Projects
1. Projecting future costs of direct air capture
This project will help to understand the costs and financing needs of DACS. More specifically, the investment needs and financial support structures required for DACS to make a significant contribution to stabilizing atmospheric CO2 levels will be derived. Since the path to large-scale deployment will also require support from private and public entities, the project also explores how to reduce the cost of these policies. To assess the cost and financing challenges, we will use techno-economic modeling and expert interviews. In a second step, the effectiveness of potential financing instruments will be assessed, using financial modelling of the risk/return effects of policies for investors.
Contact: Katrin Sievert
2. Policy Designs for Addressing Societal Acceptance Challenges in CDR Deployment
In democratic countries, policymakers are responsive to citizens’ demands. This is also reflected in the field of climate policy where public opinion often aligns with policy actions taken in a country. For this reason, public opinion is a key factor in shaping political decisions. The project, therefore, assesses the societal acceptance of policies incentivizing permanent Carbon Dioxide Removal using public opinion surveys and survey-embedded experiments.
From a public opinion view point permanent Carbon Dioxide Removal constitutes temporal and spatial governance challenges. First, the technology providing permanent storage of CO2 is still more expensive compared to methods that provide less durable CO2 removals. This constitutes a potential acceptance challenge of policies that try to incentivize permanent Carbon Dioxide Removal since citizens might disregard future benefits for climate change mitigation connected to early investment in those technologies for themselves but also for future generations. The project assesses whether temporal distance to benefits drives preferences for permanent CDR deployment and identifies possible solutions to this public acceptance challenge by highlighting anomalies in citizens’ discounting behavior and the role of policy design for preference formation. Second, perceived risks associated with the geological storage of CO2 also raise concerns among the public, especially if they live close to potential storage sites. Therefore, political initiatives to promote cross-border transport and storage of CO2 abroad have become more common. The project assessed how the distribution of costs, risks, and benefits between countries affects citizens’ perception of permanent CO2 storage.
Contact: Susanne Rhein
3. Techno-economic trade-offs and political feasibility of near-term strategies to enable Direct Air Capture
Building on lessons learned from previous transitions to low-carbon technologies, we identify different near-term policy pathways to mobilize Direct Air Capture. Using a mixed methods approach, we assess their differences in terms of techno-economic outcomes as well as social and environmental trade-offs. We finally empirically assess the political feasibility of different pathways to enable Direct Air Capture.
Contact: Nicoletta Brazzola