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Journal article

Global fossil fuel reduction pathways under different climate mitigation strategies and ambitions

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Journal article

Global fossil fuel reduction pathways under different climate mitigation strategies and ambitions

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.

Ploy Achakulwisut, Peter Erickson / Published on 13 September 2023

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Citation

Achakulwisut, P., Erickson, P., Guivarch, C., Schaeffer, R., Brutschin, & Pye, S. (2023). Global fossil fuel reduction pathways under different climate mitigation strategies and ambitions. Nature Communications, 14 (5425). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41105-z

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.

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Open access

SEI authors

Ploy Achakulwisut

Research Fellow

SEI Asia

Peter Erickson

SEI Affiliated Researcher

SEI US

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