The Politics of Negative Emissions Technologies in the EU

Most climate change mitigation scenarios assign an important role to Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs) in the limiting of global warming to 1.5C or 2C. Accordingly, the European Commission has included NETs in its long-term climate strategy and the revised EU climate law mentions technical solutions to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. However, many authors have raised concern that the expectations of future large-scale availability of NETs may delay or substitute at- source emissions reduction, especially as an attempt to defer costly and politically challenging decarbonization. Such possible delay or substitution poses a significant problem since major uncertainties persist as to whether carbon dioxide removal through NETs can adequately substitute for at-source emissions reduction, and whether delivery of NETs is possible at scale. Drawing on cultural political economy as well as science and technology studies, emerging social science literature on NETs has highlighted the potential of mitigation deterrence. However, whether and how mitigation deterrence through NETs actually occurs in climate policy-making processes has yet to be examined in detail. The projects overarching objective is to investigate whether and how expectations of future large- scale availability of NETs deter more ambitious climate change mitigation action in EU climate policy. To this end, it explores the sociotechnical imaginaries, institutional terrains, actors, and strategies which have shaped the integration of NETs into EU climate policy and traces evidence and mechanisms of mitigation deterrence within EU climate policy-making processes. The policy analysis focuses on the EUs long-term climate strategy and climate law, the revision of the Effort Sharing Regulation and the EU Emissions Trading System, the European Commissions sustainable carbon cycle strategy and the EUs carbon removal certification. The qualitative research design of this study relies predominantly on qualitative document analysis and expert interviews. To identify evidence of mitigation deterrence, the proposed project systematically traces how the consideration and integration of NETs may have affected the formulation and negotiation of emissions reduction targets and the selection of policy design options to achieve them. The projects original and innovative approach to study mitigation deterrence in policy processes will generate important new insights on climate policy formulation that will feed into the emerging debate over climate engineering and how to prevent related mitigation deterrence effects. The results will similarly prove valuable for sustainability transition and transformation research, which has yet to address the potential of NETs to undermine mitigation ambitions and thereby delay urgently needed societal transformation.