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The potential for CO 2 emission reductions through carbon capture and storage (CCS) is depending on investments that can bring the technology from the current R&D through to commercial applications. The intermediate step in this development is demonstration plants that can prove the technical, economic, social, and ecological feasibility of CCS technologies. Based on a CCS stakeholder questionnaire survey and a literature review, we critically analyse discrepancies regarding perceptions of deployment obstacles and experiences from early demonstration plants. The analysis identifies discrepancies between CCS policies versus important deployment considerations and CCS stakeholder policy demands. The discrepancy gap is emphasised by lessons from restructured, postponed, and cancelled CCS projects. To bridge this cognitive gap towards proving CCS through demonstration activities, the article highlights policy implications of establishing a broad understanding of deployment obstacles. Attention to these obstacles is important for policymakers and industry in channelling efforts to demonstrating CCS, hence validating the current focus on CCS as a key abatement potential. Under present conditions, the findings question the robustness of current CCS abatement potential estimates and deployment goals as established by policymakers and in scenarios.

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Scenarios for global developments typically point to a sharp increase in demand for energy as well as for water and land. These developments have a starting point where global ecosystems are already being exploited unsustainably. This has implications for energy systems, which can be designed as more or less water and land‐use intensive. However, evaluating the sustainability of energy systems commonly do not take water and land‐use systems into account. This presents a problem as these three systems—energy, water, land—are intrinsically linked, which provides both barriers and opportunities for these systems' individual as well as collective sustainability. More comprehensive evaluations of energy systems that acknowledge the system interlinkages are therefore needed. This has become known as applying a nexus approach . The idea behind the nexus approach is to increase system synergies and resilience through jointly analyzing ecosystem capacities, drivers for resource use, development objectives, capacities to manage linked systems, and the need for new knowledge. This provides a comprehensive perspective on the restrictions and freedom we have in governing, designing, and using the social, technical, and ecological systems. The article thus presents a nexus approach and provides an understanding of challenges for the sustainability of energy systems from a broad system perspective.

This paper investigates the role of governance dimensions in socio-economic transitions in line with degrowth, i.e., an equitable downscaling of the economy. Our focus is on experiences from the 2008 economic crisis in Latvia and Iceland. Although these cases are not in themselves examples of degrowth, we see them as important sources of empirical learning from major socio-economical transitions; furthermore, we see crises as possible starting points for future degrowth transitions. This paper applies a governance framework to explore the vast differences in management strategies and crisis outcomes in Latvia and Iceland. In Iceland, public resistance led to a shift in policy measures such that economic inequality and the negative social consequences of the crisis decreased. In Latvia, public resistance existed but had no strong influence. The outcome in Latvia included none of the elements of equitable downscaling found in the case of Iceland. These two cases show how differences in formal institutional arrangements, political culture and societal trust affect different governance dimensions during a time of crisis. The analysis illustrates the importance of institutional and governance dimensions in major socio-economical transitions, and demonstrates how they influence the kind of transition that can be realized.