Artefacts of a
Burning World

Opinionated collection of 36 articles, films, podcasts and other artefacts related to the climate crisis.

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Overview of mitigation options and their estimated ranges of costs and potentials in 2030

By IPCC
Bar chart with a list of mitigation options. Each bar is coloured according to its cost.

One of the most striking and instructive graph in the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report: It lists the potential contribution to net emissions reductions by 2030 for different migration options in sectors such as energy, AFOLU (Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses), buildings, transport and industry. In addition to the width of the bars, it also shows colour ranges for the cost of the reduction potential of the options.

The areas with the highest potential contributions are solar and wind energy, halting deforestation, better agriculture, strengthening ecosystems and hydrogen in industry.

Wind and solar energy are cheap up to 2 GtCO₂-eq per year, while the often-promised carbon capture is expensive from the outset and has very little potential.

The graphic is part of the Summary for Policymakers in “Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”.