This is the year when the fight against climate change could take a dramatic turn. The conference in Paris in December presents political and business leaders with the opportunity to take the critical decisions needed if we are to keep average temperature rises to no more than 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius. According to the IPCC, humankind cannot emit more than 1 000 giga-tonnes of CO₂ from now, if we are to stay within this limit. At the current and projected rate of consumption, this entire carbon budget will be used by 2040.

Dynamic change is happening in energy supply, but the change needs to happen faster. This Energy [R]evolution scenario proposes a pathway to a 100% sustainable energy supply, ending CO₂ emissions and phasing out nuclear energy, and making redundant new oil exploration in the arctic and deep sea waters such as off the coast of Brazil. It also demonstrates that this transformation increases employment in the energy sector.

What is required is for the political will to be there.

Greenpeace has been publishing its Energy [R]evolution scenarios since 2005, more recently in collaboration with the scientific community, in particular the German Aerospace Centre (DLr). While our predictions on the potential and market growth of renewable energy may once have seemed fanciful or unrealistic, they have proved to be accurate. the US-based Meister Consultants Group concluded earlier this year that "the world's biggest energy agencies, financial institutions and fossil fuel companies for the most part seriously under-estimated just how fast the clean power sector could and would grow". It wasn't the IEA, Goldman Sachs or the US Department of Energy who got it right. It was Greenpeace's market scenario which was the most accurate.