Public Perceptions of Carbon Capture and Storage
The research project "perCCSeptions" studies people's opinion and knowledge of carbon capture and storage technology.
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Read more about the perCCSeptions project here.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a technology with the potential to reduce carbon emissions and to help achieve the global climate targets as defined in the Paris Agreement. Storage onshore has faced limited public acceptance because of the risk for leakage. The Norwegian government has initiated substantial efforts to develop offshore storage solutions, in particular, on the Norwegian shelf in the North Sea. The storage potential is higher than the emissions from the Norwegian energy sector. Thus, CO2 is planned be imported from foreign emitters to fill storage sites on Norwegian territory.
It is presumed that offshore storage will increase the public acceptance of CCS projects, but there exists to date little research supporting this assumption. There is also insufficient knowledge on how the prospect of exporting CO2 to other jurisdictions might affect support for CCS in European countries, and how the prospect of importing CO2 affects support for CCS in Norway. More knowledge on these issues is important because public opposition constitutes a major barrier for the implementation of CCS.
The project PERCCSEPTIONS will answer these questions by conducting a series of survey experiments in Norway and Germany. Open-ended questions will be used to assess the various lines of reasoning behind acceptance and opposition. The project will utilize existing survey infrastructure in Norway and Germany for data collection. The Norwegian Citizen Panel and corresponding German panels, which provide high quality survey data corrected for weights based on national register data. The project will provide new knowledge on the drivers of support and opposition to large-scale CCS and to international transport of CO2.
