Garbage collection for the global climate? Negative emissions future promise and business model

Nils Matzner, PostDoc Researcher at the Department of Social Science and Technology at the Technical University of Munich speaks on topics such as governance and responsibility in new climate technologies as well as on interdisciplinarity, mixed methods, discourse and network research.

The atmosphere is a kind of landfill for our exhaust gases. We emit greenhouse gases that will contribute to global warming for decades to come. So-called 'negative emissions' or 'carbon removal' promises to be a kind of waste disposal. On the one hand, the great risks and uncertainties of negative emissions technologies (NETs) make them very controversial; on the other hand, they could be a business area for companies. At the same time, many climate researchers and the IPCC see the 1.5°C target as no longer achievable without NETs. Has the time run out for a simple yes-or-no decision on NETs and do we now need to think about incentives for responsible NETs? How can there be economic NETs on the one hand and responsible and sustainable NETs on the other?