Getting more people into electric vehicles needs to happen alongside a shift to more “compact” cities where fewer car journeys are needed if governments want to stave off the most dire effects of global warming, researchers said on Thursday…

The research looked at four scenarios for transport: “business as usual,” massive electrification of public and private vehicles by 2050, a major shift in cities to non-car transport, and a “high EV + shift” combination.

The “EV + shift” scenario was the only one whose estimated 2020-2050 emissions were in line with targets of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, which aims to limit global temperature rise to “well under” 2 degrees Celsius.

The key is minimizing the overall number of vehicles on the road and electrifying the rest, said Thompson, whose nonprofit group developed and released the research in concert with the University of California, Davis.