Understanding the risk associated with societal acceptance of CCS

As Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is increasingly viewed as a key technology in limiting the impacts of climate change, there are many challenges associated with industrialisation and upscaling. A key priority is the need for society to be prepared for the delivery of large-scale CCS projects, and understanding the risk presented by societal acceptance or rejection of the technology is essential.

INTRODUCTION

Acceleration of the use of CCS to provide significant CO₂ reductions requires close integration of technical, economic and environmental disciplines to support the case for CCS projects. These disciplines have a vital role to play in assisting and informing the decision-making process related to permitting, conformance and securing containment during the execution phase of CCS project.

In addition, potential societal acceptance and embeddedness must also be considered as part of the decision-making and risk assessment process.

For any new project, effective engagement of stakeholder groups is essential for addressing critical concerns in the planning of regional developments. Where there is the use of new or unfamiliar techniques, technologies or materials, there is an added imperative to consider such concerns and how these could affect the project.

SOCIETAL EMBEDDEDNESS

Lack of societal acceptance is often mentioned as a risk for the successful deployment of energy storage projects (Ref.1). However, research has shown that societal opposition is often a response to the project development strategy and the format of the decision-making process (Ref. 2 and 3).

As industry began to develop an increasing awareness of societal issues, it became clear that better insight into the deployment of a new innovative technology was required, and the ACT II DigiMon project made a first step with the Societal Embeddedness Level (SEL) method. This method proposes that industries and regulators organise a feedback loop to translate insight into societal risks into risk governance strategies, incorporating both technical and societal risk reducing measures.

The SEL-based research on the societal embeddedness of CO₂ storage projects concluded that CO₂ storage monitoring cannot in itself solve all societal acceptance challenges regarding CO₂ storage initiatives (Ref. 4). Instead, CO₂ storage monitoring forms a part of a broader risk governance strategy for industry and governmental authorities (Ref. 5).

Therefore in order to design an innovative, cost-effective and societal accepted risk governance strategy for CO₂ storage projects, current methods and risk assessment tools, which tend to focus on environmental, technical and economic risks, should also take societal (Ref. 6) and regulatory risks into account (Ref. 7).

DEVELOPING A RISK ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK

The RamonCO project is a pan-European research consortium with the objective of understanding risks to societal acceptance and development of risk governance strategies, and Risktec is a partner in the consortium.

The RamonCO project is ongoing and is extending the field of application of the SEL Assessment Framework (Ref. 8), as previously applied to CO₂ storage projects (Ref. 9), to all stages of the CCS value chain, namely:

Focus groups with stakeholders and public surveys are being used to increase the understanding of relevant risks along the whole CCS process chain. Broadening the scope of the SEL methodology provides a better insight, at an earlier stage, into the societal acceptance challenges which may present risks to the business case and societal embeddedness of CO₂ storage activities.

THE BOWTIE METHOD

As the RamonCo project progresses, it will look to build on the SEL method and its output from earlier studies. The bowtie method has been selected as an appropriate tool to deepen insight into the causes of the identified societal risks, the potential consequences, and any possible preventative or mitigative measures (Ref. 10).

Use of the bowtie method will provide an established risk assessment technique that allows detailed analysis of prevention and mitigation measures for specific hazards. The bowtie diagrams will be developed in workshops with experts, stakeholders and the public, covering the four SEL dimensions (Ref. 8):

• Environmental impact
• Stakeholder involvement
• Policy & regulations
• Market & finances

Figure 1 – Example bowtie diagram structure

RISK GOVERNANCE STRATEGIES

Based on the outputs of the bowtie studies, RamonCO will ultimately develop societal risk governance strategies and tools for those risks that have been identified as particularly important, using a participatory and interdisciplinary approach (Ref. 4).

The participatory process will consist of workshops with experts, stakeholders and the public to discuss the risk governance strategies. To maximise their applicability, these risk governance strategies and tools will be connected to the interests, language and decision-making routines of, for example, monitoring authorities, permitting authorities, industries and storage operators.

 The validated risk governance strategies and tools will then be used to give insight in the Value of Information approach, for a cost-effective and societally acceptable decision-making process and overarching risk governance design.

CONCLUSION

Currently, risk assessment of CCS and CO₂ storage projects rely on techno-economic parameters, but do not tend to consider the risk to the project posed by societal non-acceptance. By integrating the SEL method and including societal concerns within established risk analysis and tools, a more comprehensive assessment of risk can be used to support the deployment of CCS.

This can have a potentially profound impact on the planning and FEED phases of projects, as well as the permitting process, and enable operators, regulators and society to better comprehend and align on risk related to CO₂ storage.

References

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