Carbon Cultures: Technology Planning for Energy and Climate in the US and EU

Emerging technologies are not simply pursued out of economic interests, but also on the basis of assumptions about the societies and publics that technologies will serve. This paper compares how carbon dioxide capture and storage – a technology for sustainable energy generation – has been supported in the United States and European Union over the last decade. Distinct land ownership laws and market structures have helped legitimate different groups of actors as stakeholders in the technology, and CO2 has been redefined in relation to different policy narratives and legal ontologies in the two sites. Climate change mitigation might appear to depend on international cooperation founded on a shared epistemic basis. However, this article suggests that mitigation options should not simply be assessed as functions of technical qualities, but also be understood in relation to how political actors articulate and pursue the societal implications of technological futures.