Climate stabilization wedge

The Climate stabilization Wedges is an approach produced by Princeton University researchers looking at Climate change mitigation scenarios. The project was funded by Ford Motor Company between 2000 and 2009 and has been receiving funding from BP since 2000. The goal of the approach, Stephen Pacala and Robert H. Socolow, is to demonstrate that global warming is a problem which can be attacked using today's commercially available technologies to reduce CO
2 emissions. The objective is to stabilize CO
2 concentrations under 500ppm for the next fifty years, using wedges from a variety of different strategies which fit into the stabilization triangle. A newer estimate by the original authors indicated that by 2011, the number of necessary wedges had increased from seven to nine. This was due to the continuing increase in emissions since the original 2004 paper which determined the number of wedges that would have been necessary, if serious action to mitigate climate change had begun then.

Emissions of CO
2 and other greenhouse gases have been increasing ever since the Industrial Revolution. If the trend continues to hold, emissions will double by 2055. To prevent the worst consequences of global warming, scientists recommend freezing and reducing net global emissions immediately.

If global emissions of CO
2 are graphed for the next 50 years, the difference between the business as usual scenario and the flat path forms a triangle. This triangle is known as the stabilization triangle. Pacala and Socolow divided this hypothetical triangle into seven stabilization wedges, which represent different measures that must be taken to reduce emissions. When speaking of different strategies to reduce emissions, the language "to reduce one wedge's worth," is often employed, and by reducing the stabilization wedge of fourteen gigatons of CO
2 into seven wedges, the task is much easier to conceptualize.

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