The delayed deployment of low-carbon energy technologies is impeding energy system decarbonization. The continuing debate about the cost-competitiveness of low-carbon technologies has led to a strategy of waiting for a ‘unicorn technology’ to appear. Here, we show that myopic strategies that rely on the eventual manifestation of a unicorn technology result in either an oversized and underutilized power system when decarbonization objectives are achieved, or one that is far from being decarbonized, even if the unicorn technology becomes available. Under perfect foresight, disruptive technology innovation can reduce total system cost by 13%. However, a strategy of waiting for a unicorn technology that never appears could result in 61% higher cumulative total system cost by mid-century compared to deploying currently available low-carbon technologies early on.

低碳能源技术的延迟部署阻碍了能源系统的脱碳。关于低碳技术的成本竞争力的持续争论导致了等待“独角兽技术”出现的战略。在这里，我们表明，依赖于独角兽技术最终表现的近视策略导致实现脱碳目标时电力系统规模过大且未得到充分利用，或者即使独角兽技术可用，也远未实现脱碳。在完美的预见下，颠覆性的技术创新可以将整个系统的成本降低13％。然而，