Negative Emission Technologies: Miraculous Solution or Aberrant Blindness?

The IPCC tries to imagine scenarios to meet the objective of limiting global warming to +1.5 °C compared to the pre-industrial period. One scenario places importance on negative emission technologies (NETs). NETs involve taking GHGs and storing them underground or in the oceans. CCS is complex in many ways: there are differing views on the feasibility of the technology, its sequestration capacity, its deployability, and its long-term safety and stability. It was therefore interesting to know if they are a miraculous solution or an aberrant blindness. This study aims to study the representations of NETs among academics and to see how representations of the economy and the environment are determinant in the representations of NETs. The research is based on semi-directive interviews with seven academics. The results show, through discourse analysis, that academics neither support nor totally reject NETs. These social representations vary on the place that academics give to NETs among solutions to address global warming. Support for NETs and CCS is conditional on the implementation of a range of other decarbonization solutions, particularly renewable energy and energy efficiency. Interviewees are quite critical of the environmental impacts of CCS, the economic cost, and the carbon sequestration capacity.