Opportunities and obstacles for CO2 mineralization: CO2 mineralization specific frames in the interviews of Finnish carbon capture and storage (CCS) experts

Abstract Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is expected to significantly reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions for climate change mitigation purposes. Currently, the EU CCS Directive contains only geological storage as the storage option for CO2 – excluding CO2 mineralization as a storage option. Since all CCS technologies are currently in a relatively early stage of development, this exclusion seems unreasonable. Opportunities for the use of CO2 mineralization and the main uncertainties that can potentially prevent the use of these opportunities are investigated in this paper. The analysis is done by means of framing methodology that enables the extraction of CCS experts' mental models concerning CO2 mineralization from the interview data. Four of the six frames found hold a quite pessimistic future for CO2 mineralization. In addition, these frames were clearly strengthened when viewed within the global context. The way experts discuss CCS largely frames it in terms of carbon capture and geological storage (CCGS) and pushes CO2 mineralization to the margins. Thus CO2 mineralization is becoming even less likely to be included in policy making. At the same time, the slow progress of CCGS together with low public trust for the safety and sustainability of geological storage could strengthen the optimism found in two expert frames. Eventually this could weaken the pessimistic views and thus lead towards a more optimistic future for CO2 mineralization. However, this would require significant progress in CO2 mineralization technologies and especially increased publicity for such progress.

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