Carbon Management and the Role of “Hard to abate Emissions”

Abstract
The discussion on the capture and storage of CO2 (CCS) has intensified in a number of EU member states since the adoption of the climate neutrality goals. While on the EU level, the European Commission relied on CCS as part of its arsenal for reducing emissions for a while, in other countries like Germany, CCS was seen by politicians and the public as a technology that is not an option. Germany even adopted a ban on commercial CCS in 2012. It was only with the decision of the German Constitutional Court and the amendment of the Climate Protection Act in 2021 that the conviction increasingly prevailed that climate neutrality by 2045 will hardly be achievable without CCS. This change in perception is reflected in the key points of the German Carbon Management Strategy published earlier this year as well as the Long-term Strategy on Negative Emissions. These not only recognize that CCS has a necessary role to play in achieving climate neutrality, but also that CCS-based negative emissions will be necessary to reverse global warming overshoots beyond the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. Although the key points of carbon management have been published, questions remain unanswered that also arise for other countries when dealing with CCS. A fundamental question is which emissions should (or may) be reduced via CCS at all. This naturally has repercussions on the quantity of emissions for which storage is an option, and therefore also on technology development, infrastructure expansion and the design of regulation. A recurring term in this context is “hard to abate” emissions. Against the background of the national and international development of CCS, this policy talk focusses on the delineation and potential implications of a focus on “heard to abate” emissions in carbon management.