Technology growth curves:: a new approach to reducing global CO2 emissions

An alternative approach to relying on fixed national caps and deadlines for reducing carbon dioxide emissions and alleviating global warming is offered. The new proposal relies instead on a universal logistic growth curve to establish, for each year, the minimum fraction of each country's emissions that can arise from non-fossil fuels. Since developing countries presently rely more (i.e. greater percentage) on non-fossil sources, the proposed will tend to require the developed countries to take actions earlier to increase their efficiency and the use of non-fossil energy. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.