In tech we trust: A history of technophilia in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) climate mitigation expertise

[Geoengineering News]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629625003615

Authors: Jean-Baptiste Fressoz

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2025.104280

13 August 2025

Abstract

This article examines the technocentric bias that characterizes climate mitigation literature, focusing on the reports of the IPCC's Working Group III. This bias stems from structural features of the scientific field that prioritizes innovation, leading to the overrepresentation of technological solutions in climate research. Funding mechanisms further reinforce this tendency by incentivizing collaboration with industrial R&D, creating a self-reinforcing loop in which scientific authority and industrial interests converge. The IPCC's institutional positioning—as a policy-relevant yet politically cautious body—amplifies this dynamic by favoring allegedly “cost-effective” technological pathways that lack practical feasibility.

The article traces the historical roots of this technocentric bias to the 1970s, when nuclear energy was envisioned as a solution to both energy scarcity and climate change. Drawing on archival sources, it also explores the influence of U.S. diplomacy in shaping international expertise on mitigation. Subsequent sections show how the rise of the “sustainable development” agenda allowed the integration of fossil fuel interests into the production of mitigation science. This process culminated in the centrality of carbon capture and storage (CCS) and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) technologies in IPCC's net-zero scenarios.

The article argues that mitigation expertise must confront its technocentric bias. A difficult but necessary step is to acknowledge that net-zero targets for 2050–2070 as currently envisioned through technological solutions, are unattainable. Maintaining this illusion fosters false optimism, legitimizes support for speculative technologies, narrows the range of viable policy options, and postpones the structural transformations. Climate expertise must shift from tech illusions to concrete proposals on sufficiency, redistribution, sectoral degrowth and structural change—or risk delaying meaningful action.

Source: ScienceDirect

[GRETCHEN & RON LARSON]

List:

 

     I view this (non-fee) article from today as about equal in importance to three groups:   BECCS,  biochar,  and CDR    This CDR version may also be a good way to reach the BECCS community.  

 

     Kept separate, so the dialogs can be kept more pertinent to each group.

 

    Thoughts?

 

Ron 

---------- Original Message ----------

From: GRETCHEN & RON LARSON <rongre...@comcast.net>

To: "Bio...@groups.io" <Bio...@groups.io>

Date: 09/01/2025 12:08 PM PDT

Subject: Fwd: [CDR] In tech we trust: A history of technophilia in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) climate mitigation expertise

 

 

List:

 

     This (non-fee) article on BECCS could have importance for biochar, although biochar is never mentioned.  Reason: biochar added to "front end" of (new name) BC-BECCS greatly increases BECCS advantages (by replacing some energy advantages with soil and other advantages).   Not a problem with solar and wind now having much lower electric energy costs. so a BC-BECCS system could focus on thermal energy rather than its usual emphasis on electricity.   "We'd" still continue the "normal" BECCS idea of deep underground storage of CO2.   This article seems quite good on BECCS.

 

     Here is the article's final paragraph (nine sentences), reformatted with my own emphases:

 

    "New questions need to be studied.

         What, for instance, would be the social and economic implications of deliberately downsizing or phasing out specific sectors?

          How would a sustained decline in international tourism affect welfare and employment?

          What would be the consequences of halting new road construction in high-income countries, of reducing drastically meat consumption and car usage or of dismantling the military-industrial complex?

           How might such structural shifts reshape broader economic systems and collective well-being?

 

       These questions may appear speculative, but they are arguably no more so than the vision of hydrogen-powered aircraft featured in the recent IPCC working group III report [87].

      Only by engaging these questions can mitigation expertise begin to support a serious democratic debate on sufficiency, reduction, and dismantlement.

 

       As CO₂ concentrations continue to rise, such issues are no longer peripheral—they are central to any realistic assessment of climate futures.

        If climate expertise remains tied to speculative technological assumptions, it risks being judged not as a force for political or economic reorientation, but as a system that delayed necessary action by narrowing the scope of legitimate solutions."

 

     SUMMARY:   I see BECCS alone as inferior to BC-BECCS,  But not yet convinced that BE-BECCS is (overall) better than BC.  This paper is not at all on these last two topics.

 

     I have not yet read this paper sufficiently - and can't for several days at least.

 

Ron

 

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