MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Decarbonizing Our Toughest Sectors - Profitably

To avert runaway climate change, we must eliminate global carbon emissions by 2050. While much of the focus has been on the main culprits — power plants, buildings, and cars — more than one-third of emissions come from heavy transport such as trucks and planes and the heat-intensive manufacture of materials such as steel and cement. We can’t reach our goal without addressing these sectors, too. But how? They’re widely considered hard to abate — stubbornly resistant to decarbonization, which many believe would be slow, costly, and unprofitable.

But abatement is not only feasible — it will be amply rewarded, if done strategically. In this decade, a rich stew of new technologies, materials, design methods, financial techniques, and business models, along with smart policies and aggressive investments, could revitalize, relocate, or displace some of the world’s most powerful industries. By the 2030s, trucking, aviation, and shipping could be decoupling from climate. Steel, aluminum, cement, and plastics could take new forms, be used more sparingly, and be made in new ways, in unexpected places, under novel business models.