Abstract EN:

My thesis concerns the process of demonstration of CO₂ capture, transport and storage (CISC) in the European Union. This conception allows the construction of the promise of a future with reduced CO₂ emissions, which does not exclude the continuation of the use of fossil energies. During the last decade, the European Commission has established a partnership vvith industrial actors in an initiative of CTSC «demonstration» organised around the development of on site demonstrators, in order to bring these techniques to a commercial state. This process has been marked by intense debates and local conflicts, especially in what regards the risks associated with CO₂ leakage. The Commission puts forth slogans concerning the need for conciliation with the citizens. However, the process of CTSC demonstration does indeed produce a division between uncertainties that may be controlled (demonstrated) which are in the forefront, and others whose possibilités of reduction seem less certain, which are placed in the background. Thus, the interrogation here bears on the characterisation of this way of dividing the uncertainties as well as on the manner by which a policy, based on demonstration, might produce kinds of agreements among the distinct actors implicated. My analysis proposes a periodisation of the process (1972-2012) in three large phases : Genesis, Regime, and Politicisation. I develop my arguments based on four case studies : the activity of the European technological platform devoted to CTSC, « Zéro Emission Platform for Fossil Fuels » (ZEP), and three more CTSC demonstration projects, two in France and another one in Barendrecht, in the Netherlands.