Foresight Workshop Report: Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement Scenarios for Germany in 2040

This report summarizes a participatory foresight workshop exploring possible futures for Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE) for Germany by 2040. Using a structured scenario development approach, the transdisciplinary workshop participants constructed three qualitative scenarios that examine how political support, economic incentives, environmental impacts, social acceptance, and international governance might shape OAE implementation. The scenarios range from cautious, small-scale adoption, to fragmented and contested development, to large-scale, state-led implementation under climate emergency conditions. The resulting OAE scenarios are exploratory and plausible, but importantly do not represent predictions of probable futures. They are designed as structured “what-if” thought experiments to illuminate interactions between political, economic, technological, environmental and social factors across a range of potential OAE implementation pathways in the German context.