Public Participation

 

Part of the Sitechar project is dedicated to advancing public awareness and helping people form their own opinion about ongoing selection of a place where a CCS project might occur. To this end some general and specific information on CCS will be made available on the SiteChar website. Furthermore, we organize several local public participation activities: A citizens' conference and an information meeting.

 

This part of the work is led by social scientists from the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands ECN and the Independent Institute for Environmental Issues UfU in Germany, and also involves social scientists from the Scottish Carbon Capture and Storage. Other parties who contribute to the work are the project leader IFP Energies Nouvelles, AGH University of Science and Technology and Polish Oil and Gas company PGNiG to assist the work at the Polish site, and the Scottish Government to assist the work at the UK site.

 

For the general public, we provide information about the CO2 capture and storage technology. For the local publics near the research sites, we actively encourage and welcome public awareness and opinion development at two sites: The North Sea Moray Firth site in the UK and the Zalecze & Zuchlow site in Poland.

 

At these two sites, community representatives and the local public are being informed about the research and are involved in discussions about CO2 capture and storage technology by a citizens' conference and an information meeting. The objective of this part of the project is to identify and develop good methods for involving the local population in the process of project development. To this end, the local public is being given opportunities to form an informed opinion concerning CO2 capure and storage and to discuss the issues arising with the researchers and with experts. Results of the research at the two sites will be used to develop recommendations for public engagement at other sites throughout Europe.

 

The research method we use to develop the public participation activities is called Social site characterisation. If you wish to learn more about this method or if you are interested in the research results, please visit the Social site characterisation page.