UPTAKE aims to facilitate the sustainable upscaling of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) methods by developing a set of robust strategies through technical, theoretical, and practical analysis accompanied by interactive dialogue within a CDR stakeholder forum. As a result, UPTAKE will develop a harmonised, comprehensive, inclusive, integrated, and transparent CDR knowledge inventory to evaluate a wide range of CDR technologies and methods, quantifying their national, European, and global costs, effectiveness, and removal potential as well as risks, constraints, and side-effects at different scales, and their prospects of technological progress. The UPTAKE approach will allow the assessment of geographical, sectoral, socioeconomic, demographic, and temporal trade-offs, co-benefits, and opportunities emerging from portfolios of different CDR methods. The enhanced socio-technical understanding of CDR methods will feed into an ensemble of state-of-the-art integrated assessment models (IAMs), which will help improve the integration of CDR methods given the EU policy objectives set for 2030, 2050, and beyond climate neutrality. UPTAKE will assess CDR governance and policy frameworks considering social acceptance, accountability, monitoring, and regulations for sustainable CDR rollout at scale. As a result, UPTAKE will generate an open and interactive CDR roadmap explorer to investigate strategies that are resilient to risks of failure and disruption, and minimise adverse impacts on society, economy, and the environment, aiming for a just, inclusive, and sustainable transition.
48 months from 01/09/2023 to 31/08/2027
General aims
UPTAKE aims to develop resilient CDR strategies based on strengthened scientific evidence on the social, technological, economic, and environmental characteristics of CDR technologies and their interplay. The scientific evidence will be collated into a CDR knowledge inventory, openly accessible to the science, policy, business communities. Together with improved CDR modules in climate-energy models, a CDR roadmap explorer will be developed to help identify resilient and implementable CDR portfolios which enable net-zero strategies.
CMCC role
CMCC will oversee the coordination of the project and will be involved in all work-packages. In particular, CMCC will lead WP6 on “Management, Coordination and Dissemination”; Task 3.3 “Earth system feedbacks to CDR implementations”; Task 4.3 “Distributional and procedural equity in upscaling CDR”; Task 5.2 on “Politically constrained pathways of CDR strategies”; Task 5.4 “Resilient and implementable CDR roadmaps”; Task 6.1on “Administrative coordination”; Task 6.2 on “Scientific coordination”; Task 6.3 on “Monitoring and quality assurance” and Task 6.4 on “Dissemination, networking, and collaboration”.
Activities
UPTAKE project is organized into six closely interrelated work packages (WP). The co-design and co-creation of the conceptual models for understanding the role of CDR methods in shaping a climate-neutral future will be accomplished in WP1 by establishing an open CDR stakeholder forum for interactive communication and dissemination among CDR stakeholders from researchers to policymakers to technology developers and civil society. WP2 will comprehensively assess the CDR methods, considering the broader environmental, life cycle, economic, social, political, and governance implications, and ripple effects. It will generate information about the net impact of CDR methods on GHG emissions at different speeds and scales of deployment. In WP3, such information will enhance the parameterization of CDR methods in leading IAMs to better represent the regionally disaggregated socio-technical potential of CDR options in global and European decarbonization pathways. The WP4 studies the required conditions to enable a sustainable CDR upscaling. It will use an integrated approach where carbon removal adoption has a multifaceted undertaking spanning diverse areas of governance and regulation, policy, finance, ethics, equity, social acceptance, public services, international trade, and infrastructure development. WP5 collates results from previous WPs and develops the CDR knowledge inventory and a CDR roadmap explorer. Lastly, the project outcomes will be communicated through multiple channels (WP6), including a CDR stakeholder forum, an open-access CDR knowledge inventory, a repository for open-source CDR modules, and an interactive online CDR roadmap explorer.
Expected results
UPTAKE will advance the understanding of the potential role of CDR in achieving European and global climate policy goals. The unique composition of the UPTAKE team and the wide range of methods and tools proposed by the team from engineering to climate-economic modelling, to political science and SSH assessment provide an opportunity to investigate the CDR question in depth and from a multifaceted, trans-disciplinary perspective. As a result, UPTAKE aims at:
1. Providing, for the first time, a harmonised, comprehensive, integrated, and transparent CDR knowledge inventory of carbon removal methods and their comparative assessment going beyond the current technoeconomic analysis by including their broader environmental, life cycle, economic, social, political and governance implications, and ripple effects, as well as their role in an overall carbon mitigation portfolio.
2. Advancing leading energy, Integrated Assessment, and climate models by incorporating a detailed representation of various CDR methods, including geographical, sectoral, socioeconomic, demographic, and temporal heterogeneity, as well as focusing on their synergies and trade-offs.
3. Designing a governance framework for upscaling CDR methods from idea to practice, including policy measures, business models, ethical, legal, financial, social aspects, as well as MRV considerations.
4. Developing an interactive CDR roadmap explorer to provide a systemic view of just, resilient, and implementable CDR strategies at national, European, and global levels, accounting for the infrastructure requirements.
5. Promoting open research and fostering transparency about CDR methods by creating a FAIR ecosystem for open datasets and modules/software used by climate models and IAMs developed in UPTAKE.
6. Creating an open CDR stakeholder forum to gather all relevant stakeholders and actors and provide open access to research inventories, methods, and models used in UPTAKE.
Partners
- Potsdam-Institut Fur Klimafolgenforschung e.v (PIK)
- Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) GGMBH (MCC gGmbH)
- Internationales Institut Fuer Angewandte Systemanalyse (IIASA)
- Ministerie van Infrastructuur en Waterstaat (PBL)
- Universiteit Utrecht (UU)
- E3-Modelling Ae (E3M)
- Aarhus Universitet (AU)
- Chalmers Tekniska Hogskola Ab (CHALMERS)
- Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP)
- Institut Fuer Weltwirtschaft (IfW Kiel)
- Universitaet Hamburg (UHAM)
- Institut Fur Klimaschutz Energie Und Mobilitat-Recht, Okonomie Und Politik ev (IKEM)
- Fundacja Instytut Reform (Reform)
- Instytut Ochrony Srodowiska – Panstwowy Instytut Badawczy (IOS-PIB)
- Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi (UB)
- Eidgenoessische Technische Hochschule Zuerich (ETH) – Associated Partner
- Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) – Associated Partner
- University of Strathclyde (USTRATH) – Associated Partner
- Universty Court of the University of Aberdeen (UNIABDN) – Associated Partner