Although Czechia stands out across Europe for its industry, unlike other countries it is showing only minimal interest in its future. This could be changed by involving experts in planning technological innovation and strategies for the necessary emissions reductions.
At the end of February, the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change issued recommendations on how to approach so-called carbon removal. These are methods likely to become relevant in the next decade, when decarbonisation reaches a stage at which merely changing energy sources will no longer be enough to reduce emissions.
In this context, the focus is mainly on “hard-to-abate” sectors, which sometimes include cement or steel production and the petrochemical industry. Some carbon removal technologies are likely to find application precisely in these sectors.
Opportunities and dead ends
What does this mean? While changes to the energy mix and substantial electrification can reduce greenhouse gas emissions in industry by preventing them from arising in the first place—for example, through an electric furnace powered by renewable energy in steel production—in some cases it will not be possible to prevent greenhouse gases from arising, because electrifying the entire process is not possible or suitable for various reasons. In such cases, tools such as carbon removal come into play.
This can take many forms. Not just the currently popular “offsetting” – compensating for one’s own emissions through measures that remove emissions elsewhere naturally, often by planting trees. Carbon removal can also be carried out through specialised technological processes, potentially giving rise to an entirely new industrial sector.
It depends on how effective these new methods will be, and whether they will remove carbon emissions permanently or merely shift the problem elsewhere or spread it over time. The aforementioned report by the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change (ESABCC) therefore examines in detail where carbon removal technologies may offer opportunities and where they are instead likely to lead to dead ends.
The heart of industry remains silent
Carbon removal does not have to concern everyone. In fact, it is an important debate mainly for emissions-intensive industry. Yet in Czechia, which stands out across Europe for its industry, this lack of interest is striking. The Ministry of Industry and Trade did not mention the forthcoming report by European climate experts, and none of the authors of the specialist publication has a traceable connection to the Czech environment, unlike those from Germany or Sweden.
This silence is probably also due to the fact that Czechia has not yet offered Europe and the world its expert capacity in decarbonisation technologies. The European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change includes renowned academics as well as people with many years of practical experience who can point to significant emissions-reduction projects in various sectors. In Czechia, there is no body where domestic experts could meet and exchange experience, let alone formulate expert views that they could take abroad in search of professional consensus or scrutiny.
Paradoxically, the most important process is therefore not taking place in the heart of European industry: the search for its new technological and economic future. Fortunately, politicians are slowly beginning to realise this. Over the past year, the involvement of experts in decarbonisation has even been debated in committees of the Chamber of Deputies. Whether this took the form of an official climate council or an advisory panel of experts advising an executive team, Czech industrial experience would in any case gain the expert and competent face it needs in the decarbonisation debate.
