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Deliberations are underway to utilize increasingly radical technological options to help address climate change and stabilize the climatic system. Collectively, these options are often referred to as “climate geoengineering.” Deployment of such options, however, can create wicked tradeoffs in governance and require adaptive forms of risk management. In this study, we utilize a large and novel set of qualitative expert interview data to more deeply and systematically explore the types of risk–risk tradeoffs that may emerge from the use of 20 different climate geoengineering options, 10 that focus on carbon dioxide or greenhouse gas removal, and 10 that focus on solar radiation management and reflecting sunlight. We specifically consider: What risks does the deployment of these options entail? What types of tradeoffs may emerge through their deployment? We apply a framework that clusters risk–risk tradeoffs into institutional and governance, technological and environmental, and behavioral and temporal dimensions. In doing so, we offer a more complete inventory of risk–risk tradeoffs than those currently available within the respective risk-assessment, energy-systems, and climate-change literatures, and we also point the way toward future research gaps concerning policy, deployment, and risk management.

The impacts of global climate change on international security and geopolitics could be of historic proportion, challenging those of previous global threats such as nuclear weapons proliferation, the Great Depression, and terrorism. But while the evidence surrounding the security impacts of climate change is fairly well-understood and improving, less is known about the security risks to climate-technology deployment. In this study, we focus on the geopolitical, security, and military risks facing negative emissions and solar geoengineering options. Although controversial, these options could become the future backbone of a low-carbon or net-zero society, given that they avoid the need for coordinated or global action (and can be deployed by a smaller group of actors, even non-state actors), and that they can “buy time” for mitigation and other options to be scaled up. We utilize a large and diverse expert-interview exercise (N = 125) to critically examine the security risks associated with ten negative emission options (or greenhouse gas removal technologies) and ten solar geoengineering options (or solar radiation management technologies). We ask: What geopolitical considerations does deployment give rise to? What particular military applications exist? What risks do these options entail in terms of weaponization, misuse, and miscalculation? We examine such existing and prospective security risks across a novel conceptual framework envisioning their use as (i) diplomatic or military negotiating tools, (ii) objectives for building capacity, control, or deterrence, (iii) targets in ongoing conflicts, and (iv) causes of new conflicts. This enables us to capture a far broader spectrum of security concerns than those which exist in the extant literature and to go well beyond insights derived from climate modelling or game theory by drawing on a novel, rich, and original dataset of expert perceptions.

Direct Air Capture with Carbon Storage (DACCS) technologies represent one of the most significant potential tools for tackling climate change by making net-zero and net-negative emissions achievable, as deemed necessary in reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the European Green Deal. We draw from a novel and original dataset of expert interviews (N = 125) to distil ten recommendations for future DACCS policy. After providing a literature review on DACCS and explaining our methods of data collection, we present these recommendations as follows: (a) follow governance principles that ensure ‘negative’ emissions; (b) prioritize long-term carbon storage; (c) appreciate and incentivize scale; (d) co-develop with capture, transport, and storage; (e) phase in a carbon price; (f) couple with renewables; (g) harness hub deployment; (h) maintain separate targets; (i) embrace certification and compliance; and (j) recognize social acceptance. All ten recommendations are important, and all speak to the urgency and necessity of better managing and shaping the potentially impending DACCS transition.

Space-based geoengineering is gaining attention, if not necessarily traction, as a possible “break the glass” solution to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change and facilitate the transition to a low-carbon future. Though still on the periphery of discussions around climate mitigation and geoengineering, space-based methods that would deflect or block incoming sunlight, and thereby diminish how much radiation ultimately reaches the Earth, could offer advantages, notably, by avoiding the need for difficult trade-offs and decisions in terms of land and resource use on Earth. Aside from a few specialist-oriented studies, the literature on space-based geoengineering remains limited. In this study, we utilize a large and diverse expert-interview exercise (N = 125) to provide a first critical examination of the promise and relevance of space-based geoengineering for tackling climate change, including perhaps as a source of renewable energy, its feasibility and prospective risks, as well as key actors and issues related to commercialization and governance. To our knowledge, no other study has employed empirical data of any kind to examine perceptions of space-based geoengineering, let alone in relation to other kinds of climate-intervention technologies. Not only does the current research represent the first of its kind, it also provides a foundation for more informed, comprehensive deliberations around this interesting, possibly even necessary solution to climate change.