Managing the Global Carbon Cycle – Governance Options for CDR

ESMT Open Lecture with Ottmar Edenhofer

November 14, 2023, 6:30-7:30 p.m. 

ESMT Berlin, Schlossplatz 1, 10178 Berlin

This event will take place in person and online. To attend the event via livestream, please use the registration form below.

To attend the event on campus, please register here.

Climate neutrality cannot be achieved without actively removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Despite innovation, a considerable gap remains between projected levels of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and what is needed to meet climate objectives. However, challenges posed by CDR extend beyond technology development and diffusion. CDR propels climate policy into a new era; establishing a planetary waste management system for managing the global carbon cycle will become the core task of the 21st century.

In this ESMT Open Lecture, Ottmar Edenhofer, director and chief economist of the Postdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, will identify key areas of CDR governance. The presentation will focus on the policy regimes that ensure optimal deployment of carbon removal, certification of the quality of removals, and management of the liability implied by non-permanent CDR. The presentation will also address how three new institutions – namely, a European Carbon Central Bank, a Carbon Removal Certification Authority, and a Green Leap Innovation Authority – could take on these tasks for the European Union.

Speaker:

Ottmar Edenhofer is one of the world's leading experts on the economics of climate change. From 2008 to 2015, Edenhofer co-chaired Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and was instrumental in shaping the Fifth Assessment Report on Climate Change, which provided the scientific basis for the Paris Agreement. Since April 2022, Edenhofer has chaired the European Advisory Council on Climate Change (ESABCC), newly established by the EU and part of the European Environment Agency. Its mission is to provide independent scientific advice and produce reports that capture the extent to which EU policies are consistent with the 2021 European Climate Change Act and the EU's commitments under the Paris Agreement. Ottmar Edenhofer, born in 1961, is a professor at the Technical University of Berlin. Furthermore, he is director and chief economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and founding director of the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC). He was among the 1% most cited scientists worldwide in the category of "Interdisciplinary Science" in 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2022, according to the Web of Science citation index.

Moderator:

Michael Knoer is a second year master's in management student at ESMT Berlin and the current project lead for the fourth annual TEDxESMTBerlin. He currently works in business development for Everphone Inc. in Berlin. Previously, in the US, he was a digital marketing specialist for United Natural Foods and served roles in both marketing and development for B2B companies in diverse industries. He earned a bachelor's degree in marketing and German from the University of Minnesota in 2020.