Summary/Abstract
This paper draws on a recent global assessment of carbon dioxide removal (or negative emissions) technologies (NETs) undertaken by the author for Friends of the Earth in the UK. Alongside criteria such as cost and technical readiness, the review applied criteria regarding controllability, accountability and side effects (including distributional impacts) to around 30 prospective NETs found in the literature.
This paper presents a summary of results of the assessment, and in particular, focuses on the environmental justice and governance issues identified as arising from the development of NETs. NETs could have major implications for intergenerational equity if their development (or potential) permits mitigation to be postponed, and their deployment could have significant distributional impacts between countries or groups.
Three major concerns are discussed. First, the potential moral hazard arising from the development of NETs, and possible mechanisms to limit the implications of moral hazard both within and beyond carbon markets. Second, the challenges arising from the distribution (and potential limits to the overall availability) of geological storage for carbon dioxide. And third, the implications of competition for biological productivity for negative emissions through biotic technologies (eg tree burial) or through the application of carbon capture and storage techniques to bioenergy.
The paper also reflects on the selection, definition and application of the assessment criteria to derive potential lessons for the governance of current and future geoengineeering research, development and deployment.