Understanding social values on low carbon sub-surface technologies: Scotland and N. Ireland
- Funder: QUADRAT
- Status: Begins October 2022
- Project lead: Tavis Potts
- Project team: Clare Bond, Wes Flannery (Queens University Belfast)
- Project summary: Central to achieve Net Zero, is the need to secure safe, efficient and cost-effective geological storage, or use, of carbon (CCUS). Models of future carbon emissions in the IPPC 2018 special report show that CCUS is required to meet carbon reduction targets. Carbon storage alongside hydrogen production and other subsurface technologies are key to achieving Net Zero targets (CCC2019) yet non-technical factors are equally, if not more, important for successful delivery. Societal acceptance is a significant factor in determining the success of subsurface technologies and a determinant of a social licence to operate, yet a major evidence gap exists on values at regional scales and specific to emerging technologies.
This project intends to map for the first time the level of public understanding and social acceptance of CCUS and allied technologies such as hydrogen production and low carbon power generation in two contrasting UK regions. Within these sites we propose to examine and map the social licence values of carbon capture and storage (CCUS), geological storage for energy and hydrogen production as low carbon technologies of regional interest at early stages of development. - Outputs:
- forthcoming