- 1Climate Analytics, Berlin, Germany (dalia.kellou@climateanalytics.org)
- 2International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria
- 3Climate Accountability Institute, Colorado, USA
- 4Geography Department and IRI THESys, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Current assessments of "fair shares" of global mitigation efforts have tended to focus on the responsibility of States. However, recent climate litigation has started to focus on the responsibility of non-state actors, which should ideally be informed by quantitative fair share assessments. Here, we explore a case study of large investor-owned carbon majors, which were responsible for 24% of global fossil CO2 emissions between 1990 and 2018. Drawing on commonly invoked principles of climate justice, we suggest that large investor-owned “carbon majors” should be assigned Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage (DACCS) investment responsibilities. This responsibility is in addition to their primary responsibility to adopt a stringent decarbonisation trajectory consistent with the Paris Agreement objectives. DACCS is a potentially important component of mitigation portfolios consistent with global climate objectives and has a low land footprint relative to other carbon dioxide removal options. However, DACCS is in its formative phase, the early and expensive stage of technology deployment. Significant near-term investments are necessary to buy-down the cost of the technology so that it can play a cost-efficient role in future mitigation. We assess the level of investments necessary to move DACCS out of its niche phase (32 billion USD central estimate, with interquartile range 6 – 92 billion USD). Beyond that, about 250 billion USD in investments (central estimate, interquartile range 135 – 313 billion USD) may be required to buy-down the costs to 100 USD / tonne of CO2 captured. We assign responsibilities for this deployment to investor-owned carbon majors, finding that the ten highest emitting carbon majors should bear responsibility for around 17 billion USD (central estimate) in investments to contribute to moving DACCS out of its formative phase. When we also account for the buy-down cost to achieve the 100 USD/tonne goal, the scale of this responsibility may double if these company emissions grow at the same rate as global stated policies. Adopting a decarbonisation trajectory in line with a net zero emissions scenario significantly reduces this ongoing responsibility, reiterating the importance of robust company-level strategies aligned with the 1.5°C warming limit of the Paris Agreement.
How to cite: Kellou, D., Pratama, Y., Zuniga, C., Riany, F., Gidden, M. J., Heede, R., Ganti, G., and Schleussner, C.-F.: Evaluating the responsibility of investor-owned carbon majors to invest in direct air carbon capture and storage, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-18077, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-18077, 2025.