Project description
Negative emission technology for a sustainable transition
Achieving the Paris Agreement objectives may require carbon dioxide removal, but current technologies are underdeveloped and carry risks. Understanding the potential for diffusion and the impacts of carbon removal methods is critical for future climate action. The ERC-funded FIND project aims to evaluate the feasibility and social desirability of limiting global warming through negative emission technologies. The project seeks to ensure that these technologies contribute to long-term sustainable development rather than impede it. By integrating various disciplines, it will provide evidence on carbon removal solutions. The project will also assess policies to support a rapid and sustainable transition to a net-zero society, aligning with Europe’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.
Objective
The FIND project will develop an innovative framework to assess the feasibility and social desirability of limiting global warming through the diffusion of negative emission technologies. Current global climate action is deeply insufficient to deliver the objectives of the Paris Agreement and containing global warming to 1.5 °C will likely require the deployment of carbon dioxide removals. However, the technologies to sequestrate and store carbon from the atmosphere are currently immature, risky, and highly questioned. Understanding the effective diffusion potential of carbon removal methods and their socioeconomic and environmental impacts is pivotal to design future climate action. The FIND project aims to ensure that negative emission technologies act as an enabler, not a barrier, of long-run sustainable development. It brings together different disciplines – namely, climate science, economics, innovation studies, climate finance, integrated assessment, and agent-based modelling - in a coherent and synergic whole. FIND is designed to provide breakthrough evidence about two crucial and under-investigated aspects of carbon removal solutions: (i) how their techno-economic paradigms evolve and relate to the broader technological landscape, and (ii) how immature and uncertain technologies can be financed to provide social value rather than speculative interest. By combing innovation, finance, and political economy into a quantitative theory of carbon removal operationalization unfolding at global scale, FIND will expand the state-of-the-art in climate-energy-economy modelling and reassess decarbonization pathways. The project will evaluate climate and non-climate policies to create robust, no-regret policy portfolios supporting a rapid and sustainable path to a net-zero society. FIND will be of high relevance for public policy and civil society, especially considering Europe’s commitment to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 while spurring green and inclusive growth.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
56127 Pisa
Italy