Language and Lock-In A Critical Discourse Analysis of CCUS Policy Persistence.

Why do governments and investors keep funding carbon capture technologies that consistently fall short of their promised performance? This repository contains the reproducible materials behind an MSc dissertation that examines this question through a study of 23 commercial-scale carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) projects and the policy discourse that surrounds them.

Combining a global project performance dataset, a Monte Carlo opportunity-cost simulation, and a critical discourse analysis of 15 government and industry documents from the US, UK and Norway, the dissertation develops two original analytical contributions: the Obstruction Diagnostics Framework, which translates reassuring project language into testable performance claims, and the Expectation-Absorption Loop, which explains how documented underperformance is metabolised into renewed institutional commitment rather than correction.

All files in this archive — performance dataset, coded discourse corpus, codebook, NVivo node hierarchy, Monte Carlo simulation code and outputs, sensitivity assumptions, and the dissertation itself, are provided so that every figure and statistic in the dissertation can be independently traced, audited and reused.