Emerging tensions in the path towards net-zero: Swiss stakeholders’ perspectives on carbon dioxide removal

Governments around the world are starting to make concrete efforts to deploy carbon dioxide removal (CDR) portfolios, consistent with their commitments to achieve net-zero emissions by mid-century. The UK, Sweden, and Norway, for instance, have proactively addressed geochemical- and ecosystem- based methods to achieve their emission targets. The Swiss federal and local governments are also deciding on the role of geological and natural sinks, as well as building materials to reduce hard-to-abate emissions in its aim to get to net-zero emissions by 2050. Defining the role of CDR within each country’s pathway is complex, as it requires deciding choosing options, such as biochar and direct air capture and storage, that are embedded in different knowledge systems, where issues such as the relationship with communities and accounting challenges differ greatly. At the same time, some methods depend on the same energy, infrastructural or natural resources and therefore cannot be looked at independently. Divergent stakeholders’ views on how to “best” get to net-zero can lead to competition for resources, conflict between policy proponents and delay in decisions. Our study analyzes the emerging discourses shaping the role of CDR in the climate policy of Switzerland. It presents a discourse analysis of a set of interviews, reports, and policy texts, exploring the visions on the problem to tackle using CDR and proposed approaches to do so. Our analysis shows areas where knowledge systems around different methods compete or converge in the CDR governance debate. We find out that there are divergencies in the problem to be tackled, with carbon mitigation being the main goal of technological solutions proponents and a co-benefit for natural-solutions proponents. We also observe a trend from considering methods independently to recognizing the need for portfolios and an increasing focus on shared resources needed by different methods. Our work sheds light on how the architecture of CDR options has evolved in the last years and how different knowledge systems influence and collide in the CDR governance debate. This study adds to the emerging body of work using discursive structures as a tool for anticipating how CDR governance may develop, by revealing the circumstances and discursive structures that shape the governance purposes and objects that are thinkable and practicable in Switzerland.