With CCS towards climate neutrality?

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) hat in den letzten Jahren eine beachtliche Renaissance erfahren. Es ist absehbar, dass sich an der umstrittenen Technologie in den kommenden Jahren intensive Konflikte entzünden werden.

• Which and whose hard-to-abate emissions are to be reduced or offset with CCS? CCS must not be used to further delay the phase-out of fossil fuels.
• Which actors and economic activities – meat consumption, aviation, construction, etc. – are assigned how many residual emissions?
• Who is responsible and bears the costs for offsetting the emissions?
• Who decides which emissions are considered “hard-to-abate” or “unavoidable”?
• Who should have access to geological storage sites and the CO₂ transport infrastructure as well as subsidies for the construction and operation of CCS plants?
• How do we address the potential risks of CO₂ storage?

The list of unanswered questions is long. Dealing with CCS and emissions that are difficult to avoid could become a key conflict over which transformation pathways to climate neutrality we will take.

CDRterra researcher Tobias Haas from RIFS and his colleagues Alina Brad and Etienne Schneider from the University of Vienna write about this.

To the short version in the Nd (German)

Full version in the journal for critical social sciences Prokla (German):