efficient use of resources.

7.3.1 Moving to zero-emission technologies

Chapter 4 explored electrification as key to eliminating direct use of fossil fuels.
Chapter 5 explored zero-emissions generation technologies for eliminating use of
fossil fuels in the electricity sector. Both efforts can be accelerated by clever use of
information technology.
For both demand and supply side technologies, ICT allows accurate data
collection and real-time controls that enable us to more precisely match end-use
demands with variable generation sources. It also allows more rapid and accurate
real-time analysis.
Because of the rapid decline in the costs of monitoring technology (driven by
improvements in computing and communications), our ability to understand the
effects of our actions in real time is increasing rapidly. This means better control of
processes, less waste, and better matching of energy services demanded with those
supplied. In combination with battery, thermal, and (sometimes) hydrogen storage,
these tools will allow the whole electricity system to work more reliably and cheaply.
Fortunately, the inrush of data from monitoring technologies has been accom-
panied by improvements in our ability to analyze and understand those data.
Without new tools we’d have a hard time keeping up, which is why new data centers,
industrial operations, and power system operators are increasingly demanding more
powerful tracking software. These developments are important because energy-use
data are available at increasingly fine levels of geographic and temporal disaggre-
gation, which will enable vastly more responsive and reliable power systems.

2
http://bigbellysolar.com

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7.3.2 Improving end-use efficiency

While electrifying, we also need to make sure electric technologies are as efficient as
they can be. In general, efficiency is cheaper than new supply, and saving energy at
the end-use level captures significant additional savings upstream, by eliminating
system losses [47]. The more efficient and more demand responsive we can make
demand-side devices the easier and cheaper it will be to expand the electricity grid to
accommodate an all-electric economy.
In the past two decades there have been substantial gains in the efficiency of
electricity technologies for lighting, heating, cooling, water heating, electric
motors, cooking, clothes washers, clothes dryers, and other equipment [48].
Some of these changes have been driven by technological improvements (especially
for lighting, which has seen a large-scale shift to light emitting diode (LED)
technology). Others have been driven by policy and changes in consumer
preferences. The potential for efficiency improvements remains large and is
constantly expanding as technology improves [8, 12, 47, 49]. Increasing returns
to scale for granular technologies play an important role in the rapid progress of
end-use efficiency technologies [10].
Adoption of higher efficiency technologies can be accelerated with a combination
of widely used policies [50–59]. They include minimum efficiency standards for
equipment, building efficiency standards, auto efficiency standards, energy labeling,
and incentives for purchase of more efficient products. Less commonly used are
mandatory end dates for sales of fossil fuel appliances and equipment, and incentives
to scrap inefficient and fossil-fired equipment early, but these will grow in
importance over time.
In the past, these programs were designed to be ‘fuel neutral’, but with increasing
emphasis on electrification, the hesitance to promote electricity over natural gas has
diminished. Ultimately, programs like ENERGY STAR, which promotes products in the
top tier of efficiency, will need to deprecate natural gas appliances in their ratings (or
eliminate them altogether). Efficiency standards will need to do the same.
The beauty of standards is that they eliminate the hassles, transactions, and
computation costs associated with choosing the more efficient option. They are
useful for cutting off the least efficient part of the market and they reach parts of the
market (such as rental homes) that are most resistant to choosing more efficient
products. Labels and incentives are useful for pushing adoption of the most efficient
products. Early scrappage (‘cash for clunkers’) and end dates for sale of fossil fueled
equipment can also be powerful tools for accelerating stock turnover.
With the proliferation of ‘smart meters’ that allow real-time metering of
electricity use, our ability to understand energy use and emissions in all sectors
will rapidly improve. In the early days of energy efficiency analysis (in the 1970s),
researchers conducted market assessments using simple averages of costs and
savings for a single average refrigerator model for the US (for example). Now
we’re able to monitor the response of millions of households to electricity prices in

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real time, and to disaggregate household electricity use into its component parts with
unparalleled accuracy. That allows much more precise assessments of efficiency
potentials and will give businesses the opportunity to target the biggest electricity
users with energy saving innovations.

7.3.3 Redefining tasks

Chapter 3 contains one example of task redefinition, expanding our view from just
the furnace to the actual task (keeping rooms at a given temperature). Another is
creating durable materials based on calcium carbonate, which requires high temper-
atures and pressures using current technology (cement is the archetypal example). If
an engineer focused on the First Law efficiency of making cement using existing
processes, the possibilities would be limited. If she instead studied alternative means
of making such materials (copying how chickens make eggshells at room temper-
ature, for example [60]) the design space and potential emissions reductions expand
considerably.
Changing patterns of material use by consumers and businesses affect industrial
process emissions associated with the production of those materials [21, 61] as well
as emissions from agricultural production and food consumption. The potential for
such emissions reductions is often ignored but is clearly worthy of more attention
[22, 23].
In the US, mail is delivered directly to everyone’s home address. In many
suburban areas of Canada, there are central mailboxes within a block or two of
every house and the letter carrier only needs to drop mail at each central mailbox,
making it possible to deliver mail to many more homes with much less labor and
energy use (see figure 7.2 for an example). Redefining this task in that way would
enable much greater efficiencies in multiple dimensions than just focusing on the
efficiency of mail delivery vehicles.
The possibility of substituting information services for materials use (‘demateri-
alization’) is another promising option [5, 24]. It is usually possible to make products
simpler in design using software and controls in the device itself, but we can also save
energy and materials by avoiding the need to move physical objects and people from
place to place.
The three archetypal examples of this effect are telecommuting [62], replacement
of physical compact discs [63] or DVDs [64] with downloadable files, and video
conferencing [65, 66]. It is not always true that moving bits instead of atoms reduces
emissions, but it is often true.
To take full advantage of ICT’s benefits, companies must reorganize themselves
[67], which is another way of redefining tasks. ICT also makes such reorganization
easier because it improves communication, coordination, and process controls, and
creates the conditions under which complementary cost-reducing innovations can
more rapidly be brought to market [68].
To reduce emissions in an institutional context, companies typically follow a set
of steps such as the ones below, which are exactly analogous to steps needed for a
complete and actionable emissions reduction plan for a state or country [1]:

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 Solving Climate Change

Figure 7.2. A central mailbox in Canada circa 2022. Source: Copyright 2022 Jonathan Koomey.

1. Create a baseline inventory of corporate greenhouse gas emissions and

track over time.
2. Project greenhouse gas emissions and commit to an aggressive improve-
ment level in a future year to which the company will work towards.
3. Link greenhouse gas emissions to each business function.
4. Identify opportunities for transformational environmental improvements (using
whole-systems integrated design) and create business plans for capturing them.
5. Assign responsibility for implementation.
6. Implement highest impact and most profitable changes in business
processes.
7. Measure impacts over time.
8. Reward technical staff and managers for achieving improvement targets.
9. Re-evaluate opportunities each year and implement the highest impact and
most profitable opportunities first.
10. Lather, rinse, repeat.

These ‘steps to sustainability’ will look familiar to companies that are already
taking the climate issue seriously (they apply equally well to other environmental

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 Solving Climate Change

issues). Institutional innovations hold great promise for rapid and large-scale
systems change because they can be easily replicated with the help of information
technology, thus taking full advantage of increasing returns to scale [69]. This
example also highlights the power of supply chains for achieving emission reductions
goals at scale [70, 71].
Many companies use Six Sigma programs to institutionalize processes such as the
steps above. In that case, the focus is broader than just on energy or emissions, but
the idea is the same, assigning cross-departmental teams to identify opportunities,
giving those teams responsibility for capturing those savings, and measuring the
results. The teams are then rewarded for the real savings they produce, and in
general, they find more and more.
Another historical example is from Dow Chemical in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Ken Nelson, an engineer with Dow USA, created a contest among lower-level
employees to root out waste and save energy. The first year of the contest they found
dozens of projects with a measured return on investment (ROI) of 173% per year,
and over the dozen-year life of the contest, the projects saved $110 million per year
for an audited average ROI of about 200%. Those savings went straight to Dow’s
bottom line, and never petered out. The program stopped when Nelson retired, but it
is the archetypal example of how opportunities for energy savings are a renewable
resource [4].

7.3.4 Direct electricity used by ICT

ICT helps improve efficiency and optimize energy and materials flows, but it also
uses electricity. There has been much confusion in the literature around electricity
used by ICT, with the general tendency of many analysts to overestimate ICT
electricity use [14, 15, 17, 20, 72].
The most accurate research shows that conventional data centers used less than
1% of the world’s electricity in 2018, and data center electricity use grew only 6%
from 2010 to 2018, while computations, network data flows, and data storage grew
to 6.5 times, 11 times, and 26 times their 2010 levels during that period.
There is little recent work on total electricity used by all information technology
equipment, but the most credible estimates for 2015 showed that all information
technology globally, including data centers, networks, and computers, consumed
about 3.6% of the world’s electricity [73: table 6], and that total didn’t grow from
2010 to 2015.
The most common error that leads to overestimates of electricity used by ICT is
to assume that growth in service demands (such as computations or network data
flows) will continue at historic rates but that efficiency will not improve at the same
time. Why people continue to make consequential errors such as this is explored
elsewhere [17], but the key thing is to view all astounding claims about ICT
electricity use with great skepticism.
Sometimes ICT electricity demand does increase rapidly. Data center electricity
use doubled between 2000 and 2005 [74], which is why the technology industry paid

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such attention to improving data center efficiency in the early to mid-2000s. They
largely succeeded in putting the industry on a sustainable path [15].
An area of recent rapid growth in ICT is in cryptocurrency and associated
technologies [16, 18]. Recent credible estimates (https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index) place
electricity used by Bitcoin alone in the tenths of a percent of all global electricity
consumption, and little to none of that is consumed in conventional data centers.
This use of electricity has grown rapidly in the past five years and it is emblematic of
how fast-moving information technologies can lead to rapid changes in end-use
demands.
Such rapid growth can create issues for policy makers, but cryptocurrency is
particularly problematic. Naïve extrapolation of near-term grown rates often leads to
absurd conclusions [17, 72] and there is still significant uncertainty about the long-term
economic value of these technologies. The electricity use is driven by the economics of
‘mining’ and if there are big changes in the price of cryptocurrencies (as there often are)
the associated electricity use is volatile and particularly hard to track.

7.4 Chapter conclusions

Efficiency and optimization will play a key role in creating a climate-positive world, but
a whole-systems view implies a focus on ‘emissions efficiency’, not just energy efficiency.
Lower end-use demands enable faster emissions reductions and make supply-side
changes less onerous. We can achieve lower emissions intensities by switching to non-
fossil technologies (by electrifying end-uses and moving to zero-emissions generation),
improving the efficiency and operational optimization of end-use equipment, and
altering/redefining tasks to minimize total emissions. The IPCC has shown emissions
reductions of roughly a factor of two associated with end-use strategies, and information
and communication technologies can help us capture that potential.

Further reading
Creutzig F et al 2022 Demand-side solutions to climate change mitigation consistent
with high levels of well-being Nat. Clim. Change 12 36–46 https://doi.org/10.1038/
s41558-021-01219-y. This article summarizes findings on demand-side emissions
reduction options from the latest IPCC mitigation report (2022) as well as other
research.
Energy Star is a voluntary labeling program (run by the US Environmental
Protection Agency and US Department of Energy) that promotes the most
efficient products on the market: http://www.energystar.gov. It is mainly focused
on the US market but it influences standards and labels around the world.
Harvey L D 2015 A Handbook on Low-Energy Buildings and District-Energy
Systems: Fundamentals, Techniques and Examples (New York: Routledge). This
book shows how to create superefficient buildings and district energy systems.
IEA 2019 Material Efficiency in Clean Energy Transitions (Paris: International
Energy Agency) https://www.iea.org/reports/material-efficiency-in-clean-energy-

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 Solving Climate Change

transitions. This report gives a high-level view of how materials efficiency can
contribute to achieving a climate-positive world.
Koomey J G, Berard S, Sanchez M and Wong H 2011 Implications of historical
trends in the electrical efficiency of computing IEEE Ann. Hist. Comput. 33 46–54
http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MAHC.2010.28. The original article
documenting long-term trends in the efficiency of general-purpose computers
from the mid-1940s onwards.
Koomey J and Naffziger S 2016 Energy efficiency of computing: what’s next? Electr.
Design 28 November http://electronicdesign.com/microprocessors/energy-effi-
ciency-computing-what-s-next. This article summarizes the latest data on trends
in the efficiency of general-purpose computing devices, showing that the rate of
improvement in peak output efficiency slowed after the year 2000.
Koomey J G, Matthews H S and Williams E 2013 Smart everything: will intelligent
systems reduce resource use? Annu. Rev. Env. Resour. 38 311–43 https://doi.org/
10.1146/annurev-environ-021512-110549. This article gives a comprehensive
overview of how to think about information technology and resource use.
Meys R, Kätelhön A, Bachmann M, Winter B, Zibunas C, Suh S and Bardow A
2021 Achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emission plastics by a circular carbon
economy Science 374 71–6 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abg9853. This article
plots a path to a zero fossil plastics industry, relying on carbon captured from
combustion or the air and hydrogen created using zero-emissions electricity.
Poore J and Nemecek T 2018 Reducing food’s environmental impacts through
producers and consumers Science 360 987 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.
aaq0216. This meta-analysis explores tradeoffs in reducing emissions from the
food system, showing that shifting to more plant-based diets is a key option for
reducing food-related emissions.
The American Council for an Energy Efficiency Economy (ACEEE) has been
fighting to improve appliance and equipment efficiency for decades in the US:
https://www.aceee.org.
The Carbon Trust focuses on credible measurement and verification of carbon
savings: https://www.carbontrust.com/our-projects.
The Collaborative Labeling and Appliance Standards Program (CLASP) studies
and supports energy efficiency and quality of appliances and equipment around
the world: https://www.clasp.ngo/.

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[55] Tyler M, Winiarski D, Rosenberg M and Liu B 2021 Impacts of Model Building Energy
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2040_Interim_Update_07182021.pdf

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[56] Cunningham L J and Eck R J 2021 Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Incentives: A
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[58] Greene D L, Patterson P D, Singh M and Li J 2005 Feebates, rebates, and gas guzzler taxes:
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 IOP Publishing

Solving Climate Change

A guide for learners and leaders
Jonathan Koomey and Ian Monroe

Chapter 8
Remove carbon

Even if we get to net zero, we still need to get carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
—John Kerry1

Chapter overview

• We need to get emissions to zero as quickly as we can to stabilize the climate, as

discussed in previous chapters, but that’s not the end of the story.
• We also need to scale up carbon removal to drawdown past climate pollution and
return atmospheric GHG concentrations to pre-industrial levels.
• Carbon removal should not be considered an alternative to immediate, rapid direct
emissions reductions, it is a supplement needed for a climate-positive planet.
• We’ll need billions of tonnes per year of carbon removal to make a measurable
dent in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations in the next few decades.
• Enhancing the ability of land and marine ecosystems to remove and store carbon
often represents the most cost-effective approach in the near term, but addition-
ality and permanence concerns must be addressed.
• Technological options, such as direct-air capture of carbon dioxide, must also
play significant roles as soon as possible, but for that to happen we need to start
funding and deploying technology now.

8.1 Introduction
In his splendidly clear book, The 100% Solution, Solomon Goldstein-Rose points
out a critical fact that distinguishes climate change from other societal problems:

1
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/john-kerry-climate_n_6081c355e4b05c4290738500

doi:10.1088/978-0-7503-4032-8ch8 8-1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

 Solving Climate Change

The interesting thing about climate change, which makes it different from
most other global issues is that we can’t expect any lessening of impacts on
the way to a full solution. Most social problems in the world, such as
poverty or diseases, cause a certain amount of harm each year, and if we
make a little progress on a given issue, it causes a little less harm the
following year.

Climate change is different. The impacts are caused by higher average global
temperatures, which are driven by higher-than-average levels of greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere. Reducing emissions is not enough to avoid, or even
reduce, climate change effects—reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere
is the only way to do that, which requires totally eliminating emissions and then
removing some portion of the CO2 that’s already in the atmosphere [1].

We discussed the dependence of global warming risks on cumulative emissions in

chapter 1, but it’s worth reviewing it in the context of Goldstein-Rose’s quote above.
First, temperatures will continue to increase until we get nearly to zero emissions [2].
Cutting emissions in half will just slow the increases in temperatures. We need to get to
zero emissions as quickly as we can.
Second, reducing emissions to zero is only the start of mitigating harm from
climate change, we also need to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. CO2 is
the most important greenhouse gas, and one that stays in the atmosphere for
centuries unless we actively work to clean up our climate trash. What are some
practical ways to do that?
The most feasible near-term path to such ‘drawdown’ is increasing carbon
uptake from the biosphere [3], which is the path used in the low energy demand
scenario [4]. However, enhancing natural sinks alone is unlikely to quickly remove
enough carbon to return us to a pre-industrial climate, particularly if managing
land to maximize carbon storage conflicts with other needs such as food
production. We may soon also need to recapture large amounts of carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere using direct-air capture (DAC) technology. We need to
research and scale such technologies, but it will likely be over a decade before the
world will be able to accomplish significant negative emissions using such
technological means.
In the near term, most carbon removal will come from nature-based solutions such
as stopping deforestation, planting trees (afforestation in new areas and reforestation
in previously forested areas), rebuilding coastal wetlands and kelp forests, enhancing
ocean CO2 uptake, and accelerating weathering of certain minerals. Some innovators
are also starting to deploy hybrid nature-based and engineered solutions, where plants
or algae do the work of removing carbon from the atmosphere, then engineered
chemical or mechanical systems convert the carbon into a stable form for long-term
storage or conversion into useful products. Whether fully nature-based or hybrid
systems, the effects of enhancing biospheric carbon sinks may take many decades
to show results and won’t always be cheap [5–9], but we need to get started now.

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 Solving Climate Change

The innovations needed to make such efforts successful are as much social and
institutional as they are technical, but we largely know how to increase biospheric
carbon uptake now. We also know there are biophysical and economic constraints on
such activities [10].
Minx [11] suggests a natural progression of effort, with an early focus on
enhancing land-based carbon sinks, moving later to technological options that
might scale better and could capture cost reductions from manufacturing economies
of scale and technological innovation. We generally agree. Since we will likely need
both nature-based and engineered carbon removal systems to fully solve our climate
challenges we should pilot a wide portfolio of potential carbon removal solutions
now to find approaches that maximize pollution drawdown while minimizing the
unforeseen social and environmental tradeoffs that can come from scale.
Finally, we need to move away from the idea that increasing uptake of carbon in
the atmosphere is somehow an alternative to reducing emissions to zero [12]. We
need to do both, as quickly as we can. That is one reason why ‘carbon offsets’ are a
dead end. There is no alternative to rapid and immediate emissions reductions [3].
None.

8.2 Understanding carbon removal

Carbon dioxide removal (or CDR) through use of negative emissions technologies is
removing carbon from the atmosphere after it has already been emitted, to reduce
concentrations of carbon dioxide and reverse the warming associated with previ-
ously emitted carbon [13].
To put carbon removal options in context, it’s first important to understand the
global carbon cycle. The authoritative source on that topic is Friedlingstein et al
[14]. Figure 8.1 summarizes the results of that study, averaged over the period 2011
to 2020.
This figure is a rich source of insight. The stocks and flows are expressed in terms
of carbon because carbon exists in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide but is often in
other forms in other parts of the cycle. To convert carbon to carbon dioxide multiply
by the ratio of total molecular weight of carbon dioxide to the molecular weight of
carbon (44/12 or 3.667).
The annual net influx of carbon to the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels is
about 9.5 billion tonnes (gigatonnes), which is equivalent to about 35 gigatonnes of
carbon dioxide per year. Permafrost releases about 1 Gt C per year, vegetation takes
up about 3 Gt C per year and the ocean takes up about 3 Gt C per year. A little more
than half of the fossil fuel plus permafrost inflows to the atmosphere are taken up by
the oceans and land-based vegetation, with that uptake split roughly 50:50 between
oceans and land.
The stocks of carbon also tell some important stories. First, the stock of carbon in
the atmosphere (in the form of CO2) is almost 900 Gt C. Current reserves of fossil
fuels, coincidentally, also contain about 900 GtC, so if all this fuel were burned, that
would increase carbon dioxide concentrations by about 50% (because half of the
emissions would be taken up by the oceans and land-based vegetation). That would

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 Solving Climate Change

Figure 8.1. The global carbon cycle, stocks and average annual flows, 2011 to 2020. Source: Friedlingstein
et al [14]. Results are averaged 2011 to 2020. Each gigatonne of carbon emitted equals 3.667 Gt CO2 and 2.124
parts per million by volume of CO2 in the atmosphere. Reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

push concentrations to over 600 parts per million (from just over 400 million ppm in
the past decade).
Recall from the discussion in chapter 1 that fossil reserves are the stocks of fuels
that can be extracted at current prices using current technology. As technology
changes, more fossil resources can be converted to reserves, so there will a lot more
fossil fuel available over the next century than just the reserves shown in figure 8.1.
The biggest stock of carbon is dissolved inorganic carbon in the oceans, at 37 000
Gt C, with surface sediments at 1750 Gt C, soils at 1700 Gt C, and permafrost at
1400 Gt C. Even small changes in these stocks would have noticeable effects on
carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, which is why climate scientists are
worried about positive feedbacks as the climate warms (e.g. warming increases
carbon releases from permafrost) but also why carbon removal could make a
significant dent in atmospheric concentrations in carbon dioxide over time.

8.3 Carbon removal is not a silver bullet

Removing gigatonnes of carbon from the atmosphere can have beneficial effects, it is
not an alternative to emissions reductions, it will be slow and costly [5], and it won’t
reverse all the effects of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere [15, 16]. The stored heat
in the oceans somewhat offsets the cooling effect of lower greenhouse gas concen-
trations from carbon removal. In addition, outgassing of CO2 from biospheric sinks
reduces the effectiveness of carbon dioxide removal after reaching zero emissions.

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 Solving Climate Change

As Tokarska and Zickfeld [15] put it carbon dioxide removal may be a helpful
tool in conjunction with other efforts aimed at reducing the rise in atmospheric CO2,
it is not a silver bullet to restore the climate system to a desirable state on timescales
relevant to human civilization once the impacts of climate change turn out to be
‘dangerous’.
Carbon removal is only useful when it is additive to rapid emissions reductions,
and by itself will not solve the climate problem, despite the fond hopes of the fossil
fuel industry. We need rapid emissions reductions AND carbon removal.

8.4 Carbon capture and storage is not the same as carbon removal
We treat technology to remove carbon from exhaust streams of fossil fuel
combustion or industrial process emissions (commonly known as carbon capture
and storage (CCS)) as a way of reducing emissions. In general, eliminating these
emissions is a better way to tackle the problem.
CCS is expensive (in terms of both capital and operating costs) and it doesn’t
reduce emissions to zero, even in the best case. It also requires a large carbon tax or
subsidy to make the economics work for producers, but such economic engineering
generally also helps promote non-fossil energy sources that are much cheaper than
CCS already, so it’s unclear how CCS can compete for fossil energy sources. And the
use of CCS keeps fossil plants operating longer than they would otherwise, so it’s
counterproductive to the goal of ending fossil fuels. CCS may play a useful role in
reducing emissions from industrial processes, such as cement, but even in those cases
process innovations may be more cost effective.

8.5 Carbon removal options

It’s important to treat the uptake of carbon from the atmosphere as distinct from the
storage of that carbon. Some options both take up carbon and store it in one step
(such as afforestation and reforestation) others just take it up (such as direct-air
capture), so storage costs are additional.
There are also different types of storage, with different levels of permanence.
Forest carbon can be released by forest fires, invasive pests, or diseases, which are all
increasingly likely in a warming world. There are similar ‘permanence’ concerns for
ocean uptake—as the ocean warms, more methane and carbon dioxide may be
released. Above ground storage in weathered minerals or underground geological
storage can in principle be more permanent than carbon stored in forests, but the
process of capturing the carbon can be much more expensive and difficult for those
options.
Co-benefits from different carbon dioxide removal options vary a lot, but in
general, nature-based solutions have lots of co-benefits beyond carbon removal,
while more technological options (such as direct-air capture or biomass with carbon
capture) have few or none [17]. Stopping deforestation and protecting oceans from
exploitation have obvious co-benefits, as is often also true for reforestation,
afforestation, improving soil carbon management, enhanced weathering on land,
and expanding mangrove swamps and other marine adjacent ecosystems (also

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 Solving Climate Change

Figure 8.2. Carbon removal options. Source: Wilcox et al [13]. Reproduced under Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

known as ‘blue carbon’). Co-benefits make the economics of those options a lot
better, even if the value of some of them can’t be quantified (such as avoiding
extinction of species).
Precise boundary definitions and accurate accounting are essential for under-
standing costs and potentials for carbon removal [6–8]. Figure 8.2, from Wilcox et al
[13], summarizes the options at a high level, and IPCC [14] performs a more detailed
review. We describe each of them in turn.

8.5.1 Protecting ecosystems

Improving forest management and stopping the destruction of existing forests is the
first priority for many emissions reduction plans, both because the co-benefits of
existing ecosystems are large and because existing forests (and their associated
species) are irreplaceable. Project Drawdown calls this forest protection2, which is an
apt name, and the United Nations and others often use the acronym REDD, an
abbreviation for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation, as well as
REDD+, with the ‘plus’ referring to the role of conservation, sustainable manage-
ment of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries. We
define these task more broadly as stopping destruction of existing forest and marine
ecosystems, since there are many carbon-rich ecosystems beyond forests. Protecting
these natural systems both avoids emissions and preserves the abilities for already
carbon-dense ecosystems to remove even more carbon from our atmosphere.
However, protecting forests and other carbon-rich ecosystems is not a panacea.
The permanence of carbon removed by forests and other nature-based ecosystem

2
https://drawdown.org/solutions/forest-protection

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 Solving Climate Change

solutions is a concern, since a wildfire, hurricane, bark beetle infestation, disease

outbreak, or change in forest management can quickly reverse decades of carbon
conservation, and a warming world makes many of these challenges more likely.
The additionality of forest preservation carbon credits has also often been called into
question, particularly when forest conservation organizations sell carbon offsets
from supposed avoided deforestation on already protected land. Finally, there are
leakage concerns for forest conservation efforts that decrease timber production
from one location without reducing overall timber demand, since reduced wood
supply from one forest may result in higher deforestation pressures in other forests.
These concerns certainly don’t mean that forests shouldn’t be conserved, but it’s
important to understand that the climate impacts of ecosystem conservation aren’t
as straight-forward as calculating all the direct carbon stored in each location, since
nearly every place is connected to our global economy and our changing climate.

8.5.2 Reforestation and afforestation

Reforestation means re-growing forests on previously forested land and afforestation
refers to planting forests on land not previously known to support them [9, 13],
although some researchers lump afforestation and regrowth of existing forests [18]
under reforestation as a shorthand [19]. There are complex factors affecting the
direct emissions benefits of forestry options, but they are increasingly well under-
stood [20]. Full life cycle accounting of project climate benefits should also consider
any potential permanence, additionality, and leakage concerns, as discussed above.

8.5.3 Increased soil carbon sequestration

Strictly speaking, forestry options are part of the larger category of carbon
sequestration in soils, which also includes changes in land-use, but usually carbon
sequestered from land and agricultural practices is treated in their own category,
under soil carbon sequestration. This includes the use of biochar to enhance soil
carbon storage and moisture retention, alongside other changes in agricultural
practices, such as low-till agriculture, crop switching, compost fertilization, and
rotational grazing techniques [13]. While many studies have shown short-term
carbon removal benefits from soil management choices, there are still debates about
the permanence of carbon stored in soils, since interventions may be reversable, and
additionality and leakage concerns are also real.

8.5.4 Blue carbon

Coastal blue carbon refers to carbon sequestered at the interface between ocean and
land, often in mangrove swamps, tidal marshes, kelp forests, and similar ecosystems
[13]. Macreadie et al [21] and Hilmi [22] discuss potential emissions reductions and
carbon removal opportunities from blue carbon, while Macreadie et al [23] discusses
the future of blue carbon science. While coastal blue carbon solutions are often at an
earlier stage than many land-based carbon removal options, some projects are
already showing promising potential for both substantial carbon removal alongside
fisheries and biodiversity co-benefits. There has also been some research on blue

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 Solving Climate Change

carbon removal techniques for the open ocean, including ocean fertilization
techniques designed to create large algae blooms that store carbon when they die
and sink to the ocean floor, although these initial experiments have come with
concerns about ecosystem disruptions and haven’t demonstrated lasting climate
benefits. Other researchers have suggested that enhanced whale conservation could
lead to meaningful carbon storage from millions of multi-ton whale bodies, as well
as enhanced phytoplankton growth from whale-waste fertilization [24].

8.5.5 Enhanced weathering

The uptake of CO2 by mineralizing carbon from weathering rocks is Earth’s largest
natural climate cooling system, but this process typically takes thousands of years to
make a dent in atmospheric CO2. Some researchers and entrepreneurs are now
exploring enhanced weathering options to speed up this CO2 mineralization process,
which generally involves alkaline materials interacting with the carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere to create stable storage [13]. It can occur underground, at the land
surface, or in the ocean. To accelerate this process, alkaline material can be ground
up to increase the reactive surface area. To do this at gigatonne scale would likely
involve significant costs and energy use, but in some cases by-products of existing
mining processes may be applied with minimal additional processing. Given that
carbon is very stable once mineralized, permanence is much less of a concern relative
to other nature-based solutions.

8.5.6 Biomass processing with carbon capture and storage

For the past decade or two, many mitigation scenarios have relied heavily on
biomass energy carbon capture and storage (BECCS) systems to create negative
emissions [25]. Plants recapture the carbon dioxide as they grow and then when
those plants are burned to produce energy, the resulting carbon dioxide is assumed
to be captured and stored [13]. While this technology is potentially feasible, there are
complexities and constraints that can limit its potential [6]. The inefficiencies
inherent to photosynthesis, serious constraints on land and water use, challenges
with biomass collection and processing, and thermodynamic and practical con-
straints on how much carbon dioxide can be re-captured from combusted biomass
will make scaling this technology difficult beyond a certain point, although it may
have uses in niche applications.
Some ventures are now doing away with the energy part of the equation and
instead converting biomass primarily to biochar and bio-oil, the latter of which can
be injected underground for very long-term carbon storage, essentially creating a
reverse oil industry. Such systems are climate positive when waste biomass is used,
such as crop or forestry residues that would otherwise be burned. BECCS and other
engineered biomass carbon capture systems have the potential advantage of more
permanent carbon storage compared to nature-based solutions, but leakage issues
can still arise if biomass is grown on land that would have been used for other
commercial purposes.

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 Solving Climate Change

8.5.7 Direct-air capture with storage

Direct-air capture technology (DAC) extracts carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
and stores it in safe way, either as mineralized rocks or in underground caverns, or in
useful carbon-based products [6–8, 26–31]. DAC technology is in its infancy, but
initial commercial facilities are already operational, and it is clear that massively
scaling up production of machines that extract carbon dioxide would reduce the
capital cost of that equipment substantially (just as mass production always does).
As with enhanced weathering and engineered biomass carbon storage, DAC has the
potential advantage for very long-term carbon storage without additionality
concerns.
The energy use associated with running DAC machines will still be an issue,
however, because carbon dioxide exists in modest concentrations in the atmosphere
and thermodynamics is challenging in such situations. Storing billions of tons of
material per year in solid, liquid, or gaseous form will likely also be a difficult and
costly challenge.
This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t develop DAC technology, just that it will likely
take more than a decade to be important enough to make a measurable difference.
The sooner we get started the sooner we can identify the most promising avenues for
continued development.

8.6 Potentials and costs for carbon removal

How much carbon removal do we need? The short answer is ‘as much as we can
manage’. Making a measurable dent in carbon dioxide concentrations means
removing billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide per year from the atmosphere.
Exactly how much we can capture in practice is a complicated question of
implementation logistics, social complexity, land-use constraints, and technology.
The first step is to get to net zero emissions from the biosphere by stopping
industrial-scale deforestation and any other large-scale disturbance of marine and
terrestrial ecosystems. Scaling other kinds of carbon removal can happen in parallel
but stopping biospheric destruction of all types needs to be the highest priority.
These efforts will have modest direct costs [32, 33] but will yield so many co-benefits
that they should easily pay for themselves from society’s perspective.
That effort by itself can result in at least a gigatonne of carbon dioxide reductions
annually, as per Friedlingstein et al [14], but there are still big uncertainties in net
emissions from land-use changes globally [34]. In addition, that global net number
includes carbon uptake in some places (such as the US), so that stopping industrial-
scale deforestation while maintaining carbon uptake in places that already show net
negative emissions would reduce net global emissions by much more than 1
gigatonne per year.
The Carbon Removal Primer [13] and these other key sources [6–8] summarize the
costs and potentials for a range of carbon removal options, but it’s a frustrating
body of research. The uncertainties are huge and the dependence of most options on
scaling up to achieve cost reductions makes it hard to create firm estimates for the
future.

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 Solving Climate Change

Costs of carbon removal are often expressed in $ per tonne removed. An option
that removes one tonne of CO2 for one dollar (a bargain!) would cost society one
billion dollars for every gigatonne removed. If the cost is one hundred dollars per
tonne, every gigatonne would cost one hundred billion dollars, and ten gigatonnes
per year would cost $1 trillion per year. In a global economy that generates almost
$100 trillion per year that’s probably affordable, but it is still real money, and if there
are ways to remove carbon more cheaply, we’ll need to find them.
Roe et al [35] find ‘transforming the land sector and deploying measures in
agriculture, forestry, wetlands and bioenergy could feasibly and sustainably con-
tribute about … 15 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) per year’ in
global emissions reductions. Such large emissions reductions would require sub-
stantial changes in management of the biosphere but would also make a measurable
difference in carbon dioxide concentrations in the medium to longer term.
Fuss et al [6] find ‘our best estimates for sustainable global NET potentials in
2050 are 0.5–3.6 GtCO2/year for afforestation and reforestation, 0.5–5 GtCO2/year
for BECCS, 0.5–2 GtCO2/year for biochar, 2–4 GtCO2/year for enhanced weath-
ering, 0.5–5 GtCO2/year for DAC, and up to 5 GtCO2/year for soil carbon
sequestration’.
Fuss also estimates low and high costs for each of these options. We combine
Fuss’s low costs with high potentials, reasoning that only if costs were low could
higher potentials be achieved. Figure 8.3 shows those results. We also combine high
costs with low potentials in figure 8.4, reasoning potentials for each option would be
reduced if higher costs prevailed. While a more comprehensive sensitivity analysis
would no doubt yield insights, we think this crude summary is useful at a high level.

Figure 8.3. Costs and potentials of carbon removal options (low costs, high potentials). Source: Fuss et al [6],
combining low cost estimates with high potentials estimates.

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 Solving Climate Change

Figure 8.4. Costs and potentials of carbon removal options (high costs, low potentials). Source: Fuss et al [6],
combining high cost estimates with low potentials estimates.

In the low cost, high potentials case, the options that enhance biospheric carbon
uptake (such as soil carbon sequestration, afforestation, reforestation, and biochar)
are a lot cheaper than $100/t CO2, about 10 Gt CO2/year reduction potentials in
total. In the high cost, low potentials case, the savings are about 3 Gt CO2/year at
costs between $50 and $120/tonne.
Enhanced weathering adds another 2 Gt to 4 Gt CO2/year to the potential
depending on the sensitivity case, at costs between $200 and $50/tonne, respectively.
More technological solutions (BECCS and DACs) offer another 10 Gt CO2/year in
the low cost case (both together) but in the high cost case that potential drops to 1 Gt
CO2/year in total. Estimated costs for these options range between $100 and $300/
tonne. Note that these costs don’t factor in the projected permanence of carbon
storage or the impact of climate change on carbon storage duration, which could
increase costs and decrease potential for some carbon removal technologies.

8.7 Creating or adopting a BAU scenario

Net emissions from land-use vary greatly in different places, so you’ll need to collect
estimates, data, and projections for your chosen geography. In some places, such as
the Amazon, deforestation has accelerated in recent years, so it’s particularly
important to use current data when it’s available.

8.8 Creating the climate-positive scenario

The name of the game is, as always, reducing cumulative emissions and atmospheric
concentrations, so the sooner deforestation can be stopped and carbon removal

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 Solving Climate Change

ramped up, the better off the world will be. For your chosen geography, you’ll need
to begin by creating a concrete plan for stopping industrial-scale deforestation,
which is by far the cheapest option from society’s perspective.
Next, you’ll need an inventory and potentials analysis for carbon removal that
incorporates local resources and constraints. If one doesn’t yet exist, you’ll need to
create one, ideally modeling it on well-constructed analyses for other geographies.
Project Drawdown is a great place to start, and they have developed detailed plans
for many different carbon removal options (see the further reading below for the
link). For large countries, total potentials should be at or close to the gigatonne per
year scale, but countries with smaller land areas will have smaller potentials.

8.9 Chapter conclusions

Carbon removal is the only way to reduce the damage from historical carbon
dioxide emissions, which otherwise would warm the Earth for centuries to millennia.
Reducing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere will take unprecedented
effort, will sometimes be expensive, and will take many years to scale up. That
means we need to get started immediately.
The most promising options in the near term are those that enhance the ability of
land-based and marine ecosystems to remove carbon and store it. Many of these
options have significant co-benefits, which makes their economics more attractive
than more technological options for carbon removal, but many nature-based
options also have substantial challenges with additionality, permanence, and
leakage that may become worse in a warmer world.
Technological carbon removal options, such as direct-air capture, may be able to
contribute significant carbon removal by mid-century, but are not likely to be
relevant for climate-positive plans targeting the next decade. Some technological
options may reach meaningful scale sooner, particularly hybrid carbon removal
systems that combine nature-based carbon capture with engineered long-term
carbon storage. We need to start developing and deploying all promising nature-
based, technological, and hybrid options now, as we will likely need to scale a wide
portfolio of carbon removal solutions to reach a climate-positive future.

Further reading
Canadell J G and Raupach M R 2008 Managing forests for climate change
mitigation Science 320 1456–7 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1155458.
Excellent high level summary of potential forest contributions to carbon removal.
Cook-Patton S C et al 2020 Mapping carbon accumulation potential from global
natural forest regrowth Nature 585 545–50 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-
2686-x. Forest regrowth is one of the most cost-effective options for carbon
removal, with lots of co-benefits.
Hausfather Z and Flegal J 2022 We need to draw down carbon—not just stop
emitting it MIT Technol. Rev. 5 July https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/07/
05/1055322/we-need-to-draw-down-carbon-not-just-stop-emitting-it/. This summary

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 Solving Climate Change

article addresses the mistaken belief, commonly held in the sustainability community,
that carbon removal is an excuse for delaying rapid direct emissions reductions.
Hilmi N, Chami R, Sutherland M D, Hall-Spencer J M, Lebleu L, Benitez M B and
Levin L A 2021 The role of blue carbon in climate change mitigation and carbon
stock conservation Frontiers Clim. 3 https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2021.710546.
Blue carbon is stored in ecosystems at the boundary of ocean and land, it is of
increasing interest to researchers.
IPCC 2021 Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of
Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change V Masson-Delmotte et al (ed) (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press) https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-
group-i/, in particular chapter 5: Global carbon and other biogeochemical cycles
and feedbacks. This chapter of the latest IPCC report on the science of climate
change summarizes the key issues and available data in a comprehensive way.
Macreadie P I, Costa M D P, Atwood T B, Friess D A, Kelleway J J, Kennedy H,
Lovelock C E, Serrano O and Duarte C M 2021 Blue carbon as a natural climate
solution Nat. Rev. Earth Environ. 2 826–39 https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-021-
00224-1. More on the potential for carbon reduction at the ocean/land interface.
Matthews H D, Zickfeld K, Dickau M, MacIsaac A J, Mathesius S,
Nzotungicimpaye C-M and Luers A 2022 Temporary nature-based carbon
removal can lower peak warming in a well-below 2 °C scenario Commun.
Earth Environ. 3 65 https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-022-00391-z. This study
explores the effect of early nature-based carbon removal that is subsequently
reversed in the second half of the twenty-first century.
National Research Council 2015 Climate Intervention: Carbon Dioxide Removal and
Reliable Sequestration (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press) https://
doi.org/10.17226/18805. Important summary of CDR and sequestration, but a bit
dated now.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2019 Negative
Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration: A Research Agenda
(Washington, DC: The National Academies Press) https://doi.org/10.17226/
25259. A useful summary of the most important research topics on negative
emissions.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2021 A Research
Strategy for Ocean-based Carbon Dioxide Removal and Sequestration
(Washington, DC: The National Academies Press) https://doi.org/10.17226/
26278. A useful source on current research topics for ocean-based CDR.
Project Drawdown analysis contains many options for carbon removal: https://
www.drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions.
Tokarska K B and Zickfeld K 2015 The effectiveness of net negative carbon dioxide
emissions in reversing anthropogenic climate change Environ. Res. Lett. 10
094013 https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/10/9/094013. This study models the

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temperature and other effects of carbon removal over time, showing the complex
interactions between carbon sources and sinks as well as heat flows from the
ocean.
Wilcox J, Kolosz B and Freeman J (ed) 2021 Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR)
Primer https://cdrprimer.org/. A treasure drove of clear thinking and data on
carbon removal, built on the expertise of dozens of researchers.

References
[1] Goldstein-Rose S 2020 The 100% Solution: A Plan For Solving Climate Change (New York:
Melville House)
[2] Matthews H D and Caldeira K 2008 Stabilizing climate requires near-zero emissions
Geophys. Res. Lett. 35 L04705
[3] Wilcox J, Kolosz B and Freeman J (ed) 2021 Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) Primer
(Burnaby, BC: Hemlock Printers) https://cdrprimer.org/
[4] Grübler A et al 2018 A low energy demand scenario for meeting the 1.5 °C target and
sustainable development goals without negative emission technologies Nat. Energy 3 515–27
[5] Horton H 2022 Greenhouse gas removal ‘not a silver bullet to achieve net zero’: UK
scientists say carbon capture is ‘hard and expensive’ and focus must be on reducing emissions
Guardian 30 May https://theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/30/greenhouse-gas-
removal-not-a-silver-bullet-to-achieve-net-zero?CMP=share_btn_tw
[6] Fuss S et al 2018 Negative emissions—part 2: costs, potentials and side effects Environ. Res.
Lett. 13 063002
[7] Minx J C et al 2018 Negative emissions—part 1: research landscape and synthesis Environ.
Res. Lett. 13 063001
[8] Nemet et al 2018 Negative emissions—part 3: innovation and upscaling Environ. Res. Lett.
13 063003
[9] Arora V K and Montenegro A 2011 Small temperature benefits provided by realistic
afforestation efforts Nat. Geosci. 4 514–8
[10] Smith P et al 2016 Biophysical and economic limits to negative CO2 emissions Nat. Clim.
Change 6 42–50
[11] Hausfather Z and Flegal J 2022 We need to draw down carbon—not just stop emitting it
MIT Technol. Rev. 5 July https://technologyreview.com/2022/07/05/1055322/we-need-to-
draw-down-carbon-not-just-stop-emitting-it/
[12] Harvey F 2022 We cannot adapt our way out of climate crisis, warns leading scientist
Guardian 1 June https://theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/01/we-cannot-adapt-our-
way-out-of-climate-crisis-warns-leading-scientist?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
[13] Friedlingstein P et al 2022 Global carbon budget 2021 Earth Syst. Sci. Data. 14 1917–2005
[14] Tokarska K B and Zickfeld K 2015 The effectiveness of net negative carbon dioxide
emissions in reversing anthropogenic climate change Environ. Res. Lett. 10 094013
[15] Solomon S, Plattner G-K, Knutti R and Friedlingstein P 2009 Irreversible climate change
due to carbon dioxide emissions Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. 106 1704–9
[16] Fuss S et al 2018 Negative emissions—part 2: costs, potentials and side effects Environ. Res.
Lett. 13 063002
[17] Arora V K and Montenegro A 2011 Small temperature benefits provided by realistic
afforestation efforts Nat. Geosci. 4 514–8

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 Solving Climate Change

[18] Cook-Patton S C et al 2020 Mapping carbon accumulation potential from global natural
forest regrowth Nature 585 545–50
[19] Canadell J G and Raupach M R 2008 Managing forests for climate change mitigation
Science 320 1456–7
[20] Jackson R B et al 2008 Protecting climate with forests Environ. Res. Lett. 3 044006
[21] Macreadie P I et al 2021 Blue carbon as a natural climate solution Nat. Rev. Earth Environ. 2
826–39
[22] Hilmi N, Chami R, Sutherland M D, Hall-Spencer J M, Lebleu L, Benitez M B and Levin L
A 2021 The role of blue carbon in climate change mitigation and carbon stock conservation
Frontiers Clim. 3 710546
[23] Macreadie P I et al 2019 The future of blue carbon science Nat. Commun. 10 3998
[24] Yeo S 2021 How whales help cool the Earth BBC Future 20 January https://bbc.com/future/
article/20210119-why-saving-whales-can-help-fight-climate-change
[25] Köberle A C 2019 The value of BECCS in IAMs: a review Curr. Sust./Renew. Energy Rep. 6
107–15
[26] Keith D W, Holmes G, St Angelo D and Heidel K 2018 A process for capturing CO2 from
the atmosphere Joule 2 1573–94
[27] APS 2011 Direct Air Capture of CO2 with Chemicals: A Technology Assessment for the APS
Panel on Public Affairs (Washington, DC: American Physical Society) https://aps.org/policy/
reports/assessments/upload/dac2011.pdf
[28] Sanz-Pérez E S, Murdock C R, Didas S A and Jones C W 2016 Direct capture of CO2 from
ambient air Chem. Rev 116 11840–76
[29] Buck H J 2020 Should carbon removal be treated as waste management? Lessons from the
cultural history of waste Interf. Focus 10 20200010
[30] Grant N, Hawkes A, Mittal S and Gambhir A 2021 The policy implications of an uncertain
carbon dioxide removal potential Joule 5 2593–605
[31] Madhu K, Pauliuk S, Dhathri S and Creutzig F 2021 Understanding environmental trade-
offs and resource demand of direct air capture technologies through comparative life-cycle
assessment Nat. Energy 6 1035–44
[32] Grieg-Gran M 2006 The Cost of Avoiding Deforestation: Report Prepared for the Stern
Review of the Economics of Climate Change (London: International Institute for
Environment and Development) https://cbd.int/financial/finplanning/g-costdeforestion.pdf
[33] Busch J and Engelmann J 2017 Cost-effectiveness of reducing emissions from tropical
deforestation, 2016–2050 Environ. Res. Lett. 13 015001
[34] Popp A et al 2017 Land-use futures in the shared socio-economic pathways Global Environ.
Change 42 331–45
[35] Roe S et al 2019 Contribution of the land sector to a 1.5 °C world Nat. Clim. Change 9
817–28

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 IOP Publishing

Solving Climate Change

A guide for learners and leaders
Jonathan Koomey and Ian Monroe

Chapter 9
Align incentives

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move
the world.
—Archimedes

Chapter overview

• Aligning incentives enables rapid societal change.

• By incentives we mean any action, policy, program, or institutional change that
helps achieve climate positivity quickly (it’s more than just ‘getting prices right’).
• We need to make it easy for people and institutions to make climate-positive choices.
• We need to change the game so that the economic, legal, and social systems all
support rapid movement toward climate stability.
• We need to fix the rules so that old and outmoded practices don’t impede the
transition to zero emissions.
• Many conventional analyses erroneously assume that incentives won’t change, or
won’t change enough, to reach zero emissions quickly. Instead, we can choose to
change incentives and make a climate-positive world a reality, but it’s up to us.
Those incentives won’t change on their own.
• The next chapter, ‘Mobilizing money’, zooms in on money-related incentives like
pricing pollution, subsidizing the transition, removing fossil money from politics, and
moving money from planned fossil investments into climate-positive investments.

9.1 Introduction
The global economy is now powered mostly by fossil fuels, and that’s been true for
more than a century. The fossil fuel industry is the most powerful in human history,

doi:10.1088/978-0-7503-4032-8ch9 9-1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

 Solving Climate Change

with more than $5 trillion US in revenues in 2022 (see appendix F for details) and it
has shaped countless tax, regulatory, and other policies in its favor at all levels of
government. We must level the playing field by aligning broader societal incentives
with the goal of creating a climate-positive world. We also need to combat fossil-
funded corruption everywhere it exists.
Griffith [1] correctly points to outmoded regulations as a major impediment to
change, but the problem is even bigger than that. It also means more than just
putting a price on carbon dioxide emissions. Making carbon polluters pay would be
a salutary step, but it’s not the end of the story, as we discuss in more detail in our
next chapter [2].
We need to make it easy for people and institutions to move to zero emissions
quickly, and we use the broad term ‘incentives’ to describe any action, policy,
program, or institutional change that helps achieve that goal. There are many
effective ways to change incentives and promote the transition to net zero emissions,
and we should use them all.
Aligning incentives can mean everything from maximizing convenience of climate
solutions to taxing pollution, imposing mandates, reorganizing subsidies, imposing
legal liability on polluters, changing property rights, exposing and prosecuting
corruption, enhancing social pressure to shift from polluting choices, and fixing
outmoded rules, practices, and regulations. We’ll likely to do all of this and more to
properly align incentives with the goal of creating a climate-positive planet.
This chapter reviews these and other important ways to re-design non-financial,
focusing on making it easy, changing the game, and fixing the rules. The next
chapter, ‘Mobilizing money’, focuses on those incentives that are money related.

9.2 Making it easy

Most folks don’t have time in their busy lives to worry about climate on a regular
basis, so we need to make it easy for them to make the right choices. Time and
attention have value and good solutions embrace that reality, otherwise adoption
will be slower than we want.
It’s hard to value time in our personal lives but we all know it is limited, in the
near term by life’s complexity and ultimately by our finite lifespan. That’s true for
businesses too, whose biggest cost is usually payroll (people’s time as an expense).
Readily available climate solutions that save time AND reduce pollution can
practically sell themselves.

9.2.1 Make climate-friendly options the most convenient

Governments and businesses should promote climate-friendly options, make them
readily available, and make them more convenient than the fossil fueled options they
displace. The charging network for all electric vehicles (EVs) needs to be as widely
available and as reliable as the current Tesla supercharger network, for example. In
the early stages of adoption, EVs should be given preferential registration fees and
access to high occupancy vehicle lanes, with these preferences phasing out once
target adoption levels are achieved.

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9.2.2 Make climate action normal good behavior

Public service campaigns on littering, seatbelts, drunk driving, and distracted driving
have all driven changes in public perceptions of what ‘good behavior’ is, and we
need similar efforts to make responsible climate choices ‘the right thing to do’ [3].
Governments can also publicize successful emission reductions efforts. Individuals
can state their social expectations about climate action and share their successes.
Companies and investors can reinforce those norms by rewarding employees who
help reach climate goals and publicizing climate leadership by their employees. Non-
profits can help individuals, companies, and communities accomplish these goals.

9.2.3 Make the invisible visible

New technology and analysis tools can help highlight how to ‘do the right thing’, as
well as which climate choices matter most. For example, recent analysis of total life-
cycle emissions of oil and gas has demonstrated significant variation in emissions
depending on where these fuels are found, how they are extracted, how they are
processed, and how they are used [4–6]. Remote sensing of methane emissions from
fossil fuel production has enabled more accurate estimates of these emissions [7, 8],
and recent developments in information technology portend much wider use of
mobile sensors and communication equipment for tracking real time emissions [9].
Governments can mandate standardized disclosure of full scope 1–3 greenhouse
gas emissions for companies, as well as for individual products, services, and
investments, much like most governments now require food labels to include calorie
counts and nutrient contents. Standardization can prevent ‘greenwashing’ and
ensure that climate action results in real emissions reductions. Companies can
participate in creating those disclosure requirements and disseminating those
disclosures for their own operations, although pollution disclosures should always
be verified by governments or independent third-party auditors.
Combining life-cycle climate footprint data with innovative apps and other
information technology tools can help individuals, businesses and other organiza-
tions make more climate-friendly choices, as well as track the cumulative climate
impacts of their own climate choices. The Oroeco app (of which Ian was a co-
creator) and the UC Berkeley CoolClimate Network tools pioneered many
techniques for ‘gamifying’ personal and business climate footprints more than a
decade ago, and now many similar tools help improve climate choices by combining
life-cycle climate data with real and virtual rewards.
Banks and credit card companies have also started to offer automated assess-
ments of individual climate footprints based on financial transaction data, and some
also offer the option to automatically offset the climate impacts of purchases. In
addition, many individual retailers and consumer portals are adding climate data to
point-of-sale decisions, from restaurants adding climate footprints to food items to
Google adding CO2e calculations to airline flights. As regulations such as France’s
Climate and Resilience Law increasingly make climate footprint data both stand-
ardized and required, innovative technologies will likely do even more to nudge
choices towards climate positivity.

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9.2.4 Tighten regulations, mandate solutions, ban polluting technologies

Most nations have regulations on the energy efficiency and emissions from energy-
using equipment while states and localities have regulations affecting local building
design and construction. These regulations are helpful in removing the least efficient
and most polluting products and structures from the market. One of their benefits is
that they eliminate transaction and hassle costs from that choice because consumers
can no longer purchase the less efficient or more polluting devices. Another is that
such regulations are always benefit–cost tested, and their savings are virtually always
many times greater than their costs to society1.
Each country creates its own processes to update these standards, and all need to
re-examine them to speed up these updates. They are an important part of making it
easy.
More recently, countries, states, and localities have been passing laws to phase
out sales of inefficient incandescent light bulbs and fossil fuel-fired equipment. Other
laws mandate the purchase of electrified equipment, most importantly for vehicles
and natural gas in homes and businesses.
Many cities are now phasing in bans on natural gas connections for buildings
while many countries are phasing in bans on purchasing internal combustion
vehicles. Companies and communities can also move faster than governments by
enacting their own policies that mandate climate solutions and ban polluting
technologies, as many are now doing with internal mandates for 100% renewable
energy and 100% ‘fossil free’ investment portfolio targets. Regulations and private
policies move the market towards lower emissions more rapidly than would happen
otherwise.

9.3 Changing the game

System change is the name of the game. The choices of individuals (particularly
wealthy ones with large carbon footprints) can be helpful for cutting emissions, but it
is even more important to change the system in which people make those choices,
because that enables more rapid changes than would the actions of individuals on
their own.

9.3.1 Make a stable climate a core right and principle

The continued orderly development of human civilization requires a stable climate,
and that means getting to zero emissions as quickly as possible. Stating this
assumption clearly should be the first step towards ‘changing the game’ and can
help alter how policy makers, investors, companies, and consumers discuss this
issue.
The United Nations has already voted to define a ‘clean, healthy, and sustainable’
environment as a human right [10, 11], which implies a stable climate. Constitutions

1
Here is a recent example: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/us-epa-proposing-rules-cut-
emissions-heavy-trucks-2022-03-07/.

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 Solving Climate Change

of national governments should do the same. Mission statements for companies and
non-governmental organizations should state their goal of getting to zero emissions
as soon as possible. Trade agreements should prioritize rapid emissions reductions
and remove impediments to emissions reductions embedded in such agreements [12].
Countries should sign on to the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty and enshrine
the goal of keeping fossil fuels in the ground [13–16].
In addition, anyone can make climate action a top priority without waiting for
national and international policy makers. Companies and other organizations can
make achieving climate positivity a core part of their operating missions, and
individual households and communities can integrate climate action into every
decision they make.

9.3.2 Restructure property rights

Government defines property rights [17] and can choose how these will be structured
and enforced [18], which can strongly affect the incentives individuals and institu-
tions have to protect the commons and reduce emissions [19]. Many of these choices
are in some ways arbitrary, which means we can make choices that favor long-term
sustainability, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
For example, the property rights associated with a battery for many years
transferred fully from the manufacturer to the purchaser of that battery. In recent
times, as society has become more aware of the toxic effects of chemicals in
groundwater, some countries (notably those in Europe) have moved towards a
modification of property rights, under the rubric of ‘extended producer responsi-
bility’. The manufacturer is still responsible for the costs of safely recycling that
battery, even after it is sold to the customer.
This change is not much different from property rights for land in the US, where
rights for mining, water, wind generation, and air (in the sense of the right to fly
above land) can be split off and sold separately, depending on the laws for the state
in which the property resides. Redefining property rights is a powerful but often
neglected tool for changing incentives to achieve a climate-positive society (and it is
yet another case where economic models, which almost always assume fixed
consumer preferences and property rights, underestimate the possible speed and
scope of change towards zero emissions).

9.3.3 Harness learning effects, economies of scale, and spillovers

Most climate-positive products start out as niche products that have low production
volumes and high markups. Minimum standards, tax credits, government purchas-
ing, and corporate purchasing can help move niche products to become more widely
available, reducing their prices to everyone (at the same time as economies of scale,
learning effects, and network externalities reduce costs still further). We’ve seen such
‘spillover effects’ when first Germany and then China aggressively promoted
purchasing and development of solar photovoltaics [20], and such policies can
help move society more rapidly towards zero emissions.

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 Solving Climate Change

9.3.4 Harness social incentives

Shaming is counterproductive [21], but arguing in a principled and informed way
that wealthy people should change their behavior is a terrific idea. The wealthy have
a disproportionate effect on emissions and also have the money and influence to
effect big changes. The wealthy are often thought leaders and can set an example for
others to follow, validating the idea that climate is a problem worth solving.
Social influences can have dramatic effects on people’s behavior, but whether they
result in lasting change is still a subject of debate and varies a great deal from one
person to the next [22]. One powerful tool is comparing individual energy use and
emissions with those of peers and neighbors, either by demographics2 or location
[23]. Technology tools that visualize and gamify climate impacts can make climate
action socially rewarding, and thoughtfully designed climate tracking and gamifi-
cation tools can foster virtuous cycles of improvement, particularly when social
elements are combined with leaderboards and reward systems that encourage
collaboration and competition to reach climate targets.

9.4 Fixing the rules

The rules of most modern economies were set during an era of fossil fuel abundance,
but they need to be rewritten to reflect the need to get to zero emissions as soon as
possible.

9.4.1 Rationalize regulations

Fixing existing regulations should be a high priority to facilitate the transition to
zero emissions. Griffith [24] describes the shocking statistic that rooftop solar costs
one-third as much in Australia as it does in the US (others [24] say it is more than a
factor of two). As far as we know, the laws of physics are the same in both Sydney
and San Francisco, and solar panels are sold in a global market, so the difference is
in the regulatory regime that makes installation of US solar systems much more
expensive [24]. For example, permitting is a laborious process that can take weeks or
months in the US, but if it were standardized and streamlined, need not take more
than a day. Building and electrical codes also need to be modernized to reflect
changing technologies, and tariffs on solar panels and other clean energy technol-
ogies should be eliminated.
Simply mandating solar panels for new homes, as California has done, is another
way to get rid of these regulatory costs and make residential solar really cheap [25].
The inspector must come through the building site at regular intervals anyway, the
walls are open, the electrician is on site, and the roof can be constructed with solar
panels in mind from the very beginning. The mandate also expands the market for
solar installations and pushes costs down through learning effects. It is yet another
example of how mandates remove transaction and hassle costs from the equation
and drive societal costs down.

2
https://coolclimate.org/calculator

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The design of the US Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards (CAFE)

originally had one fleet average efficiency standard for cars and a lower one for light
trucks [26]. This policy created the perverse incentive for the auto manufacturers to
redefine more and more vehicles as bigger and heavier light trucks, thus partly
circumventing the intent of the standards of increasing efficiency over time. While
this policy has improved over time, such perverse incentives are pervasive.
In Europe, the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) allows energy companies to sue
governments for threatening their profits. The treaty was originally established to
compensate companies for property appropriated by treaty signatories, but now it is
being weaponized by the fossil fuel industry to fight climate action [27–29].
Unfortunately, trade and investment agreements like this one are binding on
countries, but emissions reduction agreements (such as the Paris Agreement)
technically are not. This structural asymmetry is one that needs to be fixed but
the more urgent need is to prevent the ECT from being used to hamper European
climate action.
Lead in aviation gasoline (for small planes) is still allowed in the US, even though
lead’s terrible health effects have long been known [30] and lead has been phased out
of all other fuels. Fortunately, the US Environmental Protection Agency plans on
releasing an Endangerment Finding on lead in aviation gasoline in 2022, which is the
first step towards banning it, and that will create a strong incentive to electrify
general aviation3.
As Griffith points out, fixing inefficient regulations such as these should be a high
priority when kickstarting the transition to zero emissions. It is not just about
writing new laws, it is also about removing obsolete ones.
In addition, we need to stop the fossil fuel industry and the ‘not in my back yard’
(NIMBY) movement from gumming up the regulatory process, which is one of their
preferred strategies for what the futurist Alex Steffen correctly calls ‘predatory
delay’. One prominent recent example in the US relates to the fossil fuel industry
influencing building code revisions to inhibit electrification [31], but there no doubt
are many others.
The US in particular needs to build things faster and prevent people and
industries from slowing things down for no good reason other than their own
perceived self-interest or whim, and poorly designed bureaucratic systems in the US
make many types of climate solution infrastructure substantially more expensive
relative to Europe and Asia [32]. Decarbonizing the electricity grid and getting to
zero emissions will require us to build a lot of new equipment, including a vastly
expanded electricity transmission network. We need to change the rules so we can
get that done quickly and cheaply.

9.4.2 Change laws, rules, and regulations

The legal system has been rigged by the fossil fuel industry for decades in both subtle
and not-so-subtle ways. For example, bidding in a federal auction for oil and gas

3
https://www.epa.gov/regulations-emissions-vehicles-and-engines/regulations-lead-emissions-aircraft

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drilling rights is illegal if you want to set that land aside and not develop it. The
activist Tim DeChristopher spent two years in prison after bidding on 22,500 acres
in a Bureau of Land Management auction in 2008 with no intent to produce fossil
fuels [33]. But why shouldn’t we allow people and institutions to bid on fossil fuel
leases if they want to keep those fuels in the ground? Isn’t that just private actors
expressing their preferences using their wealth as they see fit in an ostensibly free
market?
The bonding requirements for oil and gas wells are far too low to pay for clean-up
after the wells stop producing [34–37]. In recent years, many fossil fuel companies
declared bankruptcy, leaving orphaned wells for others to clean up, costing US
taxpayers billions [36, 38]. The industry captured profits from producing oil and gas
from those wells, then skipped town and forced others to pay to clean them up. It’s
long past time for that loophole to be fixed.
Other structural issues relate to the incentives of incumbent actors (such as fossil
fuel companies and the utility industry) to resist encroachment on their core
businesses. For example, fossil fuel industries block efforts to ban natural gas in
buildings and electric utilities frequently fight against rooftop solar and energy
storage. One fix to this overarching issue relates to incentives and market structure
(making the zero emissions path more profitable), another to removing money from
politics and ending the revolving door of influence (which we discuss more in our
next chapter). Stronger laws prohibiting policy makers from working for industry
(and vice versa) would also be helpful here.
While not every chemical release is related to climate change, many chemicals are
derived from fossil fuels. The current lax regulation of chemicals (and plastics in
particular) reflects broader regulatory dysfunction that also affects climate [39] and
the profitability of fossil fuel refineries. Hormone-disrupting chemicals have become
widespread and are beginning to affect the fertility and development of organisms in
a measurable way [40, 41]. Tiny microplastic particles can circle the globe in our
oceans and atmosphere. Plastics are now found throughout the food chain in every
ecosystem, even in Antarctica, wreaking havoc with wildlife and in some cases
affecting human health [42].
Most countries allow companies to use whatever chemical they please, and only
consider regulations later if obvious problems emerge [42], often relying on imperfect
analogues when these chemicals are analyzed at all [43]. We need to make companies
demonstrate safety before releasing a chemical or a plastic into the environment, just
as drug manufacturers must do for pharmaceuticals [44, 45]. Such requirements are
particularly important for rapidly growing activities with currently unknown impacts
such as rocket launches [46], but many more mundane products have broad effects on
the environment. We will need legally binding international agreements to tackle this
problem, such as the recent agreement on plastic pollution [47].

9.4.3 Make polluters liable for climate damages

The number and scope of legal challenges attempting to hold fossil fuel companies
accountable for creating climate change in the first place have increased substantially

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 Solving Climate Change

in the past decade [48–51]. The fossil fuel industry has known since the 1950s that
climate change driven by fossil fuel combustion would create major risks for society
and that their products were causing it [52, 53], but they downplayed the risks, funded
fake experts, and worked in myriad ways to delay action to reduce emissions [54–58].
This area of law is evolving rapidly, but it’s fair to say that fossil fuel companies will
face increasing legal pressure and may face liability for lying about climate change for
decades, as well as some degree of financial or even criminal liability for climate-
related disasters, such as heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods, and other extreme
events [59]. COP 27’s focus on creating a “Loss and Damage Fund” is yet another
expression of increasing interest in this issue. Governments should hasten this process
by clearly designating legal liabilities for large climate polluters, while empowering
regulators, non-profits, and citizen groups to win lawsuits for climate damages.

9.4.4 Make companies liable for failure to disclose and prepare for climate risks
Recently, legal actions against companies for failing to prepare for climate change have
created a real business risk for energy companies [60]. Most investors now understand
that climate change is real and dangerous for many types of businesses, and financial
regulators are increasingly requiring companies to report material climate risks in
standardized reporting to investors. Companies that fail to report and prepare for
climate risks will increasingly find themselves liable to regulators and investors for
climate-related damages. The more that market regulators require standardized climate
risk and preparation disclosures, the greater the incentives for forward-thinking
companies to better respond to climate risks to steer clear of legal liabilities.

9.5 Building your scenarios

The most important part of the scenario-building process is generating plausible and
evocative stories and supporting them with data, analysis, and exhaustive docu-
mentation [61, 62]. Re-designing societal incentives and detailing the required
changes will teach you important lessons about the constraints and opportunities
associated with creating a climate-positive world.

9.5.1 Creating or adopting a business-as-usual scenario

Most business-as-usual (BAU) scenarios assume little change in the next few
decades, but there still may be some obvious drivers to tweak. When a fuel looks
likely to be phased out anyway because of technological and regulatory trends
already in motion (such as lead in aviation gas, for example) it makes sense to
incorporate that change into your current trends continued case. A policy that has
been implemented but is in its early stages should also be included in your BAU
scenario as an adjustment to a scenario that doesn’t yet include it.

9.5.2 Creating the climate-positive scenario

Changing incentives is a powerful lever for speeding up climate action. We explored
many possible changes to existing incentives above, but only some will apply to your

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chosen geography. Your base-year emissions inventory and the associated projec-
tion into the future is the first place to start in prioritizing policy action, because it
allows you to focus first on what’s important.
The political environment of the state or country you are analyzing also matters.
If a policy has already been tried but been reversed in that geography, other options
might be more appealing. The key is to create and argue for a plausible mix of
changes in existing incentives that have individually in other places or at other times
been powerful enough to shift emissions significantly, combining them in ways that
are internally consistent and likely to yield the desired results.
In our class we don’t require students to assess all the costs of the policy and
programs they propose, because time is short, but ideally a national plan would
attempt such cost accounting. Koomey [62] contains a plan with an exemplary level
of detail for the US building sector, so that’s a good place to start (the data are now
old but it’s a great example of how to create detailed and well-documented
intervention scenarios).
The best you can do is argue from historical program experience and document
your analysis exhaustively. Then ‘iterative risk management’ kicks in and the plan
would be adjusted over time to reflect how well each program or policy is working,
doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

9.6 Chapter conclusions

Changing incentives can enable rapid shifts towards climate positivity. Conversely,
not aligning incentives with our climate goals will ensure that we won’t reach zero
emissions in time to avoid the worse effects of climate change.
Many models and policy studies convey the mistaken impression that we can’t
solve the climate problem quickly enough, but that erroneous result often follows
from the assumption that we won’t change existing incentives. If we modify
incentives in the right way and to the right degree, society can and will change
quickly, much like the world responded to (and recovered from) World War II.

Further reading
Axelrod R S and VanDeveer S D (ed) 2019 The Global Environment: Institutions,
Law, and Policy (Washington, DC: CQ Press). This compilation gives a
comprehensive view on global environmental issues from a wide range of experts.
Cullenward D and Victor D G 2020 Making Climate Policy Work (New York: Polity
Press). A critical look at market-based instruments for solving the climate problem.
Edwards L and Cox S 2020 Cap and adapt: failsafe policy for the climate emergency
Solutions 1 September https://thesolutionsjournal.com/2020/09/01/cap-and-adapt-
failsafe-policy-for-the-climate-emergency/. A policy framework for enabling the
transition to zero emissions.
Harvey H, Orvis R and Rissman J 2018 Designing Climate Solutions: A Policy Guide
for Low-Carbon Energy (Washington, DC: Island). Useful comprehensive sum-
mary of policy solutions for the energy sector.

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 Solving Climate Change

Moore F C, Lacasse K, Mach K J, Shin Y A, Gross L J and Beckage B 2022

Determinants of emissions pathways in the coupled climate–social system Nature
603 103–11 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04423-8. A sophisticated recent
must-read analysis of key drivers of change related to emissions.
Vig N J, Kraft M E and Rabe B G (ed) 2021 Environmental Policy: New Directions
for the Twenty-First Century (Washington, DC: CQ Press). Now in its eleventh
edition, this classic book summarizes the history and current status of US
environmental policy.

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 IOP Publishing

Solving Climate Change

A guide for learners and leaders
Jonathan Koomey and Ian Monroe

Chapter 10
Mobilize money

Just as we argued in the 1980s that those who conducted business with apartheid
South Africa were aiding and abetting an immoral system, we can say that
nobody should profit from the rising temperatures, seas, and human suffering
caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
—Desmond Tutu1

Chapter overview

• The world now spends more than $20 trillion US every year on fossil fuels,
related infrastructure, and associated environmental costs.
• Re-allocating these costs and expenditures towards climate mitigation infra-
structure will be more than enough to solve the problem.
• Re-allocating these capital flows will save money over time in direct cost terms,
as well as reduce and eventually eliminate at least $5 trillion US per year in
human health, environmental damage, and climate risks.
• Policies (such as pricing pollution, subsidizing solutions, mandates, and bans)
can ensure that climate-positive technologies are convenient and always cheaper
to buy and maintain than the polluting technologies they replace.
• Scaling up carbon removal technologies to return our climate to a stable state
will require new funding mechanisms (perhaps even a new global currency) but
financial and policy innovations point to some possible paths forward.
• The world will also need to allocate much more funding to climate adaptation
and resilience, as well as reparations for climate damages. Such funding should
be allocated based on financial need and social equity, and the largest climate
polluters should be the most responsible for paying to alleviate climate damages.

1
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/21/desmond-tutu-climate-change-is-the-global-enemy

doi:10.1088/978-0-7503-4032-8ch10 10-1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

 Solving Climate Change

• Ending the corrupting role of climate-polluter money in politics is essential, as is

rooting out myriad sources of perverse financial incentives and market
distortions.
• The political challenges of re-allocating capital are not trivial, but the end goal is
a climate-positive world that is simply better than the one it replaces, with net
negative emissions, lower total costs, less economic volatility, and many other co-
benefits for society that will improve the quality of life for nearly everyone.

10.1 Introduction
Solving climate change ultimately requires shifting trillions of dollars every year into
climate-positive alternatives. Climate spending is mostly investing, since the upfront
capital costs of renewable energy, electrification, and efficiency technologies more than
pay for themselves over time with savings from substantially lower operating costs.
Most climate solution spending also leads to substantial co-benefits, from dramatically
improved air and water quality to avoided damages from direct and indirect climate risks.
When we properly tally the costs and benefits from society’s perspective, as we should, it
becomes clear that solving climate change will lead to net financial benefits for most
people around the world. This chapter gives context related to financial incentives,
presents the benefits and pitfalls of pricing pollution, discusses incentives to promote
technology adoption and innovation, and explains the different ways capital can and
should be re-allocated to facilitate the transition to a climate-positive world.

10.2 Context
This section gives overall context for the discussion in this chapter, quantifying rough
magnitudes of monetary flows and presenting key issues to consider in analyzing how
to use financial incentives of all sorts to create a climate-positive world.

10.2.1 How much money needs to shift into climate solutions?

According to the IPCC’s latest mitigation analysis, the world should invest an
additional $3.2 trillion per year on average in zero-emissions technologies between
now and 2030 to start the world on the path to zero emissions [1]. Figure 10.1 shows
two views of those investments, first split by sector (energy efficiency, transportation,
electricity, and agriculture, forestry, and land-use) and the other by major world
region (developed versus developing countries). In contrast, annual investment in
zero-emissions technologies has only averaged around $600 billion since 2017 [2], as
shown in figure 10.2.
This seven-fold gap between what’s needed and what’s now being deployed
demonstrates the scale of the climate financing challenge we face. These large
funding gaps exist in every part of the world, and for every type of zero-emissions
technology researched by IPCC [1].
In addition to mitigation, the world must also start investing billions (and likely
trillions) of dollars per year in carbon direct removal (CDR) technologies. While

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 Solving Climate Change

Figure 10.1. Average annual incremental mitigation investment requirements for climate stabilization through
2030. Source: Figure 15.4 in IPCC [1] (calculated as the average of low and high values by category, then
subtracting out current expenditures by category).

Figure 10.2. Landscape of climate finance circa 2019/2020 (billion US $/year). Source: Reproduced with
permission from Buchner et al [4]. Copyright 2021 Climate Policy Initiative.

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 Solving Climate Change

many climate mitigation technologies pay for themselves (mostly or fully) through
operational savings, CDR solutions generally have a net cost. Of course, in the
broader sense, CDR funding can also be seen as an investment, with every ton of
CO2 removed resulting in less climate-related damages for the hundreds of years that
pollution would have otherwise remained in our atmosphere, but these climate
benefits are diffused around the planet over time and space at scales beyond the
bounds of traditional financial profitability analysis. Due to these spatial and
temporal gaps, government mandates that guarantee CDR profitability are likely
the only mechanisms that will drive enough capital to scale carbon removals at the
necessary scale.
As the world scales up funding for climate pollution mitigation and CDR
pollution drawdown, much more money will also need to be mobilized for climate
adaptation and resilience, as well as reparations for losses in many communities
already suffering from climate disruptions. The UN estimates that climate adapta-
tion and resilience funding requirements will reach about $150 billion/year in 2030
and $300 billion/year in 2050 (2020 US $), even in an aggressive mitigation scenario
[3], and delayed climate action will result in even higher costs.
Equity and social justice concerns are particularly acute for adaptation, resilience,
and reparation funding decisions, since the communities most in danger from
climate disruptions are often those who can least afford to prepare for the climate-
amplified disasters that the world is already experiencing. There have long been
tensions over how society should equitably value human lives and human suffering
compared with infrastructure losses and damages to our supporting ecosystems.
These tensions will likely amplify as finite climate funding is prioritized. Should
limited climate impact funding go to seawalls that protect expensive homes on the
coast, or to relocating poorer communities in flood zones, or to helping rural wildfire
victims, or to better managing forests to minimize wildfire risks despite droughts,
winds, and rising temperatures? The answers are not easy.
Government policies will play the largest roles in moving climate markets in the
right directions, creating new capital, and equitably distributing funding to minimize
future climate losses while compensating those already suffering from climate
impacts. Effective governance is again an essential element. If we are serious about
equity and climate justice all stakeholders must help direct decision-making, not just
stakeholders with the most financial resources.

10.2.2 Shifting off fossil fuels can pay for getting to zero emissions
The spending needed to get to zero emissions is on par with what the world already
spends every year to support the global fossil fuel industry. Annual upstream oil and
gas production revenues are about $5 trillion/year (2020 US dollars), while global
coal mining revenues are around $600 billion per year (see appendix F for details).
Even more revenue is generated from downstream fossil fuel products. Society also
directly subsidizes fossil fuels to the tune of about $500 billion per year.
In addition, there are pollution costs associated with continued use of fossil fuels.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates societal greenhouse gas

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 Solving Climate Change

pollution costs at $60/tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent [5], which implies total
costs of about $3.6 trillion US per year circa 2020 if applied to all greenhouse gas
emissions, and this is a lower-bound estimate from the literature on the social cost of
carbon [6]. There are also other pollution costs associated with the health and
environmental effects of fossil air pollution, which the IMF estimates at $2.4 trillion
per year [5]. Finally, there are investments in equipment and structures outside of the
fossil fuel industry (whose investments are captured in the fossil production
revenues) of more than $10 trillion per year, taken from the US Bureau of
Economic Analysis (see caption for figure 10.3 for details)2.

Figure 10.3. Total annual societal costs and spending on fossil fuels, related equipment, structures, and
externalities, circa 2020. Sources: Parry et al [5] for local air pollution and explicit subsidies. Climate change
damages estimated using $60/tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent from Parry et al [5] and 60 Gt CO2 equivalent
total emissions for 2020 from Koomey et al [7]. Fossil fuel production revenues from appendix F. Investments
in equipment and structures taken from US Bureau of Economic Analysis data for 2020 for the US (https://
apps.bea.gov/itable/index.cfm) scaled to the world using the ratio of world to US GDP, adjusted up to reflect a
slight difference between the percentage of non-financial investments for the world (1.39%) and the US
(1.32%). The GDP and the percentage of non-financial investments are taken from World Bank data for 2020
and 2016, respectively (https://databank.worldbank.org/home.aspx), which are the latest years available. Total
global GDP in 2020 was about $89 T/year (2020$).

2
https://apps.bea.gov/itable/index.cfm

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Figure 10.3 shows total costs associated with fossil fuels circa 2020 of about $22
trillion/year along with the components that add to that total. About a quarter of
this $22 trillion consists of direct expenditures on fossil fuels. As society moves to
phase out fossil fuels, more and more of these direct expenditures, as well as related
subsidies, will be allocated instead to zero-emissions alternatives, which will also
reduce societal costs of pollution. Purchasers of fossil fuels at market prices are now
paying less than half of the total societal costs of these fuels.
In addition, figure 10.3 includes estimates for capital expenditures outside the
fossil fuel industry for fossil powered equipment and structures, which total about $5
T/year and $6 T/year, respectively. Since most of these capital expenditures are for
energy-using equipment, at least part of these capital flows will need to be re-
allocated to non-emitting alternatives.
Even if climate solutions alternatives cost a bit more than fossil technologies up
front (which they often will until the world embraces climate solutions in earnest and
fully captures increasing returns to scale), the avoided climate change and other
pollution costs will more than compensate for higher upfront costs. A world without
fossil fuels will be better and cheaper for society than preserving the status quo. One
can quibble with details of such calculations, but the broad picture has been
confirmed by many independent analyses, and the estimates of fossil fuel related
pollution costs are almost certainly lower-bound numbers.
Of course, shifting trillions of dollars out of fossil fuels and into climate
solutions is much easier said than done. While this transition should have
overwhelmingly net positive impacts for most people and parts of the world, there
will likely be substantial economic losses for both private and public fossil fuel
companies, as well as the governments and local economies that depend upon
revenues from fossil fuel extraction and processing. Although fossil fuel revenues
disproportionately benefit fossil executives and a handful of (often corrupt)
government officials, millions more people work in fossil fueled economies and
benefit from fossil-funded government programs, and billions more people have
come to expect readily available fossil fuels at prices that don’t reflect the harm
caused by fossil pollution.
Shifting what we collectively pay to maintain our fossil addiction could fund most
of the climate solution technology the world needs. But there are powerful vested
interests that will continue to delay this transition if delay increases their profits and
power, and there are also legitimate social equity and distributional challenges to
navigate. The devils are always in the details, but if we’re serious about solving
climate, this massive financial transition must take place, and there are many
potential levers that we can pull to mobilize capital in the most effective way.

10.2.3 Speeding up innovation in finance and business models

Solving our climate problems, at the highest level, involves displacing fossil fuels and
non-fossil emissions with capital investment [8, 9]. A climate-positive world is one in
which spending on energy services shifts heavily to capital investments and away
from variable costs such as fuel and operating expenses.

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The shift to a more capital-intensive energy system highlights the importance of

financial innovation for smoothing the path to zero emissions, particularly for
homes and smaller businesses (many big companies are already expert at it).
Business model innovation is something all companies should master, both to
reduce emissions and increase profitability [10]. Both are examples of institutional/
societal innovation that are often ignored by assumption in economic models of
climate mitigation options.
Griffith [8, 9] points out that the modern car and home loans were invented in the
US in the first half of the 20th century. These loans solved a cash flow problem for
households who were wealthy enough in principle to buy new cars and homes but
needed to spread those costs over time.
Griffith argues that to accelerate the transition of households to zero emissions,
we need a financial innovation such as that (he calls it a ‘climate loan’). Electrifying
appliances, vehicles, and homes and installing solar panels requires capital expendi-
tures that would be difficult for many households to afford without a loan, and we
need to make such loans both widely available and inexpensive if we hope to rapidly
reduce emissions in the residential sector.
There are other kinds of financial and business model innovations that could play
an important role. Some rooftop solar installers now offer options to finance systems
over time with no money down, and some community-oriented utilities allow
customers to pay off zero-emissions investments over time on their monthly utility
bills. Companies are also exploring programs to help employees fund programs to
reduce and then eliminate emissions at home, including Carbon Savings Account
programs that would function similarly to tax-advantaged Health Savings Account
(HSA) plans.

10.2.4 Greater wealth = greater climate responsibility

Greater wealth almost always leads to higher climate pollution levels, both directly
from more resource-intensive wealthy lifestyles, and through financed emissions in
investment portfolios. Analysis from Oxfam International, summarized in figure 10.4,
has found that the wealthiest 1% of humanity has been responsible for more climate
pollution than the poorest 50% of our global population, and the wealthiest 10% of
the planet is responsible for more than half of global GHG emissions [12].
While climate solutions need to reach everyone, those with greater wealth (and
consequently more resources) should take more responsibility for solving the climate
crisis. Those with the most wealth also wield considerable power and influence,
which they should use to help fix this problem.
International climate policy debates are often framed in terms of richer countries
who have long profited from polluting industries, and poorer countries that strive to
catch up. Historic inequities in national climate pollution should of course be
considered when assigning climate responsibility, but the debate about national
inequities often ignores the relatively small groups of wealthy individuals around the
world who are collectively responsible for an enormous share of climate pollution. In
1990, the wealthy in North America and Europe dominated global emissions, but

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Figure 10.4. Share of carbon emissions by income group in 1990 and 2015 by major world regions. Source:
Reproduced with permission from Gore [16].

now emissions per capita are nearly as high from the wealthiest citizens in Asia, the
Middle East, and other parts of the world, as illustrated in figure 10.4.
When we frame our climate challenges in terms of the economic inequality of
emissions, it makes sense that assigning economic responsibility for climate solutions
should roughly align with household income. We all must redesign our homes, our
transportation, our diets, our jobs, and our banking and investments to make them
compatible with a climate-positive planet. The wealthier we are the more we should
reduce emissions, particularly if that wealth spans multiple homes, private jets,
substantial investments in polluting companies, or cultural influence over others’
consumption choices.
Even those of us who don’t think of ourselves as particularly wealthy or influential
are still more responsible for solving climate than we think. The average household in
wealthy countries has much higher emissions than the global average, and household
GHGs generally increase with every increase in household income [13].
While the wealthiest among us should be doing the most to mobilize the capital
needed to solve climate, we all have roles to play. Whether it’s through our own
spending and investing decisions, how we influence the choices that others make, or
how we engage with our political and corporate leaders, we all must work to move
money out of pollution and into solutions.

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10.2.5 Helping power sector market structures evolve

The shift to a more capital-intensive energy system has other implications,
particularly in the electricity sector. The economics of electricity systems has for
many decades been strongly influenced by the short run operating costs (marginal
costs) of fossil-fired electricity generators [14]. Rate design and utility business
models have been structured around the idea of marginal costs being one of the
primary drivers of utility system dispatch and investments.
The shift to a system dominated by capital investment means that market designs
for the electricity system need to evolve [15–27]. The end state of having a large
proportion of electricity generation being low or nearly zero marginal costs with
significant storage in the system [28] will force system operators to develop alternative
heuristics, improved contracts, and new market structures for dispatching power
plants, paying for the construction of new plants, and determining how demand-size
aggregators and storage resources will participate in these markets. This will also
mean developing new analytical methods for assessing the value of different operating
rules and power system investments, not just assessing costs [29–31].

10.3 Price pollution

While getting prices right won’t solve the climate problem on its own, that step
would help a lot. This section describes the benefits and complexities of pricing
carbon, adding additional subtleties about pricing other warming agents and other
kinds of pollution. As described in the previous chapter, other policy and business
model changes are also needed, but to the extent we can make the price of fuels
better reflect their true societal costs, we should do it.

10.3.1 Price carbon pollution

Pricing climate pollution has been widely used to mobilize money for climate
solutions. The basic logic is that putting a price on greenhouse gas pollution will
incorporate social and environmental externalities into market decisions, providing
incentives for polluters to reduce GHGs, while zero-emission products and services
become more cost-competitive. Revenues raised from pricing pollution can also be
used to fund zero-emissions technologies, further tilting markets towards climate
solutions.
Greenhouse gas emissions pricing can either come in the form of direct taxes on
climate pollution, or through ‘cap and trade’ carbon compliance markets where
maximum pollution allocations are determined and ratcheted down each year,
forcing polluters to purchase pollution credits from carbon trading markets or
carbon offset projects [32, 33]. Economists generally favor direct carbon taxes,
which are simpler to design and implement, but many governments have instead
created cap and trade carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS) markets, which have
often been more politically feasible and favored by regulated industries. Cap and
trade ETS systems play the largest role in pollution pricing, with the largest markets
in Europe, China, and several US states [34].

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Unfortunately, current climate pollution pricing systems still don’t cover enough
of the world’s GHG emissions or set high enough pollution prices to drive
substantial emissions reductions. About 22% of global GHG emissions are now
covered by some form of climate pollution pricing, with about $53 billion raised in
revenues from pollution pricing in 2020 [34]. Meanwhile, over three quarters of
global GHGs are not priced into markets at all, and less than 4% of global climate
pollution is priced above the $40 per metric ton CO2e level recommended as the
lowest price to be compliant with the Paris Agreement [34].
What is the right price for climate pollution? The economics literature provides
little clear guidance, giving huge ranges for the prices needed to achieve certain
emissions reductions or the social cost of carbon [1, 4, 35–38]. The practical answer
is ‘as high as practically possible’. There is virtually no danger of setting a price
that’s too high because the politics of pricing make that almost impossible and the
need for rapid emissions reductions gets more and more urgent as time passes.
While current pollution pricing systems are a step in the right direction
(particularly compared with the de facto price of zero), it’s clear that climate
pollution needs to be priced much higher than it is in most current systems, while
pollution pricing must also expand to include the majority of the world’s GHGs.
Appropriately pricing greenhouse gas pollution would make fossil fuels, deforesta-
tion, and other climate pollution sources much less economically viable, while
potentially raising trillions of dollars that could fund climate solutions in the process.
If the world’s approximately 60 Gt CO2 equivalent in annual greenhouse gas
emissions were taxed at a rate of $60/t CO2 equivalent (a lower-bound value used in
IMF analysis [31], for example), around $3.6 trillion per year could be raised and
redirected into climate solutions. Pollution revenues could be maintained around
this level if CO2 equivalent prices continue to rise as annual emissions fall, as most
economists recommend.

10.3.2 Understand the limits of carbon pricing

A price on carbon would no doubt be helpful on reducing emissions but under-
standing how and where it would be most helpful depends on knowing the structure
of energy systems. To deliver energy to small users, a large portion of energy costs
comes from the capital costs of infrastructure, such as the distribution lines for
electricity or the supply chains for retail gasoline. That means that carbon prices on
fuels get diluted for small users because the carbon prices are a relatively small
component of energy prices.
The story is quite different for most large users of fossil fuels, where fuel is a
dominant cost of production and high carbon fuels are an important fuel source.
Electric utilities, for example, have existing fossil-fired generators where fuel is the
biggest part of their costs, and new generators where fuel costs for carbon-based
fuels are still significant as a percent of the total.
Consider the effect of a $10/tonne of CO2 price on the cost of an existing
bituminous coal plant. At typical combustion efficiency that price implies 1 cent/
kWh on the running cost of an existing coal plant (see appendix G). Current (June

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2022) prices for CO2 in Europe are about $90/tonne and in California they are about
$30/tonne.3 Those prices imply adders of 9 cents/kWh in Europe and 3 cents/kWh in
California, respectively, compared to coal plant operating costs that are typically
3–4 cents/kWh. Modest carbon prices can have a huge effect on utility dispatch and
retirement decisions for coal plants at these prices.
For the small electricity consumer, the effect of carbon taxes is diluted. First, coal
isn’t the only source of generation in most power systems, there are also often
natural gas and zero-emissions nuclear, hydro, wind and solar plants. If we consider
a simplified utility system with half coal and half zero-emissions sources, that means
the 1 cent/kWh is cut in half for the consumer, to 0.5 cents/kWh.
Second, electricity prices are composed of fuel costs, operating and maintenance
(O&M) costs, and most importantly, capital costs. Capital plus O&M costs are
typically two thirds (or more) of the price of electricity in developed countries like
the US4. That fact reduces the effect of the $10 per tonne CO2 tax by another two
thirds, to 0.17 cents/kWh, or to less than one fifth of the cost the utility sees for
operating its coal plant.
This example explains why carbon taxes can be a strong economic driver of
emissions reductions for utilities and industrial consumers (who use a lot of high
carbon fuels). These users have much lower fuel prices than small consumers, so the
percentage impact of any given carbon tax (which typically only depends on the
carbon content of the fuels) is much higher for bigger users, and the percentage
change is what mostly drives economic decision-making.
Carbon taxes are weak drivers of consumer behavior but strong drivers of
emissions reductions for utilities and industrial consumers. The same $10 per tonne
CO2 charge only adds about 10 cents per gallon on the price of gasoline (see
appendix G), which is tiny compared to the price of gasoline almost everywhere.
Passing carbon taxes can be politically difficult, but the alternative of emissions
trading has its own political issues [39]. Emissions trading systems in the European
Union and in California have in the past suffered from overallocation of permits and
‘leakage’, so that market prices for carbon emissions are much lower than would
exist in better designed market regimes. The problem is that powerful market actors
can (and often do) warp the design of such regimes to favor their interests, rendering
these policy instruments far less effective at reducing emissions in a verifiable way.
The characteristics of technological systems responsible for emissions also create
practical difficulties for properly pricing carbon emissions. For example, most
proposals for taxing emissions from petroleum fuels begin with the assumption
that the tax should be based on the carbon content of the fuel when it is burned, but
‘upstream’ (exploration and production) and ‘midstream’ (refining) emissions are big
enough to matter [40–44].
For oil, these latter two components can increase the total life-cycle emissions per
barrel 40%–50% compared to combustion emissions alone [45, 46]. In addition, the
‘owners’ of upstream and midstream emissions are in many cases far removed from

3
https://carboncredits.com/carbon-prices-today/
4
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/prices-and-factors-affecting-prices.php

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the consumers actually burning the fuels. These complexities make designing what
an economist would call an ‘optimal’ emissions price for these fuels almost
impossible, but few economists have wrestled with these complexities. Of course,
any price higher than zero would be an improvement over the status quo, but
understanding the complexities is essential for designing the best policies.
One potential benefit of pricing emissions (either using taxes or auctioning
permits in an emissions trading system) is that it generates revenues that can then
be distributed to share the benefits and promote a more rapid transition to zero
emissions. In principle, this can help the politics of pricing emissions, and it
sometimes does, but people’s general aversion to taxes of all sorts can make it
challenging to argue for emissions pricing in many places.
Countries that price carbon can also implement border adjustments to reflect the
warming externalities associated with manufactured goods imported from countries
that don’t have a carbon tax. The mechanics of such systems are complicated, but
it’s an area that has been well studied [38].

10.3.3 Price other GHGs

Carbon emissions are only part of the problem, but only rarely have pricing
mechanisms acknowledged the other warming agents. The technical complexities
of estimating greenhouse gas equivalences using Global Warming Potentials are
well-known [56, 57], and in fact there is no ‘right answer’ when comparing the
warming effect of emissions of carbon dioxide to that from methane, nitrous oxide,
or other greenhouse gases. Warming effects compared to carbon dioxide vary by gas
and by the time period of analysis, in most cases substantially [49], as we show in
chapter 2.
Despite this complexity, we know that setting a price of zero for these warming
agents is wrong. Better to price them as best we can than to ignore their warming
effects. The alternative is to regulate such emissions, which in some cases will be the
preferred option, but either way, we can’t ignore these warming agents.

10.3.4 Price other fossil pollutants

Fossil fuel combustion causes air pollution beyond just greenhouse gases, and those
pollutants cause significant health and environmental effects that are only partially
controlled by existing regulations, resulting in millions of deaths every year linked to
poor air quality [50–65]. Air pollution is an ‘externality’ that needs to be
internalized. The costs of such pollution are large enough to matter and internalizing
those costs through taxes (and regulations) will shift incentives substantially and
make it easier to create a climate-positive society.
Another significant category of fossil-related pollution that’s largely unpriced is
uncontrolled plastic waste, with millions of tons of plastics (and small particles
called ‘microplastics’) flowing into our air, soils, oceans, and biological systems
every year. Emissions from washing synthetic fibers (such as polyester) and the wear
of synthetic rubber vehicle tires contribute the largest shares of microplastic
pollution [66]. It’s still unclear exactly how much harm such pollution is causing

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to humans, wildlife, and ecosystems, but there are many potential concerns, and
some microplastics are small enough to enter the human bloodstream. A recent
Dutch study found detectable microplastics in the blood of 77% of individuals tested
in the Netherlands [67].
Beyond plastics, there are many other potentially hazardous chemicals made
from oil, coal, and natural gas, and these fossil fuel co-products impose societal costs
and add profitability to the fossil industry. Pricing all forms of non-climate fossil
pollution can make the prices of fossil fuels much closer to full societal costs and
make the transition away from fossil fuels easier and quicker.

10.4 Subsidize investments and innovation

One way to smooth the transition to a climate-positive world is to subsidize early
retirement and replacement of fossil equipment with zero-emissions alternatives.
This time-tested technique has been used widely for decades and we’ll need to
expand its use. We’ll also need to ramp up funding of research and development to
fill the pipeline with zero-emissions options for decades to come. Finally, we should
explore new ways for companies to reward process innovations that result in
emissions reductions.

10.4.1 Defray capital costs with rebates

Because the transition to zero emissions is mainly one that substitutes capital for
fuels, individuals and institutions will see real upfront costs for scrapping existing
equipment early and buying new electrified equipment. We can ease the pain of that
transition by subsidizing the purchase costs for new equipment and paying bounties
for those who choose to retire fossil capital early and replace it with electrical
equipment. There is a long history of such rebates in the utility industry as well as for
tax credits from state and national governments.
Smoothing the transition is reason enough to subsidize climate-positive technol-
ogies, but such incentives also create innovation because they allow products to scale
up and move down the learning curve. The end game is making the climate-positive
options cheaper in direct cost terms than the high emissions options they displace,
which argues for high initial subsidies (to spur adoption) that ramp down as
adoption targets are reached. Combining such subsidies with institutional purchase
requirements can spur even more rapid changes.

10.4.2 Invest in climate tech R&D

We already have most of the technologies needed to fully move the global economy
to zero emissions, but investments in R&D can uncover new technologies, materials,
and processes that further push down costs for existing products. R&D investment is
also key to discovering entirely new solutions that achieve goals in better ways.
Companies, investors, and governments all play important roles in the climate
tech R&D cycle. Government funding is especially crucial for funding the primary
research at universities and national labs that leads to breakthrough discoveries,
while companies and investors bring discoveries into markets, then fund further

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R&D cycles to make new technologies scale and continuously improve. As we

discuss above, most funding should support deployment of renewable energy,
electrification, and other solution technologies that already exist, but funding
climate tech R&D at much higher than current levels is also essential.

10.4.3 Pay for performance

Innovation means more than just developing and deploying new technologies.
Process innovation is a way for companies to generate continuous improvements,
but it requires aligning the incentives of employees and managers with driving
emissions to zero.
Once standardized measurements of full-life-cycle emissions become common-
place, it will then be possible for companies to reward employee efforts to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions with direct financial incentives. If rapid direct emissions
reductions are a corporate goal, then giving bonuses to employees who help achieve
that goal is natural and sensible.
One precedent for such efforts is the Six Sigma program in many large companies
as discussed in chapter 7, which has the task of finding opportunities for cost
reductions and new products. Six Sigma practitioners are often rewarded based on
whether they achieve the cost savings and revenue increases projected in their
original business plans, and the same kind of process would work here.

10.5 Redirect capital

Most of the capital needed to create a climate-positive future needs to be redirected
from other activities. We already spend at least $5 trillion every year in direct
expenditures on fossil fuels, and at least $6 trillion per year in unpriced greenhouse
gas and other pollution externalities from those fuels. In addition, capital expendi-
tures for equipment and structures total more than ten trillion dollars every year.
Redirecting part of those funds will be more than enough to solve the problem.
This section explores ways to redirect those funds. It’s more than just a technical
or financial change, it also involves getting polluter money out of politics, ending
pro-pollution subsidies, modifying central bank policies to facilitate climate action,
and experimenting with new money focused particularly on carbon removal. The
structural changes needed won’t be easy to implement but are essential to accel-
erating the transition to a climate-positive world.

10.5.1 Equitably distribute pollution revenues

If pollution is priced above the social cost of carbon, then many polluting
technologies and businesses will no longer be profitable, and at least some portion
of pollution prices will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices for
some sources of fuel, electricity, food, and materials. If not properly managed, these
economic shifts could worsen economic inequities. For this reason, many advocates
for better pollution pricing also advocating returning most or all of the revenues
raised directly to citizens, with poorer households receiving more money back in
direct payments than they are expected to pay in higher pollution prices.

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The ‘Carbon Fee and Dividend’ system proposed by Citizens Climate Lobby
(CCL) is one potential model for returning pollution revenues to citizens5. A few
pollution markets return a portion of revenues to households but none now return
all such revenues.
Of course, if more pollution revenues are returned as dividends to citizens, less
will be available to subsidize climate-positive technologies or pay for climate
adaptation, resilience, or reparations, although the degree each household is suffer-
ing from climate damages could also factor into the payment amounts that each
household receives.
Widespread political support is key for using pollution pricing to drive substantial
emissions reductions over time. Successful pollution pricing systems will allow the
majority of citizens to receive net economic benefits, while the most vulnerable are
protected and companies and individuals who can afford it pay more. Fossil giants
and others who profit from pollution will likely continue to fight any pollution
pricing that hurts their bottom line but putting a higher price on climate pollution
will also force polluters to diversify, and several other policy and financial tools can
hasten this transition.

10.5.2 End pro-pollution subsidies

There are incentives beyond emissions pricing that matter greatly. For example, the
existing economy includes myriad subsidies for the global fossil fuel industry [68–78],
many of which are hidden. The International Institute for Sustainable Development
[72] estimated that G20 nations alone allocated $277 B US/year to oil and gas
production from 2017 to 2019, which is of the same order of magnitude as profits from
the global oil and gas industry6. An estimate for the OECD shows lower numbers of
about $50 B US/year in 2019 for fossil fuel production subsidies [79].
Exact comparisons are complicated, but it’s fair to say that eliminating such
subsidies would substantially reduce oil and gas industry profits, thus increasing the
cost of capital for that industry [80]. A transition to zero emissions must include
efforts to root out and remove all such biases and subsidies everywhere in the world,
otherwise the speed and extent of the transition will be hindered.
Five examples of hidden subsidies are the historically below-market leasing fees
for fossil fuel leases on federal lands in the US [81], low bonding requirements for
oil and gas drilling [82–84], misplaced incentives for shutting down abandoned
wells [85], the lax structure of US bankruptcy and other laws that allow companies
to privatize profits and socialize costs [4, 86], and subsidies that lower the price of
fossil fuels to consumers [87, 88]. There are many other similar hidden subsidies
elsewhere.

5
https://citizensclimatelobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-dividend/
6
The Fortune Global 500 contained 85 oil and gas companies that generated $223 B and $404 B of profits in
2018 and 2019, respectively. https://www.globaldata.com/oil-and-gas-sector-continues-to-rule-2019-fortune-
global-500-list-in-revenue-generation-finds-globaldata

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10.5.3 Donate to climate action

Given the scope of our climate crisis, it’s remarkable that less than 2% ($6 to $10
billion/year) of global philanthropy funds climate action [89]. Figure 10.5 shows a
subset of global philanthropic giving to climate action, that from major foundations,
broken out by regions and sectors. Climate philanthropy must become a higher
priority for the world to reach Net Zero by 2040. While better climate policies and
investments can drive many climate solutions, climate philanthropy is necessary for
some types of climate solutions, particularly solutions that don’t yield immediate or
direct financial returns.
Donations are particularly needed for climate communications and public policy
engagement, which are essential for mobilizing the political will to push policy-
makers to implement effective climate policies. By bridging our climate communi-
cation gaps, climate philanthropy can help break political inertia by generating the
constituent pressure politicians need to act. Donor-led technology efforts can also
enhance climate transparency, pressure companies and investors to improve, better
inform the public about climate impacts and solutions, and empower individuals
everywhere to take action.

10.5.4 Get polluter money out of politics

Effective climate policymaking is difficult when money tied to polluting interests is
allowed to disproportionately influence political systems. Historically, political

Figure 10.5. Major foundation support for climate action by regions and sectors (annual average 2015 to
2020). Source: Reproduced with permission from ClimateWorks Foundation, Funding Trends 2021 [97].

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donations supporting climate action have been dwarfed by donations and lobbying
from groups tied to climate polluting industries (particularly fossil fuels, utilities,
automobiles, chemicals, forestry, and agriculture). In the United States, over $2
billion was spent on lobbying to block climate regulations between 2000 and 2016,
more than ten times what was spent by proponents of legislative climate action [90].
Fossil fuel companies in particular have spent decades investing in politicians that
deny climate science and hold up climate regulations, with the largest share of fossil
campaign donations going to lawmakers with the longest track records of blocking
climate action [91].
The problem of climate-polluter money in politics is a worldwide issue, with the
wealthy few who profit from climate pollution using cash to tip political scales from
local governments to international climate negotiations. Over 500 lobbyists con-
nected with the fossil fuel industry attended the United Nations climate negotiations
in Glasgow, Scotland [92], a fossil-funded delegation that was larger than any single
country, and larger than the combined delegations from the eight countries worst
affected by climate change in the last two decades: Puerto Rico, Myanmar, Haiti,
Philippines, Mozambique, Bahamas, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.
According to the watchdog InfluenceMap [93], the fossil giants ExxonMobil and
Chevron have the largest negative impacts on global climate policy, followed by
Toyota Motor, Southern Company, Sempra Energy, BASF, ConocoPhillips,
Glencore International, BP, and OMV to round out the top ten political polluters.
Often these fossil giants publicly claim to support climate action while simulta-
neously funneling money to climate-obstructing trade groups, such as the American
Petroleum Institute and US Chamber of Commerce, allowing companies to pool
lobbying resources while distancing their brands from publicly unpopular positions
[94]. InfluenceMap also stresses that a large share (potentially the majority) of fossil
political influence still happens without public transparency, and that efforts to track
the impacts of polluting interests likely miss large amounts of dark money that flows
behind the scenes, as well as the full policy influence of state-owned fossil giants in
Russia, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.
There is also a ‘revolving door’ problem in many political systems, where
individuals cycle between roles as government regulators and roles as highly-paid
consultants for the same polluting industries they were supposed to have regulated.
The nonprofit Corporate Europe Observatory identified over 70 cases of European
government regulators cycling between government jobs and positions with six fossil
fuel giants and five fossil fuel lobby groups between 2015 and 2020 [95]. Former
government officials are often sought after as corporate lobbyists since they already
have personal connections in governments and know how to effectively pull political
strings. There are even some government officials who maintain large personal
investments in fossil fuel assets while continuing to act as regulators, creating obvious
conflicts of interests that are surprisingly still allowed in many political systems.
Perhaps more surprising than fossil fuel lobbying is the fact that nearly all types of
companies give more money to politicians who block climate action than they donate
to politicians who champion climate solutions. Analysis by Bloomberg found that the
average ‘climate obstructionist’ lawmaker in the US received about $1.84 in corporate

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donations for every $1 donated to lawmakers who support climate legislation [96].
Bloomberg’s analysis found that every company in the S&P 100 has been giving to
climate obstructionist politicians, including donations from many of the world’s
largest technology, finance, and healthcare companies. With most of the world’s
largest companies rewarding climate inaction with their political donations, as well as
well-funded fossil lobbying campaigns threatening to fund the opponents of politicians
who dare to advocate for aggressive climate action [97], it’s no wonder that climate
policies have fallen far short of what climate science says is necessary.
How do we get polluter money out of politics? The simple answer is that we need
much better rules that keep polluting interests from corrupting the political process
at all levels. Ideally three rules would apply to all levels of government: (1) ban
polluting industries from making political donations; (2) ban politicians from having
direct investments in fossil fuels and any other industries they regulate; and (3) ban
government regulators from taking lucrative positions with companies or industry
groups they once regulated. Enacting these rules would go a long way towards
cleaning up climate corruption and aligning lawmaking with climate science.

10.5.5 Factor climate into spending decisions

While much of what we’ve discussed in this chapter covers tactics to make the supply
side of climate solutions more economically attractive, the money we spend also
sends powerful demand-side signals. Spending decisions ultimately dictate the flow
of capital into pollution or solutions, and every level of spending is effectively a
continuous vote on our climate future, whether cash is flowing from governments
and companies or households and individuals. Implementing policies to ensure that
climate-positive options are the cheapest, most convenient, and default options can
go a long way towards shifting capital in the right directions, but consumer choice
will always be the final deciding factor in free market economies.
Information technology can play a large role in calculating the full climate
impacts of products and services, as well as making these previously invisible climate
impacts visible and actionable for consumers. Some companies are already adopting
climate labeling standards that calculate the full Scope 1-3 GHG footprint of
products and services, empowering potential buyers to add climate criteria into their
choices. As climate labeling becomes standardized, verified, and widespread,
consumers will increasingly be able to use their wallets to reward climate leaders.
Mandating climate impact disclosures for products and services can push this trend
even further by identifying and pressuring climate laggards to improve. While
consumers often have a misperception that more sustainable products are always
more expensive, standardized climate labeling can show that climate-friendly
choices often save money, whether it’s choosing cheaper plant-based menu items
at a restaurant or buying a heat-pump HVAC system that saves money over time.

10.5.6 Redirect fossil profits to climate infrastructure

Nearly all fossil fuel companies continue to invest in finding and extracting new
fossil fuels and expanding their fossil infrastructure each year, despite the

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overwhelming scientific consensus that ending fossil fuel combustion is essential for
solving our climate crisis. Yes, some fossil companies are also now investing in
renewable energy and other climate solution technologies, but these investments are
still a very small in comparison with the amounts that oil, gas, and coal companies
invest in controlling and selling more fossil fuels. ExxonMobil invested only 0.22%
of its capital expenditures in low-carbon projects between 2010 and 2018, while only
2.3% of BP’s investments went into low-carbon projects during the same period [98].
The reason for this discrepancy in fossil versus non-fossil capital is that fossil
investments are still often more profitable than investments in renewables, and fossil
companies have technical expertise that makes additional fossil extraction easier
than deploying renewables.
Politicians and investors often promote the idea that fossil companies should
become diversified energy companies that shift from fossil to renewable energy, and
fossil industry marketing often plays into this narrative. But this transition will not
take place in a meaningful way until either (a) some combination of economic
policies and market conditions make renewable energy investments more
profitable than fossil extraction, or (b) fossil companies are mandated to invest
most or all of their profits into renewables and other climate solutions.
Pricing climate pollution would help push fossil companies to transition much
more quickly towards renewables. Another approach is for governments to simply
mandate that fossil profits be invested in climate solution technologies instead of
fossil infrastructure. While policymakers haven’t yet taken this direct approach to
reducing emissions from the fossil industry, some have started redirecting fossil
profits in other ways. Windfall taxes on fossil profits have increasingly been
proposed, particularly when fossil profits skyrocket during geopolitical supply
disruptions, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Windfall taxes can take away
incentives for fossil companies to price gouge consumers while also preventing fossil
companies from investing in new fossil infrastructure, and revenues from windfall
taxes can also be redirected to subsidize climate solution technologies.

10.5.7 Re-allocate banking and investment portfolios

Historically, climate has not been a consideration for most investors. Over the past
few decades many investors have increasingly moved assets into ‘passive’ index fund
investments, which hold a diverse range of companies, and have generally offered
cost and financial performance advantages over more actively managed financial
strategies. This shift towards index funds means that most investors are invested in
fossil fuels and other climate polluting companies, since conventional benchmark
index funds invest in all parts of the economy, including dirty energy producers,
agricultural polluters, and companies with links to deforestation [99].
The past few years have seen a substantial shift towards factoring climate and
overall environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics into investment
decision-making. Many of the world’s largest asset owners and asset managers
have now joined climate and ESG investing pledges and organizations, such as the
Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), Climate Action 100+ (CA100+),

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the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), Task Force on Climate-Related

Financial Disclosures (TCFD), and Science Based Targets (SBTi), among others.
Unfortunately, most of these same investors are continuing to invest in fossil fuel
companies and other climate polluters (both directly and through conventional
index funds), and while they may be factoring more climate risks and opportunities
into investment decision-making, even large investors with quantitative climate
pledges are generally not planning to reach Net Zero until 2050. The largest asset
managers are now offering a wide range of exchange traded funds (ETFs) and other
products with climate and ESG labels, but these funds often still include fossil fuel
companies and other climate polluters due to poorly designed conventional ESG
ratings systems, leading to ‘greenwashing’ concerns for investors sincere about
improving climate impacts [100].
The biggest debate in climate investing is whether investors should fully divest
from fossil fuel companies and become ‘fossil free.’ Many large investors have
justified maintaining holdings in fossil fuels and other large climate polluters by
claiming they can use their shareholder power to push these companies to reduce
emissions with shareholder resolutions. Proponents of fossil-free divestment, includ-
ing many in the Rockefeller family whose Standard Oil empire became ExxonMobil
and Chevron [101], argue that decades of shareholder engagement have done little to
shift fossil companies away from climate pollution, and it is unlikely fossil
companies will ever match climate rhetoric with business realities since they profit
from continued climate inaction. Proponents of fossil divestment also make purely
economic arguments, highlighting the fact that fossil companies on average under-
performed global markets by over 50% from 2011 to 2021 [102], and fossil
companies are likely to have substantial ‘stranded assets’ due to international
climate targets and increased market competition from wind, solar, batteries, electric
vehicles, and other clean technologies.
Moving investment portfolios toward zero-emissions holdings should start with a
goal to make each portfolio net zero or climate positive as quickly as possible. While
a portfolio doesn’t need to be fully fossil free to reach climate targets, divesting from
all coal, oil, and natural gas makes getting to net zero and climate positive much
easier. The next step is a full Scope 1-3 climate accounting7 to determine the financed
GHG emissions connected to each individual investment, as well as the portfolio’s
total climate footprint. It is essential that this type of portfolio GHG analysis include
‘downstream’ Scope 3 climate impacts from when a company’s products and
services are used, since this is needed to accurately assess the climate footprint of
fossil fuel holdings (where most GHGs come from the downstream burning of fuels
produced). Downstream Scope 3 calculations also illuminate which companies are
net climate positive, where the climate benefits from their products (such as
renewable energy, EVs, and plant-based foods) outweigh the climate impacts from
product production.

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Newer sustainable investing companies, such as Etho Capital (of which Ian was a
co-founder), have shown how investors can improve both financial performance and
climate sustainability by shifting to fully fossil-free strategies that eliminate emissions
and are more authentically aligned with ESG goals. Figure 10.6 compares the
performance of ETHO, Etho Capital’s flagship Exchange Traded Fund, compared
to the S&P 500 index from the date of ETHO’s first full day of trading (20 November
2015). ETHO yielded about 19% more total return for the past six years compared to
the S&P 500. That’s about 3.3% per year additional return each year.
By shifting to sustainable index strategies that combine full Scope 1-3 climate data
and deeper analysis of climate and ESG risks, investors can now get many of the same
diversified performance advantages of conventional index investing while substan-
tially improving climate and overall ESG portfolio impacts [103]. Analysis by Etho
Capital has found that investors can already replace conventional global index
strategies with ESG-aligned climate-positive alternatives while maintaining similar
(or better) financial performance8. New green banks, like Atmos Financial and Ando
Money, have also launched with missions that give individuals and businesses the
ability to ensure that their savings finance clean technologies instead of fossil fuels.
Most investors already have the climate analysis tools and climate-friendly
investment options to make their banking and investment portfolios climate positive
long before 2050, it’s just a matter of knowing where to look and how to go about
the process. Some institutional investors still hide behind ‘fiduciary duty’ arguments
against climate investing, but an honest assessment of projected climate policy and
technology directions makes it clear that fiduciary duties require incorporating

Figure 10.6. Six-year performance of ETHO Climate Leadership US Index versus S&P 500 Index (ETHO
inception on 11-19-2015 to 11-20-2021). Source: Yahoo finance using adjusted daily closing price, https://
finance.yahoo.com.

8
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climate risks and opportunities into all decisions [104]. As an example, some analysts
predict that increasingly cheap energy storage could negatively affect one quarter of
corporate debt within the next decade [105].
All of us should re-allocate our banking and investments as quickly as possible.
Companies should ensure that corporate cash isn’t invested in climate pollution and offer
fossil-free and climate-positive funds for employee retirement plans. Financial regulators
should push both asset owners and financial product creators towards full Scope 1-3
climate transparency, while also designing financial industry climate labeling standards
and monitoring programs that culls greenwashing out of the market. Governments
should enact laws that require public pensions to divest from fossil fuels and invest in
climate solutions, and pension recipients, foundation employees, and university students
and faculty should engage with their fund managers to demand fossil divestment.
Innovative investors are already blazing a trail to a climate-positive future. As
climate regulations and clean technologies make fossil fuels unprofitable and obsolete,
all investors will eventually follow, and smart financial policies can hasten this process.

10.5.8 Align central banking and monetary policy with climate targets
Central banks in large economies drive the creation of new money, which gives them
a unique ability to combat climate change by linking monetary policy to climate
criteria. Monetary policy can support climate infrastructure in several ways. First,
central banks influence how commercial banks make lending decisions by control-
ling interest rates and dictating reserve requirements for commercial banking.
Central banks therefore have the power to adjust interest rates and reserve require-
ments in ways that encourage commercial banks to lend to climate solution projects
and discourage commercial banks from financing fossil fuels and other projects and
companies tied to climate pollution.
Large central banks with reserve currencies also have the unique ability to influence
economies through a process known as ‘quantitative easing’ (QE), where central banks
effectively create new money to directly buy assets like corporate bonds and equity.
Quantitative easing is generally deployed to help economies recover from economic
downturns, such as the 2008 global financial crisis or the economic challenges posed by
COVID-19. Some analysis has found that the trillions of dollars in recent QE from
central banks has disproportionally gone to buy corporate debt and equity from fossil
fuel companies, thereby likely making climate change worse [106] but QE could also be
harnessed as a climate solution. Some researchers and central banks are now evaluating
the potential to implement ‘green quantitative easing’ (or green QE), where central
banks would preferentially buy corporate debt and equity linked to climate solutions,
while also avoiding QE purchases linked to climate pollution [106].

10.5.9 Make new money for carbon removal + all climate solutions?
Central banks could play an even larger role in solving climate by making new
money that is distributed directly to fund climate solutions. The concept of creating
an entirely new climate currency has been gaining traction, and it is a particularly
appealing concept to fund the scale up of carbon removal, since existing climate

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pollution in our atmosphere will only be removed once large new pools of capital are
mobilized to pay for carbon removal services.
The most fully formed proposal for a new climate currency has been proposed by
Global Carbon Reward, an international nonprofit effort that started in Australia9.
The proposed new climate currency would be issued by a new Carbon Exchange
Authority branch of the United Nations, which would ensure that climate currency
is only issued to verified GHG mitigation or removal projects. The proposed Global
Carbon Reward climate currency would be supported by the world’s largest central
banks, which would guarantee exchange rates with traditional currency.
Central bank backing would guarantee positive financial returns for the climate
currency until global climate targets are achieved, providing incentives to participate
in the carbon rewards market. Social and environmental factors beyond climate
could also be assessed when the Carbon Exchange Authority determines how much
climate currency to issue to each proposed climate solution project, providing
additional financial incentives to scale climate solutions that maximize positive co-
benefits while minimizing negative externalities.
While the Global Carbon Reward system is still at the proposal and piloting
stage, it may be exactly the kind of big picture thinking that’s needed to mobilize
climate solution capital at the required scale. As we’ve discussed earlier, the scale
climate pollution mitigation and removal necessary are only continuing to grow as
the world delays in aligning climate action with what science says is necessary, and
the more we delay funding climate action the more the costs of climate adaptation,
resilience and reparations will also increase10.
What’s particularly appealing about the Global Carbon Reward concept is that this
type of new climate currency would not come at any direct cost to taxpayers, and the
climate currency system would also act as economic stimulant to a wide range of
climate solution enterprises, potentially supporting millions of new jobs in the process
while delivering a wide range of social and ecological co-benefits in the process. These
factors potentially make a global climate currency approach more politically feasible
than pollution pricing and more predictable than current cleantech subsidies, though
these market-directing policies can coexist with the shared goal of re-engineering
economies to scale climate solutions as quickly as possible.
It may make sense for a climate currency to first be limited to carbon removal
projects, since CDR projects that remove pollution as their primary purpose avoid
most of the additionality and leakage challenges in today’s carbon offsets markets.
CDR projects that are truly additional only exist because of the price paid for
pollution removal but no government has yet provided a realistic plan for how this
level of CDR will be funded. Thus far the biggest boosts to the CDR industry have
come from a handful of technology companies that have voluntarily started to pay
for pollution removal instead of carbon offsets [107]. If wisely implemented, funding
CDR with a new climate currency could dramatically accelerate the pollution
removal industry.

9
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10.6 Building your scenarios

Just as for non-financial incentives, the key to creating scenarios is to lay out your
assumptions in detail about how financial incentives would need to change to enable
a rapid transition to a climate-positive world. It’s impossible to predict the effects of
these changes with precision, but a structured process of creating a plausible and
internally consistent set of such changes is essential to developing your intuition
about constraints and opportunities.

10.6.1 Creating or adopting a business-as-usual scenario

Your business-as-usual (BAU) scenario should incorporate recent changes in
financial incentives that are likely to result in measurable changes in emissions. If
your chosen geography has recently adopted a price on emissions, for example,
make sure that the BAU projections for utility sector and industrial emissions in
particular reflect those policies.

10.6.2 Creating the climate-positive scenario

Koomey [115] is presents well-documented intervention scenarios for the buildings
sector that you can use as a model when data permit. The details in that article are
now old but it’s a great example illustrating the appropriate level of detail. Just as for
creating scenarios for technical options, the idea is to use historical experience as a
guide to estimate potential effects of changes in financial incentives, quantifying as
best you can. If your scenario is plausible, internally consistent, and well-docu-
mented, you’ll be on safe ground.

10.7 Chapter conclusions

Moving to a climate-positive world means shifting trillions of dollars every year to
zero-emissions and carbon removal technologies, as well as paying to alleviate and
repair climate damages. We’re already spending trillions to support our current
high-pollution system, we just need to re-allocate these expenditures toward climate-
positive alternatives. Fortunately, these shifts will also eliminate trillions of dollars
every year in health costs, premature deaths, and a wide range of environmental
harms. The political challenges of making these changes will not be trivial, but the
overall story is clear: mobilizing money for a climate-positive planet will result in a
much better world, with lower total costs and enhanced quality of life for virtually
everyone.

Further reading
Buchner B et al 2021 Global Landscape of Climate Finance 2021 (San Francisco, CA:
Climate Policy Initiative) December https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-
content/uploads/2021/10/Full-report-Global-Landscape-of-Climate-Finance-2021.
pdf. This report gives a clear picture of money flows of global climate finance.

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Cullenward D and Victor D G 2020 Making Climate Policy Work (New York:
Polity Press). This book gives a clear-eyed view of the real-world issues with
pricing pollution.
Geddes A, Gerasimchuk I, Viswanathan B, Suharsono A, Corkal V, Roth J,
Picciariello A, Tucker B, Doukas A and Gençsü I 2020 Doubling Back and
Doubling Down: G20 Scorecard on Fossil Fuel Funding (Winnipeg: International
Institute for Sustainable Development) 9 November https://www.iisd.org/publi-
cations/g20-scorecard. This report summarizes fossil fuel subsidies in detail.
Gore T 2020 Confronting Carbon Inequality: Putting Climate Justice at the Heart of
the COVID-19 Recovery (Nairobi: Oxfam) 21 September https://www.oxfam.org/
en/research/confronting-carbon-inequality. The wealthy contribute dispropor-
tionately to greenhouse gas emissions around the world, and this report docu-
ments their contributions.
IPCC 2022 Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability—The Working
Group II Contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press) https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-
group-ii/. A compilation of findings and references on adaptation challenges.
IPCC 2022 Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of
Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) https://www.ipcc.ch/
report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-3/. Chapter 15 contains details and
references on the challenge of financing the transition to a climate-positive world.
OECD 2021 OECD Companion to the Inventory of Support Measures for Fossil Fuels
2021 (Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperating and Development) 30
March https://doi.org/10.1787/e670c620-en. Details on fossil fuel subsidies.
Parry I, Black S and Vernon N 2021 Still Not Getting Energy Prices Right: A Global
and Country Update of Fossil Fuel Subsidies (Washington, DC: International
Monetary Fund) Working Paper WP/21/236, 24 September https://www.imf.org/
en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/09/23/Still-Not-Getting-Energy-Prices-Right-A-
Global-and-Country-Update-of-Fossil fuel-Subsidies-466004. A comprehensive
analysis of fossil fuel subsidies and externalities.
UNEP 2021 The Gathering Storm: Adapting to Climate Change in a Post-Pandemic
World (Nairobi: United Nations Environment Program) https://www.unep.org/
resources/adaptation-gap-report-2021. This report is the most recent global
analysis of adaptation challenges.
World Bank 2021 State and Trends of Carbon Pricing 2021 (Washington, DC:
World Bank) http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35620. This report gives the status on
carbon pricing efforts around the world.

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 IOP Publishing

Solving Climate Change

A guide for learners and leaders
Jonathan Koomey and Ian Monroe

Chapter 11
Elevate truth

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
— Mark Twain

Chapter overview

• Because this fight is a political and moral one (in addition to having an economic
dimension) elevating truth and fighting propaganda are critical to a successful
transition to a climate-positive society.
• Reducing emissions means confronting the most powerful industry in human
history and unwinding the many ways the economy has been tilted towards fossil
fuels over more than a century.
• We need to stop treating the fossil fuel industry as legitimate participants in
democratic debate and start treating them like the threat to the global climate
that they’ve been for decades.
• We need to tell the truth about climate, root out fossil fuel funded corruption,
mandate transparency and accurate disclosures, ban fossil fuel advertising, run
mass-market public engagement campaigns, and hold the industry
accountable for self-interested lies.

11.1 Introduction
Concern about climate change from increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases is
based on some of the most well-established principles in physical science. The idea
that greenhouse gases could warm the Earth is not a new one. We are now past the

doi:10.1088/978-0-7503-4032-8ch11 11-1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

 Solving Climate Change

point where anyone needs to take seriously people who dispute what the US
National Academy of Sciences [1] and virtually every other national scientific
organization on the planet regard as ‘settled facts’: the Earth system is warming,
humans are the cause, and continuously increasing greenhouse gas emissions will
warm the Earth further [2].
Policy makers should understand that those who question those high-level
findings and argue against immediate and rapid emissions reductions are no longer
engaged in the scientific process, but in a propaganda exercise [3–5]. Of course, there
will continue to be open questions about some details of climate science, and that’s
as it should be, but those details will not change the core findings of the science. The
results have been confirmed in so many independent ways and by so many
measurements that it is appropriate to consider the core findings as ‘settled science’,
similar to gravity or relativity. Debate will continue on details, but the existence of
continued scientific debate on those details is no reason to slow or stop efforts to
reduce emissions to zero as quickly as we can [2].
Stoddard et al [6] explored why we’ve failed to reduce emissions decades after
climate change was well understood to be a serious societal problem: ‘a common
thread that emerges across the reviewed literature is the central role of power,
manifest in many forms’. The reality is that solving the climate problem means
confronting and defeating the most powerful industry in human history. It is a power
struggle to create the future, not simply a scientific debate [7, 8].
For too long, media outlets, government regulators, and scientists have taken
objections to climate science as good-faith arguments, but that assumption has
enabled the forces of denial and delay [3, 5]. Fighting against such tactics isn’t easy,
but the scientific community has learned a lot over the years. One key resource in
that fight is the Debunking Handbook 2020 [9], which outlines effective ways to
combat disinformation and misinformation on climate and other topics. Others have
started to apply public pressure to identify and publicize misleading fossil fuel
advertising campaigns [10].
The broader fight to educate and train the public in the critical thinking skills
needed to recognize and debunk misinformation is important for more than just
climate change. These skills can be taught [11–13] and they are essential for
preserving functioning democracies in the twenty-first century, but by themselves
are no guarantee of an informed citizenry. It is incumbent on policy makers, aided
by the scientific community and responsible companies, to continue to educate the
public about the nature, scope, and urgency of the climate problem.
It is also important to develop new ways to combat misinformation, such as
requiring social media and traditional media organizations to run climate public
service announcements and prevent misleading content from running in the first
place [10, 14]. Social media can do much better at limiting proliferation of climate
misinformation, just as they now attempt to do for cigarettes, pornography, medical
misinformation, human trafficking, and messages that promote terrorism. It’s a
complex and rapidly evolving area of law and policy, but without action against
polluter-funded misinformation, achieving zero emissions will happen much more
slowly than it should.

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11.2 Public understanding about climate lags the science

The most comprehensive study of global views about climate change was conducted
in 2021 by researchers from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication,
who used sophisticated demographic sampling techniques to survey over 76,000
people from 31 countries and territories [15]. This study illuminates several key facts
about the current state of public understanding about climate.
First, the vast majority of people (79% to 94% in the countries sampled) understand
that climate change is happening, and most people are concerned that climate disruptions
will harm their own lives (57% to 92%) as well as future generations (59% to 91%).
Second, a majority thinks climate action should be a high priority for governments (53%
to 91%), and large majorities in most countries (with the exceptions of Egypt and Saudi
Arabia) agree that governments should do more to address climate change.
While most people around the world are concerned about climate change, most
people still don’t understand that our current climate change is caused almost
entirely by human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels [15]. As illustrated
in figure 11.1, less than half of adults in most countries surveyed understand that
climate change is caused ‘mostly by human activities’. As shown in figure 11.2, even
smaller percentages of people understand that solving climate change will require
burning ‘much less’ oil, coal, and natural gas than we use today. We must bridge
these gaps in understanding about the root causes of climate change if we’re to
implement climate solutions at the appropriate scale. We also need to study the
rhetorical techniques used by the industry to confuse public understanding [16].

11.3 What we must do

Most people know that dangerous climate changes are happening, but they don’t
know why. We now need to help people understand what is causing climate change
and what must be done to solve it. We also need to stop treating the fossil fuel
industry and other large polluters as legitimate participants in policy debates and
start treating them like the threat to the global climate that they’ve been for decades.
That means telling the full truth about climate pollution, rooting out fossil fuel
funded corruption, mandating transparency and accurate disclosures, banning fossil
fuel advertising, running countervailing public engagement campaigns, and holding
the industry accountable for self-interested lies.

11.3.1 Tell the truth about climate

We summarize the simple truths about climate change in chapter 1, following the
framework from Nicholas [17]:

• It’s warming.
• It’s us.
• We’re sure.
• It’s bad.
• We can fix it, but we’d better hurry.

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 Solving Climate Change

Figure 11.1. Public opinion in major countries about the most important cause of climate change. Source:
Reproduced with permission from International Public Opinion on Climate Change 2021 [15]. Yale University
and Facebook Data for Good.

Solving this problem will create a better world, saving trillions of dollars and
millions of lives every year. From society’s perspective, the economic case for rapid
climate action has never been more clear (and it gets clearer every day as we learn
more and technology improves). While acting immediately would drive costs of
future action down, every moment of delay makes cost of inaction larger, so delay is
folly. We need immediate action that will reduce global emissions to zero as quickly
as possible.
Climate solutions can always be made better, but existing technologies can get us
most of the way to zero emissions, and most can scale immediately given changes in
incentives and policies. Scale (which drives learning effects) is what will drive costs
down for everyone, making climate mitigation an even better deal than it is today.
As we saw in global survey data above, most people understand that ‘it’s
warming’ and ‘it’s bad’. Fewer people understand that ‘we’re sure’ that ‘it’s us’

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 Solving Climate Change

Figure 11.2. Public opinion in major countries about whether fossil fuel use should be reduced. Source:
Reproduced with permission from International Public Opinion on Climate Change 2021 [15]. Yale University
and Facebook Data for Good.

causing the warming. Even fewer understand how ‘we can fix’ our climate crisis.
Challenging these misconceptions can help generate the political will necessary to
enact needed change and encourage citizens to make more climate-friendly choices.
One of the most effective ways to convince people about the need for urgent
action on climate is to explain that at least 97% of scientific articles on climate
change support the consensus position that Earth is warming, humans are
responsible, and that rapid emissions reductions are the solution [18–21].
Emphasizing that we’re in a climate emergency, making climate risks personal,
tying climate action to deeply held values, and explaining how we can fix the

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 Solving Climate Change

problem together (making a better world in the process) are key to communicating
the threat and the opportunity of climate change in ways that will reach most
audiences [22–26].
It’s also essential to use the right climate messengers for each intended audience.
As any marketing executive knows, people more readily accept information from
trusted sources they respect who share their values. Who delivers a climate message
and how it is delivered can be just as important as the content of the message.

11.3.2 Engage the public with climate truths through information campaigns
Considering the scope of our climate challenges, it’s remarkable that massive climate
public engagement campaigns aren’t already commonplace. Effective climate
communications should come from governments, traditional and online media,
environmental nonprofits, and billions of individual conversations within trusted
communities. We must share climate impacts and solutions in personal and
actionable ways, but too often climate communications are vague and
disempowering.
Effective climate communications should combine modern information technol-
ogy with the same behavioral psychology techniques that marketing wizards have
used for decades. There are now many resources to help make climate communi-
cations more effective, including ecoAmerica’s Communicating on Climate 13 Steps
and Guiding Principles [27], publications from the Yale Program on Climate Change
Communications1, and over a decade of research from the broader Behavior,
Energy, and Climate Change (BECC) academic community2. Climate communica-
tors at all levels should use these guides to personalize climate messages for
everyone.
Governments should fund aggressive and frequent public service announcements
to educate the public about the dangers of fossil fuels and the benefits of climate
solutions. They should also mandate that traditional and online media platforms
spread approved climate messages crafted with the guidance of science and
marketing experts. We know that counter advertising worked to reduce tobacco
use, there’s no reason it wouldn’t also work well for enhancing climate under-
standing and motivating climate action [28]. Governments should also fund non-
profits and mission-driven companies to invent new climate information technology
tools that innovate new ways to engage the public in climate action.
Both traditional and online media should more effectively engage the public in
climate action. Every time climate-related extreme weather is in the news, journalists
should highlight the climate links, explain that fossil pollution is the main cause, and
emphasize that solutions are ready to scale. Big technology companies also have a
unique ability and responsibility to engage the public in climate action. Tech
companies should be pushed to harness the same algorithms that they use to
microtarget advertising to maximize public engagement on climate.

1
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu
2
https://beccconference.org/

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 Solving Climate Change

Nonprofits and foundations can also be effective in spreading climate messages to

wider audiences. Historically, large green groups have focused climate campaigns on
reaching out to existing members to donate more and engage with elected leaders.
While these ‘preaching to the choir’ campaigns likely have some benefits, these
nonprofit-funded climate messages don’t reach most people. Campaigns focused on
partisan climate politics may also exacerbate political divides and make progress on
policy more difficult.
Nonprofit climate messaging has also often deprioritized actions that individuals
can take in their own lives, such as plant-based foods and electrifying homes and
transportation. Calls for climate lifestyle changes are perceived as less popular and
beneficial for nonprofit donations. While political engagement on climate is also
important, donor-driven organizations should broaden the scope and reach of their
climate messages, since many climate impacts come from individual choices. Both
secular and religious nonprofit organizations can also spread powerful calls to
climate action that emphasize the moral and social justice dimensions of our climate
crisis, with some leaders like Pope Francis already highlighting the moral imperative
of climate action to millions of followers.
Last but certainly not least, we all have a role to play in communicating climate
truths within our communities. Many people best absorb information from trusted
friends, family members, neighbors, colleagues, and community leaders. We can all
be effective climate communicators for those who trust us, and climate messages that
resonate with each of us as individuals will likely also resonate with friends and
family. Online media technology tools also can empower us to amplify our most
powerful climate truths to a much wider audience. But even for those with no desire
to communicate more widely, every conversation is an opportunity to spread climate
truths and advocate for action.

11.3.3 Require climate education

Public climate engagement is much easier when everyone starts from common
understanding. Climate literacy is now as vital as basic math and science, since
climate change will affect many aspects of our lives, from lifestyle choices to political
decisions to our careers, to our personal safety. Mandating climate education can
ensure better public understanding of key facts about our climate challenges and
solutions, including how local communities should prepare for climate disruptions
while moving to zero emissions as quickly as possible.
Effective climate curriculum should start with educating the educators. Most
teachers devote little time to climate science in their classrooms, and educators who
do teach about climate change often feel underqualified or even teach inaccurate
information. A 2016 Science article found that a majority of middle- and high-
school teachers in the US include only an hour or two of instruction about climate
change over the course of an entire academic year, and 30% of teachers devoted less
than an hour [29]. Moreover, despite 79% of Americans supporting climate science
education, 70% of middle school science teachers and 55% of high-school science
teachers in the US do not understand the scientific consensus that climate change is

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 Solving Climate Change

caused primarily by fossil fuels and other human activities [30], and 40% of teachers
who include climate into their science curriculum teach it inaccurately [31]. The
climate education situation is likely better in some countries, but in many countries it
is likely worse, given global polling on levels of climate understanding.
Italy has become the first country to mandate climate science in public
education [32], making knowledge of climate fundamentals as essential as reading,
writing, and arithmetic. Other countries are now starting to follow Italy’s lead,
including Finland3 and Mexico4, and education regulators in cities, counties,
provinces and states can set climate education standards when national govern-
ments fail to act. There are many curriculum resources and standards on climate
already freely available from nonprofit, government, and academic groups,
including the Next Generation Science Standards, the National Center for
Science Education (NCSE), Stanford University’s Climate Change Education
Project, and ACE (formerly the Alliance for Climate Education, now renamed
Action for the Climate Emergency).
Basic knowledge of climate science and solutions can also be added as require-
ments for college and university degrees, as well as professional certifications,
including teaching credentials. Climate solutions and disruptions will affect many
careers, so professionals should a working knowledge of relevant climate informa-
tion, from electricians preparing homes for a future free of oil and gas, to architects
designing for floods and wildfires, to investment advisors shifting clients to climate-
positive investing strategies. Companies of all sizes can incorporate climate solutions
into their employee training programs, whether it’s educating chefs how to cook
with induction electric ranges or instructing product designers how to make more
climate-friendly design decisions. Climate education can and should come from
many sources, and there are many available resources to do it better.

11.3.4 Root out fossil-funded corruption

Just stating the truth isn’t enough to win this battle. It’s a political fight, and that
means confronting powerful interests directly and working toward an orderly shut-
down of the fossil fuel industry. It also means rooting out polluter-funded corruption
everywhere it exists, because such corruption allows climate polluters to elevate their
mistruths and exercise power effectively.
As discussed in earlier chapters, many of the largest climate polluters are also the
largest political donors and lobbyists, and there’s often a revolving door between
government and lucrative industry lobbying jobs. This is legalized corruption, and it
can be found almost everywhere, at all levels of government.
One of many case studies in such corruption is Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E),
the California utility whose poorly maintained infrastructure has caused over 1500
fires in the past decade [33], resulting in convictions for dozens of felony crimes [34],
over 250,000 claims from victims of wildfires and natural gas explosions, and over

3
https://thegeep.org/learn/countries/finland
4
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/07/mexico-fighting-climate-change-classroom

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 Solving Climate Change

400 deaths5. PG&E continues to be one of the largest political donors in California,
paying millions of dollars every year to political lobbyists and Democratic and
Republican politicians alike. About 80% of politicians in California have taken
money from PG&E6, and 69% of PG&E political lobbyists have previously held
government jobs7.
There are also many examples of illegal direct bribes paid by climate polluters to
regulators or politicians, and that blatant corruption is clearly important and
pernicious. According to researchers at Stanford Law School, the oil and gas
industry has been the most frequent violator of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act8,
and large climate polluters have been caught in the act of bribing US officials as well.
An outrageous recent example is in the US state of Ohio, where a major state utility
bribed state and local politicians so they would pass legislation favorable to that
company [35].
It’s also important to understand that ‘soft corruption’ is more widespread and
can be even more insidious than direct political donations, lobbying, and illegal
bribery. Funding fake experts, subtly influencing university research through major
donations, and trumpeting misleading research to foster predatory delay are
common tactics of this powerful industry [3], but often these tactics fly under the
radar. They all need to be exposed and fought.
Systemic corruption is enabled by money in politics. The US has allowed
unlimited corporate spending to influence elections and equated political donations
with free speech, enshrining Citizens United as the law of the land9. This approach is
counterproductive to the goal of rapid emissions reductions and the US (and other
countries moving down this path) need to reverse it to enable more rapid progress on
climate and many other important issues. Unlimited corporate money makes it
much easier for the fossil fuel industry and other polluters to impede climate action.
Corporations are not people and money is not speech. In a true democracy, those
with more money should not have a louder voice than those with less. In that sense,
the fight for strengthening democracy is also a fight for climate action and justice.

11.3.5 Mandate transparency and accurate climate disclosures

Taking action against climate change requires accurate information. For govern-
ments, deciding which companies to regulate or cajole depends on metrics that
reflect climate reality. For companies, having accurate metrics for climate success is
needed to drive institutional change and marketing zero emissions products. For
investors, knowing which companies are truly facing the climate challenge is

5
https://www.firevictimtrust.com/Docs/Letter_from_the_Trustee_6-21-22.pdf
6
https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/abc10-originals/fire-power-money-california-wildfires-investigation-
pge/103-c273fb35-1c43-4d9a-9bdc-3d7971e5540b
7
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/pg-e-corp/summary?topnumcycle=2022&toprecipcycle=2022&contribcycle=
2022&outspendcycle=2022&id=D000000290&lobcycle=2022
8
https://fcpa.stanford.edu/industry?industry=Oil+%26+Gas
9
https://www.fec.gov/legal-resources/court-cases/citizens-united-v-fec/

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 Solving Climate Change

essential for making informed investment choices. For individuals, knowing what
works and what doesn’t is critical for deciding how best to reduce emissions.
In every case, disclosure of accurate climate risks, costs, benefits, and full life-
cycle emissions is needed for informed decision making. Government has a critical
role to play in developing such metrics and mandating companies to accept and use
them, just as they now do for financial instruments and food nutrient labels.
Investors and donors can help by supporting research on such metrics.
France has set an example by passing the Climate and Resilience Law in 2021,
which contains a sweeping set of climate-related measures, including mandates for
climate labeling on many consumer products and requirements that products must
prove climate-related claims with full disclosure of calculation methodology [36]10.

11.3.6 Ban advertising and sponsorships for fossil fuel technologies

When the US finally decided that smoking was a threat to public health, a ban on
tobacco advertising followed in 1971 [37]. Subsequently, the World Health
Organization developed the framework convention for tobacco bans on advertising,
which had been adopted by countries representing only about 12% of the world’s
population by 201411. The evidence for the effectiveness of partial bans on tobacco
advertising is mixed, but comprehensive bans have generally been found to be more
effective at reducing tobacco consumption [28, 38–42].
In France, the Climate and Resilience Law already bans ads for fossil fuel
companies, and the advertising ban will extend to polluting vehicles by 2028, while
local governments have been given authority to further regulate ads for fossil
advertising and sponsorships [43]. Many other governments, nonprofits, media
outlets, advertising professionals, and citizen groups are now also exploring other
bans on fossil technology advertising, including diverse efforts in over a dozen
countries12, and a European Citizens’ Initiative pushing to ban advertising and
sponsorship from climate polluting industries throughout Europe13. Advertising for
fossil fuels and fossil-burning technologies can also be forced to include warning
labels related to climate and human health damages, similar to the health warnings
on tobacco products in many countries, or climate-polluter ads can be required to
promote climate-friendly alternatives. In addition to advertising bans, France has
also required that vehicle ads must now promote walking, cycling, or public
transport instead of driving [44], alongside a hashtag urging climate-friendly
transportation.
It’s worth exploring whether a ban on fossil fuel advertising would speed up the
transition to zero emissions. The fossil fuel industry, automakers, airlines, and other
large polluters clearly believe advertising works because they keep doing it. Perhaps

10
https://www.climate-laws.org/geographies/france/laws/law-no-2021-1104-on-the-fight-on-climate-change-
and-resilience
11
https://www.who.int/europe/health-topics/tobacco/banning-tobacco-advertising-sponsorship-and-promotion
12
https://verbiedfossielereclame.nl/only-words/
13
https://banfossilfuelads.org/about-us/

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 Solving Climate Change

it’s time to start clamping down on that advertising, just as some important
countries have done for tobacco.

11.3.7 Deplatform climate misinformation and disinformation

To elevate climate truths we also need to curb the bombardment of climate lies that
come through both traditional and online media. Climate disinformation is often
funded by fossil fuel interests with the goal of causing public doubts about climate
change’s true severity, causes, and solutions, following a similar playbook that the
tobacco industry deployed for over half a century [3, 4]. Political TV news stations
and talk radio have been spreading climate disinformation for decades, but online
media and social media silos have expanded the spread of climate mistruths, both
deliberate (disinformation) and unintentional (misinformation).
The largest tech companies have now also become the largest spreaders of climate
misinformation and disinformation. The core of the problem is the ‘attention
economy’ business model that maximizes advertising revenue by feeding users
content that maximizes engagement. Searching for climate content on social media
or YouTube can quickly lead to content by climate denialists, and as people engage
with this disinformation then tech platform algorithms feed them similar disinfor-
mation. This algorithmic amplification of climate lies is happening everywhere, and
while some of the large tech companies have taken tepid steps to combat the
problem, they have financial incentives to not do very much, since deplatforming
popular sources of disinformation can anger users and reduce revenues.
It doesn’t have to be this way. News media once did much more to elevate facts of
deliberately distorted fictions, and technology companies have all the tools they need
to filter out climate lies. But substantial government regulation will be needed to
root harmful disinformation out of traditional and online media. Given what’s at
stake, we should treat climate disinformation the same way we treat harmful content
that’s already subject to mandatory editorial filters, such as child pornography,
propaganda from terrorists, and others advocating violence and hate. The European
Digital Services Act14 should be a big step in this direction, with the new regulations
expected to force tech giants to remove a wide range of harmful disinformation from
their platforms [45], including climate disinformation [46], though much will depend
on how the new laws are enforced [47]. Other governments can now follow Europe’s
lead, and both new and old media companies should be pushed to do much more to
stem the flow of mistruths.

11.3.8 Hold the fossil fuel industry and other bad actors accountable for climate lies
The fossil fuel industry has known about climate risks for decades yet has repeatedly
lied and misled the public about this issue [3, 4, 48–53]. It is critical for government,
individuals, companies, and others who support climate action to publicize and
correct these lies as loudly as they can. It is also important for government to explore

14
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_2545

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 Solving Climate Change

the use of anti-fraud and other legal measures to bring consequences to bear on
individuals and companies who knowingly spread lies to advance their own interests.
Large repeat distributors and funders of climate disinformation could even face
criminal penalties beyond fines, including prison time and suspensions of rights to do
business. The landmark French Climate and Resilience Law15 codified the new
crime of ‘ecocide’, with large illegal polluters soon subject to criminal penalties.
Given that climate disinformation likely leads to more pollution, it is logical to
expand ecocide-type laws to include similar criminal liabilities for deliberate mass
distribution of climate lies. Unrestricted climate change will bring horrific con-
sequences for billions of people around the world, and the people causing it should
see consequences for lying about that risk for private gain.

11.4 Chapter conclusions

The fight to stabilize the climate is primarily a political and moral fight, and we need
to treat it that way. For too long, the scientific community has argued with fossil fuel
funded fake experts as if they were good-faith participants in public debate about
technical issues. Reframing these actors as the self-interested agents of predatory
delay makes it clear that a different approach to this misinformation is needed if we
are to reduce emissions rapidly enough.
It is also important to focus on climate change as the emergency that it is. People
and institutions can move quickly when there is an emergency, but many lack that
sense of ‘emergency urgency’ for climate change. The extended time horizons for
consequences make this problem challenging but treating it as an emergency requiring
an immediate response is an entirely proportional to the real climate risks we face.

Human-induced climate change is a scientific reality, and its decisive mitigation

is a moral and religious imperative for humanity… We are not faced with two
separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather one complex
crisis which is both social and environmental.
—Pope Francis

Further reading
Franta B 2018 Early oil industry knowledge of CO2 and global warming Nat. Clim.
Change 8 1024–5 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0349-9. Franta shows that the
oil industry knew climate change was a real danger to society as early as the 1950s.
Franta B 2021 Weaponizing economics: Big Oil, economic consultants, and climate
policy delay Environ. Politics 31 555–75 https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.
2021.1947636. Franta documents how the oil industry used economic modelers
and consultants to foster predatory delay starting as early as the 1980s.

15
https://www.iea.org/policies/12874-climate-and-resilience-law

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 Solving Climate Change

Franta B 2021 Early oil industry disinformation on global warming Environ. Politics
30 663–8 https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2020.1863703. A history of oil indus-
try-funded propaganda in the 1980s.
Lewandowsky S et al 2020 The Debunking Handbook 2020 (St Lucia, Australia:
George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication) https://
sks.to/db2020. The definitive primer on how to fight misinformation and
disinformation, with applications to climate change.
Mann M E 2021 The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet (New
York: Public Affairs). A clear-eyed recent view of the political and scientific
struggles about climate change.
Markowitz E, Hodge C, Harp G, St John C, Marx S M, Speiser M, Zaval L and
Perkowitz R 2014 Connecting on Climate: A Guide to Effective Climate Change
Communication (New York: Center for Research on Environmental Decisions
(CRED) at Columbia University and ecoAmerica) https://doi.org/10.7916/d8-
pjjm-vb57. A terrific guide to effective climate communications.
Oreskes N and Conway E M 2010 Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists
Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (New
York: Bloomsbury). This eye-opening book traces common threads among those
arguing against government action to protect the public good.
Oreskes N 2015 The fact of uncertainty, the uncertainty of facts and the cultural
resonance of doubt Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 373 20140455 https://doi.org/10.1098/
rsta.2014.0455. A more recent and academic treatment covering some similar
ground to Merchants of Doubt.
Schneider S H 2009 Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to Save Earth’s
Climate (Washington, DC: National Geographic). The politics and science of
climate change are front and center in this classic book from Schneider.
Stoddard I et al 2021 Three decades of climate mitigation: why haven’t we bent the
global emissions curve? Annu. Rev. Environ. Resources 46 653–89 https://doi.org/
10.1146/annurev-environ-012220-011104. This article is the definitive social
science analysis of the reasons we’ve failed to truly face the climate challenge.

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delay Environ. Politics 31 555–75
[51] Franta B 2021 Early oil industry disinformation on global warming Environ. Politics 30 663–8
[52] Bonneuil C, Choquet P-L and Franta B 2021 Early warnings and emerging accountability:
Total’s responses to global warming, 1971–2021 Global Environ. Change 71 102386
[53] McMullen J 2022 The audacious PR plot that seeded doubt about climate change BBC News
23 July https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62225696

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 IOP Publishing

Solving Climate Change

A guide for learners and leaders
Jonathan Koomey and Ian Monroe

Chapter 12
Bringing it all together

In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is
indispensable.
—General Dwight D Eisenhower

Chapter overview

• The process of analyzing scenarios for a climate-positive world is akin to telling

good stories about the world you want to create.
• The end-result of your climate-positive plan will be summarized in a graph
showing major contributors to emissions reductions relative to a ‘current trends
continued’ scenario.
• The best approach to creating your plan is to use simple spreadsheet models.
Complex models can be useful for estimating key parameters as input to the
spreadsheet model, but they often limit the flexibility of your thinking and require
lots of supporting data and analysis. Those constraints mean they are not the
right tool for creating your climate-positive scenario.
• Solving climate is a team sport, requiring a range of skills and knowledge as well
as flexibility in responding appropriately as reality evolves.
• Key cross-cutting issues include balancing costs, risks, and tradeoffs, addressing
interactions between measures, confronting issues of equity and justice, treating
population, health, and education with care, incorporating adaptation and
resilience, and truly making governance work.
• Identify emissions reduction options with co-benefits such as reduced air and
water pollution, labor savings, or other productivity improvements. These
options are likely to be the cheapest for society so they should feature
prominently in your climate-positive plan.
• Pinpoint the biggest and fastest growing sources of emissions and address those
first, moving down the list until you’ve identified how to eliminate emissions for
every important task in the economy.

doi:10.1088/978-0-7503-4032-8ch12 12-1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

 Solving Climate Change

12.1 Introduction
In previous chapters we described the building blocks of credible emission reduction
plans. This chapter describes the process of pulling those data together in a coherent
way.
For each major task (such as water heating, cooking, or mobility), scenario
planning exercises project key drivers of energy and emissions into the future
assuming current trends continue, then project an alternative path for each task
that moves society to become climate positive by 2040. The purpose of the exercise
is to develop intuition and quantitative understanding around how hard that
transition will be.
No one can predict the future of human systems with accuracy. The purpose of
this exercise is to use knowledge of current trends, technology characteristics,
human and institutional behavior, and physical principles to create a simple model
and use it to conduct systematic ‘thought experiments’ [1]. The futurist John Platt
called this ‘mapping the future’, which is a way to explore a range of possibilities
to help people create the future they prefer. Another name for such work is
scenario analysis.

12.2 Telling a good story1

The purpose of scenario analysis, as explained by Peter Schwartz in his now classic
book The Art of the Long View, is to explore several possible futures in a systematic
way [2]. No matter how things turn out, the analyst will have on the shelf a scenario
(or story) that resembles that future and will have thought through in advance the
likely consequences of that scenario on the decisions at hand. Such a story ‘resonates
in some ways with what [people] already know and leads them from that resonance
to reperceive the world.’
The steps for successful scenario development are as follows:

• Define the question: Scenarios should be developed in advance of some major

strategic decision so that when the time to decide arrives, the options are laid
out in detail and the implications of each decision path are made manifest.
Such a decision might be ‘How can we most rapidly reduce our company’s
direct emissions to zero?’
• Determine the key factors affecting the system: The next step is to identify the
key factors determining whether the focal decision will succeed or fail. These
factors might include such things as customer acceptance of a new technology
or competitor response to the new strategy. They could also include
demographics, inflation, commodity prices, technological change, public
policies, or political instability. Some of them are beyond the control of
any individual or institution (‘predetermined elements’), and others are
subject to human influence.

1
This section is adapted from Koomey [1]. Used with permission.

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• Evaluate factors by importance and uncertainty: Of the trends and driving

forces identified in the previous step, a small number will be both highly
important and highly uncertain (see also Morgan and Henrion’s book
Uncertainty [3]). These are the issues upon which differences in the scenarios
will be based. Predetermined elements don’t differ among scenarios.
• Choose the scenario set: The most important and uncertain factors should be
combined in various ways to define the set of scenarios to be considered.
These factors are the dimensions of uncertainty that the scenarios will
explore. For example, the scenario set for an analysis of the costs of reducing
carbon emissions might include variations in fuel prices and costs of different
technologies, which are two of the key sources of uncertainty. One scenario (a
worst case for carbon reductions) might combine low fossil fuel prices with
pessimistic technology costs for non-fossil sources. Another scenario might
combine high fossil fuel prices with optimistic technology costs. The set of
scenarios chosen also frames the story lines that will emerge from the
scenarios.
• Add detail to the scenarios: Each of the key driving forces and factors from the
second step should be assessed for each of the main scenarios. Usually, these
factors can be assigned relative rankings (e.g. ‘Inflation should be higher than
average in scenario 1 and lower than average in scenario 2’), which can then
be translated into actual numbers. The exact numbers are not so important as
long as they reflect in a credible way people’s expectations about how the
future might unfold in a particular scenario. The scenario must then be woven
into a plausible story describing a course of events that would result in the
scenario’s final outcome. Each scenario must be named in a way that vividly
reminds people of its essence.
• Determine the implications: Revisit the decision identified in step 1, and assess
how that decision would fare in each of the different scenarios. If the decision
(e.g. rapidly reducing emissions) would lead to success (as defined in step 2)
for all or most of the scenarios considered, that decision is probably a wise
one. If it is likely to be successful in only one scenario, the decision is ‘a high-
risk gamble…especially if the company has little control over the likelihood
of the required scenario coming to pass.’
• Define metrics for success: Once the scenarios have been developed, it is
crucial to identify a few key indicators by which decision-makers can monitor
the evolution of events. These indicators are used to determine which of the
different scenarios best matches up with actual events and can be used to
trigger an institutional response (e.g. ‘if we miss our emissions reduction
target by more than 5% in any year, then do X’). If you can’t measure it, you
can’t manage it, so defining appropriate indicators is crucial to success.

Schwartz believes that scenarios are successful when ‘they are both plausible and
surprising; when they have the power to break old stereotypes; and when the makers
assume ownership of them and put them to work’. The institutional process of
creating scenarios (what Schwartz calls ‘holding a strategic conversation’) can also

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 Solving Climate Change

reveal new opportunities for an organization and promote team building among its
employees.
Another name for scenario analysis is the commonly used scientific technique of
creating a thought experiment. All scientists use this technique, in which they
imagine certain real-world complexities to be absent and then think through the
consequences for the situation they are investigating. For example, Galileo imagined
a world in which the complicating effects of friction did not exist and, by doing so,
was able to make great strides in what would come to be called the field of kinetics
(the study of moving objects). Such thought experiments are as valuable in business
as in science. Instead of limiting your imagination by current circumstances and
constraints, imagine a world in which some key constraints don’t exist, and ask
yourself how you or your institution might respond.
Most of Schwartz’s examples of scenario analysis have only a small quantitative
component, but many other futurists are obsessed with numbers and computer
models. Most explorations of the future with which we are directly familiar err by
focusing too much on the mechanics of forecasting and quantitative analysis (e.g. on
modeling tools) and far too little on careful scenario development based on the
procedures described above. Quantitative analysis can lend coherence and credence
to scenario exercises by elaborating on consequences of future events, but modeling
tools should support that process rather than drive it, as is so often the case.
The relationship between data, anecdotes, models, and scenarios is summarized in
figure 12.1, adapted from Ghanadan and Koomey [4]. Raw data are difficult both to
analyze and interpret, so people rely more on anecdotes (which illustrate concepts
well but have little quantitative rigor) or models (the results of which often don’t tell
a coherent story but are at least easy to evaluate in a quantitative way). Good

Figure 12.1. How scenarios relate to models, stories, and data. Source: Koomey [1], adapted from Ghanadan
and Koomey [4]. Reproduced with permission.

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scenarios combine the narrative power of anecdotes with the additional quantitative
rigor that comes from the use of models (even simple ones).
In our years of involvement with development of energy and climate policy, we
have been most struck by how few resources are devoted to sensible scenario
development and associated data and how many are devoted to the development of
different modeling tools to assess such policies. Computer tools are sexy and
appealing (at least to the funding agencies). Data and scenario analysis, upon which
the results generally hinge, are virtually always given short shrift.
Tens of millions of dollars are spent every year on models whose capabilities are
redundant with others, usually because an agency with money wants its own in-
house modeling capability and is unwilling, because of institutional rivalry or
personal biases, to adopt a pre-existing framework. Policy makers fail to realize that
models are ALL unable to predict the future in an accurate way and that small
improvements in modeling methodology are made irrelevant by inadequate scenario
development.

12.3 The end of the journey

The end goal is to create with a graph that looks like figure 12.2 (which is the same as
figure 3.2), taken from the scenarios detailed in [5], using decomposition methods
from [6, 7]. This graph uses 100 year global warming potentials (GWPs). We
supplement this graph with one that shows cumulative savings by category from
2020 to 2050 for both 20 year and 100 year GWPs, as in figure 12.3.

Figure 12.2. Sources of emissions reductions over time from a widely cited zero-emissions scenario. Source:
Scenario results from [5], decomposed using methods from [6, 7]. There are no savings from biomass CCS and
a tiny increase in emissions from economic activity per person (not shown) in this scenario.

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Figure 12.3. Cumulative emissions reductions from 2020 to 2050 from a widely cited zero-emissions scenario.
Source: Scenario results from [5], decomposed using methods from [6, 7]. There are no savings from biomass
CCS and a tiny increase in emissions from economic activity per person (not shown) in this scenario.

The reference case envisions a world in which current trends continue. The
intervention case reaches net-zero emissions by 2040. As with all such analyses, there
are quirks to investigate and explain.
This scenario is one of the few in which changes in population growth affect
emissions. Lower population growth results in this scenario from efforts to promote
education and empower women [5].
Net emissions hit zero but then rise. Why should that be? The existence of carbon
capture in this scenario allows the continued operation of fossil gas plants that
would otherwise be retired, and the improvements in the energy intensity of the
economy that are rapid in the first few decades of the scenario slow down
dramatically mid-century. These driving factors, which are embodied in a large
and complex model, lead to an increase in primary energy demand and consequent
increase in fossil fuel use towards the end of the twenty-first century.
These are the kinds of questions that systematically analyzing zero-emissions scenarios
should raise, which is one reason conducting such exercises has value. A world that has
achieved net-zero emissions shouldn’t (and probably wouldn’t) allow backsliding in total
emissions, and it shows why using carbon capture could lead to a perverse result. Models
are not reality, but they can help highlight issues to consider and pitfalls to avoid.
Your climate-positive scenario will likely have categories of emissions reductions
that differ from those in figures 12.2 and 12.3. The availability of data and local
circumstances will dictate which options you explore.

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12.4 Big models or simpler spreadsheets?

The most widely used integrated assessment models use large and complicated
models to capture the many interactions that affect the feasibility and speed of
emissions reductions. While these interactions are sometimes important, the use of
big models (the care and feeding of which require significant resources) also has
disadvantages.
Making key assumptions transparent is much easier with simpler models. Big
models also often contain buried assumptions in their data and structure [1]. A
recent example is in [8], which showed that a common assumption (that climate
damages and climate investments should be treated equally by rational actors in
integrated assessment models) has significant implications for the results. Weighting
losses more heavily than gains, as many decision-makers do, implies much faster
mitigation than is typically shown in benefit-cost analyses for climate.
The data and structure of these models often lags recent developments because
reality changes fast and the effort to update the models is significant. For example, a
systematic review of treatment of wind and solar technologies in emissions reduction
scenarios found ‘the trend of rapid cost declines has been structurally under-
estimated in virtually all future energy scenario analyses and suggest that even the
most recent studies refer to obsolete or very conservative values’ [9]. There’s even a
name for that effect, ‘assumption drag’, which was coined by William Ascher in his
classic book on forecasting from late 1970s [10].
The structure of models also sometimes limits the questions analysts ask. For example,
most models have difficulty implementing accelerated capital retirement scenarios, and
many scenarios simply ignore it, but as we’ve discussed in previous chapters, it’s a critical
part of sensible and suitably rapid emissions reductions plans [11, 12].
It is for the reasons above that we encourage students to build simple spreadsheet
models for their climate-positive scenarios. This approach teaches the students about
data, key drivers, and underlying interdependencies more reliably than just running
a big model would. It also allows students to incorporate many kinds of data
(including results from big modeling exercises) in a way that allows for more
comprehensive analysis. The time constraints inherent in a one quarter class also
dictate a simpler approach, but the main substantive reasons for this choice are the
ones listed above.

12.5 Solving climate is a team sport

As we discuss in chapter 2, climate change is the ultimate adaptive challenge, because
the rate and scope of the changes needed to solve the problem will stretch us to the
limit. In addition, the solutions must involve changes in behavior and institutional
structure, not just technology, because the problem is so pressing. It will also require
us to learn how to work together in new ways, and to grow and evolve rapidly.
Ertel and Solomon write

It’s nearly impossible for any one senior executive–or small leadership team–to
solve adaptive challenges alone. They require observations and insights from a

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wide range of people who see the world and your organization’s problems
differently. And they require combining those divergent perspectives in a way
that creates new ideas and possibilities that no individual would think up on
his or her own. [13: p 10]

As Ertel and Solomon argue, tackling adaptive challenges requires ‘strategic

conversations’ that help define the problem and generate innovative ideas for solving
it. That’s why we think of solving the climate problem as a ‘team sport’.
That means choosing a team with different perspectives and skills will make
solving the problem easier. It means being open to ideas from outside your group.
And it means using a simpler more inclusive spreadsheet model that makes it easier
to incorporate ‘outside the box’ ideas rather than a more rigid and complex
modeling tool. Remember, there’s no such thing as accuracy in 2050, just do the
best you can (and document everything!)

12.6 Cross-cutting issues

12.6.1 Balancing costs, benefits, and tradeoffs
Adaptive challenges are complicated and solving climate change will involve shifting
money flows of tens of trillions of dollars over the next few decades [14]. A real
emissions reduction plan needs to consider the costs and benefits of each possible
action, and while we don’t require students to fully assess scenario economics we do
encourage them to consider costs and benefits in choosing the options for their plan.
That means reading literature on costs for different options and comparing results across
studies. It also means focusing on mass produced technologies where they make sense,
because those are most likely to benefit from learning-by-doing related cost reductions.

12.6.1.1 Background
Many economic modelers try to find the ‘optimal’ solution for the climate problem.
They make estimates of the costs of reducing emissions and the avoided damages
from increased emissions (as in figure 12.4) and characterize the point where the two

Figure 12.4. Standard application of benefit-cost analysis to the climate problem. Source: Reproduced with
permission from Koomey [23].

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curves cross as the optimal one [15]. That point is where the marginal cost of
reducing emissions is equal to the marginal benefits from reducing them.
In this view, reducing emissions beyond that point would imply that we would
have paid too much for emissions reductions—the costs for incremental emissions
reductions would exceed the benefits. This particular model has worked reasonably
well for short-term analyses of other kinds of pollution, such as sulfur dioxide, which
is why economists have tried to apply it to the climate problem.
The most prominent example is that of Nobel prize winning professor William
Nordhaus, the father of benefit-cost analysis for climate. In his 2018 Nobel
acceptance speech he said:

...one of the most amazing results of IAMs is the ability to calculate the optimal
carbon price…This concept represents the economic cost caused by an additional
ton of carbon dioxide emissions (or more succinctly carbon) or its equivalent…In
an optimized climate policy (abstracting away from various distortions), the social
cost of carbon will equal the carbon price or the carbon tax.

Nordhaus discusses optimality (with associated ‘uncertainty’) based on his tacit

belief that it is possible to characterize accurately the real risk to the climate of our
continued emissions of greenhouse gases in terms of costs and benefits decades and
centuries hence.
The McKinsey cost curve [16, 17] shown in figure 3.3 is an attempt to replicate the
stylized curve of incremental abatement costs in figure 12.3. The literature on
‘conservation supply curves’ contains many other examples [18–22]. While this way of
representing costs has heuristic value, this mode of analysis ultimately fails for climate.
First, the idea of accurately calculating costs and benefits decades and centuries
hence strains credulity. The literature on forecasting accuracy for energy systems
and many other technical areas should give pause to anyone who holds this belief
[10, 24–32]. What can ‘optimal’ mean when the marginal costs and benefits can’t be
estimated with precision?
Another reason why this simple model doesn’t work is the presence of so many
societal co-benefits of climate action [33], with these co-benefits dispersed through-
out the society. If society invests in energy efficiency, for example, it makes a single
capital investment that reduces greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, and other
pollutants. While there have been many attempts to add co-benefits to the supply
and demand curve framework, they always suffer from the inability to precisely
allocate parts of the capital investment to each of the co-benefits, and when the costs
and benefits are experienced by different economic actors, things get even more
complicated. The idea of marginal costs and benefits governing societal decision
making in this context seems to us to be problematic.
The simple model also fails because it assumes certain things about how the
economy works, such as no increasing returns to scale, perfect information, and
perfect rationality, but those mostly don’t apply to real economies. It’s a highly
stylized model that can yield insights in simple situations, but the climate problem is
far too complex. The underlying assumption flows from the view that there IS a

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unique optimal path, based on outputs of models that assume constant or decreasing
returns to scale and no other sources of path dependence.
Once increasing returns are introduced to models (and these effects are pervasive
throughout the real economy) then the idea of a single unique optimal path no longer
holds [34, 35]. For example, the classic analysis in [36] introduced stylized learning
effects in a model of future climate scenarios and found that strong path dependence
was the result. The model results indicated two clusters of scenarios with essentially
similar costs but vastly different emissions, indicating that there isn’t one unique
optimal path, just lots of possible paths, and we get to choose which one we prefer.
The economist Brian Arthur, in [34], explains the intellectual history of increasing
returns in economic modeling. The problem of path dependence from increasing
returns has been well known for decades and many economists acknowledge it as an
issue, but their stylized models almost always fall back on standard production
functions such as Cobb–Douglas (which assumes constant returns to scale). As
Arthur argues, this choice has historically been justified by economists preferring
models that yield a single unique equilibrium, for computational convenience as well
as elegance, but that’s not the way the real world works.

12.6.1.2 Focus on total societal costs and benefits

For the reasons described above we think the simplified marginal costs and benefits
approach doesn’t work for climate. Instead, we advocate comparing total net
societal costs (after adjusting for co-benefits) for getting to zero emissions for
multiple scenarios. It’s fine to use more micro studies to give guidance on which
lower emissions resources might be cheaper than others, but it’s ultimately total net
societal costs that should inform and govern our strategic choices.
This realization also points towards the importance of whole system integrated
design as the path forward, as discussed in chapter 3 and in [37–39]. Co-benefits
from climate action come in part from integrated design strategies that consider the
whole system and count costs and benefits for accomplishing the tasks at hand.
For example, a zero-energy home with a super-tight shell and heat recovery
ventilation can often get by with a tiny heat pump for heating and cooling, and
sometimes no heating system is needed at all, even in cold climates [40]. Similarly,
moving to a full electric vehicle allows for cost savings and design opportunities that
don’t exist for plug-in hybrids that include both fossil fuel and electric power trains.
Long-time energy researcher Amory Lovins [41] calls this approach ‘tunneling
through the cost barrier’ to identify whole system options that would be overlooked
when analysis is focused strictly on marginal costs. Redesigning the system from
scratch to accomplish the task at hand can ultimately result in lower total system
costs even if there are localized increases in marginal costs along the way.

12.6.1.3 Opportunity costs

The idea of opportunity costs comes from economics. Investing in one emissions
reduction option means you can’t spend that money on something else. Getting to zero
emissions will be hard and cost trillions, but we’d be spending most of that money
anyway to replace the current energy system over time. This time we get to spend it on

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energy sources that cost less in societal terms than the fuels they displace, and society as
a whole will be better off than it would otherwise be (in part because the co-benefits of
climate action, in terms of reduced pollution of all kinds, are so large [42–49]).
Opportunity costs come into play in two major ways:

1. Fast emissions reductions require effective deployment of resources.

Choosing the options that are already the cheapest or will soon likely be
cheapest in direct cost terms if we expand production means we get more
bang for the buck.
2. The opportunity costs of moving too slowly are big but avoidable. Keeping
fossil resources online too long, expanding fossil infrastructure that will soon
become stranded assets, and not replacing the worst polluting fuels as
quickly as we can all have deleterious climate and other environmental
effects. If we move more quickly we can avoid these opportunity costs.

The danger, in our view, is not in spending too much on climate mitigation as
conventional economic thinking would indicate, the danger is in spending too little and
moving too slowly. We’ve dithered for so long that little about the transition to zero
emissions will be optimal and now we just need to move as quickly as we can. We’re in a
climate emergency, and that should change our calculus about opportunity costs.

12.6.1.4 Political tradeoffs

One of the biggest issues in designing a zero-emissions world is that individual and
institutional interests often diverge from society’s interests. This conclusion is
particularly true for fossil fuel investors, but it applies more broadly, and it points
towards the importance of power and politics in designing a successful transition
[50]. We are not political scientists, sociologists, or politicians, and we view our role
as explaining what is necessary to preserve a livable world so that others can design
strategies to move the politics in the right direction.
The primacy of power in managing the transition comes to the fore both within
and among countries. As we have argued, solving the climate problem means ending
fossil fuels, and that means powerful interests will lose money and influence. There’s
no happy ending for the fossil fuel industry, only the management of a just transition
in which their influence and power will be vastly diminished.
There may be ways to mollify fossil fuel companies in the near term, and there
may also be opportunities for them to diversify into other energy sources. For
example, the oil and gas industry’s technical and logistical skills would be applicable
to tapping geothermal energy and building offshore wind turbines, but the history of
large companies managing big societal shifts does not make us optimistic that many
of these companies will survive the transition.

12.6.2 Interactions between measures

Some emissions reductions interact. For example, large-scale use of biomass energy
or reforestation can affect food production, and reductions in the carbon intensity of

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electricity supply can reduce the emissions savings from fuel switching. When
creating a climate stabilization plan it is critical to ensure that the most important of
these interactions are treated explicitly, and that the assumptions about those
interactions are well documented. Otherwise, there is a real danger of double
counting savings.

12.6.3 Equity and climate justice

Because the costs and benefits of climate action are distributed unequally across
time, space, income, race, nationality, and age, decisions on balancing climate
mitigation with adaptation and suffering are at their core moral choices, not solely
questions of economics, a discipline predominantly focused on economic efficiency
[51–57].
The faster and more deeply we reduce emissions, the more rapidly we’ll reduce
damages from this problem, the more quickly we’ll address long-standing questions
about equity and justice, and the more completely we’ll correct disparities between
the wealthy people who are predominantly the cause of unrestricted climate change
(and who have the means to alleviate the problem), and disadvantaged people,
poorer people, or people yet unborn who bear most of the costs but have few (or no)
means to cope with those changes.
The IPCC’s Working Group III report [42] discusses the concept of a ‘just
transition’ towards sustainability, with the goal of not imposing ‘hardship on
already marginalized populations within and between countries’, ‘just transition’:

....refers to a set of principles, processes and practices aimed at ensuring that

no people, workers, places, sectors, countries or regions are left behind in the
move from a high-carbon to a low-carbon economy. It includes respect and
dignity for vulnerable groups; creation of decent jobs; social protection;
employment rights; fairness in energy access and use and social dialogue
and democratic consultation with relevant stakeholders.

The emphasis on fairness, justice, and equity highlights the moral dimensions of
the climate challenge.

12.6.4 Energy security, food/water security, and geopolitics

The importance of energy and climate to geopolitics was made clear again in 2022
when Russia invaded Ukraine. Natural gas and oil prices spiked around the world, a
reflection of the globalized trade in these energy products.
Dependence on volatile fuels has been a concern since the 1970s [58–61]. The
focus of policy makers has traditionally been on energy imports and on energy
independence, but this focus is misguided. When fuels are traded on global markets it
is dependence on the fuel itself that exposes countries to price volatility and
economic shocks [62].
Fortunately, climate action and geopolitical stability can go hand in hand.
Getting to zero emissions means ending fossil fuels, which are the source of fuel

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price volatility. Dependence on these fuels creates the risk of extortion from fossil
fuel exporting nations (such as Russia, on whose fossil gas Europe traditionally
depends, and Saudi Arabia, which is still one of the key swing producers for the
world’s oil markets).
Fossil fuels also affect in-country politics for most nations. In the US the power of
fossil fuel producers makes passing climate legislation difficult or impossible in some
states and at the Federal level. Similar issues have arisen in Australia, the UK,
Canada, and in many other fossil fuel producing nations.
Dependence on Russia’s natural gas has made a comprehensive response to
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine difficult, but the invasion and subsequent Russian
threats have made clear the costs of dependence on fossil fuels supplied by a hostile
power. Breaking Russia’s grip on Europe is one of several reasons why phasing out
fossil fuels as rapidly as we can is in the best interests of society at large.
Similar issues arise for conflict between nations driven by water scarcity [63] and
food supplies [64], with complex interactions between fossil fuels, water use, and
agricultural production. Fossil fuels use significant water compared to alternatives
[65, 66], making it clear that ending fossil fuels will have benefits for water use and
agriculture as well. Some carbon capture technologies also use significant water [67],
raising similar issues.
The structure of property rights for water matters greatly, and inequities in who is
allowed to exploit water resources (which flow from the structure of property rights
in each country) will only intensify as the climate warms. Those inequities will
inevitably lead to intra- and inter-national conflicts. The intense drought in Chile in
recent years is one of many examples [68].

12.6.5 Population, health, and education

We discuss population as a key driver of emissions in chapter 3. It’s the first term in
the Kaya identity and is often incorrectly identified as the most important driver of
emissions growth. Economic activity per person is usually more important over time
[6], at least in recent decades, and in almost all future scenarios conducted recently,
global population is projected to level off in the mid to late twenty-first century [69].
Previous research has documented that population growth affects emissions, but
that changes in population growth are affected by many complex ethical and human
factors related more broadly to societal development. O’Neill [70] cautions that ‘the
fact that a particular phenomenon is a quantitatively significant driver of emissions
does not mean that it is also an important policy lever’.
Choices that affect societal development can also affect population (and thus
emissions) but most scenarios avoid discussing such choices as explicitly driven by
the goal of emissions reductions [71]. That said, understanding the complex
dynamics of population and economic development is critically important for
creating more useful emissions scenarios [70–72].
The van Vuuren scenario [5] shown in figure 12.2 above is one of the few to
explicitly treat the effects of changes in population growth on emissions. Those
researchers are careful to treat the issue as one of societal development, female

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education, female empowerment, and availability of family planning services, not

driven by a goal to reduce emissions. Such efforts would likely have that happy side
effect, however. Project Drawdown also calls out availability of reproductive health
services for women and equal access to education for girls as a key option that would
result in a more just, lower emissions world2.

12.6.6 Adaptation and resilience

Human systems were designed to suit a relatively narrow temperature range, but
climate change (even at 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels) will require us to adapt to
changing conditions. The first and most important priority is reducing emissions to
zero as quickly as we can, which is why we wrote this book. But even if we’re
successful at achieving that goal, we’ll also need to build in more resilience to
society’s key systems.
We encourage students to add discussion of ways to increase societal resilience at
the end of their climate solutions plan. For example, increased resilience means
hardening electricity grids against more intense heat, installing air conditioning
more widely, raising the height of key infrastructure (such as airports and sewage
treatment) to avoid flooding, upgrading building standards, redrawing flood maps,
and reforming assessments of household and business risk for insurance purposes.

12.6.7 Making governance work

Effective institutional governance is critical to achieving a climate-positive world.
The IPCC’s most recent mitigation report [42] states (in the Technical Summary):
‘Achieving the global transition to a low-carbon, climate-resilient and sustainable
world requires purposeful and increasingly coordinated planning and decisions at
many scales of governance including local, subnational, national and global levels
(high confidence).’
Sometimes only government can do what needs to be done, and we need an
honest discussion about what kind of government we want and what we want it to
do for us. Sometimes we’ll want more government, such as when we find lead in
children’s toys, salmonella in peanut butter, poison in medicines, an unsustainable
health care system, or fraudulent assets and a lack of transparency in the financial
world. We know from experience that only government can fix those things.
Sometimes we’ll want less government, such as when old and conflicting regulations
and incentives get in the way of phasing out fossil fuels. Only government can fix
that too (although the private sector has some lessons to teach on that score). And
sometimes we’ll want the same government, just delivered more efficiently, like
many governments have done in recent years by applying information technology to
speed up the delivery of services.
When it comes to government, more is not better. Less is not better. Only better is
better. And better is the goal for which we as a society should strive.

2
https://drawdown.org/solutions/health-and-education/technical-summary

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 Solving Climate Change

One common theme for those opposed to action on climate is a deep concern
about government. It is so deep, in fact, that these folks appear unable or unwilling
to recognize the reality of the climate problem. This is exactly backwards—once you
accept that only government can do certain things about the climate problem, we
move that discussion to where it should be, focusing on the question ‘what kind of
government do we want, and how can we make it work best?’ Government is us, it is
not an alien force, and we will, as the old proverb says, get the government we
deserve. If we don’t learn better ways to govern ourselves, we’re going to be in big
trouble, given the scope and nature of the climate problem.
The late Stephen Schneider asked ‘can democracy survive complexity?’, which is
exactly the right question [73]. We’d better hope the answer is yes.
The challenges we face, whether climate change or financial meltdowns, have in
common the failure of governing institutions to align private incentives with the
public good. Now we face new realities, with technological and financial power
beyond the imagination of the people of two centuries ago, and new environmental
challenges that require new ways of working together [74]. We must design
institutions that recognize those realities and use our new capabilities to align
private interests with broader societal goals [75].
Private enterprise is the best means yet devised for driving down costs and
spreading the use of technology, but we need well-regulated capitalism. Otherwise,
we end up with lead in children’s toys, testing of drugs on unsuspecting patients,
fraud and theft by corporate cronies, and rivers that catch on fire. The challenge is to
create the right kind of check on corporate power, keeping the spirit of innovation
alive while curtailing corporate excesses.

12.7 Focus on what matters most

Speed is of the essence. Focus first on the biggest fastest growing emissions segments
and get them to zero as quickly as you can. Then move down the list, with the goal of
eliminating emissions from every human activity throughout the economy.
Use findings from other studies to rank order your emissions reduction and
carbon removal options, addressing local conditions, resource constraints, and
interactions between measures. We don’t ask for a complete tally of costs and
benefits for our class but do expect students to use their judgment when choosing
options, focusing on the most cost-effective options first.
Often the best way to identify the cheapest options is to find those with multiple
benefits in addition to emissions reductions. There are many such options with co-
benefits, and they almost always can be captured at negative net cost for society.

12.8 Key pieces of the puzzle

Figure 12.5, which is identical to figure 2.3, summarizes the overarching goals of
climate action, the eight pillars of climate action, and the four key actors essential to
making climate action a success. In chapters 4–11 we listed key action items for the
four key actors. In this section we boil down those action items into five high-level
recommendations:

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 Solving Climate Change

Figure 12.5. Summary of climate action goals, pillars, and actors. Source: Copyright Violet Kitchen 2022.

• Fix rules and norms: The fossil fuel industry has had more than a century to
rig the economy in its favor. Changing these rules of the game is essential for
reaching a climate-positive world as quickly as we can. That means
eliminating fossil fuel subsidies, both direct and indirect, everywhere we
find them. It also means changing property rights, lending practices, measure-
ment standards, efficiency standards, environmental laws, regulatory proc-
esses, and many other institutional practices to favor zero emissions.
• Smooth the transition: Financial incentives are critical for accelerating the
transition to a climate-positive world. We’ll need to abandon a significant
fraction of existing fossil capital before its accounting life ends, and that
means paying off some of the owners of those assets if they retire that
infrastructure early. We also need to pay people to electrify more quickly
than they would otherwise be inclined to do. Pricing emissions is also
potentially helpful (especially for industry and the power sector), but it’s
only one of many supporting policies that are needed.
• Put purchasing power to work: One of society’s biggest levers is the immense
purchasing power of governments, companies, and individuals, which totals
in the tens of trillions of dollars every year globally. Channeling even a
fraction of those expenditures toward zero-emissions options in the near term
would allow a massive scale-up of these options, accompanied by significant
cost reductions from learning effects, network externalities, and economies of
scale.

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 Solving Climate Change

• Use information technology to minimize, optimize, and iterate: Information

technology is our ‘ace in the hole’. It can help us better optimize our
processes, better match our energy and material flows to the tasks at hand,
and reduce our environmental impacts. It is also well suited to an adaptive
challenge like climate change that will require us to iterate and change
direction as developments dictate.
• Invest in the future, sensibly: One of the most important functions of
government is to support long term research, development, demonstration,
and deployment of promising zero-emissions technologies, but we need more.
The private sector can be good at ‘picking winners’ that maximize private
wealth, but only government can pick winners that put us on the best path for
society, and that’s what we need to truly face the climate challenge.

A portfolio approach for R&D investments can be beneficial, but technologies

that fail to scale and achieve cost reductions after many attempts must be
abandoned, because we can’t afford to waste talent, time, money, and effort on
things that don’t work. ‘All of the above’ for zero-emissions options doesn’t mean
continuing to invest in failed technologies, it means trying everything and determin-
ing what path is quickest and most efficacious, discarding what isn’t working.

12.9 Chapter conclusions: creating a climate-positive world

To avoid the worst effects of climate change we will need to re-assess and re-design
every task in the economy with the twin goals of eliminating emissions and pulling
carbon from the atmosphere. Your emissions reduction plan should prioritize
options with significant co-benefits first because these are likely to be the cheapest
from society’s perspective. A climate-positive world will be a better world in every
way that matters, but we need to envision that world, tell compelling analysis-based
stories about it, and then help make it a reality.

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

—Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

Further reading
Asheim G B, Fæhn T, Nyborg K, Greaker M, Hagem C, Harstad B, Hoel M O,
Lund D and Rosendahl K E 2019 The case for a supply-side climate treaty Science
365 325 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aax5011. The end-game for fossil fuel
production is a supply-side climate treaty. It’s the only way to avoid incentives
for individual countries to keep producing fossil fuels as others phase them out.
Erickson P, Lazarus M and Piggot G 2018 Limiting fossil fuel production as the next
big step in climate policy Nat. Clim. Change. 8 1037–43 https://doi.org/10.1038/
s41558-018-0337-0. One of several recent analyses pointing toward increased
effort on restricting fossil fuels on the supply side.

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 Solving Climate Change

Green F and Denniss R 2018 Cutting with both arms of the scissors: the economic
and political case for restrictive supply-side climate policies Clim. Change 150 73–
87 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-018-2162-x. Another analysis pointing toward
increased effort to restricting fossil fuels on the supply side.
Moore F C, Lacasse K, Mach K J, Shin Y A, Gross L J and Beckage B 2022
Determinants of emissions pathways in the coupled climate–social system Nature
603 103–11 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04423-8. A state-of-the-art review
of drivers of emissions reductions, emphasizing both social and technical factors.
Morgan M G and Henrion M 1992 Uncertainty: A Guide to Dealing with
Uncertainty in Quantitative Risk and Policy Analysis (New York: Cambridge
University Press). The classic text on uncertainty in policy analysis.
Newell P and Simms A 2019 Towards a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty Clim.
Policy. 20 1043–54 https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2019.1636759. Another
article arguing for a treaty to phase out fossil fuel production.
Shi L and Moser S 2021 Transformative climate adaptation in the United States:
trends and prospects Science 327 eabc8054 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.
abc8054. A high-level review article on adaptation in the US.
Schwartz P 1996 The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain
World (New York: Doubleday). The definitive book on creating compelling
scenarios.
Sovacool B K, Burke M, Baker L, Kotikalapudi C K and Wlokas H 2017 New
frontiers and conceptual frameworks for energy justice Energy Policy 105 677–91
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2017.03.005. Nice review of issues around energy
justice.

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 IOP Publishing

Solving Climate Change

A guide for learners and leaders
Jonathan Koomey and Ian Monroe

Chapter 13
Our climate-positive future

If we do not address climate change in a timely manner, it does not really matter
what we do on human rights, on education or on health, because destruction on
the planet will be so severe, everything else will fall by the wayside.
—Christiana Figueres1

Chapter overview

• We need immediate action on climate. That means now, not in a few years, or
decades hence.
• All that matters is rapid emissions reductions, getting to zero greenhouse gas
emissions as quickly as we can, then pulling carbon from the atmosphere by
making the biosphere ‘climate positive’.
• Defeating the forces of predatory delay will take new ways of working together,
new institutional arrangements, and new ways of thinking about the world.
• We have all the technology we need to get to 80%–90% emissions reductions in coming
decades, and we’ll sort out that last 10%–20% soon enough, assuming we ramp up
investments in research, development, demonstration, and deployment as we should.
• A climate-positive world will be a better one than the one it replaces, but only if
we act quickly.

In his ‘I have a dream’ speech in 1963, Dr Martin Luther King Jr, spoke of the
‘fierce urgency of now’ and warned about ‘the tranquilizing drug of gradualism’2.

1
https://www.newstatesman.com/the-environment-interview/2022/01/christiana-figueres-if-we-fail-on-climate-
we-fail-on-human-rights-education-and-health
2
https://www.ihaveadreamspeech.us

doi:10.1088/978-0-7503-4032-8ch13 13-1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

 Solving Climate Change

He was talking about the immediate need to address racial and social justice in the
face of ongoing strife, but his words carry weight today when speaking about climate
change.
If you take only one lesson on climate from this book, it’s that we have no more
time to waste [1]. When we started working on this issue years ago there was still
time to implement modest changes to solve the problem, but no longer. We’ve
squandered thirty years and now need to reduce emissions to zero as quickly as we
can.
There are no longer gradual, moderate solutions on climate, only rapid deep cuts
to greenhouse gas emissions starting now. Immediate absolute emissions cuts are the
only relevant metric for success. Long-term targets are only as useful as the
supporting action plans to make them a reality in the near term. And defeating
those arguing for what Alex Steffen calls ‘predatory delay’ (our era’s version of
‘tranquilizing gradualism’) is the only way we’ll get through this period of societal
evolution without serious disruptions of modern society.
For governments, that means stopping all new fossil infrastructure while rapidly
approving non-combustion generation technologies, transmission lines, and energy
storage. It also means setting aggressive timelines for phasing out sales of fossil
technologies, retiring existing facilities and equipment, and phasing out myriad fossil
fuel subsidies and regulatory advantages. It means aggressive efforts to promote
efficient electricity use. And it means a halt to industrial-scale deforestation every-
where, starting now.
For consumers, that means every purchase of autos, appliances, and homes from
now on needs to be electric, and they must never again vote for politicians who fight
climate action, starting now.
For companies, that means no more contributions to climate denying politicians,
no more investments in fossil infrastructure, no more selling products that lock-in
greenhouse gas emissions for decades, starting now.
For investors and donors, that means eliminating all support for fossil fuels and
funding research, development, demonstration, and deployment of a broad portfolio
of zero-emissions options and innovations, starting now.
Whether our society will be up to facing the climate challenge is an open question.
After studying this topic for decades, we are convinced that society can do it, the
question is whether society will do it. To pass successfully through this stage of
societal evolution will require us to develop new ways of working together, new
institutional arrangements, and new worldviews3. It won’t be easy.
The fossil fuel industry says calls for urgent action are ‘alarmist’ and that modest
changes will be sufficient, but it is not alarmist to be alarmed about something that is
genuinely alarming. As we’ve described throughout this book, climate change
threatens the continued orderly development of human civilization, and that should
be plenty alarming to all sensible folks.

3
https://alexsteffen.substack.com/p/old-thinking-will-break-your-brain?s=r

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 Solving Climate Change

The facts that give us the most hope about solving the climate problem are these:

1. We have everything we need to begin deep and rapid emissions reductions

NOW. We just need to decide to do it. Getting to 80%–90% reductions in most
places is feasible using technology that is now commercial or near commercial.
The last 10%–20% will be harder, but technology is improving rapidly, and the
more we do now, the more possibilities open up for the future.
2. Many mass-produced products fall in price at predictable rates with
expansion of production. Solar panels are now 90+% cheaper, batteries
are 80+% cheaper, and wind generation is 1/3 cheaper than a decade ago. If
we build more, costs come down, and the more we build, the cheaper zero-
emissions technology will get. Most models ignore or downplay these effects,
but they are real and powerful, and will make climate action much cheaper
from a direct costs perspective than most people think.
3. From a societal perspective, climate action is already much cheaper than
preserving the status quo and has been for a long time. If we accurately count
avoided pollution costs from moving away from fossil fuels (as we should)
the transition will look a whole lot cheaper for society, and once you factor in
cost reductions from scaling technology (from point 2) we are convinced that
total societal costs will be much less than just carrying on business as usual.
4. There is a growing realization that we need to retire existing fossil capital on
rapid and predictable schedules, to allow new technology to take hold. Past
energy transitions happened organically and were slower than they needed to
be because few actors retired capital early. We need to do that for climate,
and if we do, things will happen much more rapidly than economic models
predict (because most of those ignore or downplay forced retirements).
5. Information technology is our ace in the hole. In past energy transitions we
didn’t have computers and sensors to aid the transition but this time we do,
and they will allow us to (a) move bits instead of atoms; (b) substitute smarts
for parts; (c) dynamically control energy supply and demand; (d) collect high
value data; and (e) help us design better gadgets and systems—all of these in
ways that we never could before.

We need to get started now [1]. It’s a climate emergency [2]. Let’s get to work [3]!

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man
stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs
to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and
blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows
the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who,
at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, if he
fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold
and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
—Theodore Roosevelt

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 Solving Climate Change

References
[1] UN 2022 UN Climate Report: It’s ‘Now Or Never’ To Limit Global Warming To 1.5 Degrees
(Geneva: United Nations) https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/04/1115452
[2] Fischetti M 2021 We are living in a climate emergency, and we’re going to say so Sci. Am. 12
April https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/we-are-living-in-a-climate-emergency-and-
were-going-to-say-so/
[3] Hickel J 2021 What would it look like if we treated climate change as an actual emergency
Current Affairs 15 November https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/11/what-would-it-look-like-
if-we-treated-climate-change-as-an-actual-emergency

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 IOP Publishing

Solving Climate Change

A guide for learners and leaders
Jonathan Koomey and Ian Monroe

Appendix A
Introduction to the climate problem (long form)

Appendix overview

• Following Nicholas [3], we summarize the current state of knowledge about the
climate problem in a few phrases:
– It’s warming.
– It’s us.
– We’re sure.
– It’s bad.
– We can fix it (but we’d better hurry).
• These conclusions are based on some of the most well-established principles in
physical science, corroborated by the work of thousands of scientists and many lines
of independent evidence, measurements, and analysis. Every reputable academy of
science, the United Nations, and the vast majority of the world’s national govern-
ments and multinational corporations agree with these core climate truths.
• Keeping Earth’s average temperature from rising much more than 1.5 °C from
pre-industrial levels will require immediate, rapid, and sustained greenhouse gas
emissions reductions. It will also almost certainly require removal of carbon
pollution from the atmosphere.
• Society should aim to hit ‘net zero’ greenhouse gas emissions globally by 2040 at
the latest, sooner if possible, and every year thereafter should be ‘net climate
positive’ until enough climate pollution is removed to reverse climate damages.
• Governments, companies, investors, and communities that can move faster
should do so, and their early action will drive deployment-related cost reductions
associated with learning-by-doing and economies of scale that will benefit the
entire world.

doi:10.1088/978-0-7503-4032-8ch14 A-1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

 Solving Climate Change

Climate change is a complex issue, but the basic outlines of the problem are well
known. In her book Under the Sky We Make, sustainability scientist and author,
Kimberly Nicholas summarizes the climate issue in a few simple phrases [3]:

• It’s warming.
• It’s us.
• We’re sure.
• It’s bad.
• We can fix it.
• Michael E Webber, a professor of energy resources at the University of Texas
at Austin, rightly adds: ‘But we’d better hurry’1.

This appendix explains why aggressive climate action is urgent, using Nicholas’s
framing (with Webber’s addition) to structure the discussion. Chapter 1 contains a
more compact version of this argument.

A.1 It’s warming

Scientists have used many methods to estimate global average temperatures.
Reliable and comprehensive direct measurements began around 1850, but proxy
methods, using tree rings, ratios of isotopes, and other techniques can yield estimates
going back thousands or even millions of years. Of course, the further back we look,
the more complicated it is to do accurate assessments, but even the proxy estimates
are based on well-established principles of physical science.
Figure A.1 shows a summary of the instrumental temperature record since 1850,
created by researchers at the University of Oxford [4] and continually updated.
These data combine four well accepted time-series of temperatures into what they
call a climate change index. Such temperature data are expressed relative to a base
year (or an average over a set of years).
This graph is expressed as a change in temperature relative to a 1850–1900
baseline, which is one way to characterize what we call a pre-industrial baseline. The
industrial revolution, which was the beginning of large-scale exploitation of fossil
fuels, started in the late 1700s, but really didn’t gather steam until the late 1800s.
That fact combined with widespread instrumental temperature data only extending
back to about 1850 have led scientists to use the 1850–1900 baseline in the most
recent research.
Temperature changes in the 1800s were mostly driven by volcanoes and other
natural forces. The effect of Krakatoa in 1883 was particularly dramatic, with
volcanic ash cooling the Earth by more than 0.1 °C over a year or two.
Temperatures in the 1900s were also affected by such events but increased by
more than 1 °C by 2020 due mainly to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases
during this period (see below). Each decade since the 1970s has been hotter than the

1
https://twitter.com/MichaelEWebber/status/1335950979334893572?s=20

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 Solving Climate Change

Figure A.1. Global average temperatures, 1850–2020. Source: Based on data through 2020 from https://
globalwarmingindex.org, first assessed and presented in [4].

last, and almost all of the hottest years ever recorded have occurred in the past two
decades2.
Warming since pre-industrial times has pushed the Earth out of the
comfortable and stable temperature range in which human civilization developed
[5, 6]. The rate of temperature change in the last century (as well as the rate of
change in the underlying drivers of temperature change) is also much more rapid
than humanity and the Earth have experienced in thousands of years, which is
another reason for concern, as we discuss below.
We can plot the two components of the instrumental record, the man-made
(‘anthropogenic’) and the natural forcings (such as volcanoes and solar activity) plus
the total (which corresponds to the instrumental record in figure A.1). Figure A.2
shows those results.
The anthropogenic forcings proceed smoothly because they are driven mainly by
increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases over time, while the natural forcings
are highly variable. On balance, the natural forcings contribute no-net warming over
the 1850 to 2019 period. To first approximation, warming to date is 100% driven by
human activities.
Kaufman et al created a temperature record going back 12 000 years in 2020 [5, 6]
as shown in figure A.3. We also include the instrumental record from figure A.1
tacked on at the end of the period.

2
https://climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-globally-seven-hottest-years-record-were-last-seven

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 Solving Climate Change

Figure A.2. Man-made and natural drivers of global average temperatures, 1850–2020. Source: latest data:
https://globalwarmingindex.org; reference: [4].

Figure A.3. Global average temperatures for the past 12 000 years. Source: Kaufman et al for past 12 000
years [2] and https://globalwarmingindex.org for the instrumental record [4] as shown in figure A.1.

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 Solving Climate Change

This graph tells an important story about the Holocene, the period over the past
10 000 years when civilization developed. Global temperatures in this period were
remarkably stable, with a modest rise in temperature to levels about 0.5 °C above
pre-industrial levels 6–7000 years ago (−4000 to −5000 common era or CE).
Temperatures started declining gradually around that time, and at the beginning
of the industrial revolution (late 1700s/early 1800s), global temperatures reached
roughly zero on the y-axis of our graph. Temperatures oscillated in the 1800s but
started to increase rapidly in the 1900s to current levels, which are higher than any
temperatures the globe has seen since before civilization began millennia ago. The
increase in temperatures between −10 000 and −8000 CE is related to a naturally
occurring increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) occurring before that time.
The rate of temperature change in the last century (as well as the rate of change in
the underlying drivers of temperature change) is also much more rapid than
humanity and the Earth have experienced in thousands of years, which is another
reason for concern, as we discuss below.
This warming is reflected in other indicators. Northern Hemisphere summer sea-
ice extent has reached historically low levels in recent years, while Antarctic sea ice
saw significant declines in the early to mid-twentieth century [7] with Antarctic sea-
ice extent falling below long-term averages from 2015 onwards3. Sea levels keep
increasing as land-based glaciers melt [8] and a warmer ocean expands, as shown in
figures A.4 and A.5 [9, 10]. Sea level rise has also been accelerating in recent years

Figure A.4. Arctic summer sea-ice extent (million km2). Source: National Snow and Ice Data Center https://nsidc.org.

3
https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/

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 Solving Climate Change

Figure A.5. Global average sea levels relative to 1900. Source: The 2 Degrees Institute https://www.sealevels.
org.

[11, 12], at the same time as global average upper ocean heat content has increased
rapidly, as shown in figure A.6 [13]. Finally, satellite measurements of the Earth’s
energy balance have confirmed that greenhouse gases are trapping heat, just as
scientists expected [14].
It’s important to understand that global warming does not mean that everywhere
is breaking temperature records all the time. Natural cycles and fluctuations still
exist, and places can still experience record cold temperatures on a given day. Many
places are experiencing extremes in both directions from climate change, particularly
the weakening of the jet stream in the Northern Hemisphere linked to melting Arctic
sea ice [15], which can allow hot air to move further north and cold air to move
farther south (contributing to localized polar vortex cold snaps). However, despite
localized variability, average annual and daily high temperatures are increasing
almost everywhere we look.
We have even longer-term data for historical temperatures going back millions of
years, as presented in Burke et al [16]. The uncertainties grow as we move back in
time, but it is clear Earth was a lot cooler (−3 °C to −5 °C from our 1850 to 1900
baseline) for most of the 300 000 years before the Holocene, with kilometers-deep ice
sheets covering significant fractions of Earth’s land masses.

A-6
 Solving Climate Change

Figure A.6. Global annual change in upper ocean heat content (1022 J). Source: Upper ocean defined as the
top 700 m. Change measured relative to a 1955 to 2006 baseline. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/
understanding-climate/climate-change-ocean-heat-content, https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/global-ocean-heat-
content/.

Temperatures about 3 million years ago were about at about current levels, and
before that (50–60 million years ago) temperatures were much hotter (10 °C to 15 °C
above 1850–1900). Sea levels in that warmer period were more than one hundred
meters higher than they are today [17].
Multiple independent lines of evidence are consistent with a rapidly warming
Earth. The world’s foremost climate science authority, the United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded in 2021 [18] that
‘global surface temperature has increased faster since 1970 than in any other 50 year
period over at least the last 2000 years’.

A.2 It’s us
We know why average temperature have increased over the past century: emissions
of greenhouse gases (GHGs) related to human activity have increased substantially
since pre-industrial times, leading to increasing concentrations of these gases in the
atmosphere. GHGs like carbon dioxide (CO2) trap energy from the Sun that
otherwise would radiate to space, acting like a blanket that has been getting thicker

A-7
 Solving Climate Change

for more than two centuries. To first approximation, warming to date is 100% driven
by human activities.
Global temperature changes have historically corresponded very closely with
atmospheric GHG concentrations [18]. The basic science behind how greenhouse
gases warm the Earth through the greenhouse effect has been understood since the
1800s, and pre-industrial levels of atmospheric GHGs have been instrumental in
keeping Earth warm enough for life to evolve. But while GHG levels have naturally
fluctuated over millennia, the rapid rise in greenhouse gases since 1900, driven by
human activities, is unprecedented in Earth’s history.
Figure A.7 shows man-made emissions of all greenhouse gases from 1850 to 2020,
which have increased rapidly and exponentially. There are four major categories of
greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and other

Figure A.7. Greenhouse gas emissions expressed as CO2 equivalent 1850 to 2020. Source: Fossil, cement, and
net land-use CO2 emissions 1850 to 1958 from CDIAC archives: https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/trends/emis/
tre_glob_2013.html. Fossil, cement, and net land-use CO2 emissions 1959 to 2020 from [19]. Fossil CO2
emissions include combustion from flaring, solids, liquids, and gases. Methane, N2O, and F-gas emissions from
1850 to 2019 from PIK, taken from https://www.climatewatchdata.org/data-explorer/historical-emissions.
Global warming potential values for methane and N2O adjusted to reflect AR6 100 year values in table 2.1
(PIK data uses AR4 values as described in [20]). Emissions of methane, N2O, and F-gases for 2020 estimated
assuming emissions stay at 2019 levels (just like they did during the 2009 recession).

A-8
 Solving Climate Change

gases (mostly what are called ‘F-gases’ that contain fluorine). The non-CO2 gases are
converted to what’s called CO2 equivalent (CO2e), which is the equivalent amount of
CO2 that would result in the same warming effect as emissions of these other gases
over a 100 year period. This technique allows us to approximate the total warming
effect for all gases over time.
Total greenhouse gas equivalent emissions have increased at a rate of 2.2%/year
from 1850 to 2020, with the emissions from fossil energy use growing at a 3.1%/year
rate over that period. There have been periods of modest declines, but the overall
upward trend has been inexorable.
The most important warming gas is carbon dioxide, which comes mainly from
combustion of fossil fuels for energy, but also from deforestation and production
processes for cement, steel, aluminum and other materials. Figure A.8 shows sources
and sinks by decade for CO2 over time [206].
Figure A.8 shows that burning of fossil fuels and land-use changes are the main
sources adding CO2 to the biosphere. The ocean and land have historically taken up
about half of these emissions, but what remains goes into the atmosphere and stays
there for centuries. As these emissions continue over time, the concentrations of CO2
in the atmosphere go up, climate feedback loops (like wildfires and melting
permafrost) can further accelerate GHG emissions and associated warming.
Scientists have different methods to assess past concentrations of trace gases over
time. One way is to drill for ice cores and extract and analyze air samples from
bubbles in the ice. For more recent times (since 1959) we have detailed direct
measurements of atmospheric concentrations from the observatory on Mauna Loa
in Hawaii and other locations.

Figure A.8. Sources and sinks of carbon dioxide over time. Source: Global Carbon Project, Friedlingstein et al [19].

A-9
 Solving Climate Change

Figure A.9. CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere for the past 800 000 years. Source: Law Dome ice cores
[212]. Moana Loa data (https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/).

Figure A.9 shows that over the last 800 000 years, Earth’s atmosphere never held
more than about 300 parts per million of CO2 [21] corresponding to significantly
cooler temperatures than in the Holocene (as shown in Burke et al [16]). In 2020 we
hit 414 parts per million, and in May of 2022 we hit 421 parts per million. The
increase over historical levels has occurred mostly in the span of about one and a
half centuries. When it comes to CO2 concentrations, we’ve moved rapidly into
uncharted territory [22], driven by the increasing CO2 emissions shown in figure A.7
above.
Recently, scientists have estimated the rate of change in CO2 concentrations over
this same period, to compare to historical trends, creating what they call ‘the carbon
skyscraper’, as shown in figure A.10. This graph shows the rate of change in CO2

A-10
 Solving Climate Change

Figure A.10. Rate of change in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere (ppm/1000 years). Source: Strauss [213].
https://www.climatecentral.org/report/the-carbon-skyscraper.

concentrations in parts per million per thousand years, and the rate of change
(driven by changes in the last century or so) is many times higher than anything in
the historical record. That means the warming effect of increased carbon dioxide
concentrations is increasing much more rapidly than any time in the past eight
hundred thousand years, a trend that is consistent with the temperature data
presented above.
The story is similar for methane (CH4). Figure A.11 shows methane concen-
trations over time for the past two thousand years. By 2020, methane concentrations
were 2.3 times higher than in 1850.
The data for nitrous oxide concentrations shows the same shape as for methane,
but the increase since 1850 (only 22%) is less dramatic than for CO2 and CH4.
Figure A.12 shows those data.
Growth in other gases is far more dramatic, particularly after 1960, as shown in
figure A.13.
Figure A.14 shows CO2 equivalent concentrations (including all warming agents)
from 1850 to 2020, which reached just over 500 parts per million (ppm) in 20204. For
comparison, concentrations in 1850 were about 305 ppm. That means current
concentrations are now about 1.6 times pre-industrial levels.

4
https://gml.noaa.gov/aggi/aggi.html

A-11
 Solving Climate Change

Figure A.11. CH4 concentrations in the atmosphere since year 0 CE. Source: Meinshausen et al [214] for years
0 to 2014 CE. NOAA concentrations for 2015 to 2020.

We know from models and measurements that those increases in concentrations

are consistent with long-term temperature increases of the magnitude our instru-
ments measure. You can verify this for yourself, once you know (based on multiple
lines of independent evidence) that every doubling of greenhouse gas concentrations
implies an increase in temperature in coming centuries of about 3 °C [215].
An increase in greenhouse gas concentrations to 1.6 times pre-industrial levels
implies an ultimate warming effect of 3 °C × 0.6 °C or 1.8 °C, assuming those
concentrations remain constant for the next few centuries. Some of that warming has
been masked by aerosols and other effects (see below) and time lags in the system
ensure that the full warming effect won’t be realized for centuries, but this is a
reasonable order of magnitude estimate of the ultimate warming to which current
levels of greenhouse gas concentrations commit the world.
One subtlety is that methane and black carbon, unlike CO2, nitrous oxide, and
many other warming agents, have relatively short average lifetimes in the atmos-
phere. That means that actions to reduce these pollutants could reduce concen-
trations relatively soon, and thus mitigate at least some of the warming effect
implied by figure A.14 for 2020.

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 Solving Climate Change

Figure A.12. N2O concentrations in the atmosphere since year 0 CE. Source: Meinshausen et al [214] for years
0 to 2014 CE. NOAA concentrations for 2015 to 2020.

Another subtlety is that we know at least one way to reduce CO2 concentrations
on human time scales, and that’s to increase uptake of CO2 by biomass (planting
trees, in colloquial parlance). Some scientists are also investigating ways to extract
CO2 from the atmosphere using ‘direct-air capture’ technology and storing it
underground, but that’s more speculative [207–210] and will likely exacerbate
conflicts over energy, water, food, and land use [211]. Many recent mitigation
scenarios include some form of reforestation or direct-air carbon capture because
we’ve dithered over the past few decades while emissions increased, and we’re out of
time.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2021 tallied the main
drivers of warming to the 2010 to 2019 period, relative to the 1850 to 1900 period
[18]. Those results are shown in figure A.15. Higher positive numbers mean more
warming effect, and negative numbers mean that factor causes cooling.
The most important driver of increases in global surface temperatures since pre-
industrial times has been increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide, mostly from
combustion of fossil fuels, with a significant additional contribution from changes in
land-use patterns (such as deforestation). Next is methane, driven by land-use

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 Solving Climate Change

Figure A.13. Other greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere since 1850. Source: Meinshausen et al [214]
for years 1850 to 2014 CE. NOAA concentrations for 2015 to 2020.

changes, energy production, and agriculture, followed by non-methane volatile

organic compounds and carbon monoxide, halogenated gases (such as the chloro-
fluorocarbons being phased out under the Montreal Protocol for ozone depleting
chemicals, plus some others), nitrous oxides (also mainly from agriculture), black
carbon, and airplane contrails. The cooling agents are sulfur dioxide aerosols (small
particles that reflect sunlight), nitrogen oxides, land-use reflectance and irrigation,
organic carbon, and ammonia.
The cooling effects just about cancel out the effect of all factors but CO2 and half
of the warming associated with methane, but that doesn’t mean that we can ignore
the other warming agents. As we start to phase out fossil fuels, the cooling effects
from the aerosols will also be reduced, so we’ll need to compensate by also rapidly
minimizing the shorter-lived warming agents such as methane, some fluorinated
gases, and black carbon.

A.3 We’re sure

Uncertainties always exist in science, but when we confirm scientific findings by
multiple, independent lines of evidence, we call them ‘facts’. There may still be

A-14
 Solving Climate Change

Figure A.14. CO2 equivalent concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, 1850 to 2020. Source:
NOAA, Meinshausen et al [214], and Koomey calculations.

Figure A.15. Contributors to warming in 2010 to 2019 compared to 1850 to 1900. Source: ICPP Working
Group I, Summary for Policy Makers, Sixth Assessment Report [23].

A-15
 Solving Climate Change

uncertainty about some details, but the preponderance of the evidence points
towards these facts accurately describing how the physical world operates. Every
credible scientific organization now agrees that burning fossil fuels and other human
activities are almost entirely responsible for current climate change, based on
decades of research from thousands of scientists. Human-caused climate change is
now as much of a settled scientific fact as gravity.
The US National Academy of Sciences [24], which is not known for its wild
speculation, concluded in 2010:

A strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is

occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for
a broad range of human and natural systems….
Some scientific conclusions or theories have been so thoroughly examined
and tested, and supported by so many independent observations and results,
that their likelihood of subsequently being found to be wrong is vanishingly
small. Such conclusions and theories are then regarded as settled facts. This is
the case for the conclusions that the Earth system is warming and that much of
this warming is very likely due to human activities.

The academies of science for 80 other countries (including China, India, Russia,
Germany, Japan, Brazil, and the UK) have released comparable statements about
the science of climate [25]. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the
global scientific body charged with investigating this issue, stated with uncharacter-
istic bluntness in 2007, that ‘warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now
evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures,
widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level’. [26] IPCC
reports in 2013 [27] and 2021 [18] were even more emphatic, as was the World
Meteorological Association in 2021 [28].
That greenhouse gases warm the Earth is a finding based on some of the most
well-established principles in physical science, as well as extensive measurements.
The largest historical source of warming is carbon dioxide, and we know for a fact
that the increase in carbon dioxide concentrations after the industrial revolution
(particularly after the mid-1800s) was fueled predominantly by human activity.
One reason that we know that fossil fuels and land-use changes are the cause of
the measured increases in CO2 concentrations is because the total carbon emitted
since the dawn of the industrial age is about twice as large as the total amount that
remains in the atmosphere nowadays (the other half was absorbed by the oceans),
and there are no other known sources of carbon that could account for such an
increase in the atmosphere’s CO2 content.
In addition, scientists can measure the prevalence of different isotopes of carbon
in the atmosphere to understand the sources of CO2. Carbon from recent biological
activity (such as deforestation) contains a different mix of carbon isotopes than
carbon from fossil fuels and other geological sources, and scientists have measured
changes in the concentrations of those isotopes in the atmosphere that are consistent
with the additional carbon coming from human-linked sources [29]. So it’s virtually

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 Solving Climate Change

certain that humans are the cause of elevated CO2, as well as causing similar
increases in the past two centuries in concentrations of methane, nitrous oxides, and
other GHGs [18].
These changes are warming the planet, as shown in figures A.1–A.3, and as
predicted with surprising accuracy as early as 1975 in Science [30] and in 1982 by
scientists at Exxon [31]. The best current estimates are that global average surface
temperatures have increased 1.1 °C–1.2 °C since 1900.
The physical science results supporting these conclusions go back at least a
century to the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius, who in 1896 calculated the first
climate sensitivity of 4 °C to 5 °C for a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations.
Arrhenius’s analysis was supported by earlier measurements made by Eunice Foote
and John Tyndall that demonstrated the heat trapping abilities of CO2 [32]. The idea
that greenhouse gases could warm the Earth is not a new one, and in fact the first
informed speculation about this topic was by the mathematician Joseph Fourier in
the 1820s [33].
These concerns are also validated by actual measurements of the climate system
that corroborate theoretical predictions [34]. Satellite measurements show, for
example, that as greenhouse gases have built up in the atmosphere, the heat emitted
from the Earth has been declining at wavelengths that exactly correspond to those
absorbed by various GHGs [35]. Similar measurements show that thermal radiation
back to Earth’s surface from the atmosphere, which we’d expect to increase if
greenhouse gases trap heat, has been increasing exactly as we thought it would [36].
And the amount of heat stored in the oceans over the past few decades has been
rising rapidly, which is consistent with a warming planet [23, 37, 38]5.
We can also examine data on some key indicators of warming, which by most
accounts are changing at rates equaling or exceeding our worst-case predictions of
just a few years ago [18, 39]. These measurements are one of the main reasons why
scientists are so alarmed about humanity’s effect on the planet’s temperature.
In summarizing these and other measurements, the IPCC [26] concluded in 2007
that ‘observational evidence from all continents and most oceans shows that many
natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temper-
ature increases’. By 2021, the IPCC [23] was even more explicit: ‘Human-induced
climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every
region across the globe. Evidence of observed changes in extremes such as
heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and in particular,
their attribution to human influence, has strengthened since AR5 [in 2013]’.
The observations cited above are powerful evidence for a warming world, but
they are not the only ones [18]. Glaciers are melting [8, 10], growing seasons are
lengthening, and insects and birds are changing their long-established patterns [41].
Something’s clearly happening to the climate, and these indicators are consistent
with what the last one and a half centuries of science has been saying about this
problem all along.

5
Also see https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-ocean-heat-content.

A-17
 Solving Climate Change

A.4 It’s bad

If we continue on our current trajectory, we’re committing to a doubling or tripling
of greenhouse gas concentrations compared to pre-industrial times. Figure A.16
shows the result from one widely cited ‘current trends continued’ case (also known as
SSP-2) created around 2015 or so, from Fricko et al [44].
A tripling of greenhouse gas concentrations means, using our simple math from
above and the knowledge that every doubling results in about 3 °C of ultimate
warming, we’re committing the Earth to 1.5 doublings or 4.5 °C. As above, the
ultimate warming level assumes that concentrations in 2100 remain constant for
centuries as temperatures equilibrate, and the actual realized warming by 2100 will
be lower than that (because equilibration takes time)
Figure A.17 shows the implications of that emissions trajectory for global
temperatures, resulting in an increase of about 3.6 °C above pre-industrial levels
by 2100. This result is typical for assessments of a ‘current trends continued’ path
circa 2015, which fall in the range of 3 °C to 4 °C above pre-industrial times.
In the past few years, with significant climate action in some major countries,
the ‘current trends continued’ case has improved even more [45–48], to more like
2.5 °C to 3.5 °C.6

Figure A.16. Greenhouse gas equivalent concentrations estimated from a widely cited reference case published
in 2017, based on SSP-2. Source: Fricko et al [44], Grubler et al [53], Koomey calculations.

6
Also see https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/3c-world.

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Figure A.17. Historical temperatures contrasted with the reference case projection from a prominent 2017
study. Source: Kaufman et al [5] for the past 12 000 years [5], https://globalwarmingindex.org for the
instrumental record [4], and Fricko et al [44] for the reference case, SSP-2 marker scenario [53].

In 2012, when one of us (Koomey) wrote a book assessing options for reducing
emissions [49], the current path at that time implied an increase of about 5 °C by
2100. Since 2012 we’ve made great progress in bringing down the cost of clean
technology, we’ve shut down many coal plants, we’ve implemented and strength-
ened policies to reduce emissions, and we’ve realized that some of the more dire
projections circa 2010 were based on overestimates of exploitable reserves of coal
[50]. Of course, there is great uncertainty in any projection into the future, but we
need a benchmark against to measure progress, and 2.5 °C–3.5 °C by 2100 is as good
an estimate as any.
That improvement is small comfort, however. Even our current trajectory would
be a disaster for the Earth and most other species [43, 51]. It would raise Earth’s
average temperature to a level not seen for about four million years (see Burke et al
[16]), and to do so with unprecedented speed.
The most important direct effect of increasing temperatures is stress on natural
and human systems [43]. Greenhouse gases keep more energy in the climate system,
and that energy must go somewhere. Where it goes is into extreme rainfall and
temperature events, which will become increasingly difficult or impossible for
humans to manage, and ever more devastating for natural systems (whose ability
to adapt is even more limited) [52].
Figure A.18 illustrates how a warming climate ‘loads the dice’ and makes extreme
temperature events more likely and the extremes more extreme, just as more
moisture in the air makes high precipitation events more likely (and oddly enough,
makes droughts in some places more likely and more intense as well) [23, 42, 54–58].

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Figure A. 18. Increasing temperatures load the dice and make extreme temperatures more likely (and the
extremes more extreme). Source: Reproduced with permission from [49]. Adapted from a graph made by the
University of Arizona, Southwest Climate Change Network http://www.southwestclimatechange.org.

This concern is not a theoretical one. In a NASA report published in 2012, James
Hansen and his colleagues examined distributions of temperatures for the period
1951 to 1980, comparing them to those from the 1980s, the 1990s, and the 2000s [59].
In each succeeding decade, the shifting of the distribution to towards higher
temperatures became more pronounced as the climate warmed.
Warmer oceans mean more evaporation and an overall increase in moisture
content in the air. That means extreme rainfall becomes more common, and the data
for the US show that effect (as do broader measurements for the Northern
Hemisphere [216]). Figure A.19 shows the percent of US land area subject to
extreme one-day rainfall totals, and that percentage has clearly increased since the
1910 to 1980 period, a fact that will not be a surprise to US residents facing
unprecedented flooding in recent years. Similar patterns for extreme precipitation
events have been observed all over the world in recent years [18].
As we showed in figure A.17 above, the current global environment is accustomed
to a relatively narrow temperature range, one that has prevailed for thousands of
years. Ecosystems can sometimes migrate slowly (over many millennia, not decades
or centuries), but that migration is limited by geography and other constraints. For
example, a forest biome can gradually move up the mountainside as the climate
warms (soil and geography permitting), but once it reaches the peak there’s nowhere
else to go, and extinction is the result. On our current path, thousands of plant and
animal species that have existed for eons will be driven to extinction in the span of a
century or so [60–62].

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Figure A.19. Extreme precipitation events in the US. Source: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/cei/graph/

us/01-12/4.

Humans and their support systems are also vulnerable to a warming climate.
Heatwaves will become ever more frequent, and people in locations without air
conditioning will either add it (which will worsen climate change), suffer, or even die
(as tens of thousands of Europeans did during the heat wave of 2003). Our
wastewater treatment and water supply systems are designed to handle current
conditions but will be difficult and expensive to adapt to a warming world’s rapidly
rising sea level and increasingly intense rainstorms. Wildfires will become more
frequent and more intense [40]. Pollen and its associated respiratory effects will
worsen [64]. Climate change will also increase risks of cross-species viral trans-
mission [65, 66].
With even small increases in sea level, low lying coastal areas will become
increasingly vulnerable to storm surges, putting millions of lives at risk, particularly
in the developing world. Those areas will also suffer from increased saltwater
intrusion into groundwater supplies. A ‘current trends continued’ path implies more
than 0.5 m rise in sea level by 2100 [23, 67–69], which would represent significant
challenges to human society, and sea level rise will continue for centuries, barring
substantial carbon removal from the atmosphere.

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There are also indirect effects. One of the most important is an increase in the
acidity of the oceans, caused by more dissolved CO2 (which creates carbonic acid).
This development will make life increasingly difficult for many types of aquatic life,
with rates of acidification proceeding more rapidly than at any time in the past 65
million years [70]. The acidification effect (plus the increase in ocean temperatures)
means that coral reefs will likely be a thing of the past by the end of the twenty-first
century, and will pose increasing challenges to marine life of all types [71, 72]. It also
is one reason why schemes such as those proposed to inject particles into the
atmosphere to cool the Earth are ultimately chimerical—as long as more CO2
dissolves into the oceans, the acidification effect will intensify, and just reflecting
more sunlight won’t fix it.
Remember also that the climate sensitivity measures the average temperature
change for a doubling of greenhouse gas concentrations. Changes at Earth’s poles
have been [73] and will be much larger (that’s just how the system works). The most
likely case for climate sensitivity combined with the reference case emissions forecast
would ultimately lead to an ice-free planet Earth and sea level rises much bigger than
even recent projections. It also means that large releases of carbon trapped in the
permafrost and in methane hydrates beneath the ocean floor are much more likely,
and that would amplify the warming effect.
Perhaps the most worrying aspect of climate change is the unknowable but non-
zero probability that pushing Earth’s climate out of its recent equilibrium might lead
to ‘tipping points’, discontinuous change, and catastrophic disruptions of weather and
climate [74, 75]. One example that has preoccupied scientists for decades is the
possibility that melting ice could disrupt the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic [77],
and there has been evidence of a weakening of those currents in recent decades [78–80].
The rapid release of carbon and methane from melting permafrost and methane from
warming oceans are two more. The probability and consequences from catastrophic
events are inherently unknowable, and that reality disrupts the standard benefit–cost
model for assessing the economics of climate mitigation [76, 81–84].

A.5 We can fix it (but we’d better hurry)

Let’s start by defining what we mean by ‘fixing’ climate change. Solving climate
change starts with stabilizing global surface temperatures at the lowest possible level
above pre-industrial times, and that means reducing emissions to zero as soon as
possible [85].
Many climate action plans now focus on getting climate pollution to net zero, the
point where GHG emissions are reduced far enough that any remaining remissions
are counterbalanced by GHG emission removals from natural and engineered
systems. Net zero by 2050 (or sooner) targets have now been adopted by many
governments, as well as many of the world’s largest companies and investors,
catalyzed by goals of the United Nation’s 2015 Paris Agreement.
Unfortunately, net zero is not enough. Even if Earth gets to net zero GHG
emissions tomorrow, without additional action we’re still locked into at decades of
additional warming, and a new climate equilibrium that leaves the world worse off

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than it is today. Droughts, floods, heatwaves, wildfires, rising seas, crop failures, and
other climate-linked disasters will continue to get worse. Many more lives and
livelihoods will be lost, and some once thriving places may become unlivable.
To truly solve climate change, we must view net zero as a transition point rather
than an end goal. We should aim instead to get our planet to net climate positive,
sometimes also called carbon negative, where there is a net removal of carbon from
the atmosphere every year. Our collective goal should be to make Earth climate
positive until we have returned the climate to a state that’s as close as possible to the
pre-industrial range for which human civilization and the ecosystems around us have
evolved. We should also aim to repair the damages caused by climate change as
much as we can and compensate those who have suffered when damages can’t be
repaired. Fixing climate change requires our best efforts to not just stop the bleeding,
but also heal the wounds.
This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t aim to reach (and surpass) net zero as soon
as possible, but net zero by 2050 is not soon enough, as we discuss below. Because of
the long residence time of the most important greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,
warming is to first approximation proportional to cumulative emissions [87, 88].
That means every molecule emitted matters, and that if we stop emitting greenhouse
gases, warming will eventually stop [89, 90]. This makes the climate problem
different from other types of air pollution, which generally stay in the atmosphere
for a much shorter time than do emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and
many of the other gases.
The importance of cumulative emissions means we have no time to lose in
reducing our emissions, a fact that is not widely enough appreciated. We’ve already
dithered for more than three decades as emissions kept increasing, and every day we
delay getting to climate positive makes the situation worse [85].
The good news is that we already have almost all the climate technologies we
need, and these solution technologies are improving every day. The same technol-
ogies that can get us to net zero can propel us beyond to climate positive and a
regenerative climate future. The biggest climate challenges are sociological, political,
and economic rather than technological. Society has plenty of money to pay for the
transition but shifting this money out of climate pollution and into solutions requires
navigating powerful entrenched interests, perverse incentives, bureaucratic barriers,
and outdated ways of thinking. Solving climate change will also require much better
communications about our climate impacts and solutions, engaging all levels of
society in shifting to a climate-positive economy. We can do it, but we need to decide
to do it.

A.5.1 What is a warming limit?

The warming limit approach has its origins in the realization that stabilizing the
climate at a certain temperature to minimize climate risks (e.g. a warming limit of
1.5 °C or 2 °C above pre-industrial times) implies a particular emissions budget,
which represents the total cumulative greenhouse gas emissions compatible with that
temperature goal [91]. That budget also implies a set of emissions pathways that are

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well defined and tightly constrained (particularly now that we’ve squandered the past
three decades by not reducing emissions). This risk-minimization approach, which can
also be described as ‘working toward a goal’, also involves assessing the cost
effectiveness of different paths for meeting the normatively determined target [49].
A warming limit is more than just a number (or a goal to be agreed on in
international negotiations). It embodies a way of thinking about the climate problem
that yields real insights [92]. A warming limit is also a value choice that is informed
by science. It should not be presented as solely a scientific ‘finding’, but as a value
judgment that reflects our assessment of societal risks and our preferences for
addressing them.
The warming limit approach was first suggested for externalities more generally
by Baumol [93] and was explored (then quickly dismissed) by Nordhaus [94, 95]. It
had its first fully developed incarnation in 1989 in Krause et al [1] (which was
subsequently republished by Wiley in 1992 [2]). It was developed further in
Caldeira et al [96] and Meinshausen et al [97], and served as the basis for the
International Energy Agency’s analysis of climate options in 2010, 2011, 2012, and
2020 [98–101].
This way of thinking was developed as a counterpoint to the prevailing ‘benefit–
cost’ approach favored by the economics community, and it has many advantages
[92]. It encapsulates our knowledge from the latest climate models on how
cumulative emissions affect global temperatures, placing the focus squarely on
how to stabilize those temperatures. It places the most important value judgment up-
front, embodied in the normatively determined warming limit, instead of burying
key value judgments in economic model parameters or in ostensibly scientifically
chosen concepts such as the discount rate. It gives clear guidance for the rate of
emissions reductions required to meet the chosen warming limit, thus allowing us to
determine if we’re ‘on track’ for meeting the goal and allowing us to adjust course if
we’re not hitting those near-term targets.
The warming limit approach also allows us to estimate the costs of delaying
action or excluding certain mitigation options and provides an analytical basis for
discussions about equitably allocating the emissions budget. Finally, instead of
pretending that we can calculate an ‘optimal’ technology path based on guesses at
mitigation and damage cost curves decades hence, it relegates economic analysis to
the important but less grandiose role of comparing the cost effectiveness of currently
available options for meeting near-term emissions goals [92].
The warming limit approach shows that delaying action is costly, required
emissions reductions are rapid, and most proved reserves of fossil fuels will need
to stay in the ground, and large amounts of carbon will need to be removed from the
atmosphere if we’re to stabilize the climate and repair the damage. These ideas are
familiar to some, but many still don’t realize that they follow directly from the
warming limit framing.

• Delaying emissions reductions forecloses options and makes achieving

climate stabilization much more difficult [102]. ‘Wait and see’ for the climate
problem is foolish and irresponsible, which is obvious when considering

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cumulative emissions under a warming limit. The more fossil infrastructure

we build now, the faster we’ll have to reduce emissions later. If energy
technologies changed as fast as computers there could be justification for
‘wait and see’ in some circumstances, but they don’t, so it’s a moot point.
• Absolute global emissions will need to turn down immediately and approach
climate positive in the next few decades [103] if we’re to have a good chance
to keep global temperatures ‘well below 2 °C’, as many in the scientific
community advocate [104]. The emissions pathways given the current carbon
budgets are tightly constrained. Even if the climate sensitivity is at the lowest
end of the range included in IPCC reports (1.5 °C), that only buys us another
decade in the time of emissions peak [105], which indicates that the findings
on emissions pathways are robust, even in the face of uncertainties in climate
sensitivity.
• The rate of emissions reductions, which is a number that can be measured, is
one way to assess whether the world is on track to meet the requirements of a
particular warming limit. We know what we need to be doing to succeed, and
if we don’t meet the tight time constraints imposed by that cumulative
emissions budget in one year, we need to do more the next year, and the next,
and the next. It’s a way of holding policy makers’ proverbial feet to the fire.
• The concept of ‘stranded fossil fuel assets’ that can’t be burned, popularized
by Bill McKibben [106] and Al Gore [107], follows directly from the warming
limit framing. In fact, Krause et al’s 1989 book, Energy Policy in the
Greenhouse [1] had a chapter titled ‘How much fossil fuel can still be
burned?’, so the idea of stranded assets is not a new insight (but it is a
profound one).

A.5.2 An evolution in thinking

The warming limit approach continues to be helpful in building the case for urgent
action on climate [108–110] but its original policy usefulness rested on the overarching
assumption that there was still time left to address the crisis. As time has passed and
climate damages continue to mount it has become clear to us that the world is running
out of time [111], and given uncertainties in estimating the carbon budget [112, 113], it
is in our judgment better to focus on concrete emissions reductions goals instead of
worrying too much about how much carbon budget is left.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change completed its report on
scenarios based on a 1.5 °C warming limit in 2018 [104]. That study found, after
reviewing many studies that meet the 1.5 °C warming limit, that cutting global
greenhouse gas emissions at least in half from 2020 to 2030 (with subsequent
reductions to follow at a similar pace) is a critically important milestone for success.
This rough rule of thumb, which was enshrined as a ‘carbon law’ by Johan
Rockstrom and his colleagues in a seminal article in Science in 2017 [103], describes
the minimum level of effort needed to hit a 1.5 °C warming limit. Rockstrom’s ‘law’
implies halving of absolute emissions in each decade starting in 2020, reaching close
to net zero emissions by 2050.

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When talking about rapid emissions reductions it is customary to refer to rates of

change as a percentage of base year emissions, instead of often-used exponential
rates of decline [49]. This convention is used because rates of decline reach
astronomical levels in percentage terms as emissions approach zero, and percentages
of a base year maintain an intuitive physical meaning throughout the analysis
period. With this convention, a 5%/year decline in emissions relative to 2020 would
result in a halving of annual emissions by 2030 (5%/year × 10 years) and complete
elimination of emissions by 2040 (5%/year × 20 years).
As an example, consider a prominent emissions reduction case, called the low
energy demand (LED) scenario, that would keep warming below the 1.5 °C limit
[53]. It is unusual in that it does not rely on technological carbon removal options
(such as carbon capture and storage) and it includes more aggressive improvements
in energy intensity over time. It also includes significant increases in carbon removal
from reforestation and land-use changes over time.
The LED scenario shows total greenhouse gas emissions reductions relative to
2020 of about 5.5%/year (expressed as above as a percentage of 2020 emissions
levels). This pace of reductions implies that total global emissions reach 45% of 2020
levels in 2030.
Figure A.20 shows projected emissions from 2020 to 2100 from the LED
scenario, using the same categories as shown in figure A.7 above. By 2030, the
land-use sector moves from emitting CO2 to absorbing it because the scenario

Figure A.20. Historical and projected emissions for the low energy demand scenario. Source: Historical data
from figure A.7 and LED scenario from Grubler et al [53].

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assumes deforestation slows substantially and reforestation occurs at an increasing

rate over time. Fossil energy CO2 declines to 10% of its 2020 value by 2050 and
almost to zero by 2070. Emissions of methane and other gases also decrease
substantially. N2O, on the other hand, shows only modest declines over the analysis
period. By 2100 net emissions accounting for carbon absorption in the land-use
sector are more than 95% lower than in 2020.
When evaluating long-term scenarios like these, it’s important not to place too
much emphasis on precise numbers, particularly many decades hence. It is valuable,
however, to look at broader lessons from such scenarios, and the most important
lesson is the rapid rate of change embodied in all scenarios that put a 1.5 °C warming
limit in reach. We’ll need to build zero-emissions energy and industrial process
technologies at high rates and retire existing high-emissions capital on a rapid
schedule.
Achieving such speedy emissions reductions will require unprecedented changes
in how the global economy generates value. In coming decades, many processes in
our economy will need to be re-evaluated and re-designed from scratch to minimize
or eliminate emissions.

A.5.3 The folly of delay

To solve the climate problem, we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero as
quickly as we can [86]. As William Nordhaus said in 2008 [194], ‘There is no case for
delay’ in starting to reduce emissions.
Delaying mitigation is costly because cumulative emissions are what matter
(waiting means we just need to move more quickly later) [87–89, 104, 195]. It is
costly because delay means we don’t gain the benefits of learning-by-doing, scale,
spillovers, and network externalities from deploying zero-emissions technology [154,
161, 196, 197]. It is costly because it adds to the stock of ‘stranded assets’, fossil fuel-
using capital that will need to be retired before the end of its useful life in order to
meet emissions targets [100, 104, 198–200]. And it is costly because it adds to climate
(and other) damages already being incurred by society if we continue to fail to act
[104, 201, 202].
These conclusions are not new. Over a decade ago, the International Energy
Agency concluded in its 2009 World Energy Outlook [203]:

...each year of delay before moving onto the emissions path consistent with a
2 °C temperature increase would add approximately $500 billion to the global
incremental investment cost of $10.5 trillion for the period 2010–2030.

In its 2010 World Energy Outlook [98], IEA increased that estimate of losses for
each year of delay to $1 trillion.
The White House Council of Economic Advisors under President Obama
declared in 2014 [201]:

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...a delay that results in warming of 3° C above pre-industrial levels, instead of

2 °C, could increase economic damages by approximately 0.9 percent of global
output. To put this percentage in perspective, 0.9 percent of estimated 2014 US
gross domestic product (GDP) is approximately $150 billion [per year].

...net mitigation costs increase, on average, by approximately 40 percent for

each decade of delay. These costs are higher for more aggressive climate goals:
each year of delay means more CO2 emissions, so it becomes increasingly
difficult, or even infeasible, to hit a climate target that is likely to yield only
moderate temperature increases.

The IPCC’s special report on 1.5 °C scenarios [104] concluded in 2018

every year’s delay before initiating emission reductions decreases by approx-

imately two years the remaining time available to reach zero emissions on a
pathway still remaining below 1.5 °C

and

the challenges from delayed actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

include the risk of cost escalation, lock-in in carbon-emitting infrastructure,
stranded assets, and reduced flexibility in future response options in the
medium to long term.
Daniel et al [153], after applying standard treatments of risk and uncertainty to
William Nordhaus’s DICE integrated assessment model [118], found

delaying implementation by only 1 y costs society approximately $1 trillion. A

5 y delay creates the equivalent loss of approximately $24 trillion, comparable
to a severe global depression. A 10 y delay causes an equivalent loss in the
order of $10 trillion per year, approximately $100 trillion in total.

This analysis also found that the cost of delay increases quadratically over time,
so that a five year delay costs twenty four times as much as a one year delay and
delaying action by ten years instead of five years increases societal costs four-fold.
Delay is costly, and the faster we move to reduce emissions, the easier and
cheaper it will be to do so. Conversely, the longer we delay, the more it will cost to
fix the problem, and the longer society will incur the huge and avoidable societal
costs of pollution from fossil fuel combustion [135, 137, 138, 204]. Delay also means
we need to move faster later to stay under a fixed warming limit.
As an example, consider fossil energy carbon dioxide emissions in Grubler et al’s
LED intervention case [53], which we show in figure A.21. We chose to highlight this
scenario because it has no carbon capture, simplifying the story related to delaying
emissions reductions.
Energy sector carbon dioxide emissions in this scenario decline 5.6% per year (as
a % of 2020 emissions) from 2020 to 2030, reaching 56% below 2020 emissions by

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Figure A.21. Fossil energy CO2 emissions in the low energy demand intervention scenario compared to a
delayed action case. Source: Grubler et al [53], calculations from Koomey et al [205].

2030 (it reaches the ‘carbon law’ goal of halving emissions a year early, by 2029).
The area under that emissions curve equals the cumulative emissions through 2100,
which is the ‘budget’ that we need to meet if we’re to keep temperatures from rising
more than 1.5 °C.
Figure A.21 also shows what happens if we don’t start reducing emissions until
2025 (the delayed action case). The area under this curve for the delayed action case
is the same as for the LED intervention case, so these two cases emit the same
amount of carbon from the energy sector through 2100.
Delay makes it harder to solve the problem. Starting later eats up more of the
carbon budget, and the needed rate of emissions decline goes up to 8.8% per year
from 2025 to 2030 (as a % of 2020), if emissions reductions begin right after
emissions peak in 2025. This emissions path halves emissions from 2020 by 2031,
representing about a two-year delay compared to the LED intervention case.

A.5.4 Can it be done?

The question of whether a modern society can achieve such rapid reductions is one
we’ll explore in the rest of this book, but it cannot be answered precisely by modeling
or analysis. We’ll only actually know how far we can reduce emissions once we start
trying to do so in earnest, and we really haven’t started yet.
Every tenth of a degree matters. If we overshoot 1.5 °C, so be it, but 1.6 °C is
much better than 1.7 °C, which is much better than 1.8 °C, and by getting to a
climate-positive state we can start to bring temperatures back down and reduce

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damages from temporarily overshooting climate targets. Even if we are daunted by

the challenge of keeping warming below 1.5 °C, we need to try, and we need to act as
quickly as we can.
For climate change, ‘moving in the right direction’ isn’t enough, as Solomon
Goldstein-Rose points out in his excellent book The 100% Solution:

There’s a lot of rhetoric about ‘moving in the right direction’ on climate

change. But because of its difference from other issues (impacts being caused
not by each year’s emission but by cumulative emissions until we start
removing them from the atmosphere), there’s not really such a thing as
‘moving in the right direction.’ Climate change impacts get exponentially
worse until we solve the problem 100%. That’s why it is so much scarier and
more urgent than other problems…

The idea of ‘doing what we can’ is dangerous when it comes to climate change
because it implicitly accepts that the maximum viable action is less than the
minimum needed action.

‘Can it be done?’ is therefore the wrong question and worrying about feasibility is
the wrong framing. The right question is ‘How can we change society to do what is
necessary?’
Nobody knows what’s likely or even possible until we start down the path of
aggressively reducing emissions by deploying technology, capital, communications,
and institutional innovations at the requisite scale. If we choose to do so, many
things will become possible that wouldn’t be possible if we didn’t.
Feasibility also depends on context, and on what we are willing to pay and
prioritize to minimize risks. What if we finally decide (as we should) that it’s a real
emergency (like World War II)? In that case we’d make every effort to fix the problem,
and what would be possible then is far beyond what we could imagine today.
It is therefore a mistake for analysts to impose an informal feasibility judgment
when considering a problem like this one, and instead we should aim for what we
think is the best outcome from a risk-minimization perspective, and if we don’t quite
get there, then we’ll have to deal with the consequences. But if we aim too low, we
might miss possibilities that we’d otherwise be able to capture.
History shows that under the right conditions, societies and industries can move
quickly. In the beginning of World War II, the US retooled much of its heavy
industry over the span of about 6 months [114], and some other nations engineered
similarly rapid change. We now have some technology advantages over industrial
firms of that era [115], especially information technology, which is our ‘ace in the
hole’ [116].
We also know that existing technology offers opportunities to reduce emissions
substantially right now, and maximizing immediate emissions reductions is where
we should be focused, not on worrying about whether we’ll be able to get to zero
emissions by 2040. Do the obvious things: shut down fossil fuel power plants
(starting with coal), mandate electrification where possible, install much more wind,

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solar, and energy storage, and deploy all other existing emissions reduction
technology at scale everywhere we can. Our choices now create our options later
because deployment drives costs down, creating new opportunities for reducing
emissions elsewhere.

A.5.5 Keeping carbon in the ground

Another way to think about how fast emissions need to come down is by comparing fossil
fuel consumption in the SSP-2 reference and LED intervention cases to the latest estimates
of proved reserves of fossil fuels. In geology parlance, proved reserves are those stocks of
fossil fuels that are known to exist with high confidence and that can be extracted using
current technology at current prices. Resources are fossil deposits known with less
confidence and/or are not extractable using current technology and current prices.
The first bar in figure A.22 shows proven fossil reserves for 2018 from
Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe (BGR) [117]. They total about
900 billion tonnes of carbon (not carbon dioxide). The SSP-2 reference case implies
about 1300 billion tonnes of carbon consumed from 2020 to 2100, which means that
a small fraction of the remaining resources (which are more than ten-fold bigger
than reserves) would need to be converted to reserves through exploration or using
new technology to meet that demand.
The more important bar for our narrative, however, is the one for the LED
intervention case. To keep global temperatures from increasing no more than 1.5 °C
from pre-industrial times, the world can burn less than one tenth of the fossil carbon
implied in the reference case, and only one eighth of the proved reserves. That means
we’ll either need to keep seven-eighths of the fossil reserves in the ground unburned
or identify some way to sequester the carbon from burning it, which will be a heavy
lift at the required scale.

Figure A.22. Comparing the reference case and low energy demand case to proved fossil reserves. Source:
BGR [117], Fricko et al [44], Grubler et al [53].

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These exact numbers are dependent on some key assumptions in this scenario, but
the main point is the same for all aggressive mitigation scenarios that keep the 1.5 °C
warming limit in reach: We’ll need to keep a substantial fraction of proved fossil
reserves in the ground or find another safe way to sequester that carbon.

A.5.6 The economics of climate action

In the early years of studying the economics of climate, economists were concerned
about the economic costs of moving too quickly [94, 95, 118–120]. As the problem
became better understood, a different picture emerged, indicating that the benefits of
at least modest climate action should significantly exceed costs from the societal
perspective. Subsequent analyses showed that substantially reducing emissions
would come at gross societal costs of at most a few percent of GDP in coming
decades, resulting in the loss of roughly a single year’s growth in GDP [121–128].
Further, these analyses showed that delaying action had serious downside risks, as
discussed below.
Over time, economic assessments became more sophisticated and started to
include important factors that the earliest simple models omitted—factors whose
inclusion generally showed that achieving lower emissions would be cheaper, easier,
and more beneficial for society than the earlier assessments indicated [129–133].
Models often omitted air quality and other health co-benefits, which are often big
enough to fully offset the gross costs of reducing emissions, justifying significant
climate action even before considering greenhouse gas externalities [134–139]. Many
models omitted bottom-up analysis of market reforms and technology programs,
which are important sources of negative net cost (i.e. societally profitable) emissions
reduction options [123, 130, 131, 140–145].
Many benefit–cost models ignored climate damages for reference cases, assuming
economic growth rates in those cases would be unaffected by unrestricted climate
change [146]. Many also relied on flawed estimates of climate damages that vastly
underestimate the benefits of reducing emissions [147–150]. Standard calculations of
discount rates by Nordhaus and others also included a term for business-as-usual
economic growth unencumbered by potential climate damages [151], and that
assumption led to higher discount rates that make future benefits of climate action
appear less valuable than in reality.
Virtually all models ignored the ‘long-tail’ risks of catastrophic climate change,
which lay bare the weaknesses of the benefit–cost framing like no other issue [81,
152]. Benefit–cost models also often ignored the lessons from financial economics on
pricing risk and uncertainty [153] and almost always ignored potential cost
reductions associated with economies of scale, learning effects, spillovers, network
externalities, and irreversibilities [132, 154–161], although sometimes these effects
were studied in specific cases [156, 162]. They also almost always ignore people’s
asymmetrical treatment of losses versus gains (prospect theory), which again biased
the results toward delaying mitigation [150].
Some models also omitted benefits from using carbon tax revenues to reduce
inefficiencies in the tax system [163], failed to distinguish between endogenous and

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directed or induced technical change [160, 164, 165], and included only local or
regional emissions trading and focused only on carbon dioxide rather than all
greenhouse gases [129, 166]. In almost every case, including these factors in the
analysis would have shown emissions reductions to be cheaper for society than in the
original analysis.
Prematurely excluding cost-competitive mitigation options from analyses such as
these can raise the apparent cost of reducing emissions. For example, in many places
excluding the option of extending the useful life of existing nuclear plants would
make achieving emissions goals appear to be more expensive than they would be if
this option was kept on the table. How this constraint nets out for a particular
technology, policy, or scenario depends on the cost for each option.
Conversely, including options as ‘backstop’ technologies with optimistic costs and
potentials, as has happened in the past, for example, in the case of biomass energy
with carbon capture, can make achieving emissions reduction goals appear cheaper
than they really would be in practice. On balance, however, the models historically
have erred more on the side of making the costs of emissions reductions appear to be
more expensive than they really are.

A.5.7 Climate action, equity, and justice

While the costs of climate change fall on all of us, a disproportionate share of those
costs will continue fall on the poorest countries, the poorest people, and generations
yet to be born [167–170]. The pursuit of equity and justice is central to action on
climate, a fact that is uncomfortable for many economists. The economics field has
traditionally focused on economic efficiency, not on disparities in income and power
relationships, but these issues cannot be ignored in facing the climate challenge.

...Climatologist Michael E Mann, writing in his book, The New Climate War,
wrote social justice is intrinsic to climate action. Environmental crises,
including climate change, disproportionately impact those with the least
wealth, the fewest resources, and the least resilience. So simply acting on the
climate crisis is acting to alleviate social injustice. It’s another compelling
reason to institute the systemic changes necessary to avert the further warming
of our planet [171].

Some climate policies are more justice-enhancing than others. Unless policies are
designed with existing inequities in mind, they risk exacerbating inequality and
injustice, so it is not always true that ‘acting on the climate crisis is acting to alleviate
social injustice’ [169, 170, 172]. What is true is that those with the fewest resources
will be hit the hardest by climate change [169, 170], climate change is already
increasing inequality [170, 173, 174], and society has an obligation to reduce those
harms by rapidly reducing emissions and structuring climate policies to address (or
at a minimum not exacerbate) existing inequities.
There is some empirical work supporting the differential effects of climate change
and other environmental issues on less advantaged groups, for example [170, 175–

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 Solving Climate Change

177], but it’s also an intuitively reasonable conclusion. Marginalized people have
fewer resources to manage unexpected crises and often live in places susceptible to
extreme weather events and environmental pollution. Structural racism exacerbates
these inequalities [178, 179].
For example, when extreme temperatures hit, economically disadvantaged
communities have less access to well-conditioned private or public spaces. When
flooding or hurricanes hit, poorer families have less ability to move to safer ground,
either because they are tied to low wage jobs for survival or don’t have access to
affordable transportation. Communities of color and low-income communities are
exposed to more outdoor air pollution than less diverse and more affluent
neighborhoods [180], and exposure to air pollution may also be related to increased
mortality from COVID-19 and other infections [181]. Many poorer countries are
also significantly affected by air and water pollution, and correctly accounting for
co-benefits to greenhouse gas emissions reductions should feature prominently in
international negotiations on climate targets and commitments [139]. Air pollution
from fossil fuels kills millions of people every year [135, 182], and those deaths are
borne disproportionately by poorer people.
Climate change is also deeply intertwined with intergenerational justice [63, 183–185].
Those likely to be most affected by a world with a rapidly changing climate are not yet
born, while powerful economic interests make their preference for delayed action known
loudly in public proceedings and news media around the world.
Another dimension to the question of justice and the climate is the dispropor-
tionate effects the wealthy have on emissions [186–188]. The primary beneficiaries of
fossil fuel wealth have been rich countries, and rich people everywhere, but they’ve
privatized benefits while socializing costs. That disparity makes it incumbent upon
the wealthy to take the lead on climate action. They can afford it, they are
historically more to blame for the climate problem than those people who are less
well off, and their prominence in society gives them greater ability to influence the
opinions of others [189].
As discussed above, humanity’s choices for response are threefold: mitigation,
adaptation, and suffering. Our decisions on balancing climate mitigation with
adaptation and suffering are at their core moral choices. How fast and how far we
mitigate are not solely questions of economics and are inseparable from questions
about equity and justice [167]. The faster and more deeply we reduce emissions and
the more we center the correction of existing inequities in our solutions, the less
adaptation and suffering we’ll do, and the more rapidly justice will be served.

A.5.8 Speed trumps perfection in pandemic response and climate solutions

The seriousness of the climate problem has been obvious to informed observers for
at least three decades, but our delay in facing it has virtually guaranteed that little
about humanity’s response will be optimal. The most important lesson is that we
need to get started on rapid emissions reductions as soon as possible. There’s no
more time to waste.

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 Solving Climate Change

The IPCC [43], writing in early 2022, emphasized the urgency of responding to
the climate problem without delay:

The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to

human well-being and planetary health. Any further delay in concerted
anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief
and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable
future for all.

The IPCC assigned Very High Confidence to this statement, meaning there is little
doubt that the statement is true, with multiple, independent, and consistent lines of
evidence supporting it [190]. The quotation itself is scientist-speak for ‘It’s a bloody
emergency!’ and ‘It’s warming, it’s us, we’re sure, it’s bad, we can fix it (but we’d
better hurry)’.
There are lessons for climate solutions from responding to other kinds of
emergencies. Dr Michael Ryan, Executive Director of the World Health
Organization, in talking about pandemic response in early 2020, said this:

‘Be fast. Have no regrets. You must be the first mover... In emergency
response, if you need to be right before you move, you will never win…
Speed trumps perfection…The greatest error is not to move. The greatest error
is to be paralyzed by the fear of failure.’7

We conclude from this advice:

• Don’t obsess about optimality, just move as quickly as you can.

• Don’t obsess about feasibility, just move quickly as you can.
• Don’t obsess about obstacles, just move quickly as you can.

For climate, just like for pandemic response, speed trumps perfection, and that’s
the attitude we need to take in addressing this problem now, because it’s a real
emergency [191, 192].

A.6 Greenhouse gas concentrations and temperatures with rapid

climate action
Figure A.23 shows greenhouse gas equivalent concentrations from 2020 to 2100 if
we manage to follow something such as the path laid out in the LED intervention
case (see figure A.16 above for the comparable reference case graph). Those
concentrations peak in the 2020s and begin a slow decline to 2100 as the Earth
system starts absorbing carbon from the atmosphere more rapidly than we’re
emitting it and as methane (with its much shorter residence time) exits the
atmosphere as emissions decline.

7
https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1340997408503853058?s=10

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 Solving Climate Change

Figure A.23. Greenhouse gas equivalent concentrations for the LED intervention case to 2100. Source:
Grubler et al [53] and calculations by Koomey.

Figure A.24 shows the temperature implications of the trend in concentrations,

showing a temperature peak in the 2040s and a slow decline to 2100. The
intervention scenario is a far safer world for humanity, and it’s one that substantially
reduces the damages to people and ecosystems compared to the reference case. It
also is a world that is better, cleaner, and cheaper for people and the biosphere than
continuing business as usual.

A.7 Appendix conclusions

We are in a climate emergency, but most people and institutions aren’t acting like it.
We need to treat climate like the crisis that it is. That means moving more quickly
than in normal times, getting started on rapid emissions reductions immediately.
There’s no more time to waste.
Keeping global surface temperatures from exceeding 1.5 °C above pre-industrial
times will not be easy, nor will drawing down GHGs into climate-positive territory.
On the contrary, climate change is the biggest collective challenge modern humanity
has ever faced.
We’ll need to cut absolute global greenhouse emissions in half by 2030, reaching
net zero emissions no later than 2040, then remove emissions with climate-positive
processes for many decades thereafter. Industrialized nations, including China,
should move even more quickly. Aggressive early action in these nations will drive

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 Solving Climate Change

Figure A.24. Historical temperatures through 2020 and reference case and low energy demand scenario
temperatures to 2100. Source: Grubler et al [53]. Instrumental record taken from figure A.1.

the cost of zero-emissions and climate-positive technologies down substantially,

benefitting the entire world.
The vast majority of proved fossil fuel reserves will need to be kept in the ground
to stabilize the climate. No fossil fuel companies’ business plans currently reflect this
reality [193], creating what Al Gore called a ‘carbon asset bubble’ [107]. When this
bubble bursts, as it inevitably will, fossil investors will be left holding the bag.
For climate, just like for pandemic response, speed trumps perfection, and that’s
the attitude we need to take in addressing this problem now. There will always be
social and environmental tradeoffs as we scale up climate solutions, but the direct
benefits and co-benefits of scaling solutions generally far outweigh the costs, and we
already have techniques for minimizing harm while maximizing benefits for nearly
everyone. The rest of this book explores tools needed to speed up climate action and
truly face the climate challenge.

Further reading
Burke K D, Williams J W, Chandler M A, Haywood A M, Lunt D J and Otto-
Bliesner B L 2018 Pliocene and Eocene provide best analogs for near-future
climates Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. 115 13288 https://doi.org/10.1073/
pnas.1809600115
Dessler A E 2022 Introduction to Modern Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press)

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 Solving Climate Change

Duane T, Koomey J, Belyeu K and Hausker K 2016 From Risk to Return: Investing
in a Clean Energy Economy (New York: Risky Business) http://riskybusiness.
org/fromrisktoreturn/
Goldstein-Rose S 2020 The 100% Solution: A Plan for Solving Climate Change (New
York: Melville House)
Grübler A et al 2018 A low energy demand scenario for meeting the 1.5 °C target
and sustainable development goals without negative emission technologies Nat.
Energy 3 515–27 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-018-0172-6
IPCC 2018 Global Warming of 1.5 °C. An IPCC Special Report on the Impacts of
Global Warming of 1.5 °C Above Pre-industrial Levels and Related Global
Greenhouse Gas Emission Pathways, in the Context of Strengthening the Global
Response to the Threat of Climate Change, Sustainable Development, and Efforts
to Eradicate Poverty (Geneva: IPCC) https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15
IPCC 2021 Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of
Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change ed V Masson-Delmotte et al (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press) https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-
group-i/
IPCC 2022 Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of
Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change Due Out March 2022 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press) https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-
group-3/
Mann M E and Toles T 2016 The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is
Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy (New
York: Columbia University Press)
Rockström J, Gaffney O, Rogelj J, Meinshausen M, Nakicenovic N and
Schellenhuber H J 2017 A roadmap for rapid decarbonization Science 355
1269 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aah3443
Sovacool B K, Burke M, Baker L, Kotikalapudi C K and Wlokas H 2017 New
frontiers and conceptual frameworks for energy justice Energy Policy 105 677–
91 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2017.03.005

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[216] Min S-K, Zhang X, Zwiers F W and Hegerl G C 2011 Human contribution to more intense
precipitation extremes Nature 470 378–81

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Solving Climate Change

A guide for learners and leaders
Jonathan Koomey and Ian Monroe

Appendix B
Modeling capital stock growth and turnover

Tracking capital stocks is necessary for accurate modeling of emissions reduction

scenarios. The characteristics of buildings, appliances, and industrial equipment
change over time, and those changes need to be tracked to create your business-as-
usual and your climate-positive scenarios.
A retirement function (‘survival curve’) is used to estimate the retirement rate of
equipment and structures. Sometimes it is as simple as ‘when capital reaches its book
life it retires’, sometimes it’s a function of economic conditions, sometimes it is based
on average lifetimes, but particularly for buildings and related equipment, explicit
representation of retirement functions is necessary when assessing changes in capital
stocks over time.
There are two major cases:

1. Average equipment lifetimes much longer than the analysis period, such as
industrial equipment, power plants, refineries, and buildings.
a. For industrial equipment and power plants, these are relatively few in
number and large in size, so they are often tracked individually. They
are also almost always site built rather than mass produced.
Most analyses assume that this infrastructure continues to operate
for its book life and then retires. Of course, there’s no reason why this
capital couldn’t retire early. It is also often subject to refurbishment,
which in some cases can change its characteristics significantly (and
likely extends its book life).
b. For buildings, which are more numerous, aggregate statistical treat-
ments of capital stock turnover are usually required. Residential
buildings typically number in the millions in a large country, so
treating them individually has historically been difficult, but that’s
changing as real-time billing data and other building characteristics are
available at increasing levels of detail. Even commercial buildings are
numerous enough to make individual treatment of capital stocks
onerous. Major refurbishment is also significant for buildings, and

doi:10.1088/978-0-7503-4032-8ch15 B-1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

 Solving Climate Change

occurs more rapidly in commercial buildings, typically every 15 years

or so, versus more like 30 years for residential structures.
2. Average equipment lifetimes comparable to or shorter than the analysis period.
This category includes appliances and equipment, which are almost always
mass produced rather than site built. These devices are so numerous that
statistical treatments of capital stock turnover are required for accurate
assessments.

The structure and use of a retirement function are in part dictated by the data that
are available. For appliances and buildings, it is common to have data on the
number of units existing in a base year, as well as estimates of future shipments over
time (from the industry that produces the equipment). The best way to derive a
retirement rate is to use historical data on stocks and sales of new units, but
sometimes all you have is total stocks and estimates of average lifetimes, which can
be enough.
The total number of existing homes/appliances is driven by fundamentals like
population growth. New home sales are affected by economic conditions.
Retirements are affected by fires, accidents, equipment failure, and the decision to
build a new home on an existing lot.
The most commonly used retirement function is called ‘exponential decay’, which
will be appropriate for most applications. Take the inverse of the average lifetime as
a percentage (this is the retirement rate) and subtract it from 100%, then multiply
that percentage by the equipment stock remaining in year N to get the stock
remaining in year N+1. This function has the advantage of simplicity and is widely
used. Exponential retirement rates can also be derived from historical data on stocks
and new construction/appliance sales.
We present an example in table B.1 that can be generalized to category 1b
(buildings) and 2 (appliances and equipment), based on building stock data by
building type from the US Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy
Outlook [1]. We create the stock accounting using the building stock data and
assumed lifetimes for each building type.
The split between existing and new buildings/appliances is important because
different policies are appropriate for affecting efficiency and fuel choices over time
for these two cohorts. Tracking new buildings/appliances over time is also important
because equipment standards will change over time, and these need to be tracked
explicitly.
For appliances it is common to track each annual cohort of new devices over
time. For an example of this kind of detailed stock accounting, see [2]. This
approach is more complicated, but it allows for more detailed modeling of efficiency
changes and electrification.
For more detailed analyses, sometimes a more sophisticated retirement function
is needed. This retirement function is taken from [3], and is shown in figure B.1. It is
an approximation that seems to match historical retirement behavior well for major
appliances, but the available historical data may yield more accurate results for
particular equipment types.

B-2
 Table B.1. Stock accounting example for US residential building stocks.
Stock
Category House Type Units 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 2031 2032 2033 2034 2035 2036 2037 2038 2039 2040 2041 2042 2043 2044 2045 2046 2047 2048 2049 2050

Building stocks
Single family Millions 86.0 86.9 87.8 88.7 89.6 90.4 91.3 92.1 92.9 93.7 94.5 95.3 96.0 96.7 97.5 98.2 98.9 99.7 100.4 101.1 101.8 102.5 103.2 103.9 104.6 105.3 105.9 106.6 107.3 107.9
Multi family Millions 32.4 32.7 33.0 33.2 33.5 33.7 34.0 34.2 34.5 34.7 34.9 35.2 35.4 35.6 35.8 36.0 36.2 36.4 36.6 36.9 37.1 37.3 37.5 37.7 37.9 38.1 38.3 38.5 38.7 38.9
Mobile homes Millions 6.6 6.6 6.6 6.6 6.6 6.6 6.6 6.6 6.6 6.6 6.6 6.5 6.5 6.5 6.5 6.5 6.5 6.5 6.5 6.5 6.5 6.5 6.5 6.5 6.5 6.5 6.5 6.5 6.5 6.5
Total Millions 125.0 126.2 127.4 128.5 129.7 130.8 131.9 132.9 133.9 135.0 136.0 137.0 137.9 138.9 139.8 140.8 141.7 142.6 143.5 144.5 145.4 146.3 147.2 148.0 148.9 149.8 150.7 151.6 152.4 153.3
Stock existing in 2021 still existing in year N
Single family Millions 86.0 85.1 84.2 83.4 82.6 81.7 80.9 80.1 79.3 78.5 77.7 77.0 76.2 75.4 74.7 73.9 73.2 72.5 71.7 71.0 70.3 69.6 68.9 68.2 67.5 66.9 66.2 65.5 64.9 64.2
Multi family Millions 32.4 31.9 31.4 31.0 30.6 30.1 29.7 29.3 28.8 28.4 28.0 27.6 27.2 26.8 26.5 26.1 25.7 25.3 25.0 24.6 24.3 23.9 23.6 23.2 22.9 22.6 22.3 21.9 21.6 21.3
Mobile homes Millions 6.6 6.5 6.4 6.3 6.1 6.0 5.9 5.8 5.7 5.5 5.4 5.3 5.2 5.1 5.0 4.9 4.8 4.7 4.6 4.5 4.4 4.3 4.3 4.2 4.1 4.0 3.9 3.9 3.8 3.7
Total Millions 125.0 123.5 122.1 120.7 119.2 117.9 116.5 115.1 113.8 112.5 111.2 109.9 108.6 107.4 106.1 104.9 103.7 102.5 101.3 100.2 99.0 97.9 96.7 95.6 94.5 93.5 92.4 91.3 90.3 89.2
Cumulative stock built since 2021
Single family Millions 1.8 3.5 5.3 7.0 8.7 10.4 12.0 13.6 15.2 16.8 18.3 19.8 21.2 22.8 24.3 25.8 27.2 28.6 30.1 31.5 32.9 34.3 35.7 37.0 38.4 39.8 41.1 42.4 43.7

B-3
Multi family Millions 0.8 1.5 2.2 2.9 3.6 4.3 5.0 5.6 6.3 6.9 7.5 8.2 8.8 9.3 9.9 10.5 11.1 11.7 12.2 12.8 13.3 13.9 14.4 15.0 15.5 16.0 16.5 17.1 17.6
Mobile homes Millions 0.1 0.2 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8
Total Millions 2.7 5.3 7.9 10.4 12.9 15.4 17.8 20.1 22.5 24.8 27.1 29.3 31.5 33.7 35.8 38.0 40.1 42.2 44.3 46.4 48.4 50.4 52.4 54.4 56.4 58.3 60.2 62.2 64.1
Implied new home construction in year N
Solving Climate Change

Single family Millions 1.8 1.7 1.7 1.7 1.7 1.6 1.6 1.6 1.6 1.6 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.3 1.3 1.3
Multi family Millions 0.8 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5
Mobile homes Millions 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1
Total Millions 2.7 2.6 2.6 2.6 2.5 2.4 2.4 2.4 2.4 2.3 2.3 2.2 2.2 2.2 2.2 2.1 2.1 2.1 2.1 2.1 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 1.9 1.9 1.9

Sources: Building stocks to 2050 from US EIA Annual Energy Outlook 2022. Building lifetimes assumed to be 100 years for SF, 70 years for MF, and 50 years for MHs. Retirement
rates = 1/building lifetime by building type. Retirement rates used to calculate stock existing in 2021 still existing in year N. Cumulative stock built since 2021 equals total building
stock minus stock existing in 2021 still existing in year N. Implied new construction in year N is the difference between cumulative stock built since 2021 in year N+1 and year N.
 Solving Climate Change

Figure B.1. Schematic retirement function.

For this function no appliances retire in the first 2/3 of their average life, and all
units are retired by 4/3 of their average life. Expressed as equations, this function is
as follows:

• if age ⩽ [2/3 × (average life)] then 100% survive.

• if age > [2/3 × (average life)] and age < [4/3 × (average life)] then [2 – age ×
1.5/(average life)] survive.
• if age ⩾ [4/3 × (average life)] then 0% survive.

All retirement functions are approximations to a complex process of equipment

turnover and replacement. Fortunately, results from most analyses are not very
sensitive to the form of the retirement function used but ignoring stock turnover
entirely is not an option for accurate analyses over several decades.

References
[1] US DOE 2022 Annual Energy Outlook 2022, with Projections to 2050 (Washington, DC:
Energy Information Administration, US Department of Energy) https://eia.gov/aeo
[2] Webber C A, Brown R E, Mahajan A and Koomey J G 2002 Savings Estimates for the
ENERGY STAR Voluntary Labeling Program: 2001 Status Report (Berkeley, CA: Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory) LBNL-48496
[3] Koomey J G, Mahler S A, Webber C A and McMahon J E 1999 Projected regional impacts of
appliance efficiency standards for the US residential sector Energy 24 69–84

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 IOP Publishing

Solving Climate Change

A guide for learners and leaders
Jonathan Koomey and Ian Monroe

Appendix C
How we know that much existing fossil capital
will need to retire

Grübler’s low energy demand (LED) scenario implies about 7%/year carbon
emissions reductions for the three decades after 2020 (compounded), with little
difference in this rate between the three decades [1]. This rate of emissions reductions
is aggressive, but not quite as aggressive as these percentages might imply at first
glance, particularly in later years of the scenario.
As emissions actually start declining, a given percentage reduction represents a
smaller absolute amount of equipment to be retired or replaced each year (because
the percentage is relative to a smaller base). That’s why it’s often helpful to express
reduction rates as a percentage of some base year value, in our case 2020.
This approach indicates what fraction of 2020 emissions would have to be
eliminated in any year to meet the constraints of the LED mitigation case, and it is
proportional to the amount of capital equipment associated with those emissions (as
long as there isn’t much change in the carbon intensity of energy supply, which is
true in the SSP-2 reference case [2]). Using this metric, the reduction rate for total
carbon emissions in the first decade after 2020 in the LED scenario is about 5.4% of
year 2020 emissions every year. Between 2030 and 2040 it’s 2.3% of year 2020
emissions per year, and from 2040 to 2050, it’s about 1.2% of year 2020 emissions
every year. In absolute terms, the rate of equipment retired in the LED intervention
case from 2040 to 2050 drops to about one quarter of the retirement rate from 2020
to 2030.
Figure C.1 shows an illustrative calculation about energy-related carbon dioxide
emissions to give you a feel for the magnitudes. We’ve taken the liberty of vastly
simplifying the story to make a few key points. First, we made a y-axis that shows
carbon emissions as a fraction of 2020 emissions, so the lines on the graph are shown
as an index with 2020 = 1.0. The topmost line is the SSP-2 reference case emissions
from 2020 to 2050. That scenario shows average annual growth in emissions of 1.5%
of year 2020 emissions.

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 Solving Climate Change

Figure C.1. Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions as a fraction of SSP-2 reference case emissions in 2020,
assuming different retirement rates of 2020 capital stock and full replacement of retired stock and new growth
with zero emission resources.

Then we plotted a horizontal line to represent carbon emissions from the 2020
capital stock assuming there are no retirements of that equipment (or equivalently
that it is replaced when retired with capital equipment that has same emissions
intensity as the 2020 stock). This line also corresponds to the emissions path that
would prevail if all incremental energy service demand growth is met instead with
energy technologies that emit no CO2 starting in 2020, but equipment existing in
2020 continues to emit the same amount to 2050.
Finally, we plotted emissions pathways assuming different retirement rates for the
2020 capital stock, and assuming that all growth in emissions is met with zero-
emissions energy technologies, as is all energy service demand for retiring equipment
that is displaced (retirement rates are expressed as a percentage of 2020 equipment

C-2
 Solving Climate Change

stock). This thought experiment allows us to assess the rate of equipment retirement
embodied in the LED intervention case emissions path, as shown below.
The retirement rates are related to the lifetimes of capital equipment. In the
simplest case, a 1%/year absolute retirement rate means that the average lifetime of
the capital stock is 100 years. Retirement rates of 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%, and 6% imply
lifetimes of 50, 33, 25, 20, and 16.7 years, respectively, and are also expressed as a
percentage of emissions in 2020 (this makes these retirement rates linear and
absolute, as opposed to exponential, which is another simplification). In the real
world there is great complexity in lifetimes and retirement rates of capital equip-
ment, but for the high-level calculation here, this rough approximation is good
enough.
It’s important to distinguish between capital stocks on the supply and demand
sides because their lifetimes are so different. Supply side equipment, such as power
plants and refineries, typically lasts 25 to 50 years, while most end-use equipment is
replaced in 10 to 20 years. Building shells last longer, typically 100 years for houses
and about 50 years for commercial buildings, but these usually undergo major
retrofits every 20 to 30 years. A weighted average lifetime of 33 years corresponds to
the 3%/year retirement case, which happens to roughly mimic the average annual
retirement rate to 2050 of the emissions path for the LED intervention case.
This graph repays careful study. The average required rate of emissions
reductions from 2020 to 2050 in the LED intervention case is near the limit of
what can be expected by taking maximum advantage of natural stock turnover when
replacing the year 2020 infrastructure (assuming a 33 year average lifetime). The
retirements are front-loaded in this scenario, however. From 2020 to 2030, retire-
ments are more than 5% of year 2020 infrastructure every year, with retirements
really slowing down after 2030. That means that some existing fossil capital will
need to be scrapped to meet the emissions goals of the LED intervention case,
particularly in the years to 2030.
Figure C.1 indicates the scope of the challenges we face. On average, every year
between 2020 and 2050 we’ll need to build the equivalent of about 4.5% of year 2020
energy infrastructure but do it using zero emitting technologies1. From 2020 to 2030,
we’ll need to build the equivalent of 9% of year 2020 infrastructure in zero-emissions
technologies.
Of course, we would have had to build that infrastructure anyway, we’ll just need
to do it with zero-emissions technologies instead of standard ones, which is likely to
be somewhat more expensive in the beginning. In later years economies of scale will
take hold and the net direct cost of the energy system is unlikely to cost more than a
few percent of GDP relative to the business-as-usual case and have significantly
lower non-climate related pollution costs as well as much lower climate risks [3].
Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in the reference case track energy related
capital stocks because the emissions intensity of primary energy supply doesn’t vary
much in this case. The no-policy case emissions grow at 1.5% of 2020 emissions

1
The 4.5% is the sum of 3%/year retirements and about 1.5% per year growth in emissions, all expressed as a
percentage of year 2020 emissions.

C-3
 Solving Climate Change

every year over this period (that corresponds to about a 1.3% compounded annual
growth rate). The ‘no retirements’ case represents emissions from the 2020 capital
stock assuming there are no retirements of that equipment (or equivalently that it is
replaced when retired with capital equipment that has exactly the same emissions
characteristics as the 2020 stock). Finally, we plotted emissions pathways assuming
different retirement rates and assuming that all growth in emissions is met with zero-
emissions technologies, as is all demand for replacement equipment (retirement rates
also expressed as a percentage of 2020 equipment stock).
Figure C.2 is the same graph but for all warming agents, not just carbon dioxide.
One important finding these graphs make clear is that the rate of emissions
reductions in the LED intervention case slows down drastically after 2030. If we’re
able to build 9% of 2020 fossil capital in the years before 2030, wouldn’t we keep

Figure C.2. Energy-related carbon dioxide equivalent emissions (all warming agents) as a fraction of SSP-2
reference case emissions in 2020, assuming different retirement rates of 2020 capital stock and full replacement
of retired stock and new growth with zero emission resources.

C-4
 Solving Climate Change

doing that? If we retire fossil capital at 5.4%/year after 2030 we’d get to zero
emissions well before 2050. Why would retirements slow down after 2030?

References
[1] Arnulf G et al 2018 A low energy demand scenario for meeting the 1.5 °C target and
sustainable development goals without negative emission technologies Nat. Energy 3 515–27
[2] Fricko O et al 2017 The marker quantification of the shared socioeconomic pathway 2: a
middle-of-the-road scenario for the 21st century Global Environ. Change 42 251–67
[3] IEA 2020 World Energy Outlook 2020 (Paris: International. Energy Agency, Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development) http://worldenergyoutlook.org/

C-5
 IOP Publishing

Solving Climate Change

A guide for learners and leaders
Jonathan Koomey and Ian Monroe

Appendix D
Expanded Kaya decomposition

The Kaya identity illustrates the key drivers for fossil carbon dioxide emissions from
the energy sector. This identity decomposes carbon emissions as a product of
aggregate wealth, energy intensity of economic activity, and carbon intensity of the
energy supplied. Professor Kaya presented this equation to help understand the
implications of history and future scenarios in a simple ‘back of the envelope’ way.
We show the familiar ‘four-factor’ Kaya identity in equation (D.1):

GNP PE C
Carbon dioxide emissions = P∙ ∙ ∙ (D.1)
P GNP PE
where
P is population in any year;
GNP is gross national product per year, a measure of economic activity;
PE is primary energy consumption per year, including conversion and energy
transmission losses;
C is total net carbon dioxide emitted per year from the primary energy resource
mix;
GNP
is the average income per person per year;
P
PE
is the primary energy intensity of the economy; and
GNP
C
is the net carbon dioxide intensity of supplying primary energy.
PE

The Kaya identity reflects a more general identity that expresses impact (I) as a
product of human population (P), affluence (A), and technology (T) [1, 2].
Population is the same in both the Kaya and IPAT identities, GNP/person
represents affluence, and the other two terms characterize technology.
This formulation implies that a larger number of people with a higher income and
more extensive use of certain technologies will have a greater impact on the
environment. The role of technology can be ambiguous—technologies that produce
and combust fossil fuels are the primary anthropogenic source of carbon dioxide,

doi:10.1088/978-0-7503-4032-8ch17 D-1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

 Solving Climate Change

while technologies for harnessing renewable energy and nuclear power, sequestering
carbon, and improving efficiency can reduce net anthropogenic carbon emissions.
This appendix relies on methods developed for previous work [3], enhanced and
updated, as explored in a recent white paper [4]. We summarize key drivers of
emissions scenarios in the energy sector using an expanded Kaya identity, in which
we disaggregate key terms to address energy supply losses, the fraction of primary
energy delivered by fossil fuels, and fuel switching among fossil fuels (this
disaggregation is explained in more detail in [3]). We supplement the expanded
Kaya identity with additional graphs that tell the complete high-level emissions
story for each scenario.
The expanded Kaya identity, as described in [3], reads as show in equation (D.2):

GNP FE PE PEFF TFC NFC

CFossil Fuels = P∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ (D.2)
P GNP FE PE PEFF TFC
where
CFossil Fuels represents carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels com-
busted in the energy sector in any year;
P is population;
GNP is gross national product per year (measured consistently using purchasing
power parity or market exchange rates);
FE is final energy consumed per year;
PE is total primary energy consumed per year, calculated using the direct
equivalent (D equation) method, as discussed in Koomey et al [3];
PEFF is primary energy consumed per year associated with fossil fuels;
TFC is total fossil energy CO2 emitted by the primary energy resource mix per
year;
NFC is net fossil CO2 emitted to the atmosphere per year after accounting for
fossil sequestration;
GNP
represents annual economic activity per person;
P
FE
represents final energy intensity of economic activity;
GNP
PE
represents the energy system loss factor (ESLF) which is a measure of total
FE
losses throughout the energy system supply chain;
PEFF
the ratio PEFF/PE we call the fossil fuel fraction, which is the fraction of
PE
primary energy supplied by fossil fuels;
TFC
the ratio TFC/PEFF we call the emissions intensity of fossil fuel produc-
PEFF
tion, changes in which measures fuel switching among fossil fuels (such as
switching power plants from being fired by coal to being fired by fossil gas, or
switching from oils with higher life-cycle emissions to those with lower life-
cycle emissions, as described in [5–7]); and
NFC
TFC
is an index characterizing the fraction of energy-sector emissions that
reach the atmosphere, which is a measure of how much energy-sector fossil
sequestration a scenario contains.

D-2
 Solving Climate Change

This identity allows us to disentangle key drivers affecting scenario results in the
energy sector, and to show graphically which of these drivers are most important.
Because we care about all emissions that cause warming, we also need the more
comprehensive relationship summarized in equation (D.3), which includes all
emissions in terms of carbon dioxide equivalent:

C eq eq
Total = CFossil Fuels + CIndustry + CLand-use + C Non-CO 2gases − CSBiomass (D.3)

where
CFossil Fuels is defined in equation (D.2);
CIndustry represents carbon dioxide emissions from industrial processes (non-
energy uses of fossil fuels that result in emissions, such as cement and
aluminum production), some models combine these emissions with fossil fuel
combustion emissions, but they should be split out for clarity and internal
consistency checks;
CLand-use represents net carbon dioxide emissions from changes in agriculture
and land-use that are not associated with emissions reductions from biomass
CCS, this term can be negative if there is significant reforestation;
C eq
Non-CO2gases represents emissions of other greenhouse gases converted to CO2
equivalent using relative factors of global warming potential1; and
CSBiomass represents net negative emissions from sequestering carbon emissions
associated with biomass combustion (in effect, such sequestration removes
carbon from the biosphere), the emissions reductions from this source must
be carefully distinguished from those of land-use changes.

If direct air capture of CO2 is present in future scenarios (as seems likely) an
additional term would be needed in equation (D.3).
Substituting equation (D.2) into equation (D.3) we obtain equation (D.4), which
we refer to as our fully expanded decomposition:

GWP FE PE PEFF TFC NFC

C eq
Total = P∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ + CIndustry + CLand-use
P GWP FE PE PEFF TFC (D.4)
+ C eq
Non-CO 2gases − CSBiomass

Equation (D.4) allows us to compare emissions savings in every sector from

scenario modeling runs, assuming that those modeling exercises release sufficient
data to calculate all terms in our fully expanded decomposition.

1
We convert emissions of the two major non-CO2 greenhouse gases (methane and nitrous oxides) to CO2
equivalents using 100 year global warming potentials (including climate feedbacks) from the IPCC’s Sixth
Assessment Report [8: table 7.SM.7]. For both models we calculate total F-gas emissions in CO2 equivalent
using GWPs from the same source using the three major categories of such gases reported by the models:
PFCs, HFCs, and SF6.

D-3
 Solving Climate Change

References
[1] Ehrlich P R and Holdren J P 1971 Impact of population growth Science 171 1212–7
[2] Ehrlich P R and Holdren J P 1972 One-dimensional ecology Bull. Atomic Sci. 28 18–27
[3] Koomey J, Schmidt Z, Hummel H and Weyant J 2019 Inside the black box: understanding
key drivers of global emission scenarios Environ. Model. Softw. 111 268–81
[4] Koomey J, Schmidt Z, Hausker K and Lashof D 2022 Black boxes revealed: assessing key
drivers of 1.5 °C warming scenarios White paper Koomey Analytics, Bay Area, CA
[5] Koomey J, Gordon D, Brandt A and Bergeson J 2016 Getting Smart about Oil in a Warming
World (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) http://carnegieen-
dowment.org/2016/10/04/getting-smart-about-oil-in-warming-world-pub-64784
[6] Gordon D, Brandt A, Bergeson J and Koomey J 2015 Know Your Oil: Creating a Global Oil-
Climate Index (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) http://goo.gl/
Jly9Op
[7] Brandt A R, Masnadi M S, Englander J G, Koomey J and Gordon D 2018 Climate-wise
choices in a world of oil abundance Environ. Res. Lett. 13 044027
[8] IPCC 2021 Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working
Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
ed V Masson-Delmotte et al (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press ) https://www.ipcc.
ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-i/

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 IOP Publishing

Solving Climate Change

A guide for learners and leaders
Jonathan Koomey and Ian Monroe

Appendix E
Proper treatment of primary energy

E.1 Primary energy conventions can be misleading

For electricity generation using combustion sources, half to two-thirds of the primary
energy (PE) input is lost as heat, but if we replace that generation using non-
combustion sources, we can simply eliminate that waste [1, 2]. Some widely used
models use conventions for estimating primary energy for non-combustion sources that
(i) are inconsistent and (ii) mask this important benefit of non-combustion generation.
Some energy models use a convention called ‘the substitution method’, in which
every kilowatt-hour of electricity generated by non-combustion sources such as
wind, solar, geothermal, and nuclear power is assigned an amount of primary energy
equivalent to the amount of primary energy that would have been required if the
generation came from fossil-fired power plants, or are based on the efficiency of
converting natural energy flows to electricity. The method of imputing average
system losses to non-combustion sources using the proxy of fossil fuel generation has
some justification when there is a significant amount of final energy delivered by
fuel-based generation sources.
There are issues with the substitution approach, however. Imputing losses for
non-combustion resources in essence creates ‘fictional’ PE losses that aren’t evident
in the actual energy supply system or are losses that are not consequential for an
emissions perspective (such as geothermal energy or nuclear heat not converted to
electricity). If non-combustion resources displace combustion sources with real
conversion losses, those losses are eliminated, and primary energy use should go
down. Using the substitution approach masks that contribution.

E.1.1 Disentangling energy intensity and supply chain losses

The most widely used metric for energy intensity of economic activity (PE/GWP)
refers to primary energy (PE), which is the total energy input to the economy from
all sources, measured as the energy potential in fossil fuels and biomass at the point
of extraction [3]. The PE/GWP metric is sensitive to four types of changes in an

doi:10.1088/978-0-7503-4032-8ch18 E-1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

 Solving Climate Change

Table E.1. Energy-economy dynamics that affect the ratio of primary energy to GWP.

Category Cause Example

Energy supply losses in the Technological improvements in A shift toward cogeneration of

supply chain from the efficiency of energy heat and electricity
primary to final energy supply conversion
Changes in the balance of A rising share of final energy
demand for final energy from electricity
sources
Interfuel substitution among A rising share of electricity
primary energy sources generated using natural gas
supplying each final energy
type
End-use efficiency in the Technological improvements in More efficient lights or motors
conversion of final energy the efficiency of end-use
to end-uses energy conversion
Interfuel substitution among A shift from all-gasoline to
final energy sources plug-in electric hybrid
vehicles
Structural change in the Changes in the modes of energy Globalized trade patterns;
economy service delivery urban development patterns
Changes in the types of A rising share of economic
economic activity activity from the services
sector
Conservation Reduction in non-productive Carpooling; changes in
energy uses personal behavior or lifestyle

energy-economy system, each of which is affected by specific dynamics outlined with

examples in table E.1.
Although the definition of energy intensity as a ratio of primary energy to
economic activity (PE/GWP) is widely used in the literature, there are long-standing
arguments for separating final energy to better assess trends in end-use demands and
to isolate the first effect (energy supply losses) in table E.1 [4]. Final energy is the
energy that is actually delivered to the customer’s meter or gas tank, and it can
include electricity, gasoline, hydrogen, or direct uses of natural gas, coal and
biomass [3]. The Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) reports final energy
(FE) in its detailed appendices, allowing a more accurate assessment of the energy
intensity of the economy [5], and a few analysts have disaggregated FE/GWP and
PE/FE in previous scenario decomposition studies [6–8].
Following those authors, the PE/GWP metric can be further disaggregated as
shown in equation (E.1):

PE FE PE
= ∙ (E.1)
GWP GWP FE

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 Solving Climate Change

where
FE
is the final energy intensity of economic activity, and
GWP
PE
is a measure of total energy system supply losses for delivering final energy to
FE
users.

The ratio of primary energy to final energy delivered at an economy-wide scale

indicates the portion of potential energy lost in the supply chain. A value of 1.0
indicates zero conversion losses in delivering final energy to users, so this ratio will
be greater than 1.0 for all real energy systems.
In the context of a single technology type (e.g. an electric power plant), the ratio
of final energy to primary energy (FE/PE) is a metric that captures both the
efficiency of conversion and efficiency of energy transport/transmission. At an
aggregate data level, however, it is not accurate to represent the ratio of primary
energy to final energy (PE/FE) as the inverse of the conversion efficiency, as is
done, for example, in Kawase et al [7]. Table E.1 lists three different dynamics in
an energy system that can affect supply losses, and a change in technical efficiency
is only one.
Energy supply losses do occur as a result of some inefficiency along the way, but
the value of the metric itself varies even if conversion efficiencies in the system are
held constant. Changes in the PE/FE ratio can result from changes in the balance
between fuels supplying a single type of final energy (e.g. natural gas versus coal for
electricity generation) or the balance between final energy types (e.g. supplying water
heating using electricity or natural gas). For the sake of precision and clarity this
article departs from the system efficiency terminology used by some other authors in
favor of the more precise term energy supply loss factor (ESLF).

E.1.2 Converting non-combustion energy production to primary energy

One of the key issues in understanding energy systems is assessing the total energy
consumed by the system, including all the losses in making energy available to
consumers. This assessment is complicated because of variations in how different
energy sources produce fuels or electricity that allow us to do useful work.
Primary energy is the energy contained in fossil and biomass fuels, measured as
(for example) the heat content of coal that goes into a power plant’s boiler [3]. The
difference between primary energy and secondary energy is the conversion loss in
converting coal to electricity. The secondary energy is the amount of electricity
injected into the grid at the busbar (measured in kWh), which also called net
generation (after accounting for on-site use of electricity to run the plant). Final
energy is the electricity delivered to the customer’s meter, which is lower than that
injected by the power plant into the grid because of transmission and distribution
(T&D) losses.
Nuclear, hydroelectric, solar electric, wind power, and other non-combustion
sources of electricity (or hydrogen or process heat created using these fuels) do not
have losses that result in additional emissions like fossil fuel generation does. What
should define the quantity of primary energy for these sources? There is the energy

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 Solving Climate Change

embodied in the nuclear fuel and the solar flux hitting a photovoltaic panel, but what
does it mean to ‘consume’ that energy from the perspective of the emissions
calculated by the Kaya identity?
To fully account for global energy use in emissions scenarios, all non-thermal
sources of electricity generation, hydrogen, and process heat have traditionally been
assigned a primary energy value based on some measure of the amount of fuel
needed to generate equivalent amounts of secondary energy, plus the associated
transmission and distribution (T&D) losses to transport the secondary energy to the
customer’s meter. This approach assumes that the alternative to the non-combustion
energy is fossil fuel-fired combustion/generation.
For many years, this method (termed the substitution method) was considered in the
scenario analysis community to be the ‘customary convention’. The standard prescrip-
tion for efficiency of conversion of primary to final energy in electricity generation was a
constant 38.6% [9, 10: p 90]. This convention implies a final to primary energy factor of
9.33 MJ kWh−1 (kWh measured at the customer’s meter). For direct heat treated with
the substitution method, a different efficiency of conversion may be used—for example,
85%, as found in IIASA’s Global Energy Assessment [11: p 1820].
One could also imagine a ‘dynamic substitution’ approach in which non-
combustion sources are assigned energy supply chain losses equal to those of the
average losses in the combustion part of the energy system as they change over time.
Whereas the original substitution method assumed constant losses over time, this
alternative method would assess losses as they evolve in the energy systems being
modeled. That means it would capture the shift from (for example) older inefficient
plants to newer efficient ones.
This method of imputing average system losses to non-combustion sources has
some justification when there is a significant amount of final energy delivered by
fuel-based energy sources, a situation that holds now and into the near future for
many energy scenarios. It also allows for accurate comparison of the contribution of
both combustion and non-combustion resources to the generation mix.
There are issues with the substitution approach, however, even if using the more
accurate ‘dynamic’ version. Imputing losses for non-combustion resources in essence
creates ‘fictional’ primary energy losses that aren’t evident in the actual energy
supply system. If non-combustion resources displace combustion sources with real
conversion losses, those losses are eliminated, and primary energy use should go
down. Using the substitution approach masks that contribution.
In 1998 modelers participating in the landmark Special Report on Emissions
Scenarios prepared for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change adopted an
alternative convention for non-combustion electricity generation based on the heat
content of the electricity power plants delivered to the busbar. This convention equates
primary energy of electricity generation to the secondary energy at the busbar, using a
conversion factor of 3.6 MJ kWh−1. It then subtracts T&D losses to get to final energy.
The modelers adopted this method, termed direct equivalence, as their common
convention to harmonize assumptions and facilitate the comparison of results.
SRES designated nuclear power to be treated with the direct equivalent method
along with solar power, wind power, hydropower, geothermal power, and other

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 Solving Climate Change

renewable sources of electricity and hydrogen [5]1. Hundreds of mitigation scenarios

based upon the reference scenarios developed for SRES have inherited the direct
equivalence assumption, and aside from cautionary notes buried deep in the SRES
report itself (on pages 216 and 221) and a sidebar treatment in Nakicenovic et al [10,
p 90], it has seldom been mentioned in the literature.
If more direct equivalent sources enter the supply mix, primary energy use will
decline because conversion losses from combustion are eliminated. The substitution
approach would instead indicate that total primary energy and losses in the system
would change more modestly as a function of the efficiency of combustion plants
remaining in the system after existing plants are displaced, a counterintuitive result.
Primary energy calculated using the direct equivalent approach correctly character-
izes energy system losses over time (in the form of the energy supply loss factor).
Scenario modelers, who rely heavily on the ‘four-factor’ Kaya identity, have often
compared historical changes in the ratio of primary energy to GNP to the results of
model projections, failing to distinguish quantitatively between changes
attributable to the shift to non-combustion direct equivalent resources and those
due to changes in final energy intensity. One example is Loftus et al [12], which relies
on aggregate trends in primary energy to GNP for its otherwise rigorous scenario
comparisons. Another is Peters et al [13], which notes the possibility of splitting out
the effects of these two factors in their ‘methods’ discussion but still shows a graph of
historical and projected primary energy use over time in their figure 3.
Even if the scenario modelers understand this distinction, our experience is that
policy makers can be easily misled by this way of presenting the data, thinking that
scenarios with large reductions in the ratio of PE to GNP demonstrate significant
end-use efficiency when in many scenarios significant savings come from increasing
penetration of non-combustion resources. This conceptual confusion is avoided by
splitting those two key drivers in our expanded Kaya identity, and we strongly caution
against relying on the ratio of PE to GNP in almost all cases.
It is also important to note that two of the most important energy data agencies,
the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the International Energy
Agency (IEA), have adopted conventions about primary energy that can lead to
confusion. EIA uses the dynamic substitution method for all non-combustion
resources, with non-biomass renewables assigned the annual average conversion
efficiency of fossil fuel plants, and nuclear power assigned the annual average
thermal efficiency of nuclear plants. Electricity imports are treated using direct
equivalence2. IEA treats renewables like solar, wind, and hydro using direct
equivalence, geothermal energy as a thermal power plant with 10% efficiency, and

1
It is important to clarify that engineering-economic models used to produce global energy scenarios do
consider the technical efficiency of the engineered systems that harness non-thermal renewable resources and
nuclear power. Indeed, technical efficiency is a vital characteristic of cost and performance parameters for each
technology type. However, the primary energy data calculated for each technology type by models using SRES
terms is reported in terms of direct equivalence as described above.
2
https://www.eia.gov/tools/glossary/index.php?id=P

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 Solving Climate Change

nuclear power with the thermal efficiency of 33%.3 These choices should be
reconsidered given the wide acceptance of the direct equivalent method in the
scenario modeling community and the need to avoid inconsistencies in how primary
energy conversions are treated.
More research is clearly needed on methods for assessing trends in primary
energy. As Nakicenovic et al [10: p 90] point out, ‘The very concept of primary
energy becomes increasingly problematic, particularly as renewable energy forms
gain importance’. The equations in appendix D show how correctly accounting for
the convention of direct equivalence fits into the expanding Kaya identity.

References
[1] Ehrlich P R and Holdren J P 1971 Impact of population growth Science 171 1212–7
[2] Eyre N 2021 From using heat to using work: reconceptualising the zero carbon energy
transition Energ. Effic. 14 77
[3] Grübler A, Nakicenovic N, Pachauri S, Rogner H-H and Smith K R 2015 Energy Primer:
Based on Chapter 1 of the Global Energy Assessment (Laxenburg: International Institute for
Applied Systems Analysis) https://iiasa.ac.at/web/home/research/Flagship-Projects/Global-
Energy-Assessment/Chapter1.en.html
[4] Schipper L, Meyers S, Howarth R and Steiner R 1992 Energy Efficiency and Human
Activity: Past Trends, Future Prospects (New York: Cambridge University Press)
[5] Nakicenovic N et al 2000 Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES), A Special Report
of Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press)
[6] Grübler A, Messner S, Schrattenholzer L and Schafer A 1993 Emission reductions at the
global level Energy 18 539–81
[7] Kawase R, Matsuoka Y and Fujino J 2006 Decomposition analysis of CO2 emission in long-
term climate stabilization scenarios Energy Policy 34 2113–22
[8] Price L, de la Rue du Can S, Sinton J, Worrell E, Zhou N, Sathaye J and Levine M 2006
Sectoral Trends in Global Energy Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions (Berkeley, CA:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) LBNL-56144
[9] Grübler A and Nakicenovic N 1996 Decarbonizing the global energy system Technol.
Forecast. Soc. Change 53 97–110
[10] Nakicenovic N, Grübler A and McDonald A (ed) 1998 Global Energy Perspectives
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
[11] IIASA 2012 Global Energy Assessment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
[12] Loftus P J, Cohen A M, Long J C S and Jenkins J D 2015 A critical review of global
decarbonization scenarios: what do they tell us about feasibility? WIREs Clim. Change 6 93–112
[13] Peters, G P, Andrew R M, Canadell J G, Fuss S, Jackson R B, Korsbakken J I, Le Quéré C
and Nakicenovic N 2017 Key indicators to track current progress and future ambition of the
Paris Agreement Nat. Clim. Change 7 118–22

3
https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-balances-overview

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 IOP Publishing

Solving Climate Change

A guide for learners and leaders
Jonathan Koomey and Ian Monroe

Appendix F
Estimated annual revenues from fossil fuel
companies and tobacco companies in 2019

This appendix documents estimated annual revenues from fossil fuel companies and
tobacco companies in 2019, using methods similar to those found in the appendices to
Koomey [1]. Table F.1 shows revenues for top oil and gas companies, table F.2 shows
revenues for coal companies, and table F.3 shows revenues for the top tobacco
companies. Fossil fuel revenues totaled at least $5 trillion in 2019, with 90% of that
revenue attributable to oil and gas, only 10% to coal. Fossil fuel industry revenues
were more than 13-fold bigger than tobacco revenues in total in that year. Other data
for 2022 show oil and gas production revenues of $5 trillion/year1 and coal production
revenues of $600 billion/year, so both methods yield comparable results2.

Table F.1. Oil and gas industry global revenue for top companies in 2019.

Revenue Billion
Company 2019 US$ % of total Notes

Sinopec Group 435 9.7% 2

China Petroleum and Chemical Corp. 429 9.6% 2
CNPC 401 9.0% 2
PetroChina 364 8.1% 2
Royal Dutch Shell 345 7.7% 3
Saudi Arabian Oil Company 297 6.6% 2
BP 278 6.2% 3
Exxon Mobil 265 5.9% 3

Total 176 3.9% 3

(Continued)

1
https://www.ibisworld.com/global/market-size/global-oil-gas-exploration-production/
2
https://www.ibisworld.com/global/market-size/global-coal-mining/

doi:10.1088/978-0-7503-4032-8ch19 F-1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

 Solving Climate Change

Table F.1. (Continued )

Revenue Billion
Company 2019 US$ % of total Notes

Chevron 147 3.3% 3

OAO Rosneft 137 3.1% 2
Gazprom 118 2.6% 2
Valero Energy 108 2.4% 3
Petroleo Brasileiro 85 1.9% 2
ENI 80 1.8% 3, 4
Pemex 79 1.8% 2
PTT 73 1.6% 2
ENGIE 67 1.5% 3, 4
Equinor 66 1.5% 3
ONGC 62 1.4% 2
Petronas 59 1.3% 2
Pertamina 56 1.3% 2
SOCAR 50 1.1% 2
E.ON 46 1.0% 3, 4
ConocoPhillips 37 0.8% 3
CNOOC Limited 34 0.8% 2
National Iranian Oil Company 30 0.7% 7
Ecopetrol 22 0.5% 2
KazMunayGas 21 0.5% 2
Repsol YPF 16 0.4% 2
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation 16 0.4% 2
NNPC 16 0.4% 2
RWE AG 15 0.3% 3, 4
Sonangol 15 0.3% 2
Lukoil 12 0.3% 3, 5
Indian Oil 8 0.2% 3, 6
Naftogaz 6 0.1% 2
Marathon Oil 5 0.1% 3
TAQA 5 0.1% 2
Total 4480 100%
Notes:
1. Data compiled by Zachary Schmidt ([email protected]), April–June 2021.
2. Source: National Oil Company Database (https://www.nationaloilcompanydata.org).
3. Source: Company Annual Report.
4. Revenues converted to US dollars using 1.12 dollar/euro.
5. Revenues converted to US dollars using 0.0155 dollar/Russian rubles.
6. Revenues converted to US dollars using 0.0142 dollar/Indian rupee.
7. Source: https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-
economics/statistical-review/bp-stats-review-2020-full-report.pdf. Oil revenues estimated using
total company oil production (3.535 million barrels/day, p 16) and the average spot crude oil
price for 2019 (p 26). Gas revenues estimated using total company natural gas production
(8.79 exajoules/year, p 35) and the average natural gas price for 2019 (p 39).

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 Solving Climate Change

Table F.2. Coal industry global revenue for 2019.

Revenue
Billion % of
Company 2019 US$ total Notes

Glencore 215 42.9% 2

Peabody Energy Corporation 46 9.2% 2
BHP Billiton 44 8.8% 2
Rio Tinto 43 8.6% 2
Vale SA 38 7.5% 2
Shenhua Group 35 7.0% 2, 5
Anglo American 30 6.0% 2
RWE Group 15 2.9% 2, 3
Teck Resources 12 2.4% 2
Yanzhou Coal Mining Company 10 2.0% 2, 5
Limited
Bumi Resources 5 0.9% 2
Adaro Indonesia 3 0.7% 2
Banpu 3 0.6% 2
Coal India 1 0.3% 2, 4
Arch Coal 1 0.2% 2

Total 501 100

Notes:
1. Data compiled by Zachary Schmidt ([email protected]), April–
June 2021.
2. Source: Company Annual Report.
3. Revenues converted to US dollars using 1.12 dollar/euro.
4. Revenues converted to US dollars using 0.0142 dollar/Indian rupee.
5. Revenues converted to US dollars using 0.1448 dollar/Chinese yuan.

Table F.3. Tobacco manufacturing industry global revenue for 2019.

Revenue Billion
Company 2019 US$ % of total

China National Tobacco Corp. 150 40.8%

Philip Morris International Inc. 78 21.2%
Imperial Brands 40 11.0%
British American Tobacco PLC 33 9.0%
Altria Group 25 6.8%
Japan Tobacco Inc. 20 5.4%
PT Gudang Garam Tbk. 8 2.2%
ITC Limited 7 1.8%
KT&G 4 1.2%

(Continued)

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 Solving Climate Change

Table F.3. (Continued )

Revenue Billion
Company 2019 US$ % of total

Universal Corporation 2 0.6%

Eastern Co SAE 1 0.2%
Total 368 100%

Notes:
1. Data compiled by Zachary Schmidt ([email protected]), April–
June 2021.
2. Sources: https://vape.hk/china-tobacco-1205-6-billion for China National
Tobacco Corp., Company Annual reports for all others.

Reference
[1] Koomey J G 2012 Cold Cash, Cool Climate: Science-Based Advice for Ecological
Entrepreneurs (El Dorado Hills, CA: Analytics)

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 IOP Publishing

Solving Climate Change

A guide for learners and leaders
Jonathan Koomey and Ian Monroe

Appendix G
The effect of carbon prices on existing coal-fired
electricity generation and retail gasoline prices

Table G.1 shows the calculation of the effect of a $10/tonne carbon dioxide charge
for existing coal-fired power plants, assuming a higher heating value (HHV)
efficiency of 33% (from [1]) and the carbon content of typical US bituminous coal
(based on HHV, from the US Energy Information Administration [2]).

Table G.1. Effect of a $10/tonne tax on carbon dioxide emissions for an existing coal plant.

Bituminous
Units Coal steam existing

HHV efficiency % 33
Carbon content g C/kWh.f 86.8
Emissions g C/kWh.e at busbar 263
Emissions g CO2/kWh.e at busbar 965
Cost at busbar for $10/tonne CO2 tax 2020 ¢/kWh 1.0
Notes
1. g C/kWh.f = grams of carbon contained in fuel (coal) equivalent to 1 kWh (3412 Btus or 3.6 MJ) of heat
value, taken from https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/co2_vol_mass.php.
2. g C/kWh.e = grams of carbon emitted per kWh of electricity generated from burning coal at 33% efficiency,
measured at the busbar.
3. g CO2/kWh.e = grams of carbon dioxide emitted per kWh of electricity generated from burning coal at 33%
efficiency, measured at the busbar.
4. CO2 emissions calculated assuming 100% combustion and the ratio of carbon dioxide to carbon molecular
weights (44/12).
5. Price per gallon calculated for $10 per tonne CO2 charge (2020 $).

Table G.2 shows the calculation of the effect of a $10/tonne carbon dioxide
charge on retail gasoline prices, using the carbon content of typical US motor
gasoline (based on HHV, from the US Energy Information Administration [2]).

doi:10.1088/978-0-7503-4032-8ch20 G-1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

 Solving Climate Change

Table G.2. Effect of a $10/tonne tax on carbon dioxide emissions for US motor gasoline.

Units Gasoline

Carbon content per energy content g C/kWh.f 66.3

CO2 emissions per energy content g CO2/kWh.f 243
Energy content in kWh per gallon kWh/gallon 35.25
CO2 emissions per gallon kg CO2/gallon 8.58
Price effect of CO2 tax 2020 US ¢/gallon 0.09
Notes
1. g C/kWh.f = grams of carbon contained in fuel (gasoline) equivalent to 1 kWh (3412 Btus or 3.6 MJ) of heat
value, taken from https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/co2_vol_mass.php.
2. CO2 emissions calculated assuming 100% combustion and the ratio of carbon dioxide to carbon molecular
weights (44/12).
3. Energy content in kWh/gallon calculated from data at https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/units-and-
calculators/british-thermal-units.php.
4. Price per gallon calculated for $10 per tonne CO2 charge (2020 $).

References
[1] Koomey J et al 2010 Defining a standard metric for electricity savings Environ. Res. Lett. 5
014017
[2] EIA 2016 Carbon Dioxide Emissions Coefficients (Washington, DC: Energy Information
Administration, US Department of Energy) https://eia.gov/environment/emissions/co2_vol_-
mass.php

G-2