Professor Ottmar Edenhofer examines why large-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is essential for meeting climate targets and establishing a third pillar of climate policy alongside abatement and adaptation.
Even with rapid innovation, projected levels of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) remain far below what is required to stay within internationally agreed temperature limits. The main barriers to technology development and deployment are institutional, economic, and political – reflected in governance gaps that undermine incentives to invest in and deploy CDR at scale. He presents market and governance solutions, including innovative “clean-up certificates” and a European Carbon Central Bank to manage net-negative emissions within carbon market frameworks. By “cleaning up” the atmosphere, CDR can also help reduce free-riding incentives in international climate co-operation.
Professor Edenhofer identifies planetary carbon management as the central challenge of 21st-century climate policy, a necessary third pillar of climate policy, alongside emissions reduction and adaptation, and as a critical enabler of net-zero and net-negative pathways.
Date
23.7.2026
, 10.30 a.m. until noon
Speaker
Prof. Dr. Ottmar Edenhofer, Technical University of Berlin, Director at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Ottmar Edenhofer is one of the world’s leading experts on the politics aneconomics of climate change. He is Director and Chief Economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Professor at the Technical University of Berlin.
From 2008 to 2015, Edenhofer was co-chair of Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and played a key role in shaping the Fifth Assessment Report on Climate Change, which formed the scientific basis for the Paris Agreement. Since April 2022, Edenhofer has been chair of the European Environment Agency’s newly established European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change. Its task is to provide independent scientific advice and produce reports assessing the extent to which EU policy is consistent with the 2021 European Climate Law and the EU’s commitments under the Paris Agreement.
Edenhofer is a member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech), the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW), among others. According to the Web of Science citation index, he was among the top 1% of most-cited scientists worldwide in the category ‘Interdisciplinary Science’ in 2018, 2020 and 2021.
In July 2018, Edenhofer was awarded the Romano Guardini Prize by the Catholic Academy in Bavaria. In 2020, the German Federal Environmental Foundation (DBU) awarded him the prestigious German Environmental Prize. In December 2022, Edenhofer received the Bavarian Constitutional Order.
Venue
Institute for Employment Research
Regensburger Straße 104
90478 Nürnberg
Room Re100 E10
or online via MS Teams
Registration
Researchers who like to participate, please register via eveeno