When climate policy meets foreign policy: Pioneering and national interest in Norway’s mitigation strategy

Røttereng, Jo-Kristian Stræte

doi:10.1016/j.erss.2017.11.024

Cited by 17 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Beck & Mahony, 2017;Haikola et al, 2019). Negative emissions too, emerged from mutual interactions between science and policy, where the demand from policy makers for policy-relevant solutions has motivated experts to produce pathways consistent with policy targets (S. Beck & Mahony, 2017, 2018bParson, 2017). And just as with the longer history of carbon removal, we can identify ways in which scientists creating negative emissions-dependent scenarios are making climate change governable in supposedly neutral, but ultimately value-laden and contested ways.…”

Section: Carbon Removal Is Politicalmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…And just as with the longer history of carbon removal, we can identify ways in which scientists creating negative emissions-dependent scenarios are making climate change governable in supposedly neutral, but ultimately value-laden and contested ways. One might thus reasonably ask-as scholars are doing in renewed calls for scientific reflexivity and a more responsible approach to negative emissions research (S. Beck & Mahony, 2017;Low & Buck, 2020)-what political perspectives and assumptions are represented in the "determinative" (Dooley, Christoff, & Nicholas, 2018) and "anticipatory" (S. Beck & Mahony, 2017, 2018b scenario analyses that characterize IAMs. If NETs-dependent scenarios help shape the corridor of plausible policy actions, then contestable assumptions about, for example, what discount rate to apply in IAMs have potentially far-reaching implications for who or what is recognized in climate policy, and who or what is not (e.g., future generations) (M. Beck & Krueger, 2016).…”

Section: Carbon Removal Is Politicalmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Røttereng (2018a) for example analyzes international support for carbon sinks in the form of CCS and REDD+, and finds that in both cases it is mainly affluent petroleum-producing countries that have been their most active proponents. A case study of Norway demonstrates that political support for CCS and REDD+ gained traction exactly because it allowed the government to reconcile its domestic interest in continued oil and gas extraction with international climate commitments (Røttereng, 2018b;Tjernshaugen, 2011). Meanwhile, the promise of CCS has proven fertile ground for fossil fuel producers, most notably the coal industry, which has seized on the technology in extensive "clean coal" campaigns as a way to fence off a crisis of legitimacy in the face of demands for climate action (Fitzgerald, 2012;Schneider, Schwarze, Bsumek, & Peeples, 2016;Tyree & Greenleaf, 2009).…”

Section: Carbon Removal As Tool To Reproduce the Status-quomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Large-scale carbon removal, also referred to as negative emissions, has recently gained attention as a key component of climate change mitigation pathways that limit warming to 1.5 or 2 C (IPCC, 2014(IPCC, , 2018. First put forward in technoeconomically focused integrated assessment models (IAMs) (Azar, Lindgren, Larson, & Möllersten, 2006;Kriegler et al, 2014;Kriegler, Edenhofer, Reuster, Luderer, & Klein, 2013;Van Vuuren et al, 2007), there is now an extensive literature that explores the potential opportunities, risks and trade-offs of relying on negative emissions (Buck, 2016;Dooley, Christoff, & Nicholas, 2018;Fuss et al, 2018;Gough et al, 2018;Heck, Gerten, Lucht, & Popp, 2018;McLaren, 2020;Williamson, 2016), maps the various feasibility concerns involved (Forster, Vaughan, Gough, Lorenzoni, & Chilvers, 2020;Hansson et al, 2019;Vaughan & Gough, 2016;Waller et al, 2020), or seeks to understand how IAMs came to rely so heavily on negative emissions in the first place (S. Beck & Mahony, 2017, 2018bGeden, 2016;Workman, Dooley, Lomax, Maltby, & Darch, 2020). Private sector actors have started taking an interest (Carbon Engineering, 2019;Shell, 2019;B.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Negative emissions and the long history of carbon removal

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Asiyanbi

Beck

et al. 2020

WIREs Climate Change

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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: Carbon Removal Is Politicalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Carbon Removal Is Politicalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Carbon Removal As Tool To Reproduce the Status-quomentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Negative emissions and the long history of carbon removal

Carton

Asiyanbi

Beck

et al. 2020

WIREs Climate Change

150

100

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“…These included the relative absence of less expensive potential emissions cuts domestically (because of Norway’s hydropower economy), a tradition of seeking cheaper emissions reductions abroad, and few fiscal constraints due to high petroleum revenues. Others have argued that Norway’s willingness to participate in a scheme such as REDD+ was also closely connected to ‘Norwegian national climate identity’ (Røttereng, 2018: 222) and to Norwegians’ self-perception as a global ‘Good Samaritan’ (Egede-Nissen, 2014: 8).…”

Section: Political Motivations For Redd+ (2005–2009)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Following REDD+: Elite agendas, political temporalities, and the politics of environmental policy failure in Guyana

Hook

2019

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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This article follows the journey of Guyana’s Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) programme, from its promising emergence in 2009 as an ambitious, Norway-funded scheme worth US$250m to its near-abandonment by all actors ten years later. It is based on primary fieldwork conducted in Guyana in 2016 and 2017 and a deep review of the theoretical and empirical literature on REDD+ policy processes and the Norway–Guyana agreement. The article shows how, contrary to the mainstream understanding of environmental policy as a disinterested search for a rational, scientific solution, decisions governing REDD+ policy in Guyana were rather shaped throughout by the political objectives and calculations of a small number of opportunistic elite actors. It further shows how even the modest incarnation of REDD+ in Guyana (which ended up resembling more of a results-based aid programme than a Payment for Ecosystem Services scheme) was continually affected by political factors beyond the control of policy managers. These included fluctuations in the world gold price that led to an increase in mining activity and deforestation, the departure of a key international investor which caused the collapse of the flagship REDD+-funded Amaila Falls hydropower project, and legislative gridlock in Guyana generated by a hung Parliament. While not suggesting that REDD+ (or similar Payment for Ecosystem Services schemes) can never work, the article nonetheless illustrates the ways in which political objectives and unforeseen events can overwhelm substantive policy efforts towards fighting climate change. The findings also illustrate the dangers of prioritizing short-term ‘success stories’ over longer-term and more consultative environmental policy processes.

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Exploring paths and innovation in Norwegian carbon capture and storage policy

2023

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Norway, a significant petroleum producer and exporter, has been a frontrunner within policies for carbon capture and storage (CCS). As CCS is recognized as a key technology for achieving the Paris climate policy targets, there is a clear need for more knowledge about how to design successful projects. Norway's first CCS policy initiative, the ambitious Mongstad project, was the result of a political compromise that was imposed from above, basically with one single company in control. The project was largely seen as a failure and was terminated in 2013. However, instead of dropping ambitions for developing CCS projects, the authorities launched a new policy soon afterwards. This policy evolved with the differently organized Longship CCS project as its core. Using a path‐dependency perspective, we find that established institutional structures from the Mongstad project, combined with national interests and expertise, help to explain the fundamental continuity of CCS policies in Norway. This explanation is supplemented by a policy‐learning perspective, which helps to explain policy changes and differences between the two flagship CCS projects. The Longship project developed gradually ‘from below’; linked project responsibilities close to competences and interests; dealt with key risks separately to reduce the inherent complexity; and organized clear requirements up front. We hold that this way of designing CCS projects is of relevance to other countries considering CCS projects. Furthermore, by placing the Norwegian case in context of the development of EU and international climate policy we contribute a theoretical framework relevant also for subsequent research.

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When climate policy meets foreign policy: Pioneering and national interest in Norway’s mitigation strategy

Cited by 17 publications

References 31 publications

Negative emissions and the long history of carbon removal

Negative emissions and the long history of carbon removal

Following REDD+: Elite agendas, political temporalities, and the politics of environmental policy failure in Guyana

Exploring paths and innovation in Norwegian carbon capture and storage policy

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