About UsStaffPartners & FundersCareersDonate
Simulators & Science
En-ROADSC-ROADSResearch & Insights
Ambassador Program
About the ProgramBecome an AmbassadorMeet our Ambassadors
Experiences
En-ROADS Climate WorkshopClimate Action Simulation GameWorld Climate Simulation GameEn-ROADS Guided AssignmentJoin an Event
Other Programs
MultisolvingSystems ThinkingClimate AnalysisFood Systems
Trainings
En-ROADS TrainingC-ROADS TrainingSystems Thinking Training
Events
Event & Webinar ScheduleContact an AmbassadorRun an Event YourselfRegister Your Event
NewsVideosPress
Frequently Asked QuestionsEn-ROADS ResourcesC-ROADS ResourcesContact Us

Climate Solutions Save Lives and Improve Health

By Janet Chikofsky
February 10, 2026

Climate change is the biggest health threat of the 21st century, according to the World Health Organization—but every action we take can save lives. Every fraction of a degree of warming we prevent means fewer people exposed to deadly heat, disease, and air pollution.

Consider just one solution: energy efficiency improvements alone could save 554,000 lives from extreme heat, protect 37 million people from dengue fever, save 4 days of outdoor labor per worker per year that would otherwise be lost to heat, and cut 4 million tons of harmful air pollution in the year 2100 alone.

The En-ROADS Climate Solutions Simulator that we created with MIT Sloan combines advanced modeling of the climate, energy, land, and economic system with research on heat, air pollution, disease, and food security to translate emissions reductions into concrete health outcomes. With En-ROADS, you can explore these life-saving possibilities in real time. No other public tool lets you see the link between climate solutions and the health and wellbeing of people around the world.

Here are four examples of how individual climate solutions deliver long-term health benefits. With just a few slider adjustments, you can explore how these actions improve health and wellbeing around the world.

Energy efficiency improvements could save 554,000 people from dying from extreme heat in 2100.

Insulating buildings, sealing energy leaks, upgrading to energy-efficient machines, expanding public transportation, and building bike lanes all reduce how much energy we need.

Because most of our energy still comes from fossil fuels, using less energy lowers emissions, slows global warming, and reduces extreme-heat events—ultimately preventing heat-related deaths.

A strong global effort on energy efficiency could prevent over 554,000 heat-related deaths per year by 2100.

Try it yourself: Move the Energy efficiency sliders for transport and buildings and industry and watch extreme-heat deaths decline.

0
lives saved
per year in 2100

What else could energy efficiency improvements do?

Explore the other impacts that this action alone would mitigate in the En-ROADS simulator under Graphs > Impacts.

Additional co-benefits. These results show impacts avoided by energy efficiency compared to a scenario with no increased action, but they still underestimate total health benefits. Many co-benefits are not reflected here, such as cleaner air, more physical activity from walking and cycling, and healthier indoor environments from better-insulated homes. These changes further reduce illness, prevent premature deaths, and improve quality of life.

Ceasing the construction of new coal-fired power plants and retiring old ones would create massive immediate improvements in air quality, preventing millions of deaths.

Closing down coal plants is a climate solution that produces benefits right away. Burning coal emits tiny particles called PM2.5. These airborne pollutants are so small that they can penetrate deep into the lungs and even enter the bloodstream, causing heart disease, strokes, respiratory disease, and death. In 2022 alone, pollution from burning coal was responsible for 1 million deaths worldwide.

If we stopped building new coal plants and retired existing ones by 10% per year, En-ROADS calculates that we would prevent 14 megatons of PM2.5 emissions in 2050.

How big is that? For comparison, the entire city of Delhi, India—one of the world’s most polluted cities—emitted about 0.12 megatons of PM2.5 in 2020. In other words, this coal-retirement scenario would prevent more than 100 years’ worth of Delhi’s annual PM2.5 emissions in the year 2050 alone.

Cleaner air means fewer heart attacks, fewer strokes, and fewer premature deaths—even before considering the long-term climate benefits.

Try it yourself: Move the Reduce new coal infrastructure and Coal plant accelerated retirement sliders and watch PM2.5 emissions decline.

0
megatons PM2.5
avoided per year
in 2050

Implementing a carbon price of $100 per ton CO2—which raises the cost of fossil fuels in proportion to the CO2 they produce—could spare 26 million people a year from hurricane exposure by 2100.

Carbon pricing is an economic policy designed to reflect the broader social costs of fossil fuel use by increasing prices based on the amount of CO₂ emitted. A price of $100 per ton would be substantially higher than the current global average of about $5 per ton, higher than the European Union average of roughly $70 per ton, but still below Sweden’s carbon price of about $144 per ton. In En-ROADS, the Carbon Price slider simulates an average global carbon price.

As global temperatures rise, oceans warm and the atmosphere holds more moisture—conditions that intensify hurricanes (also known as typhoons or tropical cyclones, depending on the region) and increase the risks they pose to human health and safety.

By discouraging fossil fuel use, a carbon price reduces greenhouse gas emissions and slows warming, which in turn weakens these drivers of extreme weather. As a result, a carbon price of $100 per ton CO2 could lead to 26 million fewer people exposed to hurricanes in 2100.

By preventing this extreme weather, we reduce injuries and deaths, keep communities safer, and help people stay in their homes.

Try it yourself: Move the Carbon Price slider and watch exposure to hurricanes go down.

0
people
saved from hurricanes
in 2100

By halting human-caused deforestation and restoring forests at scale, we could spare 13 million people from exposure to dengue in the year 2060.

Dengue fever, a mosquito-borne disease, causes flu-like symptoms and can lead to severe bleeding and death. As the planet warms, dengue, malaria, and other mosquito-borne diseases are already expanding beyond tropical regions.

By reducing deforestation by 10% each year, and planting trees on 550 million hectares of land—an area larger than the European Union—we could limit expansion of mosquito habitats due to warming and reduce dengue exposure. Trees remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, slowing the warming of our planet. Cooler temperatures mean that disease-carrying mosquitoes can’t spread as widely.

En-ROADS calculates that this approach could protect 13 million people from dengue by 2060. This is likely a low estimate, as research suggests forest protection can reduce mosquito-borne disease through multiple pathways beyond temperature reduction, such as limiting standing water.

Try it yourself: Move the Deforestation and Afforestation sliders and watch exposure to dengue decline. At first, you might think these sliders barely make a difference—the curve bends only slightly compared to the Baseline. But these changes add up to millions worldwide. It’s a clear reminder that even modest reductions can have huge impacts.

0
dengue
exposures avoided
per year in 2060

Create a scenario by combining actions

Of course, we’re not suggesting that we rely on just one of these actions. Limiting warming and keeping our world habitable requires sustained effort across all climate solutions. By combining these actions, plus electrifying equipment and reducing methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gas emissions, we could limit global warming to 2°C during this century. This scenario would result in:

Climate action is health action. En-ROADS shows why every tenth of a degree matters—today, in the next decades, and for generations to come. Try it yourself: adjust the sliders, combine policies, and see how different choices shape health outcomes.

Create your own scenario in En-ROADS

Want to go deeper?

Notes on methodology

Modeling the connection between temperature and impacts

Many of the climate impacts in En-ROADS are derived from peer-reviewed research studies that have connected specific impacts to different global temperature scenarios. Our modeling team used that research to formulate individual functions relating global mean temperature to each climate impact. Other impacts, such as ocean acidification, sea level rise, and PM2.5 emissions, are modeled explicitly. For more information on the climate impact and the study it is based on, view the graph description by clicking on the information button or the gray arrow on the top left of the graph title. Details on modeling are included in the En-ROADS Technical Reference.

App version

This article uses En-ROADS app version 26.1 (January 2026). En-ROADS is updated monthly with new modeling and features, so later versions may produce different numerical results.

Funding and advisors

We gratefully acknowledge the Wellcome Trust for supporting the integration of climate-related health impacts into En-ROADS. We also thank the advisors who generously contributed their expertise, reviewed the modeling, and offered valuable feedback, including: