Fig. 1. Fossil fuel use in near cost-optimal net-zero CO₂ pathways.

Near cost-optimal pathways for coal (a, b), natural gas (c, d), and petroleum (e, f) in net-zero CO₂ pathways. The box plots (a, c and e) show the distribution of the total energy use by fossil fuel type across all 1100 net-zero pathways in exajoules (EJ). The pathway plots in (b, d and f) show the range of fossil fuel use by sector, with the shading representing each decile of results across the 1100 model runs (darkest shades around the median, lightest shades around the 10th and 90th percentiles). The solid lines show the deterministic least-cost net-zero pathway, while the dashed lines depict the least-cost current-policy pathway. Box plots indicate median (middle line), 25th, 75th percentile (box) and 1.5 times the inter-quartile range from the first and third quartiles (whiskers) as well as outliers (single points). Source data are provided as a Source Data file.