The meeting of issues in governance and ethics of CCS – An ECR’s Perspective

This blog was written by Xiaohong Huang, a UKCCSRC ECR from the University of Edinburgh, who received funding from the ECR Meeting Fund to attend the meeting of issues in governance and ethics of CCS in Cambridge, 7 July.

Dr Clair Gough, from University of Manchester, presided over the meeting. 28 scholars from European and Australia attended this meeting. This meeting included the two parts: Presentations and Discussions.

Firstly, David Reiner reviewed the 5th social network meeting on the previous day, and Clair Gough reviewed the previous UKCCSRC meeting of issues in governance and ethics of CCS in September 2014.

Tim Dixon, Peta Ashworth and Elin Lerum Boasson then respectively introduced the policy reflections of international, Australian and Norwegian CCS projects. This suite of presentations highlighted the stories of global CCS projects and the policy experiences of different governments, and mapped the CCS ethics landscapes. They also discussed public engagement and ascertaining a social license to operate.

I was very interested in Karl McAlinden’s presentation in the afternoon, which was about the diffusion and adoption of carbon capture and storage (CCS): international cooperation and social learning with the people’s republic of China. As I am a CCS practitioner from China, I think there isn’t obvious technical barriers on realizing of CCS. Similar to other countries, the biggest barriers of CCS in China will be the government policy and public acceptance.

Karl McAlinden is a joint training PhD candidate of the University of Nottingham and Fudan University in China. He focuses on the study of diffusion and adoption of CCS technology. In his presentation, he introduced the developments for CCUS in China, and introduced the Everett Roger’s Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) theory & it’s Critics in detail through the following five aspects: diffusion, the social system, communication channels, social learning and adoption. The International and Chinese CCS Communities must enhance understanding of the composition, structure, functions and influence of the international CCS community on the diffusion of CCS and the position of Chinese parties within this social system. And we must increase knowledge on how Chinese parties contribute to global learning on the uncertainties and risks of CCS and what they gain in this process and how this may contribute to the future development and deployment of CCS.