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Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL)

An enormous gap is looming between the current level of ambition on climate change and what’s needed to keep global warming below 2˚C, and head off the associated impacts.

Wedging the Gap is a co-ordinated effort to identify, analyse and support the scaling-up of a series of bottom-up initiatives that together could deliver sufficient proven emissions reductions in the short term to ensure that a 2˚C future remains viable.

The Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and Ecofys, a leading Dutch sustainable energy consultancy, are co-leading the project, aiming to work openly and collaboratively with pre-existing initiatives that can deliver both significant economic and social co-benefits as well as major near-term emissions reductions. 

The work is based on an approach initiated by Ecofys, called ‘Wedging the Gap', which assessed the potential of 21 major efforts, or ‘wedges’, that together would trigger greenhouse-gas emission reductions of around 10 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Gt CO2e) by 2020. After attracting great attention at the two most recent conferences of the parties (COP-18 in Doha and COP-19 in Warsaw), the approach has entered the public stage under the umbrella of ‘International Cooperative Initiatives’ (ICIs).