In 2008 the EU adopted an inventive CCS policy, with a funding mechanism linked to the sale of EU emissions trading allowances as a central element. This study highlights how policy entrepreneurs were main driving forces for establishing this policy. The study reveals how it is instructive to distinguish between stable, ‘tortoise’ entrepreneurs and more temporary ‘carpe diem’ entrepreneurs. The European Commission was the main tortoise entrepreneur who opened the policy window for new climate policy in the EU, including CCS more generally. The Parliament, in alliance with industry actors and environmental organizations, climbed in the policy window and pushed the inventive and key funding element. These two types of entrepreneurs utilized different techniques, combining both ‘preference shaping’ (convincing actors about the merits of such a new CCS policy) and ‘procedural engineering’ (altering the decision-making procedure and hence the room for inventive policies). A main lesson from this study is that policy invention has both a long-term patient policy-making dimension and a more short term, carpe diem dimension, involving the ability to create and exploit more temporary windows of opportunity.
