Decarbonization by 2050: Are We on Track?

Thirty years after the world first gathered to confront climate change, leaders are meeting again this month at the United Nations COP30 climate summit in Brazil — and the stakes have never been higher. Despite decades of pledges, the planet remains on a perilous path, with most countries falling dangerously short of their climate commitments.

October also marked the fifth anniversary of the publication of our book, The Decarbonization Imperative: Transforming the Global Economy by 2050. In it, we examined clean technology developments across five major industry sectors — transportation, energy, buildings, agriculture and manufacturing — and discussed ways to accelerate decarbonization within each.

In every chapter, we applied the principles of disruptive innovation, looking for evidence of technology improvement, cost and performance parity, industry shake-out, competitive reordering, and mass adoption.

Fast forward to today: progress is unfolding much as we predicted, for better and for worse. Below, we look at the leaders and the laggards in the race to decarbonize by 2050.

Transportation: Electric Vehicles

In 2020, we were most bullish about the decarbonization of transportation based on the observed trajectory of electric vehicles (EVs). At the time, global EV sales were estimated at three million, a significant increase from 1 million in sales just three years before and roughly 4% of total sales. Every major manufacturer offered at least one model, some even announcing aggressive timelines for discontinuing internal combustion engine models, and battery costs were falling fast. Financial incentives provided by US, China, and other governments were fueling the EV frenzy.

Today, despite recent headlines around manufacturers pulling back on EVs, electrification continues even as incentives expire in some countries. In 2024, EV sales exceeded 17 million globally, which is more than 20% of total sales. Even under today’s policy scenarios, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that EVs will represent 40% of worldwide sales by 2030.

There are still roadblocks. Tariffs are creating uncertainty and have resulted in a slowdown in production, which is true for all cars. And while battery prices continue to fall, the higher upfront cost of EVs are still a deterrent.

In China, 75% of EVs are priced the same or lower than internal combustion engine models, positioning Chinese brands like BYD to be new global EV leaders. Some analysts predict EV battery cost parity with gasoline by 2026 without incentives, at which time we could see the next EV boom.

The challenge is the existing 1.4 billion gas- and diesel-powered cars on roads worldwide. Without early retirement incentives, complete phase-out of internal combustion engines could still take decades.

Energy: Renewable Electricity Generation

Wind and solar energy provided another beacon of hope for decarbonization. In 2020, renewable energy represented 28% of global electricity generation. While hydropower has steadily contributed to the share of renewables, solar and wind drove growth, representing about 75% of new capacity installations.

Today, that number stands closer to 95%. The cost of utility scale solar and wind generation was favorable compared to natural gas and coal in most cases. A renewable boom seemed to be underway.

But there are challenges, largely driven by a shift in policy. This is particularly true in the U.S. While 2.6 Terawatts of new capacity sits in the interconnection queue of power generation projects seeking to connect to the electrical grid — 95% which are solar and wind projects — the current administration is canceling renewable subsidies, grants, and even individual projects.

Meanwhile, AI is driving a build-out of datacenters that will be hard to support with renewables alone. Attempts by Google, Microsoft and others to sustainably meet their projected data needs are encouraging, but there is no denying that some level of fossil fuels will be required to ramp up operations.

In 2020, we acknowledged small nuclear reactors as a solution, but couldn’t have predicted the renewed interest, both in large and small forms, driven primarily by datacenter development. That’s the tricky thing about technology disruption, it’s hard to predict the winners early on.

Even with these challenges, IEA estimates that the share of renewable energy generation will surpass 40% by 2030, with wind and solar in the lead. Analysts predict that solar and wind can provide 30-50% of generation, depending on grid balancing and flexibility, before storage will be needed. The next roadblock might be long duration storage solutions, which today are nascent and expensive.

The Laggards: Buildings, Manufacturing and Agriculture

For buildings, energy-efficiency initiatives have significantly reduced energy use, but electrification and on-site renewables are the answer. This is an industry where standards can greatly accelerate adoption and there are signs of regulatory shifts.

In the U.S., several states and cities require or strongly encourage all new buildings to be electrified. More than 25 million houses have solar rooftops (as of the most recent data from 2022) and electric heat pumps are outselling gas furnaces. The EU will mandate a zero-emission new building standard starting in 2030.

Yet, decarbonization in this sector is challenged by a large existing stock and while building new electric buildings are cost-competitive the price tag associated with deep energy retrofits for existing buildings is a difficult hurdle to clear.

A large portion of emissions from manufacturing comes from three industries: steel, cement and petrochemicals. While other industries can be electrified using renewable energy, the energy intensity of these industrial processes creates challenges.

For these industries, the answer lies in the feedstock. Recycled steel, plant-based “plastics,” and low carbon concrete are available and could replace virgin steel, standard plastics, and Portland cement, but all are currently niche applications and unable to cover all use cases. Since 2020, we have seen little movement in adoption of alternatives across all these industries for a variety of reasons, including cost and concerns around performance.

Agriculture is both a big contributor to, and acute victim of, climate change. Increases in the number and severity of weather events threaten our ability to produce food. Methane and nitrous oxide represent most of the emissions in this sector, primarily from cattle farming and fertilizer use.

Several of the technologies that we explored in the book still hold promise today: vertical indoor farming, crop-monitoring drones, plant-based alternatives, and gene editing (different than gene modification).

Yet, for the thousands of farmers around the world, many in rural areas, the high up-front cost of these technologies is difficult to cover, especially given tight margins. Precision farming through digitization continues to be a challenge; while more than half of farmers in developed countries have adopted at least some basic digital tools, in developing countries the adoption rate is much lower.

Further, the food and beverage industry is driven by demand, and the customer is king. While the demand for cattle products is stabilizing in developed countries, slowing emissions, it is increasing in developing ones. Reduction in food waste could help slow production and emissions. Yet, in the U.S., ReFed reports that although we have seen momentum in preventing and reducing waste, responsible for 8-10% of global emissions, the amount of food wasted remains “stubbornly high.” It comes down to behavior, which is extremely hard to change.

It's Time to Pull All the Levers

In The Decarbonization Imperative, we outlined a series of levers to accelerate innovation, emphasizing that no single, cross-sector solution exists. Rather, each sector has a unique set of challenges and opportunities with regards to policy, private sector motivation, existing infrastructure, and consumer engagement that will dictate which lever, when pulled, might have the biggest impact in moving the needle on climate change.

History teaches us that human beings innovate out of necessity. Yet, with every year that goes by, that innovation becomes more costly and the price of non-compliance on vulnerable communities increases.

The time to act is yesterday but this month at COP30 country leaders have an opportunity to lean in more intently on mitigation, not just setting goals but aggressively improving and investing in the innovative opportunities to meet them, and signal to the world that it is the biggest and most important challenge of our lives.

Mike Lenox and Rebecca Duff are co-authors of "The Decarbonization Imperative: Transforming the Global Economy by 2050,” available on Amazon.