Impact of CCS Communication on the General and Local Public in Romania- Oltenia Region

Abstract

The public acceptance of CCS is an important precondition for the large-scale deployment of these technologies. At present it can be assumed that the majority of the public is neither for nor against CCS, because the level of awareness among the public is very low or virtually nonexistent. Hence, the pivotal question is how information on CCS has to be communicated in order to increase the stability and consistency of public opinion to better predict future public support or opposition. The main assumption of the project “Impact of communication” is that communication on CCS should enable the public to develop their own well-considered opinion on the technologies. Otherwise the strength with which the opinions on CCS are held will be very low and therefore these opinions will be very unstable. If public attitudes are very unstable they are worthless for predicting future support for CCS. Therefore, the aim of the project is to develop recommendations for the communication of CCS enabling the public to establish their own informed opinion. For this purpose the project will carry out a comparative study of the communication of CCS in Romania-Oltenia region. The comparative approach is based on two main methods: a) a survey of a representative sample of citizens to investigate the awareness, knowledge and opinions of the public concerning climate change, energy technologies and CCS, b) a study that compares the effectiveness of two different methods for communicating CCS which both aim to enable lay persons to develop their own well-considered opinions (focus groups and Information-Choice Questionnaire). The collected data will be compared to enable conclusions to be drawn concerning the question of how to communicate information on CCS technologies so that the resulting public attitudes could be understood as indicators of future public support. The main objective is to collect data on public awareness and knowledge of climate change, energy policy and CCS in general and furthermore on public awareness and knowledge about local demo initiatives and existing CCS information material and campaigns. Comparison of the effectiveness of two CCS communication methods: 1) oral presentation of information by experts to a small group of lay persons who will have the opportunity for extensive discussion on CCS (focus group), and 2) written presentation of the identical expert information to a number of individual lay persons (who cannot interact) by an instrument helping them to make use of the information provided to form opinions on CCS (Information-Choice Questionnaire, ICQ). The study “Impact of communication” was provide recommendations for the communication of CCS to the general and local public. The recommendations is based on empirical data about public awareness and perceptions of climate change, energy policy, CCS and CCS communication in Romania. This will support the development of effective methods and comprehensive tools for a further goal-oriented public communication campaign. The collaboration will also increase the transfer of knowledge with regard to CCS acceptance and the results could facilitate the deployment of CCS in Europe.