Jonas Allesson

Researchers and civil society have proposed separating targets for emissions reductions and carbon dioxide removal to prevent mitigation deterrence – the risk that the anticipation of future removals delays decarbonisation. In 2017, Sweden became the first state to adopt separated targets, specifying that its 2045 net-zero target must be reached through a minimum of 85% domestic emissions reductions, with the remaining 15% achievable through carbon removal. I reconstruct the policy process that resulted in the separated net-zero framework using Historical Materialist Policy Analysis based on interviews with seventeen policymakers, stakeholders and experts involved. My analysis shows that state knowledge apparatuses, especially climate scenarios, pre-structured a policy corridor that made carbon removal appear technically unavoidable rather than a political choice. The separation of targets was not a safeguard against mitigation deterrence; some actors viewed the quantification of a removals target as a potential license to delay. Moreover, the separation worked as a spatio-temporal fix which displaced conflicts between actors advocating rapid decarbonisation and a coalition seeking to protect the competitiveness of Swedish industry. The 15% removals target was a concession necessary to reach agreement on the 2045 net-zero date, a leftover of the compromise on 85% reductions rather than any assessment of sustainable removal potentials or what would be a socially necessary or globally just level of residual emissions. The Swedish case shows that without such reflexive assessment, and awareness of the prescriptive influence of climate scenarios, even separated targets can embed mitigation deterrence into climate policy.