Deepening the edge of the environment

This project examines how knowledge production contributes to extending the boundaries of the known subsurface. It focuses on offshore contexts, where access to the subsurface is particularly challenging and where several European initiatives are emerging.
A comparative analysis will be conducted between Norway—where offshore carbon storage projects such as Northern Lights are already operational—and France and Sweden, where potential offshore storage remains largely at the prospecting stage.

The project aims to map key research and industrial initiatives related to geological carbon storage in these three countries, analyze the forms of knowledge produced before and after industrial project deployments, and assess current research is shaping future trajectories. Methodologically, it combines theoretical approaches from Science and Technology Studies (STS), philosophy of science, and sustainability research with qualitative empirical methods, including literature and database reviews, interviews with scientific and industrial actors, site visits, and participation in academic and industrial events.

By analyzing the relationship between evolving states of knowledge and the state of carbon storage infrastructures, the project will explore how knowledge production contributes to the environmental valuation, governance, and transformation of the subsurface. More broadly, it will contribute to debates on the politics of knowledge in environmental governance as new domains—such as the seabed or outer space—are increasingly researched and integrated into systems of resource management and environmental intervention.

Project coordinator

• Kristin Asdal is professor of STS and her research focuses on the sociology of knowledge across economics and natural science and on how scientific expertise is partaking in democracy.

Network members

France

• Lisa Claussmann conducts postdoctoral research on geological carbon storage in France and Norway.

Sweden

• Clément Lasselin is a postdoctoral researcher working on the science and politics of geological carbon storage at Lund University.