Community perspectives on direct air capture and storage in Kenya’s rift valley: A qualitative case study

Sammanfattning

The IPCC’s Illustrative Mitigation Pathways achieving below 2°C of global warming increasingly rely on Direct Air Capture and Storage (DACCS). Research has largely concentrated on techno-economic aspects, while community perspectives have been almost exclusively focused on in the Global North. This thesis presents the first empirical case study of a commercial DACCS facility in Africa. Drawing on eighteen semi-structured interviews in Gilgil, Kenya, this research analyzes community perspectives through Social License to Operate and Environmental Justice frameworks. This study finds that a social license has been formed, built on trust, perceived net benefits, and substantive engagement, but remains fragile under partial technical understanding and the company’s role as sole information source. This case shows distributive and procedural justice, while containing community-internal recognitional failures, as respondents delegitimized dissent. These findings sharpen mitigation deterrence concerns and call for sustained attention to host communities as DACCS scales across the Global South.