Summer reading: The social dynamics of carbon capture and storage

This new book on carbon capture and storage (CCS) takes a different approach than the normal technical review.  This book will therefore be of interest to anyone who is engaged with the study of energy technologies, carbon reduction and climate change policy more widely, and concerned with questions about the political, policy and social context in which the technology develops and is governed.

The Social Dynamics of Carbon Capture and Storage:  Understanding Representation, governance and innovation, edited by Nils Markusson, Simon Shackley and Benjamin Evar

CCS is a technology system designed to remove the carbon dioxide from flue gas emissions of power plants and large industrial processes in the chemicals and metals sectors, and store it in the deep geology (800m and deeper) in porous rock formations.

The technology has been advocated by scientists, engineers and policymakers as an essential part of the global climate change mitigation solution.

Different reasons have been proposed for why CCS is needed, for example the likely continued reliance on fossil fuel energy and energy intensive-industries in decades to come and the potential for CCS to act as a bridge; towards inherently low-carbon, low-cost renewable energy. However, this kind of reasoning is also seen as controversial, in part because it legitimates the continued use of fossil fuels and raises the spectre of reinforcing lock-in to fossil fuels use for decades to come, may reallocate resources away from renewable technologies (wind, solar, biomass, wave), and in part because it opens up a new debate on costly infrastructure for carbon removal.

Responding to such concerns, local communities in the Netherlands, Germany and the USA have all campaigned against CO₂ storage demonstration (and even research) projects being placed in their neighbourhoods. Public resistance was totally unanticipated by the industry. Hence there has been a rear-guard action in the past few years to engage the public, an activity that has created its own tensions as developers’ instinct is to control and circumscribe public participation. Among environmental groups, different positions for and against the technology can be observed, such as the principled opposition of the Climate Camp social movement and NGOs such as Greenpeace, which contrasts with the pragmatic values of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in the USA.

Most people in the CCS field agree that the technology is now facing a tough time. From setbacks to planned demonstration projects, a dearth of financing from industry and national governments, and a heated debate on the responsibility and size of long-term liabilities, the future of CO₂ capture and storage now appears to be far more uncertain than just a couple of years ago. A shortfall of cash is not particularly remarkable in times when the global economy is strained. Yet, it is interesting to observe how the CCS community is coping with this challenge and others. Such observations can also help identify best practice and lead to insights about where the field might be heading.

In a series of chapters written by social scientists, all of who have researched issues in CCS for years, The Social Dynamics of Carbon Capture and Storage explains the key drivers and debates which account for the shaping of the technology and how it has arrived at its present juncture. It considers the roles of key turning-points such as the 2005 publication of the landmark Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report in providing a case for CCS; the iconic status of successful and attempted projects within the scientific community; the ways that the EU CCS Directive has shaped debates on liability and evidence of safe storage; and other major events that have promoted the technology or acted as stumbling blocks to a larger fleet of projects being rolled out worldwide.

However, social science analysis is often interested in more than simply pointing out the immediate challenges facing science, technology and policy communities and is more generally engaged with the matter of how different stakeholders set the terms of a debate, and how social action shapes technology. The book therefore also asks how governments, scientists, industry and NGOs have portrayed the prospects for CCS over the years; how research foci have evolved; why people may oppose local projects; how uncertainty in science is translated into risk in regulation; how actors learn from demonstration projects, and energy and climate change policy discourse fits with practical innovation challenges.

In short, this book aims to put humans and the institutions they create centre stage in the unfolding CCS story.

The editors argue that the technology is undergoing a crisis and will need to find new rationales, applications and support among diverse social groups – more wide-ranging than those who have currently engaged with it. Until now, CCS policy has been dominated by a technocratic, expert-driven push, moderated by the dominant neo-liberal economic ideology of the last three decades. However, this approach is increasingly challenged in a number of arenas as politicians struggle to create policy frameworks that favour ‘cost-effective’ low-carbon technologies, often imagined as the product of bottom-up innovations. The reality is that innovation in CCS will require significant sources of public funding – hence high-level political support that includes the key power-brokers in a given political context. The position of CCS in relation to key societal agendas, including sustainability, energy security, energy poverty and equity, global governance and democracy itself may therefore have to evolve, to create wider support for the technology. The technology itself may have to change in the process.

The Social Dynamics of Carbon Capture and Storage: Understanding CCS Representations, Governance and Innovation, is published by Routledge in The Earthscan Science in Society Series and is also available from Amazon in both hardcover and paperback versions.