Fast Lane
High near-term emissions, then a steep late-century drawdown driven by large-scale novel carbon removal.
Fast Lane is the techno-world pathway: society delays deep mitigation, then scales up carbon removal fast and hard late in the century. Emissions stay high through mid-century before a sharp reversal, so the scenario leans on risky, technology-heavy removals to bring net CO₂ down in time.
It maps to ScenarioMIP SSP5-HL — a high-emissions, low-mitigation trajectory. Compared with the other two roads, Fast Lane starts with the least removal and ends with the most: the drawdown is back-loaded onto engineered methods rather than early, steady land-based uptake.
Values from the WITCH ssp5_HL run; net-zero is the year World Emissions|CO2 crosses zero.
Total CDR — Fast Lane
Carbon Removal for World, 2005–2100 (Gt CO₂/yr).CDR by method (stacked)
Net CO₂ emissions
Emissions|CO2 (solid) with the energy & industry and land (AFOLU) components (dotted), World, Gt CO₂/yr. Below zero means net removal.