About the project
Achieving net-zero emissions requires the rapid diffusion of multiple low-carbon technologies, including multi-purpose technologies (e.g., hydrogen fuel cells, and electric batteries) that can solve sustainability problems in multiple sectors. One implication is that some decarbonisation technologies must interact with multiple (new) user sectors.
This thesis explores the innovation and diffusion of one such technology, carbon capture. Over the past ten to fifteen years, carbon capture has seen a significant shift in which users engage with the technology. There has been a shift from the fossil energy sector to various energy-intensive industries and hard-to-abate sectors (like the cement industry).
This thesis focuses on how this shift has affected both the technology itself and its broader innovation system.
From innovation studies, we know that innovation and diffusion are complicated interconnected processes. Here, diffusion is not seen as an ‘event’ that has occurred once someone new starts using a technology but as a complex ongoing process.
We also know that sectors differ in terms of their needs, how they operate, and how equipped they are to handle these diffusion processes.
This can create major challenges for a technology like carbon capture that is envisioned to not only spread—but to spread rapidly—to many different sectors.
This thesis explores how the interactions between this diffusion process and these sectoral differences affect the innovation system and a technology’s characteristics. It looks at both how a technology is connected to multiple new sectors and the effects of these new connections on the diffusion and innovation of a technology.
This thesis contributes by shining a light on the dynamics involved in the diffusion of a (lumpy) decarbonisation technology to multiple heterogeneous users simultaneously. It shows how important the characteristics of user sectors are in the diffusion process. It highlights how the process plays out as a complex interplay between the characteristics of the technology and its innovation system, the needs of users, the visions and actions of different actors, and the context in which diffusion occurs.
These insights are used to reflect on the remaining challenges for carbon capture to diffuse at the rate needed to contribute to net-zero emission targets – and what this means for carbon capture as a net-zero decarbonisation solution.
Thesis supervisors
The thesis is supervised by Taran Thune (Professor at TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo) and Allan Dahl Andersen (Researcher at TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo and Associate Professor at the Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen) and is part of the research centre INTRANSIT - Innovation Policy for Industrial Transformation, Sustainability and Digitalization.
Commentator
Hans Hellsmark (Senior Researcher, Environmental Systems Analysis, Technology Management and Economics, Chalmers University of Technology)
About Jørgen Finstad
Jørgen Finstad is a PhD candidate at TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture at the University of Oslo. Read more about him here. This seminar marks the final evaluation prior to submission of his dissertation.
How to participate
The seminar is open for everyone to join - either at TIK (Meeting room 1040) or via ZOOM. Welcome!
Meeting ID: 624 8634 8543
Passcode: 569263
The manuscript is available upon request. Please send the request to Jørgen Finstad jorgen.finstad@tik.uio.no.