Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies have increasingly been brought to the fore as a valuable tool to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve CO2 stabilization. In the policy debate, CCS is advanced as an option in the context of a portfolio of climate change mitigation strategies, such as transition to renewable energy, promotion of energy efficiency and other low-carbon alternatives such as nuclear and hydro.

The past two years CCS has increasingly become embedded in the EU’s energy and climate policy-making and in post-2012 climate negotiations, particularly related to the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and its future role. Cautioned optimism or skeptical realism reflects dominant perceptions in academic community of CCS: CCS is not the silver bullet to solve the climate problem, but remains a necessary option in a larger portfolio of diverse climate mitigation strategies. Factors that hampers accelerated investment in CCS are the costs barriers coupled with both market and regulatory uncertainty. Objective, methods, results: This objective of this paper is to analyze the prospects and challenges associated with the inclusion of the CCS option under the CDM in a post-Kyoto global bargain.
Central research questions are: What is the role of CCS in a post-Kyoto multilateral climate process and how can CCS be an incentive to promote participation of developing countries in UNFCCC/Kyoto process? Can CCS projects contribute to the twin goals of CDM, i.e. cost-effective emission reductions for developed countries and sustainable development for host countries? The issue of allowing CCS projects under CDM in a post-2012 treaty is highly contested. Proponents argue that CCS is a mature technology ready to be deployed to slow carbon emissions where they are most needed, namely in coal-rich growing developing countries, calling for technology transfer.

Opponents argue that CCS is an unproven and immature technology and making CCS eligible as CDM projects will make developing countries ‘guinea pigs’ since issues of storage, leakage, monitoring and liability are largely unresolved in rich industrialized countries. The paper reviews this contested debate and the competing arguments among industry actors, NGOs and developed and developing countries will be mapped. Key methods are participatory observations, argumentative and discourse analysis and archival studies of the negotiation process. The results demonstrate that the heated debate on CCS in post-2012 climate negotiations raises larger debates on risk governance, uncertainty in the employment of large-scale technologies, the role of coal and fossil fuels in future energy production, and burden sharing and equity between the North and the South and current and future generations.

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IOP Publishing- Lund University