CE Climate Solution Scale Model

Even if every government in the world agreed today to stop all new fossil fuel projects, the coal plants, gas furnaces, and gasoline-powered cars that already exist would continue burning fuels for their entire working lives — releasing roughly 680 billion tonnes of CO₂ before they retire. That's nearly 3 times the entire carbon budget remaining before we hit 1.5°C of warming.

The bars show how much CO₂ is already "baked in" to existing infrastructure, broken down by type. The green and orange horizontal lines are the 1.5°C and 2°C budgets we have left. When the bars tower above those lines, it means retiring existing fossil infrastructure early isn't optional — it may be mathematically required just to stay within budget, even before accounting for any new emissions.

This chart answers a specific question: "If we deployed every technology we already have — as fast as physically possible — how much of the problem could we solve right now?" Solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars, nuclear reactors, heat pumps, and geothermal plants are all real, commercially available, and getting cheaper every year. These aren't future bets — they exist today.

The bars show the maximum annual emissions reduction each technology could achieve at full deployment. The green line shows the total reduction needed each year to hit net-zero. When the combined bars approach or exceed the green line, it means deployment speed — not invention — is the binding constraint. When they fall short, new technology or major policy action is also required. Use the scenario buttons above to see how much this picture changes between optimistic and pessimistic deployment assumptions.

Think of the carbon budget like a bank account with a fixed balance. Every year we emit CO₂ under current policies, we withdraw from that account. The chart tracks cumulative spending — the running total of all CO₂ emitted — and marks when it hits the 1.5°C and 2°C limits.

Under current policies, the 1.5°C budget is exhausted in the early 2030s. That's not a distant future problem — it's this decade. Once the budget is spent, additional warming is essentially committed. Reducing emissions after the budget runs out can slow the rate of further warming but cannot undo the overshoot without pulling CO₂ back out of the atmosphere — a far more expensive and uncertain proposition.

Climate change isn't caused by one industry — it comes from power generation, manufacturing, driving, heating buildings, farming, and land use all at once. This chart shows the relative size of each sector's contribution to the 52-billion-tonne gap we need to close.

The energy sector (power generation) is the largest single piece, which is why solar and wind receive so much attention. But notice that transport, industry, and buildings together are roughly as large as the energy sector. A climate plan that only focuses on electricity generation leaves more than half the problem unsolved. Any serious net-zero strategy requires action across all six sectors simultaneously.

This converts the technology stack into a simple percentage: out of the total emissions reduction we need, how much can our current pipeline of emerging technologies actually deliver? 100% would mean technology alone solves the problem. Anything below 100% is the share that depends on something else — policy changes, behavior shifts, or a technology that doesn't yet exist at scale.

Notice how coverage builds over time as technologies scale up, but often dips or plateaus mid-period before recovering — this reflects ramp-up time. Compare this across the three scenarios: the Optimistic scenario likely shows much higher coverage. The gap between Optimistic and Pessimistic coverage is essentially the deployment risk — the range of outcomes depending on how quickly industry and governments execute.

Imagine describing the climate problem as a single engineering challenge: "Build one technology that removes X billion tonnes of CO₂ per year by year Y." This chart shows what X has to be, year by year, if one breakthrough solution had to close the entire gap the known portfolio can't handle.

Use this as a reality check. If someone claims a new technology — nuclear fusion, direct air capture, enhanced weathering — will "solve climate change," look at this chart and ask: can it plausibly operate at this scale in the required timeframe? The earlier a breakthrough technology is deployed, the smaller the peak scale it needs to reach, because existing technologies will have already closed part of the gap. This is why deployment speed of known technologies and breakthrough investment are complementary, not alternatives.