Selecting a set of mitigation strategies to create a stabilization triangle is a planning framework for identifying possible interventions for the reduction of emissions.

The objective is to stabilize CO2 concentrations under 500 ppm over fifty years, by choosing strategies for mitigation as represented by wedges.

[5][6][2] This approach to presenting complex information about mitigation was introduced in 2004 by Princeton University researchers Stephen Pacala and Robert H.

[1][2][7] In 2004, Pacala and Socolow estimated that seven wedges worth of improvements would be needed to mitigate climate change by 2054, if serious actions were taken immediately.

As a reference unit, a stabilization wedge is equal to the following examples of mitigation initiatives: deployment of two hundred thousand 10 MW wind turbines; completely halting the deforestation and planting of 300 million hectares of trees; the increase in the average energy efficiency of all the world's buildings by 25 percent;[when?]

[12] There are, however, sources that estimate the need for 14 wedges because Pacala and Socolow's proposal would only stabilize carbon dioxide emissions at current levels but not the atmospheric concentration, which is increasing by more than 2 ppm/year.

[14] If global emissions of CO2 are graphed for the next 50 years, the difference between the business as usual scenario and the flat path forms a triangle.

Reducing a projected fourteen gigatons of carbon emissions into seven wedges in a stabilization triangle makes the task easier to conceptualize.

[4] As of 2020[update] the CMI website presents the fifteen strategies and groups them into nine categories, as follows:[17] In addition to limiting emissions of CO2, such changes offer public health cobenefits such as reduced air pollution, enhanced fitness, and regulation of infectious disease.

[18] Like many other discussions of global climate change, the majority of Pacala and Socolow's wedges focus on improvements in energy efficiency.

[20][21][22] As of 2004[update], Pacala and Socolow estimated that seven wedges worth of improvements would be needed to mitigate climate change, if serious actions were immediately taken.

[23] Hoffert suggested in a 2010 Science article that Pacala and Socolow's 2004 estimates were too low, and that some of their assumptions about declining carbon-to-energy ratios were being countered by increases in natural gas, oil and coal production.

This means accelerating the deployment of the... wedges so they begin to take effect in 2015 and are completely operational in much less time than originally modelled by Socolow and Pacala.

"[9] Romm emphasized the importance of shifting national and global policy from longer-term to immediate strategies, and the urgency of deploying existing low-carbon technologies.

Business executives played the game at as seminar held by the Sustainable Enterprise Academy at York University in Toronto.

[14] Richard G. Richels, a senior engineer at the Electric Power Research Institute, says that the lack of economic precision in the game could create misconceptions: We have to find out what it's going to cost to make it affordable.

[16]A final criticism is that the Wedge Game focuses on technological fixes rather than fundamentally challenging the endless growth economy that is at the heart of global climate change.