Effective risk communication and CCS: the road to success in Europe

Over the past ten years or so, there have been multiple attempts to site and build carbon capture and storage (CCS) facilities in Europe, North America and elsewhere. To date, most of those attempts have not been successful. In Europe, for example, there are currently no commercial CCS facilities in operation. There are a number of reasons for this, ranging from lack of political will, the collapsing price of CO 2 , lack of commercial drivers to capture and store CO 2 , and public opposition to the proposed facilities. There have been several case studies examining the communication challenges associated with the siting of CCS facilities. Up till now, most of this research has been carried out by climate change or carbon policy experts as well as social researchers rather than scientists representing the wider risk communication community, aside from some notable exceptions. This study does the opposite by examining CCS from a broader risk communication perspective. It provides a brief overview of risk communication theory in order to situate some of the findings of the CCS communication research, and then, it makes some recommendations on how the siting of CCS facilities could be improved including the importance of trust, proactive communication and early stakeholder involvement. In conclusion, this study notes that if the science associated with the technology is communicated in the correct manner and if the key risk communication recommendations are adhered to, then the siting of future CCS facilities should be successful.