Organisational aspects of public engagement in European energy infrastructure planning: the case of early-stage CCS projects

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed a proliferation of studies on public perceptions of carbon capture and storage (CCS), accompanied by efforts to translate such knowledge into toolkits for public engagement and communication. At the same time, both literature and toolkits have paid little attention to the organisational dynamics and views of project implementers with regard to public engagement. Here we investigate the views of project development consortia employees in five European CCS projects, focusing on their experience of organisational norms and structures relating to engagement. Finding that planning for this engagement has in several cases been hampered by a lack of shared internal vision on engagement and communication within the project consortia, at least initially, we draw upon the socio-technical approach to technology embedment and new institutional theory, to observe that internal organisational alignment is crucial in multi-organisational projects when seeking effective public engagement and communication. We observe that this aspect of internal organisation is not yet reflected in the toolkits and guidelines designed to aid engagement in CCS projects. Engagement guides need to direct the attention of project implementers not only in specific outward directions, but also towards reflexively considering their own internal structures, perspectives, motivations, expectations and aims in relation to engagement and communication practice. The work was begun while at the Tyndall Centre, University of Manchester.Breukers S, Upham P. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 2013 DOI:10.1080/09640568.2013 2 Key words:Public engagement; communication; CCS; organisational dynamics Organisational practice in public engagement and communicationThe literature on public opinion of renewable and low carbon energy infrastructure has variously focussed on the characteristics of the technology involved; the psychological processes of the receiving population; and institutional, planning and governance-related factors ; for reviews see Bell, Gray and Hagget, 2005;Upham et al., 2009 andWhitmarsh et al., 2011;Wolsink, 2006). Reflecting increasingly nuanced understandings of public opinion in this context, energy infrastructure developers in Europe and elsewhere are now typically encouraged towards early public engagement and to obtain an understanding of the social context of planned developments. In pragmatic terms, early public engagement acknowledges that local acceptance may be contingent on situational, highly local circumstances (Renn, 2008) and that a developer would do well to anticipate some of these.In general, then, the focus in the siting literature is on affected populations and their environment in a wide sense. It is much less common to examine public engagement in energy infrastructure developments from the perspective of the organisations promoting the development. Responding to this, here we investigate opinion, dynamics and structures within the boundaries of the firms involved in develo...

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