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But the cost of inaction is also significant in terms of deaths, displacement and damage. Last year, damages from floods, wildfires, drought, and other weather and climate-related disasters totaled approximately $145 billion in the United States. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The agency said “extremely high” levels of disasters have become the “new normal”.

“Significantly reducing emissions is much less painful than you might think, and possibly beneficial in the short term,” said Glen Peters, of the International Center for Climate Research in Oslo, Norway, who contributed to the report.

The new report examines dozens of strategies proposed by scientists and energy experts to help nations make the transition.

First, countries will need to clean almost all power plants worldwide that generate electricity for homes and factories. This means relying more on energy sources such as wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal or hydropower. Most of the world’s coal and natural gas power plants would either have to be shut down or built. carbon capture technology can capture emissions and bury them underground. This type of technology has been slowed down by its high costs.

The next step will be to restructure transportation, industry and other parts of the global economy to run on clean electricity instead of fossil fuels. Gasoline-powered cars can be replaced by electric vehicles charged with low-carbon grids. Gas-fired furnaces in homes can be replaced with electric heat pumps. Steel mills could switch to electric furnaces that melt scrap instead of burning coal.

At the same time, countries can take steps to reduce their total energy demand. This could entail expanding public transport, upgrading insulation so homes consume less energy, recycling more raw materials and making factories more energy efficient. At its peak, such demand-side policies could help reduce emissions in key sectors by up to 40 to 70 percent by 2050, according to the report.

But many economic activities cannot be easily electrified. Batteries are still too heavy for most airplanes. Many industries such as cement and glass require extreme heat and currently burn coal or gas. For these emissions, governments and businesses will have to develop new fuels and industrial processes, according to the report.