Climate neutrality as a consensus frame: how EU interest groups framed carbon removals in the 2040 climate target consultation

Details

Supervisors

Merlet, Pierre

Faculty

Institut d'études européennes Saint-Louis

Degree label

Advanced Master in EU Environmental Governance (POLLEN)

Abstract

enThe European Climate Law requires the European Union to reach climate neutrality by 2050. The objective is quantified, dated and legally codified. However, the role carbon removals will play in it, is still uncertain and was notably discussed during the debates on the 2040 climate target. This research asks whether climate neutrality functioned as a consensus frame in the debate on carbon removals, and which frame packages were mobilised beneath it. Thirty-one submissions from EU interest groups to the public consultation on the 2040 climate target, held between March and June 2023, were analysed through inductive frame package analysis. Twenty-eight documents referred to climate neutrality and none contested the term. However, the content given to it differed across them. Five frame packages were identified: Decarbonisation prioritised, CDR-sector building, Prior service, Fair share and Ecological limits. They did not correspond to actor types, except for Prior service. Eighteen documents asked for emission reductions and carbon removals to be governed by separate targets, and this demand was produced by the two packages whose definitions of the role of removals are opposed: in one, separation prevents removals from substituting for reductions and should be limited as much as possible; in the other, it secures dedicated support for the future deployment and rapid uptake of removals. The results show that legal codification did not remove the indeterminacy of climate neutrality but displaced it into the accounting operation on which the target rests, and therefore onto the role carbon removals will play within it.