What role for CCS in delivering just transitions? An evaluation in the North Sea region

Abstract

This paper assesses the role of carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) in addressing challenges in the energy transition in regions reliant on carbon-intensive industries for employment and as an economic base. The assessment is based on semi-structured interviews with relevant stakeholders and experts in the Aberdeen area in Scotland, the Rotterdam harbour (or Rijnmond) area in the Netherlands, and in Norway. The interviews explored challenges around the role of CCS in regional 'just transitions', or how to make the transformation of regions relying on carbon-intensive industries to a low-carbon society fair. While significant differences in responses between the Aberdeen area, the Rijnmond area and Norway were found, a common understanding showed that for CCS to contribute to a just transition it has to (a) make a contribution to climate change imperatives; (b) help to mitigate the economic and employment effects arising from declining or maturing industries; and (c) be undertaken in a manner that helps to redress (or at least does not increase) uneven vulnerabilities and inequalities in society. Five key themes that characterise the opportunities and challenges for CCS from a just transition perspective were drawn from the interviews: Skills for a just transition, transition as an opportunity, responsibility, scale of action and viability. We recommend that these are added to earlier work on barriers and enablers of CCS in areas relying on fossil industry.

Different This Time? The Prospects of CCS in the Netherlands in the 2020s

“…CCS, it is as argued by NGO's, concerns an end-of-the-pipe solution, with little added benefits to society. It can moreover maintain the status quo of the fossil fuel industry, simply allowing them to deal with their waste products but not with the original processes producing this waste (Swennenhuis et al, 2020). To this end, some have argued in the past that CCS should not be implemented.…”

“…Previous studies have showed that people feel more comfortable when a CCS project is further away from where they live due to safety concerns (Miller et al, 2007(Miller et al, , 2008Midden and Huijts, 2009;Chen et al, 2015). The experiences with onshore CCS projects have led to the decision to move CCS offshore (Swennenhuis et al, 2020), and a first attempt was made with the ROAD project, but this project failed due to a lack of business case, caused by low carbon prices (Read et al, 2019).…”

Social Acceptance of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) from Industrial Applications

“…In addition, the articles mention social-psychological concepts that illuminate social behavior even more against the background of cultural aspects and certain values, such as the theory of planned behavior in [30] and, in the context of the Master's thesis, the concept of the Ethical landscape of CCS, the theory of worldviews and the cultural theory to specify belief systems in [73]. Two of the analyzed articles reflect their findings on iCCS acceptance to the whole debate on energy system transformation using the just transition approach [65,78] or the multidimensional research concept as in [15].…”

“…Personal risks may also be perceived in conjunction with the economic factors of iCCS. For example, the results of the analyzed studies illustrate that the factor of employment can be perceived as both a personal risk and a benefit [14,65] for people in a region in the context of iCCS. For example, one study expressed concerns that iCCS may impose costs that are then offset by, for example, lower employment levels in iCCS operations.…”

“…On the other hand, the introduction of the technologies could create new areas of work and if steps were taken to retrain and employ industrial workers within the iCCS sector, this would be a benefit [71]. However, there has been an equal concern that there may be inflation of products through use with iCCS and in the long run this effect will contribute to industrial companies becoming uncompetitive in the global market and may lead to local plant closures [65].…”