What ‘climate positive future’? Emerging sociotechnical imaginaries of negative emissions in Sweden

This article analyses competing, emerging visions on the role and governance of negative emissions technologies (NETs) in Sweden. Using the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries, we explore different visions of NETs, how they relate to each other and how prevailing socioeconomic interests constrain their prospects for institutional stabilisation. Through an interpretive and qualitative analysis of interviews and publicly available documents, we identify various negative emission imaginaries that differ in their degree of contestation and institutionalisation. We find relatively high agreement on the desirable role of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) in Swedish energy systems, while measures in the land-use sector appear more contested. These differences can be attributed to conflicts/alignment with existing imaginaries of the bioeconomy in Sweden, with energy systems already highly oriented towards bioenergy use, and with the political and economic interests that underlie these conditions.