NOTICE OF DEFENSE
Ms. Emma JAGU SCHIPPERS (Industrial Engineering Laboratory, CentraleSupélec, Université Paris Saclay and IFP School) will publicly defend her doctoral thesis entitled
"Addressing climate change with carbon dioxide removal: insights for industrial economics and cooperative games"
Location: CentraleSupélec, Bâtiment Bouygues, Amphithéâtre Peugeot (SC.046), in presential or remotely using this link.
Members of jury:
Anna CRETI, Professor, University of Paris-Dauphine |
Reporter |
Steven A. GABRIEL, Professor, University of Maryland |
Reporter |
Philippe QUIRION, Directeur de recherche CNRS, CIRED |
Examiner |
Niall MAC DOWELL, Professor, Imperial College |
Examiner |
Yannick PEREZ, Professor, CentraleSupélec |
Examiner |
Direction of the thesis:
Pascal DA COSTA, Professor, CentraleSupélec |
Director of the thesis |
Olivier MASSOL, Professor, IFP School |
Co-chair of the thesis |
Abstract:
Removing CO2 from the atmosphere in addition to rapid mitigation efforts appear inevitable to keep global warming below 2°C. A growing number of countries and companies are setting “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions objectives in the coming decades, which implies that residual CO2 emissions would be compensated for by Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR). CDR methods enhance natural carbon sinks or chemically engineer CO2 out of the atmosphere for durable storage through, for example, afforestation, Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), or Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage (DACCS). Although some methods are already well-established and technically feasible, CDR faces a slow uptake. With few exceptions to date, large-scale projects have not been commercially deployed. The identification of the socio-economic barriers currently hindering the deployment of CDR is thus a fundamental and timely research challenge. In particular, the barriers related to strategic interactions and coordination issues within value chains are often overlooked, despite being critical to unlocking a large-scale deployment of CDR.
This thesis examines two specific coordination issues: (i) the deployment of shared CO2 transportation infrastructures, which are essential for the upscaling of BECCS processes, and (ii) the formation of inter-regional coalitions to reduce the overall costs of CDR. In both cases, cooperation can only succeed if a mutually acceptable and fair distribution of the costs and benefits can be achieved. Cooperative game-theory is thus particularly well-suited to examine such gain-sharing problems. The application of cooperative game-theory to a Swedish case-study of CO2 infrastructure deployment reveals that an incentive-compatible sharing of infrastructure costs is possible, provided that a sufficiently high CO2 price is reached. However, BECCS projects may be locked out from pipeline construction projects because of their current lack of economic incentives compared to fossil-fueled CCS projects. The risk of lock-out has important policy implications, as forward-looking infrastructure planning appears necessary to ensure the inclusion of BECCS in CO2 infrastructure. Finally, this thesis argues that inter-regional cooperation is instrumental in affordably deploying CDR and provides guiding principles on fair gain-sharing to ensure inter-regional agreements can materialize.