Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) approaches

Date de clôture : 27 sept. 2022  
APPEL À PROJET CLÔTURÉ

Project results are expected to contribute to some of the following expected outcomes:

• Support climate policies through an enhanced understanding of existing and emerging carbon dioxide removal options in terms of their technical readiness, key requirements (land and other resource needs, geographical and geological constraints, primary energy needs, etc.), short- and long-term sequestration potential, permanence, impacts (environmental, social, health, resource depletion, etc.) including potential co-benefits.
• Support climate models and integrated assessment models through an improved parametrisation of these technologies and solutions, allowing their better integration into pathways and strategies and broadening the carbon dioxide removal technology options that can be numerically modelled.
• A harmonised, comprehensive and transparent methodology for the characterisation and comparison of such technologies and the barriers to their deployment, which can facilitate public discourse on their role and impacts.
• Gain better insight into the extended, system-level impacts of these technologies by considering ripple effects (e.g. extended impacts, land benefits foregone, opportunity costs, and rebound effects).
• Develop abatement cost estimates in function of time profile as well as factors like scale of deployment, key input factors (e.g., land/sea space, energy, reservoirs).
• Exploration and demonstration of business/ policy/ MRV (Monitoring, reporting and verification) frameworks for CDR uptake at scale, ranging from plant level to incorporation of CDR in international MRV and accounting (for example in the case of bioenergy trade).

Projects under this topic should identify an extended range of nature-based and technical CDR methods, analyse and characterise them in a consistent and transparent assessment framework. In this way, projects should:

• Deliver realistic estimates of each approach’s potential scale, cost, and effectiveness: on the basis of factors such as technical readiness, key land and other resource needs, geographical and geological constraints, primary energy needs (and associated impacts, including emissions), short- and long-term sequestration potential (including risk of non-permanence), key impacts (environmental, social, health, resource depletion, etc.) and risks.
• Allow the better parametrisation of integrated assessment models with respect to removals as well a better design of forward-looking policies. Develop abatement cost estimates in function of time profile as well variables like scale of deployment and key input factors.
• Explore efficient incentive and governance frameworks to facilitate CDR uptake at scale, including social acceptance, ethical and regulatory considerations, as well as identifying major issues and options for establishing MRV and accounting systems associated with CDR in general and specific technologies where applicable.

Analysis under this action should be based on practical experiences (in particular with a range of land-based projects), existing pilot and experimental projects, technical and theoretical analysis and review, including system-level impacts by considering ripple effects through consequential analysis, including land benefits foregone, opportunity costs and rebound effects, key barriers to deployment and governance challenges.

Interactions with CCUS topics under Destination 3 and HORIZON-CL5-2021-D2-01-08: Emerging technologies for a climate neutral Europe under Breakthrough Technologies are encouraged.

Projects investigating the use of CDR technologies for enhanced oil recovery are not eligible.

Where appropriate, interaction with the topics related to climate-ecosystem interaction (HORIZON-CL5-2021-D1-01-08, HORIZON-CL5-2021-D1-01-09, HORIZON-CL5-2022-D1-02-05) as well as marine topics (Cluster 6) is encouraged in order to foster integrative and system approaches including different scientific communities and disciplines, as well as different sectors of the society.

This topic requires the effective contribution of SSH disciplines and the involvement of SSH experts, institutions as well as the inclusion of relevant SSH expertise, in order to produce meaningful and significant effects enhancing the societal impact of the related research activities.

Socio-economic science and humanities