Dr Richard Aldous: "The relationship between carbon capture and storage in local communities is important, as it is actually with large mining and resource projects.  And in some parts of the world local communities have just said, look, we don’t want CO2 stored in our area.  We think it might be dangerous, so we’re concerned about it.  So just go away.  I mean, surprisingly this is in Europe, for example, where already there are many many millions of tonnes of natural gas stored in the same way for use in people’s homes and industries.  So it’s quite common to store natural gas under the ground to draw it down when you need it.  At our Otway Project we’ve done, we did a lot of work with the local community before we started.  And we’ve continued to build a strong relationship with the community all the way through our demonstration efforts.  And this is proved very valuable, not only in terms of our relationship with the local community, but it’s actually been a beacon for other projects to look at and to learn about how we did that, how did we build that relationship, how did we keep the community on side.  And what’s happened actually in over the last five or six years, is that we’ve gone and done studies of local community immediately around the project, but also in the region.  And we’ve found that the awareness of CSS has gone up compared to other parts of the country, and also the acceptance of this technology.  Typically we find when someone hears about CCS their first reaction is, oh well, this doesn’t really sound safe, you know, what is this.  But when they’re given even a five or ten minute explanation of how it works and some of the science and engineering behind it, they’re usually very accepting.  And so a lot of the problem is about education, about getting it out there.  And that’s really why we certainly welcome programmes like this.  It’s an opportunity to let more people understand what this technology is about.  That it is happening, that it can work and it can be a vital part of climate change management."

Categories: Carbon Capture and Storage, Environment & Climate, Global Markets
Author: Dr Richard Aldous