Underground as a Controversial Mitigation of Climate Change Option: Example of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Implementation

• In Event: Practical Limits of ANT and Explorations in Other Conceptual Frameworks

Abstract

The idea of capturing CO2 from industry to solve global warming issue was first detail in a Marchetti paper in 1977 (Marchetti 1977). In his paper Marchetti highlight the critical impact of CO2 emissions on global warming. According to him, managing these emissions is a needed action to maintain economical model. According to Marchetti store CO2 on ocean ground to dissolve it and consequently reduce it impact on global warming is the most relevant option. He also envisioned geological storage but stressed the limited capacity of this option. However, after some controversial experimentation of oceanic storage of CO2 (De Figueirdo 2003) the application of the technology evolved and only geological storage was considered as a relevant option.
In this paper we will describe various CCS actor-networks in focusing on the role assigned to the underground. Our research material is composed of scientific paper, newspaper articles, but also case studies in various European countries that implement CCS. According to the Actor Network Theory Methodology (Callon 1979, 1987; Latour 1984) we will show that in some cases underground storage is not an issue. Conversely in other cases the underground storage issue is controversial and forced CCS project’s developer to think about CO2 reuse options. Therefore we will be able to clarify the role of underground and then of CCS in climate change mitigation

Author

• Jonas Pigeon, IDEES