---
key: 1
title: Accelerate deployment of mature climate solutions
description: Thanks to extraordinary progress achieved over the past decade, zero-CO₂ emitting technologies exist that are lower cost to operate than their fossil-fueled rivals. The list includes wind and solar power projects in most of the world and electrified vehicles in a small but growing number of nations. Yet these climate-friendly technologies do not always flourish, in part due to policies that explicitly protect incumbents.
---

While much of the climate discussion centers on long-term goals 20, 30 or even 40 years away, achieving intermediate goals is also critical. Thankfully, due to the extraordinary progress achieved over the past decade, zero-CO2 emitting technologies exist today that are lower cost to operate than their fossil-fueled rivals. The list includes wind and solar power projects in most of the world and electrified vehicles in a small but growing number of nations. Yet these climate-friendly technologies do not always flourish, in part due to policies that explicitly protect incumbents. This emphasizes the need for immediate, concrete policy action to accelerate decarbonization today.


Thanks to extraordinary progress achieved over the past decade, zero-CO₂ emitting technologies exist that are lower cost to operate than their fossil-fueled rivals. The list includes wind and solar power projects in most of the world and electrified vehicles in a small but growing number of nations. Yet these climate-friendly technologies do not always flourish, in part due to policies that explicitly protect incumbents.

Accelerate deployment of mature climate solutions

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key: 2
title: Support development of new climate solutions
description: The current suite of cost-competitive zero-carbon technologies – wind, solar, batteries and electrified transport, among others – is poised to cut emissions meaningfully over coming decades. But to zero out emissions entirely, more technologies will be required to provide around-the-clock, zero-carbon power, decarbonize industrial processes, cut emissions associated with livestock production and meet other challenges.
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The current suite of cost-competitive zero-carbon technologies – wind, solar, batteries and electrified transport, among others – is poised to cut emissions meaningfully over coming decades. But to zero out emissions entirely, more technologies will be required to provide around-the-clock, zero-carbon power, to decarbonize industrial processes, to cut emissions associated with livestock production and to meet other challenges.  

Global supply and demand for green industrial products, such as net-zero steel, cement and fertilizers, will be crucial to delivering on international climate targets. While the technologies to decarbonize these hard-to-abate sectors exist, their commercialization is still at early stages. Just 3% of the global investment in the energy transition tracked by BloombergNEF in 2022 went to low-carbon technologies for industry. Policymakers must create enabling environments to accelerate the commercialization of key emerging technologies for the industrial transition in Pillar 2, so that industry can deploy clean solutions at pace and scale in the 2030s. 
 
To achieve global net-zero, every sector of the energy economy needs to eliminate emissions completely by mid-century. There can be no free riders. Even the hardest-to-abate sectors will need to adopt carbon-free solutions, only turning to carbon removals where absolutely necessary.


The current suite of cost-competitive zero-carbon technologies – wind, solar, batteries and electrified transport, among others – is poised to cut emissions meaningfully over coming decades. But to zero out emissions entirely, more technologies will be required to provide around-the-clock, zero-carbon power, decarbonize industrial processes, cut emissions associated with livestock production and meet other challenges.

Support development of new climate solutions

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key: 3
title: Phase out carbon-intensive activities
description: Despite the immediate threat posed by climate change, national governments continue to subsidize the burning of fossil fuels or underwrite their extraction through state-owned companies. While this clearly must cease, scaling back subsidies that artificially cap consumer gasoline and electricity prices can be politically challenging. Nonetheless, policy makers and others have found innovative ways to phase out fossil-fuel supports.
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Despite the immediate threat posed by climate change, national governments continue to build thermal power plants, subsidize the burning of fossil fuels or underwrite their extraction through state-owned companies. Over 2010-2021, fossil-fuel fired capacity grew by over 1,000GW, with coal accounting for more than half. Despite climate pledges, the world added over 220GW of new coal- fired power generating capacity since the Paris Agreement. 
 
Phasing out high-emitting sources and scaling back subsidies that artificially cap consumer gasoline and electricity prices can be politically challenging. However, these are fundamental measures to limit global warming. 
 
Many assets in the real economy are long-lived, ranging from around 15 years for cars and buses, up to 50 years for fossil fuel power plants, and 100 years or more for buildings. However, many of these will need to be retired early to get the world on a 1.5- degrees trajectory. This will require a transformation of the corporations, utilities, and communities that have historically relied on their operation. 
 
Although the benefits of the low-carbon transition will far outweigh the costs, the structural change implied by the change will need to be managed to ensure new benefits created are inclusive. As the global economy transitions from high-carbon assets to low-carbon alternatives due to market forces or regulatory interventions, workers and communities that rely on these assets must be supported, in what has been coined a “just transition.” This will require a strong, coordinated action among governments, communities, investors, and businesses


Despite the immediate threat posed by climate change, national governments continue to subsidize the burning of fossil fuels or underwrite their extraction through state-owned companies. While this clearly must cease, scaling back subsidies that artificially cap consumer gasoline and electricity prices can be politically challenging. Nonetheless, policy makers and others have found innovative ways to phase out fossil-fuel supports.

Phase out carbon-intensive activities

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key: 4
title: Create appropriate climate transition governance
description: The scope of the climate crisis is forcing smart policy makers to take a multidecadal view of the problem. But policies are only as good as the frameworks that exist to implement and enforce them. Policy makers must recognize that to attract investment in low-carbon technologies – and enjoy the associated economic benefits – they must construct governance structures that are durable and long-lasting.
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The scope of the climate crisis is forcing smart policymakers to take a multi-decadal view of the problem, which encompasses multiple sectors and stakeholders. But policies are only as good as the frameworks that exist to implement and enforce them. Policymakers must recognize that to attract investment in low- carbon technologies – and enjoy the associated economic benefits – they must construct governance structures that are durable for the long term. Investors, corporations and civil society all have key roles to play in ensuring that the transition is fast, but does not leave anyone behind.




The scope of the climate crisis is forcing smart policy makers to take a multidecadal view of the problem. But policies are only as good as the frameworks that exist to implement and enforce them. Policy makers must recognize that to attract investment in low-carbon technologies – and enjoy the associated economic benefits – they must construct governance structures that are durable and long-lasting.

Create appropriate climate transition governance

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key: 5
title: Agriculture
description: As developing countries grow, demand for food overall and for food with higher protein levels rises. This creates a pressing need for sustainable agriculture solutions that address the emissions challenge while not hampering economic growth.
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The manufacturing and use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides accounts for 2.1% of greenhouse gases released globally. Ammonia-based fertilizers emit nitrous oxide (N2O) after application, a gas with a global warming potential 273 times that of CO2. To reach net zero emissions in agriculture, these post-application emissions need to be cut. Improved agricultural practices can reduce – albeit not eliminate – post-application emissions by raising nitrogen use efficiency, which averages 50% globally today but can be as high as 70% in some countries, including the US. 

Some improvements to nitrogen use efficiency are also expected under our base case, such as from the adoption of biologicals and precision agriculture, which economically cut fertilizer demand by 18% versus business as usual. A significant change in crop rotation practices is unlikely to happen under the ETS, however, as that would require a change in dietary preferences toward increased consumption of legumes. While incumbent ammonia use decreases in agriculture, it could find new uses as fuel in shipping.


As developing countries grow, demand for food overall and for food with higher protein levels rises. This creates a pressing need for sustainable agriculture solutions that address the emissions challenge while not hampering economic growth.

Agriculture

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key: 4
title: Buildings
description: The buildings sector is responsible for a large share of global emissions, but retrofitting existing buildings with low-carbon heating and cooling technologies and requiring efficiency standards in new builds can reduce this share. Heat pumps are a mature, efficient heating technology with the potential to play a significant role in lowering the sector's carbon footprint.
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The buildings sector is responsible for a large chunk of global emissions - around 6% annually. Heat pumps are efficient heating systems that provide space and water heating by extracting heat from a source, such as the surrounding air or geothermal energy stored in the ground, to amplify and transfer it to where it is needed.  However, in most of the world, they struggle to compete economically with gas-fired boilers and furnaces or coal-based heating on an unsubsidized basis. While they are often more competitive than oil boilers on a lifetime cost basis, high upfront costs for heat pumps are a major barrier for households switching heating technologies.  When subsidies are applied effectively, governments can help alleviate these expenses and reduce the lifetime costs of low-carbon heating technologies. Reaching net zero will require a significant increase in governmental efforts, likely a combined stick-and-carrot approach, to decarbonize heating and cooling in buildings.



The buildings sector is responsible for a large share of global emissions, but retrofitting existing buildings with low-carbon heating and cooling technologies and requiring efficiency standards in new builds can reduce this share. Heat pumps are a mature, efficient heating technology with the potential to play a significant role in lowering the sector's carbon footprint.

Buildings

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key: 2
title: Industry and Materials
description: Manufacturing, producing basic materials and other industrial activities account for about a quarter of annual global CO₂ emissions. This includes energy-intensive processes such as steelmaking, refining of chemicals and fuels and making consumer and other goods.
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Industry and materials inludes the supplying of raw materials to manufacturers and the production of finished goods to consumers. It is not only a critical segment of the overall economy, but also a major user of energy and a massive producer of CO2 emissions. In all, the category accounts for around 30% of global energy consumption and a fifth of greenhouse gas emissions. 
 
Processes for raw material production often require very high temperatures, which makes them highly energy-intensive and dependent on the burning fossil fuels. Steel production, for example, relies heavily on coal both as a fuel and as an agent in the chemical process itself. In petrochemicals, oil and gas are both feedstocks and energy carriers for the production process. Decarbonizing these high-heat processes is a challenge, especially in the short- to medium-term. However, there are abatement options available today that can get the sector on the path to net-zero. 

Building net-zero technologies for industry at commercial scale is an expensive and lengthy process. In most sectors, hydrogen, carbon capture and direct electrification have been trialed in a lab or at very small scales, but there is still no detailed information on capex costs, operating parameters and the energy or emissions intensity of these processes. Large pilot projects are needed to fill in these knowledge gaps and to demonstrate the viability of the technologies for producers and their lenders.





Manufacturing, producing basic materials and other industrial activities account for about a quarter of annual global CO₂ emissions. This includes energy-intensive processes such as steelmaking, refining of chemicals and fuels and making consumer and other goods.

Industry and Materials

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key: 1
title: Power and Grids
description: The power sector has several well-established and mature zero-carbon technologies; however, support for the deployment of emerging solutions, including those that are still unproven at scale, will be needed if the power sector is to stay on track to net zero.
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Decarbonizing the global power system is a foundational step toward ensuring that climate commitments are met. More than half of all abatement in the power sector relies on scaling up wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) production. That, in turn, will require deploying increasingly mature flexibility solutions such as battery storage and demand-response technologies – and a significant scale-up of investment in the transmission and distribution networks.

The shift to a clean power system is well on the way thanks to the increased cost-competitiveness of zero-carbon electricity generation technologies and large, established supply chains. Either wind or solar is now the cheapest form of new-build electricity generation in countries accounting for over two-thirds of the world’s population, more than three-quarters of global GDP, and 90% of all electricity generation. It is also now cheaper to build new renewables from scratch than operate existing coal and gas plants in a growing number of markets, including China, India and much of Europe.

The power sector has several well-established and mature zero-carbon technologies; however, support for the deployment of emerging solutions, including those that are still unproven at scale, will be needed if the power sector is to stay on track to net zero. This is because deep decarbonization of the power system cannot be achieved economically with wind, solar and battery storage alone. This includes new sources of flexibility and dispatchable technologies to back up and balance variable renewable generation as the power system decarbonizes and more energy end-use sectors electrify


The power sector has several well-established and mature zero-carbon technologies; however, support for the deployment of emerging solutions, including those that are still unproven at scale, will be needed if the power sector is to stay on track to net zero.

Power and Grids

---
key: 3
title: Transport
description: The movement of people and goods via cars, buses, ships, planes and other forms of transportation accounts for one-seventh of total global CO₂ emissions each year. Within transportation, emissions from road vehicles has been rising sharply, particularly as developing nations put more cars on the roads.
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In transport, the uptake in electric vehicles requires an unprecedented expansion of manufacturing and battery-metal mining capacity. In aviation an immediate scale-up in sustainable aviation fuel production requires a fast solution to overcome feedstock supply bottlenecks. In shipping, the industry structure calls for a single-fuel solution, but coordination and quick decisions are needed to agree on the best hydrogen-derived fuel that can fit the bill.

Direct electrification via batteries is the most efficient, cost-effective and commercially viable route to decarbonize road transport. While electric vehicles are making progress, many decades will be needed to replace internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles that continue to be sold, especially in emerging countries. However, electrification is not the only vector of change in road transport. Shared mobility, vehicle connectivity and, eventually, autonomous vehicles are also set to reshape automotive and freight markets around the world in the decades ahead.

Policymakers should not lose sight of long-term goals. While oil demand from transport is set to peak later this decade, only a couple of Nordic countries, and California, are currently on track for having a completely zero-emission passenger vehicle fleet by 2050. The rest of the globe is still lagging behind. The window for achieving net-zero emissions in road transport is closing quickly and there is no room left for complacency. EVs are still the most cost-effective and commercially viable route to fully decarbonizing transport. 


The movement of people and goods via cars, buses, ships, planes and other forms of transportation accounts for one-seventh of total global CO₂ emissions each year. Within transportation, emissions from road vehicles has been rising sharply, particularly as developing nations put more cars on the roads.

NetZero pillars

NetZero actions