Community compensation in the context of Carbon Capture and Storage: Current debates and practices

Societal opposition has the potential to slow down the implementation of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). One of the difficulties is that the perceived benefits associated with a CCS facility for local communities tend to be low compared to its perceived burdens. As is the case for other low carbon technologies, community compensation (or community benefits) has been suggested as a way to restore this perceived imbalance. A diverse literature has looked into the role of community compensation across various land uses and research fields. Synthesis is limited, while at the same time, the provision of community compensation in practice is moving from an ad hoc to a more institutionalized approach. Therefore, it is important to take stock of the literature. This paper provides a review of the community compensation literature in the form of four debates, drawing together environmental social science research on different low carbon technologies (e.g. CCS, renewable energy). In addition, current practices in community compensation for four European countries are discussed. The two parts of this paper are brought together in a set of lessons for the provision of community compensation for future CCS projects; in turn, suggestions for further research are made to address remaining knowledge gaps

Public awareness and perceptions of carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) : insights from surveys administered to representative samples in six European countries

The representative survey studies provide a comprehensive database on the public awareness and perception of CCS in six selected European countries. Our results provide insights into the public understanding and knowledge of energy related issues and CCS topics. The embedded experimental research provides insights into how information affects CCS perceptions. The results discuss implications for CCS communication methods

A comparison of techniques used to collect informed public opinions about CCS: opinion quality after focus group discussions versus information-choice questionnaires

Both focus group discussions and information-choice questionnaires (ICQs) have previously been used toexamine informed public opinions about carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS). This paper presentsan extensive experimental study to systematically examine and compare the quality of opinions createdby these two research techniques. Depending on experimental condition, participants either participatedin a focus group meeting or completed an ICQ. In both conditions participants received identical factualinformation about two specific CCS options. After having processed the information, they indicated theiroverall opinion about each CCS option. The quality of these opinions was determined by looking at threeoutcome-oriented indicators of opinion quality: consistency, stability, and confidence. Results for allthree indicators showed that ICQs yielded higher-quality opinions than focus groups, but also that focusgroups did not perform poor in this regard. Implications for the choice between focus group discussionsand ICQs are discussed

Scrutinizing the impact of CCS communication on opinion quality : focus group discussions versus Information-Choice Questionnaires : results from experimental research in six countries

Previous research has shown that public knowledge and awareness of carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) is very limited. As a result, traditional surveys designed to collect public opinions about CCS do in fact assess so-called pseudo opinions. Pseudo-opinions are of very low quality because they are mostly unstable and inconsistent. Therefore, they are not predictive for actual and future public support for or opposition against CCS. As compared to pseudo opinions, opinions expressed after the public has been provided with factual information about CCS are likely to be of higher quality. Focus group discussions and Information-Choice Questionnaires (ICQs) are two research techniques frequently used in the CCS literature that aim to collect such informed public opinions. In this study, we examined which of these two research technique leads to the highest quality opinions (i.e., to opinions that are consistent, stable, and that people are confident about). Our results showed that ICQs yielded higher-quality opinions than focus group discussions. Practical implications and recommendations are discussed