ALBERT

Description: Since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015, spurred by the 2018 IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, net zero emission targets have emerged as a new organizing principle of climate policy. In this context, climate policymakers and stakeholders have been shifting their attention to carbon dioxide removal (CDR) as an inevitable component of net zero targets. The importance of CDR would increase further if countries and other entities set net-negative emissions targets. The scientific literature on CDR governance and policy is still rather scarce, with empirical case studies and comparisons largely missing. Based on an analytical framework that draws on the multi-level perspective of sociotechnical transitions as well as existing work on CDR governance, we gathered and assessed empirical material until early 2021 from 9 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) cases: the European Union and three of its Member States (Ireland, Germany, and Sweden), Norway, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. Based on a synthesis of differences and commonalities, we propose a tripartite conceptual typology of the varieties of CDR policymaking: (1) incremental modification of existing national policy mixes, (2) early integration of CDR policy that treats emission reductions and removals as fungible, and (3) proactive CDR policy entrepreneurship with support for niche development. Although these types do not necessarily cover all dimensions relevant for CDR policy and are based on a limited set of cases, the conceptual typology might spur future comparative work as well as more fine-grained case-studies on established and emerging CDR policies.

Description: The European Union cap-and-trade emissions trading system (EU ETS) faces two challenges in the context of the European Green Deal. First, to meet the Paris temperature target, emissions in the energy and industrial sectors must fall to net-zero and then even become net-negative. Second, there is a concern that excessive CO2 price spikes and volatility on this path will jeopardize the political acceptance and support for emissions trading as a climate policy instrument. Conditional supply of carbon removal credits (CRCs) to support dynamic carbon price caps would make it possible to stabilize the market in the transition from positive to net-negative emissions trading while keeping the net-emissions path unchanged. CRCs would be assigned for carbon removal achieved for example with methods like Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage or Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage and would be used by companies under the EU ETS to compensate for their emissions. However, we suggest that there would be no direct exchange between emitting companies under the EU ETS and carbon removal companies, i.e., the demand and supply side of CRCs, during an initial phase. Instead, we suggest assigning an institutional mandate to for example a carbon central bank (CCB) to organize the supply of CRCs. Under this mandate, carbon removal would be procured, would be translated into a corresponding number of CRCs, and a fraction of it could be auctioned to the market at a later point in time, provided that market prices exceed a certain (dynamic) price cap.

Description: Since net zero targets have become a keystone of climate policy, more thought is being given to actively removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while continuing to drastically reduce emissions. The ocean plays a major role in regulating the global climate by absorbing a large proportion of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. As the challenges of land-based carbon dioxide removal (CDR) approaches are increasingly recognised, the ocean may become the new “blue” frontier for carbon removal and storage strategies in the EU and beyond. However, the ocean is not an “open frontier”; rather, it is a domain of overlapping and sometimes conflicting rights and obligations. There is a tension between the sovereign right of states to use ocean resources within their exclusive economic zones and the international obligation to protect the ocean as a global commons. The EU and its Member States need to clarify the balance between the protection and use paradigms in ocean governance when considering treating the ocean as an enhanced carbon sink or storage site. Facilitating linkages between the ongoing review of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive and the establishment of the Carbon Removal Certification Framework could help pave the way for debate about trade-offs and synergies in marine ecosystem protection and use.

Description: Since net-zero greenhouse gas emissions targets have become a keystone of European and German climate policy, a debate about the need to actively remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in addition to drastically reducing emissions has emerged. Although still relatively scarce, empirical studies on the emergence of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) on the political agenda have shown that variations in the constellations and positions of policy-relevant actors play a key role in shaping patterns of CDR policymaking. The German and wider European Union (EU) CDR policy space is emergent, and political actors are just beginning to position themselves. Building on our previous work which established a typology of CDR policy integration patterns and developed a discourse analytical framework for mapping CDR-policy-relevant speaker positions, we present the first fine-grained empirical reconstruction of CDR-policy-relevant actors and their positions in the German context. Our analytical approach aims to improve understanding of patterns in CDR policymaking by showing that on the EU, national, and subnational levels, a multitude of institutional actors may adopt differing positions as the CDR policy space evolves. In addition to identifying fine-grained ‘ideal types’ of positions that policy actors may adopt in the formative phase of German CDR policy, our analysis provides an empirical ‘map’ of CDR policy-relevant actors and explores hypotheses about emerging discourse coalitions and potential conflict cleavages.

Description: Given the escalating climate crisis, the task of integrating novel carbon dioxide removals into the European Union’s climate policy is urgent and long overdue. Here, we argue that there is a window of opportunity for responding now, and put forward a solution.

Description: Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) – the creation, enhancement, and upscaling of carbon sinks – has become a pillar of national and corporate commitments towards Net Zero emissions, as well as pathways towards realizing the Paris Agreement's ambitious temperature targets. In this perspective, we explore CDR as an emerging issue of Earth System Governance (ESG). We draw on the results of a workshop at the 2022 Earth System Governance conference that mapped a range of actors, activities, and issues relevant to carbon removal, and refined them into research questions spanning four intersecting areas: modeling and systems assessment, societal appraisal, policy, and innovation and industry. We filter these questions through the five lenses of the ESG framework and highlight several key ‘cross-cutting’ issues that could form the basis of an integrated ESG research agenda on CDR.