Understanding and addressing the social dimensions of carbon removal

Right now, environmental and climate scientists across the world are racing to develop a plan to reverse the Earth’s warming climate.

Carbon removal — a process to slow (and even possibly reverse) climate change by capturing and storing carbon — is one of the techniques that experts consider “critical” to reaching the American goal of having net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

While many people across the globe suffer at the hand of global warming, addressing the issue isn’t simple. The process of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the atmosphere isn’t just complex to implement: It will also deeply affect the lived experiences of families and communities where the industry exists. And it may be the social dimensions of carbon removal that are tougher to manage.

“I think for all of my time working in CDR, I felt like the social risks of deployment, the community dynamics, and host sites where we're trying to employ these technologies has been an undervalued and underappreciated part of what's going to what it's going to take to scale this industry,” said Marcela Mulholland, deputy director of partnerships for the Carbon Removal Alliance, at an Arizona State University seminar discussing the social dimensions of CDR. “It feels like the world of social science research for CDR should be at least comparable to the kind of technical research that we see for these technologies. Too often, they're siloed, and the people in the technical world don't necessarily talk to or incorporate the findings from the social scientists into their work.”

The seminar — held on October 3 at the ASU Barrett & O'Connor Center in Washington, D.C. — was twofold, with researchers discussing what they’ve learned while studying the social dimensions of CDR while also questioning how future carbon removal processes can be more responsible to the communities it inhabits. Held blocks from the White House by the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes at ASU, the group of experts and attendees were prompted to consider how considering the social dimensions of CDR could make a difference in its success.

“People have all these experiences of harm from [the] industry and promises that have been made about new industries, and so that's another reason why they are maybe less accepting [of carbon removal] — because they've heard this story before, right?” said Holly Buck, a professor from the University of Buffalo and author of a new report, “100 Conversations on Carbon Removal, Decarbonization and Desired Futures,” which spanned research from five regions in the United States. “You need that qualitative piece to fully understand what numbers out of the survey are telling you.”

Buck’s research examined five different approaches to carbon removal in Alaska, California, Maine, Oklahoma and West Virginia. As Buck described, she and her team’s research analyzed what real people in each region felt was feasible, what they saw as beneficial, and what resources would be needed to actually make CDR a trustworthy prospect in their home.

“Intersecting issues that are way beyond carbon is going to determine the feasibility of having gigaton-scale industries with any of this, and housing and workforce came up a lot,” said Buck. “If we want new industries, there need to be places for people to live. This isn't secondary; it's something that needs to be thought through at the same time as we're having these new industry conversations with the energy transition.”

While there are several different methods of carbon removal, the social dimensions of them often remain the same. Sara Nawaz, a director of research for American University’s Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal, discussed a method of carbon removal called ocean alkalinity enhancements (OAE), in which adding alkaline to seawater helps to store carbon. In her research, Nawaz found similar distrust of industry from the local communities, which she summarized in three top-level findings:

• People care about more than solely marine and ecological impacts of OAE. The effects of OAE on the local supply chain, energy, mining, and disposable waste were also top of mind for interviewees.
• Pursuing OAE in a “circular approach” by repurposing existing infrastructure was important. “We don’t want to build all this infrastructure and then have it get locked into a future with OAE if we’re not sure yet if we want it,” said Nawaz in her presentation.
• Ownership and financing matters. “There was a lot of expression of distrust to big companies, a preference for community, tribal, public ownership and governance models,” said Nawaz.

Even though people who would be affected locally by OAE may very much be in favor of slowing climate change, they’re often still wrestling with whether a wide-scale effort like OAE is truly worth the money and effort when it could harm other aspects of their community.

“A lot of times we talk about science for society, but sometimes we forget that social science, at least across the board, is also for society,” said Amanda Borth, an associate researcher at CSPO. “Figuring out what society needs means we need to be having these types of collaborations.”

For ASU, sustainability is essential to education. Whether requiring students to take a sustainability class as a part of their general education requirements, challenging itself by world-class sustainability goals or being consistently recognized as a leader in sustainable development, ASU is prioritizing work in sustainability to invite thoughtful discussion and change for the future. But despite its successes to date, ASU and CSPO alike recognize that this effort is only just beginning.

“There's a lot of work to do. There's a lot of things that can go wrong, but also a lot of ways to steer right,” said Borth. “We're working to determine what are the right tools, what are the effective capacities, and what are the effective institutional structures to help move CDR in a way where decision making is equitable, just and responsible and hopefully therefore effective.”