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• The UK's Committee on Climate Change suggest up to 195 MtCO 2 pa of removal is possible. • Scale up of Greenhouse Gas Removal requires more than technical and least cost considerations. • In the UK there is an adapted and unplanned governance framework which is inadequate. • Procedural Justice mechanisms are unsuitable and weak failing to engage the wider national public. • There is a lack of understanding of the scale at which socio-legal governance is required. Greenhouse gas removal (GGR) is increasingly seen as a key dimension of national and international climate policy. The need to deploy a portfolio of GGR technologies in order to decarbonise sectors with the 'hardest-to-abate' emissions, particularly to achieve net-zero emissions targets, has become increasingly evident in recent years. In May 2019, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) published a report outlining a pathway to net-zero emissions in the UK, which comprised significant contributions from engineered and land-based removals. The target of net-zero emissions has since been enshrined in UK legislation, meaning that GGR will likely be part of the UK's climate strategy. Plans for GGR deployment will therefore need to be set in motion in the short-term, in order to align with the timeframe proposed by the CCC. Despite a growing body of research examining the role governance could and should play in GGR development and deployment, there is a gap in the literature relating to the social implications of removal activities. In particular, the roles of procedural justice (PJ) and social legitimacy (SL) have not been closely examined. This study comprises an analysis of relevant legislation, combined with a series of interviews conducted in the community of Selby (a proposed location for BECCS development) in order to investigate PJ and SL in the context of GGR. It is found that the existing legal framework operates PJ as a 'tick-the-box' exercise, failing to engage a wide range of interested stakeholders or to promote meaningful engagements. Moreover, the PJ landscape for GGR is unplanned and adapted from existing legislation and cannot meet the unique needs of this novel activity, such as the need to engage the wider national public given their interest in climate change mitigation. Research in Selby corroborates these findings, revealing a range of issues with engagement procedures, including disinterest or disillusionment with processes, a lack of accessible information, and a disparity between stakeholder expectations and GGR realities. Ultimately, it is only by conducting meaningful engagements, which adequately inform and include participants, that the role of social legitimacy can truly be understood and thus leveraged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The saltmarsh carbon storage potential is a key topic in blue carbon research and climate policy. Ecosystem service valuations provide valuable information to policymakers for habitat management and climate change mitigation policies. Yet, only few saltmarsh valuation studies have included the carbon storage service in the UK context. This paper investigates how the public values saltmarsh ecosystem services, focussing on the carbon storage service. We used a choice experiment to elicit the willingness to pay (WTP) of a representative sample of the Scottish public to support interventions that would maintain or improve the provision of these services. Furthermore, we tested the effect of information on individuals' preferences and WTP with a split sample approach where one group received a treatment in the form of additional information. We found that (i) all attributes had a significant influence on individuals' choices; (ii) both groups had, on average, a positive marginal WTP for all presented ecosystem services; (iii) the treated sample had, on average, no significantly different marginal WTP for carbon storage than the control group. This paper adds to the limited literature on the saltmarsh carbon storage ecosystem service and demonstrates a developed nation's public's openness to nature-based climate change mitigation solutions. [Display omitted] • The Scottish public on average prefers saltmarsh management over the status quo. • Providing additional information reduced heterogeneity in WTP for carbon storage. • Most respondents preferred an improvement of all saltmarsh ecosystem services. • Therefore management should focus on both climate change mitigation and adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of a changing climate, a growing number of construction firms are adopting carbon reduction targets on individual projects and across their portfolios. In the wake of the Paris Agreement, some firms are seeking a means of aligning their targets with sectoral, national and international mitigation commitments. There are numerous ways by which such an alignment can be achieved, each requiring different assumptions. Using data from the UK construction industry, this paper reviews current company commitments and progress in carbon mitigation; analyses the unique challenges in aligning construction targets, and presents a series of possible sectoral decarbonisation trajectories. The results highlight the disparity between current company targets and the range of possible trajectories. It is clear that a cross-industry dialogue is urgently required to establish an appropriate response that delivers both a widely-accepted target trajectory and a plan for its delivery. This paper is intended to stimulate and support this necessary debate by illustrating the impact of different methodological assumptions and highlighting the critical features of an appropriate response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Timing of ecosystem restoration can influence its resilience to climate change. • This study quantifies the opportunity cost of delaying restoration-based GHG mitigation. • Delaying mitigation substantially decreases the economic benefits of peatland restoration. • Climate change beliefs explain variation in benefits of increased peatland resilience. • Results provide economic arguments for early investments in nature-based solutions. Ecosystem restoration and, in particular, peatland restoration, are considered a promising greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation strategy to move towards net zero emissions. To remain within acceptable limits for projected warming scenarios, inaction with respect to GHG mitigation in the short term implies a need for even larger removals of GHGs in the longer term, which can be conceptualized as a 'mitigation debt'. This paper explores the economic implications of delaying GHG mitigation through ecosystem restoration using data of a large survey (N = 1377) that included a choice experiment to elicit the public's willingness to pay (WTP) for peatland restoration in Scotland, UK. The valuation specifically considers the interaction between the timing of restoration action and long-term ecosystem resilience. We find that respondents have a substantial WTP for peatland restoration. Importantly, we find considerable benefits for early restoration action (up to £191 million annually in our case study), which is linked to an increased resilience of peatlands under future climate change. This demonstrates that delaying restoration and thus accumulating a mitigation debt has an important opportunity cost that substantially decreases the related economic benefits. Attitudes towards climate change and climate change beliefs are found to explain variation in the public's WTP. Our research strengthens the economic argument for not delaying climate change mitigation through ecosystem restoration, demonstrating that the mitigation debt also translates into a welfare loss. To fully realise the potential benefits associated with immediate mitigation using peatland restoration, however, more needs to be understood about the mechanisms that facilitate large-scale implementation in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Paris Agreement on climate change has calls for urgent, radical, and transformative actions in mitigation and adaptation, particularly in terms of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emission. There are many terms used to describe the process of reducing GHGs, including decarbonization, low carbon development (LCD) or low carbon transition (LCT). The conceptualization of these terms remains puzzling and there has not been any consensus to explain the meaning and their interrelationship. Clearer definition and conceptual boundaries are necessary to improve the coherence of overarching practices to cut CO 2 emission. The paper aims to review key concepts related to climate change mitigation related to the reduction of CO 2 and efforts toward net-zero emission in the academic literature, by (1) examining progress of the literature over time, (2) identifying geographical locus and sectoral focus of the literature, (3) determining the interrelationships between the key concepts. We use a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) method for data collection by selecting peer-reviewed literature from Scopus and analyzing the data with content analysis and bibliometric analysis. The findings are, firstly, the publications of the literature are influenced by global and national climate change policies and the interest of scholars affiliated to institutions from major emitter countries. Therefore, the literature is mostly originating from countries that emit the most CO 2 while also implement mitigations to reduce CO 2 emission. Secondly, China is the country where studies are mostly focused and also where the authors are affiliated/located. However, publications from the United Kingdom are cited the most. Thirdly, there are three clusters of literature found, namely that LCD and LCT are the terms used to identify visions for climate mitigation, while decarbonization is the actions and processes to achieve either LCD or LCT (as the visions). • The dynamic of climate change policies influence the literature trend. • The literature is mostly originating from major CO 2 emitter. • Low carbon development and low carbon transition are visional terms. • Decarbonization indicates the processes of decoupling CO 2 to achieve the visions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]