مفاهیم عمومی جداسازی کربن دی اکسید و ذخیره آن (CCS) و بازتاب آن

ABSTRACT Public concepts of CCS: Understanding of the Dutch general public and its reflection in the media

The Netherlands continues to strive to meet national targets for climate change mitigation and energy use. CO2 capture and storage is one of the options, that is, seen by some as a possibility to achieve those national targets. The extent to which the Dutch society understands and supports this option is an important research question because this will define if and how CCS will be implemented in the Netherlands. This was recently demonstrated when a planned storage demonstration project was called off due to public protest (Brunsting et al., 2011), where the public made very clear that they had wanted a voice in the debate. It could be argued that a successful energy transition strategy depends on the involvement and support of the public. The better the public understands the energy and climate change issues, the better it can contribute substantially and meaningfully to the discourse and take appropriate actions. That begs the question how much people currently understand of these issues. This study aims to increase the understanding of the public view on CO2 capture and storage (CCS) in the Netherlands.

In recent years, several studies have investigated public awareness of CCS. These show that CCS is a relatively new topic for the general public. In the Netherlands, a mere 3.6% of a random sample of the general Dutch population stated that they were aware of CCS technology in 2004 with 20.2% stating to have heard of it a little. These percentages increased to 10.4% and 46.7%, respectively, by 2008 (de Best-Waldhober and Daamen, 2011). In a study comparing the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Japan, Reiner et al. (2006) found similar results. Between 22% of respondents in Japan and 4% in the U.S. confirm to have heard of CCS. Studies in Australia show similar results as well (Ashworth et al., 2009). Notwithstanding the low awareness among the general public, several demonstration projects have met with strong public opposition. Some were even cancelled solely due to opposition of local politicians and public (Brunsting et al., 2011; Feenstra et al., 2010). The Dutch project that was cancelled due to public protest might have had some impact on the awareness of the Dutch general public regarding CCS though, as this awareness seems to have increased after the start of public protest. At the end of 2009, 44.5% of 555 respondents drawn from the general Dutch population stated to have heard of CCS, while 5.5% stated to have heard quite a bit (Pietzner et al., 2011).

Contrary to expectations though, this rise in self-reported awareness does not seem to be accompanied by an increase in knowledge of CCS. In fact, the study of Pietzner et al. (2011) shows that less than 3% of respondents correctly identify mitigation of global warming as the sole goal of CCS among a list of several environmental problems, including inter alia ozone depletion and acid rain. A longitudinal comparison by de Best-Waldhober and Daamen (2011) of public awareness and knowledge between 2004 and 2008 also shows a lack of increase in knowledge, combined with only a small increase in awareness late 2008. Although there are no studies in other countries that compare the development of public awareness with the development of knowledge regarding CCS over time, there are other studies showing a discrepancy between self-reported awareness and actual knowledge. A study in Canada (Sharp et al., 2006) for instance showed that although between 10% of respondents in Alberta and Saskatchewan and 15% of respondents in the rest of Canada said to have heard of CCS, only very few of the respondents were able to correctly identify the problem CCS1 addresses. It seems that awareness of CCS therefore does not directly imply knowledge of the technology. When interpreting these results, it is important to keep in mind though that measuring knowledge was only a small part of these studies. This means that these measurements of knowledge were not very elaborate. Two earlier studies in the USA and in Switzerland studied the ideas and beliefs of lay people about CCS and related topics much more elaborately (Palmgren et al., 2004; Wallquist et al., 2009). In-depth interviews with lay people were conducted for both studies, which revealed that people had concerns about the risks of CCS. This included fears that the pressure in the storage site would be too high and therefore damage the storage site or that the CO2 would rise to the surface and leak because it is a gas. Some compared it to nuclear waste storage and some would attribute negative properties to CO2 such as “unhealthy and smelly”, or that it could alter DNA of organism.

The elaborateness of the measurements of knowledge is not the only difference between the latter two studies and those mentioned before that. Where the first mentioned studies mostly measured knowledge by comparing what people know to what experts think they should know, a more top down approach, the latter two studies studied the ideas and beliefs that people have themselves, mostly before they have talked to experts. That raises the question what valuable knowledge is on this topic and how this relates to people’s actual knowledge, including ideas and beliefs. Earlier research in the Netherlands shows that what constitutes relevant information for people to develop their opinion is neither straightforward nor easily foreseen by CCS experts (de Best-Waldhober et al., 2008, 2009). To enable people to contribute to the debate about energy options it is therefore essential not only just to understand what constitutes relevant information for people, but also to understand what they know already and how this knowledge is developing. Although several studies have addressed parts of these research questions, none have addressed both knowledge and the development thereof, or have combined measurements of the “top down” kind of knowledge with “bottom up” measurements of lay beliefs. Moreover, the studies that have addressed lay beliefs have been done outside the Netherlands. The current study investigates both kinds of knowledge among the Dutch public.

One factor that seems obvious to take into account when studying how the public’s knowledge and beliefs of CCS develop is the media. One can argue that the media might have an influence on public opinion development, or at least that what is in the media reflects what is in the public opinion. Dowd et al. (2012) argue that mass media is understood to play a key role in generating public concern about particular issues and uncertainties associated with such new technologies. van Alphen et al. (2007) found an increase in the amount of articles about CCS in the Dutch written media up to 2007; following this Kliest (2010) states that this increase as well as the increase they find in later years reflects the development of public opinion. However, as mentioned before, public awareness of CCS has increased only slightly and not until 2008, and the few measures done in the Netherlands seem to indicate that knowledge does not increase at all. This raises the question to what extent CCS in the media and public opinion regarding CCS interact in the Netherlands. Understanding not only what lay people know and belief about CCS but also what role the media might have as a vehicle for knowledge transfer will contribute significantly to decision making on communication efforts. Part of the study reported in this paper therefore investigates the role of the media as a vehicle for knowledge transfer.