Carbon Capture and Utilization: The hidden industrial decarbonization strategy?

Industrial decarbonization remains one of the major challenges in climate policy approaches worldwide. For „hard-to abate“-industries such as the cement industry, simply shifting to a renewable electricity supply or to green hydrogen will not do the trick in achieving net-zero emissions. CO2 will still be emitted as it stems from industrial processes and is not all energy related. What is more, industrial processes such as chemical production often require carbon as a resource. So far, this carbon mainly stems from fossil resources. It is becoming increasingly apparent that industrial decarbonization will call for a range of different strategies that will have to be developed in parallel. One of the available approaches to achieving carbon neutrality in industry is Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU): CO2 is captured, converted, and then used, for instance, to produce synthetic fuels or as a feedstock for the chemical industry. As a building block in industrial decarbonization strategies, this so-called CCU approach, although technologically available at least in its early stages, does not seem to receive a lot of attention – neither in academia nor in politics. This paper seeks to learn more about why that is, thus beginning to address an existing research gap on CCU. It focuses on Germany as a single case study to analyze how CCU is perceived in media discourse. Applying framing as a conceptual framework, it studies which actors are involved in media discourse on CCU, what the perceived problems and challenges around CCU are and what types of solutions actors suggest. For the analysis, the paper draws on a unique dataset of print, online and social media for the years 2020, 2021 and 2022. The analysis enables us to understand better the issues of public and political acceptance of CCU technologies. Preliminary results reveal the many open questions and challenges surrounding CCU technologies, including high costs, high energy demand, questions surrounding the certification of sustainability of different CCU approaches and its actual contribution to reducing emissions and/or contributing to a circular economy approach. Moreover, it shows that only a very limited number of actors from science and industries are part of the media discourse. It is not a broad societal discourse. Based on its media analysis, the paper finally develops an assessment of the feasibility of CCU approaches as an industrial decarbonization strategy.