The politics of carbon management in Austria: Emerging fault lines on carbon capture, storage, utilization and removal

Abstract

With the proliferation of net zero targets in climate policy and corporate climate governance, the question of how to deal with greenhouse gas emissions considered hard-to-abate is attracting growing attention. In this context, the notion of carbon management has emerged on the political agenda – an umbrella term typically encompassing carbon capture and storage (CCS), carbon capture and utilization (CCU) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR). Here, we investigate the emerging politics around the design of a national carbon management strategy in Austria, a country which can be considered a yet understudied latecomer regarding CCS and novel CDR methods including BECCS and DACCS. Based on expert interviews with policy actors as well as qualitative document analysis, we identify four actor coalitions as well as key fault lines. These fault lines specifically relate to a) whether the CCS ban in Austria should be lifted, and b) which economic sectors get access to carbon storage and transport infrastructure as well as subsidy schemes (selective vs. unrestricted integration). We also find that framing CCS, CCU and CDR under the umbrella term carbon management produces specific coalitional effects while simultaneously concealing contested climate policy choices – a finding with wider implications beyond the Austrian case.