Scaling up biofuels? A critical look at expectations, performance and governance

Goetz, Ariane; German, Laura; Weigelt, Jes

doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2017.05.004

Cited by 15 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…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. While we do partly engage with insights from, for example, carbon capture and storage (CCS) debates as well, a comprehensive review is beyond the scope of this article (but see for example, Bäckstrand, Meadowcroft, & Oppenheimer, 2011; Bui et al, 2018; Dauvergne & Neville, 2010; Goetz, German, & Weigelt, 2017; Gough & Mander, 2019; Krüger, 2017; Lima & Gupta, 2013). This implies that our conclusions are in the first place applicable to conversations on land‐based NETs, whose land‐use requirements raise a number of distinctive social, political and ethical questions.…”

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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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Negative emissions and the long history of carbon removal

Carton

Asiyanbi

Beck

et al. 2020

WIREs Climate Change

148

100

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Amplification and scaling research, thereby, does not refer to a coherent and established field but an emergent body of literature that revolves around the identification of small-scale initiatives that potentially have a large-scale impact (Taylor Aiken et al, 2022). At one end of a broad spectrum, use of (up)scaling and amplification concerns how specific technologies or practices are mainstreamed and institutionalized, for example biofuels (Goetz et al, 2017). Whereas these innovations (might) have structural effects, the concomitant changes generally remain within broader institutional framework conditions, such as price-driven markets (Feola, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A critical view on the role of scale and instrumental imaginaries within community sustainability transitions research

Schmid

Aiken

2023

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Research has recently focused on various under‐the‐radar sustainability‐oriented community initiatives to understand and support bottom‐up dynamics of social‐ecological change. While community initiatives vary widely, research on them tends towards an instrumental perspective: a will‐to‐upscale. While exploring possibilities for expanding (some of) the practices and impacts of sustainability‐oriented projects and organizations, we argue for a more cautious approach to instrumentalising community initiatives. We develop our argument around four recurring issues we identify in the literature: (1) conceptual imprecisions; (2) privileging of novelties; (3) politics of urgency; and (4) outwards orientation. In response to these critiques, and leaning on geographical theories of scale, we outline our caution. At its core, this approach is a ‘literacy of scaling’ where scaling functions as a tactic subordinate to the community.

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“…Work has also been done on tidal (Devine-Wright, 2011a) and hydrogen (Sherry-Brennan et al, 2010) energy. Therefore, it is sensible to examine these aspects in the context of seaweed-derived fuels so that evidence-based policy and commercial decisions can be made (Goetz et al, 2017). Levels of public acceptance and commercial development differ across technologies, contexts and scales, so we cannot assume that reactions to seaweed-derived fuels will be the same as for other renewables (Wiersma and Devine-Wright, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%