Subsea carbon storage: The role of data in governing marine carbon futures

Following decades of carbon extraction, the ocean and seabed are being valued anew for their capacity to store carbon on planet-altering scales, and thus mitigate climate change. Indeed, offshore carbon storage as part of land-based carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects is frequently central to many nations’ net-zero emissions targets and to global climate models for staying within the limits set by the Paris Agreement. This paper examines the role of data in governing subsea carbon storage. Assessments of subsea geologic storage capacity and decisions over where and how to potentially store carbon are often presented as purely technological and apolitical. Thus an image of undersea space as transparent, knowable, and ready-to-hand is promoted by government and industry alike. At the same time, knowledge of the subsea storage potential is frequently generated by energy companies who have proprietary rights and financial interest regarding this data, which they use not only for obtaining contracts for carbon storage but also for further oil and gas extraction. This data is therefore both inaccessible to the public and central to the expansion of climate-damaging fossil fuel industries, even as governments invest heavily in carbon storage initiatives. The conditions under which this knowledge is produced and shared have implications for decision-making, as well as for how risk and uncertainty are portrayed. But moreover, the production and governance of data are key ways by which continuities are shaped between oil and gas extraction and new carbon futures for the ocean – futures which may look radically different under new carbon regimes, or may continue business as usual. This paper focuses on the United Kingdom’s North Sea territory to investigate the role of private and industry-led knowledge in shaping state responses to climate change. Further, it analyses the production and mobilisation of data for the ocean’s new carbon futures, situating knowledge within developing understandings of the barriers and opportunities for more democratic and sustainable ocean governance.