Correction to: Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03821-8Published online 08 September 2021.

In this Article, a small, unintentional off-model calculation oversight meant that the volumes of unextractable oil and fossil methane gas for some categories of oil and gas in some regions were overestimated. Having corrected for this oversight, at a global level, unextractable oil and coal reserves in 2050 have not changed, whereas fossil methane gas is 3% lower than in our published estimates. Here we describe the differences between the corrected and original published estimates. It should be noted that most of our analysis (production pathways and unextractable resource estimates) remain unchanged from the published Article. The correction affects light tight oil, shale gas, tight gas and coalbed methane in regions where these categories form a part of the proved reserve base, namely, Australia, Canada, China and the United States. The error arose because there is no explicit distinction between reserves and resources for these categories in the supply cost curves used in our model, TIAM-UCL.

Tables 1 and 2 (oil and fossil methane gas, respectively) of this Amendment show the corrected regional and global estimates of unextractable oil and gas. Alterations to the original Article are as follows: (1) the percentage of unextractable global fossil methane gas reserves in 2050 has been changed from 59% to 56%; (2) the percentage of unextractable oil has been corrected from 43% to 42% in 2100, and fossil methane gas has been corrected from 50% to 47%.

Table 1 Regional and global difference in unextractable oil reserves after accounting error has been fixed
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Table 2 Regional and global difference in unextractable gas fossil methane reserves after accounting error has been fixed
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Table 1 and Fig. 1 of the original Article have been corrected to reflect the revised estimates of unextractable oil and gas reserves for the regions impacted, as shown in Tables 1 and 2, respectively, of this Amendment. For reference, the corrected version of Table 1 is shown below as Table 3.

Table 3 Corrected Table 1 from the original Article
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In addition, the Supplementary Information of the original Article has been altered to reflect the corrected estimates of unextractable oil and gas reserves. The following changes were made to the Supplementary Information:

  • A new section (section 8) explains in detail the source off the off-model calculation error and a step-by-step example for the United States.

  • Supplementary Figs. 3 and 4 and Supplementary Tables 2 and 3 have been altered to reflect the corrected unextractable volumes (740 Gb and 87 tcm) of oil and gas and unextractable proportions of gas (56%). In addition, the text has been changed to reflect the reduction in unextractable global fossil methane gas reserves (from 59% to 56%) at the start of the section ‘Comparison to McGlade and Ekins (2015) paper’.

  • A new file has been added that contains Source Data for Supplementary Figs. 1–16.

All authors agreed with this Author Correction, and we thank the peer reviewers for their feedback, particularly in communicating the correction in a clear and concise manner. The original Article has been corrected online