It's mad that we'll once again try to tackle inflation (caused by fossil fuels increasing the price of energy) by raising interest rates, which will in turn make the real long-term solution (not fossil energy sources) more expensive in the short term. Monetary policy is homeopathy.
My global decarbonisation pathway, built on www.climatewedges.com It deploys 20 wedges to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.
An infographic showing the 36 strategies that can deliver at least a wedge of mitigation. It explains the scale of deployment each one needs, across the electricity, industry, buildings, transport, and land use sectors.
There is no single “correct” path to decarbonise.
There are six trillion.
Our new paper in Science puts 36 climate solutions into one common unit, so you can build your own pathways.
Paper: doi.org/10.1126/scie...
App: climatewedges.com
What would your pathway look like?
NEW ANALYSIS: UK emissions fell 2.4% in 2025 as coal fell to a 400-year low. Incredibly, we used less coal last year than than in 1600, when Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne and Shakespeare was writing Hamlet.
All the details in our article: www.carbonbrief.org/...
It's fine the pentagon AND an AI company can both be bad
The first can deliver much greater electrification, while actually pushing FF out of the mix.
When people talk about AI being powered by wind/solar, we need to ask "but what else could this wind and solar have powered?"
There's a big difference between:
- Electrification that ACTIVELY DISPLACES fossil fuels (heat pumps, electric vehicles, industrial electrotech)
- Electrification that simply ADDS alongside the existing system (most notably data centers)
A graphic which shows the relative impact of using additional clean electricity to power EVs (and displace existing fossil-powered cars), vs. using electricity to meet additional datacentre demand.
⚡ Not all electrification is equal ⚡
Lots of noise building around electrification, but what strategies give us the biggest impact?
🚗 Increasing elec by 1% of total demand & using this for EVs boosts global electrification rate by 1.2–1.7%
💻 Using that same elec for AI only gives you a 0.8% boost
The choice is stark. Reform are the party of foreign wars and high bills.
The Greens want de-escalation and energy security through renewables. Solar and wind prices don't fluctuate when rogue US presidents launch illegal bombing campaigns.
I see the Allister Heath headline generator has branched out to cover all Telegraph opinion writers.
Come and get the 316 to Shepherd's Bush!
A woman in traditional costume photographed in colour with Rembrandt lighting
Rishan from my now cancelled Journeys project. She escaped religious persecution in Eritrea and travelled across the Sahara and through Libya aged only 15, eventually making it to Kent. She has now qualified as an NHS nurse to give something back to the country which gave her sanctuary.
*TAPPING THE SIGN*:
People's "concern" over immigration doesn't track actual immigration levels, it tracks the level of media coverage we give to immigration
Thanks Gunnar, it has been such a pleasure working on these scenarios with you! The REMIND model continues to be a crucial foundation for best available science on 1.5ºC!
This scenario gives me hope, and I hope it gives you hope to. Let’s double down on action to try and rescue 1.5ºC.
Read more here: climateanalytics.org/publications...
But it shows that we don’t have to give up on 1.5ºC (and with it, give up on the most vulnerable).
Personally, I’m all in on the fight for 1.5ºC. It’s not a magic line in the sand, but it’s a lifeline for climate justice.
If we deliver these four levers, we can peak temperatures and get back below 1.5ºC pre-2100.
This is not a “good” scenario. It’s one of profound loss & climate impacts that were totally avoidable if we’d acted in line with the science and cut emissions earlier. I struggle to feel "happy" about it
If you don’t think this CDR scale-up is possible, that’s fair.
The good news is that even BECCS/DACCS only scale to 1 GtCO2 by 2050 and never beyond that, we can still get below 1.5ºC pre-2100 (I ran the numbers 🤓)
We’re pushing the CDR frontier, but if we fall short we can still rescue 1.5ºC
We have tried to stay within feasibility limits on CDR & avoid mad reliance on tree-planting. But this is still a lot of CDR.
This CDR is not compensating for fossil fuels – which are phased out fully.
The choice of fossil phaseout OR removals was always a dumb one. It’s no longer a choice we have
4️⃣ Removals
Carbon removal is controversial – I get it. I wrote my PhD criticising the over-reliance on CDR in many global scenarios.
But in a world of overshoot, removals are a necessity not a choice. We either accept a radical scale-up of removals, or a radical escalation of climate risks.
3️⃣ Methane
Methane is a super pollutant, but it only hangs around in the atmosphere for around ~12 years. That means if we cut methane emissions, then within about a decade, the amount of methane in the air will start falling, and that will help bring temperatures down
2️⃣ Fossil phaseout
Renewable electricity + targeted hydrogen/e-fuels push fossil fuels out of the mix. Not to low levels, but to ZERO.
Sorry Al-Jaber, but you’re wrong 😉 We can, and must, phase out fossil fuels
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
1️⃣ Electricity ⚡
The HPA leans into electrification. Electricity is the future – it’s cheaper, it’s smarter, it’s just fundamentally better than continuing to burn stuff (which is sooooo last century). See @ember-energy.org's great work on this!
Two-thirds of demand comes from electricity by 2050
These curves look pretty scary 😬. How do we actually achieve them? We identify 4 levers, that need to ALL be pulled with the highest possible ambition to deliver this scenario.
If we achieve that, then temperatures would be set to peak at ~1.7ºC – 0.2ºC above the Paris Agreement’s limit.
But by phasing out fossil fuels, cutting methane & scaling up removals, we can bring temperatures back below 1.5ºC pre-2100.
We can still rescue 1.5ºC!
Let’s dive in. First, emissions
❌ We can no longer halve emissions by 2030.
✅ But we can still cut them by ~20%, or 10 GtCO2e
🏃 Post 2030, we need to play catch-up with the IPCC scenarios to make up on lost time
🎯Net-zero dates are accelerated – with NZ CO2 pre-2050, NZ GHGs ~2060
So in this new work, we provide a NEW global scenario to guide climate action. This scenario
✅ Starts from current emissions levels
✅ Tries to minimise overshoot
✅ Does so by focusing on things that actually WORK (renewables + electricity), rather than techno-boondoggles (CCS)
No, I’m convinced that we need to double down on 1.5ºC, not give up on it. But how do we do that?
One problem is the scenarios we’re using to guide action are fast becoming outdated. The last IPCC 1.5ºC scenarios assume emissions fell 25% by 2025, and >40% by 2030. We are WAY off track for this.
Some would say that 1.5ºC is a radical position, and that 2ºC would be a more pragmatic target.
Pragmatic for whom?
Not for small islands. Not for vulnerable ecosystems. Not for the global poor on the frontlines of the crisis.
To accept a world above 1.5ºC is to accept a radically altered world.
Does this mean we should give up on 1.5ºC?
No – 1.5ºC endures as a legal and ethical imperative as we approach, meet and potentially exceed 1.5ºC. See @joerirogelj.bsky.social's great piece on this: bsky.app/profile/joer...
In recent years optimism about 1.5ºC has been hard to find. Temperatures have been breaking records, and we’re currently rocketing forwards 1.5ºC warming at break-neck pace.
Meanwhile, global emissions, rather than falling, are still marching upwards.
www.unep.org/resources/em...
