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Oceans provide essential ecosystem services to human society, yet the climate impacts on blue capital have long been ignored. Incorporating the latest works on ocean science and economics, researchers show that accounting for the potential damage would almost double the social cost of carbon estimation.

This study demonstrates that renewable energy expansion, green hydrogen deployment, and carbon offsetting strategies targeting the European Union’s natural gas reliance can simultaneously advance its climate goals and long-term energy security.

Funding large-scale negative emissions through a carbon market designed for traditional emission reduction strategies risks exacerbating long-term economic inequality. We suggest exploring alternative financing mechanisms that address this concern and that still ensure decarbonization at reasonable costs.

Households reduced their electricity use the most when they learnt both that they were using more energy than their neighbours and that energy conservation was socially approved. This suggests that efforts to use social information to nudge conservation should combine different types of social feedback to maximize impact.

Climate change and economic inequality are critical issues, and we still lack understanding of the interaction between them. Multi-model analysis shows how climate policies compatible with the goals of the Paris Agreement, including revenue-redistribution schemes, can reduce inequality—particularly in the short and medium terms.

Scenarios, generated by integrated assessment models in model intercomparison projects (MIPs), play a central role in climate decision-making. This Perspective discusses the challenges of the current approach and proposes a new MIP platform with a transparent and inclusive process.

The rapid expansion of AI server installations in the United States poses sustainability challenges in terms of water usage and carbon emissions. A study now quantifies these potential impacts and outlines coordinated mitigation strategies for the AI sector to achieve net-zero.

Energy-efficiency classes provide product information in a simple way but do not accurately report details about lifetime costs. Now, a randomized trial to add energy cost information to a retailer’s website finds that consumers tend to buy cheaper, lower-efficiency products but with similar overall energy and total costs.

A loss and damage (L&D) fund has been established to support particularly vulnerable developing countries. L&D funding needs, entitlements and necessary contributions can be quantified using climate economics coupled with historical responsibility principles; for the year 2025, total L&D funding needs are estimated to be US $395 [128–937] billion.

Benefit-cost analyses of climate policies have generated conflicting assessments; as social welfare is affected by regional heterogeneity. Here the authors show that economically optimal pathways are consistent with climate stabilization but are characterized by persistent economic inequalities due to climate damages.

Contrary to the hopes of policymakers, fossil fuel subsidy removal would have only a small impact on global energy demand and carbon dioxide emissions and would not increase renewable energy use by 2030.

Communicating climate science requires depicting uncertainty. This study shows that the tendency for COP21 policymakers to assign model forecasts less weight than their prior beliefs when making predictions is mitigated by presenting individual model forecasts with the statistical range.

Negative emissions technologies at scale are seen as essential for the overall decarbonization effort to achieve the Paris Agreement targets. However, private ownership of these technologies could largely increase regional or international inequality by financing them through carbon markets.

Timely R&D investment in green technologies lowers mitigation costs with positive employment effects. Carbon revenues are sufficient to finance the additional R&D investment and generate economic benefits.

Current emissions scenarios include pathways that overshoot the temperature goals set out in the Paris Agreement and rely on future net negative emissions. Limiting overshoot would require near-term investment but would result in longer-term economic benefit.

Comprehensive policy measures are needed to close the emissions gap between Nationally Determined Contributions and emissions goals of the Paris Agreement. Here the authors present a Bridge scenario that may aid in closing the emissions gap by 2030.

Mitigation pathways allowing for temperature overshoot often ignore the related climate and macroeconomic impacts. Net-zero pathways with limited overshoot could reduce low-probability high-consequence risks and economic loss.

Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage (DACCS) is not considered in Integrated Assessment Models. Here the authors make comparisons using multi-model regarding the role of DACCS in 1.5 and 2 degree scenarios and find that DACCS allows to postpone mitigation and reduce the climate policy costs.

Residual CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels limit the likelihood of meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. A sector-level assessment of residual emissions using an ensemble of IAMs indicates that 640–950 GtCO₂ removal will be required to constrain warming to 1.5 °C.

Home energy reports convey information about others’ energy use (descriptive norms) and social approval for energy saving behaviour (injunctive norms). This study shows that the combined effect of descriptive and injunctive feedback depends on their consistency and relative strength.

Global estimates of the economic impacts of CO₂ emissions may obscure regional heterogeneities. A modular framework for estimating the country-level social cost of carbon shows consistently unequal country-level costs.

Scenarios that constrain end-of-century radiative forcing to 1.9 W m^–2, and thus global mean temperature increases to below 1.5 °C, are explored. Effective scenarios reduce energy use, deploy CO₂ removal measures, and shift to non-emitting energy sources.

Direct electrification is the best option to reduce environmental impact and improve energy security, a report from an expert group shows.

L'elettrificazione diretta è l'opzione migliore per ridurre l'impatto ambientale e migliorare la sicurezza energetica, come dimostra il rapporto di un gruppo di esperti.

Climate change mitigation scenarios are finding a wider set of users, including companies and financial institutions. Increased collaboration between scenario producers and these new communities will be mutually beneficial, educating companies and investors on climate risks while grounding climate science in real-world needs.

Experts using integrated assessment models to analyse the effects of climate change policy, have recently engaged in model inter-comparison projects (MIPs) to generate conclusions robust to different models' specifications. This Review synthesises results from the most comprehensive MIP that focuses on the different possible outcomes of post-2020 climate negotiations, recently announced pledges and their relation to the 2°C target.

Research on climate change mitigation tends to focus on supply-side technology solutions. A better understanding of demand-side solutions is missing. We propose a transdisciplinary approach to identify demand-side climate solutions, investigate their mitigation potential, detail policy measures and assess their implications for well-being.

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage could be used to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However, its credibility as a climate change mitigation option is unproven and its widespread deployment in climate stabilization scenarios might become a dangerous distraction.

Increasingly, financial institutions will be exposed to climate risks that will exacerbate the negative economic impacts of climate change. An agent-based integrated assessment model is used to analyse climate impacts on the global banking system, finding an increase in banking crises and public bailout costs.

Results from four integrated assessment models show countries’ efforts to cut emissions fall towards the lower end of the social cost of carbon distribution, suggesting insufficient levels of ambition to meet the Paris Agreement goals.

Mitigation scenario ensembles are becoming an important tool to bring new and robust insights into the transition to net zero. This Perspective unpacks their potential and identifies key steps for better use of scenario ensembles and to foster good practices.

It has been hoped that making abundant natural gas available by hydraulic fracturing (fracking) would reduce greenhouse gas emissions but now modelling shows that increased consumption will have limited effect on climate change.

Climate policies are frequently argued to achieve energy independence as an additional benefit. Jewell et al. use five energy-economy models to show that the opposite is not true: constraining energy imports is much cheaper than climate change mitigation but would not significantly reduce emissions.

Assessing the cost of climate change mitigation is essential to policy-making, yet for many the perception remains that meeting climate goals will entail economic loss. This Perspective unpacks key aspects of mitigation cost estimates to clarify interpretation and discussion of costs.

Uncertainty in estimates of the economic impacts of climate change makes it difficult to evaluate the benefits of mitigation. This Perspective reviews methods for determining economic damages from biophysical impacts, highlights critical gaps and suggests priorities moving forward.

The international community has committed to fight climate change and achieve 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Here the authors assess evidence about the relationships between the two agendas and discuss the need of deeper interdisciplinary efforts to understand these relationships.