The Citizens' Conference was held during two weekends in March and April 2012. Its aim was to enable a group of citizens to develop an informed opinion on carbon capture and storage (CCS).
The group involved in the conference consisted of 11 participants, residents of the Moray area in Schotland. A recruitment firm had recruited these participants to ensure representativeness in terms of age, gender and employment as much as possible.
The Citizens' Conference was held in two phases. During the first weekend in March 2012, participants received the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the scientific, technical and social aspects of CCS technology. To this end, several experts were invited to give presentations on the scientific, political and industrial perspectives on CCS and discuss these with the citizens. In the second weekend in April 2012 the focus was on having citizens develop and write down their own opinion on CCS in the form of a
positioning paper.
The result of two weekends of deliberation is a written statement (
positioning paper) about CO2 capture and storage that represents the group’s view on the technology. This document will be used to inform the process of site characterization as well as further public engagement activities, amongst others an
information meeting to be held by the end of August 2012 in Schotland.
The Citizens' Conference was also held in Poland in parallel to the Scottish Focus Conference. The main difference between the events in discussion content was that the discussion in Poland focused on conditions for acceptability of a possible CCS project in the area rather than on national level.
Download the English translation of the Polish positioning paper here.