Climate math: What a 1.5 degree pathway would take

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Decarbonizing global business at scale is achievable, but the math is daunting.

While a number of analytic perspectives explain how greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions would need to evolve to achieve a 1.5-degree pathway, few paint a clear and comprehensive picture of the actions global business could take to get there.

By expanding the use of district heating and blending hydrogen or biogas into gas grids for cooking and heating, the buildings sector could potentially reduce nearly an additional 40 percent of emissions.

Nuclear power could also contribute to the supply of low-carbon power, but it is largely outside the scope of our analysis.

In the nearer term, a mix of existing approaches could help with day-today and seasonal load balancing, although emerging technologies such as hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, and more efficient long-distance transmission would ultimately be needed to reach a 1.5-degree pathway.

In the first, more rapid decarbonization scenario, the amount of CO 2 captured via CCUS each year would have to multiply by more than 125 times by 2050 from 2016 levels, to ensure that emissions stay within the 1.5-degree-pathway budget.