November 12, 2024
Holly Caggiano, SCARP Assistant Professor in Climate Justice and Environmental Planning, is excited to let us know about a new perspective paper she co-authored with colleagues led by Sara Nawaz, Director of Research at American University’s Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal (& IRES alum!), titled:
“Carbon Removal for a Just Transition”
Caggiano and Nawaz argue that while emerging carbon removal practices don’t currently align with just transition principles, we can and should reorient its delivery to support equitable climate mitigation efforts.
There is growing acknowledgement of the need to remove and durably store carbon dioxide. Even with dramatic emissions reductions, achieving net zero will require the creation of new infrastructures, institutions, and processes for carbon removal on the scale of major existing industries. Removal technologies are in development but their material configurations in functioning socio-technical systems are as yet undetermined. As private and public investments flow into research, development, and deployment, the foundations of an emerging carbon removal industry are being laid down via policy decisions and presumptions that will shape the field for decades or more. Here we argue that although deployment of carbon removal is necessary to underpin a just transition, its emerging configurations and governance run counter to just transition principles. With reference to findings from an expert convening, we highlight a set of critical problems and inequities within the emerging political-economic model of the nascent sector. While scholars have previously examined the role of carbon removal in climate policy, and the technical and economic conditions for its effective delivery, we focus here on the prospect of radical interventions to reorient its practical delivery to support a just transition. We suggest interventions to guarantee that carbon removal is done for just purposes (e.g. not to allow high emitters to continue emitting), and ensure that carbon removal can be done sustainably and responsibly at the scales imagined. We call for mandatory substantive participation in decision-making, particularly amongst marginalized groups. We look beyond commodification, markets, and private ownership as models for deploying carbon removal and argue that fossil interests and historical emitters must be held financially responsible for carbon removal without being placed at its helm.
Key policy insights:
Carbon removal can – and must – be part of a just transition.
As a nascent carbon removal sector emerges, the status quo trajectory suggests significant need for political economic reorientation to align with principles of a just transition.
Radical policy ideas worth exploring further include: purchasing pools to replace offset markets; government support for public and community carbon removal providers; broad and independent public deliberation; and a global reparations fund.
About Holly Caggiano
Caggiano’s research explores social dimensions of the renewable energy transition in the US and Canada. She is interested in how diverse stakeholder groups form coalitions to advocate for environmental change. This work connects patterns across decision-making scales, exploring the ways individual decision-making influences collective action and how collective action disrupts existing relations of power.
Drawing from her interdisciplinary social science background, Caggiano’s work critically evaluates both top-down and bottom-up approaches that aim to advance equitable climate change mitigation & adaptation efforts.
Her dissertation research explored social-behavioral drivers of household resource consumption at the food-energy-water nexus.