(By Martin LaMonica) - Science journal Nature published a commentary on Wednesday that argues that scientists’ climate change models overestimate the impact of low-carbon energy technologies.

A transition to cleaner forms of energy is one of the pillars of any discussion around mitigating global warming, along with policy and changes in lifestyle.

In their article, the Nature authors pick apart the assumptions built into the climate change reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In short, they argue the IPCC studies are “dangerously” optimistic regarding the pace of clean technology and energy efficiency adoption.

An excerpt:

“Here we show that two thirds or more of all the energy efficiency improvements and decarbonization of energy supply required to stabilize greenhouse gases is already built into the IPCC reference scenarios. This is because the scenarios assume a certain amount of spontaneous technological change and related decarbonization. Thus, the IPCC implicitly assumes that the bulk of the challenge of reducing future emissions will occur in the absence of climate policies. We believe that these assumptions are optimistic at best and unachievable at worst, potentially seriously underestimating the scale of the technological challenge associated with stabilizing greenhouse-gas concentrations.”