Matthias Honegger

• MSc Env. Sc ETH
• Head of Research on CDR and SRM at ICFG | Perspectives Climate Research

This paper has been prepared by Perspectives Climate Research and KTH Royal Institute of Technology as part of the research project “Nordic bio-CCS cooperation through Article 6”, funded by the Swedish Energy Agency under the Industrial Leap support programme. The project examines the conditions for promoting the capture and durable storage of biog...

Purpose of review Despite the increasing political attention and support, the high costs of many carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies remain a barrier to their large-scale deployment. We provide an overview of the economics for two key CDR options – BECCS and DACCS – and review proposed and existing CDR policies to address the “CDR gap” in ach...

The following summarizes three workshops exploring the landscape of the interrelated non- technical challenges of CCUS (Carbon capture utilization and storage) hubs and clusters in Europe. The workshops were held to jointly with industries explore expert insights toward a strengthened shared understanding of both common as well as region-specific c...

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) – the creation, enhancement, and upscaling of carbon sinks – has become a pillar of national and corporate commitments towards Net Zero emissions, as well as pathways towards realizing the Paris Agreement’s ambitious temperature targets. In this perspective, we explore CDR as an emerging issue of Earth System Governance...

Successful development of CCU and CCS hubs and clusters is as much a technological challenge as it is a non-technical challenge. Non-technical challenges span social and political aspects, economics, monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV), as well as legal, regulatory, and contractual aspects. Many of these can become showstoppers if they are...

Successful development of CCU and CCS hubs and clusters is as much a technological challenge as it is a non-technical challenge. Non-technical challenges across social and political aspects, economics, monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV), as well as legal, regulatory and contractual aspects all can become showstoppers if they are not given...

Presentation held at the Baltic Carbon Forum 2023 based off of work by the CCUS ZEN consortium Work Package 2

The development of Hubs and Clusters for Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) involves complex non-technical challenges and issues pertaining to the involvement of many different sectors, various actor-types and complex regulatory, and legal conditions as well as the need for coherent monitoring, reporting and verification and development...

International carbon markets are potentially a very powerful tool for mobilizing carbon dioxide removal in line with Paris Agreement ambitions to limit global warming to well below 2°C. This requires reaching global net-zero emissions between 2050 and 2070. Yet, carbon market regulators have not approached removals in a systematic manner. This revi...

As it is increasingly uncertain whether humanity can limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, Solar Radiation Modification (SRM) has been suggested as a potential temporary complement to mitigation. While no replacement for mitigation, evidence to date suggests that some SRM methods could contribute to reducing climate risks and would be technically fe...

Carbon dioxide removal technologies are gaining prominence in academia, industry and policy, yet the need for substantial funding raises serious challenges. This comment outlines these issues and charts a path for the effective, systematic and fair mobilization of funds for removals. Carbon dioxide removal technologies are gaining prominence in aca...

Climate change mitigation actions, including those aimed at developing and scaling carbon dioxide removal (CDR) activities spanning the industrial, energy, and agroforestry sector, emerge in a context of internationally shared norms that include governance objectives, legal provisions and informal expectations, and societal expectations. Establishe...

We propose a conceptual framework to explain why some technologies are more difficult to govern than others in global environmental governance. We start from the observation that some technologies pose transboundary environmental risks, some provide capacities for managing such risks, and some do both. For “ambiguous” technologies, potential risks...

This NET-Rapido report offers an overview of existing and planned carbon dioxide removal tracking methodologies, specific proposals for refining and revising existing ones, overcoming gaps and problems in an efficient and yet environmentally robust manner.

With national governments almost universally pledging to achieve net zero emissions, a key uncertainty is how net zero policies will affect global equity. It is unclear which policy measures are available for achieving net zero equitably, what the social and environmental implications of these measures will be under global pathways, or how they mig...

This session will survey global evidence and examples of best practice on mitigation solutions and enabling conditions for mitigation. Access a video recording of the session here: https://www.cambridge.org/engage/coe/article-details/60cf3af7b36152cc3700ec15

Solar radiation modification, particularly stratospheric aerosol injection, holds the potential to reduce the impacts of climate change on sustainable development, yet could itself generate negative impacts and is subject to intense scholarly debate based on relatively little evidence. Based on expert elicitation involving over 30 individuals with...

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) poses a significant and complex public policy challenge in the long-term. Presently treated as a marginal aspect of climate policy, addressing CDR as a public good is quickly becoming essential for limiting warming to well below 2 or 1.5°C by achieving net-zero emissions in time – including by mobilization of public and...

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is often characterized as separate from climate change mitigation. Discussion of CDR governance – despite enjoying growing interest – tends to overlook how key provisions on mitigation apply. Similarly, many climate policy processes have ignored CDR. CDR may have been discursively held separate from ‘mitigation’ due to...

This report examines how policy ought to mobilize continuous funding for carbon dioxide removal in order to provide a necessary public service – the sewage treatment of the skies so to speak. We examine various requirements that policies and policy mixes ought to provide in the near- and the medium to long-term in order to see CDR activities funded...

Carbon dioxide removals (CDR) complementing emission reduction efforts are needed to mitigate climate change. Many technological CDR options that could result in highly permanent removal of CO2 only exist as concepts or in very few pilot installations due to their high cost and lack of non-carbon revenue. By mapping the current public policy and pr...

As the international community’s best expression of a collective vision of a desirable future, the 2015 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) present a framework against which to assess the broader impact of emerging technologies. Implications of technologies and practices for removing CO2 from the atmosphere (CDR) are not fully understood and ha...

Wird Deutschland bis zum Jahr 2050 klimaneutral oder nicht doch eher treibhausgasneutral beziehungsweise CO2-neutral sein? Eines ist klar: Wir wollen den Klimawandel stoppen, haben uns dafür ein Ziel gesetzt und wollen es bis 2050 erreicht haben. Aber was genau eigentlich: Was hat sich Deutschland, was die Europäische Union und viele andere Länder...

Climate change is a paradigmatic example of systemic risk. Recently, proposals for large‐scale interventions—carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM)—have started to redefine climate governance strategies. We describe how evolving modeling practices are trending toward optimized and “best‐case” projections—portraying deploy...

Climate change and climate-altering technologies pose an emerging risk governance challenge involving risk-risk trade-offs both regarding potential outcomes as well as governance choices. Trade-offs characterize not only various emergent governance and policy design choices but also how research is conducted and communicated. This chapter identifie...

Abstract Some climate engineering technologies are being developed to remove CO2 from the atmosphere (carbon dioxide removal, CDR), which is expected to contribute to reducing and preventing climate change. Some other technologies (solar radiation modification, SRM) would artificially cool the planet and could reduce some symptoms and risks of clim...

This Briefing Report was prepared by Perspectives as part of the research project NET-RAPIDO (Negative emissions technologies: readiness assessment, policy instrument design, options for governance and dialogue) supported by the Swedish Energy Agency (SEA). The research project aims to enhance understanding of opportunities, challenges and risks of...

Potential consequences of future SG deployment are assessed in a growing number of authoritative studies and reports, yet results are contested due to lack of clarity in three respects: • Defining what SG deployment might be, requires making conscious choices throughout a pyramid of biophysical, socio-political, and value-laden assumptions. • The p...

Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement stand as milestone diplomatic achievements. However, immense discrepancies between political commitments and governmental action remain. Combined national climate commitments fall far short of the Paris Agreement's 1.5/2°C targets. Similar political ambition gaps persist across various areas of...

International policy instruments that mobilize practices and technologies for removing CO2 from the atmosphere and reliably storing it (Carbon Dioxide Removal, CDR) are currently non-existent despite most mitigation pathways for 2°C or 1.5°C relying on implementation of CDR at scale. Feasibility of CDR at large-scale is highly uncertain due to hig...

• While there is a vast toolbox of regulatory and financial policy instruments for climate change mitigation, its application requires robust political will. • The IPCC Special Report on the 1.5°C target specified in the Paris Agreement shows that greenhouse gas mitigation ambition needs to be raised drastically to keep the target of global net zer...

The Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development highlight the inextricably linked need for tackling climate change alongside-and as an element of-sustainable development (SD). Reaching the Paris Agreement's targets requires large-scale removal of CO2 by Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs). Technologies currently proposed to d...

This report explores the potential implications which two groups of experimental technologies aimed at managing global climate risk, known as Carbon Removal and Solar Geoengineering, could have for delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The report is based on a review of recent literature, combined with expert analysis and insights p...

This report was funded by the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative (C2G2) and prepared in partnership between C2G2, Climate Strategies (CS) and Perspectives Climate Research (PCR). The Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) has served as independent academic partner. Any views expressed in this report are solely those...

Negative emissions technologies (NETs), especially bioenergy with carbon capture and storage and direct air capture and storage, have been invoked as necessary to achieve the aspirational 1.5°C target of the Paris Agreement. However, currently their costs are estimated to be very high, NETs do not seem to offer co-benefits besides mitigating climat...

Despite extensive efforts, greenhouse gases continue to be emitted in vast amounts, with potentially devastating consequences around the world. This is why targeted interventions in the climate system, known collectively as ‘climate engineering’, are receiving increased attention. Proposed approaches are often divided into two groups: those intende...

Despite extensive efforts, greenhouse gases continue to be emitted in vast amounts, with potentially devastating consequences around the world. This is why targeted interventions in the climate system, known collectively as ‘climate engineering’, are receiving increased attention. Proposed approaches are often divided into two groups: those intende...

This white paper resulted from a risk dialogue project with climate scientists and experts on the subject of climate engineering – conducted by the neutral and independent Risk-Dialogue Foundation St. Gallen between April 2016 and March 2017. The aim was to identify the current state of research on the topic as well as related risk and to evaluate...

Dieses Vorhaben untersucht für das Umweltbundesamt die Möglichkeit, die Rolle von Nachhaltigkeitszielen in den zukünftigen Marktmechanismen unter der UNFCCC zu stärken. Die Ergebnisse des Vorhabens sollen Eingang in die öffentliche Debatte finden um interessierten Parteien bei der Meinungsbildung zum laufendem Prozess zu unterstützen, insbesondere...

After the signing of the Paris Agreement, the policy landscape for the World Bank’s Carbon Initiative for Development (Ci-Dev) has changed substantially. Host country governments will no longer look at the generation of revenues from the Clean Development Mechanism alone, but need to assess the requirements of (Intended) Nationally Determined Contr...

Building a NAMA concept on an ongoing PoA is an approach to NAMA design that increasingly draws attention and may become an attractive approach for developing practical NAMAs from the bottom-up. The main questions that have to be addressed regard the parallel activities under the PoA and the NAMA respectively: the attribution of emissions reduction...

The Paris Agreement (“Agreement”) has been widely lauded as a major step forward in multilateral efforts to address global climate change. Its bottom-up approach based on national pledges, its universal scope entailing substantive commitments by both developed and developing countries, its ambitious climate targets, and other aspects of the Agreeme...

Market mechanisms are important instruments to achieve cost-effective mitigation and thus a key topic of international negotiations on a new international agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Implemented correctly, they can increase flexibility and thus remove barriers to scaling up mitigation ambition...

This study examines whether and how African parties are making changes to their INDCs in the process of ratifying the Paris Agreement. Moreover, the study analyses whether and how countries are planning dedicated policies and measures to implement and achieve the mitigation components of their INDCs. To achieve this aim, a summary overview of the (...

Despite not having led to emissions reductions compatible with the target of limiting warming to 2° C, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process provides important lessons for the emerging governance of climate engineering. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a highly relevant institution with re...

Over the last years, the development of new market mechanisms (NMM) has stalled in the international climate negotiations, particularly due to developing countries lacking trust in the willingness of industrialized countries to generate demand for emission credits. Therefore, it is important to engage in pilot activities that can test the character...

The role of market mechanisms in the current transition period in the international climate policy regime is characterized by an increasing supply of available carbon credits as well as weak demand for these credits due to generally low mitigation ambition among Annex-I countries. This has resulted in a price depression for UNFCCC-backed carbon cre...

Ziel dieses Forschungsvorhabens ist die Untersuchung von sektoralen Ansätzen in einem internationalen Regime der Klimapolitik, mit Fokus darauf eine Brücke zwischen existierenden und zukünftigen Mechanismen und Instrumenten zu schlagen. Hierfür analysieren wir zunächst die Diskussionen und Entwicklungen zu sektoralen Ansätzen in bestehenden und zuk...

This study analyses how sectoral approaches are evolving in existing and future mitigation mechanisms, and how they can help shaping the transition period to a new climate regime most effectively. The analysis is based on an evaluation of recent UNFCCC submissions, a desk review of the relevant literature and databases, as well as a set of semi-str...

Climate change may become disruptive to humanity in the 21st century. Large-scale technological interventions have been proposed to limit the impacts, but making sensible use of these options is an unprecedented challenge of societal decision-making. I address the following question: "What are the main challenges to good governance of climate engin...

• The 21st century faces a twofold challenge: The end of cheap fossil energies and the threat of dangerous climate change. A new energy technology generating abundant, zero carbon and low cost power fitting into the existing power infrastructure could become a solution for both. • Such a highly scalable new energy technology with operating costs an...

International negotiations on climate change under the UNFCCC are increasingly burdened by the gap between low political will to engage in emissions mitigation and the level of mitigation required for limiting warming to 2°C. Given the growing understanding that mitigation will be insufficient, adaptation has recently gained in importance – a step...