Beschreibung:
In 2019, the German government agreed on a Climate Protection Program intendedto deliver its 2030 climate targets. Concrete measures, such as a carbon price, willbe put in place as early as 2021. But how to plan beyond 2030? Scenarios can bepowerful tools to envision the world in 20, 30, or 50 years, to describe pathways towarddifferent visions of the future, and ultimately to investigate technology portfolios andpolicy options against their performance toward the achievement of a decarbonizedfuture. This is why scenarios are especially popular with energy and climate scholars.In particular, scenarios with biomass-based carbon removal options (BCO2) can helpto highlight how we may reach a net negative emission world. Hence, in this study, 66energy and decarbonization scenario studies are systematically reviewed for Germanyfrom the years 2002 to 2019 to assess how inclusive they are with regard to BCO2concepts. The portfolio of BCO2 concepts within those scenarios is studied over time anda qualitative analysis of the scenario documentation is performed to identify the rationalesfor their inclusion or exclusion. The results indicate “blind spots” of the scenarios withregard to bioeconomy aspects, as biomass for material use is only sparsely covered.Likewise, only about 10% of the studies provide a framework for land use changes andcorresponding emission accounting to adequately represent biomass-based negativeemission technologies (NETs) in their assessments. The analysis for carbon captureand storage (CCS) further reveals the necessity of revisiting the public acceptanceargument which has previously served so far for many studies as the ultimate, thoughnot well-grounded deal-breaker. Based on the detected gaps and shortcomings inthe current German scenario landscape, recommendations for a more transparent andholistic representation of BCO2 in the scenario framework are given.