A roadmap to combating climate change

The document assesses how constraints on biomass, specific metals, and water resources may impact the transition to a low-carbon economy. It evaluates various scenarios for biomass production, predicts cumulative deficits for metals like indium and tellurium, and examines the water-energy nexus, using a California case study to demonstrate how technology choices can mitigate water stress while reducing emissions.

• Biomass production is primarily constrained by land availability, and the most significant opportunity for growth lies in increasing crop yields by raising yield potential and closing the gap between potential and actual yields.
• Among four analyzed scenarios for biomass, a 'Sustainability Transition'—which combines a focus on agricultural production and climate mitigation—is identified as the most promising path to yield benefits on both fronts.
• Analysis of five metals critical for low-carbon technologies indicates a severe risk of cumulative supply deficits for indium and tellurium, a moderate to severe risk for neodymium, and a limited risk for cobalt and lithium by 2035.
• The demand for scarce metals is driven by the large-scale deployment of technologies such as photovoltaics (indium, tellurium), wind turbines (neodymium), and electric/hybrid vehicle batteries (lithium, cobalt).
• Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) significantly increases the water intensity of power plants, with findings showing it can increase water withdrawals by 41 to 95 per cent and consumption by 45 to 91 per cent.
• A case study in California demonstrates that a 'RPS+Technology' approach—which shifts the solar portfolio toward a 50:50 mix of concentrating solar power and photovoltaics and adopts dry cooling—can reduce both greenhouse gas emissions and water withdrawals compared to business-as-usual scenarios.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (n.d.). A roadmap to combating climate change. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate/sei-3c-resource-scarcity-summary.pdf

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. A roadmap to combating climate change. n.d. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate/sei-3c-resource-scarcity-summary.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=A roadmap to combating climate change |url=https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate/sei-3c-resource-scarcity-summary.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitutendroadmap, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{A roadmap to combating climate change}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, url = {https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate/sei-3c-resource-scarcity-summary.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }