Category: Science-Policy Documents

Science-Policy Documents

Johnson et al: (2024): Can coastal and marine carbon dioxide removal help to close the emissions gap? Scientific, legal, economic, and governance considerations 

Martin Johnson, Erik van Doorn, Nathalie Hilmi, Christa Marandino, Natasha McDonald, Helmuth Thomas, Denis Allemand, L. Delvasto Algarin, Lara Lebleu, David T. Ho, Mary Oloyede, Alain Safa, Peter Swarzenski IN: Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.2023.00071

In this Policy Bridge, the authors present the key issues regarding the safety, efficacy, funding, and governance of coastal and marine systems in support of climate change mitigation. Novel insights into the likely potential of these systems for use in mitigating excess carbon dioxide emissions are presented. There may be potential for coastal blue carbon and marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) actions to impact climate change mitigation significantly over the rest of the 21st century, particularly post 2050. However, governance frameworks are needed urgently to ensure that the potential contribution from coastal and ocean systems to climate change mitigation can be evaluated properly and implemented safely. Ongoing research and monitoring efforts are essential to ensure that unforeseen side effects are identified and corrective action is taken. The co-creation of governance frameworks between academia, the private sector, and policymakers will be fundamental to the safe implementation of mCDR in the future.

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Science-Policy Documents

Salman et al. (2024): G20 roadmap for carbon neutrality: The role of Paris agreement, artificial intelligence, and energy transition in changing geopolitical landscape

Muhammad Salman, Guimei Wang, Lin Qin, Xing He IN: Journal of Environmental Management, 367, 122080, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.122080

Here, the authors look at the linear effects of AI and the Paris Agreement (AI), as well as their potential interaction on carbon neutrality. They also investigate whether geopolitical risk (GPR) can hinder or enhance efforts to attain carbon neutrality through energy transition (ET). To measure carbon neutrality of G20 countries, the authors employed a robust parametric Malmquist index combined with the fixed-effect panel stochastic frontier model to account for heterogeneity.

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Science-Policy Documents

Policy Brief: Eckpunktepapier für ein integriertes Carbon Management

Aysel Aliyeva, Lukas Daubner, Ralf Fücks und Julia Hönnecke, Zentrum Liberale Moderne, Mai 2024

Carbon Management ist eine notwendige Säule des Klimaschutzes. Ein integriertes Carbon Management muss dabei komplexe klima-, industrie- und umweltpolitische Fragen zusammendenken. Das Eckpunktepapier erklärt Methoden, diskutiert Lösungen, aber auch Herausforderungen und zeigt konkrete Handlungsempfehlungen auf, wie ein integriertes Carbon Management rasch etabliert werden kann.

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Science-Policy Documents

Policy Brief: Build Carbon Removal Reserve to Secure Future of EU Emissions Trading

by Wilfried Rickels, Mathias Fridahl, Roland Rothenstein, Felix Schenuit, Kiel Institute for the World Economy, May 2024

Transforming an existing ETS that covers gross emissions into a net-emissions system that covers both emissions and removals and introducing a net-zero cap followed by a net-negative cap, poses the challenges of ensuring that the market remains operational and that the policy objectives underlying the ETS are maintained during the transition period. The EU faces this dual challenge. Delpla and Gollier (2019), Rickels, Proelß, et al. (2021), Rickels, Rothenstein, et al. (2022), and Edenhofer et al. (2024) propose introducing a Carbon Central Bank (CCB) to manage the inclusion of CRC trading and the transformation of the existing EU ETS into a net-zero and then net-negative ETS.

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Science-Policy Documents

Report: Charting a Course for Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal (mCDR): Policy Sequencing in mCDR Development

by Jasmine Yu, Savita Bowman, clearpath, March 2024

This report (1) identifies policies to support each innovation stage of mCDR technologies: early-stage R&D, widescale deployment and commercialization, (2) highlights the growing U.S. federal engagement and resources for mCDR and (3) describes policies that could create the conditions for successful wide-scale mCDR deployment,
dependent on the findings from R&D field trials.

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Science-Policy Documents

Envisioning a carbon removal strategy for Europe

Carbon Gap, March 18, 2024

Carbon Gap offers 18 actionable policy recommendations for how the EU could support carbon removal over the next thirty years as part of an EU carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategy. The recommendations are spread across four key “pillars” that should be pursued collectively to deliver effective and just CDR: creating fair and inclusive governance, prioritising research, development and innovation, introducing dedicated deployment incentives. The recommendations provided under each of these pillars would help grow the pool of potential CDR methods, test the viability of scaling promising, yet high-cost methods, and secure future demand for CDR.

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Science-Policy Documents

Rothkirch et al. (2024): Carbon dioxide removal: A source of ambition or of delays? Examining expectations for CDR in Swiss climate policy

Juanita von Rothkirch, Olivier Ejderyan, Michael Stauffacher IN: Environmental Science & Policy, 103659, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2023.103659

This paper explores the emerging discourse on CDR in Switzerland. The authors examined how the CDR community legitimizes CDR and limits its scope, and what the implications are for emissions mitigation. Switzerland is home to growing businesses in CDR and has pioneered the implementation of international offsetting projects under Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement. They found that numerous promises help legitimize and attract interest in CDR. Actors use discursive strategies and rules to limit CDR and avoid disappointment in its contribution to climate mitigation. 

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Science-Policy Documents

Grubert & Talati (2023): The distortionary effects of unconstrained for-profit carbon dioxide removal and the need for early governance intervention

Emily Grubert, Shuchi Talati IN: Carbon Management, https://doi.org/10.1080/17583004.2023.2292111

Governance and institutions, especially related to how CDR is allocated and paid for, will fundamentally shape CDR efforts, including by structurally incentivizing particular approaches and monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) objectives. The authors argue that the emerging tendency toward market-based, unconstrained, and for-profit CDR presents fundamental and predictable risks for climate and justice goals. Such a model incentivizes growth in profitable compensatory removal applications, effectively allocating limited resources based on ability to pay rather than public good, while also increasing the amount of CDR required to meet global climate targets. They describe the need, development context, function, and resource limitations of CDR, then characterize the major challenges with the emerging unconstrained, for-profit governance model.

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Science-Policy Documents

Bednar et al. (2023): Beyond emissions trading to a negative carbon economy: a proposed carbon removal obligation and its implementation

Johannes Bednar, Justin Macinante, Artem Baklanov, James Hall, Fabian Wagner, Navraj S. Ghaleigh, Michael Obersteiner IN: Climate Policy, https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2023.2276858

A policy framework based on ‘carbon removal obligations’ (CROs) has been proposed to respond to concerns about the financial and fiscal viability, the lack of incentives for CDR uptake, as well as the physical and technological risks associated with any climate mitigation scenario that relies on large scale CDR. Here the authors propose an updated and improved CRO policy framework, consisting of two core elements: the ‘principal CRO mechanism’ obliges emitters of a tonne of CO2 to remove a tonne of CO2 at the time of maturity of the CRO. On top of this obligation, CRO holders need to pay a fee for the temporary storage of CO2 in the atmosphere.

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Science-Policy Documents

Nature – Fridahl et al. (2023): Novel carbon dioxide removals techniques must be integrated into the European Union’s climate policies

Mathias Fridahl, Felix Schenuit, Liv Lundberg, Kenneth Möllersten, Miranda Böttcher, Wilfried Rickels, Anders Hansson IN: Communications Earth & Environment, 4, https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-023-01121-9

The authors argue that the current policy framework neither provides Union-wide economic incentives for novel CO2 removals, nor does it encourage EU Member States to develop national policy incentives. The proposed solutions includes incentivizing removals through a conditional integration into the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS), expanding the portfolio of removal methods in the Land-Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) Regulation, and to manage anticipations regarding which residual emissions that need to be counterbalanced by removals.

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