Climate Innovation

Our research in this area focuses on sustainably scaling technologies needed to reach net-zero emissions by mid-century. Initially, this evolved around Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). Recently, the scope has expanded to understanding cleantech innovation networks in general and their interplay with corporate climate strategies and carbon markets. For projects in this area led by sus.lab, please refer to Download their website.

The ACHIEVE consortium supports Switzerland in its transition to net zero by working with stakeholders from society, politics, and industry to develop scientifically sound roadmaps towards this goal. ACHIEVE evaluates and implements measures to reduce emissions from hard-to-abate sectors, i.e., agriculture, waste-to-energy, cement production, and chemical industry, while accelerating the implementation of carbon capture, utilization, transport, and storage (CCUTS) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) infrastructure. Project objectives include assessing mitigation strategies, unlocking biomass and CDR potentials, advancing circular economy approaches for industrial decarbonization, and co-designing CCUTS pathways and policy frameworks. ACHIEVE pioneers pilots to demonstrate CCUTS and CDR feasibility in Switzerland, including CO2 injection in the subsurface and biochar-based construction materials. ACHIEVE generates impact across three stages: generating systems knowledge on effective measures, identifying target knowledge for implementation, and designing transformation knowledge to guide policy and technological advancements. Key expected outcomes of ACHIEVE target emission reductions in the agri-food sector, cascaded sustainable biomass use, net-zero cross-sectorial industry roadmaps, a national CCUTS framework, and stakeholder perception and acceptance of trade-offs in net-zero transition pathways.

The project is funded by the Swiss Federal Office for Energy (SFOE).

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) faces the most severe sustainable development challenges of any region. Typically, these developmental challenges are understood to be at odds with the global need to reduce emissions – as it is assumed that the economic development required to create jobs and meet the SDGs, will inevitably lead to higher emissions. Yet, there is a sector that harbours both the opportunity for job creation and emissions reductions: carbon dioxide removal (CDR). Moving early and decisively into CDR could give SSA a first-mover advantage to capture a significant part of the carbon removal market. Yet, there is limited evidence in both the academic literature and the practitioner community which of the CDR options offer the greatest sustainable development benefits for the continent and how these technologies can be scaled.

external page Our project therefore aims to accelerate SSA’s carbon removal startup ecosystem in three steps by i) identifying CDR technologies and parts of the value chain with the highest potential for domestic socio-economic benefits, ii) assess the readiness across three archetypical SSA countries to understand the broad potential across the region, and iii) run a CDR startup accelerator dedicated to the key technologies and bottlenecks identified in steps 1-2. Our research relies on state-of-the-art qualitative and quantitative methods detailed in the proposal. Ultimately, the project seeks to make CDR a key enabler of sustainable development, job creation, and poverty alleviation in SSA.

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The joint initiative SPEED2ZERO contributes to halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, preparing the infrastructure needed to achieve this, building a resilient energy system and safeguarding biodiversity.

SPEED2ZERO aims to connect disciplines and institutions of the ETH Domain with private industry, government and policy, aiming to build a community of experts and stakeholders. The consortium is represented by ETH Zürich, WSL, EPFL, Eawag, PSI, Empa, and SDSC. The project is supported by the ETH Board.

The project focusses on the areas of net zero greenhouse gas emissions, energy, biodiversity and climate change.

SusTec contributes to Speed2Zero's work package 4 by researching how companies and start-ups can help reach net zero in Switzerland without reducing biodiversity.

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Together with the Technology Assessment group at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), we work on evaluating different carbon dioxide removal (CDR) methods. The project is funded by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN).

Within the project, the Technology Assessment group develops life cycle analyses and inventories for direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS), bioenergy carbon capture and storage (BECCS), enhanced weathering (EW), biochar and wood in construction. Together we parametrize the LCAs for these approaches and develop a public LCA screening tool that can be used to identify hotspots and gather early insights when comparing different CDR approaches.

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We evaluate methodologies for monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) that are used to certify CDR projects to generate carbon credits. This work started as part of the project “Life Cycle Assessment of Carbon Dioxide Removal Options” funded by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN), and has since expanded to a larger collaboration with researchers from various research institutes to evaluate more CDR methodologies.

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