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Cross-border CO2 transport decreases public acceptance of carbon capture and storage

Nature Climate Change (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Carbon capture and storage is crucial to achieve net-zero targets and cross-border CO2 transport is essential for cost-efficiency of a carbon capture and storage strategy but how the public views this is unclear. Here, using multifactorial vignette experiments in four European countries and Canada, we show that cross-border transport hinders public acceptance of carbon capture and storage. Public concerns are unlikely to be offset by compensation, presenting a challenge for policy-makers.

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Fig. 1: Acceptance ratings of CCS implementation scenarios by origin of CO2 emissions.
Fig. 2: Random intercept model results of CCS implementation attributes on citizens’ vignette ratings based on acceptance.

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Data availability

The dataset analysed for this study is available through OSF.io28.

Code availability

The model codes constructed for the data analysis are available through OSF.io28.

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Acknowledgements

This work is part of the ACT3 (Accelerating CCS Technology) initiative ENSURE project no. 327317. S.A. acknowledges funding for this study from ACT3 (grant agreement no. 327317; ‘ENSURE’ project). The project is a cooperation of NORSAR, the University of Alberta, Total Energies One Tech, Shell Global Solutions International, the Quest venture, operated by Shell Canada Ltd and owned by Canadian Natural Resources Limited, Chevron Canada Oil Sands Partnership and Shell Canada Ltd, Alcatel Submarine Networks, Midwest Regional Carbon Initiative (MRCI), INGV and BP. It is funded by Emissions Reduction Alberta (ERA), the French Environment and Energy Management Agency (ADEME) and the Research Council of Norway (RCN). We thank M. van der Baan for assistance in the attribute design of the vignette experiment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

    Sven Anders

  2. Department of Sociology, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

    Ulf Liebe

  3. Department of Business and Economics, Berlin School for Economics and Law, Berlin, Germany

    Juergen Meyerhoff

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  1. Sven Anders
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  2. Ulf Liebe
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  3. Juergen Meyerhoff
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Contributions

S.A., U.L. and J.M. have equally contributed to the work presented in this article.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sven Anders.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information

Nature Climate Change thanks Katrin Arning, Sverker Jagers and Åsta Dyrnes Nordø for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Tables 1–3, acceptance ratings, descriptive and multivariate findings; Tables 4–6, fairness ratings, descriptive and multivariate findings; Table 7, experimental design; Table 8, vignette order effects; Table 9, tendency towards middle-point ratings; and Tables 10–15, the relevance of knowledge effects; Figs. 1–4, information provided to respondents, and references.

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Anders, S., Liebe, U. & Meyerhoff, J. Cross-border CO2 transport decreases public acceptance of carbon capture and storage. Nat. Clim. Chang. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-024-02023-0

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