UPTAKE aims to develop resilient Carbon Dioxide Removal (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. 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. Further, UPTAKE will assess CDR governance and policy frameworks considering social acceptance, accountability, monitoring, and regulations for sustainable CDR rollout at scale.
The contribution of PSI’s technology assessment group focuses on environmental Life Cycle Assessment of CDR all relevant methods. We will develop parameterized and prospective LCA models for all CDR methods in collaboration with the teams performing techno-economic assessment to ensure consistency in the evaluation. These LCA models will enable to quantify net carbon removal effectiveness, impacts on human health and the environment as well as resource demand in a geographically and temporally differentiated way. LCA-based environmental performance metrics will be integrated in the participating IAM to be able to estimate potential environmental co-benefits and trade-offs of scaling up specific CDR methods in transition pathways and scenarios. Further, LCA-based information on the environmental performance will be used to evaluate sustainability implications of large-scale CDR implementation on a European and global scale.