Community Roundtable - Risk vs. benefit
Our Community Roundtables invite our online community to provide their unique and experienced views on various topical aspects of CCS.
In this roundtable, we asked the community:
Developing an effective risk communication program relies heavily on understanding how people perceive CCS and how it will impact them. The issues and risks around a project are also unique and need to be tailored to fit the audience.
In your experience, how is it best to communicate the risk vs. benefit of a CCS project?
Jean-Philibert Moutenet
Research Officer
To the extent that the local residents adhere to the overall objectives of a CCS project and that the intention of the project proponent is considered noble (i.e. to reduce GHG emissions), they could evaluate the project on its merits, as the project is presented. At this stage, a clear and transparent communication is paramount.
Local residents should understand the ins and outs of the project to have an informed opinion about it. The key elements of the citizens’ project assessment are their understanding of the project’s benefits, risks and means in place to mitigate these risks.
Surely, it can’t be generalized but, in the province of Québec, citizens are ready to accept risks (to some extent) if they are well defined and if they are adequately mitigated.
However, it is clear that no one must say, for a CCS project or any kind of project, that there is no risk! It’s really important to be honest and completely transparent.
To conclude, one other key element for the acceptance of a CCS project by the local residents is the fact that they must think they have the power to influence the project development process. The local residents must feel that they are consulted, that their concerns are taken into account and that the project proponent is open-minded. Therefore, they will hopefully trust the project proponent.
Katarina Buhr
Research Fellow | Climate and Sustainable Cities
IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute
While there is some research now on public awareness of CCS, significantly less has been written about the communication of CCS. The real-world experience of communicating CCS is still limited and it seems like we have only begun to understand how CCS should be communicated and what consequences there are to different communication strategies. One study comes to mind, where the authors argue for the pros and cons associated with choosing a proactive or reactive communication approach. In a proactive strategy, where stakeholders and the public are informed and engaged at an early stage, the communication activities might alarm the public and create perceptions which do not correspond to estimated risks. On the other hand, a reactive approach, which is more passive in character, is sensitive to criticism at later stages which may lead to difficulties of rebuilding trust. There is also a democratic aspect of informing the public about activities which may, however unlikely it is, affect them directly or indirectly. Future research should attempt to collect experiences of communicating CCS from e.g. corporations and policymakers, and also look towards other areas with similar communication challenges, how they have been addressed, and with what consequences.
Andrew Buchanan
Principal Engineer
For a start I believe that risk versus benefit is not a concept that the public at large are prepared to engage in, in the way that professionals from our sector would do. There are numerous examples where public perception is influenced at an early stage by inaccurate journalism and scare-mongering. CCS as a sector has been subject to press of this nature.
I think hazard and risks in the CCS life-cycle should be presented separately from the presentation of advantages and benefits of the technology. In my view a rational discussion on the risks versus benefit of CCS can only be held with the public when they are better informed than they are at present.
Step one is therefore to present the hazards and risks associated with CCS clearly, covering each stage of the life-cycle. The next step is to discuss the advantages and benefits associated with CCS over alternative carbon abatement technologies. Once these two stages have been carried out the full CCS life-cycle including hazards and risks and benefits should be more widely understood by the public.
My hope would be that the outcome of this process would allow the debate to develop into an informed one where level of risk can be assessed against the potential benefits and the public can decide any limitations that they would want to see built in to the development of CCS whether they be technological, geographical or economical.
Louis-Marie Jacquelin
Consultant - In charge of CCS activities development
Surprisingly, what matters most about risk communication isn’t the core content of your message. The most effective strategy is to get back to basics: considering 'communication' as an exchange process rather than a one-way signal.
This golden rule appears to be on the critical path while talking about public engagement challenges connected to CCS projects. Stakeholder relation management needs to partly slip away from communication departments to operational departments: being involved in the project, stakeholders switch attitudes from 'why I don’t want it' to 'what I want', and leads to a strong, long-lasting consensus.
Such a pragmatic, efficient co-engineering has been around for years in mining and oil and gas industries. ENEA Consulting’s method gathers public engagement best practices into a pragmatic, operational, software-supported methodology. We consider CCS social acceptance to be the result of a process during which concerned stakeholders build together the needed minimal acceptability conditions.
What’s new for the project manager?
- Multi-criteria rating instead of non-constructive opposition.
- Integrated profiling to identify common-ground opposition and choose appropriate dialogue options.
- Practical way forward and decision-making assistance.
- Low operational uncertainty: controlled, predictable costs and timeline.
Why do stakeholders participate?
- Ability to suggest options is promoted.
- Everyone can be heard and see that one’s opinion counts; no voices are too loud, silent majority gets its right recognition.
- All options and decisions are recorded; the transparency and appropriation lead to a long-lasting consensus.
Beyond basic statistical approaches or academic social research, beyond one-way communication, project-oriented stakeholder involvement tools are the industrial future of public engagement.
What is your opinion on how best to communicate the risk vs. benefit of a CCS project?
Leave your views or questions for our roundtable participants in the comments section below.
Stephen Collins
With a background in communications, change and organisational innovation, I work on changing corporate, government and public culture with better approaches to communications, hyperconnectedness, social innovation and collaboration.
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Comments
For CCS projects, the information that needs to be exchanged falls into at least three general categories. First, there is a series of questions about “What is CCS?” and “Why CCS? ” Second, there is a series of questions about the project in general “What is this project?” and third, there is a series of questions regarding the impact the project might have on the individual and the community “How will it affect me?”, and “What is the benefit for my community?”
The need to be proactive with risk communication is also well understood. At any time, any stakeholder in a risk issue can seize strategic control of the public's attention and the issue through their risk communication efforts. By failing to be proactive, a stakeholder may find that they lose strategic control of the risk issue.
One must also be very careful when it comes to who is delivering the information. Who is the messenger? It can be a very good idea to have a group of spokespersons, and not only the project developer. Consider who is the trusted stakeholders in each community, region and country.
Provide answers to community questions in real-time when possible, as opposed to logging questions and providing answers at a later date. Keep an inventory of questions and their respective answers over time, and analyze them in order to flag local issues and devise strategies to resolve them.
The communication has to be open and honest on the risk factors. And shown that this is taken seriously.
The public also has to actually have an opportunity to both ask questions and as, said, get answers, AND they must be able to affect the process, even to change it. Benefits (jobs, emission mitigation, image as forward in R&D and climate change responsibility...) can be considered as much larger and more important than the potential risk. The risks is well known, investigated and there is experience in the field already. This means that it is a good thing to know about the risks; you will be prepared for the very small chance of this happening. The benefits can be many and vital for a community, especially if the risk part is communicated in a responsible manner. Then people can take the benefit factors more "in" and relate to them.