Contested framings of greenhouse gas removal and its feasibility: Social and political dimensions

Waller, Laurie; Rayner, Tim; Chilvers, Jason; Gough, Clair; Lorenzoni, Irene; Jordan, Andrew; Vaughan, Naomi E.

doi:10.1002/wcc.649

Cited by 59 publications

(77 citation statements)

References 94 publications

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“…As the social science on CCS and BECCS technologies matures, analysis moves beyond assessments of 'acceptance' or 'public perceptions' to provide a more nuanced and holistic understanding of the societal impacts and contexts. Recognising how different cultural, social, political, ethical, and governance contexts shape the wider sociotechnical environment can contribute to a more sustainable implementation and the 'responsible development' [8] of BECCS technologies. Fostering acceptability (that is, the quality of being acceptable) is one element of achieving a social licence and establishing emergent technologies in a 'fair and competent' manner [90], in which the role of citizens is neither passive nor static.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We gratefully acknowledge the head start given to this paper from the work of Waller et al [8] in collating a large body of literature in this area.…”

Section: Acknowledgementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent reviews have been published relating to public perceptions of CCS [4], carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) [5], BECCS [6•], and CDR, covering all disciplines [7], and focusing on the social and political dimensions of BECCS and afforestation as greenhouse gas removal approaches [8]. The present paper builds on these reviews, which demonstrate the strong analytical base from which to build communications material and procedural good practice for establishing projects, to explore what is known about social responses to BECCS from research focused on BECCS and from the wider CCS literature.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Beyond Social Acceptability: Applying Lessons from CCS Social Science to Support Deployment of BECCS

Gough¹,

Mander²

2019

Curr Sustainable Renewable Energy Rep

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Purpose of Review This paper assesses social science research relating to BECCS and considers the applicability of research on CCS to BECCS. Recent Findings In recent years, social science research on CCS and BECCS has gone beyond an evaluation of public acceptance to provide a more nuanced analysis of the wider social political, ethical, and governance contexts in which large-scale deployment might be achieved. This raises issues at global, local, and regional scales, requiring a wide array of methods and approaches. Summary Awareness of the scale and urgency needed to act on climate change is growing and the role of BECCS in delivering carbon dioxide removal forms a central argument for the use of this family of technologies. Here, framing becomes a critical factor in how society responds to BECCS technologies and we argue that making the case for BECCS as a means of extending mitigation to make a 'net zero' goal achievable could be the key to its acceptable and sustainable deployment. Keywords CCS. BECCS. Carbon dioxide removal (CDR). Negative emissions. Social responses. Acceptability This article is part of the Topical Collection on Deep Decarbonization: BECCS

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We gratefully acknowledge the head start given to this paper from the work of Waller et al [8] in collating a large body of literature in this area.…”

Section: Acknowledgementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Beyond Social Acceptability: Applying Lessons from CCS Social Science to Support Deployment of BECCS

Gough¹,

Mander²

2019

Curr Sustainable Renewable Energy Rep

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“…Assessing the feasibility of NETs can be described as a process, with different assessments of feasibility carried out at different moments in time. These range from specific assessments like technology-or dimension-focused (e.g., Fuss et al, 2018;Nemet et al, 2018;Roe et al, 2019;Robb et al, 2020), reviews or syntheses of multiple dimensions or comparison of NETs (Oschlies and Klepper, 2017;Minx et al, 2018;Waller et al, 2020), and combined feasibility assessments (IPCC, 2018). These assessments accordingly differ in scope and how feasibility is operationalized.…”

Section: Feasibility Operationalized In Nets Assessmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deployment of Negative Emissions Technologies at the National Level: A Need for Holistic Feasibility Assessments

et al. 2020

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The 2015 Paris Agreement aims to strengthen the global response to climate change, and to maintain an average global temperature well below 2°C, with aspirations toward 1.5°C, by means of balancing sources and sinks of greenhouse gas emissions. Following this, the importance of carbon dioxide removal in global emission pathways has been further emphasized, and Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs) that capture carbon from the atmosphere and remove it from the system have been put in the spotlight. NETs range from innovative, engineered technologies, to well-known approaches like afforestation/reforestation. These technologies essentially compensate for a shrinking carbon budget coupled with hard-to-abate future emissions, and a historical lack of action. However, none has been deployed at scales close to what is envisioned in emission pathways in line with the Paris Agreement goals. To understand the potential contribution of NETs to meet global emission goals, we need to better understand opportunities and constraints for deploying NETs on a national level. We examine 17 Long-Term Low Greenhouse Gas Emission Development Strategies (LT-LEDS), and discuss them in the context of available NETs feasibility assessments. Our mapping shows that most countries include NETs in their long-term strategies, and that enhancement of natural sinks is the most dominating type of NET in these strategies. In line with many feasibility assessments, LT-LEDS focus on technical and biophysical considerations, and neglect socio-cultural dimensions. We suggest that feasibility assessments at the national level need to be more holistic; context-specific and comprehensive in terms of aspects assessed.

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“…The main focus of our review is on land-based carbon removal by way of AR, where we see the largest contribution from the critical social sciences and also the most obvious gap with the negative emissions literature on the topic (Waller et al, 2020). As one of the two NETs that figure most prominently in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments, it is also where significant policy and private sector interest on carbon removal is directed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Negative emissions and the long history of carbon removal

Carton

Asiyanbi

Beck

et al. 2020

WIREs Climate Change

148

100

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Recent IPCC assessments highlight a key role for large-scale carbon removal in meeting the objectives of the Paris Agreement. This focus on removal, also referred to as negative emissions, is suggestive of novel opportunities, risks, and challenges in addressing climate change, but tends to build on the narrow techno-economic framings that characterize integrated assessment modeling. While the discussion on negative emissions bears important parallels to a wider and older literature on carbon sequestration and carbon sinks, this earlier scholarship-particularly from the critical social sciences-is seldom engaged with by the negative emissions research community. In this article, we survey this "long history" of carbon removal and seek to draw out lessons for ongoing research and the emerging public debate on negative emissions. We argue that research and policy on negative emissions should proceed not just from projections of the future, but also from an acknowledgement of past controversies, successes and failures. In particular, our review calls attention to the irreducibly political character of carbon removal imaginaries and accounting practices and urges acknowledgement of past experiences with the implementation of (small-scale) carbon sequestration projects. Our review in this way highlights the importance of seeing continuity in the carbon removal discussion and calls for more engagement with existing social science scholarship on the subject. Acknowledging continuity and embracing an interdisciplinary research agenda on carbon removal are important aspects in making climate change mitigation research more responsible, and a precondition to avoid repeating past mistakes and failures.

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Contested framings of greenhouse gas removal and its feasibility: Social and political dimensions

Cited by 59 publications

References 94 publications

Beyond Social Acceptability: Applying Lessons from CCS Social Science to Support Deployment of BECCS

Beyond Social Acceptability: Applying Lessons from CCS Social Science to Support Deployment of BECCS

Deployment of Negative Emissions Technologies at the National Level: A Need for Holistic Feasibility Assessments

Negative emissions and the long history of carbon removal

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