| Potential Wedges | ||
| Option | Effort by 2054 for one wedge, relative to 14 gigatons of carbon per year (GtC/year) BAU | |
| Energy Efficiency and Conservation | Economy-wide carbon-intensity reduction (emissions/$GDP) | Reduce by additional 0.15% per year |
| 1. Efficient vehicles | Increase fuel economy for 2 billion cars from 30 to 60 mpg | |
| 2. Reduced use of vehicles | Decrease car travel for 2 billion 30-mpg cars from 10,000 to 5,000 miles per year | |
| 3. Efficient buildings | Cut carbon emissions by one-fourth in buildings and appliances projected for 2054 | |
| 4. Efficient baseload coal plants | Produce twice today's coal power output at 60% instead of 40% efficiency (compared with 32% today) | |
| Fuel Shift | 5. Gas baseload power for coal baseload power | Replace 1,400 GW 50%-efficient coal plants with gas plants (4 times the current production of gas-based power) |
| CO2 Capture and Storage (CCS) | 6. Capture CO2 at baseload power plant | Introduce CCS at 800 GW coal or 1,600 GW natural gas (compared with 1,060 GW coal in 1999) |
| 7. Capture CO2 at H2 plant | Introduce CCS at plants producing 250 MtH2/year from coal or 500 MtH2/year from natural gas (compared with 40 MtH2/year today from all sources) | |
| 8. Capture CO2 at coal-to-synfuels plant | Introduce CCS at synfuels plants producing 30 million barrels per day from coal (200 times Sasol), if half of feedstock carbon is available for capture | |
| Geological storage | Create 3,500 storage projects | |
| Nuclear Fission | 9. Nuclear power for coal power | Add 700 GW (twice the current capacity) |
| Renewable Electricity and Fuels | 10. Wind power for coal power | Add 2 million 1-MW-peak windmillls (50 times the current capacity) "occupying" 30x10-to-the-sixth ha, on land or off shore |
| 11. PV power for coal power | Add 2,000 GW-peak PV (700 times the current capacity) on 2x10-to-the-sixth ha | |
| 12. Wind H2 in fuel-cell car for gasoline in hybrid | Add 4 million 1-MW-peak windmills (100 times the current capacity) | |
| 13. Biomass fuel for fossil fuel | Add 100 times the current Brazil or U.S. ethanol production, with the use of 250x10-to-the-sixth ha (1/6 of world cropland) | |
| Forests and Agricultural Soils | 14. Reduced deforestation, plus reforestation, afforestation and new plantations | Halt tropical deforestation instead of 0.5 GtC/year, and establish 300 Mha of new tree plantations (twice the current rate) |
| 15. Conservation tillage | Apply to all cropland (10 times the current usage) | |
CCS = carbon capture and storage |
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