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, yvind 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 where he has been the co-director of the project Transforming CO2 to capital through interdisciplinary CCU optimisation strategies (iCCU) (with Hans Chr. Eilertsen). His research has focused on deliberative democracy theory, environmental philosophy, climate ethics, the assessment of technological sustainability, and degrowth. His latest works are Environmental democracy and climate protest in the era of marketisation, Norwegian Journal of Philosophy, 2-3, 2021), and Thinking like an ocean: A climate ethic for the Arctic marine environment, in: Eva Pongrácz, Victor Pavlov, Niko Hänninen (Editors): Arctic Marine Sustainability: Arctic maritime businesses and resilience of the marine environment.

Elin M. Oftedal is a professor of Change Management and Innovation. Her research interests are sustainable and responsible innovation and entrepreneurship. With a Ph.D. defended in 2008, She has devoted over a decade to academia contributing substantially to entrepreneurship and sustainability research. Dr. Oftedal has initiated and co-led impactful projects, including focusing on entrepreneurial universities, research-based innovations and spin - outs, student entrepreneurship, responsible innovation and sustainable business - model, enhancing the academia-industry interface. She has also supervised a high number of Master’s students and Ph.D. candidates within these topics.