Tag: politics

Peer-reviewed Publications

Brad & Schneider (2025): Carbon removal, mitigation deterrence and the politics of target separation. Evidence from the EU 2040 climate target negotiation

Alina Brad and Etienne Schneider IN: Environmental Research Letters, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/add0c9

The ongoing integration of novel carbon dioxide removal (CDR) methods into climate policy has raised concerns that expectations of CDR may delay or undermine emission reduction efforts – a risk discussed as mitigation deterrence. Separating targets for emission reduction and CDR has emerged as a key policy proposal to address this risk, limiting the fungibility of emission reduction and CDR and enabling critical assessment of the credibility and ambition of mitigation plans. However, stakeholder preferences and rationales as well as factors shaping political decisions on target separation have not been systematically analyzed to date. Here, the authors investigate the politics around the EU’s 2040 climate target design as a key conflict over how to deal with mitigation deterrence risks in climate policy-making through target separation. Drawing on data from the EU consultation process, document analysis, expert interviews and relevant online events, they find that a majority of stakeholders, including business actors, prefer separate targets over a net target, albeit based on different rationales. They also provide evidence on the political factors that led the European Commission to opt against target separation in its 2040 climate target communication.

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Scientific Theses

PhD-Thesis: A Review of the Social and Justice-Related Implications of Direct Air Capture Deployment at Scale

Adam Green, University of Pennsylvania, 2023

This research review the hazards of DAC deployment, or the lack thereof, in order to successfully integrate environmental justice considerations into its deployment. Previous publications and the current political climate will be reviewed as it pertains to DAC, and overall considerations and recommendations for environmental justice mapping and policy will be presented based on analysis of the literature.

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Reports

mCDR Foresight Scenarios: Policy Frameworks for Marine Carbon-Dioxide Removal in 2040

Miranda Böttcher, Working Paper Research Division EU/Europe 2023/No. 02, April 2023, 35 Pages

This report outlines processes and insights from a participatory foresight workshop held in Berlin (December 2022). This workshop aimed to switch the mode of thinking about the future of mCDR policy from predictive to anticipatory: a reorientation from »navigating ‘what will be’« to »thinking through alternative ‘what ifs?’« The workshop organisers aimed to encourage the participants to engage experimentally with conceptions of the future derived from a broad field of perspectives. Additionally, the workshop was designed to help the participants explore the capacities of various policy frameworks and instruments to deal with threats and opportunities across a range of plausible futures.

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Lund et al. (2023): Net zero and the unexplored politics of residual emissions

Jens Friis Lund, Nils Markusson, Wim Carton, Holly Jean Buck IN: Energy Research & Social Science 98, 103035, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2023.103035

In this perspective article, the authors call for more engagement with the unexplored politics of residual emissions. With the mainstreaming of net zero as the long-term goal of climate policy, the politics of residual emissions are set to become a key point of contestation. Claims about residual emissions tend to revolve around notions of necessity and possibility, i.e. emissions that derive from activities deemed socially necessary yet impossible to fully abate. The authors highlight how such claims are socially constructed and ultimately contingent on values, norms and interests.

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Science-Policy Documents

Fraser (2022): Up in the air: the challenge of conceptualizing and crafting a post-carbon planetary politics to confront climate change

Alistair Fraser IN: The Journal of Peasant Studies, DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2022.2113779

The author argues that confronting climate change requires conceptualizing and crafting a post-carbon planetary politics focused on removing carbon from the atmosphere. A focal point for beginning to build this politics should be carbon removal networks. The author conceptualizes these networks as vehicles that tap diverse knowledge domains (from sciences such as ecology or chemistry to activism and the law) to establish a planetary-wide political alliance which removes carbon while delivering nutrition, shelter, and care to populations in all manner of geographical settings.

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Media

Voters Want State and Federal Lawmakers to Lead on Carbon Dioxide Removal

by Celina Scott-Buechler and Toby Bryce on dataforprogress.org

“The New York Carbon Dioxide Removal Leadership Act (CDRLA) marks the first of its kind: a state-level bill aimed at advancing CDR deployment in the immediate term to ensure it’s ready to be scaled up when we most need it and done so in a sustainable and progressive way. The act authorizes the creation of a state-run advance market commitment for durable carbon removal, starting with a very small amount (10,000 tons in 2024) that doubles each year through 2029.[…] And the New York CDRLA is popular: recent Data for Progress polling in New York state finds that 72 percent of voters approve of the state legislature passing a bill to accelerate the development of carbon removal approaches and technologies. This includes 85 percent of Democrats, 66 percent of Independents, and 57 percent of Republicans.”

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Science-Policy Documents

Low et al. (2022): Rethinking Net-Zero systems, spaces, and societies: “Hard” versus “soft” alternatives for nature-based and engineered carbon removal

Sean Low, Chad M. Baum, Benjamin K. Sovacool IN: Global Environmental Change 75, 102530, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2022.102530

The authors build on Amory Lovins’ “hard” and “soft” alternatives for energy pathways to illuminate how foundational experts, technologists, and policy entrepreneurs think about different modes of resource inputs, infrastructure and livelihoods, and decision-making, regarding ten nature-based and engineered carbon removal approaches.

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Calls

Questionaire: Carbon Market Watch reply to European Commission public consultation on the certification of carbon removals – EU rules

on Carbonmarketwatch.com

“This public consultation invites public administrations, academic institutions, businesses, organisations and individuals to contribute to the preparation of an EU regulatory framework for the certification of carbon removals. The findings of the consultation (which will be summarised and published) will inform the impact assessment accompanying the Commission proposal on this initiative.”

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Video

The future of direct air capture policy: a Climeworks and Carbon180 event

by Climeworks on Youtube

Climeworks’ head of climate policy Christoph Beuttler and Carbon180’s executive director Erin Burns discuss the latest carbon dioxide removal policy develpoments in the US and Europe. In the second part, Bergur Sigfússon from Carbfix and Alma Stefánsdóttir from the Icelandic Youth Environmentalist Association join the policy experts to talk about the social dimension of building direct air capture facilities through stakeholder engagement.

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