Etienne Schneider (University of Vienna)
The Political Economy of Carbon Removal: Asset Revaluation and Uneven Development
Moderation: Carmen Elsayad
Wednesday, January 21, 2025, 16:15-17:45
Department of Development Studies, Sensengasse 3, Room SG 2, 1090 Vienna
More than three decades into international climate policy, global greenhouse gas emis-sions continue to rise. Overshooting the 1.5° C target – and with it, facing catastrophic im-pacts and the crossing of tipping points in the Earth system – appears increasingly inevita-ble. In this context, the promise of carbon removal and negative emissions has gained momentum in climate policy: a range of emerging technologies to extract CO2 from the atmosphere and store it durably. In climate models and policy debates, these methods are envisioned to offset residual emissions, and eventually draw down global temperature af-ter an overshoot of the 1.5 or 2° target. Yet, even as large-scale feasibility remains uncer-tain, these methods generate powerful fictional expectations that reshape the present-day climate politics. This talk outlines a critical political economy perspective on carbon removal, focussing on how such expectations impact on the politics of asset stranding and revaluation, and how they reconfigure questions of uneven development and climate jus-tice.