The Carbon Mitigation Initiative's Wedge Strategy

Working at the Carbon Mitigation Initiative, Robert Socolow and his colleagues have identified 14 strategies that could each reduce carbon emissions by one billion tons per year by 2055. These 14 strategies represent a portfolio of existing technologies. Based on carbon emissions in 2005, the Carbon Mitigation Initiative believed only 7 stabilization wedges (for a 7 billion ton reduction) would be needed to stabilize carbon emissions at current levels.

Following Socolow’s model, wel assume that these strategies cannot be realistically applied across a single sector. Instead we will draw across the electricity, heating and transportation sectors. For the purposes of our research we must understand each of the wedge approaches.