Although Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs) are not yet widely known about outside the research community, all current IPCC pathways to keep global temperature rise to “well below 2C” greatly rely upon NETs, especially in the second half of this century. Among these, Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) has become the most prominent technique in recent IPCC Integrated Assessment Models. However, some researchers and NGOs have expressed serious concerns about the large-scale implementation of NETs, and especially of BECCS, ranging from threats to food security from extensive bioenergy generation, territorial and risk issues related to carbon sequestration, concerns with responsible and legitimate governance, and with possible legal liabilities created by unintended consequences. Further analysis of these concerns thus appears to be both necessary and urgent.
Worryingly, very little has been written to date about NETs by professional ethicists. While there is an emerging literature on the ethics of geoengineering, it is unclear whether the arguments encountered here apply to NETs, and if so to what extent. Indeed, it is also unclear whether the term ‘geoengineering’ is even an apt description of NETs. Debates within this literature include whether geoengineering could be a justified ‘lesser evil’ option, an unacceptable act of human hubris, through to various justice-related concerns with the research, implementation, governance, and cessation of geoengineering techniques. Unfortunately, many discussions concentrate upon Solar Radiation Management techniques, which differ markedly from NETs and raise different concerns. Rare discussions of Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) techniques in this literature are typically highly abstract, leaving important issues related to NETs unaddressed. Indeed, within this literature hardly a word has been written about BECCS. Given the potentially great reliance upon NETs in future climate policy, further analysis of ethical concerns related to them is clearly required. In this paper, I will evaluate some key concerns expressed about NETs and BECCS in particular, drawing upon the existing ethical literature on climate change and geoengineering, along with other research identifying ethical concerns. Although many of these concerns are not yet well-addressed in the ethics literature, its normative resources allow for further reflection on procedural and distributive justice issues associated with NETs, legitimacy issues associated with NETs governance, and remedial responsibilities for loss and damage from both foreseen and unforeseen consequences.
