Integrating carbon dioxide removal into EU climate policy: Prospects for a paradigm shift

Abstract

Scenarios meeting the Paris Agreement's temperature targets envisage a major and imminent deployment of technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, of which there has been almost no practical implementation to date. Here we explore the political dimensions and policy implications of expectations for “negative emissions” in the European Union (EU), considering its largely successful leadership role in mitigation action and corresponding low-carbon technology development and deployment. Carbon dioxide removal and especially Bio-Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage present significant challenges to the EU's dominant climate policy paradigm and low-carbon policy experience. Considering this challenge, we assess expectations for widespread implementation of carbon dioxide removal in the EU to be unrealistic, and explore possible pathways for its more limited introduction.

This article is categorized under:

• Policy and Governance > Multilevel and Transnational Climate Change Governance
• The Carbon Economy and Climate Mitigation > Policies, Instruments, Lifestyles, Behavior

Abstract

Illustration of differing BECCS expectations in the EU: indicative range of selected Integrated Assessment Model outputs (green), unrealized EU CCS demonstration ambition (blue), EU2016 reference energy scenario CCS as BECCS.