Publication

The 2020s represent an unprecedented time to address climate change in the United States given the opportunities provided by its large renewable resource base and decreasing technology costs, and the threat to humans and ecosystems due to rapidly emerging climate impacts. This study addresses technical, societal, and policy issues for scaling deep decarbonization technologies, describing and extending the analysis presented at a National Academy of Sciences workshop convening modeling, industry, and other experts. Prominent modeling studies estimate that solar and wind electricity generation technologies must be deployed at more than four times their current highest annual rates, and solutions are needed for low-carbon firm generation and energy storage. These studies also show electric vehicle sales needing to increase from 300,000 vehicles per year to annual sales in the tens of millions. Scaling these technologies poses substantive challenges. Other more difficult emissions reductions will need to come from decarbonizing corporate value chains and the heavy industry sector. Negative emissions technologies will compete as mitigation options but scaling these pose substantial resource requirements. Further, decarbonization is not simply an issue of technologies. Reaching net-zero emissions is a transformation of society occurring over decades, not years. The societal aspects of decarbonization involves developing a social compact around the need to decarbonize and benefits that will accrue. Policy elements encompass federal, sub-national, economic, and regulatory approaches. Because technologies, political priorities, and societal opinions will change over this time, consensus-building scientific institutions including the National Academies will enable the independent technical and policy advice needed.