If you haven't seen or heard about it, the ExponentialRoadmap.org initiative brings together technology innovators, scientists, businesses, and NGOs. In 2019 they published their second version of a report, Exponential Roadmap which sets an ambitious course for employing 36 solutions, cutting emissions 50% by 2030. Meeting the 1.5°C Climate Ambition is a condensed version.
The "exponential" refers to the goal of halving emissions every decade. This is reflective of the urgency, the benefit of early adoption, and the reality that some "solutions" will be more difficult and time consuming to develop and deploy.
Exponential Roadmap divides the solutions into six sectors plus a carbon sink category as shown in the graphic below.
A few things to note:
The six sectors combine for an annual 54 Gtonnes of CO2e. The Energy Supply sector totals 18.46 Gt which is distributed between the six. The contributions of each sector are shown above the horizontal bar chart. "Energy's own" emissions are those emissions that are not directly attributed to the other five, such as fossil fuel extraction, processing, and delivery.
Also note that most of the solutions take a few years to take off, with the bulk of the reductions occurring after 2025.
These are solutions and goals similar to Project Drawdown. Drawdown slices and dices solutions into smaller pieces, sets 2050 goals, orders solutions by total potential CO2e removed rather than annual emissions, and proposes three separate scenarios -- Plausible, Drawdown, and Optimal. The differences in approach, expectations, and time frame make comparison difficult. Exponential Roadmap appears more aggressive and pragmatic while Drawdown is more focused on implementing specific, proven solutions.
