Global fossil fuel reduction pathways under different climate ... - Stockholm Environment Institute
Global fossil fuel reduction pathways under different climate mitigation strategies and ambitions | SEI
This study examines mitigation scenarios from a database by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report and their implications for a decline in fossil fuel supply in the coming decades.
A cut-out metal arrow is strapped to a tree in the forest.
Photo: Monique Snijder / Unsplash
The mitigation scenarios database of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report is an important resource for informing policy-making on energy transitions. It contains a large variety of models, scenario designs, and resulting outputs.
In this study, researchers analyse the scenarios consistent with limiting warming to 2 °C or below regarding the speed, trajectory and feasibility of different fossil fuel reduction pathways. Higher-gas pathways are enabled by higher carbon capture and storage (CCS) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR), but are likely associated with inadequate model representation of regional CO2 storage capacity and technology adoption, diffusion and path dependencies.
These findings suggest the need to adopt unambiguous near- and long-term reduction benchmarks in coal, oil and gas production and use alongside other climate mitigation targets.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.