According to the New York Times, a recent study from Princeton lays out “exhaustively detailed scenarios for how the country could slash its greenhouse gas emissions down to zero by 2050.”
“The study’s findings are at once optimistic and sobering. Reaching “net zero” by 2050 appears technically feasible and even affordable. There are ways to get there that rely solely on renewable energy, as many environmentalists prefer, or that lean on other technologies such as nuclear power or carbon capture. Each approach carries different social and economic trade-offs.”
“The scale of what we have to build in a very short time frame surprised me,” said Christopher Greig, a senior scientist at Princeton’s Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. “We can do this, we can afford this, but now it’s time to roll up our sleeves and figure out how to get it done.”
“The studies found that, if done right, getting to net zero appears broadly affordable, largely because technologies like wind and solar have become so much cheaper than anyone expected over the past decade. In all the scenarios analyzed, energy costs would remain smaller as a share of the economy than they were during the 2000s.”
Read the entire New York Times article here.