Making CO₂ a Resource: The Interplay Between Research, Innovation and Industry

This interdisciplinary book explores how CO2 can become a resource instead of a waste and, as such, be a tool to meet one of the grandest challenges humanity is facing: climate change.

Drawing on a Norwegian narrative that has significance for a global audience, Øyvind Stokke and Elin Oftedal introduce in-depth, multi-perspective analyses of a sustainable innovation research experiment in industrial carbon capture and utilisation technologies. Building on extensive literature within marine sciences, sustainability research, and environmental philosophy and ethics, this book documents how a misplaced resource like CO2 can become valuable within a circular economy in its own right, while at the same time meeting the challenge of food security in a world where food production is increasingly under pressure. The book is diverse in scope and includes chapters on how to reduce the environmental footprint of aquaculture by replacing wild fish and soy from the Amazon, how to optimise the monitoring of aquatic environments via smart technologies, and how to replace materials otherwise sourced from natural environments. The authors also analyse the pivotal role of the university in driving innovation and entrepreneurship, the pitfalls of different carbon technologies, and explore how the link between petroleum dependence and CO2 emissions has been addressed in Norway specifically.

Making CO2 a Resource will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, environmental ethics, environmental philosophy, sustainable business and innovation, and sustainable development more broadly.

Øyvind Stokke is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. His research focuses on environmental philosophy and degrowth, climate ethics, the assessment of technological sustainability, and deliberative democracy theory. Stokke has been co-leading the research project Transforming CO2 to capital by interdisciplinary CCU optimisation strategies (iCCU) (UiT 2017–2023), which explores CO2 Capture and Utilisation (CCU) by taking into account environmental, ethical, informationtechnological and economic aspects, and was the leader of the pre-project The ARC Methodology (UiT 2021) exploring the grounds for a methodology assessing technological sustainability based on synergy effects between nature and technology. He was member of the research consortium in the project Political Philosophy looks to Antarctica (RCN 2017–2020) which explored moral and legal issues of natural resource justice in the Antarctic Treaty System. Stokke initiated and led Environmental Philosophy Research Group and was a member of the leader group of the Arctic Center for Sustainable Energy at the UiT from 2016 to 2020.

Elin M. Oftedal is a professor of Change Management and Innovation at the Institute of Media and Social Sciences at the University of Stavanger. Her research focuses on sustainable and responsible innovation and entrepreneurship, institutional change, legitimacy, cultural entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial universities. She has initiated, participated in and co-led impactful projects, such as on academic entrepreneurship: “Academic Entrepreneurship– from University Research to Implementation and Commercialization of Innovations – a Comparative Study.” Responsible innovation: “Digitalize or Die: Dynamic Drivers of Responsible Research and Innovation in Health and Welfare Service” and “Releasing the Power of Users – Articulating User Interest to Accelerate New Innovative Pathways in the Digital Health and Welfare Sector.” Sustainable business practices in: Transforming CO2 to Capital by Interdisciplinary CCU Optimisation Strategies (iCCU). She is a member of the AFINO network, which goal is to establish broad dialogues and shared commitments to ensure that innovation contributes to a more just, inclusive and sustainable Norway.