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Public perception of carbon capture and storage (CCS): A review

October 2014
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 38:848-863

DOI:10.1016/j.rser.2014.07.017

Authors:

Selma L'Orange Seigo

ETH Zurich

Michael Siegrist

ETH Zurich

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is regarded as an important bridging technology to a sustainable energy production. Whether it will be deployed on a large scale depends on both technological advances and social processes. Public perception of CCS can be crucial, and research interest in this topic has been growing. This review analyzes the public perception research thus far (42 articles were identified). Laypeople's concerns and spontaneous reactions to the technology have been thoroughly analyzed, and the results form a good basis for risk communication about CCS. What deserves more research is the role of the context (particularly the social context) in which CCS would be deployed. More case studies are also needed to gain a clearer picture of what matters for CCS acceptance at the project level, as opposed to societal acceptability of CCS.

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Public perception of carbon capture and storage (CCS): A review

Selma L'Orange Seigo

, Simone Dohle

a,b,

, Michael Siegrist

ETH Zurich, Institute for Environmental Decisions (IED), Consumer Behavior, Universitätstrasse 22, CHN H75.3, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland

Department of Psychology, University of Cologne, Richard-Strauss-Straße 2, 50931 Cologne, Germany

article info

Article history:

Received 29 August 2013

Received in revised form

16 May 2014

Accepted 6 July 2014

Available online 26 July 2014

Keywords:

CCS

Carbon capture

Public perception

Review

Risk communication

abstract

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is regarded as an important bridging technology to a sustainable

energy production. Whether it will be deployed on a large scale depends on both technological advances

and social processes. Public perception of CCS can be crucial, and research interest in this topic has been

growing. This review analyzes the public perception research thus far (42 articles were identiﬁed).

Laypeople's concerns and spontaneous reactions to the technology have been thoroughly analyzed, and

the results form a good basis for risk communication about CCS. What deserves more research is the role

of the context (particularly the social context) in which CCS would be deployed. More case studies are

also needed to gain a clearer picture of what matters for CCS acceptance at the project level, as opposed

to societal acceptability of CCS.

Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 849

2. Acceptance of new energy technologies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 849

2.1. Acceptance and acceptability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 850

2.2. Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 850

2.3. Experience with the technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 850

2.4. Trust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 850

2.5. Fairness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 850

2.6. Affect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 850

2.7. Perceived costs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 850

2.8. Perceived risks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 850

2.9. Perceived beneﬁts............................... .............................................................. 850

2.10. Outcome efﬁcacy/perceived behavioral control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 850

2.11. Problem perception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 850

3. Selection of studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 850

4. Overview of the studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 851

5. Key results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 851

5.1. Attitude and acceptance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 851

5.2. Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 852

5.3. Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 852

5.4. Trust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 853

5.5. Fairness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 853

5.6. Affect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 853

5.7. Perceived costs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 853

5.8. Perceived risks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 853

5.9. Perceived beneﬁts............................... .............................................................. 854

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/rser

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2014.07.017

Corresponding author. Tel.: þ41 44 632 5892; fax: þ41 44 632 1029.

Corresponding author at: ETH Zurich, Institute for Environmental Decisions (IED), Consumer Behavior, Universitätstrasse 22, CHN H75.3, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland.

E-mail address: selma.lorange@alumni.ethz.ch (S. L'Orange Seigo).

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 38 (2014) 848–863

5.10. Outcome efﬁcacy................................................................ .............................. 854

5.11. Problem perception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 854

5.12. Other variables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 855

5.12.1. Energy context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 855

5.12.2. Values. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 855

6. Summary and outlook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 855

7. Practical implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 857

Acknowledgements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 857

Appendix A. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 858

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 863

1. Introduction

Tackling climate change is a prominent and pressing problem

today. Carbon dioxide (CO

) emissions from the burning of fossil

fuels are one of the major contributors to global warming, and

they need to be reduced drastically to keep within the goal of a

maximum of 2 1C warming. The energy sector remains one of the

main sources of CO

emissions, and fossil fuels, particularly coal,

are dominant in electricity production [1]. A technology that can

help mitigate these emissions is carbon capture and storage (CCS).

is captured at large point sources, typically coal-ﬁred power

plants, transported to suitable storage locations and then injected

into the deep subsurface. The goal is to permanently sequester

the CO

in certain geological formations. This approach is not

truly sustainable, because it relies on fossil fuels for energy

production (although CCS with biomass is also possible), but

it can avoid signiﬁcant amounts of CO

emissions. According

to the International Energy Agency's BLUE Map scenario, CCS

could account for up to 19% of the global emission reductions by

2050 [2]. It could thus play a crucial role in smoothing the

transition to truly sustainable energy production from renewable

sources.

Whether CCS will actually be deployed on that large scale

depends on the one hand on technological advances and on the

other on social processes, such as energy policies and public

perception. At least in democratic countries, the public generally

has a say in whether large-scale technologies are adopted; if not at

the more strategic national level, they can protest the implemen-

tation of speciﬁc projects. Therefore, it is important to understand

how the public perceives such technologies, so that stakeholders

can make decisions that are aligned with the public's views and

avoid conﬂicts. Public perception of CCS has been a research topic

for roughly a decade. Particularly in the last couple of years, there

has been an increase in publications. We think it is useful to take a

step back now and get a comprehensive picture of what we know

so far. The aim of this review is to give an overview of empirical

ﬁndings regarding public perception of CCS, identify areas where

much research has been conducted and identify areas that are still

under-researched. Ultimately, the goal is to inform better policy

decisions with insights from public perception research.

First, we will present a framework of energy technology

acceptance. The variables in this framework will be used to

structure the results of our review. This is followed by a descrip-

tion of how the articles discussed in this review were found and

selected. Section 4 gives a general overview of the publications

that were included. Section 5 presents some key results for each

element of the technology acceptance framework. We then give a

brief summary of the results and point to possible avenues for

future research. The paper concludes with practical implications

for CCS implementation.

2. Acceptance of new energy technologies

New energy technologies often face skepticism or downright

opposition by the public. Also in the case of renewable and

sustainable energy technologies, acceptance is not guaranteed

and depends on many factors [3]. Despite growing awareness

and an increasing number of studies of public acceptance of

different technologies, there is still no general psychological model

to explain technology acceptance. Most studies focus only on

selected factors and are therefore very hard to compare. Recently,

Huijts et al. [4] tried to ﬁll this gap by building a framework that

pulls together different psychological theories and concepts that

have been applied in acceptance research of sustainable energy

technologies. It includes elements from the theory of planned

behavior [5] (attitude, perceived behavioral control, social norms),

from norm activation theory [6] and from theories of affect. These

in turn are inﬂuenced by other variables, such as trust, fairness,

perceived risks and beneﬁts, or knowledge. An overview of the

concepts can be found in Table 1. The exact causal relationships

between those concepts have not yet been tested empirically. The

framework constitutes a good starting point, however, to identify

factors that are relevant for the acceptance of new energy

technologies. We have therefore chosen to structure our review

Table 1

Concepts of the energy technology acceptance framework [4] as used in this article.

Concept Deﬁnition

Acceptance/attitude Both expressed acceptance (“I would accept CCS”) and revealed acceptance (whether people engage in activities for or against CCS)

Knowledge Awareness of CCS, self-assessed knowledge and objectively assessed knowledge

Experience Direct experience with CCS, but also with related technologies (e.g., fossil fuel extraction, underground gas storage)

Trust Trust in stakeholders. In the case of CCS typically project developers, government, NGOs

Fairness Two types: Procedural fairness (fairness of decision processes) and distributive fairness (distribution of costs, risks, beneﬁts)

Affect Feelings towards CCS, with positive and negative affect being two distinct dimensions

Perceived costs Financial costs for individuals and society, and psychological costs (e.g., effort)

Perceived risks Potential risks to the health and safety of both humans and nature

Perceived beneﬁts All potential beneﬁts attributed to CCS: for oneself, society and the environment

Outcome efﬁcacy Belief that one's own behavior affects the implementation of CCS

Problem perception Awareness of climate change and consequences if no new technologies are implemented

S. L'Orange Seigo et al. / Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 38 (2014) 848–863 849

article along those variables. All the variables discussed by Huijts

et al. [4] apply to the case of CCS, with one exception: We exclude

norms (both personal and social) from our discussion, because we

do not think that this concept can be usefully applied in the CCS

context. The technology is so young and so little known that no

norms have been established yet regarding CCS. At the same time,

we identiﬁed two additional concepts that seem relevant in the

speciﬁc case of CCS, but that are not included in the framework;

these will be discussed in Section 5.12. In the following, we give a

brief overview of the different elements of the energy technology

acceptance framework and their operationalization.

2.1. Acceptance and acceptability

Sometimes, a distinction is made between acceptance and

acceptability. From a linguistic point of view, acceptance refers to

the act of accepting, whereas acceptability is a property of the item

to be accepted. Huijts et al. [4] draw a slightly different distinction:

they deﬁne acceptance as behavior toward an energy technology,

and acceptability as an attitude (i.e., an evaluative judgment)

toward a new technology or toward possible behaviors regarding

the technology. We ﬁnd that in the case of CCS, it is unclear what

behavior should be used as an indicator of acceptance (the act of

not protesting, protesting as sign of non-acceptance, voting

behavior, etc.). We ﬁnd it more useful to use only the term

acceptance, but in certain cases distinguish between expressed

acceptance and revealed acceptance; we borrow this terminology

from risk acceptance literature, which distinguishes between

expressed preference and revealed preference regarding risks [7].

Expressed acceptance is the agreement with statements such as

“I would accept a CCS project in my community,”and revealed

acceptance is the act of (non)engaging in activities to promote or

prevent CCS. Using this broader deﬁnition of acceptance is more

consistent with the terminology used in CCS public perception

research. Most studies investigated what Huijts et al. [4] would call

attitude, but the authors themselves call it acceptance.

2.2. Knowledge

Knowledge about a technology and how it functions undoubt-

edly inﬂuences how a person evaluates the technology in question.

Knowledge can be operationalized differently: it can range from

mere awareness that the technology exists to subjective knowl-

edge (i.e., self-assessed knowledge) to objective knowledge

(usually measured with true/false-type questions developed by

experts). In this review, we will subsume all of the above under

the concept knowledge.

2.3. Experience with the technology

Concrete experiences with a technology inﬂuence how people

perceive it. In the case of CCS, only few people have direct

experience with the technology. However, there are related

technologies that are more common and that might also shape

the perception of CCS, such as fossil fuel extraction or under-

ground gas storage. We believe that they are relevant because they

also use the deep subsurface and are related to energy production.

2.4. Trust

Trust in relevant stakeholders has been found to be a reliable

predictor of the acceptance of new technologies. Because knowl-

edge is low, people use their trust in promoters or opponents of

technology as a heuristic for its acceptability. This relationship is

often mediated through perceived risks and beneﬁts [8,9].

2.5. Fairness

How fairly people perceive the way a technology is implemen-

ted can greatly affect their acceptance. A distinction can be made

between procedural fairness, which relates to the decision pro-

cesses, and distributive fairness, which refers to the distribution of

costs, risks and beneﬁts [4,10].

2.6. Affect

Feelings toward a technology, or affect, are also relevant for

attitude formation [11]. Positive and negative affect can be concep-

tualized as two distinct factors, rather than two ends of one

continuum [12].

2.7. Perceived costs

Costs refer to ﬁnancial costs for the individual and society, but

also psychological costs, such as effort.

2.8. Perceived risks

Perceived risks can be safety risks for humans and nature, but

also ﬁnancial risks according to Hujits et al. [4]. Because the

conceptual difference between perceived costs and perceived

ﬁnancial risks is not very clear, we decided to use the term

perceived risks for health and safety risks, and refer to perceived

ﬁnancial risks as perceived costs.

2.9. Perceived beneﬁts

Perceived beneﬁts encompass all potential beneﬁts the public

sees in a technology. This includes personal and societal beneﬁts,

but also beneﬁts for the environment.

2.10. Outcome efﬁcacy/perceived behavioral control

There are two different types of outcome efﬁcacy according to

Huijts et al. [4]: the belief that the new technology will actually

reduce energy problems, and the belief that one’s own behavior will

impact the implementation of the technology. In the case of CCS, the

ﬁrst kind is almost indistinguishable from beneﬁt perception. There-

fore, we use the term outcome efﬁcacy only for the second type –

perceived inﬂuence on technology implementation. This in turn is

very similar to perceived behavioral control, which constitutes a

separate factor in the framework by Huijts et al. [13],butisnot

discussed separately in this review.

2.11. Problem perception

Problem perception is the “awareness of problems related to

the current energy system when no new energy technology is

implemented and used”[4]. This includes climate change, which is

very relevant in the case of CCS.

3. Selection of studies

A literature search was conducted on Web of Science in December

2012.WesearchedforCCS(searchterms“CCS,”“carbon capture,”

“CO

storage”) in combination with each of the following terms:

“acceptance,”“acceptability,”“perception,”“attitude,”“public opinion.”

Conference proceedings were excluded from the search. The following

criteria were applied to select an article: (a) it dealt with public

perception rather than stakeholder perception, and (b) it reported

empirical ﬁndings and was not purely theory-based, or a commentary.

S. L'Orange Seigo et al. / Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 38 (2014) 848–863850

The search was supplemented by snowballing to identify additional

studies. Through this, we identiﬁed 45 papers. After reviewing them in

greater detail, we decided to exclude two media analyses, because

they did not directly assess public opinion. It is reasonable to argue

that media coverage is a useful proxy for public perception, but this

was not the focus of our review. One more publication was excluded

because it was about public perception of oceanic carbon sequestra-

tion as opposed to geological sequestration. Oceanic disposal is no

longer considered a viable option for CCS, and it might be perceived

differently from geological sequestration [14], which was the (primary)

focus of the remaining studies. A total of 42 empirical research articles

was therefore included, which will be discussed in the following

sections.

4. Overview of the studies

The earliest article included was published in 2002 [15],which

shows how young the ﬁeld of public perception research of CCS is.

There has been an increase in studies over the last years, and 24

articles were published between 2010 and 2012. Where studies on

public perception of CCS were conducted does not necessarily map to

where CCS activities actually take place, as can be seen in Table 2 .

Table 2 compares the CO

emissions of countries with the number of

CCS projects and the number of public perception studies conducted

there. The list includes only countries with at least one public

perception study. Two continents are completely absent: South

America and Africa. South America currently has no CCS activities,

and Africa has only the In Salah storage project.

In terms of methodology, the studies in this review covered

quite a wide range. A third (n¼14) were qualitative. They used

interviews, focus groups and workshops. The remaining studies

(n¼28) can be classiﬁed as quantitative. They differed in their data

collection (paper–pencil surveys, online surveys, interviews, labora-

tory experiments) and data analysis (frequencies, conjoint analysis,

regression, structural equation modeling, analysis of variance). They

were heterogeneous in their research questions and the variables

measured. A detailed overview of the studies, where they were

conducted, their research methods and key ﬁndings can be found in

Tables A1 and A2 in Appendix A.

5. Key results

In the following, we give an overview of the most important

ﬁndings that can be derived from the studies. The results are

structured along the variables of the technology acceptance frame-

work discussed in Section 2 [4].Tables 3 and 4 summarize which

study included which concept(s).

5.1. Attitude and acceptance

Most studies measured expressed acceptance. There are not many

CCS projects yet where revealed acceptance could be measured, and

many studies were conducted in places where CCS has not been

implemented yet, but where there is interest in gauging public opinion

beforehand. Therefore, it is difﬁcult to interpret and compare levels of

reported acceptance. Because CCS is little known, participants had to

be given information about the technology, and their opinion is likely

to be highly sensitive to the content of that information and to the

research context. In our discussion of the results, we will therefore

focus on studies that investigated which variables inﬂuence attitude,

rather than reporting absolute levels of attitude. Studies that do

measureabsoluteacceptancetypicallyﬁnd means that are close to

themidpointofthescale;fewpeopletakeanextremestanceonCCS,

neither positively nor negatively. The technology is rarely categorically

rejected, because people see the need for reducing CO

emissions into

the atmosphere. At the same time, they object to the fact that it is an

“end-of-pipe”solution, which does not reduce the production of CO

from fossil fuels, and they want to see it embedded in a comprehen-

sive energy strategy that addresses the problem of climate change

from multiple angles. Overall, it could be said that CCS is reluctantly

accepted.

Many studies conﬁrmed the typical ﬁnding that risk and beneﬁt

perceptions are two of the main predictors of the acceptance of a

technology [16–20].Duanetal.[21] measured perceived beneﬁts but

notperceivedrisks,anditwasthemostinﬂuential predictor in their

regression. Trust in stakeholders is another inﬂuential variable that can

have direct effects on acceptance, or through perceived risks and

beneﬁts [17–20]. Studies that included none of these variables had low

explained variance, although they found some signiﬁcant other factors.

De Best-Waldhober et al. [22], for example, concluded that their

participants based their evaluations to some extent on the aspects and

Table 2

Countries where CCS studies were conducted, their CO

emissions and number of

CCS projects.

Country Emissions

CCS projects

Studies

China 7711 11 1

US 5415 23 7

Japan 1168 0 3

Germany 770 0 3

UK 493 6 4

Canada 488 8 2

Australia 380 4 5

France 361 1 1

Poland 316 1 1

Spain 267 1 4

Netherlands 191 2 14

Belgium 115 0 1

Sweden 52 0 1

Switzerland 41 0 7

Note: The number of studies does not add up to the number of articles considered

in this review, because some articles report on studies conducted in multiple

countries.

emissions (in million tons) in 2010 (IEA, Paris, 2012).

Large scale integrated projects (The Global CCS Institute, 2013, 2013).

Table 3

Overview of concepts investigated in qualitative studies.

Study Ex. Kn. Tr. PF DF PA NA PC PR PB OE PP Ac.

Anderson et al. [24] ✓✓ ✓✓✓

Ashworth et al. [25] ✓✓✓

Ashworth et al. [46] ✓✓✓✓✓

Fleishman et al. [31] ✓✓

L'Orange Seigo

et al. [47]

✓✓✓

Gough et al. [15] ✓✓✓✓✓

Oltra et al. [41] ✓✓ ✓ ✓✓

Oltra et al. [26] ✓✓✓ ✓✓✓ ✓

Palmgren et al. [14] ✓✓ ✓✓

Shackley et al. [48] ✓✓ ✓✓

Upham and

Roberts [27]

✓✓ ✓✓ ✓✓

Wallquist et al. [51] ✓✓✓✓

Wong-Parodi and

Ray [28]

✓✓✓ ✓✓✓✓✓

Wong-Parodi

et al. [29]

✓✓✓✓✓

Ex.¼Experience, Kn. ¼Knowledge, Tr.¼Trust, PF ¼Procedural fairness, DF ¼Distri-

butive fairness, PA¼Positive affect, NA¼Negative affect, PC ¼Perceived costs,

PR¼perceived risks, PB ¼Perceived beneﬁts, OE ¼Outcome efﬁcacy, PP¼Problem

perception, Ac.¼Acceptance.

S. L'Orange Seigo et al. / Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 38 (2014) 848–863 851

consequences of the technologies explained, but that there are clearly

other, more inﬂuential factors. Sharp et al. [23] found that media

reports and the extent to which CCS is used in other countries

signiﬁcantly inﬂuenced support for CCS. It is also possible to inﬂuence

attitude toward CCS by giving speciﬁc information (see Section 5.3 on

Knowledge).

Only three case studies measured revealed acceptance as

opposed to expressed acceptance. Anderson et al. [24] emphasized

the importance of participation, which should live up to certain

standards. For project managers, it is important to know a

community's social characteristics and to be sure that they might

not be mistaking for acceptance what is actually passive resigna-

tion. Ashworth et al. [25] formulated ﬁve success factors for

projects that go in a similar direction. The social context of a site

should be considered, and the project should be ﬂexible enough to

adjust to it; communication experts should be an integral part of

the project from the beginning, and important stakeholders need

to be aligned. Oltra et al. [26] saw three issues as most important

for acceptance: trust in the developer, the quality of public

engagement activities, and the public's and stakeholders' percep-

tions of the need for the facility.

5.2. Experience

Only ﬁve articles discussed the role of experience for accep-

tance of CCS [24,26–29]. It is interesting that they were all

qualitative studies, and three were case studies. Anderson et al.

[24] discussed farmers' acceptance of the Otway project in

Australia. They cited experience with the gas industry as a key

factor for initial acceptance. The farmers were familiar with

pipelines and gas wells, and appreciated the extra income they

received from compensation payments. Later on in the project,

however, there were negative experiences with the CCS activities,

which caused ongoing interruption to farm management activities.

As a consequence, old concerns about the gas industry emerged

again, and acceptance dropped. Oltra et al. [26] also found a

relationship between previous experience with the fossil fuel

industry and acceptance of CCS projects in their analysis of ﬁve

European cases. The two projects that did not face strong opposi-

tion were located in communities with prior experience.

Wong-Parodi and Ray [28] looked at two communities in

California that might have been host sites for a CSS project. Both

had previous experience with industrial harm and how it was

handled. One community had been able to stop the construction of

a chemical plant near a river, which strengthened their sense of

empowerment; they felt that they would also be able to exercise

their voice in the case of a CCS project, if anything went wrong.

The other community, however, had an unresolved water contam-

ination issue; they felt that if anything went wrong with the

proposed CCS facility, their complaints would go unheard. This

feeling of helplessness would likely have prevented them from

actively protesting against the CCS project; it is important to note,

however, that this would not have been due to real acceptance.

Upham and Roberts [27] conducted focus groups, and their

participants used their experience with natural gas storage and

transport as a proxy for assessing the safety of the transport and

storage aspects of CCS.

5.3. Knowledge

Numerous studies assessed whether the general public had

heard of CCS and knew what it is used for. Awareness is generally

quite low, and only a small minority had heard of the technology.

De Best-Waldober et al. [22,30] and Fleishman et al. [31] assessed

how thoroughly informed participants evaluate CCS. The research-

ers gave participants rather extensive background information on

climate change, energy production technologies and how CCS

functions. This avoided the problem that people might report only

pseudo-opinions because they are unfamiliar with CCS. Informed

participants were neither overly enthusiastic about CCS nor

entirely opposed to it. De Best-Waldhober et al. found that aspects

and consequences of the technology itself left much of the

variance in people's evaluations unexplained. There must be

other factors that inﬂuence judgments about CCS. This ﬁnding

was replicated in a more recent study by de Best-Waldhober

et al. [32], which found only a weak relationship between knowl-

edge of CO

and CCS, and attitude toward CCS.

L'Orange Seigo et al. [33], Moutenet et al. [34], Oltra et al. [35]

and Tokushige et al. [19] gave their respondents information about

speciﬁc aspects of CCS and measured how that inﬂuenced attitude.

L'Orange Seigo et al. [33] found that information about monitoring

measures undertaken at CO

storage sites had an alarming rather

than a reassuring effect, at least in men. Moutenet et al. [34]

observed lower support for CCS, after participants were presented

with the unfavorable views certain nongovernmental organiza-

tions (NGOs) hold of CCS. This relationship was likely mediated

through trust, although this was not measured in the study. Oltra

et al. [35] found a positive effect for information about the natural

character of CO

, although other manipulations in the study were

unsuccessful at inﬂuencing attitudes. Similarly, Tokushige et al.

[19] measured increased acceptance after their participants had

read about natural analogues of CO

storage. Information about

ﬁeld demonstrations, however, barely inﬂuenced acceptance.

Table 4

Overview of concepts investigated in quantitative studies.

Study Ex. Kn. Tr. PF DF PA NA PC PR PB OE PP Ac.

Carley et al. [52] ✓✓✓

de Best-Waldhober

et al. [30]

✓✓

de Best-Waldhober

et al. [32]

✓✓✓

de Best-Waldhober

et al. [22]

✓✓

Duan [21] ✓✓✓✓✓

Ha-Duong et al. [53] ✓✓✓✓

Huijts et al. [13] ✓✓ ✓✓ ✓✓ ✓

Kraeusel and Möst

[16]

✓✓✓✓✓✓

L'Orange Seigo et al.

[33]

✓✓✓✓✓

Midden and Huijts

[37]

✓✓✓✓✓ ✓

Miller et al. [39] ✓✓ ✓✓

Miller et al. [38] ✓✓ ✓✓

Moutenet et al. [34] ✓✓✓

Oltra et al. [35] ✓✓✓

Palmgren et al. [14] ✓✓ ✓✓

Reiner et al. [54] ✓✓✓

Sharp et al. [23] ✓✓✓✓

ter Mors et al. [40] ✓

Terwel et al. [18] ✓✓✓✓

Terwel et al. [42] ✓

Terwel et al. [43] ✓✓

Terwel and Daamen

[17]

✓✓✓✓

Terwel et al. [44] ✓✓ ✓ ✓ ✓✓

Tokushige et al. [49] ✓✓✓✓

Tokushige et al. [19] ✓✓ ✓✓ ✓✓

Wallquist et al. [56] ✓

Wallquist et al. [50] ✓✓✓

Wallquist et al. [20] ✓✓✓✓

Wallquist et al. [36] ✓✓✓✓

Ex.¼Experience, Kn. ¼Knowledge, Tr.¼Trust, PF ¼Procedural fairness, DF¼Distri-

butive fairness, PA¼Positive affect, NA¼Negative affect, PC ¼Perceived costs,

PR¼perceived risks, PB ¼Perceived beneﬁts, OE ¼Outcome efﬁcacy, PP¼Problem

perception, Ac.¼Acceptance.

S. L'Orange Seigo et al. / Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 38 (2014) 848–863852

Only two studies [32,36] assessed objective knowledge of CCS.

Knowledge was generally low, and typical misconceptions wide-

spread. Such misconceptions are that the CO

is stored as a gas in

large cavernous spaces, and that the applied pressure might lead

to explosions. Wallquist et al. [36] found an effect of knowledge on

risk and beneﬁt perceptions, but the inﬂuence was rather limited.

5.4. Trust

Trust is recognized as a key variable for technology acceptance,

and 18 of the studies we reviewed included it in some way in their

analysis [13,15,17–20,25–27,29,37–44]. The most trusted stake-

holders are researchers and NGOs. Two case studies by Ashworth

et al. [25] and Oltra et al. [26] found accordingly that the projects

that could be successfully implemented and faced the least

opposition were research projects. Those run by energy compa-

nies, however, often faced strong opposition or were even can-

celled. Industry is one of the least trusted stakeholders.

Government organizations tend to fare better but are often not

trusted to manage CCS operations safely.

Quantitative studies have found that the effect of trust on

acceptance is not direct, but is mediated through perceived risks

and perceived beneﬁts [17–19] . Wallquist et al. [20] found an effect

on perceived beneﬁts, but not risks. And Midden et al. [37] further

observed that the relationship between trust and perceived risks

operated through affect.

The question is, of course, how trust comes about in the ﬁrst

place. Huijts et al. [13] found that trust in a stakeholder was

inﬂuenced by the perceived similarity with that stakeholder,

which is in accordance with the wider literature on trust [45,9].

Using experiments, Terwel et al. [43] examined the effects that

group voice in decision making has on trust. Authorities were

judged as more trustworthy if they granted different interest

groups a voice in the decision-making process about CCS imple-

mentation, which in turn led to higher acceptance of the ﬁnal

decision. Knowledge had a moderating effect: Informed people

cared more about group voice, whereas uninformed people were

indifferent. Another study by Terwel et al. [42] investigated the

relationship between corporate communications and trust. It was

not just message content that was predictive of trust, but whether

the message was in line with the assumed motives of the

organization standing behind the communication. Industrial orga-

nizations, for example, were thought to act more out of self-

serving motives than public interest. When they highlighted

environmental beneﬁts of CCS, trust was low, due to perceived

dishonesty. Trust could be preserved, however, when an honest

argument (ﬁnancial interest) was coupled with a more public-

serving message (CCS is good for the environment).

Ter Mors et al. [40] looked at when information from stake-

holders is seen as trustworthy and reliable. Information coming

from dissimilar but collaborating stakeholders was seen as more

balanced and therefore trustworthy than information coming from

one stakeholder alone. Trusted stakeholders were not negatively

affected by collaborating with a less trusted stakeholder.

5.5. Fairness

The role of fairness (both distributive and procedural) has not

been studied much in the context of CCS. Some studies touch the

topic indirectly, and only two publications by Terwel et al. [43,44]

address the role of fairness explicitly. The ﬁrst is the same study that

was discussed in the subsection on trust. Procedures that are

perceived as fair lead to more trust and ultimately to higher

acceptance. The second one is an analysis of the Barendrecht case

(a project in the Netherlands that was cancelled, at least partially due

to public resistance); local residents there found the decision-making

procedure unfair and thought that Shell (the project developer) had

undue inﬂuence, whereas local residents lacked decision power. Oltra

et al. [26] also analyzed the Barendrecht case and observed that

opposition was partially driven by local stakeholders questioning the

need to select their community and not others as a storage site,

particularly because they had already absorbed many infrastructure

projects in previous years. This is clearly a concern with distributive

fairness.

Wong-Parodi and Ray [28] stressed the importance of the

empowerment of a community. This “partly stems from the

community's ability to exercise voice and have recourse to

compensation or damage mitigation”[28], which are aspects of

procedural fairness. Anderson et al. [24] take a more normative

stance: public participation should be an integral part of any CCS

project, and a good participation process needs to ensure that the

local population has appropriate resources, also in terms of social

capital, to voice their needs and have their concerns addressed.

5.6. Affect

Affect is another variable that has received very little research

attention. Midden and Huijts [37] included affect in their study

and conﬁrmed the ﬁnding that negative and positive affects are

two separate dimensions, rather than two ends of a continuum.

Both positive and negative affects were inﬂuenced by trust in their

sample, and in turn inﬂuenced perceived beneﬁts and risks. Huijts

et al. [13] reported frequencies regarding affect; ratings of negative

affect were higher in their sample than ratings of positive affect. In

a study by L'Orange Seigo et al. [33], information on CO

monitor-

ing measures induced higher levels of negative affect compared to

a control group who did not receive the same information.

Wong-Parodi et al. [29] argued that pro-or anti-CCS messages

are most persuasive if they trigger an emotional reaction. The

authors called such messages “emotionally self-referent”(ESR).

Participants in the study identiﬁed their own ESR triggers and

used them to create messages in favor of or against CCS in their

community. These messages were based on different arguments

than those created by experts, and they were seen as more

persuasive, although the participants believed the expert mes-

sages in terms of factual content.

5.7. Perceived costs

It is not always easy to distinguish perceived costs from perceived

risks. Particularly in the case of CCS, cost estimates are associated with

large uncertainties and might also be framed as ﬁnancial risks. A few

studies explicitly mention costs, however, in particular monetary costs.

A number of participants in qualitative studies brought this issue up.

InfocusgroupsconductedbyUphamandRoberts[27],costswere

seen as a, if not the, major disadvantage by participants from the

United Kingdom (UK), Germany and Poland. They thought that

increased costs for electricity production should be shouldered by

power companies rather than the consumer. Similar concerns were

found by Gough et al. [15] and Palmgren et al. [14].Inthecasestudies

discussed by Oltra et al. [26], a potential increase in electricity prices

was one of the concerns raised in Bełchatów –a project faced with

some opposition.

Kraeusel and Möst [16] conducted a conjoint study and

included a monthly price premium as one of the factors. Partici-

pants were willing to pay a premium for an increased share of

renewable energy in the electricity mix, but not for CCS.

5.8. Perceived risks

The majority of studies (n¼26) investigate risk in some way

[13–21,23,24,26–29,33,35–37,46,50,51]. Qualitative studies can

S. L'Orange Seigo et al. / Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 38 (2014) 848–863 853

give insights into which kind of risks people are concerned about.

By far the most frequently voiced concern is that the CO

might

leak back into the atmosphere. This would at the same time

undermine the single largest beneﬁt of CCS. Concerns also exist

about how such a leak might happen. Some people believe there

might be sudden blowouts or explosions (both at the surface level,

for example at injection wells, and underground). Another com-

mon concern is that ground movements might compromise the

storage integrity. Multiple studies cite “earthquakes”as a potential

risk, but it is not always clear whether it is meant that earthquakes

would cause faults in the caprock and thus lead to leakage, or

whether the pressure of the injected CO

might lead to earth-

quakes. CO

is also seen as a pollutant or a toxic substance, and

people therefore feel uncomfortable disposing of it underground.

They fear negative effects on ecosystems, although they cannot

specify what these effects would be.

The second big set of potential risks voiced by laypeople

revolves around the unsustainable nature of CCS: it does not

tackle the root of the problem –producing CO

by burning fossil

fuels –and is perceived as an end-of-pipe solution or sweeping the

issue under the rug. There are also concerns that the development

of CCS might reduce investments in renewable energy technolo-

gies. We call this set of concerns sustainability concerns.

A concern that was mentioned only in case studies was the

potential impact on property values or tourism. This indicates that

different risks can become focal once a speciﬁc project site has

been selected.

When these concerns are measured quantitatively, it seems

that sustainability concerns, fears of leakage and fear of over-

pressurization are most inﬂuential for risk perception as a whole

[36]. Various studies looked at whether information about differ-

ent aspects of CCS technology or CO

can inﬂuence risk percep-

tions [35,33,49,50], with mixed results. It seems possible to

inﬂuence risk perception, but the effect is rather small, and

different kinds of information have different effects.

Consistent with the risk perception literature in other domains,

trust in stakeholders was found to be inversely related to risk

perceptions [17–19] . Similarly, Midden and Huijts [37] found an

impact of both negative and positive affect; negative affect

increases risk perception, whereas positive affect decreases risk

perception.

Also in agreement with the literature on risk perception and

technology acceptance, a number of studies found that risk

perceptions of CCS were a signiﬁcant negative predictor of

acceptance [16–21,37,44,49]. Wallquist et al. [20] found a particu-

larly strong relationship between perceived risks and acceptance.

They measured the latter as protest potential, in order to be closer

to actual behavior.

5.9. Perceived beneﬁts

Almost half the articles included beneﬁt perception as their

dependent or independent variable [13,16–21,26,28,29,33,36,37,

41,46–50]. Interestingly, not all studies that tried to identify

perceived risks also asked about perceived beneﬁts, although

perceived beneﬁts are very important for acceptance, often even

more relevant than perceived risks. This has also been found in the

case of CCS [16–20,37,49].

The obvious beneﬁt of CCS is its contribution to reducing CO

emissions and thus mitigating climate change. Sometimes this is

framed as CCS allowing the continued use of fossil fuels, while still

reducing CO

emissions. It thus enables a smoother transition to

sustainable energy production. It could be argued that this is the

only reason for and thus the only beneﬁt of CCS. At a societal level,

this might be true. But at the local level, there can be additional

beneﬁts, which were brought up by respondents in case studies or

potential host communities [46,26,28,29]. They focused on eco-

nomic beneﬁts, which might come through job creation, tourism

or future investment in the community. Ashworth et al. [25] also

pointed to the importance of identifying local beneﬁts in order to

make a concrete CCS project successful.

At the broader, societal level, beneﬁt perceptions seem to be

positively inﬂuenced by trust [37,17–20] and positive affect [37].

L'Orange Seigo et al. [33] and Wallquist et al. [50] looked at how

information can impact beneﬁt perceptions. As in the case of risk

perceptions, the effect depends on the exact type of information.

Wallquist et al. [36] found that the most inﬂuential factor on

beneﬁt perception was sustainability concerns –higher concerns

were associated with lower beneﬁt perception. This factor was

more important than actual factual knowledge about how CO

storage works.

5.10. Outcome efﬁcacy

Outcome efﬁcacy, or the belief that personal actions can

actually inﬂuence the implementation of CCS technology, was

explicitly addressed in only two studies. Anderson et al. [24]

showed how a lack of social capital led to a sort of passive

acceptance by farmers, which was less driven by favorable views

of the CCS project than by insufﬁcient social resources to make

themselves heard. Social capital was deﬁned as connections and

networks between individuals, and the corresponding trust.

Wong-Parodi et al. [28] looked at how a community's social

economic standing and local history can affect their sense of

empowerment. They compared a low-income, mostly Hispanic,

community with a wealthier, mostly Caucasian, community in

California. They found that the poorer community felt fairly

powerless and did not believe that they would have much say in

the siting process or that they would receive compensation if

anything went wrong. Here also, the authors pointed out how this

passive resignation should not be confused with acceptance.

Outcome efﬁcacy is also related to perceived fairness. As Terwel

et al. [44] showed, local residents in Barendrecht thought they did

not have enough inﬂuence over the proposed CCS project, which

led to low perceived fairness.

5.11. Problem perception

Problem perception was included in many studies we reviewed

[14–16,19,21,23,27,32,34,36,38,39,41,44,48,51–54]. This is not sur-

prising, given that mitigating climate change is the primary beneﬁt

of CCS. It would be hard to argue in favor of CCS, if the basic tenet

that climate change is real and needs mitigating is not accepted.

There seems to be general agreement among the public that

climate change is happening and that action is necessary to reduce

greenhouse gas emissions. The highest number of climate change

deniers was reported by Reiner et al. [54] for the United States

(US), where 7% of respondents indicated that global warming was

not a problem. In the UK and Sweden, the same statement was

endorsed by 3% and 2%, respectively.

Few studies looked at how awareness of climate change

actually affects perception of CCS. Kreausel and Möst [16] found

that people with higher climate change concern also had higher

risk perceptions (which in turn would be expected to lead to lower

acceptance). Contrary to that, Wallquist et al. [36] found a negative

inﬂuence of climate change awareness on risk perception, and a

positive inﬂuence on beneﬁt perceptions. Similarly, Oltra et al. [41]

reported that groups that accepted CCS thought that climate

change was an urgent problem. Tokushige et al. [19] also looked

S. L'Orange Seigo et al. / Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 38 (2014) 848–863854

at the inﬂuence of problem perception on risk and beneﬁt

perceptions. They operationalized the concept slightly differently

from other studies, however, and emphasized the aspect of human

interference with nature and going against nature's laws. They

found a positive inﬂuence on risk and beneﬁt perceptions.

5.12. Other variables

A couple of concepts emerged as important variables for

people's evaluation of CCS, but are not covered in the technology

acceptance framework [4]. We will discuss them in the following.

5.12.1. Energy context

The current energy mix of a country where CCS is to be

deployed and the available alternatives both seem to be very

important to people. Within the technology acceptance frame-

work, it could be argued that this acts through beneﬁt perception,

or it could be framed as a speciﬁc kind of risk. But because these

concerns seem so prevalent in the case of CCS and have such large

importance, we feel they deserve their own discussion. Several

qualitative studies bring up this issue, which is closely related to

the sustainability concerns mentioned above (see Section 5.8).

Gough et al.'s [15] participants were concerned about investing in

a technology that would be rendered obsolete by other low-carbon

technologies. This could simply be framed as ﬁnancial risks, but it

also points to the fact that people do not evaluate CCS in isolation,

but consider the availability of other technologies that might yield

equal beneﬁts. The same was found by Palmgren et al. [14], who

stated that “many respondents indicated a desire to consider

carbon capture and sequestration in the context of a broader set

of options for carbon management.”Similarly, Shackley et al. [48]

argued that results from their focus groups “strongly support[s]

the need to embed CCS within a portfolio of decarbonization

options and to promote CCS as a ‘bridging strategy’to other lower

zero-carbon energy sources.”Oltra et al. [41] found that rejection

of CCS among participants was partially based on a preference for

other renewable technologies.

Fleishman et al. [31] studied perceptions of CCS when it was

embedded in realistic energy portfolios, rather than looking at the

technology in isolation. Their results showed a more favorable

evaluation of CCS than other studies. A study that tried to quantify

the effects of framing CCS as a bridging technology was conducted

by Wallquist et al. [50]. They gave participants in a within-subject

experiment different types of information and measured the effect

on risk and beneﬁt perceptions. After participants read a para-

graph on how CCS is only part of a solution and should be

embedded in a range of other low-carbon technologies, their

beneﬁt perceptions increased and risk perceptions decreased.

5.12.2. Values

One particular set of values has emerged as an important

predictor in some studies; it revolves around interference with

nature. Gough et al. [15] highlighted two implicit cognitive models

that participants seemed to hold regarding CCS, one of which is

the belief that there is a web of interconnected ecosystems that

can easily be disturbed, and interference in one place will cause

disastrous chain reactions. Tokushige et al. [19] and Wallquist et al.

[20] included interference with nature in structural equation

models to predict acceptance. One called it “perception of inter-

ference with the environment for implementation of the geologi-

cal storage of CO

”and the other “tampering with the subsurface,”

which is more speciﬁcally about the subsurface rather than nature

in general. Tokushige et al. [19] found a signiﬁcant impact on risk

perception and a direct path to public acceptance. In Wallquist

et al. [20], tampering with the subsurface was the single best

predictor of perceived beneﬁts and perceived risks. The ﬁnding

that perceived interference with nature affects risk perceptions is

in line with risk perception research in other energy-related

domains [55].

Wallquist et al. [56] also conducted a conjoint study that looked

at the relative impact of each of the three CCS elements (capture/

source, transport and storage) on overall acceptance of CCS.

The factor CO2 source had two levels: CO

from a gas-ﬁred power

plant and CO

from a biogas-ﬁred power plant. When the source of

the CO

was biogas, there was no Not In My Backyard (NIMBY)

effect, and participants did not seem to mind living near a storage

site. This might seem irrational, because the CO

is the same,

regardless of its origin. It is possible, however, that biogas is

perceived as more natural, and therefore, CO

coming from it is

regarded as less harmful than CO

from fossil fuels. This effect

might have been particularly pronounced, because the study was

conducted in German, and the preﬁx“bio-”has the meaning of

“organic.”

These results point to a potentially important role of the value

interference with nature regarding public perception of CCS.

Further studies could try to clarify what the public perceives as

(non)interference with nature, and what its exact role in accep-

tance of CCS is.

6. Summary and outlook

Over the last decade, a diverse body of articles has been

published on public perception of CCS. As we have shown, the

technology acceptance framework by Huijts et al. [4] is a useful

tool for structuring the various results. Table 5 summarizes the

most important ﬁndings for each variable in the framework, and

the two additional variables we propose for the CCS case.

Aspects that have been well researched are the public's

intuitive reaction to CCS, their mental models of the technology

and the subsurface, and their awareness of climate change. These

variables would be subsumed under knowledge in the technology

acceptance framework. Although people generally know that

climate change is happening, they are unsure what exactly is

causing it or what possible mitigation options are. Many seem to

underestimate the extent of emission reduction that is necessary,

while overestimating how much can currently be achieved

through the use of renewables. There are some small differences

between countries, but overall, the mental models the general

public holds of CCS and how it works are very similar.

What we know about these mental models is enough to draft

risk communication that should be understandable and useful.

Such communications are necessary to make sure the public has

access to adequate information and can participate in democratic

processes around the deployment of CCS. One should not expect,

however, that risk communication can produce acceptance, or that

information is the most inﬂuential variable for acceptance. Knowl-

edge has been shown to have an impact on public attitude, but

other variables are more important.

The best predictor of acceptance of CCS is beneﬁt perceptions.

This is typical for acceptance of new technologies [8,57]. In the

case of CCS, beneﬁt is intrinsically linked to the continued use of

fossil fuels for electricity production. At least at the societal level, it

is difﬁcult to identify additional beneﬁts to reducing CO

emis-

sions. This could be the reason people feel a strong need to view

CCS in context. They want to know about other alternatives, and

are concerned about the unsustainable nature of the technology.

CCS is seen as an end-of-pipe solution that might even displace

S. L'Orange Seigo et al. / Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 38 (2014) 848–863 855

investment in renewable energy technologies. Such sustainability

concerns are among the most important risks people see regarding

CCS. Other relevant risks are leakage or overpressurization of the

storage formation.

These last concerns are real and quite prevalent. At the same

time, they do not seem to scare people to the extreme. When

perceived risks are assessed quantitatively, the mean scores are

typically just above the midpoint of the scale, and almost nobody

uses the scale extremes. This is consistent with the ﬁnding by

Tokushige et al. [49] that CCS loads not overly high on the “dread”

factor within the psychometric paradigm [7]. At the societal level,

perceived risks should not be a major barrier to CCS implementa-

tion. At the local level, however, the picture might look different.

People who actively protest CCS sites can be motivated by

perceived risks, and local protest can cause a project to be

cancelled [25,26,44]. At the same time, absence of protest does

not necessarily mean that the local population is happy with the

proposed CCS project. They might simply feel that their voice

would not be heard anyway. More case studies would be useful to

further reﬁne our knowledge of what the key factors are for the

success or failure of a project, and how these factors might differ

from those that are crucial for acceptance at the societal level.

To date, many studies have focused on how properties of CCS

itself affect acceptance. Newer research, however, points to the

importance of context for the acceptance of CCS. At the local

project level, the social context of the community plays a large

role. We know it is important to take the history and social

structure of a community into account –have there been activities

of the fossil fuel industry in the past and does it form an integral

part of the economy, how empowered do the residents feel, etc.

Such questions are important, but it is not overly well understood

in which ways exactly they contribute to local acceptance of a

project, and how knowledge about the local context can be used to

foster support or opposition to a project.

Fairness is another variable that is not speciﬁcally related to

CCS but plays an important role in acceptance. Some studies

point to the importance of perceived fairness regarding CCS

(see Section 5.5). They emphasize the role of procedural fairness.

There is room for more research, however, to better understand

when a procedure is perceived as fair, and whether fairness is

more important at the local level or equally important for societal

acceptance. Research about other energy technologies indicates

that the latter might be the case (e.g., [58]). Almost entirely

neglected so far has been distributive fairness. Because CO

storage

Table 5

Main ﬁndings for each concept.

Concept Main ﬁndings

Acceptance



Most important predictors are perceived risks, perceived beneﬁts and trust



Aspects and consequences of technology itself play a role, but the inﬂuence is limited



Social context of project site is inﬂuential

Experience



Case studies point to the importance of prior experience with the fossil fuel or other industries for acceptance



Little research, worth exploring more

Knowledge



The public's mental models and misconceptions about CCS are understood well enough to produce meaningful information materials



Pre-existing knowledge and information about CCS inﬂuence acceptance, but the impact is limited

Trust



Important predictor of acceptance



Most trusted are researchers and NGOs, least trusted are industry stakeholders



Trust can be enhanced through fair procedures, honest communications and collaboration of multiple stakeholders

Fairness



Case studies point to the importance of both procedural and distributive fairness



Little research, worth exploring more

Affect



Positive and negative affect are two different dimensions



Affectively loaded messages are more persuasive; their content might be different from expert messages

Perceived costs



Costs are seen as a major disadvantage of CCS

Perceived risks



Potential risks that the public sees are quite well understood



Most important perceived risks are leakage and sustainability concerns



Perceived risks are one of the best predictors of acceptance

Perceived beneﬁts



Single best predictor for acceptance



Perceived beneﬁts are inﬂuenced by trust



Important for concrete projects to identify local beneﬁts

Outcome efﬁcacy



Low perceived outcome efﬁcacy prevents protest, even if acceptance is low

Problem perception



General agreement that climate change is real, only small portion of deniers



Tends to have positive effect on beneﬁt perception, negative effect on risk perception

Energy context



People want to discuss CCS within broader context of alternatives



Evaluation in context tends to be more positive than in isolation

Interference with nature



Seems to be important predictor for risk perception, beneﬁt perception and acceptance



More research needed to clarify role

S. L'Orange Seigo et al. / Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 38 (2014) 848–863856

sites are locally conﬁned but might not necessarily store local

emissions, it is very plausible that this type of fairness inﬂuences

acceptance, too.

Another set of variables that seems promising but has received

very little research attention are values, in particular what we call

interference with nature –the belief that humans should not

interfere with natural processes. Large perceived interference is

associated with more negative attitudes. This concept was highly

predictive of acceptance in studies by Wallquist et al. [20] and

Tokushige et al. [19]. More research is needed to gain a clearer

picture of what people perceive as interference with nature, and

whether it is possible to change that perception, for example by

pointing to natural analogues of underground gas storage. Perhaps

CCS projects could be designed in a way that perception of

interference is minimized. The exact role of these values for public

perception could also be clariﬁed.

Finally, increasing attention should be paid to dynamic pro-

cesses that shape public perception. Understanding individual

perceptions is of course important. Public perception of a technol-

ogy, however, is not just the sum of individual perceptions, but the

result of a dynamic process in which individuals and organizations

interact. Particularly new technologies associated with certain

risks and uncertainties can be subject to a social ampliﬁcation of

risk process [59,60]. The social ampliﬁcation of risk framework

(SARF) posits that risks are perceived and portrayed through risk

signals; they can be images, signs or symbols. These signals are

communicated among people, and each person or institution

involved in this communication process will apply their own

ﬁlters, heuristics and interpretations as they pass on the informa-

tion. Thus, the perception of risks can be ampliﬁed or attenuated,

as the information passes through the various “ampliﬁcation

stations.”This can lead to so-called ripple effects that affect groups

that were not originally involved with the risk event in question

[60]. Kasperson et al. [59] gave the example of the Three Mile

Island nuclear accident, which led to changes in management

practices for nuclear power plants around the globe. If the CCS

industry were confronted with a similar event that has a large

signaling effect, such as a large-scale leak or a blowout at an

injection well, this might tip public opinion of CCS and change

which variables are the most predictive of acceptance.

7. Practical implications

In the previous section, we pointed out some research gaps that

should be addressed. However, the existing body of research on

public perception of CCS can also answer some important ques-

tions and allows certain conclusions for practitioners wanting to

implement CCS.

Because CCS is such a new technology and very little known,

one concern is often with informing the public. As mentioned in

Section 6, we now have a fairly clear picture of what people's

intuitive image of CCS is and which aspects are most important to

correct. The majority of people accept climate change as real and

relevant, which can be built on in communications. There seems to

be considerable confusion, however, about the role of CO

, where

it comes from and which effects it can have, not just on the climate

but also on human health. This should be explained in an

introduction to CCS. Concerning the technology itself, widespread

misconceptions revolve around geological storage mechanisms

and the behavior of the CO2 in the reservoir. Communication

materials should point out these misconceptions and then

correct them.

It is certainly necessary to provide adequate and neutral

information for the general public, and we would argue there is

an ethical obligation to do so. But project developers should not

overestimate the effect that such information materials have on

acceptance. Even if people are motivated and able to process them

carefully, the effect of knowledge on acceptance has been shown

to be moderate at best. What is more inﬂuential is the context in

which CCS is deployed: What other options for climate change

mitigation are being pursued, who promotes CCS and why, how

will costs and beneﬁts generated by the technology be

distributed, etc.

Most countries have no public participation processes for their

national energy strategies or national laws governing the deploy-

ment of CCS. At the local level, however, when it comes to the

implementation of speciﬁc CCS projects, the local population often

has a say. If no formal engagement procedure is applied, they can

at least organize local protests.

Case studies point to the importance of experience for accep-

tance of local CCS projects. The historical and social context of a

potential host community should be carefully analyzed. If the local

population has prior (positive) experience with the fossil fuel

industry, they are more likely to be positively disposed to a CCS

project. But even experiences that are not directly related to CCS

may turn out to be relevant. If there have been other industrial

activities in the past that had negative impacts on the community,

this will shape people's reaction to a proposed CCS facility.

The latter point is related to aspects of fairness and trust. If

people feel they have already been taken advantage of in the past

and had to bear the negative consequences of industrial facilities,

they will most likely not be willing to accept a CCS project. In a

community that is neutral, perceived fairness can be enhanced by

involving the local population as early as possible, giving them

decision power wherever possible, and communicating openly and

honestly. A problem that arises here is that project developers are

typically energy companies. They are the least trusted stakeholder,

and even honest communication might not achieve its goal.

Therefore, it makes sense for project developers to seek coopera-

tion with a more trusted stakeholder, such as a local citizen group

or an NGO.

Local cooperation partners might also be able to help with the

analysis of the local context and to identify local beneﬁts for the

community. This is an important issue. In studies about both

societal acceptance and local acceptance, perceived beneﬁts are

crucial for acceptance. Their role is usually larger than that of

perceived risks. The latter should not be disregarded, however.

Perceived risks do have a signiﬁcant impact on acceptance. They

can to some extent be inﬂuenced by information, but they are also

inﬂuenced by trust in stakeholders. What is important to bear in

mind in the case of CCS is that one of the largest risks people see is

the displacement of other efforts to mitigate climate change. This

concern cannot be argued away with scientiﬁcﬁndings. A pre-

requisite for acceptance of CCS in our view is that it is embedded

in a solid energy strategy that people ﬁnd acceptable.

To conclude, we would argue it is quite well understood which

information is necessary to help people form their own opinion of

CCS and make an informed decision. Project developers should pay

attention to the local context of a proposed project site and focus

on building an equal and trusted relationship with the local

population.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank swisselectric research for funding this

study. The funding source was not involved in the study design or

preparation of this article.

S. L'Orange Seigo et al. / Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 38 (2014) 848–863 857

Appendix A

See Tables A1 and A2.

Table A1

Overview of the qualitative studies.

Study Country Method Key ﬁndings

Anderson et al. [24]:“Exploring CCS community

acceptance and public participation from a

human and social capital perspective”

AU Qualitative: interviews



Farmers had a closed social network and therefore

closed information loop; proponent message thus

reinforced



Farmers' acceptance declined during the project, but

they remained passive and did not coordinate with their

neighbors



Farmers would have been in need of capacity-building

for human and social capital for a fairer and more

transparent participation process

Sample: from affected communities

Ashworth et al. [25]:“What's in store: lessons

from implementing CCS”

AU, NL,

Qualitative: interviews about case studies



Critical success factors for projects: alignment of

government and development team; communication

expert; consideration of social context and ability to

adapt to changing social context



Components of effective stakeholder communication:

timing (early); knowing the community; identifying

local beneﬁts; use of appropriate information channels

Sample: stakeholders from each case

Ashworth et al. [46]:“Public acceptance of

carbon dioxide capture and storage in a

proposed demonstration area”

AU Qualitative: workshops



Facilitated workshops are a useful engagement tool;

perceived positively by participants



Main concerns: safety, leakage, groundwater

contamination



Perceived beneﬁts: employment and business

opportunities, apart from climate change mitigation

(which should not happen at the expense of

renewables)

Sample: snowball sample from potentially

affected communities

Fleishman et al. [31]:“Informed public

preferences for electricity portfolios with CCS

and other low-carbon technologies”

US Qualitative: workshops with “homework”

material



Participants favored energy efﬁciency over other low-

carbon alternatives



Technologies with CCS preferred over their counterparts

without CCS



Preferences were stable, rankings did not change after

group discussions

Sample: from Greater Pittsburgh

Metropolitan area, recruited through

community organizations

Gough et al. [15]:“Burying carbon under the sea:

an initial exploration of public opinions”

GB Qualitative: focus groups



Problem perception: global warming seen as problem



Perceived risks/costs: high costs for an unsustainable

solution, diversion of investment for renewable energy,

infrastructure costs, leakage (in particular sudden and

large), effects of seismic activity



Doubts that any institution can monitor stored CO

for

centuries

Sample: convenience sample

L'Orange Seigo et al. [47]:“The effect of ﬁgures in

CCS communication”

CH Qualitative: interviews



Incorporation of mental models into illustrations of CCS

does not aid comprehension



Suboptimal illustrations do not interfere with

comprehension



Strong misconceptions cannot be corrected implicitly, by

giving correct information; they need to be addressed

explicitly

Sample: convenience sample

Oltra et al. [41]:“Lay perceptions of carbon

capture and storage technology”

ES Qualitative: focus groups



Dominant reaction in groups: rejection



Rejection driven by: perceived risks, preference for

renewable energy technologies, perception that CCS

does not contribute to solving climate change and

energy problems



Perceived beneﬁts very limited. If beneﬁt from climate

change mitigation seen as very high, then reluctant

acceptance

Sample: quota sample from general

population

Oltra et al. [26]:“Public responses to CO

storage

sites: lessons from ﬁve European cases”

DE, PL,

ES, NL

Qualitative: interviews, document analysis



No single factor can guarantee success or failure



Higher likelihood of positive community reaction if

project: is at research scale; is managed by research

organization; engagement strategy is proactive; trusted

experts are involved; local beneﬁts are seen; project is

located in area with low population density with

Sample: stakeholders (including public)

S. L'Orange Seigo et al. / Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 38 (2014) 848–863858

Table A1 (continued )

Study Country Method Key ﬁndings

positive relationship with fossil fuel industry

Palmgren et al. [14]:“Initial public perceptions of

deep geological and oceanic disposal of carbon

dioxide”(Study 1)

US Qualitative: interviews



Problem perception: most agree that global warming is

problem



Perceived risks/costs: costs, efﬁcacy, unforeseen

negative consequences



Desire to consider CCS in broader set of options

Sample: convenience sample

Shackley et al. [48]:“The public perception of

carbon dioxide capture and storage in the UK:

results from focus groups and a survey”

GB Qualitative (focus groups) and quantitative

(interviews)



“Lukewarm”support; conditional on implementation of

other options



Beneﬁts: can mitigate climate change, buys time to

develop other solutions



Perceived risks/costs: “Technical ﬁx”that reduces

incentives for other activities, blowouts

Sample: from York and Manchester, skilled

working class to middle class (focus groups);

people at Liverpool airport (interviews)

Upham and Roberts [27]:“Public perceptions of

CCS: emergent themes in pan-European focus

groups and implications for communications”

BE, DE,

ES, GB,

Qualitative: focus groups



Knowledge/problem perception: people are concerned

about climate change, low knowledge of CCS



More familiar energy technologies are taken as

reference points –inﬂuenced by local context



Risk perception: 3 groups of risks: physical risks

(especially leakage, supposed ﬂammability of CO

seismicity), ﬁnancial risks (cost seen as major

disadvantage), governance risks



Trust: many trust neither government nor industry;

scientists regarded as reliable information source



Perceptions across countries are very similar

Sample: “Representative of national

populations”(unspeciﬁed)

Wallquist et al. [51]:“Lay concepts on CCS

deployment in Switzerland based on

qualitative interviews”

CH Qualitative: interviews



Knowledge/problem perception: knowledge about CCS

very low; agreement that climate change is a problem



Beneﬁts: mitigate climate change



Perceived risks/costs: leakage (both slow and sudden

blowouts); induced seismicity; diffuse harm to

ecosystems; unsustainable technology; crowding out of

renewable energy; rebound effect



perceived as unhealthy and smelly

Sample: convenience sample

Wong-Parodi and Ray [28]:“Community

perceptions of carbon sequestration: insights

from California”

US Qualitative: focus groups and interviews



Primarily negative attitudes towards hosting CCS site



Perceived risks/costs: catastrophic leak; induced

seismicity; technical risks might change nature of the

town (e.g. property values)



Poorer community felt resigned and powerless



Sense of empowerment inﬂuenced by past experiences

with industry-caused environmental damage

Sample: from potentially affected

communities, one high status and one low

status

Wong-Parodi et al. [29]:“Inﬂuencing attitudes

toward CCS. A social marketing approach”

US Qualitative: interviews



Emotionally self-referent (ESR) triggers are the same for

pro and anti CCS messages (but different “spin”)



ESR triggers are the same across different subgroups, but

their relative important changes



Citizens feel ESR messages should be coupled with

expert messages

Sample: Snowballing, started with carefully

identiﬁed “key informants”in 4 Wyoming

communities

Table A2

Overview of the quantitative studies.

Study Country Method Key ﬁndings

Carley et al. [52]:“Early public impressions of terrestrial

carbon capture and storage in a coal-intensive state”

US Quantitative: phone and mail survey



Knowledge: 80% have not heard of CCS



More positive view of CCS if respondent: believes

human activities contribute to climate change,

supports expanded use of low-carbon electricity

sources, holds egalitarian worldview



More negative view of CCS if respondent: is a political

conservative

Sample: random digit dialing with

stratiﬁcation

Analysis: regression (probit)

de Best-Waldhober et al. [30]:“Informed and uninformed

public opinions on CO

capture and storage

technologies in the Netherlands”

NL Quantitative: electronic survey,

Information-Choice Questionnaire



Knowledge: Most have very basic understanding of

greenhouse gas effect (objective measures), but very

low awareness of CCS technologies (subjective

measures)



Half the respondents who had never heard of CCS gave

evaluation anyway (pseudo-opinions); these opinions

Samples: 2 representative samples

Analysis: regression

S. L'Orange Seigo et al. / Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 38 (2014) 848–863 859

Table A2 (continued )

Study Country Method Key ﬁndings

were unstable



Informed respondents were somewhat positive

towards CCS



Aspects and consequences of technology could explain

35% of variance in evaluations of informed

respondents

de Best Waldhober et al. [32]:“Public concepts of CCS:

understanding the Dutch general public and its

reﬂection in the media”

NL Quantitative: electronic survey

(informed by previous interviews)



Many people unsure about characteristics, effects and

sources of CO



Confusion about current energy production and its

relation with climate change



Effect of knowledge about CO

and CCS on attitude

is small

Sample: “similar to the Dutch

population”(unspeciﬁed)

Analysis: frequencies and ANOVA

de Best-Waldhober et al. [22]:“Informed public opinion

in the Netherlands: evaluation of CO

capture and

storage technologies in comparison with other CO

mitigation options”

NL Quantitative: electronic survey,

Information-Choice Questionnaire



Informed participants evaluate CCS options not very

favorably (below “acceptable”in Dutch school grading

system)



Despite this, large-scale implementation would be

passively accepted by most people; does at least not

spur protests



Consequences of each electricity portfolio are relevant,

but also leave much variance unexplained –other

factors must inﬂuence people‘s judgments

Sample: representative

Analysis: frequencies and regression

Duan [21]:“The public perspective of carbon capture and

storage for CO

emission reductions in China”

CN Quantitative: interviews



Knowledge/problem perception: 24% had heard about

CCS, high awareness of climate change



Predictors of attitude: Sociodemographics not

signiﬁcant, CCS-related attitudes most important,

beneﬁt perception best predictor (66% explained

variance)

Sample: residents and visitors of

Xiamen city

Analysis: frequencies and regression

Ha-Duong et al. [53]:“A survey on the public perception

of CCS in France”

FR Quantitative: interviews



Knowledge: High awareness of climate change

mitigation options



CCS not seen as overly effective, compared with other

strategies



Majority agrees with statement that CCS discourages

development of renewable energy technologies



Women are less accepting, but not more opposed

(many “don't know”answers)

Sample: quota-based

Analysis: frequencies

Huijts et al. [13]:“Social acceptance of carbon dioxide

storage”

NL Sample: from potentially affected

communities (sampling method not

speciﬁed)



Knowledge: 76% know nothing or very little about CCS



Risks rated higher than beneﬁts; safety concerns



Trust: Highest in environmental NGOs, lower in

government, lowest in industry



Trust predicted by perceived competence and

perceived intentions; respective inﬂuence of each

predictor depends on actor

Analysis: frequencies and regression

Kraeusel and Möst [16]:“Carbon Capture and Storage on

its way to large-scale deployment: Social acceptance

and willingness to pay in Germany”

DE Quantitative: conjoint study (þsurvey)



Knowledge: High awareness, only 28% reported no/

little prior knowledge



Risk and beneﬁt perceptions can explain 77% of

variance in acceptance, beneﬁt perception more

inﬂuential



Factors conjoint study: Share of CCS power; share of

green electricity; monthly price premium. Most

important is increased share of green electricity



Respondents who are more concerned about climate

change perceive higher CCS-related risks

Sample: university students

Analysis: regression and conjoint

analysis

L'Orange Seigo et al. [33]:“Communication of CCS

monitoring activities may not have a reassuring effect

on the public”

CH Quantitative: online experiment



Information about CCS monitoring can be alarming



Men‘s risk perception is heightened to the level of

women, their acceptance is lowered

Sample: internet panel

Midden and Huijts [37]:“The role of trust in the affective

evaluation of novel risks: the case of CO

storage”

NL Quantitative: survey



2 factors found for affect: positive and negative



Attitude towards nearby storage inﬂuenced only by

affect, attitude towards storage in general more

inﬂuenced by perceived beneﬁts



No effect of perceived risk on attitude



Trust inﬂuenced perceived beneﬁts but not risks; effect

of trust on attitude via affect

Sample: random sample from

potentially affected communities

Analysis: structural equation

modeling

Miller et al. [38]:“Public understanding of carbon

sequestration in Australia: socio-demographic

predictors of knowledge, engagement and trust”

AU Quantitative: online survey



Women more likely to think that reducing greenhouse

gas emissions is important, but less likely to have

followed public debate

Sample: commercial online panel

Analysis: frequencies

S. L'Orange Seigo et al. / Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 38 (2014) 848–863860

Table A2 (continued )

Study Country Method Key ﬁndings



Men more accepting of CCS

Miller et al. [39]:“Initial public perceptions of carbon

geosequestration: Implications for engagement and

environmental risk communication strategies”

AU Quantitative: online survey



Majority ﬁnds reduction of greenhouse gas emissions

important; few, however, follow debate



Knowledge: Majority (82%) have not heard of CCS



Trust: Commonwealth Scientiﬁc and Industrial

Research Organisation (CSIRO) trusted most, national

government trusted least

Sample: commercial online panel

Analysis: frequencies

Moutenet et al. [34]:“Public awareness and opinion on

CCS in the province of Québec, Canada”

CA Quantitative: online survey



Knowledge/problem perception: Climate change seen

as important issue; CO

identiﬁed as greenhouse gas;

green technologies well known, but CCS awareness at

13%



Only 8% fundamentally opposed



Opinion very sensitive to new information; after NGO

views were presented, support declined substantially

Sample: commercial online panel,

weighted

Analysis: frequencies

Oltra et al. [35]:“The inﬂuence of information on

individuals' reactions to CCS technologies: results from

experimental online survey research”

ES Quantitative: online experiment



Participants who read information on the natural

character of CO

have more positive initial reactionSample: internet panel

Palmgren et al.[14]:“Initial public perceptions of deep

geological and oceanic disposal of carbon dioxide”

(Study 2)

US Quantitative: survey



CCS is least favored mitigation option; respondents

want efﬁcacy of storage better demonstrated



Possibility for continued use of fossil fuels not seen as

compelling argument



Higher pro-environmental values associated with

lower acceptance of CCS

Sample: convenience sample

Analysis: frequencies

Reiner et al. [54]:“American Exceptionalism? Similarities

and differences in national attitudes toward energy

policy and global warming”

GB, JP,

SE, US

Quantitative: survey



Knowledge/problem perception: Climate change

recognized as problem; CCS mostly unknown



Similar preferences across countries for how national

energy agencies should allocate funding



Information on cost & environmental impact of

renewable energy technologies decreased support for

renewable

Samples: online panels and random

samples

Analysis: frequencies

Sharp et al. [23]:“Anticipating public attitudes toward

underground CO

storage”

CA Quantitative: online survey, conjoint

study



Knowledge/problem perception: Agreement that

climate change is a problem; low awareness of CCS



Respondents slightly supportive; inﬂuenced by extent

to which CCS is used in other countries and media

reports



Those opposed seem to be concerned about risks,

rather than being fundamentally opposed

Sample: random digit dialing with

quotas

Analysis: conjoint analysis, regression

ter Mors et al. [40]:“Effective communication about

complex environmental issues: perceived quality of

information about CCS depends on stakeholder

collaboration”

NL Quantitative: experiments



Information from different/dissimilar stakeholders

expected to be more balanced than info from one

single stakeholder



If a credible and a less credible stakeholder

communicate together, their respective reputations are

not affected

Samples: university students

Terwel and Daamen [17]:“Initial public reactions to

carbon capture and storage (CCS): differentiating

general and local views”

NL Quantitative: quasi-experiment



Initial reactions to local CCS plans not necessarily

dominated by NIMBY sentiments



Onsite residents put greater emphasis on risks to local

population



Trust in government indirectly affects attitude towards

CCS, no effect of concern about climate change

Sample: general public convenience

sample

Terwel et al. [44]:“It's not only about safety: Beliefs and

attitudes of 811 local residents regarding a CCS project

in Barendrecht”

NL Quantitative: phone survey



Most residents were indeed opposed to the CCS

project, and the issue was important for them



Predictors of attitude: Perceived safety of CO

storage,

trust in decision makers, anticipated fall in property

value, inﬂuence of Barendrecht residents, perceived

fairness of decision-making process, inﬂuence of Shell

Sample: residents of Barendrecht

Analysis: frequencies and regression

Terwel et al. [18]:“Competence-based and integrity-

based trust as predictors of acceptance of carbon

dioxide capture and storage (CCS)”

NL Quantitative: experiments



Stakeholder positions about CCS inﬂuence risk and

beneﬁt perceptions differently, depending on type of

trust (integrity-based or competence-based)



Stakeholder position adopted when competence-based

trust is high



Opposite position than that of stakeholder adopted

when integrity-based trust is low

Samples: university students

S. L'Orange Seigo et al. / Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 38 (2014) 848–863 861

Table A2 (continued )

Study Country Method Key ﬁndings

Terwel et al. [42]:“How organizational motives and

communications affect public trust in organizations:

the case of CCS”

NL Quantitative: experiments



Motives ascribed to a stakeholder mediate trust in that

stakeholder



When stakeholder argues in favor of CCS, congruence

between communication and inferred motives is

predictive of trust, not message content alone

Samples: university students

Terwel et al. [43]:“Voice in political decision-making: the

effect of group voice on perceived trustworthiness of

decision makers and subsequent acceptance of

decisions”

NL Quantitative: experiments



Procedural information is used to judge

trustworthiness of decision-makers; higher acceptance

of outcome if decision-maker is trusted.



The mere presence of group voice affects reactions to

authorities and their decisions, even when people are

not involved themselves.



Equal treatment of different groups more important

than giving speciﬁc groups a voice

Samples: university students

Tokushige et al. [49]:“Public acceptance and risk-beneﬁt

perception of CO

geological storage for global

warming mitigation in Japan”

JP Quantitative: survey



92% of variance in attitude could be explained with

risk and beneﬁt perceptions



Beneﬁt perception and acceptance increased after

information provision, risk perception decreased

somewhat



In comparison to nuclear power, CCS loads much lower

on the dread factor and much higher on the unknown

factor within the psychometric paradigm; additional

information reduces dread dimension, but not

unknown dimension

Sample: university students

Analysis: factor analysis

Tokushige et al. [49]:“Public perceptions on the

acceptance of geological storage of CO

and

information inﬂuencing the acceptance”

JP Quantitative: survey



83% explained variance in acceptance with risk

perception, beneﬁt perception, trust, perception of

human interference with regard to global warming

and with regard to CCS



Largest inﬂuence: beneﬁt perception



Main concerns of people with high risk perception:

leakage and earthquakes



Information on natural analogues decreased risk

perception, increased acceptance; information on ﬁeld

demonstrations had little inﬂuence

Sample: university students

Analysis: path analysis

Wallquist et al. [56]:“Public acceptance of CCS system

elements: a conjoint measurement”

CH Quantitative: conjoint study



All 3 factors (plant, storage, pipeline) had main effect

on acceptance



Pipeline most important, then plant, then storage



Participants could be clustered into 3 groups, each

focusing on one aspect (plant/storage/pipeline)



NIMBY effect disappeared, if CO

source was a biogas

power plant

Sample: online panel of research

group

Wallquist et al. [50]:“Adapting communication to the

public's intuitive understanding of CCS”

CH Quantitative: experiments



Follow-up mail survey: more detailed information led

to lower risk perception, higher beneﬁt perception,

lower sustainability concerns



Lab study: Information on reservoir pressure increased

risk perception and decreased beneﬁt perception;

information on the liquid form of CO

in the reservoir

and the role of CCS as a bridging technology decreased

risk perception and increased beneﬁt perception

Samples: respondents from a previous

survey (mail survey experiment) and

university students (lab experiment)

Wallquist et al. [20]:“The role of convictions and trust for

public protest potential in the case of carbon dioxide

capture and storage (CCS)”

CH Quantitative: survey



Inﬂuence of risk perception on acceptance (“protest

potential”) larger than in other studies



“Tampering with the subsurface”best predictor for risk

and beneﬁt perception



Value conﬂict between “cutting emissions”and

“tampering with the subsurface”: both positively

correlated, but opposite effects on beneﬁt perception



Trust not signiﬁcant for risk perception –perhaps

because stakeholder positions are still unknown

Sample: random phone book sample

Analysis: structural equation

modeling

Wallquist et al. [36]:“Impact of knowledge and

misconceptions on beneﬁt and risk perception of CCS”

CH Quantitative: survey



Knowledge: 36% had heard of CCS, some

misconceptions widespread



Risk perception: Strongest predictors are sustainability

concerns, concerns about leakage and about reservoir

overpressurization



Beneﬁt perception: Sustainability concerns strongest

predictor

Sample: random phone book sample

Analysis: regression

S. L'Orange Seigo et al. / Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 38 (2014) 848–863862

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Article

Jan 2010

The article presents the framework of social amplification of risk which integrates the technical assessment and the social experience of risk. Risk perception research has revealed that contextual factors shape individual risk estimations and evaluations. Identification of these factors, such as voluntariness, personal ability to influence risks, familiarity with the hazard, and catastrophic potential, provides useful information about the elements that individuals consider in constructing their interpretation of risks. In addition, analyses of people's heuristics in making inferences have shed some light on how risk information is generalized and evaluated intuitively. These psychological studies fail to explain, however, why individuals attend to certain characteristics of risks and ignore others. Furthermore, in focusing only on the individual as an information processor, these studies exclude from the analysis the social and cultural variance of risk interpretations. The social amplification framework postulates that the social and economic impacts of an adverse event are determined not only by the direct physical consequences of the event, but by the interaction of psychological, cultural, social, and institutional processes that amplify or attenuate public experience of risk and result in secondary impacts.

What's in store: Lessons from implementing CCS

Article

Jul 2012
INT J GREENH GAS CON

Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) has been identified as a key technology for mitigating carbon emissions. However, CCS is still very much at a developmental stage and the full-scale projects required to test the technology have proven difficult to implement, with lack of societal acceptance considered a key contributing factor to this delay. This paper reports on a study that explored practices for effective communication, engagement strategies and activities in the context of five detailed CCS project case studies. The cases studied included Barendrecht, The Netherlands; Carson, USA; FutureGen, USA; ZeroGen, Australia; and the CO2CRC Otway project, Australia. Comparative analysis of these cases identified a series of factors including: the extent to which key government and project team members are aligned; deployment of communications experts as part of the project team from the outset; consideration of the social context; the degree of flexibility in the project; and competition involving community self-selection. The research team designated these “critical success factors” that, when present, seemed to enhance the effectiveness of best practices in engagement and contribute to successful project deployment in some cases. The paper proposes that project developers need to consider ways to maximise these critical factors as part of their project planning and implementation process. It also discusses best practices in stakeholder communication and engagement activities applicable to CCS projects.

The effect of figures in CCS communication

Article

Aug 2013
INT J GREENH GAS CON

Illustrations are an essential part of most CCS communication materials. This article looks at the role of illustrations in communication and education in general, and in CCS communication in particular. First, literature on multimedia learning is reviewed and general guidelines for designing graphical displays deduced. This is followed by a discussion of relevant mental models and their possible implementation in pictorial form. The authors then report on an interview study in which illustrations with various implementations of CCS mental models are compared. No major differences were found regarding understanding of CCS between the different illustrations. Graphical displays alone are not powerful enough to implicitly correct typical misconceptions about CCS. Such misconceptions should be stated explicitly, along with their correction.

The infl uence of information on individuals' reactions to CCS technologies: Results from experimental online survey research

Article

Jun 2012

The effective engagement of the public in carbon capture and storage (CCS) has become important in recent years. The most basic level of engagement is to inform the public about the characteristics of the technology. It is often assumed that providing more information will increase individuals' acceptance of the technology. However, social research on the effect of information on individuals' attitudes toward CCS has questioned this assumption. This paper reports the results of an experimental online survey aimed at analyzing how additional information on CCS affects individuals' reactions to CCS. Our findings suggest that information can influence individuals' reactions to CCS; specifically, those messages that link CCS to natural processes result in a slightly more positive reaction to CCS among individuals. © 2012 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Public awareness and opinion on CCS in the province of Québec, Canada

Article

Apr 2012

Public perception of carbon capture and storage (CCS): A review

Abstract