Explore different visions of the future from the Calculator team, other models and other organisations.
When building your pathway, make sure you note the warnings at the right of the screen. If any of these are red, you may want to change your choices. Hover over the warning for more information.
Other common issues that arise when using the Global Calculator are:
- Emissions from electricity: if you want to reduce emissions by electrifying transport, buildings and manufacturing, then you may not be successful unless you reduce the emissions from electricity production. You can do this through levers on carbon capture and storage, fossil fuel, nuclear and renewables
- Oversupplying bioenergy: some scenarios (e.g. high livestock yields scenarios) can free up land. If you use this land for biocrops you may oversupply bioenergy and see a red warning telling you this. You can use the surplus land for afforestation instead, by reducing your "surplus land" lever.
- Failure to iterate: sometimes people go through the levers sequentially and then stop once they reach the end. However, the impact of some levers depend on the selection for other levers so it is worth going back and testing each one to see if you still need the lever selections you initially chose.
- Emissions post 2050: this lever is to allow the user to assert if emission trends from 2035 to 2050 continue or if emissions flat line from 2050. If you generate an extreme pathway that results in total deforestation by 2045, emissions in 2050 may be lower than emissions in 2045 (you have no more emissions from deforestation because there is no more forest to deforest!). So if you continue the trend in emissions, emissions post 2050 will collapse. If you have run out of land and have a trend of deforestation, your pathway is not realistic.
If you are still having problems, the FAQ section may be able to help.