Trade-offs between strategies

Limits to deployment

Some stategies can only be deployed once. For example, a wedge of clean cement involves decarbonising nearly every plant operating in the world. Other strategies can acheive multiple wedges of mitigation. For example, wind and solar power can deliver four wedges, implying they can each produce up to a quarter of the world's electricity. The pathway builder prevents you from deploying too many wedges, and you can see their limits in the infoboxes.

Some wedges compete for the same market. There are limits on how many wedges you can deploy in each of the five sectors, based on the how much carbon those sectors will emit in the future. The app will prevent you from deploying too many wedges within each sector.

Interactions you need to notice

Wedges are individual stratgies, considered in isolation, but real systems have limits and linkages. If two wedges act on the same activity, they will have less combined effect than you would think.

The pathway builder does not optimise trade offs for you, so you need to think about all the elements in your pathway and how they will work in symphony.

Electricity is the biggest link

Many wedges run on clean electricity. Electrifying cars, heating, industry, hydrogen, and carbon removal can all increase demand on the grid. If the extra power is not clean, emissions move upstream. The app helps by tracking the clean electricity needed for electricity hungry strategies, so you can see when your pathway is short on supply.

Reality checks you bring to the table

Climate wedges let you build a pathway, they don't tell you if it is good or not. Materials, land availability, public acceptability, skilled workers, and cost are all potential bottlenecks that could derail your plans. As these are all subjective and speculative, you are challenged to consider these when building your pathway.

The cards below will (in a future update) provide background information about the main benefits and trade-offs of each strategy.