New Goal-Driven Roadmap Maps Technologies Needed for Carbon Neutrality

Reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century will require technologies that, in many cases, do not yet exist on the market. A new open-access review published in the journal Carbon Neutrality on 21 September 2026 argues that the gap between current technological progress and what climate goals demand is so large that technology development must be reorganised around the end goal itself, rather than assembled piecemeal from whatever happens to be available today.

The paper, led by Siyue Guo and Guangwen Hu with colleagues including Jing Meng, Weichen Zhao and Xian Zhang, proposes a goal-driven framework for carbon neutrality technology (CNT) development. The authors define carbon neutrality technologies as all technologies that contribute to achieving the net-zero greenhouse gas emissions goal, whether engineering-based or management-oriented, and whether their mitigation pathway is direct or indirect. Their central claim is that roadmaps should work backwards from the climate target, decomposing it into phased sub-targets and then identifying the mix of short- and long-term innovations needed to meet them.

The scale of the challenge is stark. In 2019, global greenhouse gas emissions reached 51.3 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent, with the energy sector the largest contributor and industry close behind. Roughly 70 percent of these emissions are carbon dioxide, with the remainder made up of methane, nitrous oxide and hydrofluorocarbons. Around one third of total emissions come from sectors regarded as hard to abate, including heavy industry, international transportation, agriculture and buildings. Meanwhile, the review notes that approximately 35 percent of the technologies necessary for the net-zero goal are still not available on the market.

Time pressure compounds the problem. The authors point out that a typical technology needs 20 to 70 years to evolve from initial innovation to widespread adoption, yet less than 40 years remain before mid-century. This mismatch means that accelerating development cycles is necessary, and that some technologies may need deployment even when their costs are not competitive or their technological chains are incomplete. In such a context, they argue, government interventions to accelerate and direct technological development become crucial.

The proposed framework rests on three principles. The first, prospective, seeks an optimal balance between short- and long-term decarbonisation innovation: disruptive innovations for energy systems and industrial processes may take decades and billions of dollars to mature, while gradual improvements to existing technologies, such as coal power generation, offer feasible near-term mitigation. The second, comprehensive, emphasises cross-societal innovation on both supply and demand sides, warning that integrated assessment models are often fragmented and can over-rely on specific technologies such as carbon capture, utilisation and storage. The third, systematic, highlights coordination and integration across sectors rather than simply aggregating individual sectoral efforts, noting for example that decarbonising the energy system requires synchronised advances in energy storage, grid infrastructure and demand management, not just renewable generation.

To organise the field, the team introduces what they call a “5 + 1” technology framework. Five direct mitigation parts cover the full decarbonisation chain: zero-emission electricity and zero-emission fuels provide carbon-free energy carriers and feedstocks; zero-emission processes rebuild end-use sectors; non-CO2 reduction targets methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases; and CCUS and carbon removal address residual emissions that are technically hard to abate, serving as the final step towards neutrality. The sixth, indirect part, integration and optimisation, captures governance innovation and cross-disciplinary synergies intended to maximise decarbonisation potential at minimum cost. The typology assigns each category to a main emission source, which the authors say clarifies boundaries and prevents redundancy or omissions in deployment.

Within each category, technologies sit at very different stages of maturity. Silicon-based solar cells, onshore wind and hydropower have reached significant commercial maturity, while offshore wind is transitioning from demonstration to large-scale deployment. Energy storage remains a critical gap: pumped hydro, high energy density batteries and hydrogen fuel cells should be developed within the coming decade, with compressed air storage, sodium-ion batteries and supercapacitors still in pilot testing. In fuels, mature technologies such as industrial by-product hydrogen coexist with early-stage approaches like high-temperature thermochemical water splitting. In industry, hydrogen-based metallurgy has reached demonstration stage, while bio-metallurgy and green biochemistry remain at foundational research. Carbon removal spans widely implemented nature-based solutions such as afforestation and mangrove restoration, scaling trials of bioenergy with carbon capture and direct air capture, and foundational research on ocean iron fertilisation and enhanced weathering.

To demonstrate the framework in practice, the authors apply it to China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, whose net emissions reached almost 13 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2021. China’s decarbonisation challenge is unusual in several respects. Annual reductions of more than 0.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent will be required after 2030, exceeding the total emissions of 90 percent of the world’s countries. By 2060, carbon dioxide emissions are projected to fall below 2 billion tonnes, with carbon dioxide removal ranging from 1 to 2.5 billion tonnes, while electricity consumption is anticipated to double. The country’s relatively young infrastructure, with coal, iron and cement plants averaging under 20 years old and more than half of natural gas pipelines built after 2015, raises the risk of carbon lock-in and stranded assets, and shapes when technologies such as carbon capture are likely to be implemented in the coal power sector.

The China roadmap was built through a combination of modelling, literature review, bibliometrics and a Delphi expert process involving more than 1,000 questionnaires, reviews by roughly 30 organisations and three rounds of consensus workshops. The assessment found that only about 20 percent of China’s carbon neutrality technologies have been commercialised, while roughly half remain in pilot tests or industrial demonstration. Zero-emission electricity technologies show the highest maturity and carbon capture and removal the least. Around 80 percent of the technologies are expected to result in increased costs, although most provide synergistic benefits and the identified environmental risks are generally considered manageable. The authors also cite a cautionary example of planning drift: China’s 2019 CCUS technology roadmap projected capacity exceeding 20 million tonnes by 2025, but only 2 million tonnes had been achieved as of 2022.

The review is candid about its own limits. The framework has not yet been quantitatively benchmarked against existing roadmaps or integrated assessment model outputs; some prioritisation and deployment timing rely on expert judgment rather than purely quantitative metrics; the triennial review mechanism functions as a governance concept requiring institutional support rather than a validated algorithmic tool; and transferability beyond the China case study, to regions with different institutional, economic or technological contexts, requires further assessment. The authors argue that similar roadmaps are especially needed in developing countries, where technology planning resources are limited, lock-in risks from new infrastructure are high and underdeveloped data systems hinder decision-making.

Subject of Research: A goal-driven framework for developing and roadmapping carbon neutrality technologies, applied to China

Article Title: A goal-driven framework for carbon neutrality technology development

Article References: Guo, S., Hu, G., Meng, J., Zhao, W., Fan, J., Li, J., Peng, X., Liu, J., & Zhang, X. (2026). A goal-driven framework for carbon neutrality technology development. Carbon Neutrality, 5(1), Article 29. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43979-026-00183-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43979-026-00183-w

Keywords: carbon neutrality, net-zero emissions, technology roadmap, carbon dioxide removal, CCUS, energy storage, hydrogen, non-CO2 greenhouse gases, hard-to-abate sectors, China, climate policy, technological innovation