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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Clim.
Sec. Carbon Dioxide Removal
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fclim.2024.1514753

Risking Delay: The storylines of (Bioenergy with) Carbon Capture and Storage in Swedish Parliamentary Discourse

Provisionally accepted
Ashley Almqvist-Ingersoll Ashley Almqvist-Ingersoll 1,2*
  • 1 Department of Thematic Studies, Linköping University, Linköping, Östergötland, Sweden
  • 2 Center for Climate Science and Policy Research, Linköping University, Linköping, Östergötland, Sweden

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), along with Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), feature heavily in climate mitigation scenarios. Nevertheless, the technologies remain controversial within the broader mitigation discourse, in part for their potential to excuse delay in more ambitious emissions reductions in the short term. Sweden has included BECCS and CCS as proposed "supplementary measures" to enable the country to meet its ambitious target of achieving net negative emissions by 2045. Hajer's Argumentative Approach to Discourse Analysis is applied to Swedish parliamentary speeches, motions, and written questions and answers, to uncover the storylines and attendant assumptions constituting Swedish policy deliberation regarding CCS and BECCS. This study finds that by problematizing climate change as an issue of emissions, actors position CCS and BECCS within a dominant neoliberal discourse and characterizes them as tools to facilitate a green transition centering on industrial and economic competitiveness. This discourse lacks detail, and risks delay by oversimplifying the needs and requirements for CCS and BECCS deployment. Meanwhile, a CCS-critical discourse acknowledges the need for negative emissions but challenges storylines portraying the technology as inexpensive or easy to deploy rapidly. If pursued, this discourse could serve to sharpen the debate about the technologies and bring planning in line with aspirations, helping to avert risks of delay.

    Keywords: Policy discourse analysis, CCS -Carbon Capture and Sequestration, BECCS, Neoliberalism, Storylines, Sweden

    Received: 21 Oct 2024; Accepted: 27 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Almqvist-Ingersoll. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Ashley Almqvist-Ingersoll, Department of Thematic Studies, Linköping University, Linköping, 581 83, Östergötland, Sweden

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