Does the nationality of CO2 matter? Public perceptions of a Northern European market for CO2 storage (CCSMARKET)

CCSMARKET analyses what laypersons in Norway, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the UK think about carbon capture and storage (CCS) using surveys. It is a joint project with Norce funded by the Research Council of Norway.

CCS is a technology to capture carbon dioxide (CO₂) from point sources such as cement factories, waste incineration facilities, or chemical plants before it reaches the atmosphere where it would contribute to global warming. The captured CO₂ is then stored deep underground in empty oil and gas fields or in other geological structures that are sealed off and can keep the CO₂ for centuries to millennia. The technology is ready for use, but in some countries, like in the Netherlands or Germany, people are skeptical of the technology and are against its deployment.

At the same time, there are very concrete plans in Denmark, Norway and the UK to import CO₂ from other countries and store it under the North Sea. The Norwegian government for example has initiated substantial efforts to develop offshore storage sites on the Norwegian shelf in the North Sea. The storage potential is higher than the emissions from the Norwegian energy sector. Thus, it is planned to import CO₂  from other countries to fill storage sites on Norwegian territory.

The lack of public acceptability, especially of onshore storage, has been a barrier to the development of CCS in Europe in the past. With CCSMARKET, we continue our work from our preceding project, PerCCSeptions where we found that especially in Norway, storing CO₂ that has been captured in Norway is perceived a lot more positively compared to storing imported CO₂ from e.g. Germany. What the public thinks influences the political feasibility of setting up a European CO₂-transport and -storage infrastructure and this can affect the chances of reaching the goal of NetZero Emissions.

In CCSMarket, we extend the geographical focus beyond Germany and Norway to Denmark, the Netherlands, and the UK. We test the robustness of our earlier findings and whether they are generalizable to other fields such as a transboundary electricity infrastructure and other policy fields.