The webinar was chaired by Samuela Vercelli of Sapienza University of Rome – Italy, leader of WP9 Dissemination. It started with a presentation by SiteChar coordinator, Florence Delprat-Jannaud of IFPEN (France) who introduced the main achievements of the project, in particular the development of the workflow, a step by step procedure to characterise CO2 storage sites and its application to dry-run storage permits.
Suzanne Brunsting of ECN (The Netherlands), leader of WP8 on Public Awareness, then llustrated the work performed on CO2 storage public engagement for 2 potential storage sites, one in Scotland and one in Poland. She explained how the involvement of the public has been prepared and subsequently what kind of activities have been organised to allow the expression of the local community perspective. Finally she provided interesting input for both operators and policy makers about lessons learnt.
An interesting set of questions were raised on the part of the participants about which communication strategies have the higher impact in increasing the public’s participation and understanding about the technology; about the importance of providing reliable information on how CCS can contribute to local employment; about the role of local benefits such as the transference of part of the royalty fee to the municipalities located in the area of storage.