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  • Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A-2014-Oldham-

    Rights statement: © 2014 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Mapping the landscape of climate engineering

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
Article number20140065
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>02/2015
<mark>Journal</mark>Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London A
Issue number2031
Volume372
Number of pages20
Pages (from-to)1-20
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date17/11/14
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

In the absence of a governance framework for climate engineering technologies such as Solar Radiation Management (SRM), the practices of scientific research and intellectual property acquisition can de facto shape the development of the field. It is therefore important to make visible emerging patterns of research and patenting, which we suggest can effectively be done using bibliometric methods. We explore the challenges in defining the boundary of climate engineering, and set out the research strategy taken in this study. A dataset of 825 scientific publications on climate engineering between 1971 and 2013 was identified, including 193 on solar radiation management; these are analyzed in terms of trends, institutions, authors and funders. For our patent dataset, we identified 143 first filings directly or indirectly related to climate engineering technologies – of which 28 were related to SRM technologies – linked to 910 family members. We analyze the main patterns discerned in patent trends, applicants, and inventors. We compare our own findings with those of an earlier bibliometric study of climate engineering, and show how our method is consistent with the need for transparency and repeatability, and the need to adjust the method as the field develops. We conclude that bibliometric monitoring techniques can play an important role in the anticipatory governance of climate engineering.

Bibliographic note

© 2014 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.