Map-makers and navigators of politicised terrain: Expert understandings of epistemological uncertainty in integrated assessment modelling of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage

Abstract

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) has recently risen to international prominence due to its modelled potential to allow a mid-term temperature overshoot compensated by large, long-term removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The technology, however, is far from commercial. Therefore, BECCS is a suitable entry point for exploring how modellers identify, manage and communicate uncertainties. By applying framing analysis to 21 interviews with researchers working directly or closely with integrated assessment models (IAMs), three prevalent cognitive frames are identified: Climate scenarios as (1) talking points to discuss possible futures, (2) fundamentally political prescriptions that foreclose alternatives, and (3) distortions of pure science. The discourse around IAMs has entered a phase of critical reflection about their performative, political dimensions, both inside and outside of the IA modelling community. This phase is marked by modellers grappling with the responsibilities that are perceived to come with simultaneously providing maps of possible futures and standards by which these maps are to be evaluated.