Natural Gas with CCS: Social License & Community Relations

Context

CCS projects may face local opposition due to concerns about potential leaks, seismic activity, or the impact on local property rights. Some of the concerns may be secondary to general discontent around new projects in general, but the infrastructure needed for CCS creates the potential for additional "veto points" that can stall or derail projects.

Industry Observations & Insights

“Unfortunately it gives anyone who's opposed to the project for other reasons one more lever they can pull to slow it down. So that is a challenge: anything that you add all that is potentially positive from a climate perspective actually becomes a negative in the permitting process”

“You see a lot of people right now opposed aggressively to geologic sequestration. That’s a huge factor in public perception around gas with CCS, probably potentially more impactful than economic issues in terms of slowing down and changing public perception of projects. Public perception will be immensely more important to a hyperscaler than it will to an [oil & gas major] building a blue hydrogen facility.”

“Community acceptance is really critical. This is a new technology, it's unfamiliar, and there is a lot of linear infrastructure that has to cross a lot of land in some cases. So having a really strong and proactive approach to engaging with communities, ensuring that they benefit from projects is really important in terms of the go-to-market.” -Natural Gas Buyer (Hyperscaler)

“The sentimental restraints are largely around reputational risk and not fully understanding what would be the reaction from a community as well as the national level. Data centers and hyperscalers in particular are the likely offtakers for CCS right now. So reputation is the huge one both at the community level and also with the ENGO community where these guys are getting hammered right now; there's a lot happening with the challenge around speed to power.”