Assessing socio-technical mindsets: Public deliberations on carbon capture and storage in the context of energy sources and climate change

Einsiedel, Edna F.; Boyd, Amanda D.; Medlock, Jennifer; Ashworth, Peta

doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2012.10.042

Cited by 45 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Adopting this more relational approach has proved valuable in opening up the notion of participation in transitions, extending it beyond sites of deliberative fora (e.g. Einsiedel, Boyd, Medlock, & Ashworth, 2013;Hendriks, 2009) to multiple forms of public engagement across low carbon energy systems (Smith, 2012) including activism, grassroots innovation, and interactions with more mundane technologies in everyday life. An important advance of our approach has been to introduce a framework that allows the sort of symmetrical and comparative analysis across diverse cases of engagement that has not been evident in the sustainability transitions or participation literatures hitherto.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Participation in Transition(s): Reconceiving Public Engagements in Energy Transitions as Co-Produced, Emergent and Diverse

Chilvers

Longhurst

2016

Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning

223

213

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This paper brings the transitions literature into conversation with constructivist Science and Technology Studies (STS) perspectives on participation for the first time.In doing so we put forward a conception of public and civil society engagement in sustainability transitions as co-produced, relational, and emergent. Through paying close attention to the ways in which the subjects, objects, and procedural formats of public engagement are constructed through the performance of participatory collectives, our approach offers a framework to open up to and symmetrically compare diverse and interconnected forms of participation that make up wider socio-technical systems. We apply this framework in a comparative analysis of four diverse cases of civil society involvement in UK low carbon energy transitions. This highlights similarities and differences in how these distinct participatory collectives are orchestrated, mediated, and subject to exclusions, as well as their effects in producing particular visions of the issue at stake and implicit models of participation and 'the public'. In conclusion we reflect on the value of this approach for opening up the politics of societal engagement in transitions, building systemic perspectives of interconnected 'ecologies of participation', and better accounting for the emergence, inherent uncertainties, and indeterminacies of all forms of participation in transitions.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Participation in Transition(s): Reconceiving Public Engagements in Energy Transitions as Co-Produced, Emergent and Diverse

Chilvers

Longhurst

2016

Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning

223

213

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“…The exception being The Netherlands, where 52% purported to be knowledgeable regarding CCS while a further 30% indicated awareness of the technology [32]. Overall, public perception and acceptance of CCS research indicates a general lack of enthusiasm toward the technology [5], yet not all public opinion is against CCS. Though energy efficiency options and renewable energy technologies would appear to be preferred, people nonetheless recognise the need for trade-offs [33,34].…”

Section: Public Acceptance and Opposition To Fossil Fuel With Ccsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other potential low carbon energy options which may be included in a suite of options with coal, natural gas and CCS include: geothermal, wave and tidal, nuclear, wind, hydroelectric, solar and bioenergy [5].…”

Section: Public Acceptance and Opposition To Fossil Fuel With Ccsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The ability for improved carbon emission reductions through the development of new and promising technologies, such as CCS, is seen to have a critical role to play in reducing fossil fuel power generation and industry related GHG emissions [5,6]. The past 10 to 15 years has seen an expansion of the scientific and technical knowledge required to advance investigation and development of CCS [7,8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Social Science Insights for the BioCCS Industry

2015

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BioCCS is a technology gaining support as a possible emissions reduction policy option to address climate change. The process entails the capture, transport and storage of carbon dioxide produced during energy production from biomass. Globally, the most optimistic energy efficiency scenarios cannot avoid an average temperature increase of +2 °C without bioCCS. Although very much at the commencement stage, bioCCS demonstration projects can provide opportunity to garner knowledge, achieve consensus and build support around the technology's properties. Yet many challenges face the bioCCS industry, including no guarantee biomass will always be from sustainable sources or potentially result in carbon stock losses. The operating environment also has no or limited policies, regulations and legal frameworks, and risk and safety concerns abound. Some state the key problem for bioCCS is cultural, lacking in a 'community of support', awareness and credibility amongst its own key stakeholders and the wider public. Therefore, the industry can benefit from the growing social science literature, drawing upon other energy and resource based industries with regard to social choice for future energy options. To this end, the following scoping review was conducted in order to ascertain gaps in existing public perception and acceptance research focusing on bioCCS.

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“…Some recent research has begun to explore aspects of this question, either by eliciting people's judgments of portfolios of energy supply options (12)(13)(14) or of future energy scenarios for particular cities and communities (15,16). What was unique about our own project was the desire to develop engagement methodologies that would permit us to elicit a range of public attitudes and values toward energy system change for the United Kingdom as whole (i.e., encompassing simultaneous supply-and demand-side changes), and in relation to current national policy imperatives.…”

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confidence: 99%

Creating a national citizen engagement process for energy policy

Pidgeon

Demski

Butler

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

140

107

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This paper examines some of the science communication challenges involved when designing and conducting public deliberation processes on issues of national importance. We take as our illustrative case study a recent research project investigating public values and attitudes toward future energy system change for the United Kingdom. National-level issues such as this are often particularly difficult to engage the public with because of their inherent complexity, derived from multiple interconnected elements and policy frames, extended scales of analysis, and different manifestations of uncertainty. With reference to the energy system project, we discuss ways of meeting a series of science communication challenges arising when engaging the public with national topics, including the need to articulate systems thinking and problem scale, to provide balanced information and policy framings in ways that open up spaces for reflection and deliberation, and the need for varied methods of facilitation and data synthesis that permit access to participants' broader values. Although resource intensive, national-level deliberation is possible and can produce useful insights both for participants and for science policy.public engagement | national dialogue | energy system transitions

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Assessing socio-technical mindsets: Public deliberations on carbon capture and storage in the context of energy sources and climate change

Cited by 45 publications

References 42 publications

Participation in Transition(s): Reconceiving Public Engagements in Energy Transitions as Co-Produced, Emergent and Diverse

Participation in Transition(s): Reconceiving Public Engagements in Energy Transitions as Co-Produced, Emergent and Diverse

Social Science Insights for the BioCCS Industry

Creating a national citizen engagement process for energy policy

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