Brad et al. (2024): Whose negative emissions? Exploring emergent perspectives on CDR from the EU’s hard to abate and fossil industries
Alina Brad, Tobias Haas, Etienne Schneider IN: Frontiers in Climate 5, https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2023.1268736
Net zero targets have rapidly become the guiding principle of climate policy, implying the use of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) to compensate for residual emissions. At the same time, the extent of (future) residual emissions and their distribution between economic sectors and activities has so far received little attention from a social science perspective. This constitutes a research gap as the distribution of residual emissions and corresponding amounts of required CDR is likely to become highly contested in the political economy of low-carbon transformation. Here, the authors investigate what function CDR performs from the perspective of sectors considered to account for a large proportion of future residual emissions (cement, steel, chemicals, and aviation) as well as the oil and gas industry in the EU. They also explore whether they claim residual emissions to be compensated for outside of the sector, whether they quantify these claims and how they justify them.