Tackling climate change: Small-scale deliberative engagement with Taranaki community stakeholders on...

Tackling climate changeSmall-scale deliberative engagement with

Taranaki community stakeholders on carbon

capture and storage (CCS)

F. J. Coyle

October 2014 | CO2CRC Report No: RPT14-5134

GNS Science Consultancy Report 2014/207

REPORT

CO2CRC PARTICIPANTS

CSIRO

Curtin University

Geoscience Australia

GNS Science

Monash University

Simon Fraser University

University of Adelaide

University of Melbourne

University of New South Wales

University of Western Australia

Core Research

Participants

Supporting

Participants

Industry & Government

ParticipantsCanSyd Australia

Charles Darwin University

Government of South Australia

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Process Group

The Global CCS Institute

University of Queensland

ANLEC R&D

BG Group

BHP Billiton

BP Developments Australia

Brown Coal Innovation Australia

Chevron

State Government Victoria – Dept. of State Development Business & Innovation

INPEX

KIGAM

NSW Government Dept. Trade & Investment

Rio Tinto

SASOL

Shell

Total

Western Australia Dept. of Mines and Petroleum

Glencore

Tackling climate change

Small-scale deliberative engagement with Taranaki community stakeholders on carbon capture and storage

(CCS)

F. J. Coyle

October 2014

CO2CRC Report No: RPT14-5134

GNS Science Consultancy Report 2014/207

Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC) PO Box 1182, Carlton, VIC 3053 Third Floor, School of Earth Science, University of Melbourne, VIC 3010 AUSTRALIA Phone: +61 3 9035 9729 Email: [email protected] Web: www.co2crc.com.au Reference: Coyle, FJ, 2014. Tackling Climate Change: Small-scale deliberative engagement with Taranaki community stakeholders on carbon capture and storage (CCS). Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies, Canberra, Australia, CO2CRC Publication Number RPT14-5134. 178 pp.

© CO2CRC 2014

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Table of contents Executive summary ..................................................................................................................... iv

1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1

2. Carbon capture and storage: the state of engagement ................................................... 4 Risk perceptions of CCS ............................................................................................. 4 The significance of place ............................................................................................. 5 Engagement techniques .............................................................................................. 7 Deliberative engagement ............................................................................................ 8

3. Research method .............................................................................................................. 10 Recruitment of focus group participants .................................................................... 11 Focus group questionnaire ........................................................................................ 11 Structure and content of the focus groups ................................................................. 11

3.3.1. Session one: Adapted focus group ................................................................ 11 3.3.2. Session two: Discussion forum ...................................................................... 15 3.3.3. Session three: Multi-stakeholder deliberative forum ...................................... 15

Data analysis ............................................................................................................. 17 Feedback survey ....................................................................................................... 17

4. The local context: a sense of place ................................................................................. 18 The maunga .............................................................................................................. 18 Place identity and attachment ................................................................................... 21

4.2.1. People in place .............................................................................................. 21 4.2.2. Place as people ............................................................................................. 22

Oil and gas exploration .............................................................................................. 26 Dairy farming ............................................................................................................. 31 Challenges ................................................................................................................ 33

4.5.1. Environmental issues ..................................................................................... 33 4.5.2. Transport infrastructure ................................................................................. 34 4.5.3. Communications infrastructure ...................................................................... 35 4.5.4. Upkeep of facilities ......................................................................................... 35 4.5.5. Attracting professionals into the area ............................................................. 36 4.5.6. Population ...................................................................................................... 37

Visions for the region ................................................................................................. 39

5. Contextualising CCS: perceptions of climate change ................................................... 41 Information sources ................................................................................................... 42 What is climate change? ........................................................................................... 44 Consequences of climate change ............................................................................. 47 Local consequence and observations ....................................................................... 48 Causes of climate change ......................................................................................... 50 Tackling climate change ............................................................................................ 51

6. CCS: the lay-expert researcher ........................................................................................ 55 Session 1: the science talk ........................................................................................ 55 Initial impressions of CCS ......................................................................................... 56 Where participants found information on CCS .......................................................... 57 What participants found about CCS .......................................................................... 59 What they thought about this information .................................................................. 61

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7. Stakeholder perceptions of CCS ..................................................................................... 63 CCS – the concept .................................................................................................... 63 Cost of CCS .............................................................................................................. 65 Politics of CCS .......................................................................................................... 66 Alternatives to CCS ................................................................................................... 68 CO2: a ‘natural’ waste product ................................................................................... 68 Kaitiakitanga: taking care of our waste ...................................................................... 70 Offshore VS onshore ................................................................................................. 72 Logistics and technicalities of CCS ........................................................................... 74 Environmental concerns ............................................................................................ 75 Leakage .................................................................................................................... 76 Natural disasters: volcanic and seismic activity ......................................................... 79 The ‘fracking’ debate: induced seismicity .................................................................. 80 The politics of home .................................................................................................. 83 Monitoring and emergency planning ......................................................................... 84 Legislation ................................................................................................................. 87 Liability ...................................................................................................................... 89 Benefits and compensation ....................................................................................... 91 Communication ......................................................................................................... 95 Questions ................................................................................................................ 102 Summary ................................................................................................................. 102

8. Multi-Stakeholder risk perceptions ............................................................................... 103 Objectives for the evening ....................................................................................... 103

8.1.1. Community views, input and understanding ................................................ 105 8.1.2. Knowledge and information ......................................................................... 105 8.1.3. Rules, processes and risks .......................................................................... 105

Presentations .......................................................................................................... 106 8.2.1. Iwi ................................................................................................................ 106 8.2.2. Farmers and landowners ............................................................................. 107 8.2.3. Urban community ......................................................................................... 109 8.2.4. Oil and gas .................................................................................................. 110 8.2.5. Council ......................................................................................................... 111

Multi-stakeholder forum ........................................................................................... 112 8.3.1. Key points .................................................................................................... 115 8.3.2. Key discussions ........................................................................................... 116 8.3.3. Observations................................................................................................ 119 8.3.4. ‘The parking lot’ ........................................................................................... 119

9. Methodological critique .................................................................................................. 121 Stakeholder selection .............................................................................................. 121 Stakeholder motivations .......................................................................................... 121 Regional introduction ............................................................................................... 122 Science presentation ............................................................................................... 122 Fictional scenario .................................................................................................... 123 Use of the CCS researcher ..................................................................................... 124 Homework exercise ................................................................................................. 125 The multi-stakeholder forum .................................................................................... 126 Feedback from participants ..................................................................................... 126 Best practice discussion forum guides .................................................................... 128

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10. Summary ......................................................................................................................... 129 Community risk perceptions: space, place and culture ........................................... 129 Risk management ................................................................................................... 130 Information and communication needs .................................................................... 132 Small-scale deliberative engagement: a complex systems approach .................... 133

Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. 136

References ................................................................................................................................ 136

Appendix I ................................................................................................................................. 141

Appendix II ................................................................................................................................ 142

Appendix III ............................................................................................................................... 143

Appendix IV ............................................................................................................................... 145

Appendix V ................................................................................................................................ 149

Appendix VI ............................................................................................................................... 154

Appendix VII .............................................................................................................................. 159

Appendix VIII ............................................................................................................................. 164

Appendix IX ............................................................................................................................... 166

Appendix X ................................................................................................................................ 170

Appendix XI ............................................................................................................................... 174

Figures Figure 1 Carbon capture and storage. Source: http://www.makingitmagazine.net/?p=652 ............. 1 Figure 2 CCS Taranaki 2030: Fictional scenario. ........................................................................... 14 Figure 3 CCS fictional scenario: Main content. ............................................................................... 14 Figure 4 Ground rules for the deliberative forum. ........................................................................... 16 Figure 5 Mount Taranaki or Mt Egmont. ......................................................................................... 18 Figure 6 Map of Taranaki. ............................................................................................................... 20 Figure 7 “President Murt Kennard, right, is elected ahead of Mike Self at the Whangamomona

Republic Day celebration”. ................................................................................................ 25 Figure 8 Taranaki oil and gas exploration. ...................................................................................... 26 Figure 9 NZPAM map of petroleum wells in the Taranaki region. .................................................. 27 Figure 10 Dairy farming in Taranaki. ................................................................................................. 31 Figure 11 Outcome of sticky notes exercise. .................................................................................. 104 Figure 12 Three main themed objectives for the deliberative forum. .............................................. 104 Figure 13 Summary of points from session two with the farmers and landowners. ....................... 109 Figure 14 Community stakeholder view on CCS: commonalities. .................................................. 113 Figure 15 Community stakeholder view on CCS: other points. ...................................................... 114

Tables Table 1 Overview of focus groups and participants. ...................................................................... 12 Table 2 List of recorded sources consulted during homework exercise. ....................................... 58

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Executive summary Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is one of a portfolio of ways to tackle the pressing issue of anthropogenic climate change by reducing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). It is a technological solution, which involves the capture of CO2 at a point source (coal-fired power station or industrial site), its transport (e.g. via underground pipeline), and permanent underground storage in deep natural reservoirs. This may occur both onshore and offshore, utilising former oil or gas fields or via the identification of other suitable storage reservoirs. It has been marketed as a “bridging technology” (ICL and Shell, 2008), to assist with the transition from an energy landscape dominated by fossil fuels, to one of environmental sustainability characterized by low or no emissions technologies and renewable energy. However, its deployment has not been without controversy in the public domain. Heightened risk perceptions over the consequences of potential leakage (particularly in terms of the possibility of groundwater contamination) and resultant public protest have led to the cancellation of planned projects in some parts of the world.

In New Zealand, there is potential for the deployment of CCS with a likely area identified as the Taranaki region in North Island. With a workforce geared towards the oil and gas industry, local expertise and suitable underground reservoirs, the infrastructure to host a CO2 storage site exists. Whilst the majority of people in a previous GNS study were not against CCS (see Doody et al, 2012), participants did not see the need for the technology in New Zealand, a nation seen as possessing a unique renewable energy profile and low overall emissions. However, these perceptions were collated from a Wellington-based study and the question of how a community at a potential host site would react would be an entirely different research study. In addition, there were also other unexamined issues to be considered, such as: how to engage a local community in an appropriate and ethical manner, who should be included in stakeholder discussions, and how early to initiate the engagement process.

With no CCS planned for the Taranaki region at this stage, there was an opportunity for early engagement with local stakeholders (urban community members, farmer and landowners, iwi, local councils and the oil/gas industry) via a method that included scenario-based focus groups, direct engagement with scientists, and a small-scale deliberative process. The primary aim of this research was to trial a methodology that could promote deliberation, foster an informed understanding of different viewpoints, generate solution-focused outcomes, identify potential areas of conflict that would need to be addressed if CCS was to be deployed and most importantly, include the wider community (including iwi) in the decision-making process from an early stage. The deliberative engagement process involved a three step process:

1. Five single-stakeholder adapted focus groups that explored participants ‘sense of place’, regional issues, understandings about climate change and energy and introduced CCS via a hypothetical scenario where the technology was deployed in 2030.

2. Five single-stakeholder discussion forums where CCS was explored from a personal line of inquiry approach with the opportunity for participants to interact with a CCS researcher and each other. This process led to the development of a group viewpoint, which was presented by two representatives from each forum at a final multi-stakeholder deliberative forum.

3. One multi-stakeholder deliberative forum was held to identify commonalities and differences between discussion forum representatives, foster informed understanding, and empower the group to develop a series of issues and actions that would need to occur should CCS ever be deployed in the region.

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Emergent from this study was an in-depth social characterization of the region and its relationship to perceptions of CCS, including its economy, culture/s, environment, values, historical evolution, challenges and visions for the future. Although CCS was contextualized in terms of climate change and reducing CO2 emissions, this did not feature, to any significant degree, in how the community perceived the technology. Rather, attitudes and values were strongly coloured by experiences with the dominant industries in the area (e.g. dairy farming and oil and gas), as well as a sensitivity to seismicity, influenced by the catastrophic impact of the Canterbury earthquakes and national debate on hydraulic fracturing. Additionally, a strong sense of regional identity and attachment to place were pivotal in assessing the impact that CCS might have on the community as a whole. Whilst participants were initially guided through the same process in single-stakeholder groups, at the final multi-stakeholder session they realized how similar their attitudes to both the region and CCS were, reflecting community coherence, identified as a key characteristic of the region.

The perception of CO2 as a “waste product” led to some trepidation around how the region would be viewed by the rest of the nation, with particular concerns about not being perceived as a “dumping ground”. However, there was also agreement with the iwi perspective of kaitiakitanga (caretaking, environmental sustainability), with the view that we have a responsibility to take care of our waste. This led to the outcome that the participants were willing to consider looking after their own emissions, but not importing CO2 from elsewhere. Ultimately, though with notable input from oil and gas representatives in the final forum, storage was not seen as having a business case in the current economic climate.

The participants also indicated a need for the community to be involved in the co-governance of any CCS project that was planned for the region from the earliest conceptual stages. In particular, local iwi wanted to be informed and engaged as part of the community as a whole. Rather than being in a “reactive mode”, which was viewed as emanating from late involvement, the iwi group wanted to be integrated into the decision-making process from the outset. Ideally, any community engagement around CCS should include: transparency over possible risks and contingency plans, access to real-time monitoring data, openness to questions, open days, and informing and involving the entire community, as opposed to selected stakeholders, on an ongoing basis. Many participants thought that early engagement and involvement would be beneficial for the development of trust and forging of ongoing relationships with the company. Whilst some did not want to feel as if they were being “bought off”, there was a general persuasion that the region should have some beneficial outcomes for taking on their share of the burden of reducing emissions, and hosting a storage site that was not without risk. This included local employment in the industry and local apprenticeships in Information Technology (IT), and support for regional/community development, which paralleled that provided by the oil and gas industry.

In summary, the small-scale deliberative engagement process was welcomed by the community, with excellent feedback from the vast majority of participants and a general feeling that this type of process should happen more often.

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1. Introduction Climate change and the co-existent dilemma of how to tackle it are not without significant controversy in the public and political domain. Moreover, the potential for conflicts that are fuelled or triggered by climate change is a serious issue, not only in communities likely to be impacted by its effects, but in communities who may have to take on more than their fair share of responsibility for mitigation initiatives and their potential consequences. Specifically, risks and long-term liabilities associated with a technological response to climate change mitigation, such as carbon capture and storage (CCS).

CCS is part of a portfolio of responses to mitigate climate change, and involves the capture of carbon dioxide (CO2) from industrial and energy sources, its transport and then injection as a super-critical liquid in deep underground reservoirs to achieve permanent storage (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Carbon capture and storage. Source: http://www.makingitmagazine.net/?p=652

The technology is not widespread and in most places still has to earn its ‘social licence to operate’ (Dowd and James, 2014). Marketed as a ‘bridging technology’, it is associated with a number of risk perceptions, related particularly to the underground storage of CO2. These include: the vulnerability of storage sites to earthquakes, catastrophic leakage and groundwater contamination (Curry et al., 2004; Gough et al., 2002; Huijts et al., 2007; Itaoka et al., 2004; Markusson et al., 2012; Miller et al., 2008; Oltra et al., 2010; Palmgren et al., 2004; Shackley et al., 2005; 2009; Upham and Roberts, 2011; van Os et al., 2014; Wallquist et al., 2009; Wong-Parodi and Ray, 2009). Moreover, there is a disparity between locations where capture will occur (e.g. industrial, power stations) and storage sites (often rural or offshore), with communities in the vicinity of the latter commonly having to take a share of the burden of associated risks and their potential consequences.

In the New Zealand context, with expanding oil and gas exploration, underground reservoirs and a skilled local workforce, the Taranaki region has been identified as a potential storage location by GNS Science. The region is dominated by a towering volcano, known as Mt Taranaki or Mt Egmont, enveloped in interacting layers of meaning for the local community. It is the focus of Māori biography (King et al., 2007; Ruru, 2004:123) and is associated with the recognition of ‘home’, outdoor recreation, a sense of regional pride and the tourism industry. Coming into the region as a researcher, ‘the mountain’, as it was called, had a striking presence, reminiscent of the geological protagonist in Malcolm Lowry’s novel, Under the Volcano.

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As yet, no CCS pilot studies have been planned, nor technology deployed in New Zealand. This provided the opportunity to test the effectiveness of very early engagement with different sectors of the local community, via a hypothetical scenario process. Consequently, the research method pivoted around three central but interrelated questions:

1. Could a scaled-down, cost-effective deliberative engagement process be designed and utilised to help identify and address any foreseeable areas of conflict?

2. Could such a methodology create a space that acts as a complex adaptive system as opposed to one defined by the chaos of a conflict situation?

3. Could this promote the emergence of dialogue, ideas and solution-focused outcomes, as opposed to miscommunication and misunderstanding?

With some grounding in the aim of the study, a fourth question could be added to this: ‘how early is too early’ to engage a community about controversial technologies that might impact them?

By adopting the guidelines for conducting a social site characterization, more substantive, informational research questions were developed:

How did different groups of local community stakeholders understand their home region, climate change, CCS and New Zealand’s energy landscape?

What did local community stakeholders see as the risks and benefits of a CO2 storage facility in the region?

What roles did the local, national and international contexts play in these perceptions?

What were the timing and needs of community stakeholders in regards to communication and information?

What commonalities and differences were there in opinions between individuals and groups?

What form would a solution-focused outcome take?

What action points would arise?

In order not to merely replicate previous research on perceptions of CCS, particularly the preceding GNS Science report (Doody et al., 2012), the primary focus of this report was threefold:

1. Establishing the importance of local context, knowledge, attitudes and values in determining understandings about the siting of a CO2 storage facility in a community used by oil and gas operations.

2. Identifying what knowledge and information would be useful to the local community, how this should be communicated, by whom, and at what stage of the development.

3. Critiquing the small-scale deliberative engagement process that was designed to foster open communication among community stakeholders: iwi, urban community, farmers and landowners, councils, and the oil and gas industry.

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With these pivotal issues in mind, chapter two contextualises the research with a short literature review on recent engagement processes on CCS, theoretical concepts around ‘place’ that are relevant to this analysis, and deliberative engagement theory. Chapter three describes the small-scale deliberative process that was developed and employed in this research. This is followed by chapter four which provides a thorough overview of the local regional context from which participants based their assessment of CCS. Chapter five explores perceptions of climate change that were explored in the lead up to the discussions on CCS. Chapter six presents participants’ initial understanding of CCS and the research that they individually conducted, which assisted in the discussion and decision-making process. Chapter seven provides a summary of the main points identified by participants in the first two sessions, with particular emphasis on some emergent social, cultural and environmental issues that underlie community risk perceptions. Chapter eight focuses on the final multi-stakeholder deliberative forum, identifying the issues raised by each stakeholder group, commonalities and differences, and conclusions reached. Chapter nine provides a critique of the method and its ability to re-produce space as a complex adaptive system, allowing the emergence of ideas, dialogue and constructive decision-making. Finally, chapter ten synthesises and discusses the implications of the results, providing some conclusions to the research.

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2. Carbon capture and storage: the state of engagement

Public risk perceptions and subsequent protest over the planning of climate change mitigation technologies such as wind farms, hydroelectric power stations and CCS pilot facilities have, at times, hindered their progress and even deployment (Brunsting et al., 2011; Devine-Wright, 2005; Feenstra et al., 2010; Mehta, 2005; OECD, 2003; Shackley et al., 2005; Walker, 1995). With an increased need to understand where these publics were coming from, a series of international studies were undertaken to explore the range of public perceptions about and perceived acceptability of CCS (see Ashworth et al., 2013; Curry et al., 2004; Gough et al., 2002; Huijts et al., 2007; Itaoka et al., 2004; Miller et al., 2008; Oltra et al., 2010; Palmgren et al., 2004; Shackley et al., 2005; 2009; Upham and Roberts, 2011; van Os et al., 2014; Wong-Parodi and Ray, 2009). This chapter briefly explores some of this work, particularly from the perspective of ‘how’ to engage publics, the role of place, and the potential for deliberative engagement techniques, both to gather data and act as a conduit for effective engagement and decision-making.

Risk perceptions of CCS

Whilst the nature of the technology (CCS) did play a limited role in risk perception, this report is framed under the supposition that for diverse publics, there is more to risk assessment than purely a critique of the technology itself. Instead, as Slovic (1987; 2000) argues, public risk perceptions are mainly judgments about risk, which are coloured by individual, social, cultural, political and economic factors. Moreover, there is known to be a significant difference between the way experts ‘objectively’ perceive risk, and the way lay publics understand it, in context (Slovic, 1987). Furthermore, an increase in information and knowledge about CCS does not necessarily lead to more positive public opinions about the technology, with perceptions taking a much more important role. As “manifestations of a particular perspective on the technology”, perceptions are neither correct not incorrect, and what counts as a misperception differs between stakeholders (Brunsting et al., 2013: 7427). Hence, Brunsting et al. (2013) stress the importance of dialogue in exploring and understanding a range of viewpoints and their formation.

Internationally, the number of studies on public risk perceptions of CCS has expanded. At a global level, these studies have conveyed very similar attitudes towards CCS, which include concerns over leakage, groundwater contamination, atmospheric contamination, sufficiency of monitoring and contingency plans, appropriate legislation, anticipated benefits to the community, and the need for early and appropriate engagement from the company establishing the industry. However, even with an increase in the number of studies, people still appeared to know very little about CCS prior to the engagement process, making it difficult for them to make informed decisions about the technology (e.g. Ashworth et al., 2013; Curry et al., 2004; Gough et al., 2002; Huijts et al., 2007; Itaoka et al., 2004; Miller et al., 2008; Oltra et al., 2010; Palmgren et al., 2004; Shackley et al., 2005; 2009; Upham and Roberts, 2011; van Os et al., 2014; Wong-Parodi and Ray, 2009). In New Zealand, a previous GNS study (Doody et al., 2012) on public perceptions of CCS came to similar conclusions, albeit with a general consensus that with unique emissions and renewable energy profiles, CCS was not perceived as necessary for New Zealand.

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In addition to general public perceptions, research has also pivoted around the perceptions of communities close to potential CCS sites, or pilot CO2 storage facilities (Ashworth et al., 2012; Mabon, 2012; Mabon et al., 2013; Mabon et al., 2014). Reactions have been mixed, and are ultimately, context and community-dependent. For instance, the CCS pilot project at Barendrecht in the Netherlands was met by the mobilization of public protest in response to the nature of the storage proposed and quality of engagement strategies employed (Feenstra et al., 2010). Findings indicate that one important cause of the lack of local acceptance of the project was the absence of a cohesive and timely strategy for discussing the project with local stakeholders, as part of the formal decision-making process rather than apart from it (Brunsting et al., 2011).

Alternately, CO2CRC’s Otway Project in southern Australia has been met with more positive reactions from the local community. The Otway Project was Australia’s first operational storage site for carbon dioxide and a specialist team began to engage with the local community in 2005; three years prior to any injection of CO2. Furthermore, the engagement process was evaluated both in 2006 and 2011 via focus groups and questionnaires. This ongoing work provided valuable information on levels of understanding of CCS, areas of community concern and preferred methods of communication. The resulting consultation program, informed by this research, has continued throughout the project’s life with communication tools and strategies that include newsletters, a website, public meetings, open days and a dedicated community liaison officer (Steeper, 2013). Whilst there have been occasional “pitfalls” in community relations, the team has worked hard to establish and if necessary, re-establish relationships with the local population (Ashworth et al., 2010). One of the conclusions of this process was that having baseline social research was invaluable in evaluating and refining Otway’s engagement programme to inspire curiosity in the project, with the outcomes being a more informed community and sense of pride (Steeper, 2013). As this study demonstrates, engagement at this level should aim to understand and ultimately empower the community: their visions for the region, needs, complexities, culture, economy and sense of place.

Recently, other community studies have engaged theoretical frameworks from the disciplines of human geography and environmental psychology to explore the relevance of local context in understanding risk perceptions around CCS (Mabon, 2012).

The significance of place

Much of the risk perception literature on CCS has focused on the importance of social, cultural, ethical, political and economic considerations on shaping individual viewpoints. However, within the literature on controversial low-carbon technologies (e.g. wind, wave), as well as CCS itself, increasing attention has been paid to the role of place in shaping attitudes, values, perceptions and behaviours (Devine-Wright, 2009; 2011; 2013; Mabon, 2012; Manzo and Devine-Wright, 2014; Hammond and Shackley, 2010). In very basic terms, place can be understood as “meaningful location”, but can also be conceptualised as, “bounded settings in which social relations and identity are constituted” (Duncan, 2000: 582), such as home, neighbourhood or region. Moreover, the relationship between place and identity is dialectical, for as place constructs people, people also construct place, both through individual agency, and via intersections of local and global processes (Jackson and Penrose, 1993).

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Originally stemming from the discipline of humanistic geography in the 1970s and 1980s (see Buttimer, 1976; Relph, 1976; Tuan, 1977), the idea of place has been taken further, with varying associated permutations that are relevant to this study. In particular, the discourses of human geography, environmental psychology and environmental ethics have focused on the salience of ‘place identity’, ‘place attachment’ and an overall ‘sense of place’ in understanding the importance of place and local context in community perceptions of the siting of new and controversial technologies. These concepts are interrelated, so they will be briefly introduced, before exploring their importance in helping to understand risk perception.

The concept of ‘place attachment’ was recently unearthed from the archives of environmental psychology, in a thoroughly researched paper by Maria Lewicka (2011). It can be understood simply as “emotional bonds which people develop with various places” (Lewicka, 2011:219) or “the extent to which an individual or community feels a strong sense of attachment to a particular place” (Hammond and Shackley, 2010: 44–45). Place attachment may derive from close ties within a locale, generational rootedness, spiritual significance, aesthetic appeal, recreation and recuperation, or simply being in a physically or emotionally stimulating environment (Lewicka, 2011:213). Moreover, a “rich network of place-related meanings” and “deep sense of self-continuity” can result from residing in a single place through several life stages (Lewicka, 2011:224); what geographers would refer to as “rootedness” in a place.

The related concept of place identity is associated with the bonds people make with places (Lewicka, 2010: 211) and can be defined as “the extent to which a particular place is important in the construction of personal identity” (Hammond and Shackley, 2010: 44). Hence, the physical nature of a locale, alongside its social attributes can forge a particular type of place identity (Proshansky et al., 1983). The term is closely linked to a sense of self- and social-identity, assumed from being and belonging in-place (Bonnes et al., 1995).

Finally, there is the widely used concept of ‘sense of place’, which refers to a general feeling about a place by an individual. Its meaning has developed over time, and more complex understandings of the term have arisen.

The attitudes and feelings that individuals and groups hold vis a` vis the geographical areas in which they live. It further commonly suggests intimate, personal and emotional relationships between self and place (Gregory et al., 2009: 676).

The feelings evoked among people as a result of the experiences and memories they associate with a place and the symbolism they attach to that place. It can also refer to the character of a place as seen by outsiders: its distinctive physical characteristics and/or its inhabitants…[A sense of place] is the result of a shared pool of meanings, which carries over into people’s attitudes and feelings about themselves and their localities (Knox and Marston, 2007: 33).

As described in the definitions above, a ‘sense of place’ can differ between individuals, with a palimpsest of previous memories and experiences ‘in place’ continuously feeding into this complex, dynamic relationship. In general, if an area has a strong ‘sense of place’, it can be understood to have a strong identity, which is felt by locals and acknowledged by visitors and incomers. This identity may not always be singular, and in a globalized world, may be dynamic and indeed, progressive (Massey, 1997).

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Whilst these concepts are essential in understanding places and communities, they are also increasingly important in comprehending how the siting of controversial low-carbon technologies such as wind, nuclear, wave power, and CCS facilities are regarded. More importantly, these concepts provide insight into the behaviour that can arise when place identity, place attachment and a sense of place are disrupted by new developments. For instance, where individuals are found to have a strong place attachment, resistance to any development that threatens this level of attachment can be correspondingly strong (Hammond and Shackley, 2010: 45). Similarly, a strong place identity (even if a person does not live there) may precipitate resistance if the characteristic identity of a particular place is threatened by a development project (Hammond and Shackley, 2010: 45).

Patrick Devine-Wright has taken these conceptions of place to a further level. Challenging the concept of NIMBYism, commonly known as the ‘not in my backyard’ response to controversial projects such as landfills, wind farms, nuclear sites and CCS facilities, he suggested a re-conception of ‘back yards’ and ‘sites’ as ‘places’ (Devine-Wright, 2011). Furthermore, so-called NIMBY responses need to be correspondingly reconceived as “place protective actions that arise when the siting of large-scale energy technologies disrupt pre-existing emotional bonds and threaten place-related identities” (Devine-Wright, 2009:764). Namely, when a project appears to the ‘out-of-place’, this dis-congruity disrupts only the identity of the place itself, but the inter-twined sense of self. When a place is also symbolic of home, this sense of threat can intensify (Devine-Wright, 2009: 434). However, where technology developments are perceived to fit with the identity of a particular place, support for such developments can also arise as an outcome (Devine-Wright, 2009).

Engagement techniques

This next section highlights the issue of identifying and utilizing the most effective and appropriate means of research and engagement around CCS. One of the pressing questions that has stemmed from recent studies is the question of ‘how’? How to communicate? How to engage? How to educate? How to provide information? There are also the associated factors of ‘when to engage’, ‘where to engage’ and ‘what information needs to be provided’? More recent research, at an international level, has moved beyond information gathering and paid attention to these methodological concerns.

The most utilized methods for studying perceptions of CCS have been focus groups (small group interviews), semi-structured interviews and surveys. In a review of the techniques used to foster social engagement around CCS, Vercelli and colleagues (2013) acknowledged that qualitative techniques such as focus groups, workshops and interviews had a number of known strengths. This included the identification of: the impact of participation on the formation of opinion and risk/benefit perception, the role of socio-economic issues in risk perception, the thoughts and emotions that impact on perceptions of CCS, the positive impacts of collaborative learning in an environment of trust, and the kinds of questions that people want resolving, such as how they will participate in decision-making, who will assist the community if something goes wrong and how does the project fit into or improve the community’s way of life (Ashworth et al., 2009a;b; Bradbury et al., 2009; Upham and Roberts, 2011).

However, there is still a pressing issue of how to engage in a way that fosters meaningful dialogue between experts on the community, experts on legislation, experts on CCS, experts on the local environment, experts on Treaty issues and scientific experts. The question, here, is how to foster dialogue in a way that acknowledges and engages these different forms of expertise in an appropriate and solution-focused way. Currently, this gap is not filled by a traditional community consultation process, which tends to have a top-down, pre-determined agenda and feature the same sets of attendant stakeholders, as opposed to a broad range of community members. Furthermore, as Mclaren (2012: 361) suggests, in order to successfully consider, and integrate, matters of justice into the

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emerging regulatory framework for CCS, engagement should become more deliberative, as well as further upstream.

A large-scale deliberative process, where citizens engage in dialogue and decision-making would fulfil these needs, but is extremely time-consuming, as well as costly (Cronin, 2008a; Horst and Irwin, 2010). Alternately, in designing this project, it was envisaged a scaled-down version of a deliberative approach that could be run over a tighter time-scale and with a small budget. In the next section, the concept of deliberative engagement and its uses, successes and relative weaknesses is introduced.

Deliberative engagement

Deliberative engagement is not a new form of interacting with a range of publics and stakeholders. As a general method, it stemmed from Denmark, in the form of the “consensus conference” and has been employed for a number of years in a variety of contexts (Horst and Irwin, 2010). With an aim to include a diverse range of publics in decision-making around science, the engagement of lay and expert citizen panels in productive dialogue precipitated what became a social movement in terms of public engagement: large scale deliberative engagement. Here the process is critical, as it provides a way of “democratizing expertise” (Blok, 2007) and acknowledging local knowledge and expertise of lay publics.

According to Cronin (2008a: 32), deliberative dialogue should enable an “authentic human exchange”; one which can initiate a personal transformation, alongside genuine social and political transformation. Ideally, it should include the following operational criteria: a diverse range of participants, provision of background information, face-to-face communication, a safe space for discussion, utilization of small-groups, equality, facilitation, ground rules, inquiry as opposed to debate, respect, reciprocity, views based on personal experiences that move onto problem recognition then possible solutions, inclusion of strategic questions, identification and deliberation of options and alternatives and time for reflection. Further to this, structural criteria should include: the widest range of views and interests (representative), early engagement through a pro-active approach, access to resources (including funding), a real-world setting where outcomes are utilized, decision-makers as participants, a wide scope of issues, evaluation and feedback and finally, a democratic process (Cronin, 2008a: 32–36).

Albeit emanating from the Danish heartland, the deliberative process moved swiftly to the peripheries, and was internationally adopted in a variety of countries, contexts and forms (Einsiedel et al., 2001; Goven, 2003; Guston, 1999; Hammond and Shackley, 2010; Thompson, 1997). From humble beginnings, the consensus conference has been translated into a smorgasbord of deliberative techniques including the Citizen’s Jury (Rogers-Hayden and Pidgeon, 2006), Deliberative Mapping (Burgess et al., 2007; Davies, 2006), and Structured Decision-Making (Cronin 2008b; 2008c; Ohlson et al., 2005). These have been adopted in a variety of contexts such as genetic engineering (GM-Jury, GM Nation, Hands Across the Water) (Cronin and Jackson, 2004; Cronin, 2008b), nanotechnology (Nano-Jury), radioactive waste management (CORWM), biosolid waste management (Goven 2003), solar radiation management (Corner et al., 2013; MacNaghten and Szerszynski, 2013) and CCS (Ashworth et al., 2013a; 2013b).

In Australia, CSIRO have engaged in a prolific amount of work around social research, communication and education on CCS. Some of their recent work involves a deliberative style of community engagement, utilizing large-scale workshops, interaction with a CCS expert and an action research approach to encourage a “safe space” from which to engage in in-depth discussion (Ashworth et al., 2009a; b). With funding from the Global CCS Institute, this workshop process continued on, internationally, for example in Canada (Einsiedel et al., 2013) and Scotland (Howell et al, 2014).

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At a smaller scale, in a related context, MacNaghten and Szerzynski (2013) adopted a deliberative focus group technique to promote dialogue on solar radiation management, a form of geo-engineering. This is a potentially controversial project about which, like CCS, little is known in the public sphere, but which is marketed as a technique to modify climate change. The research aim was to facilitate a series of focus groups to encourage widespread discussion on “the dominant imaginaries of key actors – scientists, policy-makers, civil society actors – and to imagine how the future will unfold with respect to those imaginaries under real-world conditions” (MacNaghten and Szerzynski, 2013: 467). The use of a deliberative technique in the focus group format entailed introducing participants to a range of resources on a little-known topic, ensuring the subject was not framed by experts, encouraging a variety of voices and opinions, but not necessarily consensus, and fostering a supportive environment to encourage the imagination of possible futures involving solar radiation management (MacNaghten and Szerzynski, 2013).

Whilst I was unaware of this study whilst designing the small-scale deliberative engagement process, there were some similarities between the assumptions embedded in its design and my own. There were also practical differences, and some of these will be discussed in the next chapter.

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3. Research method The previous GNS Study suggested that New Zealanders had little or no awareness or knowledge about CCS (Doody et al, 2012), which followed an international trend (Ashworth et al., 2009a; b; Huijts et al., 2007; Reiner et al., 2006; Shackley et al., 2005). In this initial study, an adapted focus group approach was employed, and there was a desire from the project manager to maintain consistency of technique in the current research in case any comparative analysis might prove to be fruitful. However, based on a critique of the stimulus material utilised in these original focus groups and the fact the new study focused on a potential host community (as opposed to Wellington-based public perceptions, since there is no scope for CCS under Wellington City), there was also a need to adjust the methodology to suit the context.

As a consequence of my growing interest in ways of engaging people with different views in constructive dialogue (deliberative engagement), I saw the possibility of adapting the focus group technique into a small-scale deliberative engagement process that could be conducted on a minimal-budget. Moreover, as no CCS was planned for New Zealand, this also provided the opportunity for some very early upstream engagement with different stakeholders in the community.

In order to maintain consistency, the same themes were maintained as in the first study: regional issues, climate change, energy, a homework exercise and a Q&A session on CCS with a GNS scientist. However, changes were five-fold.

First, a presentation by a GNS scientist was used to introduce CCS using ‘the facts’, as requested by previous participants in the first study (as opposed to the Greenpeace Report and Shell/ICL video, which presented the opposite sides of the debate) (Doody et al, 2012).

Second, due to the local region being a potential site for a CO2 storage facility, a future-oriented, scenario-based approach was used in order to make the situation more realistic for participants and focus their attention on issues for the local community.

Third, rather than seeking participants to represent a local demographic, local community stakeholders were identified, who could commit to two single-stakeholder sessions.

Fourth, whilst the first of these sessions were run as an adapted focus group, the second sessions took on the form of a discussion forum, with the production of a list of key points as a final product. An underlying aim was to gradually transfer power to the community.

Fifth, the final session was a multi-stakeholder deliberative forum, with two participants from each stakeholder group presenting and then representing the range of views that had emerged. Rather than simply being a focus group, and hence, a data-gathering exercise, this was a solution-focused session, intended to allow participants to develop an informed understanding of different viewpoints, participate in solution-focused decision-making and identify issues that would need to be discussed/negotiated in the event that the scenario should ever materialise in the region.

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Recruitment of focus group participants

Five adapted focus groups, five discussion forums and one multi-stakeholder deliberative forum were held between May 6th 2013 and June 10th 2013. Participants were drawn from five identified stakeholder groups in the Stratford district. These were: local iwi, local urban community, farmers and landowners, oil and gas industry, and local and regional council. Recruitment was conducted via the Taranaki Regional Council, through personal contacts and snow-balling. The response from the oil and gas industry to participation requests was less than for other groups, so individual companies were directly contacted or re-contacted by the research team and invited to send one or two representatives.

Potential participants were sent a copy of an information sheet (Appendix I) and, in advance, a copy of the consent form (Appendix II) that they would sign during the first session they attended. Attendance was required at two sessions for each stakeholder group, although some provision was made if a participant could not attend a particular session (e.g., access to information and questions in the focus group guide of the session missed). Participants were provided with $50 New World vouchers for each session attended, to cover their travel expenses.

Focus group questionnaire

Prior to the beginning of the focus group I also asked participants to complete a short questionnaire (Appendix III). The purpose of this questionnaire was three-fold. First, we wanted to discover whether or not any respondents had heard or read about CCS prior to their involvement in the group. This also allowed us to examine the correlation between participant responses in the questionnaire and focus groups. Second, the survey enabled us to collect social and demographic information about the participants that could be compared to the previous study (Doody et al., 2012). Whilst the survey results confirmed some of the qualitative data, an analysis of the results is not included in this report. However, Table 1 provides some basic details on the groups, dates and venues.

Structure and content of the focus groups

Daytime sessions were held at the office of the Taranaki Regional Council, and evening sessions at the War Memorial Centre in Stratford. Each stakeholder focus group was comprised of two sessions, one week apart. The sessions ranged in length from 1½ to 2½ hours, depending on the characteristics of the groups. This followed the rationale of earlier research (Doody et al., 2012) from which this study originated, allowing a greater length of time to explore a variety of interrelated issues and a period of reflection and research on CCS between sessions. I facilitated all but the first session with iwi, which was ran by Rawiri Faulkner, the GNS Māori strategy manager, who kindly agreed to assist. Rawiri also attended the final multi-stakeholder session in his role in Māori liaison.

3.3.1. Session one: Adapted focus group

The aim of the first session was to gain an understanding of the range of cultural, social, economic, political and environmental issues in the Taranaki region, as well as exploring the cultural milieu in which discussions on CCS were couched. Hence, the first session allowed this technology to be contextualised in terms of its relationship to climate change (as one of the range of options), energy issues and the local geography of the region. In particular, there were two main benefits of these sessions:

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Table 1: Overview of focus groups and participants.

Group No.

Dates of group Stakeholder Group Social background Location CCS materials provided/GNS Science CCS experts

1 6 May 2013

14 May 2013

Local iwi 6 participants

Varied backgrounds and ages

Taranaki Regional Council meeting room

Talk/Q&A by Brad Field

Q&A with Malcolm Arnott

2

6 May 2013

14 May 2013

Local and regional council

5 representatives

5 from Taranaki Regional Council

1 from local council




3

6 May 2013

14 May 2013

Farmers and landowners 7 Farmers (total)

Dairy farming businesses

All Pākehā

War Memorial Centre, Stratford



4

7 May 2013

15 May 2013

Oil and gas industry 5 representatives from three companies

Engineer (3); Environmental liaison (1); Management (1)




5 7 May 2013

15 May 2013

Local Stratford community Mixed group of community members; high proportion of retirees.




6 10 Jun 2013

Multi-stakeholder group, 1–2 representatives from each original (N=9) plus 2 visiting from local iwi


Brad Field

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First, they allowed participants to discuss CCS in the framework of wider regional issues and talk about their views on the region as a whole. Second, they allowed the research team to gain an understanding of these issues and their relevance to any proposed carbon dioxide storage site.

Consequently, the focus was on four main areas (see Appendix IV):

1. Sense of place

- Place attachment, place identity, place image

- The perceived benefits of living in the region

- Challenges facing participants’ communities

2. Climate change

- Meanings of the term ‘climate change’ for participants

- Thoughts about the idea of climate change

- Thoughts about how climate change might impact the community

- Who should address climate change and how

3. Energy

- Perceptions of where energy comes from in New Zealand

- Thoughts about current and future energy supplies and resources

- The mix of energy resources participants would like to see as part of New Zealand’s energy supply

4. CCS

- Meanings participants associate with the term CCS

- Awareness about CCS

- Initial perceptions of CCS

This session was finalised with an introductory presentation by a GNS scientist on CCS, followed by a brief question-and-answer session.

Introduction to CCS

In the preceding GNS study (Doody et al., 2012), two avenues were used to introduce participants to CCS: an introductory video entitled “Carbon Capture and Storage: A Bridge to a Low-Carbon Future” produced by Imperial College London (ICL) and Shell (2008) and a Greenpeace (2008) report entitled “False Hope: Why Carbon Capture and Storage Won’t Save the Climate”. These two media provided some context to the strengths and weaknesses of CCS by juxtaposing oppositional viewpoints. However, reacting to the way the subject matter was presented, as opposed to CCS itself, participants had focused too much on critiquing the way these positions were represented. Some also had expressed a desire for ‘the facts’ from a neutral organisation (Doody et al., 2012).

As a consequence, Brad Field, the project manager for the CCS programme, agreed to construct and present a PowerPoint slide show that presented likely climate change scenarios and provided an introduction to CCS for non-experts.

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Participants were then introduced to a future scenario, created with the help of some fictional information pamphlets from ‘Tellus Enterprises’. Figure 2 depicts the front and back cover of the pamphlet, whilst Figure 3 depicts the main content pages.

Figure 2: CCS Taranaki 2030: Fictional scenario.

Figure 3: CCS fictional scenario: Main content.

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Basic information on CO2, the need for CCS, the rationale for its potential deployment in Taranaki and impacts on the community were provided as a stimulus material from which to provoke debate. The aim was also to bridge the space-time gap that could lead to an emotional distancing from such a project, by identifying the region and asking participants to place themselves in an imminent scenario.

Homework exercise

Subsequently, as a homework exercise, participants were encouraged to take on the role of a researcher and find out what they would want to know if CCS was coming to the region in 2030. This could be by talking to family and friends, work colleagues and/or conducting Internet or library-based research. As a process, it was intended to initiate participant engagement with the subject matter as it related to the hypothetical situation, promote learner-initiated inquiry, and allow participants to identify and address any concerns that they were personally interested in. Moreover, it would also promote the creation of ‘lay-experts’ on the subject area, and allow these lay-experts to come back to the second session with specific questions that could be put to the attendant CCS scientist.

3.3.2. Session two: Discussion forum

The second session was closer to a discussion forum than a traditional focus group. Its overarching aim was to provide a space in which participants could explore their initial views on CCS in more depth, ask personalised questions, clarify details and raise any concerns they had. The focus of the entire session was on CCS (see Appendix V) and was comprised of the following:

1. A discussion about the homework exercise on CCS;

2. Questions and answers with a GNS Science CCS researcher;

3. Discussion on the 2030 scenario on CCS in Taranaki: benefits and concerns, monitoring, regulations, communication needs and anything else that arose.

Key points of this discussion and community concerns were recorded on a flip-chart by a volunteer from the group. This written documentation was then taken away by two group representatives, and used to formulate a 5–10 minute presentation. This presentation was the basis for the stakeholder viewpoint to be communicated in the final multi-stakeholder deliberative forum.

3.3.3. Session three: Multi-stakeholder deliberative forum

The deliberative forum took place on June 10th 2013, with a total of nine volunteer representatives from all groups and one scientist, this time in the role of listener and observer. Furthermore, the original role of ‘focus/discussion group moderator’ was now fully metamorphosed into the form of ‘group facilitator’, with the ultimate aim of empowering the community stakeholder representatives to make their own decisions about CCS. The room was set up so that the desks formed a U-shape, a configuration that is known to help aid communication. Details of the format taken and exercises employed lie below and are also outlined in Appendix VI.

Ground rules

The process was fore-grounded by the provision of ground-rules. These are depicted on Figure 4, below.

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Figure 4: Ground rules for the deliberative forum.

Participants were asked their opinions on the acceptability of these ground rules. Moreover, they were asked whether any extra rules needed adding. Once a final decision was reached, as facilitator, I reminded participants that in order to stay on course within the timeframe allowed, anybody veering off the focus of discussion would be reminded of these rules and brought back on track.

The multi-stakeholder deliberative forum also provided the opportunity to utilise some techniques from a recent facilitation skills course (see Pattillo, 2013), to encourage conversation and allow participants to draw up the evening’s objectives:

Speed dating

“Speed dating” exercises encouraged participants to become aware of the commonalities of their views formed in earlier sessions. Three rounds of quick-fire questions were asked:

‘Name one thing you love about living in the region’;

‘Name one thing you learned about CCS’; and

‘Name one thing your group said about CCS’.

For each separate round, individuals were asked to pair up with someone they had not met before, or, since this was a small community, someone with whom they were not well-acquainted.

Sticky notes: Defining objectives

An exercise utilising sticky notes helped define the group’s objectives for the evening. Participants remained in their final pairs to discuss what they wanted out of the session and wrote out each point on separate sticky notes, which were subsequently posted onto a window. Then, as a group, participants organised them into related themes and were then invited to name these themes. These will be described, later, in chapter seven.

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Presentations

In a carefully choreographed process, representatives were subsequently asked to present the range of views of their initial stakeholder group, before working out the commonalities and differences between the group perspectives and identifying the unique issues raised by different presenters.

Discussion

The aim was never to come to a group consensus, but for participants to arrive at an informed understanding of different viewpoints, to identify and acknowledge topics that might need further discussion in the future, and for some solution-focused decision-making that involved identifying and addressing perceived risks, communication needs and regulatory/monitoring requirements in the advent of a planned storage site in the region.

Conclusion

The session was finalised, briefly, by asking participants in turn, what they would take back to their original stakeholder groups.

Data analysis

All focus group sessions were recorded and then transcribed verbatim by a professional transcription company. Participants were assigned codes, based on their group (Urban community, Council, Farmers, Iwi, Oil & gas), identity in the group (a number) and gender (M/F) (e.g. I2M). In the multi-stakeholder forum, participants were assigned a different code based on the sample principles, but prefixed by MS (e.g. MSF2M was the 2nd Male Farmer in the Multi-Stakeholder group). For the purpose of anonymity, where a small community is concerned, this is how they appear in this report. Analysis of the focus groups involved thematic content analysis, which demands multiple readings and reviews of each transcription, extensive note-taking and writing, and the elaboration of the themes evident in the data (Lofland et al., 2006; Stewart & Shamdasani, 1990). These themes were then subjected to further, in-depth interpretation and testing by close examination of the content of each theme and the relations between the themes using the qualitative data analysis package, ATLAS.ti 6.0. The purpose of this process was to identify the commonalities and differences in people’s views and concerns about regional issues, energy, climate change and CCS.

Emergent themes were varied and included risk/safety issues (particularly in the wake of the earthquake and aftershocks in Canterbury), corporate trust, economic development/detriment and environmental concerns such as visual pollution, and the cost-effectiveness of CCS in the New Zealand context. These will be discussed in detail in the remainder of this report.

Feedback survey

After a time period for reflection and critique of the method, a feedback survey was designed via Survey Monkey, and sent out to the twenty seven participants in all focus groups (Appendix VI). The survey contained predominantly open-ended questions designed to explore participant’s experiences during the discussions and obtain feedback that would help refine the method for future use. The questions on the survey were based on a critical debrief that occurred between the facilitator, note-taker and CCS scientist after the final session.

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4. The local context: a sense of place “You never really understand someone until you get in their skin and walk around in it”

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

The Taranaki region, described by one participant as “New Zealand’s best kept secret”, is steeped in a farming tradition, with the entrance of oil and gas exploration starting as far back as 1865, but moving into the modern era with the discoveries of the Kapuni field in 1959 and Maui field in 1969. The local context, as will become evident as this report progresses, is crucial to how participants understood and assessed CCS. Moreover, it also provides an important overview of the identity of a region, an insight into the different peoples who constitute the wider community, and what is important to these groups of people.

I will start by discussing ‘the mountain’ or the maunga, as for all the community groups involved, it was a significant and symbolic part of living in the region, and particularly for people born and bred there, a defining point of their identity and the meaning of home.

The maunga

Figure 5: Mount Taranaki or Mt Egmont.

That Mountain over there is our sacred thing, because it always drags us back. Around our area here we always looked at that mountain. Everything we do concerns that mountain around us (I2M, Iwi, Session 2).

I think most people in Taranaki, and I’m relatively new to the area, have some sort of relation [to the mountain], presumably. You can see it from almost every aspect, you know. You can see it from most anywhere in town (O4M, O&G, Session 1).

As Figure 5 and the opening quotations clearly illustrate, Mount Taranaki (or Mount Egmont, the Pākehā name) visibly dominates the picturesque landscape of the region and the psyche of its residents. Indeed, to any visitor approaching Stratford, it would easily be the most striking feature in the panorama. Thus, it was not altogether surprising that the mountain, or maunga, has a somewhat iconic status to the people who live there, and have indeed inhabited the region for generations.

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For the community of Stratford, as a whole, the mountain was symbolically linked to the concept of home.

Yeah, the Maunga, it does, it calls you home no matter where you travel, you’ve got to come home (I3F, Iwi, Session 1).

It’s nice to know it’s there. When you come down from the north and you see the mountain you know you’re home (F1M, Farmers, Session 1).

But I was speaking about the mountain, I always, when I was a child I could look out the window, get up in the morning and look out the window and there was the mountain right there. When I got married, I lived at the end of a road and I couldn’t see the mountain cos’ of this very large hill and I missed that terribly, not being able to see the mountain, so then when I moved to where I live now, thirty years ago, I made sure that our house had a big picture window where I could look out and see the mountain. Mmm, the mountain is a very great part of our lives here in Stratford, it defines our lives and I get very annoyed when I see pictures of Mount Egmont that hasn’t got Fanthams Peak on it from our point of view (U3F, Urban, Session 1).

As U3F related, this symbolism and association with home was particularly the case for residents who were Taranaki ‘born-and-bred’; the mountain was engrained into their psyche from childhood.

The maunga also had an especial significance to the iwi group, with I2M providing some insight into its status as a symbol of home.

I2M: Every time I go back…I want to pack my bag and get back to that mountain… Facilitator: …Why do you say ‘come back to the mountain’, particularly? I2M: Everybody that lives in Taranaki always looks for the mountain. As soon as they get in

to Mokau the first thing they do they look over the sea and see the mountain. They know they’re home once they hit Mokau. Same when they’re coming back from this way, as soon as they hit Patea, the main street of Patea, they’re looking straight at the mountain.

I1M: As soon as I see the mountain I say to my wife, there’s home, there’s home. I2M: We’re home. I1M: I love it here. This was followed up by others in the group, including I4M:

The Maunga is really important to us and so these guys are right, no matter whether you’re coming from North or South, or even coming from the yeah, we see our mountain yeah, we’re home, so that’s, that’s a special thing for us, is our mountain (I4M, Iwi, Session 1).

The mountain was also used in a practical way as a geographical reference point, to determine the position of home and the prevailing weather.

I live half an hour probably the other side of the Mountain towards the coast from here (F4M, Farmer, Session 1).

If you can’t see the Maunga, then it must be raining (I4M, Iwi, Session 1).

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As one participant from the oil and gas group put it, “you can Google it”, look at it on a map and see all the forest surrounding it, not far away from either Stratford or New Plymouth. Supporting the centrality of the mountain to the region, Figure 6 also provides some context to places that participants named during the discussion sessions: Stratford, Hawera, New Plymouth and Inglewood.

Figure 6: Map of Taranaki. Downloaded from: http://www.safetaranaki.org.nz/injury-prevention/npis/new-plymouth-district

For participants, the mountain took on many forms: as one participant from the oil and gas group put it, “many moods”; another commented on its ever-changing form.

O1F: I was born and bred in Taranaki and I’ve spent a couple of years away but I like the mountain, the sea, the, yeah just everything here and it’s not too big.

Facilitator: Not too big. What do you like about the mountain and sea? What appeals?

O1F: Oh you can climb it, you can swim in it. The Mountain has many moods, I won’t go on.

You know, the mountain, you know, you can look at the mountain every day and see something different up there (F7M, Farmers, Session 1).

It was also a place of outdoor recreation or what one participant called a “central park”, as articulated during the rounds of general introductions: “Yeah, I like the outdoors. The mountains are right there on our back door” (F4M, Farmers, Session 1). Moreover, it was also described during the urban community group as a “central place for gliding” and a “central place for, and nationally recognized for, stock car racing”.

In sum, the place identity of the region pivoted around the mountain; it also was central to the place attachment and feelings for place that participants conveyed.

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Place identity and attachment

The next section explores in more detail the dialectic between ‘people in place’ (how people define themselves by the landscape around them) and ‘place as people’ (how it is the local community who define the social and cultural landscape of a place).

4.2.1. People in place

For many participants, the Taranaki region was characterized by its picturesque landscape. One Māori participant referred it as “paradise”, a participant in the oil and gas group noted the beauty and relaxed atmosphere in the region and one of the farmers saw the landscape as “pristine” and “special”.

I live right on the coast so to me that’s paradise. I love it. I can see, wake up in the morning and see the sun rays hitting the ocean and it tells me what sort of day I’m going to have, and nine times out of ten it’s correct (I3F, Iwi, Session 1).

Oh, it’s a lovely area around here. It’s, in the Taranaki Region, it’s a sort of nice relaxed country town sort of atmosphere, the whole of Taranaki. It’s a beautiful area as well (O4M, O&G, Session 1).

The environment is pristine really… you can sit up on the hills down [near Ngaire], early in the morning and it’s like heaven, you know, just when the mist is coming, the sun’s just coming, that’s a pretty special place to live (U1M, Urban, Session 1).

For many participants, this sense of “paradise” transpired through having both the mountain/s and the sea in relatively close proximity to one another. Reflective of a number of responses, as F2M recalled, “I can swim in the sea. You can fish. You can do all those things and then two minutes later, you can be up tramping around the Ranges”.

Moreover, coupled with low population density, the abundance of natural landscapes led to an interesting turn of phrase to describe the area.

U2M: Our natural attractions are all within half an hour. Big beaches, alpine slopes, I think seven lakes, they’re just there waiting to be yours and I guess how I sum this whole scene up is there’s one thing I and many of the others enjoy and that is the low density and out of that comes the phrase “scenic silence”. We enjoy it here…

Scientist 1: Silence?

U2M: Silence. It’s like low density…

U1M: Actually, if I could elaborate on that scenic silence...You can go out and sit on the hill just out of town or whatever in the early hours of the morning and it’s just magic. You must do it before you go…It’s just so quiet and peaceful.

Taking U1M up on this opportunity, I can support the use of this phrase to describe a certain ambiance to the region, albeit closer to sunset, and viewed from one of the trails leading out of town.

Another factor that the iwi group agreed on was the fertility and richness of the region, expressed by one participant as:

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About the greenest place I can find in New Zealand…there’s different shades of green when you go to the far North, or if you go to Gisborne, it’s brown. I always come home and you can guarantee that this place will always be green (I4M, Iwi, Session 1).

For others, the green was synonymous with weather, in the form of rain, but also wind, particularly in New Plymouth. However, in addition to being very green, Taranaki centres such as New Plymouth were viewed as increasingly cosmopolitan. There was general agreement that the influx of overseas workers, particularly in the oil and gas industry, had promoted this change.

For people in the oil and gas industry, who had travelled and worked overseas, Taranaki also appealed due to its small size, and ease of travel, particularly to work. For instance, one oil and gas participant who had been sent to the region some time ago chose to come back after moving overseas.

O3M: I very quickly came to the conclusion that New Zealand was a better place to live, raise a family, and so would I liked the place and I think reality is I like the size of the place and the only alternative for me will be kind of living in [a big European city]. An hour in a traffic jam in the morning and an hour in a traffic jam in the evening type of thing and here you’ve got a lot of quality of life.

Facilitator: So you say a quality of life. What? Superior here compared to?

O3M: Well, less travel time, nature around you all the time. It’s even the size of the house, the size of the garden compared to my original country of birth, type of thing. It’s just the whole package really.

Comparisons such as this were made by the entire group, who chose to live in the region, when in theory, as the farmers stated, they could make more money overseas. This was supported by council staff who were familiar with the area.

There were people that came here from all round the world who had been in expat positions all round the world, they came here and they went “this is amazing! It’s clean, there’s no corruption, your kids are safe on the streets, and the same would apply in Hawera, alright, all those things. They thought it was amazing, alright, they loved it but of course their world is you spend two or three years somewhere and then you get sent somewhere else but some of them have stayed so, and the other key thing and its inherent in what other speakers have been saying is it is a bit undiscovered still (C2M, Council, Session 1).

Here, C2M starts to touch on the social characterisation of the region; namely, ‘people as place’.

4.2.2. Place as people

Whilst the place, not surprisingly, had an impact on the local population, places are also produced by the people who inhabit them. People make a place. And according to participants in this study, the Taranaki region was comprised of what one council participant described as “a broad range” of “really good” people with certain characteristics that made it an exceptional place to live. The first of these characteristics was a sense of people being “more friendly” and “relaxed” than in busier regional centres.

I think we’re more relaxed, more friendly, more welcome (I3F, Iwi, Session 1).

Everyone seems, no one ever seems to be in a rush. It’s pretty cruisy in Taranaki (O2M, O&G, Session 1).

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I like, for me I like the people, the attitude the people; Taranaki’s got its own unique attitude. We are different. I know every Region probably says the same but we are, we do have a different psyche (F5F, Farmers, Session 1).

Participants discussed the community in terms of its coherence and supportive nature. Indeed, this sense of community transpired not only in attitude, but in action. One Stratford participant described how the local community had “wrapped around” his family at a time of need; one of the farmers thought that this community support was particularly strong in rural areas and the wider farming community.

That’s the testimony of the community, the folks on Tāngata, Tāngata, Tāngata, people, people, people. I think, just what U1M said, I like the idea that you can drive somewhere and park your car in front of it (U4M, Urban, Session 1).

Rural communities, we all come from, we get great support from within the communities from all the people around us even with the neighbouring communities. Most people in your vicinity whether it’s five or ten Ks you probably know ninety percent of those people and they know you…and if something went wrong they’d just be there to help and so that’s something that you know I value quite highly (F7M, Farmers, Session 1).

As F7M stressed, in comparison to cities, there was a sense of neighbourliness and helpfulness in Taranaki, leading to a strong feeling of community support and what U2M referred to as being part of a “compassionate community” with “true community spirit”.

Moreover, this manifested in the building of facilities to support and revitalise the community: a hockey facility in Stratford, a cycle track up in Inglewood and a “flash new hub” in Hawera. There was also community funding from organisations such as TSB Community Trust and Taranaki Electricity Trust, fed into local sports centres.

For some, this attitude was superfluous to the region. As F2M, one of the farmers, stated, “everybody’s, you know, pretty passionate about being here and taking part in things and joining things”. It was a passion that he said also came across in agricultural practices.

There was also a feeling that the local population were hardy and resilient, living next to ‘the mountain’, with weather that to outsiders, might seem cold.

The love of place was connected to feelings about the mountain, the rootedness of family, and a sense of pride in the region.

You know, if you don’t survive here you die…Got the mountain over there, so you know. You live here or you die…Well people say it’s cold but to us who live here it’s not cold. I don’t find it cold. You got to be tough to live here. If you’re a weakling you’ll die (I1M, Iwi, session 1).

Moreover, there was a strong feeling of self-reliance, recognising that the region was small and geographically isolated, and that communities had to reply on their own ingenuity at times. F5F described this as a “can do” attitude: that “nobody’s going to tell us we can’t do anything”. This was echoed by participants from the council group. C4M identified a distinctive “attitude” where “Taranaki people stand on our own two feet and just get on and do it”. C3M, for instance, talked about a “Taranaki culture”.

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There is a Taranaki culture which is one of getting things done and of looking after ourselves to make sure things happen. I mean, I just roll my eyes every time Auckland bleats about needing some more Government funding for more roads or more buses or whatever, you know, Taranaki just gets on and does it. Self-reliant and that really comes through (C3M, Council, Session 1).

Community values such as resilience, self-reliance and simply “getting things done”, directly influenced the evolution of cities such as New Plymouth. Indeed, F5F, echoing others, went on to describe it as, “a little city that just punches above its weight”, annually hosting the Womad festival, and laying claim to the Len Lye Centre, Puke Ariki museum and library and Pukekura Park. Moreover, as one council participant said, the Taranaki community has tried to make a difference. Some of this has occurred through investment in the area.

I mean the ethos here is the people are very proud to be Taranaki, and to try and make a bit of a difference, right, and have a point of difference, e.g., New Plymouth [unclear] Centre for example, and the Todd Family, New Zealand’s richest family putting ten million dollars into that for example, as a regional facility; that’s a point of difference (C2M, Council, Session 1).

This difference is not limited to the central region. Indeed, the regional hinterland includes the Republic of Whangamomona, connected to the rest of the region by “the forgotten highway”, albeit one that has been uptaken as a transit route by European settlers.

U2M: In fact the, that Highway 43 is becoming a go to for particular cultures it seems, I mean the Germans are great users of this, and the Swiss, the Germans are great users of the forgotten highway. You could stop off at the Whangamomona pub and take your passport and have it stamped with the “You’re now in the Republic of Whangamomona”...

U3F: Yeah.

Scientist 1: This is Whangamomona?

U1M: It’s the first...

U4M: Whangamomona, yeah.

U1M: It’s the first heritage railway in New Zealand.

Facilitator: Right, yeah.

U4M: There are a number of category one historic places out there, a significant number so I think it’s a rich area that we as the people that have lived here all their lives know it. But there’s a lot of people that actually have lived here all their lives and don’t know it. One of the things that we need to do is to make sure that they are aware of the richness that surrounds them really.

The republic was declared in response to the re-drafting of regional boundary lines that displaced the township from Taranaki into Manawatu-Wanganui; a move that was not popular. As U4M suggested, the Taranaki region is more than just farming, and oil and gas exploration. The area is steeped in history, and in this case a rather quirky history that attracts visitors from all over North Island for its biennial election of the new president (Figure 7); previous notables being: Billy Gumboot the Goat and Tai the Poodle.

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Figure 7: “President Murt Kennard, right, is elected ahead of Mike Self at the Whangamomona Republic Day celebration”. Image taken from: http://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/news/4572702/Vote-rigging-part-of-the-fun-of-Republic-Day

Over time, the region as a whole has become more culturally diverse, with the retention of these core values. One participant from the council group recalled the 1980s, where Japanese, Americans and Canadians had arrived during building operations. This has opened Taranaki up to a new awareness of other cultures and cultural values. Moreover, these international cultures and the sense of cosmopolitanism that they brought to New Plymouth, materialised in the landscape as “faces on the street” and a diversity in retail outlets.

In 1980 New Plymouth was white pākehā of European origin and now the number of Filipinos and Indians and Turkish, again. Takeaways in 1980 were fish and chips, whereas now you’d be struggling to find a fish and chip shop, if there was a fish and chip shop in town. A number of places sell chips but they might be Malaysian or Indonesian or Turkish or, as their stock in trade. Or American: McDonalds. So it’s faces on the street, it changes in what’s in the retail commercial world. The names you see on face plates or business cards that you’re talking to; the actual engineering industry. Early 2002, The Last Samurai, and suddenly a thousand Japanese are around town; quite exciting stuff. We have a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic day once a year and which is a big thing in New Plymouth (C3M, Council, Session 1).

All-in-all, there have been some historical changes in the social and cultural makeup of the region, which have transformed it into an increasingly multi-cultural place, where that “can-do” attitude still remains strong. This overall ‘sense of place’ in Taranaki accords well with Doreen Massey’s (1997) concept of a “progressive” or “global sense of place”, associated with the idea of places as dynamic, in-process, having multiple identities, as opposed to a singular one, and embedded in a web of complex global relations.

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Oil and gas exploration

Figure 8: Taranaki oil and gas exploration.

We’ve got so many gas wells going up everywhere I turn I’ve got gas wells….Destroying our land (I3F, Iwi, Session 1).

We’re very lucky to have the oil industry cos’ it allows us to have a mixture of wealth. It allows us to have New Plymouth with, if you want to go to a very nice restaurant you can and in a rural area, and if we didn’t have the oil industry these restaurants just wouldn’t exist (F1M, Farmers, Session 1).

Visually, alongside the landscapes created by framing, the oil and gas industry dominated certain parts of the region, bringing with it a mixed response from the existent community. As an accurate visual representation of oil exploration in the Taranaki region, Figure 9 depicts the extent of active petroleum wells in relation to some of the larger regional centres and the mountain.

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Figure 9: NZPAM map of petroleum wells in the Taranaki region. Downloaded from: http://data.nzpam.govt.nz/arcgis/rest/directories/arcgisoutput/Utilities/PrintingTools_GPServer/_ags_37ca72cb7ba94159bdb75dd216b840ef.pdf

There was a general awareness among participants that underneath the Taranaki region was a rich source of oil and gas. For instance, in the second session with iwi, reference was made to the natural oil seeps in the Taranaki region.

I2M: There has been an episode, accident in New Plymouth where the oil leaked out of the ground when they built the house and it was going through the house down towards Ngamotu.

Scientist 2: The oil?

I2M: Yeah the oil and all that because they shifted the people out of there, the Council did, and were going to do something about it. And Ngaire’s got oil leaking out of its swamps.

Scientist 2: Yeah there’s a lot of natural, Taranaki has quite a lot of natural seeps.

I2M: I mean in Taranaki there’s a few places where it’s coming out of the ground.

These incidents of natural seepage were mobilised by I2M, in order to present his concerns about CO2 leakage after seismic events, but also conveyed some local knowledge.

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However, there was a slight unease from some members of the community about the future of their landscape, when coupled with the realisation that “the demand for energy is only going to increase”. For many, this had already reached proportions that they considered were having significant impacts on specific parts of the community.

At the moment we’re, [Federated Farmers] have started talking to our farmers about the oil industry. They seem to be putting wells up like, don’t know what you’d call it, it sounds like planting roses in the garden, and it’s starting to cause some problems in the community (F1M, Farmers, Session 1).

Whilst one farmer noted that this was not intrusive on this side of the Kapuni field, other participants named affected communities such as the township of [unnamed location]. In particular, F5F, was following someone from the community on Twitter:

F5F: I’m following a [unnamed location] resident who’s become a bit of a; I’m following her on Twitter and she was in the paper the other day, has become a bit of a crusader on behalf of the community at [unnamed location], which is a small, you know, sort of third generation farming community, third or fourth generation and there’s more than one oil company involved and lots of wells going up and lots of noise and so on and I think, and this particular person is not a dairy farmer. I think the dairy farmers through Federated Farmers have actually; they’ve got an advocate there for them....

F4M: They’re trying.

F2M: They’re trying, yeah.

F4M: Yeah, it’s ongoing.

F5F: ....whereas these people have got a garden which their business is around tranquil peaceful gardens.

F1M: It used to be....

F5F: And they’ve got all these oil wells going up around them.

F1M: Yeah, one oil well, maybe two, and ten, every five years they burn them off or do something interesting. Now you’ve got twenty, thirty, forty wells. Basically every week they’re doing something.

F5F: And there’s a huge amount planned for [unnamed location].

F1M: Oh, heaps more.

F2M: It’s only the tip of the iceberg at the moment.

Clearly, there was some concern among participants, not necessarily about the presence of oil wells, but their rapid expansion in a concentrated area close to a small local community.

Yeah so what’s the balance where’s the right balance, I mean at the moment it’s a very emotive argument so I don’t know what the truth is but that’s what in terms of looking at it on the surface it looks like it’s more important to have oil wells than it is to have small communities (F5F, Farmers, Session 2).

I4M: It’s actually quite intrusive, I mean if you’ve got to go North, particularly in the North, that’s just say using the North as an example, and if you were to go to see the Motunui

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Plant and it’s all lights and noise, and sometimes you hear it roaring at night now. You live right next door to the place.

I3F: I live right next door to it…I don’t need lights on at night.

I4M: ...and I can hear it, so it’s, there are some down sides to development in the area and particularly with the oil, oil wells, arh, well sites, you know, they’re flaring and all that type of stuff. They do become quite intrusive, noisy…But as John Key [Prime Minister] said, that’s the price we pay.

There was a particular concern that adjoining properties had to deal with the noise and light pollution, but were provided with no compensation. Stories emerged of local people who were unable to sleep due to excessive noise, and public gardens/commercial nurseries that were impacted by erratic plant growth due to light pollution:

And because the lights and things can affect the garden and how things grow so if you’ve got a garden that’s open to the public and that’s your livelihood, and a nursery that’s open to the public and that’s your livelihood the lights, I think the [unnamed] have been told they are a bit far and won’t be affected, but I know out [unclear] some of the gardens were effected from some of those early wells with the lights ‘cause they things grew at wrong times ‘‘cause the plants were all confused (F5F, Farmers, Session 2).

Then you’ve got the deep vibration that goes through the earth which can go for a very long way. And as if you say if you’re sitting there, you can’t hear the noise if you were let’s say hanging or whatever, you couldn’t hear it, but it comes up through your bed it comes up through the floor and there’s no way you can really (F1M, Farmers, Session 2).

Another farmer added that, whilst as a community they were “agreeable” people, there was a feeling among some residents of [unnamed location] that the oil and gas companies had taken advantage of this good will, a feeling that should be borne in mind in the advent of a possible CCS facility in the distant future.

However, for some of the farmers, a level of symbiosis or at least mutual benefits, had been achieved and was recognised.

F4M: There are some good examples of the oil and gas industry working in with farmers too. I mean, I know a guy that came into scrape all these sand hills that weren’t really much good for farming and they brought in all the drilling mud and put that down and levelled it for him. They had a beautiful flat farm land and there’s a another one, a different farmer on it, you know, that’s in the process of doing the same thing, so it’s a win, win, situation for both parties.

Facilitator: So like a remediation process?

F4M: Yeah, gives the oil and gas people somewhere to dump their drilling mud and it helps bring the sand country into good productive farm land.

Furthermore, as other participants conveyed, the expanse of the oil and gas industry into the region had indirectly led to enhanced regional development. This was particularly the case for New Plymouth.

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There’s some quite good places in New Plymouth now and I think that benefited from the think big projects in the eighties with the expats that came in with the big oil and gas projects in the eighties, expats came, Canadians mostly and Americans, came and lived in New Plymouth and found that there was nothing there <laughter> and so things kind of developed to keep them there and it's still a constant battle from an oil and gas perspective to keep people and skills here, so as a Region we actually have to have lots to offer them or they’ll go away (F5F, Farmers, Session 1).

Moreover, one of the farmers mentioned initial feelings of envy when the farms selected for drilling were also subject to environmental remediation work on their land.

I remember feeling quite envious though when I was talking to farmers who had Shell coming to put oil wells on their farms and they were doing all this, doing up all their races for them and filling in gully’s while their diggers were there and I was thinking shit I wish I had one of those at my farm, you know (F4M, Farmers, Session 2).

Others acknowledged that these benefits, including payouts, had solely been for farmers who had wells on their property.

In sum, there were mixed feelings about the oil and gas industry, from the wider community, with a general acceptance, but concern over the encroachment of the industry in specific locations. This was also acknowledged in the oil and gas session. For instance, during their first session, when asked about challenges to the region, O1F raised the issue of their current reputation, drawing particular attention to the role of the media.

In terms of our industry, in terms of the oil and gas industry there’s big challenges. People understanding, like there’s a lot in the media and people trying to, but we’ve also been around for a long time so there’s a lot of acceptance in the community but then there’s media stuff so I think that’s quite a challenge at the moment (O1F, O&G, Session 1).

This issue was also raised by one of the participants in the urban group. As a long-standing dairy farmer, he couched the problem in the history of the region.

U1M: Stratford has always been, and surrounding areas, has always predominately been a farming, rural farming type area, and there’s got to be the emergence of, or there is the emergence of new industry, the oil and gas industry, and I think there’s going to be some real challenges there for people to understand and accept that change to the, the change to our....

U2M: Well, our amenity values.

U1M: .....our amenity values, our outlook, and yeah, just an understanding of how that industry operates, yes. Not a lot of good information out there I don’t think at the moment about how they go about their business. There needs to be a real drive to educate the people of this area about their industry and where it’s going, and I see that as a real challenge you know because at the end of the day we all have to work together, we all have to co-exist.

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Dairy farming

Figure 10: Dairy farming in Taranaki.

Dairy farming was the second major industry in the region, visibly shaping the rolling, fertile landscape beyond the mountain. Whilst endemic to the region’s identity, there had been a number of significant changes to the industry over the last few years that had impacted on this landscape. One member of the farming group briefly described these changes to the dairy industry.

F5F: I mean, it’s home, so, and farming, it’s a good place to farm. Good for the dairy industry. I’m quite passionate about the dairy industry and I guess the history of the dairy industry is also the history of Taranaki so you know, all the dead dairy factories around each corner as is all the little communities that used to be around dairy factories are now amalgamated but the history has sort of followed the dairy industry I guess.

Facilitator: Could you briefly talk about that? Just curious.

F5F: Well, if you look at where we all live. In terms of Skeet Road for example, there used to be a cheese factory on every corner, so there’s still a lot of old dairy factories that have been, that are now either abandoned or people live in them or they run businesses out of them or they store hay in them…You’re going right back into history, you know, from the dairy factories were as far as they could take the milk on a horse and cart then as far as they could take them in their truck and then as far as the tanker would collect them so as transport’s, so I love their history, that history side of it, so, and the dairy industry has been good to Taranaki I think and Taranaki has benefitted from it.

According to F5F, the history of the dairy industry was synonymously that of the community and landscape of Taranaki. More recently, however, there have been wider concerns about environmental sustainability, which have had repercussions in the farming community.

In a discussion on adaptation to climate change and environmental sustainability, the farming group also got onto the interrelated topics of economic and environmental sustainability for New Zealand, stating that the dairy industry made a significant contribution to the nation’s export revenue, but simultaneously were equated with environmental pollution, leading to the catchphrase, ‘dirty dairying’.

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We know, we dairy farmers are very proud of the fact that we contribute a quarter of the export earnings to New Zealand and if you kind of reduce that significantly where is New Zealand going to be, but I the other thing that’s really hard for dairy farmers in particular is, you know, if you look, I don’t know, probably even as, well certainly ten years ago, we were the good guys, salt of the earth, you know, we were the good guys. Now we’re, dairy farmers are kind of the devil incarnate, and so you know we get that a lot, the dirty dairying, the you know, our cows are messing up the environment, our rivers are rubbish, our... and I mean we know that’s not true, so it’s really hard I think for farmers to take on board a lot of the stuff that you know when you’re getting the really negative stuff all the time (F5F, Farmers, Session 1).

Whilst the farmers were clearly concerned about their reputation, they put any misrepresentations down to media sensationalism, and desire to sell a story. Instead, the reality they saw was that the farming community was comprised of “family businesses” and “people who are just trying to do their best”. However, as the group relayed, there had been consequences from this image, not least that water quality issues were quickly blamed on the dairy industry prior to any scientific investigation of their source.

I think Waitara might be a case in point, I’m trying to remember, there was a lot of criticism about dairy farmers polluting the river and stuff like that and it’s just come out from the Regional Council that the reason why they’ve polluted down at the beach is because their septic tanks down there are leaking (F1M, Farmers, Session 1).

Whilst there have been significant changes in the infrastructure of the dairy industry, with obvious social and economic impacts, there have also been changes in farming practice. One of these, as reported during session one with council representatives, was a change in riparian management to protect the quality of the waterways.

C2M: Well, I’ll give you the example of the riparian management program that we’ve run here that’s supported by Districts. That started in the nineties. That’s all about the total length of streams in Taranaki are sort of almost equal to the length of New Zealand coastline.....

Facilitator: Wow!

C2M: ...and so it’s a matter of planting and fencing those to protect water quality. Well, we’re about sixty to seventy percent of the way down that journey. That’s an absolute voluntary programme, right. It’s not a regulatory thing....

Facilitator: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

C2M: ....and it’s working, right. It’s half a million plants a year our farmers are buying to put in so I mean that’s quite innovative. There’s some things we do that C4M does that the District Councils do here that are innovative, right.

What was interesting about this was that it was not enforced through regulation, but by social processes, and harnessing the idea of good environmental practice as a social norm. The farmers involved in the research, whilst not representing the entire community, supported this project, and in fact, seemed proud of their achievements.

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Challenges

Participants were also asked about challenges to the region, which will be discussed in the next section. Many of the challenges in the area sprung from a combination of its geographical isolation and low population density. Whilst these were perceived as a plus point for many participants, the flip side of the coin were issues such as a poor transport infrastructure, inadequate telecommunications, maintaining the upkeep of facilities, an aging population due to out-migration and the difficulty of attracting people into the region outside of the oil and gas industry. However, there was also some environmental issues.

4.5.1. Environmental issues

In general, Taranaki was perceived as a “clean environment” by a large proportion of the stakeholder groups. However, a number of environmental concerns were raised in discussion with the iwi group.

For iwi, a great concern, raised at the beginning of the first session, was the loss of their aquatic kai, or food source. Both eels and fish were mentioned:

The only thing is the eeling fisherman that took all our eels. We’ve got nothing now for competitions cos’ they’ve run our river out…That’s the only thing that hurts and for me there’s a lot of the things that been taken away from our people, you know. They said, oh, no, no, years ago, since I’ve been a Māori Warden and I even brought that up years ago about the eel factory being here, that they’ll run out of, oh, no, no, there’ll be plenty of eels. Now they’re finding out that there’s nothing (I2M, Iwi, Session 1).

They’re not even coming back yet because we’ve got the power dams now stopping them all, the dams along the rivers stopping all the fish coming back up. They’ve got to buy the fish from Rotorua and then drop them off at the scout den and they disappear somewhere else (I2M, Iwi, Session 1).

I4M: Just to touch on the issues, two of our pā tuna, pā tuna ones are our real one, is like you said Rawiri, around the Motu pā tuna is going to become more talked about and particularly here for all us here in Taranaki, I mean the long fin is endemic well, as you know to New Zealand but because of the, our waterways, the long fin used to be well established here, used to be.

I2M: Used to be, yeah.

I4M: ...and now the impacts through commercial fishing but also the change in habitat, you know, when the, you take away the bush and that type of stuff then you lose all that cover and the water temperature changes, that type of stuff and so the habitat changes for the long fin, so there’s commercial fishing, changes in habitat but the most compelling one is the Patea Dam and other dams because they stop the migration patterns of our pā tuna so whilst they do have a trap and transfer process at the Patea where they pick up the elvers and they put them over the top, it doesn’t really work when we can’t get them back out again because they get turn up in the turbines and that type of stuff so say what the hell is the use of putting them back in there if we can’t guarantee them to get back out again.

Facilitator: Yeah, yeah.

I4M: So we have to come up with something better than, cos’ the Patea catchment and other catchments are actually quite [unclear] or two to the long finned tuna for us but um,

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there’s those things, and cos’ we have another fish here that’s quite special to us and that’s the piharau.

I2M: Oh yes.

I4M: Yeah, so we still in our Northern Whānau, Te Atiawa, those ones, they still actively harvest the piharau and so but that’s another fish that’s, that’s another story and of course it’s all about habitat, that type of stuff.

Local iwi were also concerned about the health impacts of air quality, particularly for those with asthma and emphysema, which were accentuated by a southerly breeze.

Where I live my son, when he was born, suffered from asthma, and they were putting it down to the rubbish that was coming out of Methanex when it was flaring and what not, it was affecting my child’s health (I3F, Iwi, Session 1).

So if you get rid of all that smell then that would, especially with the health wise, well asthma and that, you get that Southerly too and that, that brings the asthma on. If you’re going to get that gas and everything that’s come around it makes it worse, you know (I1M, Iwi, Session 1).

Another member of the group had been informed that his son had been diagnosed with allergic asthma on moving into the region, and it was put down to the high pollen count in the region.

4.5.2. Transport infrastructure

The inadequate road network, both in terms of the number of roads, and the state of the existing roads, were brought up by a number of participants as a challenge for communities living in the region.

Probably the transport like at the moment you know we’ve got issues with transport in and out of the province in the way that we’ve, we probably don’t get as much money spent doing our..., It’s a bit of an issue for us on our roads, our main arterial routes out of Taranaki and that’s an issue and it’s obviously been work done at the moment, there’s a survey being done but it’s going to be a long slow process (F2M, Farmers, Session 1).

There’s a lot that goes to Auckland from Taranaki industries, and that’s all done on population basis and if you look at, if you’re driving round everyone here can vouch for this. The roads are just slowly dropping backwards and in ten years’ time I suspect they’ll, they won’t be very good at all (F1M, Farmers, Session 1).

The road linkage north is, well, it’s better than it was, it’s not just an insurmountable psychological barrier as some people tried to perceive it to be, but there’s only three roads out of Taranaki, north, across to Whangamomona and so on and then south via Hawera through to Palmerston North and Wellington. So yeah, you sort of have a sense of being isolated (C3M, Council, Session 1).

Here, the scanty road network adds to the sense of geographical isolation, with the existing roads perceived to be rapidly degrading from overuse.

For one participant from the oil industry who lived in New Plymouth, road congestion from trucks was also an issue, and as well as once again, the sense of geographical isolation from the rest of North Island.

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O4M: The challenge is as much as the isolation as well. Being a little bit isolated does have a problem. Transport here is a bit of an issue, as you say something like a dust cloud is not so good. The road you have going South is okay but that’s still a five hour trip to Wellington and also going North on the Mount Messenger road, that’s terrible. Very windy, very convoluted. I don’t know if you’ve ever been on that road?

Facilitator: No, I haven’t. No.

O4M: It’s beautiful if you’ve got time, if you’re a tourist, but it’s full of heavy trucks cos’ there’s only two ways in and out of New Plymouth. One is to go on the road you’ve just taken which is to Stratford, and go South, or to go North and up towards Te Kuiti and that road’s quite isolated so being a rural New Zealand town that is an issue.

In sum, for a region requiring the transportation of oil and farming produce to the rest of the nation and even internationally, there was an expectation that the local infrastructure should be much better than it currently was.

4.5.3. Communications infrastructure

It was not only the transport infrastructure that was perceived as lacking, but the farming group also pointed out that there were gross inadequacies in existent forms of telecommunication.

I reckon we’re not getting enough adequate technology since farming in general has one of the highest productivity levels in New Zealand and here we are missing out on the internet which is supposed to be a multiplier, and since we’re so few population we’re not getting, the rural areas getting decent internet quality service (F1M, Farmers, Session 1).

A brief discussion on the slow internet connection speed, and the frustration that stemmed from this, led into an exchange about mobile phone coverage in the region. In particular, both Vodafone and Telecom were noted as having bad reception, and yet again, ‘being forgotten’ was put down to the small, low density population in the region. However, one participant did note, that as far as internet was concerned, Taranaki still fared better than some rural regions, which were “still on dial-up”!

4.5.4. Upkeep of facilities

With an aging population and low overall population density, there were some issues around the upkeep of existing facilities, whether from lack of finances or volunteers.

Although community members had fund-raised to support the construction of facilities such as sports centres, there was a lack of population to support both their running and raising money for their upkeep. This issue was raised during the first session with the farmers.

F2M: but it’s actually maintaining those things without a population base and the usage of the people it is very hard to maintain that without getting more funding and it’s hard to get that funding cos’ you get the initial setup and then it’s keeping it going.

F4M: People tend to forget that they’ll fundraise to build something.....

F5F: Yeah.

F4M: ....and they forget about.

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The pool of people who were actively engaged with community issues were seen to be small and “recognizable”. However, U2M from the urban group also made the comment that: “I understand, subject to confirmation, that Stratford has the highest number of voluntary organisations per capita in New Zealand”.

Outside of Stratford, there were other concerns, and C3M, one of the council participants mentioned that in Hawera, there was what he called “some anguish” over the “supply of medical facilities and having the services available twenty four hours around the clock and what level of services”. He noted that the major emergency department was in New Plymouth, which was some distance away, and notably, if I link this to comments on the transport infrastructure, likely to be a long trip on less than satisfactory and possibly congested roads.

However, C3M also noted that it was unusual that a town the size of Stratford also had a movie theatre, the Pioneer Village Theatre. Once again, this he put down to the volunteers that helped both fund-raise for it, and keep it up and running.

4.5.5. Attracting professionals into the area

One of the consequences of a perceived geographical isolation was the difficulty of attracting a diverse range of businesses and industries outside of farming and petroleum exploration.

One negative sort of thing that we get is getting, say, professional people to come in and work in the area, because they just perceive, you know, we are stuck out on a limb that’s a long way from everywhere...like veterinary people...those professional people and they think, ‘oh, why would you want to go and live there’? They’d rather go and live in Palmerston or Hamilton or something like that (F7M, Farmers, Session 1).

Many of the participants commented that they would like to see an increase in local diversification. For instance, U3F pointed out that technology could enable this to take place.

We’d really like to see more industry here or more businesses here. With modern technology there’s no reason on earth why businesses can’t set up in a small place like Stratford or else more Kaponga, no reason what so ever and I just think it’s a shame that the big centres, Auckland, New Plymouth, places like that, want everything for themselves. It just creates congestion and frustration and ghettos (U3F, Urban, Session 1).

Based on her experience of a previous industry what had established itself in the region to derive the benefits of “an un-tapped work force” (the local women), U3F saw no reason why it was not possible to run “a good-sized industry” in Stratford. However, as already pointed out, there were issues with both mobile reception and internet connection.

Attracting businesses into the region was reported to be more of an issue in the south than the north, where the oil and gas industry had paved the way for the enhanced development of regional amenities and infrastructure. However, for newcomers to a region that was so closely knit, there could also be the issue of cultural integration. One of the farmers recognised the difficulties around this.

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Cos’ we know everybody, it’s, you do notice it when you know someone who’s just moved into the Region. We’re not as, apparently we’re not as bad as other Regions but we do still do take a long time for, to integrate people and it will be “so where do you come from?” And if we can’t kind of make that family connection and where they fit in the world we might be a little bit sceptical but apparently we’re not as bad as Whanganui (F5F, Farmer, Session 1).

Furthermore, some professionals moving into the region from overseas missed the familiar sense of history stemming from the European continent. Added to this was always the difficulty of little leave and an expensive, long-haul flight back to cater for this need.

The only disadvantage I find here is it’s a long way to Europe and I do miss a bit of the historical culture at times, which I solve by going back to Europe every second year for eight weeks (O3M, O&G, Session 1).

However, O3M was still happy to live in the region. As a place to live, he clearly articulated that he had realized he preferred being there to a congested Europe.

Finally, one council member recalled moving to the region, and his surprise at how friendly people were.

It’s a good mix of sort of some of the old fashioned values that are good, I mean when we arrived down here we went for a walk down the street one evening and people actually said hello and…that was just “wow”, this is bizarre. People actually talking to each other; what a strange phenomenon (C3M, Council, Session 1).

This friendliness, he put down to sound “old-fashioned values” that encouraged a sense of community in the area; something he noted did not happen in larger cities.

4.5.6. Population

The region was characterised by an aging population, and decline of younger generations of working age. Moreover, over the last 15–20 years, a few of the smaller schools had permanently been closed down in response to a declining population base to justify their existence.

What’s happened in the last ten or fifteen years has been the amalgamation of smaller [dairy] farms into larger farms, which has an effect on the rural population. Less families, less children, less schools (U1M, Urban, Session 1).

Another issue of concern was the migration of younger members of the farming community to larger centres in both North and South Island.

F4M: And a lot of the young people seem to be moving out of the province to go and work somewhere else. They want to be in the cities. I don’t think my children will be farmers so they’ll probably go and live somewhere else in New Zealand or in the world.

F1M: Even the young people that are farming, they tend to grow into the South Island or the Waikato, so they move there and then they tend to buy a farm there.

Whilst the oil and gas industry certainly attracted people into the region, many were seen by the farmers to subsequently use their training to work for better wages in Australia. Whilst their families remained in Taranaki, happy with the lifestyle, these people would work overseas for a month at a time, as opposed to within the region itself. However, the problem was that the region still needed to attract people to work

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here, but that small local companies could not compete with the wages offered by the oil and gas industry or Fonterra. This was perceived by one farmer as creating a situation that was “a little out of balance”.

One of the council members described the nature of this balance in a little more detail.

C3M: Taranaki’s population is older than average for New Zealand. We get people retiring here and we do also have young people and that is in fact a challenge we didn’t mention earlier, and to see whether we can do much about that or not. We simply can’t support a University and the place is just too small a population in the first place. Our Polytech’s struggling internally with some politics and financially so of course if we lose that we start losing our young people that are haemorrhaging quite badly, so how to retain or bring back the new life to the place, you know…So yeah, the question of age group representation in our population and.....

C4M: I think population retention too is a challenge particularly in the South...

C3M: Yeah.

C4M: ....where our population is falling and the Council’s acutely aware of what it should be doing to make South Taranaki a better place to live. Often the cultural-ness and perhaps amenity values in the South aren’t as good as say around New Plymouth and so there’s a growing trend for, in South Taranaki I believe, for people to reside in New Plymouth and commute to a job in South Taranaki.

As this excerpt shows, the council participants had a broader view of the population structure in the region, and explained to us the loss (and potential future increase in loss) of the younger population base. Moreover, they also identified and explained the geographic trends in depopulation, with a demonstrable issue in South Taranaki, as opposed to New Plymouth.

At the other end of the spectrum, as C3M pointed out, the regional population pyramid was top-heavy with an aging population. Coupled with the shrinkage of emergency medical services in Stratford and difficulty in travelling as older people, there were increasing consequences for this particular population group.

U3F: We don’t have a hospital and we’re not going to have a physiotherapy service any more, which is annoying, so you know for older people there are a few problems. Once upon a time people retired to Stratford because it had everything including the very efficient little public hospital of its own. Mind you that was many years ago but.... We had a wonderful doctor called Dr Kerry Smith and everybody was more than happy to be treated by him, operations by him. He did a skin graft on [unnamed person’s] leg, beautiful job and then because they said he wasn’t a specialist enough they more or less closed the hospital down which was really annoying. We’ve got a wee place here called Elizabeth R which is, I think if you have treatment in New Plymouth Hospital they’ll bung you down in Elizabeth R for a sort of what, not resuscitation,...

U4M: Recuperation [laughter].

Whilst U3F pointed out there was no longer any hospital, U4M did communicate that there was a local medical facility that was being used as national model by Age Care and that ACC-funded physiotherapy did still exist in the town. However, as he later added, “As we get older we need transport to get to New

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Plymouth. We need the health care, we need the medical, all those things that you need as you get older and we need to have a balance”. As yet, this did not appear to have been achieved.

Visions for the region

One of the council participants wanted to see the continuation of positive trends in the region into the next 30 to 50 years and onwards. He particularly emphasized the trend in improvements in the condition of the region’s waterways: “despite the national conversation about water quality, water quality in Taranaki is undeniably getting better”.

When we finish getting our waterways fenced and planted that will make a big, um, yeah, a fairly sizeable change and we’re looking at diverting our dairy effluent discharges out of water to land, almost exclusively, so there’s two big benefits I can see coming through in ten years (C3M, Council, Session 1).

The farmers had a different vision for the region, based on their livelihood. F4M, for instance, wanted to “continue to grow and prosper as an agricultural province” and “lead the country in our environmental sustainability as farming businesses”. This, he thought was “quite do-able”. Others in the group wanted to see some recognition for their efforts in the form of facilities and economic input into the region. Finally, the farmers had some reflections on the co-existence of the farming and oil and gas industries, and how to make this sustainable in the long term.

F2M: I’ve got concerns and I hope we have some good outcomes about, well, I’d like to see us in twenty years’ time in a good space. I just think that we need a whole lot of work to happen that we can still co-exist, farmers and the oil and gas industry and we all benefit from it, which I, you know, hopefully we are at the moment but some of us are not probably. But I think that there needs to be a whole lot of work done that the province is still in a sustainable state that it is now in the future, with all this oil and gas exploration and wells and things like that so that, you know, everything’s still sustainable and that everybody benefits. So, I’m not quite sure how we achieve that but it will be a lot of work; I know that, you know, to make it happen.

F5F: And I think it is a lot about conversations and understanding. I think we’ve probably taken-for-granted in Taranaki, quite a bit, that urban and rural have been relatively close compared with other regions but it’s starting to divide now and again, cos’ we do produce a fair amount of economic value in Taranaki, it’s important that we keep having those conversations and that they do know that we can lead the way in sustainability.

Interestingly, the oil and gas group had a similar perspective, albeit phrased in terms of finding a balance between economic growth and “prosperity” for the individual and environmental sustainability. Namely, “without losing the good things the province has on offer at the moment”. The conversation around this topic had already been prompted during a discussion on regional challenges. It provides some depth to the picture and is quoted below.

O3M: I think it’s finding the right balance between environmental objectives and economic growth.

Facilitator: Mmm. Could you explain that? A little bit more about what you’d want?

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O3M: You seem to have, a very strong [unclear]. You know, people think economic growth is always at the expense of an environment and I think most of our industry believes you can actually do that hand in hand. You know, sustainable development can come together with oil and gas…

Facilitator: Cool. O2M?

O2M: Yeah. So it’s all about getting that knowledge in the community of what we do and how we’re doing it. How we can do it, you know, to be environmentally sound as well as keep growth going in the region. Like it’s amazing what oil and gas has done for Taranaki.

One of the oil and gas participants thought that this economic growth could be characterized by some diversification away from the dualism of oil and gas, and farming.

O4M: I think it would be nice if it did expand and had sort of, maybe a little bit more diversity from oil and gas and also the farming area. That would be useful, and as I said I think transport infrastructure they need to work on and having that sort of core in the area. I mean it’s doing quite well, New Plymouth Taranaki, it’s doing pretty well compared to some of the other Regions but it could do with probably you know, better communications and a bit more centralisation, so…

Facilitator: So you say ‘expand’ and a bit more diversity from oil and gas. What do you mean by more diversity?

O4M: Well, it’s the usual sort of thing in here is that Taranaki being the only oil and gas producing province in New Zealand there isn’t anywhere else, is, if Maui declines and we don’t find anything else then a lot of stuff, well, not a lot of stuff, quite a bit of stuff here is tied to oil and gas so you know, whether you diversify into other industries, which is always good for me to pontificate about, there are, you know, other industries and what they may be I don’t know, whether it’s IT or whatever, just so you got, not just the farming, not just the oil and gas, which is one string in our bow more than probably other places. But it’s only two real main areas of employment and income, so if say Maui and Kapuni, Kapuni’s older than me and Maui is only slightly younger than me which means they’re quite old and they’re declining in production and it’s something we need to be aware of, because obviously the more it declines the less employment and less income for the area.

O4M’s concern was around the implications brought on by the decline of some of the existing oil fields, before the region had a chance to expand and diversify its economy. In particular, following trends throughout larger centres in New Zealand, he suggested that the IT industry had the potential to enhance the economy and provide much needed long-term employment stability. However, another suggestion was raised during session one with participants from the council: totalling approximately 16% of the region’s population, diversification could come through new investments by local iwi.

C2M: We’ve got eight iwi here, we’ve now got four settled…we’ve got four about to settle and they’re looking to settle and they’re going to become key players in the economy going forward.

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C3M: And some of the leaders within iwi are taking that responsibility of saying okay, how do we enhance our financial security and where do we go develop this?

C2M: And it’s as much about kaitiakitanga and environmental stewardship as investment and ‘where do we want to invest?’, and maybe iwi perhaps in the past wearing the hat of submitter and opposition to a whole lot of things suddenly wearing the hat of ‘I’m an applicant’…....and we’re also seeing some really good iwi leaders coming through…to deal with the issues of modern society.

Iwi had a vision for the region, which entailed claiming back the land and restoring it back to a pristine environment. Hence, “clean air” was one priority.

I1M: I’m a firm believer in clean air you know. Clean air is my number one project, clean air, especially for our mokos, for future. Clean air.

Facilitator: Ka pai.

Co-facilitator: How would you define clean air?

I1M: So I can go out there and not smell smoke and all that other bloody horrible stuff.

I3F: Or gas.

In sum, the local context, as described and informed by the participants in this study and the wider community as a whole, was a dynamic, complex, historical palimpsest of social, environmental, cultural, economic and political change. One of the participants mentioned that Stratford had been contemplating designing a representative emblem for some time. However, deciding what features from what one participant called the “rich tapestry” of the town should be included (aside from Mt Egmont) has turned into a monumental project.

For an industry such as CCS, an understanding of the views formulated and maintained by these complex processes and local landscape would be paramount to understanding the “fit” of a storage site to a local community. And more importantly, aside from assessing the local geology and infrastructure, the following question also needs to be addressed: would this, socially and culturally, be a suitable location for CCS deployment? Would the wider community be amenable to it, or would a proposed site likely be met with protest? How should engagement occur and at what stage? Understanding the local context is essential to understanding these issues, and gaining an appreciation of the local and regional community. In the next chapter, I further this contextualization by exploring how the wider community understood climate change, and present the research that they conducted in order to assess CCS.

5. Contextualising CCS: perceptions of climate change

Following the method used in the previous GNS study (Doody et al., 2012), CCS was contextualised in terms of climate change. This chapter briefly explores participants’ understandings of climate change; the causes, potential effects, responsibility, mitigation and adaptation. It provides some further background from which to explore perceptions of CCS. I start by discussing information sources that underpinned their understandings about climate change, then more substantively present participants’ understandings of the term, climate change and its consequences, causes and actions needed to tackle the problem.

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Information sources

When asked about how they had gained their knowledge about climate change, participants referred to a range of information sources, from university education, through to media coverage. By far the most utilised source was the media, whether it was in-depth journalism in European newspapers, television documentaries, magazine articles or New Zealand newspapers. Some of the council members pointed out the “ebbs and flows” of reportage, dependent on whether there was an election pending or a recent “dramatic” flood or drought. Participants were also acquainted with the counter side of the debate through letters to the newspapers from people adamantly against climate change.

In particular, media personalities such as Gareth Morgan, David Attenborough and Al Gore were named as interesting sources of perspective on the various debates.

Al Gore. I think he raised the public conscious, or the world’s consciousness around that issue. I think we all kind of thought it but it was never, it was never a central repository for views, and that actually created a great point of discussion I think, and since that time science has actually become more in our life as well as a result of the consciousness it raised (U4M, Urban, Session 1).

Moreover, early perspectives were also gained from magazines such as National Geographic and Time Magazine. Public lectures were another source of information with the following speakers named:

David Wratt (NIWA)

Gwynne Dyer – an international independent journalist

Lord Monckton – critic of anthropogenic climate change, NZ lecture tour

Fonterra had also brought speakers such as Paul Gilding and journalist Rod Oram into the region to talk to farmers about climate change. In particular, there was an emphasis on carbon tax: “what the Government is, their scheme they developed, how it’s going to influence us or impact on us and their reasons for doing it” (F1M, Farmers, Session 1).

The farming group revealed that they had been invited to see a number of guest speakers on climate change and other important environmental issues. However, there was an issue about the credibility of some of these speakers, and a realisation that they had a different interpretation of what essentially were the same facts.

And I think looking at a lot of environmental stuff that we’ve had to date, credible scientists aren’t very good at getting that information out there before all the misinformation gets out there. So it would be looking at how you could get the credible science out there to keep people informed about what was happening. So other than talk to a few people about it, it’s all very interesting and sounds interesting, that’s if we need to do it if climate change is real, then yeah it just sounds interesting, I’d want to see the real science (F5F, Farmers, Session 2).

Council participants also learnt about climate change as part of their role, particularly through meeting agendas. Some of this material included emissions trading standards and even the IPCC report on Climate Change. The farmers had similarly attended conferences and read some of the council materials.

Some participants had been taught about climate change at the university level, namely those specializing in Geography and other environmental subjects such as environmental ethics. Others,

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particularly from the oil and gas and council groups, had furthered their interest with scientific journal articles that they trusted.

Whilst there were a range of available sources, the iwi group did not find them easy to understand: “I’m down here and it’s way up there” (I1M, iwi, Session 1). In this group, the information was aimed at too high a level and needed “to be reported in plainer English” (I3F, iwi, Session 1) to be comprehensible for people who had little basic knowledge of what it entailed to begin with and to prevent them switching off (“you see their eyes close”). Moreover, one member of the group relayed that there were cultural implications with not being able to understand the language of science, with a loss of mana, or social status. Hence, rather than ask for clarification and lose mana, people had become shy, and remained quiet rather than admit they lacked knowledge. In approaching iwi in an engagement exercise, these cultural factors are highly significant and would have to be tactfully navigated with the help of iwi liaison.

Iwi were, however, not alone in having difficulties with the information on climate change, with other participants also finding it to be “confusing”. In particular, when all the scientific information presented from both sides “made sense”, this confusion only increased. For instance, U3F from the urban group presented the counter argument to climate change.

Some science says that we’ve been in a slightly cooling phase the last fifteen years, that all this business about the global warming can be discarded because we’ve been in a cooling phase for the last fifteen years, so what do you believe? What do you believe? (U3F, Urban, Session 1).

Ultimately, U3F said that you have “got to use your own common sense to work out what you think’s right”, with each person having a different set of experiences and perceptions from which to make a judgment.

O1F, from the oil and gas group made a very valid point: “the way it’s presented is confusing because the media seem to want to continue this debate about whether it is an issue or not…that’s my perception anyway”. Namely, dualistic, never-ending debates about controversial issues create media interest and hence, sell stories through what one of the farmers called “sensationalism”, as seen with other debates such as genetic engineering and embryonic stem cells. However, as O3M subsequently pointed out, the quality of reportage differed significantly.

I’ve seen it presented in multiple ways. I’ve seen it in very balanced ways and I’ve seen it in very imbalanced and advocacy ways and you know ultimately I do at times hope that people actually look at all the elements playing a role (O3M, O&G, Session 1).

I think nowadays, more and more, it’s most media. These societies change over the last decade from you know in-depth journalism to a bite size pieces which are not necessarily simplistically journalists don’t do it as thorough work as they used to do, so it’s you know, a lot of it’s copying from the internet or other places. I think it’s just a general quality the result of that and that sort of in fact we see the whole society doing it, you can’t necessarily blame that specifically on this particular subject (O3M, O&G, Session 1).

As O3M pointed out, the root causes included journalism for advocacy (taking sides), the oversimplification of issues due to the demise of in-depth reporting in favour of sound bites, and journalists lacking rigour in their research process. Moreover, coming to an informed viewpoint required some contemplation of the information presented; although this in turn would require a certain prerequisite of basic knowledge about climate itself, which clearly not everybody had. Instead, O3M viewed all material, including that from scientific journals, with a healthy degree of skepticism.

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I think it’s always useful to have a dose of skepticism. I don’t think the results have been and quite recently maybe not so much but especially on there’s been a lot of finding out of scientific people who make up their data not necessarily about climate change. We also know, obviously, it’s, the data’s, obviously prey on it that; there have a number of incidents with the global climate science where things were found out to be manipulated and so I think it’s always useful to have a dose of scepticism and work possibly on the balance of probabilities and things like that, and use your own brain (O3M, O&G, Session1).

O3M put some of this down to the continuous pressure to publish in the research world, resulting in a culture where “some people have become a little bit less honest”. F1M, from the farming group, took this one step further, explaining the impact on scientific credibility when dishonesty was exposed:

The biggest harm has been done when is when the left field as some people call them, catch them lying, scientists, and once you’ve caught a scientist lying you look at everything else they’ve done and say well they must have lied about that too, so I think the ethics of our scientists and the information that has been given to us, I know it has to be sensationalised and made media friendly but as a farmer that has to deal with numbers and survive in the environment and if you cannot feed your cows you cannot sort of thing that is sort of the line we have to live with. It’s difficult to believe anybody that’s been caught (F1M, Farmers, Sessions 1).

Here, trust in these experts was displaced, seemingly on a permanent basis. Incidences such as these made the farmers keenly aware that climate change was about the interpretation of the existing facts, and that in order to make a judgment about what was presented to them, they had to look at how a range of experts interpreted the same facts, their alliances and then trust their own common sense. O3M and F1M were not alone in this attitude towards the information presented, with the farming group and iwi having similar views on its reliability.

On the other hand, the farming group found the information that had been presented to them easy to pick up and understand, particularly over time and continued exposure to the arguments. Whilst both sides of the argument were initially presented, there was a noticeable shift to an emphasis on “environmental sustainability” and practical measures to ensure water quality, “rather than this big thing that’s going to happen”.

Like the majority of others in the study, iwi thought that the information available was of variable credibility; namely that 50% was okay, 50% was fabrication. Moreover, there was a sense of frustration at information on regional weather, for instance, coming from experts in Wellington, particularly when it did not fit the actual conditions on the ground. Information coming from local people was perceived as more trustworthy.

All in all, there was a call for information to be balanced, and for those whose science literacy needed developing, presenting the facts in plain, understandable English, before building up to a more complex scenario. Others also wanted to see the facts as they stood, but transparency over where they were sourced, with a preference for original sources.

What is climate change?

Participants had a diverse range of knowledge and understandings about climate change, reflective of their demographic diversity. This ranged from very little knowledge (but a desire to learn) in the iwi group to the complex understandings of specific individuals in the urban, council and oil and gas groups.

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The iwi group admitted to generally not being familiar with climate change. For instance, one participant said: “but I really need to know for my own self what is actually climate change you know. What does it mean? You know, what are we talking about there really?” (I1M, Iwi, Session 1).

Iwi were not the only group who admitted to having little knowledge about climate change. F2M from the farming group referred to his completed survey that enquired about prior knowledge, saying: “I just put a circle around the one that I didn’t know anything about it”. However, he did offer a synopsis of his understanding, saying:

It’s about I ‘spose climatic warming and all that sort of having an influence on our weather patterns and those sorts of things, that’s my assumption of the like you know so that we’re told that the temperature of the Earth is warming up and that’s having an effect. You know, we have extremes of weather and you know I assume that’s you know sort of Climate Change in a pretty simple form (F2M, Farmers, Session 1).

Similarly, F5F from the farming group expressed some doubt over her understandings of climate change.

I’m not sure about Climate Change, I mean I don’t understand the science around Climate Change, but I understand the premise around environmental sustainability, so I think for me I’d much rather the conversation was around environmental sustainability cos’ I think you can’t argue with that. With Climate Change there’s, you know, people are arguing for and against and people who want to deny it or whatever, you know certainly we are seeing extreme weather patterns and when, I guess you know, if you go far enough back there was an ice age that maybe was around Climate Change (F5F, Farmers, Session 1).

Part of this emanated from difficulty with the science and grasping the meaning of the term; part of it was based on the polarised debate, and part on the knowledge of natural cycles. What was interesting here, though, was that the new buzzword the farmers had been introduced to, ‘environmental sustainability’, was more easy to relate to, understand and had a series of associated, achievable practical steps.

Another farmer focused on the understanding of climate change as ‘natural cycles’, which would occur anyway, regardless of human interference.

I believe the science on it, it’s a cyclic thing and it’s, you know, we go back millions of years, we’re in just one of the cycles of it so I think, we have an influence as a people but it’s very, very, small, and so the climate is going to happen regardless of, well, provided we are sensible about how we live I suppose, if you know what I mean, that we’re not, like F7M mentioned, you know, like we have huge amounts of emissions. I think if we carried on down that path, if we manage our industries and our agriculture production sustainably then we won’t have an issue. These Climate Changes will happen regardless of what we do (F2M, Farmers, Session 1).

Some participants viewed climate change as a process induced by human interference with natural cycles, linking it to emissions and changes in weather patterns (causes and consequences). Not surprisingly, for some, there was an association with it being an unnatural process, although in some cases, there was a lack of an appropriate word in the English language to state exactly what should replace the term.

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C1M: Climate change to me means um, I’m going to say the word unnaturally, unnaturally high rates of temperature increase on account of human activity, that’s what climate change means when someone says that to me.

Facilitator: And you used the term unnaturally. Why do you use that word?

C1M: Well, I mean it might not mean accelerated or something like that to be implied, I didn’t think there, it wasn’t a word I really wanted but I, I could have asked you a question, but I don’t think unnaturally is the right, I mean if we weren’t here it wouldn’t be happening, that’s basically it. I mean if humans weren’t here it wouldn’t, the particular climate change we’re talking about wouldn’t be happening and that’s basically what I mean.

This commentary highlights that understandings around the nature of climate change also intertwine with some of the more complex debates on the boundaries between natural/nature and unnatural/caused by humans (see Coyle and Fairweather, 2005). It also highlights that the boundaries between natural cycles and human interference with these are far from clear-cut.

Other participants, perhaps the vast majority, saw climate change as human interference in a natural process.

Well I think climate change is something that the world’s always had. It’s inevitable and perhaps the degree of human activity that is influencing climate change is an issue for us but I actually think that there’s nothing, so permanent as change and it also applies to climate (C4M, Council, Session 1).

This was the overall perspective within the oil and gas group, who had the highest level of adherence to this concept and some consequent discussion around it.

Well, the, so emissions that are heating up the Earth’s surface and may or may not be causing the weather, the changes in weather we’re seeing and see there’s a whole cycle of how things go anyway...and yeah, it’s a very difficult thing to understand, I think (O1F, O&G, Session 1).

I was going to make similar, like, in the sense that the climate is always changing and has always changed and will always change. However in reality the way it’s normally used in most conversations is that it’s linked to global warming really and more importantly in that sense in the negative sphere in the sense that human induced global warming related to greenhouse gases (O3M, O&G, Session 1).

Some participants had a more informed understanding of anthropogenic climate change and the role of CO2 emissions. For instance, U4M from the urban group had just recently read the British broadsheet reportage about CO2 levels recorded at an all-time global historical high.

As I just said in the Sunday Times I coincidentally read that article 400 parts to million and that’s going to 2 degrees, 4 degrees over time is going to increase the temperature? (U4M, Urban, Session 2)

Others acknowledged that climate change was a dualistic term, which needed to be interpreted in terms of its specific context.

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For me it always carries at least two meanings and you have to look at context as to which one. There is the, there’s climate variability and built into that there are, you know, various cycles and the decadal cycle as in drivers of like the El Nino, La Nina and so on, but then there’s the concept of induced or driven climate change and the consequences that arrive, arise sorry, arise from that, so there’s a package of consequences of that activity, that human activity is driving changes within the climate (C3M, Council, Session 1).

This commentary draws together all the different, but related understandings of the term, and also serves to highlight what was a fairly unanimous conclusion: that climate change was difficult for many people to understand and define, in part due to its dualistic representations, and in part due to the sheer complexity of the science, and understanding how human actions influenced the feedback loops in a complex system.

Finally, it should be noted that occasionally, participants noted that some people were skeptical of climate change, based on an interpretation of scientific evidence; namely, that data sets did not show any significant human-induced change in natural cycles. However, as one council participant pointed out, this sub-population seemed to be losing numbers to the “don’t know” and “yes” categories. He saw this as a perceptual process, as opposed to being based on an adherence to particular data sets.

Consequences of climate change

Throughout all the groups, climate change was generally associated with an increase in weather extremes, meaning hotter summers, colder winters, drier weather and wetter weather, and an increase in storms and droughts in some parts of the world. There appeared to be a good basic knowledge of these consequences among the groups.

Some participants had an understanding of climate as a complex system, which filtered into their consideration of the consequences. C3M, from the council group, described the global complexity of the potential consequences of climate change, phrasing it as a question as opposed to an answer in itself.

Well, when you’re talking about climate change are you just talking about temperature increase or are you talking about shifting weather patterns, your more rain, less rain, higher temperatures, lower temperatures, more wind, less wind, more storm, less storm, depending on which part of the planet you’re talking about and which season you’re talking about and all the rest of it? More cloud, less clouds and then start going on to, therefore more sunlight penetrating therefore the sea’s getting warmer or ice caps melting or whatever so, and feedback loops, you know, tundra melting therefore more methane being released so therefore more climate change being induced, so there’s a whole package and it’s hard to say this, but the climate change of this bit is the consequence so it’s all horribly connected (C3M, Council, Session 1).

This complex systems response was associated with a degree of uncertainty when dealing with a global phenomenon characterized by dynamism, complex feedback loops, interactions with the biosphere and the uncertain impacts of human perturbation on global processes.

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Local consequence and observations

Whilst there was a general knowledge about the global “symptoms” of climate change, some participants had observed subtle changes that they thought could potentially be attributed to climate change. Others had researched into what would be the predicted local effects in the Taranaki region.

Iwi, with a long oral tradition, based their insights on local changes that had been noticed over time. Some of the group associated climate change with “temperature change”, based on local observations that winters were not as cold as they used to be. Namely, they were not turning on the heat pump or gathering wood for the fire. However, I3F noted that the water temperature on the coast was also different; traditionally, it had not been possible to swim or walk out into the water, but now it was. Similarly, I4M noticed that the maunga had changed over time: “Now when I grew up we always had snow on our maunga. Now, we don’t see snow here too often on our maunga....so for me over time since I’ve grown up here that’s been a real indicator”.

The group also discussed the increasing frequency of weather “extremes”, with recurrent Brisbane floods and snowstorms in Europe and the USA cited as topical international examples. There was an expectation that the frequency of such events over time would further increase, particularly in terms of storms and strong winds.

Others, such as F4M in the farming group, hesitantly followed the same line of thinking:

But I do think that we are getting, I don’t know maybe it’s just me, but I think over the last, you look back over the years I think the extremes are becoming more, like there’s more extreme colds and colder and more extreme hots, and hotter and drier, and I bel..., maybe I’m a sucker but I believe what they’re saying about this trend (F4M, Farmers, Session 1).

Here, although noticing differences in weather patterns, there was element of doubt in associating these personal observations with climate change, a position which was not uncommon and reflects the scientific uncertainties in dealing with a complex system on the edge of chaos.

One of the urban group had observed that over the last ten years, the seasons seemed to have shifted and raised the issue in conversation.

I would say that the seasons have shifted, six to eight weeks… Summer used to start say November but now don’t be surprised if it doesn’t start ‘til January, but once it starts it sticks, and I think we have got a slightly improved notion of the seasons changing and it does get a bit blurry but they have become a bit more distinct in recent years with the late starting of summer creating what we call the, an Indian summer that goes on to “hell, I’m still in my shorts, you know, after Easter,” and this year’s an example of that. Easter you can expect hail and winter to set in (U2M, Urban, Session 1).

U2M was not alone in these observations, with U3F agreeing, and U1M suggesting that the wettest, coldest month has shifted from June to August or September. Particularly as a farmer, U1M said that he could “feel the change” as opposed to merely reading about it in the media.

The council group had read up on some of the predications for the Taranaki region. For instance, one participant thought that compared to the rest of the world, the impacts in Taranaki would be a lot less consequential.

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Now part of the context also with Taranaki is that in terms of consequences of climate change Taranaki’s about the best place in the world to be. We might get a little bit wetter. We might get a little bit warmer, but we already have quite a bit of rain sort of all year round. There is the possibility of increased frequency of extreme events but again compared with East Coast with its draughts or whatever we’re just not going to be in a bad place. We’d lose a bit of snow off the mountain, you know, so what, it’s fairly rough skiing up there skiing at the best of times. We need more water in the port so a bit of sea level rise is great, so quite seriously when you work through the consequences Taranaki’s a good place to be if the worlds going to be going through some of these, of facing the consequences that the...(C3M, Council, Session 1).

Whilst acknowledging the scientific predictions, C3M was more cautious in terms of acknowledging any observable change. He added that “we can’t find any”, but that NIWA had reported “a little bit of a trend” in rainfall patterns (1–2% change) with South Taranaki getting marginally drier over decades (a percent change) and north Taranaki getting marginally wetter. However, C3M made a point of saying that these changes were “really at the limits of statistical significance over decades”.

The oil and gas group similarly thought that we would see more weather extremes, with the biggest impacts in the region likely to be on agriculture and sea level. There was some concern for the farming community and an expectation that widespread irrigation systems fed by groundwater might be needed in the future. However, among the farmers and urban community, there was a perception that farmers are adaptable by nature, and unless there was a catastrophic change in weather patterns, they would be able to adjust.

I think as farmers we work very closely with nature, so we’ve got a reasonably good understanding of you know, how the weather affects us and how we need to look after the environment so we can continue to do what we do (F4M, Farmers, Session 1).

U3F: you’re watching or monitoring all the time, constantly and when you’ve farmed for a little while you develop a sixth sense don’t you U1M, if something nasty’s going to happen?

U1M: And I see the changes as something that happens over a thirty forty fifty year period I think is what they’re saying so you have time to adapt. They’ll breed a different type of animal that will cope with that. There will be new feeding systems, you know, and all this stuff will just evolve as the, just the same way as humanity has evolved over the years with... It would have to be extreme and sudden and for a long period of time. I think if it’s a gradual change people will adapt, systems will adapt.

With a relatively slow level of change, U1M thought that there could be some time for adjustment through biotechnological innovation. This said, there was some further discussion in the urban group about international consumer demand dictating an increase in dairy farming and irrigation of dairy pastures in the future. Also noted was the lush pastures and correspondingly dry rivers in South Island. As a consequence, there was a concern for the future of water resources in a changing climate, whether it involved climate change or not.

U4M: We’re going to struggle at some point in time around such things as water, the use of water, the management use of water. Not just on the rural sense but in domestic senses as well.

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U3F: I agree with that, I agree with exactly what U4M’s saying, water’s going to be the next problem.

There were others still who were skeptical about the association of climate change with observed weather extremes. For instance, U3F from the urban group, recollected a long dry summer back in 1975, with no similar occurrences in the years in between, until 2013.

That might be just getting old, but if you look back on the records and I can remember, was it 1975 I think, there was a terrible, terrible drought and it affected the coastal Taranaki and we took some heifers in for grazing from round the coast, and it was dry for months and months and you know, this is, this happened again this year but all those years in between have been normal if you like, so I’m not entirely convinced about Climate Change. I believe everything is cyclical, round and round in circles. I mean there’s sun spots on the sun every eleven years, quite cyclical, and everything else is cyclical, we have just got, we live for today and tomorrow it’s going to be wet and the next day is going to be wet but, you know, we forget, and I talk to U1M, as a farmer, I can remember farming and every day in September and October it was wet and I had to put wet weather gear on. The following spring I didn’t wear wet weather gear all spring, so you know, people have very short memories. It’s only when I sit down and think about these things (U3F, Urban, Session 1).

U3F was also aware of other known, scientifically proven phenomenon impacting on global weather cycles; in this case, the eleven year sun spot cycles.

As a former farmer, U3F kept a weather diary, continues to do so, and hence, was able to compare annual weather patterns over a series of years. She did not see significant differences over time, and thought that unless we had “a particular date to hang a memory on”, we all suffered from a very short-term recall. She was not alone in this kind of thinking, and as F1M from the farming group said of changes in the extremity of these weather patterns, “we talk to the old farmers, they had variations too but whether it’s more extreme or we forget…”.

Here, whilst there was a difference in thinking and attribution between groups, the commonality was that changes had been noted. More importantly, among some groups there was a heightened sensitivity to weather patterns over time, which might play an important role in responding to climate change in the future.

Finally, whilst local consequences were considered, within our own lifetimes, one participant from the oil and gas group brought in his concern for the unborn future generations who would live the consequences of our current actions:

Personally, if it’s as bad as it is reported, then hopefully we’re not, it’s not hitting at the planet too fast that it’s really going to affect grandchildren and what not. You always want to see snow on that mountain and you don’t want to see water come up to the mountain you know by a rising sea and all that sort of stuff. Just yeah, personally I want to make sure that we as a society and as a culture make sure that we leave it in somewhat similar to when we had it, the planet (O2M, O&G, Session 1).

Causes of climate change

But what about the causes of climate change? In general, there was a sound knowledge of the main causes in all groups. For instance, one woman in the iwi group named urban growth and deforestation as contributing causes; another participant in the same group referred to the impact of changes in the

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ocean to changes in climate. The oil and gas group came up with: “the way we got here today – cars”, “the cows that produce the food we eat”, “industries” and “what we’re breathing out”. One member of the industry was quite succinct about these causes:

The emission discharges from large oil and gas power stations, vessels, planes and all that sort of stuff so you have the sources which can produce pollutants which can generate climate, greenhouse gas emissions so you have the reasonable sort of mixture of what causes it (O4M, O&G, Session 1).

The farming group, acknowledging the contribution of dairy farming (methane) to global greenhouse gas emissions, also mentioned “China’s industrial revolution” and the international desire to raise living standards to those in much of the developed world. As F1M put it, “We live a very high life. We have power, guaranteed power as long as you pay your bill. Petrol in every car, can afford to get petrol. You don’t get that in China and various other places”. Similarly in the urban group, after some reflection between sessions, U4M reported that:

The other added factor I think, now is the growing middle class in China and India where you now have this insatiable demand for what we’ve had for years, and you add that into the pot and suddenly you know we’ve got an issue (U4M, Urban, Session 2).

In general there was a good basic knowledge about the causes of anthropogenic climate change, although there was some confusion from a participant between gases previously used in refrigeration that contributed to the ozone hole (chlorofluorocarbons) and greenhouse gases.

Tackling climate change

“If you ask the Government they’ll say its individuals and if you ask individuals they’ll say its

Government” (O4M, O&G, Interview)

In all of the groups, there was acknowledgement that as people, we need to “make an effort” to both mitigate and adapt to climate change, although there was some differentiation between what was defined as the most effective scale level: individual, local, regional, national or international. Taking responsibility for climate change covered the whole spectrum of scale levels but there was some discrepancy as to how it would play out in practice.

C4M: Maybe it’s everyone’s role.

C3M: Yeah, which means nobody takes up the responsibility cos nobody wants to be the one person who’s having to do more than anybody else.

C4M: I mean you know it could be everyone’s role from day to day actions that we take as individuals on the planet right through to National and International because the District Council or Regional Council can’t control issues such as discharges from cars of people commuting in Auckland for instance....

Facilitator: Mmm.

C1M: Yeah.

C4M: ...as an example.

C3M: But the gases being burnt in Taranaki or burnt at our production stations is supplying the whole of the North Island and avoiding coal being burnt somewhere else, so should

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we get penalised or should we actually get paid for supplying cheap gas to it and to other places and avoiding coal. You can start going round in circles very quickly.

Whilst accountability should be at all levels, as C3M pointed out, getting a grasp of the entire picture in terms of balances and imbalances was difficult. There was also the issue of what was considered to be fair and who should lead the way.

An emphasis was placed by some on sustainable practices and behaviour: “as a human in a race we’ve got no option but to live in a sustainable manner otherwise we’re all going to become extinct” (F7M, Farmers, Session 1). Others thought that science had a role to play in balancing the equation: “we can also adapt if you apply the science. If we spent enough money on the science we’d all be able to adapt” (F1M, Farmers, Session 1).

At an international level, there was some concern over the role of international politics on the manifestation of a global movement to reduce climate change. China and Australia were the topic of two conversations in the community group.

It’s alright for us to sign this, the emissions trading scheme the Kyoto Protocol, but we’re not a big producer. It’s the bigger countries like China and India and America and they’re saying well we’re not going to sign it because, and yet they’re the ones who absolutely need to do it and lead the way. They’re not doing anything (U5F, Urban, Session 1).

U6M: Australia they must be belching it out as if it’s going out of fashion.

Scientist 2: Yeah Australia rely 80% on coal fired electricity generation so that’s why they are taking it very seriously.

U6M: And they must have spare land, you know just the sheer volume of their continent, they’ve got areas that you could poke this back in.

Although U5F was concerned about the efforts of China, India and the US, U4M subsequently pointed out that China was doing a lot to try and reduce its emissions. A comparable conversation occurred when the case of Australia was raised.

One iwi participant pointed out that our Government should be involved, due to the international and political nature of climate change; this was paralleled by the oil and gas group.

Cos’ it’s not just New Zealand, there’s other countries that have to be in to this as well otherwise, we can try and do all the best we can but if the effects are coming from other countries as well and they’re not doing it then you can see the problems we’re going to run into (I4M, Iwi, Session 1).

O2M: There’s got to be a drive from somewhere.

O3M: Well, it needs to be driven, I mean, you can’t, it’s such a big issue, it’s such a globally huge, you know, and if the Politicians don’t take the lead on that and try to convince people in other countries I mean what New Zealand can do on the global scale with their point 0.1 percent of the global, you know, top thing it’s not going to work, so you know you need to get the China’s, the US and all those people involved and committed to it and so that’s where the Politicians I my view come in and obviously it’s the big people who can, elected Politicians.

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Again, there was some perspective on the global political complexity of the issue, and achieving a sense of fairness in terms of perceived action. The oil and gas group were also asked how it might affect their industry, which turned out the following commentary that focused on the complexity of the issues at a global and societal level and their impact on action.

From our company perspective, from the industry perspective, I mean, you know I at least now talk on behalf of [an oil company], we don’t deny that there is an issue. We’re just realistic in our expectation how long it takes for society to change without going back to the caves and things like that, and if you look at global trends you know it’s a bit harsh from us in the rich west to deny the people in China and India to a decent life and therefore we are sitting on the moral hard ground, we want to change the world, you know, the global climate for whatever reason and we deny them the right to have a, you know, build up some prosperity, so from our industry we recognise it’s there, we actually invest globally, at least [oil company] invests in sustainable energy sources and alternatives, and we recognise there’s probably in this industry, sorry the society as a whole, the Government as a whole globally, you know, dictate to changes for fifty, sixty year life cycle before we’re actually on, you know, on a completely different path (O3M, O&G, Session 1).

Here, O3M pointed out that whilst the will to change was there, due to political, economic, infrastructural, ethical and social issues, these changes would take time to implement and the transition would be a slow one.

At a regional level, there had been some action, both in terms of mitigation and adaptation. Aware that the regional agricultural chemical industry made a significant contribution to New Zealand’s climate change emissions, the council group had initially tried to address the issue. However, they were thwarted by policy changes that identified climate change as a “national and international issue without local consequences” that needed to be addressed at a national, rather than regional or local level. In sum, the directive was framed as a political boundary issue, but as C2M put it, “Greenhouse gases don’t recognize regional and district boundaries”.

Instead, the council’s sole legislated remit became climate change adaptation.

In terms of emissions, we have to take it into account in terms of planning around, you know, infrastructure or looking at sort of the long term flood risk or anything like that, or sea level rise, but we cannot address discharges (C3M, Council, Session 1).

Similarly, for one younger council participant, the current shift had been from a scientific one to a pragmatic one, moving towards “resource management” as an all-encompassing form of climate change mitigation and adaptation. This perspective had been taught at university, and he thought that there would be an increasing number of people with this same perspective as a result of the educational system.

This change in remit for the council did not appear to be common knowledge, with participants in other groups seeing the council as a body who should be addressing rather than adapting to climate change. However, it also appeared that when people did speak up about any related issues, they felt “blocked” from the conversation in the format it is currently set up. Alternately, “it’s all to do with people being able to talk to each other quite freely like we are talking across the table to each other” (I4M, Iwi, Session 1).

At an individual level, some participants relayed how the knowledge of climate change had affected their behaviour. For instance, with a raised awareness, the following was said:

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As an individual…it’s one of the reasons I grow a garden. I bike and walk more. As a family we only have one car, that’s a choice. It’s not just financial reason for me, it’s the whole trying to live the lower impact life I guess (O1F, O&G, Session 1).

I try to be environmentally friendly cos’ I’m sure that we’re not, we can look after our planet that whole notion of kaitiaki, we’re simply caretakers here but we can do that on a day to day basis…Cos’ if you can change your own practice and by that changes someone else’s practice it’s so, you do change the world so I think, you know, I’ll change what I do in terms of my personal life but I don’t sort of try to psycho-analyse too much (U4M, Urban, Session 1).

A general attitude was defined in the oil and gas group as: “minimising ongoing impact” on the environment as a whole, by personal decisions, “using our conscience a little bit more” and energy-efficient actions. U4M, from the urban group, also thought that changes in your own practice could influence others to make similar changes; this all occurred at a very local level, but was perceived to have the potential to have a global impact.

The farmers, after initially feeling overwhelmed with the economically unsustainable concept that to reduce emissions, dairy farming should be discontinued, had being presented with small, achievable steps to enhance the “environmental sustainability” of their industry.

So now we’re just taking those little steps year on year and at the start people didn’t have a lot of faith or belief in it and now it’s been there and people actually believe some of this and they are thinking well we’ll just do a step this year (F5F, Farmers, Session 1).

Hence, there was a reframing of the issue to render it more manageable, achievable and hence, sustainable. Supporting this, U3F, from the urban community group, made a point that changes might be small, but could be achieved with some commitment.

Getting back CFC's we did do something and it's tiny steps. Rather than a knee jerk reaction whereby you hold your nose and heavens knows what's likely to happen, you know, you progress with tiny steps, making each one a winning post as you go, and the accumulative effect of that and gets desired results in the end (U3F, Urban, Session 2).

Adding to this, U4M thought that in order to change people’s attitudes, both scientists and social scientists working in the field needed to be “given some grunt” (empowered), and that the issue should be addressed as a “big ticket item” as opposed to focus groups with a small number of people. There was also a feeling that without Government backing, change would be unlikely to occur.

Sustainable meaningful change needs to come from the ground up, not from the top down so I'm just thinking how you might achieve that scenario in this context. You're really trying to change behaviours at various levels to create this reduction in CO2 usage so you've gotta have change in individual behaviours and their demands and you've gotta have change at the local government level, change at national level and then change at international level. There needs to be synergies between all of those steps but at the end of the day it's gotta come from the bottom up so ways of empowering, I guess, the people to implement the change it's gonna come anyway (U4M, Community, Session 2).

Here, U4M suggested that for long-term, sustainable change to succeed, it needed to come from both individual actors and varying levels of institutions, and should occur both practically and in terms of

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policy. However, this change in behaviour was not as easy to achieve as merely informing people and hoping for a pragmatic response. This brief exchange occurred during the urban group:

U4M: That means you have to be informed, but also has to be this stick. The carrot is being informed and knowledgeable. In this day and age there is no excuse to be ignorant, however we could explore that, however you need the stick as well; without it, you’re not going to change people. The change of smoking was the price went up and up and up and up, it became socially unacceptable and fiscal, financial, out of peoples reach. I'm the perfect example; I smoked.

Facilitator: So in the case of this, how would you define the stick?

U4M: Well there has to be, I'm just exploring, how would I define it? If you’re purchasing gas for example, an element of what you pay would go into some scientific research fund, to, I don't know there's all sorts of possibilities but I've gotta pay something and the more I use... going back to what we were talking about at the council yesterday, user pays, how much should people pay if they use it should they pay for it or should we all pay for it? And if you’re paying for it will you change your behaviour. Use of water is a perfect example in Taranaki and Stratford we turn our tap on and we can leave it running for hours and hours, we can shower for an hour, etc. there's no more cost but if you put a meter on would people change their behaviours? And I suspect they would and in Stratford the challenge is going to be the water is one of those challenges and it’s ironic, really. It piddles down like it does but we don't have the ability to store the water when it's at its greatest and it's a similar sort of issue you only change peoples’ behaviours by the carrot and the stick.

One example of a “stick” was raised by one of the scientists: the Australian carbon tax. However, it was noted by one participant that this was “not much of a stick” that “really bellied” in the end.

6. CCS: the lay-expert researcher At the end of the first session, participants were introduced to CCS via a presentation by one of our scientists, provided some time for questions, introduced to the fictional 2030 scenario where a CCS storage site was being considered for Taranaki and then asked to go and conduct their own research on what they would want to know if this should occur. This chapter first briefly addresses the kinds of questions that arose during and after the science talk, presents participants’ initial impressions of CCS, then discusses in-depth, the research process that participants’ went through to understand CCS: information sources, what they found and what they thought about this information. The latter information was gathered via an analysis of submitted homework exercises and discussion during the second sessions.

Session 1: the science talk

The science talk occurred at the end of the first sessions, and precipitated an abundance of questions from participants who were curious about different aspects of CCS. Participants in the iwi group had been introduced to the topic via the metaphor of a shaken bottle of coca cola, so were particularly curious to find out more about the topic and what it meant for their whānau.

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Whilst the timing of the questions varied, with some asked during the presentation and others as part of a Q&A session at the end, there were commonalities between them. Some of the questions and their respective answers are listed in Appendix VII. They pivoted around:

Climate change

Motivations for CCS

Technical issues around CCS

Monitoring

Integrity of the storage site

Leakage

Potential for environmental damage

Whilst the risk of leakage and environmental contamination was an obvious issue to ask an independent expert, many participants were actually curious about the technology itself and the motivations for using it. Finally, it should be noted that even though prompted, the oil and gas group had no questions for the CCS researcher; some were already familiar with the technology.

Initial impressions of CCS

Paralleling the preceding GNS study (Doody et al., 2012), there was little understanding of the term, carbon capture and storage (CCS). The vast majority of participants in all stakeholder groups reported that they knew “nothing” about it. Others added, though, that they were keen to learn about it.

Initially, for some participants, there was a slight scepticism towards the technology: “I’m just wondering if it’s a feel good factor or whether it actually substantially reduces carbon dioxide emissions” (F1M, Farmers, Session 1). For others, particularly one member of the oil and gas industry, there was significant skepticism, “It’s commercial suicide”, with his argument against CCS being based on realism and practicality, as well as cost.

In reality, it’s the practicality of some of that, is just zero… injecting, you know, through old pipelines, old platforms, you haven’t got any pressure to put in the wells and the cost of running an offshore facility to do it into a reservoir with extremely high active support, so you can just as well use a normal water aquifer. It just makes no sense, you know” (O3M, O&G, Session 1).

This participant’s stance was maintained throughout the entire deliberative process, and seemed to have some influence on the thinking of his peers and later, the wider community, after it was backed up with reference to a study undertaken and presented at the deliberative forum.

In contrast, one of the council members was already aware that the oil and gas companies were transforming CO2 that had been stripped out of natural gas reservoirs, from a gas to a liquid for the purpose of transportation.

Of course at Kapuni they’re already turning CO2 into liquid CO2 anyway for transport so it’s just a matter of them sticking it down a hole instead of into a tanker (C3M, Council, Session 1).

What was particularly interesting was that some of the council members had been contemplating sequestration for twenty years, based on informal talks with the oil and gas industry and an aim to mitigate emissions problems with industry taking responsibility for their own gases and utilizing the

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existing infrastructure to do it. However, discussions demonstrated that, even though politically, carbon was a hot topic, industries thought that there had to be a “business case” due to the high costs involved.

But the feedback from the, business-wise, basically, until there is a large price put on carbon they’re not going to be going there. I mean, it cost big money to pump CO2 down a hole in big volumes so they’re basically saying, unless it is a, driven by a tax, a levy, an economic driver (C3M, Council, Session 1).

Any ongoing discussions, however, were halted by the policy changes already mentioned that meant their actions had to be solely on climate change adaptation.

Where participants found information on CCS

Participants used a variety of sources of information, both online and offline to educate themselves about CCS. Online information usually was found by acting on the results of a Google or Yahoo topic search for CCS (or Lake Nyos in one case), or via deliberate searches for particular organisations associated with CCS or print media. This led participants to the following websites:

CCS operations (CO2CRC, Gorgon, Schlumberger Carbon Service, TCMDA)

Environmental organisations (Greencarcongress, Greenpeace, Heatisonline, Treehugger)

Local and national governments/governmental agencies (IPCC, NZ, UK, US)

Multimedia (YouTube)

Oil companies (Shell, Statoil, TAG Oil)

Online compendiums (Britannica, Wikipedia)

Print media (farming magazines, NZ and UK press, general news)

Research institutes (Carbon Capture Association, CRL, global CCS Institute, GNS Science, Ohio State University)

Of these websites, it was those from government and governmental agencies, in addition to online compendiums (Britannica) that received the most attention (5+1 counts). This is likely due to a participant focus on government policy and legislation for the former, with the prevalence of Wikipedia at the top of any Google search, reader-accessibility and breadth of information explaining the latter. Notably, compendiums such as Wikipedia were noted alongside a range of other sources, always listed first (3 mentions) or high up (2 mentions), suggesting that they were utilised as a gateway site to contextualise the technology. Participants also favoured the websites of companies conducting CCS R&D and pilot studies (5 mentions) and print media (4 mentions).

In terms of search strategies, these varied according to the participant, with U4M from the urban group and C5M from the council group providing some information on their respective methods.

I was always looking for options in positives and negatives (U4M, Session 2, Urban).

C5M: I typed CCS into Google and then I realised that I had to go a little further and type carbon capture storage into Google, that was about it, and clicked on various different reports, and a couple different websites, CCS Association, Global CCS Institute.

Facilitator: Why did you choose those over other sites that came up?

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C5M: Cos they were at the top of the list…They looked very official.

Whilst C5M selected what were thought to be the more “popular” Google searches, he notably quickly justified his action by highlighting the credibility of the sites. However, his search strategy is likely to be a common one, as opposed to exceptional. In addition to this, C5M also accessed some written reports and academic papers available at the TRC.

Offline, some participants discussed the topic of CCS with colleagues, friends and family. The iwi group took their experience of the first session back to the marae for discussion. In particular, there was a once-monthly meeting that night, which participants wanted to use as an opportunity to discuss the issues.

A table of a full list of the diverse range of sources lies below.

Table 2: List of recorded sources consulted during homework exercise.

Information Source Mentions

Wikipedia 5

Hui at local marae 5

Schlumberger Carbon Services 3

GNS Science 2

Google CCS 2

Newspapers – UK 2

NZ govt online 2

Statoil 2

USDEE 2

Britannica.com 1

Carbon Capture Association 1

CEN-online 1

CO2CRC 1

CRL 1

Discussion with peers 1

Discussion with family 1

Discussion with friends 1

Farming magazines 1

Global CCS Institute 1

Gorgon 1

Green car congress 1

Greenpeace 1

Heatisonline.org 1

IPCC 1

Journal article 1

Local government 1

Newspapers – general 1

NRDC 1

Newspapers – New Zealand 1

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Information Source Mentions

Ohio State University 1

Shell 1

Smartplanet 1

TAG Oil 1

TCMDA 1

Treehugger.com 1

UK Govt online 1

Yahoo 1

Youtube 1

Notably, some members of the oil and gas group had actually searched out some of the online documentation that contested the use of CCS as a climate change mitigation measure. For instance, one participant located and cited the Greenpeace Report, which I had deliberately avoided introducing into the focus group discussions before CCS was presented in a factual way. Her reasoning for locating this report is outlined below, and may possibly have been influenced by reading the methodology used in our previous study that I forwarded on before the sessions (Doody et al., 2012).

O1F: I watched some You Tube videos to see how it was done, it was a Shell YouTube video. Basically singing its praises, so that was why I went straight to the Greenpeace because I wanted to get a balanced view, oil companies view of it, Greenpeace view of it but nowhere near as well read, I didn’t even get into the incident.

Facilitator: So you say you wanted to get a balanced view, to what extent did you find you got a balanced view by looking at the two?

O1F: I felt like I had a reasonable understanding of what people who are against it would say and that’s what I wanted to get out of it, you know what are the people who say CCS is a waste of time or it’s no good and I wanted to understand why they said that as well as the seismicity issues and the risk of it staying where its put.

Here, by acquainting herself with the arguments on both sides of the debate, O1F thought that she could gain a more balanced view, get some insight into the issues and understand the rationale of both parties. Another oil and gas participant similarly consulted pro-renewable energy and energy efficiency websites such as Treehugger.com, Heatisonline and Greencarcongress to gain a wider perspective on the issues and options.

What participants found about CCS

The kinds of information that participants located and discussed are important to this project. Since the instruction to people was to go away and conduct some research on what they might want to know in the event that a CO2 storage facility was planned in their area, this research should reveal to some extent, what people were either interested in or concerned about.

As previously stated, a good majority of participants looked for online examples of CCS pilot projects such as Otway, Scotland and Shell’s Quest project in Canada. Whilst participants were looking for examples of pilot projects to seek general information about them, and potentially their impact on the

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local communities, one of the O&G industry group picked up on costs and issues of long term liability; two issues notably of importance to the industry itself.

Two of the local community group members referred to the work of GNS Scientists; in particular: “Brad Field’s other scientific papers on the subject” and Rob Funnell’s study on the “Potential for geological sequestration of CO2 in New Zealand”.

Council participants engaged in some “general” research into CCS, alongside devising an action plan to implement a legislative process around it. However, local government websites proved to be “not much joy” for one participant (U3F, Urban Group, Homework Sheet), suggesting that they were lacking in useful or available information for the general public.

What was noticeable was that participants did not just seek information specifically about CCS, but also searched for sites outlining alternative approaches to climate change mitigation and particularly, alternative ways of sequestering and using atmospheric carbon dioxide.

O1F, the oil and gas participant who read the Greenpeace Report (REF), tended to agree with some of its findings.

O1F: I got a little bit diverted on my research I ended up looking at some Greenpeace documents saying basically that carbon capture and storage was diverting the attention away from finding other, better alternatives. What does it say…Dead and buried the demise of carbon capture and storage, false hope, I mean obviously that is the side they will always present on anything but it was still very interesting reading.

O3M: I would probably agree with it. I think that’s essentially what O5M is saying as well, it’s not looking it in a [unclear] it’s just simply trying to plug the hole

The findings in this report led directly into some further discussion on the drivers behind CO2 emissions.

Aside from local iwi, three other participants made note that they had discussed global warming and CCS with family, friends or acquaintances. One participant was greeted with the comment, “well if there is such a thing as climate change” (F5F, Farmers, Session 2). Another noted down the differences between these communications.

General discussion with acquaintances (They are not particularly well-informed. Showed mild concern about possible global warming, but not too concerned. Generally considered a warmer Taranaki would not be all that bad) (U3F, Urban, Homework sheet).

Farmer friends are in general agreement that they could like simple, easy-to-read on what they can do, on a practical level, to keep CO2 emissions as low as possible. If CO2 reduction is not too time-consuming, or costly, most are willing to make the effort. (Note – they will do their bit voluntarily, but not happy with compulsion/costly compliance. Would help if they could take home some financial benefits, including tax deductions) (U3F, Urban, Homework sheet).

Another participant from the urban group stated that family and friends were concerned about CO2 leakage; yet another from the farmers group relayed a more equivocal picture.

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But I talked a lot to other people about it, what they thought, and you know I went to this interesting meeting the other night and told them what it was about and I said what do you think? And everyone, bar; no-one was just worried about it leaking back out again. But when you sit down and talk to them about, ‘well, okay, so you don’t think we should do it’, and, ‘no, no ‘cause it might leak out, so we shouldn’t do it’. But it’s leaking out now. It’s going into the atmosphere; we actually make them understand that that’s actually what’s happening now there’s only a possible positive side to it, apart from the financial (F4M, Farmers, Session 2).

Here, F4M pointed out difficulties of perceiving a new technology when no or little information was available; and hence, also the importance of in-depth discussion around an issue. This insight was very similar to that which emerged in the previous GNS study (Doody et al., 2012), where initially, some participants perceptions of CCS could swing widely from one extreme to another.

What they thought about this information

Participants who searched the web were generally satisfied with the quantity of information available online. Responses noted on the anonymous feedback survey about the quality and integrity of this information, however, were mixed.

Only used the web, which we all know contains reliable information as well as complete rubbish. Existing knowledge of CCS and geology helped filter the good from the bad.

I used the internet and found that it had some good information. That seemed to be confirmed in the discussion.

Need to be careful at looking at the web as there is questionable material present, in terms of accuracy. Any sources that have high standards and a peer review process are acceptable.

These comments paralleled those within the focus groups themselves. For instance, F3M, from the farmers group was satisfied with the amount of available information, but not its consistency.

There’s a lot of information there but such a wide range of variables. Like there’s no, to me, there’s no real accurate information, you know like they’d give percentages that might vary between 20 and 90 % and that type of thing… anything from what’s being emitted to the cost of re-injecting it, the data around whether it’s going to be safe, there wasn’t anything that was really, I didn’t think that was really concrete you know (F3M, Farmers, Session 2).

Whilst his general feeling was that the information was far from concrete, another participant contextualized, clarified and explained the 20–90% variability as referencing the potential increase in power (and hence cost) needed to run the CCS operation, which would vary between sites.

F5F, also from the farmer’s group did not have time to use the Internet, but was highly skeptical about what counted as “credible science”.

I had intended to look on the internet ‘cause I do Google just about everything, but I would probably look at a lot of stuff with a bit of skepticism unless I knew where the real science was coming from. So for me I’d want to see credible science around it…I guess looking at examples on the internet would be interesting but you do also get a lot of misinformation on the internet (F5F, Farmers, Session 2).

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For F5F, actually getting the correct facts and “real science” meant interacting with real scientists, as opposed to written online interpretations of science, but she was aware that these interactions were limited by their small scale. Alternately, as the next best measure for people who had some scientific training (and time to “troll through it”), F8F from the farmers group added that she would like to have more access to articles from ‘peer-reviewed’ journals, which she could read first-hand, as opposed to see in citation form.

Overall, participants juxtaposed the simplicity of sites such as Wikipedia, with spring-boarding into official CCS sites and online government information portals. For those whose science literacy was limited, the breadth of ways the information was presented offered some assistance in understanding it. For instance, one woman in the farming group found diagrams to be the most accessible form of information:

The thing that I found when I did the research was it was really good to go in and see some, I found some really good diagrams, and I think for me it’s kind of simple, not having a science mind. I mean when it comes to equations and that sort of stuff. My son’s got a science degree and if I see anything that’s a bit complicated I just kind of ask him, but it was really good. But so it sort of gave me a general idea of what it was (F6F, Farmers, Session 2).

Here, condensing the information into a diagrammatic form translated the detail into something that F6F could use as a basis from which to understand the concept.

For a number of participants, internet research revealed to them that CCS was a broader and complex topic than they had imagined. As one participant from the urban group said, “I thought I had an idea, but I certainly didn’t”. This led to more extensive internet searching, with the same participant adding “more bits and pieces as I read it” to “remove my ignorance”.

Within the urban group, there was also a brief discussion over how much knowledge you needed to make and support what U5F called “a solid stance” on the issue of CCS. One participant thought that it was important to remain quiet, and “listen” until you had enough knowledge and credibility to support such a stance.

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7. Stakeholder perceptions of CCS I think the biggest thing the public really would be interested in is safety, would have to be one of the main features to come up with all that. That's just human reaction; if you're gonna do this: is it safe? (U6M, Urban, Session 2).

Following the international literature on perceptions of CCS, the main issues that emerged through dialogue were: geological risk and safety, the competency of existing regulatory frameworks, responsibility, cost of the technology, long-term liability and accountability, the need for monitoring and its reinforcement, the community’s desire to be informed about what is happening from the outset and what benefits could there be for the region. Whilst similar perceptions arose from this study, there were some unique differences and underlying factors that specifically influenced these perceptions.

Even though CCS was couched under the rubric of CO2 emissions and the Greenhouse Effect, throughout session two discussions, there was very little reference to climate change at all. Instead, the dominant influencing factor on how CCS was perceived and understood was experience with (and participation in) the oil and gas industry in the area. This chapter outlines the full range of risk perceptions, alongside some important local, regional and national issues that played a role in defining them. I begin with the very concept of CCS.

CCS – the concept

As a means to mitigate climate change, and one of a spectrum of complimentary options, some participants thought that CCS was a viable option. For instance, U3F from the urban group thought that CCS, in theory, was a “sensible” response to climate change mitigation, and O5M from the oil and gas group thought that it was important to mobilise these kinds of technologies for the sake of the planet.

If as I say the Carbon Capture and Storage is as proposed this seems to me to be a sensible alternative in the meantime and it avoids a knee jerk reaction where suddenly everybody goes ahh, you know we've gotta do this or we've gotta do that and they make mistakes. That's why you've gotta progress slowly. Avoid making mistakes and should this go ahead there needs to be some sort of careful monitoring and regulation as much as we can (U3F, Urban, Session 2).

In terms of, I believe that for the planet and everything yes we should be moving ahead with these technologies but I just don’t think there is, everything comes back to the dollar at the end of the day and if that driver isn’t there, it’s just not going to happen (O5M, O&G, Session 2).

In the council group, C2M was supportive of CCS from the perspective that it was worth exploring as a means to tackle climate change: “It is definitely worth looking at. Definitely.” However, others wanted to make sure it was a “viable” option in terms of cost versus benefits. There were also initially some queries about the technicalities of deep well injection and a “myriad of things”, as well as recognition that CCS had its “limitations”.

And potentially again I guess only, essentially at the source of the emissions, so it’s obviously got limitations, but no doubt I’m assuming that there are situations where it is feasible…I guess, that the reservoirs where you’re going to store the stuff is actually somewhere near the source of your emission (C1M, Council, Session 2).

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Hence, there was an early recognition of the dilemma of geographical disparities between suitable capture and storage sites and the issues that could arise from this.

An important point that emerged from the council session was the recognition that the Taranaki region was a suitable location for a CCS storage site, from a number of perspectives.

I mean we’ve got the infrastructure here, that’s the, you know, we’ve got the basic infrastructure to be the disposer of it here if the conditions are appropriate, or to deal with it and ship it somewhere else. Cos you’ve got all the pipeline infrastructure as Scientist 2 was talking about. And I mean, with the decline of hydrocarbon resources you’ve potentially got underground capacity to replace them with something else. So you’ve probably got a, if anywhere in NZ, you’ve got a pretty strong business case to deal with the issue of injection, deal with the associated issues of having to abandon those facilities, and the high costs of that (C2M, Council, Session 2).

I mean you’ve got a whole lot of alignments with regulation, capacity of workers, capacity of regulators, the kit, you know you’ve got, and maybe thrown in with where the discussion went, is if something if accidents did occur it was potentially less, less environmental effects (C2M, Council, Session 2).

Another member of this group added that: “It’s hard for me to say what I think of it as an idea when I don’t know what the alternatives are” (C1M, Council, Session 2), reinforcing the need to introduce CCS as part of a range of options to address our burgeoning level of atmospheric CO2. However, theoretically, the concept did make sense to him.

Well when someone talks about it, it doesn’t set off alarm bells and I go oh shit what about that, oh shit what about this, you know it’s kind of a oh yeah carbon dioxide, going into the ground, in places where gas has been stored for a million years, carbon dioxide is less dangerous than the stuff that we took out of there in the first place as far as I know, that had managed to hold all those kind of things (C1M, Council, Session 2).

One of the participants in the urban group had conducted some extensive research on CCS, but came back with more questions than answers. In particular, he tried to imagine what would constitute one million tonnes of carbon dioxide, and realised that this was a difficult image to conjure up.

1 million tonnes of CO2, I'm trying to visualize what that actually looks like, what that is, one million tonnes. It's a huge amount. I'm having difficulty visualizing that and comparing that to what we might omit here (U4M, Urban, Session 2).

Another one of the urban session participants thought that even during the second session, with little social interaction between people of differing opinions, “it’s pretty hard at this stage to give any black and white myself”.

The oil and gas group thought that CCS should be considered, and was not a “high risk” project, but was a very costly way of addressing CO2 emissions. For instance, from a technical perspective, one of the engineers was extremely fascinated with the concept, but concerned about the economic viability of such innovation.

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From an Engineers point of view it’s quite exciting, stimulating exercise I guess but echoing the others again it all comes back to economics on the whole thing and to be quite honest with you I don’t see anybody doing this off their own back unless it’s a company owned by Richard Branson or somebody like that, that seems to have plenty of money and all the will in the world. It’s not until it’s forced upon us, i.e. legislated or know the Carbon credit price goes up or whatever that’s going to really encourage people to get into it I don’t think it all comes back to the economics for me that’s the part that scares me the most (O5M, O&G, Session 2).

O5M was far from being alone in this concern over cost, and the next section reveals some of the issues that arose during a myriad of discussions in different groups.

Cost of CCS

The main concern about CCS, other than leakage, was its high cost, both in terms of the economy, and the power requirements for the entire process. As F1M from the farmers group put it:

It’s going to be the old recycling argument if it takes twice as much oil to process the product like made plastic, then you’re actually spending more effort to get rid of it (F1M, Farmers, Session 2).

There was a view from participants such as F6F from the farmers group that this was like, “chasing your tail”. Namely, that there were no gains in terms of CO2 reduction if large amounts of power were required for the process. However, after some discussion, other participants raised the point that if this was the case, why would businesses even consider it?

Whilst participants, including the New Zealand oil and gas representatives, were concerned about the high cost of CCS, there was some discussion about international drivers for its deployment. One of these drivers was seen as early action in the face of potential future legislation that would enforce such mitigation measures. The farmers were familiar with a number of science speakers, and F4M referred to what he had learnt from one of them.

It’s interesting one of the things that Paul Gilding was saying the other day about big companies that do this sort of thing they think it’s going to be, they’re going to be compelled to do it in years to come, so they think, ‘we’ll pre-empt that and get onto it now before we have to’. Once they’ve made that big investment then they actually encourage the rules to change to push you into doing that because then they’ve got a competitive advantage against their competitors who haven’t done it, so that’s how it sort of sells (F4M, Farmers, Session 2).

By far the most discussion about cost was from the oil and gas group, with CCS viewed as a “very expensive way of dealing with the problem” of climate change. O3M, for instance, thought that if New Zealand deployed CCS, without general international legislation on CO2 emissions, “all you’re doing is creating poverty in New Zealand”. More succinctly, he used the following rationale.

I mean if you force, and 80% sequestration, it’s all very nice, but if you do that in isolation in New Zealand is create an economic nightmare scenario for New Zealand as a whole compared to the rest of the world. If it’s something on a global scale then that’s a different ball game (O3M, O&G, Session 2).

However, further down the line, with enforcing legislation in place, a marginal field that contained high levels of CO2 could theoretically become economically viable.

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This led into some discussion in the oil and gas group about carbon credits, which at the time, were $3 per tonne, in New Zealand, compared to Australia’s (now abandoned) tax of $26/tonne. O4M thought that currently, these credits were globally ineffective; in Australia, it was actually cheaper to ignore it, and buy some carbon credits leaving it as a failed incentive to curb emissions.

The oil and gas group also had considerable discussion on the role of the consumer in producing this CO2 in the first place; namely, that we all drove our cars to work and to the meeting that day. There was an overwhelming feeling in this group that we should be addressing the “root cause” of climate change, and focusing research on technologies that did not pollute at source.

I think we should be treating the problem at the root cause rather than trying to clean up the mess after really so you know let’s look at alternative ways of transport. We are so reliant on natural gas for a lot of our energy, are there alternatives out there rather than having to, to capture the CO2 and then deal with that problem (O5M, O&G, Session 2).

Politics of CCS

A big question that is consistent through the little New Zealand-based research on CCS (see Doody et al., 2012) is: do we need to do it here? The question is inherently as much a political one, as it is an ethical one. In this research study, one of the farming group had found an online description of CCS that positioned New Zealand as a low contributor to international greenhouse gas emissions, and one whose CCS contribution would make very little difference on an international scale. This led her to the question: “what is the relevance of that, to us, in terms of how much do we need to do here?” (F6F, Farmers, Session 2).

Another concern that arose in the farmers group, based on experiences with expanding oil and gas exploration in the region, was that CCS facilities could also have an accumulative effect.

F3M: Yeah, and in the long term, like what we said at the moment it’s just the tip of the iceberg, in the long term it’s going to affect, I said before at the moment it affects a very small number of people, but that is going to, because of the accumulative effect of it it’s just going to get bigger and bigger and more people are going to be effected. And I see the same with the carbon capture, you know initially we’ll be talking about injecting one well here but as we produce more CO2 it’s going to get bigger isn’t it.

F1M: More places, and got to multiple sites, an old site will shut down and a new site will start.

Whilst this did not involve any immediate discussion around the availability of suitable storage sites, there had been earlier concerns about enforcement of the process through legislation. This conversation also diverged into the difficulties of transporting CO2 from capture to storage site.

F8F, from the farmers group, wanted to know the drivers for countries who had engaged in CCS projects; a question which is answered in APPENDIX VIII. In response to the explanation, she summarised one of the drivers in Europe (public opinion) with a now-familiar phrase: that businesses need a “social license to operate”.

U5F, from the urban group, was concerned that CCS had actually come too late, as a tool to reduce CO2 emissions at source.

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Do you not think that this should of all been done like 30–40 years ago, you can’t tell me that scientists with all their knowledge didn’t know that coal and everything’s going to be letting off all these emissions and the more traffic, the amount of money that goes into research and development from the government and companies that the long term plan should’ve been put in place years ago instead everybody rushing to do it now. If we’re rushing to do it now, mistakes are made because and then you’ve got the economic side of it and then you’re going to have to put the pipelines in how much land is that going to take out, it’s all just a rush, rush, rush at the moment. 2030 you know, it should have been 30–40 years ago. Forward thinking all these emissions are coming out we’re going to have to have something in place so in 2030 it’s basically gone (U5F, Urban, Session 2).

U5F was also concerned, similarly to participants in the previous study (Doody et al., 2012) that with CCS as an implementable option, companies would use it as an excuse for continuing their extraction and use of fossil fuels.

If this does go ahead, that, do you not think that a lot of companies and/or government are going to say oh well we've got somewhere to stick it now, there is not so much of a hurry to stop it and they'll procrastinate and just leave it and leave it and leave it until the maximum amount of time instead of finding the research and development to get it done as quickly as possible. The storing it. We've got somewhere to put the CO2 so we don't need to worry about doing as much as quickly (U5F, Urban, Session 2).

However, whilst this parallels reactions to the Shell/ICL video (Doody et al., 2012), the current sessions with industry provided a different perspective. CCS was too expensive to be viable in current conditions, alongside a slew of reasons that were delivered to all stakeholder representatives in the final session. This marks a clear difference between perceptions from the first study and what the industry representatives who we talked to in New Zealand actually said, that can predominantly be attributed to introducing people to CCS via the use of a “corporate” video.

Community participants had delved into the economic conundrum in their online research, citing examples from overseas. For instance, F2M from the farmers group pointed out the difficulty of piping CO2 from its source (power station/industry) to a suitable storage location.

Just one of the ones was the actual, getting the gas to a suitable site to pipe it back down again. And my scenario was, to capture a quarter of the emissions, it would need a pipeline system that could transport twice as much crude oil so it’s a massive cost to get it from where it’s processed to pipe it back down, and that was in Scotland. Yeah so they said it was uneconomic to do it, it just wasn’t economic to process it and it wasn’t even about the carbon emission it was more about the cost of the pipeline and what it took to yeah (F2M, Farmers, Session 2).

On the other hand, U4M conveyed the need for a consistent political imperative; one that was not reconstituted every three years after a change in Government.

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See something like this if you’re talking about a political imperative here something like this if it’s that significant it needs a [unclear] approach to it and that's the difficulty in the 3 year electoral cycle. Use these things are points of difference rather than points of concurrence and that’s your challenge, isn't it, really, so legislation you know will change it when we get it, you know, the greens and the. I'm not putting my flag up the mast but I'm saying if this is really important I believe education is really important and it shouldn't become a battle field every 3 years, you know but it does and this is also significant in terms of our planet and you know it needs them to work together, collaborate collectively with an agreed position going forward working with the people who know the science (U4M, Urban, Session 2).

Here, U4M highlighted the intertwining of science and politics; accentuating the extent to which science is always embedded in a political context and hence, politicised.

Alternatives to CCS

A number of alternatives to CCS were brought up during the second focus groups sessions. For instance, F3M and U4M raised the topic of algal synthesis.

So there were a couple of other processes that I read about, algal synthesis, they can store CO2 in membranes and turn it into animal feed and plastics and stuff (F3M, Farmers, Session 2).

Well you know I understand that you could potentially use the CO2 for algae, mass marketing and turning it into biofuels. I’ve read something you see (U4M, Urban, Session 2).

Similarly to the oil and gas group, U5F looked to individual emissions-cutting actions such as car-pooling or public transport.

Its agriculture, is probably most of it, or at least 40–50% of it. That’s what New Zealand is, we’re an agricultural country. There’s probably not a lot you can do to change that. But in the cities, with their transport they should be looking different ways, if people – you have to carpool, you have to use public transport, you cannot take 1 car with 1 person, it’s as simple as that (U5F, Urban, Session 2).

Whilst these actions were also discussed in the context of climate change, they interestingly recurred when talking about CCS.

CO2: a ‘natural’ waste product

The framing of CO2 was an important factor when it came to evaluating CCS. Whilst it was viewed by many as a natural phenomenon, essential to life on earth, it was simultaneously perceived by many as a “waste product”, creating something of an interesting conundrum with associated perceptions being based on how it was produced and used.

CO2 occurs naturally, that’s just been what’s happening over the earth for as long as it’s been around, that’s a moot point as far as I’m concerned because you’re just adding it back into the ground (U5F, Urban, Session 2).

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So when you start talking about waste, well actually CO2 in this context is talked about as a waste, but CO2 is also a part of life…The trees need it, the plants need it. So it’s a building block, but what we’re talking about in this instance here because we’re doing an activity like burning fossil fuels, being the CO2 is in a different form that’s actually, we need to manage better (I4M, Iwi, Session 2).

With CO2 viewed as a waste product of industrial society, the issue of how to appropriately manage it, as well as to prevent its accumulation were the topic of some conversations.

In his discussion on alternatives to CCS, F3M was concerned about what would count as true solutions to raised CO2 levels, compared to simply relocating the problem (in this case, underground).

F3M: It just seemed to me it was a process that got rid of the problem it wasn’t a process that shifted the problem somewhere else.

Facilitator: So would you see CCS as a process of shifting the problem somewhere else?

F3M: To a degree yeah you know sort of

F5F: Well you’re literally just burying it so you’re not actually getting rid of anything you’re just hiding it.

F8F: But you’ll never get rid of it there’s the same amount of carbon in the world as there was at the beginning

F2M: Yeah I guess I’m probably saying do we need more of it underground though, then we’re just pushing it back down to the ground again which is, yeah yeah, but there’s a whole process involved and is that a good thing? We don’t know whether, you know, by pushing it back down again is a good thing or in the future we’re talking hundreds of years, here, you know, we’re not talking next year, you know.

Facilitator: What do other people think about that?

F4M: I just think that’s where it came from anyway.

F7M: Probably the same as F4M, like basically we need to have less in the environment, in the air, so if it is pushed down into the ground hopefully we get back to say like if you look at the literature pre 1970’s level you know like it started lifting after that time. So if we bury it into the ground, but then I have concerns about is that going to ‘cause a problem, but we’re actually causing a bigger problem by having it above ground, so that outweighs that like a risk factor.

This emphasis on shifting the problem of CO2 emissions to another location, as opposed to solving it parallels once again, the metaphor that arose during the previous research project; that of sweeping the problem under the carpet (Doody et al., 2012). However, in response to this discussion, F2M raised an interesting question: could the underground storage of CO2 lead to unforeseen problems in hundreds of years? Once again, the problem-solution-problem cycle, characteristic of a Risk Society (Beck, 1992) was referenced. However, as F7M further pointed out, was the “bigger problem” likely to stem from underground storage of CO2 or via the impacts of non-action?

There was a concern in the urban group that owing to its geological and economic suitability, Taranaki could become a dumping ground for the rest of New Zealand. This was supported by an example straight from the fracking debate.

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U4M: The geology of our country means that certain areas are more predisposed to carbon capture than others, if you're talking about putting it down into the..... Taranaki is one of those. We could become the dumping ground, in a sense, couldn't we?

Scientist 2: Realistically that is a difficult option to get it from somewhere else.

U4M: The East Coast trucking over all their fracking stuff over to here.

Scientist 2: Yeah, but that's actually pretty minor. Its relatively small quantities compared to this.

U4M: Well it is if it's managed well, but if it is not managed well it doesn't become minor any more does it.

This framing of CO2 as a waste product that was “dumped” underground seemed to gain some ground during the progression of the research. It could have followed the previous GNS study, where CCS was seen through the metaphor of sweeping waste under the carpet, or in parallel to permanently dumping waste at a landfill site. However, the framing was mobilised in an entirely different way by the iwi group, in an ethic that permeated discussions in the final multi-stakeholder forum. That ethic was kaitiakitanga, which is discussed in detail in the next section, and played a pivotal role in the way iwi responded to CCS.

Kaitiakitanga: taking care of our waste

After a hui at the local marae that occurred between the first and second sessions, participants in the iwi group reported back that they were supportive of CCS on the basis that we should take care of our

‘waste’. To one participant in the second session, this seemed to be “common sense”, but also appealed

to his cultural values.

I4M: And what we just talked about before, where it actually makes more sense if we are taking the stuff out of that one hole, that when that hole is no longer being, you know it’s no longer useful for taking the oil and gas out, then it makes sense we inject the waste back down again. I mean that I can grab totally, and I’m on board with that. So that sort of works in line too with how, I mean if you were to look at how, how I suppose our Māori communities, or even if you talk about our te kohanga [unclear] and all that type of stuff, is how we manage waste if we make it, then we actually have to look after it. And so this thing where we had this discussion around moving those oil wastes around the country it doesn’t make sense; culturally it doesn’t sit well with Māori. It’s because of that stuff, if we make the waste then we are actually responsible for looking after it. So this thing that we’re talking about here if you take it out of this hole and you put it back down in that same area, that’s why I said it makes more sense to us, or certainly makes more sense to me (I4M, Iwi, Session 2).

Facilitator: What do the rest of you think?

I2M: I reckon that’s a better idea by putting it back. What you take out and put back, that’s more or less giving our ground more energy again.

This emphasis on taking care of our waste was related to the Māori concept of kaitiakitanga, understood as an ethic of caregiving, guardianship and environmental sustainability. To elucidate, I4M explained this in more detail after an enquiry by the facilitator.

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Facilitator: Are there any other ways you’d explain it to us?

I4M: So it’s, for me, it’s all about sustaining our natural wellbeing. You know that’s a principal that we have and then every action we do after that you actually have to consider, that world out there. And what are the effects of your activity or your whānau, your hapu, your iwi, your marae, that type of stuff. What are the effects that are you having on them? What are you doing to actually minimise any risks that are happening there? So it’s all that all those things that you guys get taught in universities; it’s about, environmental concerns. I mean it’s something that is sort of, almost I don’t know whether it’s drilled into us, or it’s there, or we’re told about it, but it’s that duty of care that we have, so that’s that caregiving, that duty of care that we have to actually maintain the natural world to either to where its present level is or even better than what it is. Because at the end of the day what we have now doesn’t actually, it’s not for us; it’s for our future generations still to come. And even if that concept is, everything we do now is because of those future generations.

Facilitator: So, I6F, you had something to add?

I6F: I was just going to say so that we could put that, wellbeing, in there because that would be the biggest and most important thing out of the whole situation.

The outcome here, was that kaitiakitanga was also about sustaining our natural wellbeing; the outcome of taking care of the environment.

More specifically, to explain the concept more thoroughly, one of the upcoming Māori leaders made specific reference to a whakatauki or proverb that epitomised this thinking:

When the Totara falls at the hands of a man, the man must help to grow the seed. So I think that’s the concept that Māori have and so it’s very important for us to uphold. ‘Cause I mean these things were said by our ancestors, you know, so they’re our guides to, in the way that we will follow through with what they’ve given us, ‘cause they are guidelines and they are principals, the rules really for us to follow as kaitiaki of the whenua. So I suppose when we talk about resubmitting that back into the, into the whenua, the recycling process, I think that’s probably definitely something positive that our people would actually support....If you take something, you always put it back. And that’s our culture, that’s our heritage, that’s our belief (I5M, Iwi, Session 2).

Whilst this was a Māori principal that for participants under-laid all plans and subsequent actions, Kaitiakitanga was also raised in the urban community group, with one participant finding some resonance with his own way of thinking.

I like the notion Kaitiaki; we are caretakers and we've got to do stuff, we got to do, pretty quickly and I know we can't change the world but we can certainly change what we do individually and then collectively (U4M, Urban, Session 2).

Like the whakatauki, U4M associated the principal of Kaitiaki with action; on an individual and collective level.

I4M pointed out that the same Māori values also underlay western science, revealing some workable compatibilities between the two mind sets. However, he thought that in practice, the two languages and value systems, albeit similar, were never fully integrated.

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The ideas that we have or the way that we express things as Māori is no different to how Western science thinks of looking after things. They actually mirror each other it’s just the way that we express them are a little bit different. But when you look at the core principles and values that we have they actually mirror each other…So it’s not just ensuring that our values are being recognised but is also, I’m pretty much sure, that those values and principals are actually the same, just like I say different ways of expressing them (I4M, Iwi, Session 2).

One of the key differences was that as kaitiaki, or caretakers, responsibility was for taking care of your own waste at a local and regional level, which did not extend to taking responsibility to that of the nation or at an international level.

Scientist 2: So the concept of waste you create or something comes from the area, the region, should be returned to it. What about from somewhere else?

I4M: This is where we start crossing those lines, this is where it becomes culturally insensitive

Scientist 2: So you would, again, you would have an issue with something coming from this area and being asked to be put somewhere else, and similarly something coming from here, okay that’s fine.

I2M: You don’t take anybody else’s

I5M: It’s not ours to hold, it’s theirs.

That final sentence, ‘it’s not ours to hold, it’s theirs’ very neatly sums up the attitude that whilst once released into the atmosphere, waste gases such as CO2 transcend all boundaries, the issue for emissions control should be addressed at a local level.

In sum, if Taranaki utilised CCS to take care of their own CO2 emissions, this would be perceived as a form of environmental responsibility, adhering to the ethic of kaitiakitanga, adding value to the regional identity. However, this responsibility did not extend beyond the region, nor should it; as I5M said: “It’s not ours to hold; it’s theirs”.

Offshore VS onshore

Not unexpectedly, among the majority of stakeholders, there was a preference for any CO2 storage facility to be located offshore.

I think people would probably accept it better if it was offshore because it’s got all this water on top of it, it may make no difference whatsoever but people’s perception may well be that the water’s going to help hold it under (F4M, Farmers, Session 2).

Well for me it’s a likely spot that we should look at given its offshore, so the potential impact if something did happen, given that it’s twelve nautical miles plus offshore, the impact to us here is actually quite minimised (I4M, Iwi, Session 2).

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You moved off, off discharging carbon off the coast quite quickly and I think the obvious thing there is you’re taking it away from having a private property owner, and being close to somebodies dwellings or dwelling. So some of the oil and gas sensitivities are around, where do people live? And how close are they to the activity? So once you’re off the coast it’s a whole different basket of sensitivities to on the land (C4M, Council, Session 2).

Logically, following I4M, this made sense if viewed from the perspective of potential impacts to the immediate environment and community. It also made sense, in general, as U6M from the urban group pointed out:

Like reclaiming oil; the scarcer it gets the further you go, and the more expensive becomes viable. If this became a real problem you could probably foot the expense and have to move out into the ocean (U6M, Urban, Session 2).

The offshore possibility led to some debate within the urban group. As one participant pointed out, the environmental impacts of an offshore leak into the ocean could be more catastrophic and unpredictable.

U5F: I think there'd be more risk having it offshore.

Facilitator: What kind of risk, do you think?

U5F: I think the ocean is quite unpredictable, you know. If something happens then you've got the danger to marine life. What would happen if it leaked in the ocean?

U4M: Acidity would change…

However, after some discussion about the relative locality of detrimental effects and preventative action, U5F eventually concluded: “I think if it’s monitored properly it probably sounds like it would be reasonably safe”.

Nevertheless, based on experience with off-shore oil spills, participants also recognised that it might be harder to control and predict the outcomes of any potential leakage. Reference was made to the impact on coral reefs of ocean acidification, reflecting an understanding about the complex ecosystem surrounding an offshore installation. Moreover, one participant in the council group raised the resultant “spiritual issues” for “iwi and recreationalists”.

What one council participant called an “interesting twist” to the offshore possibility, was a recent bill that had just gone through Parliament. If the storage facility was located less than twelve miles out, in the coastal marine area, iwi would have the right to pass or fail a resource consent before the council even received it.

However, logistically, there were technical problems with near-depleted oil fields such as Maui. This was pointed out by one of our scientists, as well as during the oil and gas sessions.

One of the considerations with existing oil and gas fields is the old oil and gas wells are typically the casing cement they use isn’t what they call CO2 resistant, so it’s a problem. So for large old oil and gas fields there’s a lot of work would be done in re-casing all of them, with CO2 resistant cement (Scientist 2, Iwi Session 2).

The theme of technical difficulties featured strongly in the oil and gas preference for onshore CCS. Offshore was considered to be “technically much harder”, “expensive” and “doesn’t make sense unless you’re already there” and have a “unique big source” with spare capacity for storage.

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Just offshore was deemed as technically easier than 100-metres offshore, but still difficult to drill. The only advantage that one participant could see was that of “public perception” – the installation couldn’t be seen and nor would any potential damage to the biota be visible at the surface as it would with an onshore operation, should there be any high level leakage. However, this was still considered to be low probability, with the more likely scenario being low-level “bubbling” of gas.

One final, but important consideration was that of public protest. F6F, from the farmers group, logically correlated this to the onshore-offshore debate. Her argument was that whilst any onshore facility would solely impact on a local community, and hence involve geographically localized “noise”. Alternately, she surmised that an offshore site, involving New Zealand’s oceans, would extend beyond NIMBYism into a national debate.

I would suspect just given the reaction around the room, about you know it’s out in the sea and it’s everybody’s thing and not in our backyard is that, you know that’s the initial reaction but I would say that if you were going to do something like this in the sea you would get a lot more noise because everybody would kind of see that nationally is some sort of bad thing to do. Whereas you do a group of people in [unnamed location] or whatever, you get very localised sort of stuff going on (F6F, Farmers, Session 2).

F5F concurred, and thought that an onshore site only impacting on a few people (with maximum impact) might actually be considered overall, to be the “minimum impact” option for a company. Based on her understanding of the current oil and gas conflict around [unnamed location], she suggested that there was some ambiguity over the interpretation of the phrase “minimal impact”.

Logistics and technicalities of CCS

In addition to the cost of CCS, other logistical issues were raised. One member of the urban group was concerned about any capture and storage setup that would require underground pipelines; in part due to the pipelines already in existence, and also due to the restrictions on land use over these pipelines. In the council group, some of the technical issues were raised, that moved above and beyond appropriate legislation, and were likely to be foremost on the minds of the local regulators, should CCS come to the region.

That’s the overwhelming gut feeling I get when I think about it is hey well we’ve got all this infrastructure, you’ve got all the safety regimes, industry standards, you’ve got all that. The big question really is what happens to the stuff underground? And what does it do to the existing infrastructure? So can the pipelines handle it, can the pumps handle it, can it be handled underground? (C2M, Council, Session 2).

In all, there were a number of uncertainties (e.g., subsurface and surface infrastructure), that could be identified and managed.

With parallel technical expertise, the oil and gas participants were interested in the technical viability of CCS. As a consequence, there was some in-depth discussion on this topic. It appeared that the issue of pipelines was just the tip of the iceberg, and the industry group revealed that technically, the current linings of the extraction boreholes were not designed to withstand the relative corrosiveness of liquid CO2. They would have to be re-lined, at expense, to make CCS viable.

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Environmental concerns

The range of environmental concerns, aside from leakage, differed between groups and scale levels. For iwi, protection of the environment in its entirety was paramount to their concerns.

I5M: It’d be definitely maunga, the mountain, wildlife, whenua, rivers, pretty much everything pertaining to the land, I would say.

I6F: Safety wise

I5M: Yeah safety wise, yeah the safety of those things. Like I mentioned as Māori that’s one of our biggest jobs as Māori is to be kaitiaki of the whenua, be the caregivers of the whenua. So that would be my main concern and I’m pretty sure that would be the main concern of iwi.

Most importantly, the impact of any risks associated with the underground storage of CO2 on the maunga, the symbolic locus of the region, was of particular concern:

I suppose my main concern would be our maunga, our mountain. What sort of effects would it have underground for him, being that he is a dormant volcano. Is there any sort of research around those sorts of effects (I5M, Iwi, Session 2).

Considering the symbolic status of the maunga, discussed in chapter three, this concern for ‘his’ safety was not altogether a surprise.

Another environmental concern noted during the farmers’ sessions was noise pollution, particularly during the construction phase, but also from “rowdy” gas compressors. One of the group had first-hand experience of this, living in close proximity to a rig, and relayed that it was impossible to appreciate the impact until you had lived with it. The group agreed that it was not something you associated with living in the countryside, and that many people had moved out there for peace and quiet. Notably, one of the participants pointed out that this was not mentioned in any of the information she had researched.

The oil and gas participants were presented with a scenario, in which potentially, a CCS company wanted to set up an operation proximal to their permit boundary or drilling vertically through their field; namely, to become neighbours. Placed in this situation, with CCS next to what could be referred to as their ‘home patch’, the response was immediate and not altogether favourable. Once again, it was coloured by recent events in the region that concerned the oil and gas industry.

O3M: Well if you think about it if I have my license somebody else wants to do it next door. Then you obliviously do get kind of questions, essentially it’s the same thing that happened in [unnamed location]. Our neighbours screwing up our reputation…[unnamed company].

O5M: ‘Another operator’, I think, is the word for it.

O3M: Those things play a role for me in saying, do I, or would I accept it next door. If you have stratigraphic stuff you have to think about that people will be drilling wells in the area you’re already in, annoying neighbours potentially in the process so not necessarily about the technical issues but you then you got community management issues to manage where suddenly you’ve got accumulative effect from multiple companies drilling the same thing.

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O1F: You all get put in the same basket.

Not surprisingly, this led to a brief discussion about a concern that all oil and gas companies were being perceived as culturally the same, with one company overstepping the line marring all the work that had been put into community engagement by the others. This was eventually categorized as “reputational risk”.

Reputational risks, is you are the organizations here we spent a lot of money on community relationships and those sort of things and there are no regulations stopping another operator coming in and messing things up so whether it be an oil or gas company or CCS company. If they come along and considered to be like us because they are drilling wells and putting things down then we could suffer (O4M, O&G, Session 2).

Moreover, on a “community management” basis, as opposed to a technical one, if a CCS company wanted to inject CO2 above a gas field, O3M said that he might be apt to influence and even block it.

The oil and gas group also pointed out, that similarly to the Gorgon project in Australia, there would be small levels of other contaminants such as methane and hydrogen sulphide (H2S) along with the CO2 that would be injected into the storage reservoir. O4M pointed out that H2S, at 0.2–0.5% volume, was a “significant” level for such a gas, and was concerned that Gorgon were using it as a “dump line”.

Leakage

For most participants, catastrophic leakage of CO2 in their local area was their worst-case scenario and “number one” concern, with low-level leakage and subsequent groundwater contamination also of great importance.

Not surprisingly, with the potential for water and soil contamination already on the radar, groundwater contamination was a particular concern for the farming community.

F8F: Well see I was thinking if the carbon dioxide gets into the water then it can make it acidic cant it? And then you start to dissolve rock or get other minerals dissolving that are leaching into it which could be more toxic than are naturally in the rock, so it’s around knowing, really knowing, where they are going to put it and the geology of the area.

F4M: That’s exactly what Scientist 1 said last time, that’s a possibility, that’s one of the things he raised.

F8F: …I guess I’m thinking that dissolves things, yeah and if it does, if it gets near ground water that then becomes surface water eventually.

Whilst F8F from the farmers group was not present for the first session in which Scientist 1 raised some of the potential, but unlikely risks of CO2 storage, her own scientific knowledge led to the same logical conclusion: that leakage could lead to the acidification of groundwater. Here, it is perhaps useful to reiterate that upfront transparency and discussion around these issues is important, as opposed to community members having to research the risks for themselves and left assuming they have been omitted for a reason.

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As the following excerpt from the farming group reveals, the implications of issues for different segments of the local community should factor significantly in any risk assessment process.

F7M: I did read about somewhere where they thought there was a risk of leakage, I can’t remember, one of the sites, and it just mentioned…so the water was, that’s our life blood really, so, was there a risk of that?

Facilitator: So you say it’s your life blood?

F7M: Well if we ever don’t water…The oil industry might keep going, but the dairy industry or agriculture I should say as a whole would be the end of it, if we have no quality water. Because for one thing it might be stock but the other thing the consumer might reject it as well, you know whether it’s got a, it’s contaminated crops or something like that.

F1M: …..I agree that the biggest risk is any damage to even our reputation of being a clean, green, healthy place to produce food. With marketing anything, perception is reality if the customer deems us not to be as clean and green as we once were. That’s going to affect us, even if it’s not true.

This issue was initially brought up prior to any discussions about CCS, with the premise that the consumer always dictated what was acceptable. As F4M said, “as farmers we are always aware that the customer’s always right. Perception is reality. If they don’t want something then we’ve got to take it out otherwise we’re not going to wise up”. The farmers had already had a prior experience with a nitrogen inhibitor called DCD in their fertilizers that was intended to help improve water quality, but which subsequently ended up being detected in their milk produce with a consequential impact on consumer perception. Risk perceptions were not helped by a journalist who utilised the word “toxic” to describe the chemical traces, and wrote that China had reacted negatively, when this was not apparently the case.

On a practical level, then, any perception of milk tainted by contaminants was perceived to be the ruin of the farmers’ livelihood. It is important to bear in mind the ramifications of the Fonterra tainted milk scandal to appreciate this insightful rationale (Dougan, 2013). In this case, China did react, and for very good reasons. As F5F iterated, it came down to one simple point:

We still have to be able to farm on top of it, so that comes back to the water and if there’s any chance of leaking anywhere, it’s still what’s sitting on top has to be sacrosanct, really (F5F, Farmers, Session 2).

One farmer, again based on his experience of the oil and gas industry, was also concerned about the devaluation of agricultural land values in the mid to long-term future.

Similarly, one of the issues highlighted by the oil and gas participants was a concern over the impact of any CO2 that might enter the groundwater. This was initially raised by one participant, but then continued as a theme throughout, being picked up at different intervals during discussions.

O5M: Going back to what O3M was saying before you know there is the whole acid business, what happens when that’s now injected underground into the aquifers and what have you, what happens to the formation down below. Yes there are technical ways and means but suddenly you start getting into chemicals now and more waste products and other things, it just sort of becomes bigger and bigger from what I can so…

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O4M: You don’t want to be adding CO2 to an active reservoir you will sour it completely

O5M: Absolutely and then you, to fix one problem and that causes you to go to use some method to solve that problem which then in turn creates more problems.

This theme of “problem-solution-problem” (see Beck, 1992) recurred throughout discussions in this project, suggesting that the technology is being strongly correlated to the history of other technologies and human interventions that either failed to achieve their desired outcome or created further, unanticipated problems down the line. Such ‘technological misadventures’ are not uncommon in human history, and correspondingly, taint the evaluation of the new and innovative.

Even with the knowledge that some of the pilot projects have been uneventfully running for 10–15 years and had adequate monitoring programmes, the community risk perception was still raised. Geographical differences, such as ground structure, the need for sufficient information unique to the local area and the overall makeup of the region were important factors, here.

Some participants were concerned about the risk of “explosion” and the “volatility” of CO2, hence paralleling it to natural gas (methane). This suggested that they were unaware that unlike methane, CO2 was a non-explosive gas. Others were concerned about the toxicity of large amounts of CO2 in a catastrophic leakage. Paralleling previous research (Doody et al., 2012), online enquiry had led some participants to the Lake Nyos CO2 disaster in Cameroon.

I think on the leakage thing I think what people are worried about is that there’s going to be an almighty big leakage at some stage. And I read something about, I think it was over in Cameroon or somewhere, where I think 1700 people were asphyxiated through a natural release [of CO2], because of an earthquake or something (F3M, Farmers, Session 2).

Also corresponding to the previous study, F3M attributed the CO2 release to “an earthquake or something”. In reality, the cause was lake-turnover and origin of the gas was volcanic, but this confusion between seismic and volcanic activity (and uncertainty of origin) is a commonality in the research on public perceptions. Most importantly, what participants remembered was the large number of resultant deaths, with F3M later quoting the statistics: “1700 people died” (F3M, Farmers, Session 2).

Whilst the wider community were concerned about the consequences of a high risk event, CO2 leakage was perceived as a “low risk occurrence” by the oil and gas companies, particularly if a depleted gas field was utilized: “That is ultimately where the benefit of the depleted gas reservoir comes from because it is proven to be gas containing and has done for millions of years” (O3M, O&G, Session 2). Namely, a reservoir that has contained a mix of gases, including CO2 for that length of time, without noticeable leakage, is a reliable container for CO2 storage over similar time-scales.

However, whether the calculated risk of leakage was of a low probability, the perceived risk for potentially affected populations was often based on the worst-case scenario, with people then working backwards from this potential outcome. Simply stated in experiential terms, it was a case of, ‘what is the worst thing that could happen to my friends, family and myself’? It is important to remember that when public safety is concerned, the risk is not about the probability of something happening, but the real-life outcome of that event and the impact it would have on the community and local environment. Contextualizing a technology in terms of abstract probabilities, and hence dehumanizing any potential outcomes, could well serve to distance the audience.

However, whilst the potential for leakage of CO2 was seen as low risk by the oil and gas group, percolation into their adjacent field was viewed as a serious matter. These underground fields, it

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appears, do not necessarily sit neatly within the blocks of licensed land, leading to the following potential scenario:

O4M: If somebody is dumping a load a CO2 and it interconnects with your reservoir you would be extremely upset I think it is the nicest way of putting it. If you started to get CO2 percolating through from a technical point of view you would be quite annoyed.

O3M: It would potentially destroy a saleable product into a non-saleable project.

O4M: Absolutely then you’re left with all the waste product…Yeah you’re right communication amongst reservoirs is a real threat. It’s not something that is widely considered here either…It is not clearly defined in regulations.

O1F: Because the permits are just lines on top of a map. Nothing to do with reservoirs.

O4M: Nothing to do with geology at all.

Hence, a brief discussion revealed that there would be significant economic and correspondingly, legal ramifications if this ever should occur.

In sum, participants recognized that there were risks involved, but wanted any company setting up a CCS operation to be clear about them, and the contingency plans that were in place.

Natural disasters: volcanic and seismic activity

The potential for natural disasters and their impact on the underground storage of CO2 was raised in some focus group discussions. For instance, during the second urban session, Mt Taranaki, and the omnipresent danger that it posed, was raised by U5F.

Have they made allowances for the mountain erupting and it’s staying there and it’s not shifting and they have to make allowances for that for a natural disaster. All I can see is that even with this, this is what’s going to happen, it’s all going to be perfectly safe because the scientists say you know, it’s safe. At Kapuni it’s going to be safe because it’s a well there anyway, but there’s been no allowances made

for Mother Nature. It’s a live planet and we’re here for the ride (U5F, Urban, Session 2).

Here, U5F very pointedly raised the importance of recognizing nature as a dynamic, unpredictable system. However, by far the most references were to the risk of earthquakes.

The vast majority of New Zealand residents are experientially aware that we live in a seismically active country. Yet, even with this knowledge, the impact of the Canterbury earthquakes came as an unexpected shock to the nation, with the active, responsible fault-lines only becoming visible after ground movement (geologically known as ‘surface expression’), hence being previously unknown and unmapped. The recent nature of these earthquakes meant that they repeatedly seeped into conversations about the siting of a CCS storage facility in a seismic country.

That’s something we don’t know, there’s obviously studies on faults and stuff but who knows of the scale or that type of thing, it’s an unknown isn’t it? If we said we were going to have a Christchurch earthquake, then they’d always said the potential was there, but until it actually happened…(F2M, Farmers, Session 2).

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In all groups, following the prior research we conducted (Doody et al. 2012), there was a sensitisation to earthquake risk, whether it was from drilling and injecting into bore holes or in this case, safely storing carbon dioxide underground for an unspecified amount of time with the ongoing leakage risks posed by seemingly unpredictable seismic activity.

I’d have a concern being that we do have such things as earthquakes in the area, we do have shakes and the possibilities of them obviously contributing to a leak. And my concern would be the way that the wells are, they’re so close together here in Taranaki especially up in the North. If you see how it looks like they’re building on top of each other, so it’s like if they were to put that back into the earth, well how is it such large, in one little area, how would that affect that area, yeah that concentration in such a small area, how would that really affect it?(I5M, Iwi, Session 2).

Whilst the risk of naturally-occurring earthquakes was undoubtedly of concern, the potential for earthquakes triggered by induced seismicity, notably headlining at the time, was the subject of further discussion around the risks of CCS.

The ‘fracking’ debate: induced seismicity

Hydraulic fracturing, otherwise known as ‘fracking’, has been in operation in the Taranaki region for over 25 years. However, in a matter of months, these normalised practices swiftly took centre stage as the oil and gas industry became embroiled in what became an international debate. Suddenly there was controversy, conflict and the chaos of miscommunication and misunderstanding. Whilst an inquiry by our Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE, 2012) correlated with a quietening of media coverage, a dis-quietening shadow was cast over our discussions on CCS by the national and regional debate on oil and gas operations.

For instance, one participant from the oil and gas industry, drew parallels between the two, particularly in terms of the requirement of a ‘social license to operate’, a buzz-word that is now associated with all controversial science and technology.

...a social license to operate, and with any new technology like carbon capture and storage it is a problem. Fracking became an issue even though we’ve been doing it for probably about fifty to sixty years, though because it...(O4M, O&G, Session 1).

In the second oil and gas session, there was some further discussion about fracking, in the context of community engagement.

O4M: It would be a bit like the current fracking debate, you know, none of us obviously do that here…I mean fracking has caught us all a little bit on the back foot because it’s nice bite size word that various groups have jumped on either though we’ve been doing it and I did check, remember I said 50–60 years and you kind of thought it was 20 no it’s 50–60 years in 1949 in Texas.

Scientist 2: What about New Zealand though?

O3M: ‘89

O4M: So we’ve been doing it a very long time and that caught us a bit on the back foot so he’s given education of what is actually involved, why we’re doing it, what we’re doing it for whereas because we’ve been doing it for so long we didn’t really think that

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anybody’s coming. As you said how long in New Zealand but the fracking came from overseas first and then it came into New Zealand. Everyone’s going oh you know what’s this hydraulic fracturing and that’s our day to day operations we do it quite a lot and you know we’ve had Jan Wright [The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment] and everyone else looking into and is it serious, you’ve got embargos, sorry, moratoriums is the correct word, over in parts of the US and Australia.

Parallels were drawn to hydraulic fracturing practices, such as: the risk of groundwater contamination by dissolved carbon dioxide and not wanting to feel bribed or ‘bought off’ by a CO2 storage enterprise. For instance, as soon as some of the risks were mentioned in the science presentation, one participant in the council group immediately responded with the following:

Scientist 1: So some of the risks associated with CO2 storage are that you could have leakage potentially through a seal upwards say into groundwater. You could have leakage around the edge of the seal up into groundwater. You could have leakage of CO2 up into a fault which if it was ready to go could go so there’s potential for tremors or earthquakes if you were to do that.

C2M: The same issues we’ve been dealing with here with fracking. Exactly the same. With fracking. So what about well integrity?

Scientist 1: Not quite the same.

C2M: Deep well injection and fracking are the, around faults have some more potential outcomes…

Scientist 1: One of the big differences between CCS and fracking is that in fracking you are trying to fracture the rock by increasing the pressure whereas CCS you're trying to keep the pressures below the actual pressure, so you’re trying to not cause fractures...

Moreover, whilst the difference between fracking processes and deep injection of liquidised carbon dioxide was explained by our scientist, there were still concerns about whether the practice would trigger earthquakes (induced seismicity).

During discussions in the council sessions, fracking was described as an experience that was “not enjoyable”. As C2M put it, “It helps understand what we do in terms of what the aim of the whole thing is”. Namely, with CCS perceived as a potentially controversial topic, internationally, there was the potential to run into similar difficulties, misunderstandings, media controversies and distrust. For instance, C4M brought up the issue of induced seismicity.

I suppose there will still be some concerns akin to fracking. People will see the process as being similar, you know obviously it’s not the sort of like vtex type contaminant going into the ground. But are they going to talk about earthquakes for instance? (C4M, Council, Session 2).

To provide some context, C2M recounted their experiences when the fracking debate arose in the region.

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See one thing that really annoys me is that, and it came up through the fracking debate, was we’re people that have served the community for decades right, then all of a sudden on a fracking issue no-one can be trusted, right no-one can be trusted, TRC you can’t be trusted, you know, just absolute compost. So because some people don’t perceive us to be independent, it’s all around independence and integrity right (C2M, Council, Session 2).

Alternately, much of the work the council conducted on this debate was peer-reviewed, meaning that it was checked over by experts. According to the council participants, 99.999% of the time, the reviewers were “happy with your level of competence”, with the occasional recommendations that were followed through.

On the other hand, the council group were extremely unhappy with what was called: “sensationalist media reporting, incompetence of reporters, training of reporters, poor investigative journalism” (C2M, Council, Session 2) that they saw as fuelling this sense of distrust. Moreover, C4M also added that he was concerned that “the consumer” of this reporting did not challenge or inquire into these “snippets of superficial news”, so the journalists went unchallenged. Again, in terms of CCS, this is something important to bear in mind, and for any CCS company, a communications strategy that acknowledges that journalists may also be lacking in scientific literacy around CO2 storage would be a wise place to begin.

However, based on this experience of a controversial practice, with what could be conceived as similar issues to a CO2 storage site (noise from drilling, installation etc.), the council already had in place a general strategy; one that could be adjusted to suit the new context. For instance, one of the “learnings” from the fracking debate was that if required, a series of papers on different issues could be researched and written up.

For fracking we did a whole lot of sub papers around the issue that the public came up with around hydrogeological risk, radioactivity, seismic risk, effects of air discharges (C2M, Council, Session 2).

Notably, the council did this prior to any investigations by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment.

However, it should be stated, that although the hydraulic fracturing debate did enter discussions in a less than positive way, this was not always the case. F6F, from the farming group, highlighted the uniqueness of the pragmatic and community-based outlook of the Taranaki culture. It led her into a discussion on the importance of recognising the difference between perceptions and reality, particularly in reference to the fracking debate.

The whole argument now has been, well, Taranaki’s been using fracking for years and nothing’s happened. But it got into it, came here, before all this kind of awareness of that sort of, you know, people weren’t quite so aware of that. So it is political, it’s social, it’s cultural and sometimes the perceptions and the reality are different (F6F, Farmers, Session 2).

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The politics of home

“It’s so good to touch the green, green grass of home”

Claude Putman Jr.

Even with reassurance from our scientists on the low risk of adverse events and their subsequent management, environmental concerns were not completely diminished. Here, the pivotal factor was the ‘politics of home’; the mountain, the land. These attitudes do not simply stem from NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard), but some contextual and geographical issues need to be acknowledged. The region is more than just a place of residence for participants; it is their ‘home’.

Hence, concerns were also the manifestation of a deep-rooted ‘sense of place’, where the symbolic meaning of ‘home’ was understood in relation to self, family and friends, and the wider region. With this level of ‘place attachment’, any potential threat of environmental contamination also becomes a threat to the regional sense of pride, self-identity and wider social relations (Devine-Wright, 2009).

Discussions with the farmers around compensation and fairness revealed the impact of the unique ‘sense of place’ that participants living in the region drew upon, in making decisions about CCS.

It needs to be community driven, the whole thing needs to be community driven, because it is our community. I’m not about money, I’m not about money for me, I’m about preserving what we’ve got here. We’ve got something pretty unique here in Taranaki and it’s more than money can buy… I think we have a real affinity for the land, for what happens here; the environment. (F3M, Farmers, Session 2).

This statement directly referenced conversations from session one about the uniqueness of the region, described by all participants. And it led the conversation well beyond the depth and complexity it had already reached, into a much deeper motivation driving the need for a fair process. In fact, F6F added to this, that this uniqueness should be preserved and passed onto the community’s grandchildren, a statement that echoed the long-term view of iwi with a focus on future generations.

Whilst the farmers were particularly concerned about regional identity, for the iwi group, having such sites in close proximity to a marae was seen as “nothing new”. It seemed to be viewed in a matter-of-fact way, with references to oil companies already drilling close to or under it.

Facilitator: And what about concerns about having a storage site that could be relatively close to the marae?

I4M: We have that already we have lots of sites close to our marae.

Facilitator: The drilling sites?

I4M: Yeah, yeah, I mean there wasn’t, only a couple of years ago with [unclear] and with the [unnamed oil company] wasn’t it? Drilling down underneath the marae.

I5M: Yeah it’s just underneath their marae

I6F: There’s some up Midhurst there’s some down Ngairie way

Scientist 2: Is that the one up [unnamed location]?

I5M: [Unnamed location], yeah

I4M: So there’s nothing new to us having sites close to, or not just marae but sites of significance like urupa and that kind of stuff, that’s nothing new. And in fact if you look

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at the Pohokura Gas Field, they intended to actually cut up that reef so they could put their pipeline in or drill, and then there was, after some discussion of course, the idea was to drill down and build underneath it, which is far more easier for us but yeah they were talking about digging the whole bloody reef up at one stage. So, you know having facilities in or around our sites of significance it’s nothing new to us. I guess in this stage here and taking from what you said that the scenario of an injection site is probably you’re not going to see it to be its not going to be that great, possibly.

However, whilst the presence of facilities was not viewed as a new or alarming one, any potential noise or aesthetic pollution would generally not be welcomed by any community. However, I4M also pointed out that these facilities had to be sited in someone’s “backyard”.

Scientist 2: And again it’s a common for everybody, it’s like not wanting a huge facility next to them.

I4M: Next to your own place yeah I mean yeah. No real communities going to want that in your backyard, but if we are to have it, then okay we’ve got to put it somewhere.

Whilst I4M recognized that nobody might actually want to host this facility, there was also a realization that it would have to be located somewhere.

Monitoring and emergency planning

With their experience in monitoring industry fields, the oil and gas group considered the kind of monitoring that should be put in place. One participant thought that it was important to monitor seismic activity and leakage, bearing in mind the potential for impacts on a CO2 storage facility. More specifically, to check for potential leakage into groundwater, monitors could be placed in “crestal places” (structural high points in the geological formation) in the “intermediate water layers”, where CO2 might accumulate. O4M provided some more detailed commentary on what would likely occur:

You’d want the regulations in place before you started to have detailed monitoring which would include that seismic profile in a 4D basis plus monitoring wells and we need to have, that’s the most sort of significant long term, you’d also want short term as well (O4M, O&G, Session 2).

‘Short term’ involved talking about surface operators, monitoring truck movement and the infrastructure used for well-drilling. Whilst the surface processes involve pressuring the CO2 into a liquid, as O3M pointed out, “you would try to do it all below fracking conditions, otherwise you know, definitely it is going to leak”. Namely, fracking aims to have a pressure high enough to fracture a rock, but CO2 injection needs the integrity of the rock to remain, in order to strengthen the capability of the reservoir. In order to provide what U3F from the urban group called, “assurance” about the safety of a CCS operation, participants were extremely keen on being informed via monitoring programs. Moreover, I6F, from the iwi group also wanted companies to be held accountable for their actions.

First, the issue of ‘who’ should do the monitoring, universally fell upon the CCS company. However, there were also suggestions by the council group that Government could also be responsible and some community participants wanted to be directly involved.

Second, there was the issue of how long monitoring should continue. As this excerpt from the council group demonstrates, this was far from clear.

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C1M: Well as long as the stuff’s there, there should be some level of monitoring, forever presumably.

C2M: That should be appropriate to the level of risk, so it should be risk based.

C1M: That’s hard to get without specific knowledge about the risk.

C2M: And then there are the associated issues of liability for the stuff and who would pay for the monitoring.

Facilitator: And who do you think should pay for the monitoring?

C2M: The user, Tellus, or the government.

One way of funding this monitoring that was proposed here, was via the interest on “a huge performance bond”, but it was noted that it was important to make sure the bond was “real” as opposed to a “letter of credit” from a bank that would stand for very little, should the company disappear.

Third, there was the issue of what was deemed, “acceptable monitoring”. However, there seemed to be some differences in what would be classified as ‘acceptable’. I4M, from the iwi group, pointed out that it was also important to oversee the monitoring process.

I4M: There should be some sort of oversight too in terms of the monitoring so that you have another group who can actually go in and say yes you’ve done this, yes, yes, in terms of what would you call it?

Facilitator: Double checking?

I4M: Well it’s double checking, it’s almost okay well auditing. You know a checker checking the checkers type of stuff so that you can actually say everybody put their hand on up yes we’ve complied with the social rules.

However, U6M from the community group wanted to know how many checks would be necessary to provide absolute certainty.

Another way of ensuring the checking process was raised in the iwi group: that of allowing community members to participate in the monitoring process.

I5M: So that they know for themselves they feel empowered that they are aware of the movement, they can track it themselves; they can sort of have that sort of information. I would say that would be something that would be.

I4M: That’s a really good point. Allowing the community to actually to participate in the monitoring so that they’re actually a part of the process, and that there’s an exchange of information around even the reports that would come back from the monitors. And I suppose an agreement to meet at certain intervals for the company to report back what they’ve done or what they’re doing.

In response, one of the GNS scientists recounted the process at the Otway site, with a community member as part of the team, who was able to go back to the community to keep them informed about what was happening inside.

Following on from the previous section, the main prerogative for monitoring was to prevent harm caused by leakage. A participant in the urban group wanted to know under what circumstances a detected leak

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would be taken seriously, and was assured by a scientist and another participant that there would be regulations in place that would require remediative action and the follow-through of a pre-devised contingency plan. The importance of these contingency plans was raised in the iwi group, and a desire to have copies of them, to ascertain what to do in “certain situations”. However, based on historical experiences of previous incidents, there was a concern in the urban group that once a consent was given, it might not be held to account.

Fourth, the urban community also wanted the monitoring results to be publically available, in an accessible and understandable format.

U5F: And with them monitoring the results of the monitoring I think they need to be available to the public either on the Internet or in the Library or in the Council if you want to go and have a look and see what the results are or what they've been over the last year you can just go in and have a look.

U3F: With a plain English interpretation.

Such transparency and the translation of the figures into meaningful terms and implications would likely aid in the alleviation of community concerns. As U5F put it, “for ease of mind if anything so nothing feels like it’s being hidden or they are trying to dodge things”.

As part of the monitoring and legislative process, particular attention was paid to the need for interested community members to see the company’s contingency plans.

F8F: Yeah you’d want them to have good contingency plans.

Scientist 2: So a few plan B’s.

F5F: And you’d want to know that they were maintained and kept up to date and someone had responsibility for them. That they weren’t a plan that was developed and then shoved in a drawer in some Government Department somewhere and yeah so someone would need to actually own those.

F2M: Yup well we only need to see what happens in coal mines with stuff like that when you know all the safety processes are supposedly there but don’t happen, and that’s you know

F1M: All we hear is systematic failure, and then they’ll walk away.

F5F: Yes so that’s right so we’d need to know who had responsibility for those plans.

F5F wanted to see similar plans to those at Civil Defence, with mock drills for the community. However, I2M, from the iwi group thought that the current Civil Defence strategy in the region was inadequate, particularly when compared to its relative robustness, many years ago. He put this down to their move to Palmerston North, the subsequent lack of further training, and disappearance of the people who used to be responsible for it.

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Legislation

I suppose the community would have an expectation that their regulators are onto it, and can assure them that the activity can be carried out safely or within existing regulations (C4M, Council, Session 2).

All of the groups talked about the need for tight regulations that were “do-able, practical and measurable”. With the local and regional councils involved in the group process, legislation became the key topic of discussion in the second session. Council participants had considered their approach, should there be a CCS operation planned for the region. It involved what was called a “multi-pronged strategy”, which was gleaned from experience with the fracking debate. Their plan is outlined below:

1. Assess the statutes (laws) that apply to regulating activity, e.g., drilling;

2. Assess overseas experiences, issues and “learnings”;

3. Clarify what the main issues are and run this past the community to gain its input;

4. Engage with iwi, either separately, or alongside the rest of the community;

5. Commission the research needed to address these issues;

6. Establish normal background environmental conditions as a base-line;

7. If the topic was controversial, have the work peer-reviewed;

8. Implement a non-statutory strategy;

9. Tweak the existing legislation and employ the Resource Management Act (RMA).

If the company had gained its consent, there was a further series of steps that council participants had identified that should be engaged:

1. Monitor and enforce any conditions in a “transparent” way.

2. Inform the public this was occurring

Whilst overseas examples and an assessment of the current legal framework would provide the basis for legislation, council participants stressed the importance of comparing these to the local context and conditions. This could be achieved with community assistance and using “our own judgement based on our knowledge of the region” (C2M, Council, Session 2).

In general, there was a feeling among the council group that some of the existing legislation, particularly covering oil and gas exploration, needed to be “tweaked” to cater for CCS. The following excerpt clarifies what this “tweaking” might entail.

Facilitator: So you’ve mentioned tweaking, what kind of tweaking do you think might need to be done?

C2M: Well to look at the actual laws and regulations themselves to make sure that the scope is there to deal with this activity. And firstly ask yourself the question as to whether you, whether that’s the right place to deal with it, so you scope out the whole thing. Then you run that past the regulations you have, and then you make sure if they can address them or not.

C1M: For example, I’m thinking aloud here a bit, our legislation, the RMA says that you can’t take into account the effects of greenhouse gas emissions. Well we’re dealing with air discharges so that I don’t know where the converse applies whether you take into

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account the benefits of the global greenhouse thing when you stick it into the ground, that might be a legislation tweak that will need to be clarified.

Clearly, as well as some evaluation of the regulations, what was needed was some clarification of terms; in particular, whether the stored CO2 counted as a “greenhouse gas emission” or a “discharge”, in the event of leakage.

One of the most likely scenarios raised during the council session would be to contact researchers at GNS Science, and employ them on a sub-contract funded by the CCS company, to research issues such as geochemistry and geological integrity of the proposed site. Moreover, the council also saw the need to talk to overseas experts who were already engaged with CCS projects: “You need experts right, you need to go and find people who’ve been there done that, what you need to find. Cos we don’t want to reinvent the wheel here, that’s done” (C2M, Council, Session 2).

However, the oil and gas group recognized that there were some issues with the existing legislation for stratigraphic boundaries; namely where a suitable reservoir for CO2 injection might lie either above or below an existing operational oil or gas field.

I think it is the stratigraphic which is more difficult I think from a regulation perspective to manage but that is something which you would then have to discuss with the regional councils and work through those issues and I suppose a district council with regards to traffic lighting issues (O3M, O&G, Session 2).

Whilst participants recognized that the Resource Management Act (RMA) would cover some issues, such as discharge of contaminants to adjacent land, stratigraphic consents would require the development of additional regulations. The general feeling was that this was a good base from which to begin.

Well the RMA is actually a very powerful piece of legislation it is all about effects base, being able to demonstrate [unintelligible]. Oh ok there’s some room for interpretation what it actually means but the frame work is pretty strong. It’s the criticism is how it’s translated from the RMA into actual practice with regard to consensus that’s where weakness is sometimes around. Potentially driven from the lack of understanding when it’s new (O3M, O&G, Session 2).

As this comment highlights, the other main issue raised during conversation was that whilst regulations could be put in place, making sure the company understood and complied with them was a further matter. A similar issue was brought up by one of the urban group, whose concern, again, was with the interpretation of guidelines:

And with the legislation that could be bought in would there be, they’re saying there could be guidelines, they need to put specifics in, guidelines are open for interpretation and companies have a bad habit of interpreting minimum standards, the very, very minimum standards. I think if this was to happen they need to bring in legislation that’s specific and if the companies are just going to throw it in the face, say well you know ‘we’ll take the fine’, it needs to be severe consequences, even though it does occur naturally that’s beside the point, completely beside the point (U5F, Urban, Session 2).

In particular, this participant referred to the ambiguity of the words, “appropriate” and “adequate”, asking, “How do you interpret appropriate and adequate”? She also thought that companies would be economically inclined to take the minimum amount of precautions to align with the minimum requirements of any enforced regulations, and hence, had a preference for clear, unambiguous

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legislation. Another participant wanted the regulations to be annually reviewed, to make sure the rules were still applicable and effective.

These regulations were thought to be best devised via a co-governance approach, with direct “public input” to the process and direct communication to the “powers that be” about “how your community feels”.

I think there needs to be a public input as well, not just with their local government and their companies and stuff like that. The public need to have a voice and have a say, and say not, that’s not really feasible but come to an agreement as well (U5F, Urban, Session 2).

I think any legislation, particularly on this one here, has to be driven by communities. So the way that I would look at it is there has to be early input and participation by the communities as to what are the boundaries, what are the rules that we have to go and put in place? (I4M, Iwi, Session 2).

However, as another participant in the urban group pointed out, all communities were divided in their opinions:

Just saying what you're getting at there with everyone involved as U4M would know again, it's nearly impossible to get a consensus that's just, you know, we have our open forums and our public things and something’s you have 3 or 4 completely different opinions on the 1 subject and somewhere you've gotta put it together and come up with an answer and it's not always pleased everyone, some it doesn't work for (U6M, Urban, Session 2).

Hence, consensus was not always possible and some parties would remain disaffected by any decision. However, being forced to reach consensus on the topics under discussion, as U5F pointed out, forces you to “make concessions”:

We've had to do that as well, the delegates, and you know you’re at this group and there are so many different points of views but you have to come to a consensus, you've gotta make concessions. There were things that I agreed to that I didn't agree with, but you've got to compromise and that's all there is to it (U5F, Urban, Session 2).

However, whilst co-governance was an optimum, if people were not willing to make concessions, the process itself could potentially delay necessary action. For instance, at the request of the project manager at GNS Science, oil and gas participants were asked about the iterative peer review process at the Gorgon field in Australia. O4M was familiar with it; in particular the 20-years of process that stretched out before coming to a conclusion. Although he attributed this to the fact that the site was under a Class A nature reserve, alongside the new and novel nature of the technology, it does provide an example of the difficulties that could occur, should a co-governance strategy run into difficulties. The ultimate outcome, of course, would be another 20 years of CO2 emissions from that source, before agreement was reached.

Liability

The question of who would take mid- and long-term liability for a CCS operation was a pivotal one in focus group discussions. Since the CO2 was to be stored indefinitely, with the scenario placing it in close proximity to a community, there were very obvious concerns to ensure the safety of future generations

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and who should take on this responsibility. In the council group, there was some discussion about the importation of CO2 as “waste” that was from elsewhere, whether China or another part of New Zealand.

C4M: I guess the thing with the CCS in my mind is you’re getting something from somewhere else that’s been dumped here or left here.

C2M: But we get rid of some of our hazardous waste to France, right now, as a society we send some of our hazardous waste to France, yeah we do.

C4M: So if someone was proposing to have a hazardous waste processing site here and take hazardous waste from China, I’d think that Taranaki people would take an interest in that.

Facilitator: In what way?

C4M: Well the fear that they’re going to be left with the liability of pollution that may not be appreciated when we sign up to it, it may become apparent in future years.

This recognition by C4M echoes the comments of other participants in the community; the idea that they had previously “signed up” to things about which the real issues only emerged after the fact. It was also a concern about CCS, and long-term liability was consequently a major concern.

Three of the groups (the farmers, council and iwi) came up with the idea of a long-term “bonding scheme”, which would operate as an insurance scheme, should any problems arise.

F1M: I’d almost feel like you’d want some sort of bonding scheme over fifty, a hundred years, because oil companies don’t carry on existing for ever. They can start up and shut down. How would you have some sort of insurance or that if there was a disaster, ‘cause we are looking fifty a hundred years away something may go wrong, let’s say Taranaki couldn’t be used or a large chunk couldn’t be used for agriculture because of it, how could the oil companies which would benefit from harvesting this gas which is a I presume must be profitable if they’re going to be sticking eighty per cent of the carbon back down and hopefully they are looking at making big profits, as they are now, how can they ensure that we concerned to farm or there is some reimbursement which if it goes wrong may not be possible.

Facilitator: So how would this bonding scheme work?

F1M: It will have to be, like, an insurance, because you’ll have to deal with the company that exists for fifty to a hundred years.

However, after some brief discussion in the council group around international resolutions, the idea of the CCS company paying into a long-term bond was abandoned. Information provided by the GNS scientist revealed that companies held the consent, and hence responsibility for no more than 30 years after the storage operation closed down. However, it appeared that under the RMA, due to the permanent changes to the underground land, a 35-year consent would continue to “roll over”. Whilst the logistics of making a company pay into such a long-term bond seemed difficult, and the local residents/council should not be held accountable for “picking up the bill”, council participants thought that it seemed more appropriate to follow other international examples and let the Government take on long-term liability.

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Who should take responsibility for long-term liability, however, was arguable, with debate around whether it should be local government or central Government. The council group recognized that as this was a permanent installation, it required an organization to take permanent responsibility for it.

C1M: Uncertainties. What I’m thinking about is who takes on-going responsibility for the whole setup, is it kind of a, it’s going to be there forever, what happens in one hundred years, two hundred years, what you know, is it definitely going to hang together and still be working alright and. So I guess I’m saying there is not it’s not without some kind of risk to the region in terms of, but it just needs to be understand and ticked off kind of thing.

C2M: Well the liabilities, you know. Have the liabilities, all the liabilities been addressed.

The oil and gas group also thought that Government should take on long-term liability, as the company that deployed the CCS might not exist in the long-term future. For instance, this would have implications, should the reservoir fracture: “You might try and prosecute someone in 100, 1000 years-time. If they don’t exist, where are you going to go?” (O4M, O&G, Session 2). The rationale was that if central Government approved the project, hence accepting that the risk profile was “reasonable”, they should be partly responsible for dealing with any leakage issues, should they ever occur. Here, one participant referred specifically to the risk of earthquakes in the region being ever-present, another to the importance of a scheme to assess “reservoir integrity” prior to approval of a scheme.

However, if liability was taken on by central Government, there was also a concern over the ambiguity of the language used to pass a CCS programme. One participant pointed out the difference between accepting a project and approving it: “They don’t approve, they just accept which means if something does go wrong, they never approved it in the first place so it’s your problem” (O4M, O&G, Session 2).

Benefits and compensation

Whilst the groups were predominantly focused on risk perceptions and risk management, some participants did eventually raise the issue of benefits to the community; usually relegated to the end of the second session. Moreover, these benefits were perceived with skepticism by some members of the Taranaki community. They included compensation for taking a share of the burden of risk, training and employment opportunities, and Taranaki becoming a centre for expertise on CCS. The experiences of participants as part of an oil and gas community played a major role in these discussions, and many references were made back to the impacts of drilling on the region from all angles.

The council group saw that due to the pre-existing infrastructure, one benefit was the continuation of employment, and the quality of life that brought with it. Moreover, on a grander scale, C4M thought that: “A big benefit would be to the nation and I suppose the global climate, of taking the, capturing the carbon and storing it”.

On a more regional scale, one of the oil and gas participants thought that with the deployment of CCS in Taranaki, it had the potential to become a “centre of excellence”, and with it reap the benefits of this status.

O4M: Well if you become a centre for excellence in anything that’s a benefit. They’re trying to do in Christchurch with Agriculture you have a centre of excellence, you have a centre of excellence for it here. You find something somewhere else in New Zealand and

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you have a centre of excellence and people come here to be trained and all that sort of thing so there is obviously benefits for that which is economical and technical.

O5M: There could be a public perception benefit as well you know if Taranaki is seen to lead the way and there is green technology and whatever. I don’t know that is very hard to put your finger on, to quantify that exactly but you know how some of these airlines are saying they are going to move to biofuels to fuel their airplanes so you gonna get a certain percentage of the population are going to…align themselves with that airline, so I’m just thinking, you know, if we get ourselves as a reputation.

Whilst he did see that a “green technology” could benefit the reputation of the region, O5M was not altogether certain of the impact this would have. If it was positive, he thought that there could be a multitude of “flow-on” benefits for the community. It is an interesting point to make, as it would be quite different from the concern among some urban community members that Taranaki might be perceived as a “dumping ground” for the nation.

Community perceptions and understandings of benefits were highly influenced by their experiences with oil and gas companies in the region. This was both in terms of what they had received, but also in relation to how the region/community was viewed at a national level.

If you do store it here, and it’s talked about the benefits, it’s like we actually carry all the risk and yet the economy, say NZ as a whole we’d actually look at that side of it and say well it benefits NZ, but if it’s stored say only here in Taranaki basically Taranaki carries the can. Because nobody else is going to get polluted if something does go wrong and so how do we guarantee our survival for our third generation, and that’s what we’re talking, so yeah (F7M, Farmers, Session 2).

Do we receive acknowledgement or do we just get the bad end of the stick? If all the energy’s used in Auckland, all the wealth is up there, are we left holding the bad stuff. Being criticised in the future for what we have done to contribute (F1M, Farmers, Session 2).

Hence, the perception here is that, like oil and gas exploration, not only does the rest of the country reap the benefits, but if anything goes amiss, Taranaki will be the region to be blamed for it. As F1M asks, is the region going to receive any esteem and hence benefits for taking a share of the burden of responsibility, or simply be left to bear the risk and potential consequences?

At the other end of the spectrum, F5F, again from the farmers group, did not want the community to feel like it was bearing a burden to begin with.

I wouldn’t actually want it to be a burden if it was going to happen here I’d want it to be without disrupting things too much. So I think we’ve got too much to lose if it was ever considered to be a burden. And I think NZ’s got too much to lose if Taranaki doesn’t, can’t produce, can’t farm, and can’t do the things that we can actually still do now at the productivity levels that we can do now (F5F, Farmers, Session 2).

Namely, what F5F wanted was “minimal impact” to the region as a whole, and once the initial construction was over, a feeling that the CCS storage site wasn’t even there. Any form of payout would make her feel as if she was being compensated for taking CCS on as “something bad”. Another participant described it as being “bought off” and there was a feeling among some farmers that it could end up as a case of “like it or lump it”. This caution was based on signing up to Fonterra [collective dairy company], a move which many of the farmers later regretted. As F4M added, “you’ve got to be careful

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what you sign up to at the start” because “we can’t go back now and say,’ oh yeah, but we wish we didn’t’”.

Whilst the discussion in the farming group became quite complex, one final comment was that compensation could be seen as an acknowledgement that even with all good measures in place, a company could not foresee all possible future uncertainties. Namely, rather than being compensated for bearing a burden, a community was being compensated for sharing an “element of risk”: “We can do as much as we can but really we don’t know all the answers and we probably never will” (F4M, Farmers, Session 2).

With some discussion around the compensation provided by oil and gas companies that was discussed in chapter three, participants in the farmers group were concerned that it should go to the entire community, as opposed to individual landowners. These discussions gave the distinct impression that previously, granting individuals large sums of money as compensation had inadvertently catalysed what seemed to be a divide within a tight-knit community. As F3M put it, “People are very much treated in isolation; like the property owner who’s getting the money is treated in complete isolation to the neighbour, who’s getting nothing”.

It’s money versus conscience really at the moment out there. People will grab the money and not worry too much about the effects it will have on their neighbours, and that’s the environment that I guess the oil and gas industry has created. It’s a divide and conquer mentality (F3M, Farmers, Session 2).

Whilst the “divide and conquer mentality” may have been an unintended outcome of the compensation process, the way this has been perceived by members of the community is important for relationships with the oil and gas industry and its co-existence with the dairy industry. The group revealed that due to privacy clauses in these payouts, the individuals involved could not divulge how much they were getting, which was viewed as creating increasing problems and separating them from the community as a whole.

The conclusion was that if compensation was offered for hosting a CCS facility, it should not follow the same model, one perceived as deeply flawed by the farmers involved in the project.

As well as payouts, some of the indirect benefits that were discussed were employment opportunities. One woman from the urban community was particularly concerned about improving them at both a local and regional scale.

Even though there’s guys there that could do the jobs anyway would it be open to training like people from WINZ, training them if the people doing the job then, they could move in and do it. If it's gonna be done around here in Taranaki you want people from Stratford and Eltham and out the back and that and the young ones, give them something to do where it's gonna be local jobs and not have people come from the outside or imported from overseas to come in and do it cause a lot of the, serve a lot of the guys and they're not local residents they might live here now but they've come from overseas and come in. If they do some sort of scheme from WINZ where maybe like a training or apprenticeship or something like that, where if it's going to be turned into an industry then they could provide jobs for them and provide jobs for them that way (U5F, Urban, Session 2).

However, other members of the group pointed out that once the construction period was over, much of the work would be mechanised, requiring a small workforce.

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The urban and farming groups also referred to special funds bequeathed to them by oil and gas companies, which have already been discussed in chapter three. As mentioned, these funds benefitted the community with school scholarships and cultural/sporting venues.

I’d like our lives to be enhanced whether it be, let’s say, a slightly better education than the rest of the country, because we are low population we are missing out progressively. So we have decent hospitals, decent education, decent infrastructure, communication. If we knew we had internet like Auckland through the whole rural Taranaki, a good health system so we could call the doctor when we wanted, we could live with a lot of noise, pollution, and things, let’s say the same as the noise of Auckland, but we’re ending up with all the noise and light pollution of Auckland but none of the benefits that accrue from the oil and gas that comes from here (F1M, Farmers, Session 2).

However, agreement over this was far from coherent, as F7M acknowledged that by accepting such contributions in the near future, the community would be the “greedy cats”, getting the immediate benefits but not acknowledging that they might not be there for future generations who would still have to take on the risk. For F7M, passing the burden onto future generations would not be a morally acceptable decision.

One alternative raised by the farming group was a community fund that should be distributed from the outset, but maintained for future generations. However, its long-term implementation was not discussed, nor agreed-upon by everyone. Furthermore, as one participant in the urban group stated, if such funds were to become available to communities in close proximity to a CCS facility: “What we're looking for is an emphatic relationship not a parasitic one and historically it's been the latter”.

Another suggestion was that the new infrastructure could be used to benefit the region; with new roads bringing in more tourists and boosting the tourism industry. This stemmed from the benefits of the “think big” projects in the 1980s, which have been maintained and expanded through time.

Moreover, whilst these discussions brought up the short-term benefits to the community, the farmers raised the issue of long-term benefits. Once again, this was imbued with knowledge about oil and gas communities. The example of Texas was raised, where the wells used to extract “easy oil” were abandoned until fracking processes made it technically and financially viable once again. However, alongside the abandonment of the well, was the abandonment of the community; Taranaki residents did not wish for the community to become an “industrial zone with a few cows running in between to provide national good” (F1M, Farmers, Session 2).

In sum, there was a feeling that rather than simply just being informed about what was happening, the community would like to be heard, not only about a CO2 storage site, but about the future co-development of industries in the region. As F2M put it:

I think that there needs to be some listening done, not just ‘this is what’s happening’… I guess that whole consultation process needs to be done across the whole community, and agriculture is included in that, and some listening instead of just saying, you know just doing the consultation process for the sake of it, which now seems to happen (F2M, Farmers, Session 2).

Moreover, some of the female farmers though that it was also important to focus on the social side of development, and examine where the community meshed with this.

Finally, the dual concepts of fairness and justice were raised. One participant in the farmers group said that any process should be “seen to be fair”, which was later explained in the following way:

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To be seen, it’s just like democracy needs to be seen to be done and justice needs to be seen to be done. The community has to see what is going to be proposed, not this silo-ing of farmers and you’re not allowed to talk to anybody else, but you don’t know what your neighbours are doing except for rumours and innuendo. The community gets presented what’s going to happen, and there’s some formula that how people are compensated for what’s affecting. If something untoward happens let’s say the valley channels the sound let’s say as an example, and someone’s more affected than the little diagrams are it gets rectified, so that no one’s missing out and no one’s gaining on top of the bodies of their neighbours or someone else (F1M, Farmers, Session 2).

The farming group had some deliberation over the specifics of this process, with an eventual conclusion that it should be acceptable to people, they should be aware that there were different levels of compensation that corresponded with proximity to the site and specific criteria, but that the full details did not need to be made public knowledge.

Communication

In all discussions, participants were asked about their communication needs: how would you like to be communicated to, by whom and when? There were some differences and even disagreements in the suggestions put forth, reflecting a range of different voices and communication styles, so I will address the findings for each group, in turn. Even so, there were still differences within the groups, according to individual preferences and levels of comfort.

For instance, in the iwi group, one participant thought that decentralised meetings would attract a wide range of participation; another preferred a more centralised hui that would draw people in.

I6F: Yeah, well, the biggest thing is to have meetings in the different areas so that the iwi can come to the meetings so that they could be.

I2M: No, here you’d get more people around to a marae, having a hui at the marae than what you would in the memorial hall or council room. Because you’ll get all the hapus and everything that can come in, we notify them.

As the quotations suggest, these preferences were for different reasons. The former, allowed wider participation throughout the region vis-à-vis the provision of a choice of location and time. Whereas, having companies come to the marae, gave a wider degree of control to iwi, and as conveyed elsewhere, the feeling of being at home, meant that communication was likely to be more fluent.

The iwi group were also happy to invite people from the wider community to the marae to have these meetings, and felt that there would be more participation from their tribes if they felt at home and hence, comfortable in speaking.

I2M: Most of our Māori people would sooner have it in maraes than go to, and they stand up and speak more at a marae than what they would at…

I5M: Confidence

I2M: Yeah they got more confidence on their own marae…

I6F: …Familiarity, it’s a safe environment for a lot of them. They feel more comfortable, whereas if they went, say like, not being awful or anything, but the big chamber buildings or something like that and have a meeting there they’d feel…

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I5M: Can be quite intimidating for our people, they can shy away from making comments and stuff like that, whereas on their marae they’re more comfortable to tell you how they feel. And sometimes that can actually be a negative thing because they will tell you how they feel.

Whilst familiarity and a feeling of belonging were seen to promote a larger turnout of people, the process of engagement at a marae was also seen as important in levelling the playing field.

I4M: The process that we use on the marae is more familiar for our people. Sometimes the language you can use on the marae is actually far more descriptive.

Facilitator: In what way descriptive?

I4M: And then you know one of the things that I’ve noticed…is that part of the process includes the hakari or lunch, or food. Foods actually, now food, sitting around a table and sharing food actually levels the playing ground, it does. And you will find that a lot of decision-making is done then. You may have all the fire and brick stone leading up to it but when the kai comes out and it’s for me, it’s about everybody sitting at that same level. And you can talk, and like I’m saying, I’ve seen lots and lots of decisions being determined, so by the time we’ve got back after lunch the decision is made.

Here, the traditional process of making decisions over the sharing of food was perceived as conducive to communication and making decisions.

Paralleling other groups, one participant thought that any education on the topic should involve details on “what the concepts are and the advantages and that, as well as the disadvantages” (I6F, Iwi, Session 2). Here, it was important that people fully understood, so they were not “left out of the loop”, and one way of ensuring this would be the appointment of a Māori liaison officer by a CCS company. Another would be educating “the young ones” so that they had the “knowledge” and “tools” to be able to take over responsibility in the future. Like the other groups, there was a feeling that these meetings should be ongoing, particularly to reassure the local marae that regulations were being followed.

In the farming group, a communal and equal approach to “consultation” that was community-driven was proposed, with the entire community invited to meetings, the same information provided to everybody and access to “independent scientific advice” in an “accessible language”. With such local governance, it was pointed out that any failure of the process would not be blamed on the company, but that responsibility was also a local one, as opposed to that of oil and gas companies. Participants wanted to see some sort of funding to allow the community to establish and run this type of consultation.

The call was also for increased transparency and involvement, with the community being “asked” their opinion, rather than “being told” what was going on. One consultation model that was raised was that of the methanol company, Methanex, where a business breakfast or similar event was sponsored, and the participating farmers “are involved and they have a voice and they meet the CEO of Methanex on a one on one basis, who knows their name individually and they have that conversation” (F5F, Farmers, Session 2). There was also a recommendation that the “definition of interested parties” be expanded away from those solely in the immediate vicinity of an operation. There was also a general agreement that the process should be from the start and be maintained for a much longer time period than current consultations.

Participants in the farming group acknowledged that even with this kind of process, there was never going to be absolute consensus, and that an acceptable limit should be devised. As F4M put it: “Even

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after all this consultation no matter how many years you consult for there’ll be people who still disagree with anything. So you’ve got to accept what level of acceptance, does it need to be viable?” He added that with only a negative view, it was not possible to move forward. In a more practical way, F5F outlined the kind of general process that needed to occur:

You’d identify what the key, there’d be some commonality and some key things, there’d be some that are just niggles, and some people that you are never going satisfy, and no matter how much science or evidence you give them the earth’s still flat (F5F, Farmer, Session 2).

What F5F described, closely resembles the basis of deliberative engagement or any form of democratic process; in particular, the consensus conference. F7M added that this could work best with a small representative, “mixed” sample of the community, who were educated enough and diligent enough to take on the responsibility, and could communicate issues back to the wider community.

The oil and gas group were also asked how they thought a company should engage with the community as a whole.

I think a lot of it is about honesty, openness, you know, engaging type of thing… If it is news, you would do it differently; you would actually organize public forums and things like that, to educate people you would probably use a bit of a media campaign (O3M, O&G, Session 2).

Its discussion with community so they understand what the technologies are and how it’s worked (O4M, O&G, Session 2).

Any company coming in would have to be aware to that the people in Taranaki are already wary and probably slightly better educated then other parts of New Zealand so they’re not going to be cold coming in…people are already aware of the issues here and will be asking the harder questions I should think (O5M, O&G, Session 2).

In all, the oil and gas group thought that the local community would have some more challenging questions to ask a CCS company, and as O1F stated: “And expecting they will get the answers to those questions”. However, and very relevant to the scenario that I created, there was an aversion to the “glossy pamphlet” approach to community engagement, and any attempt “for want of a better term, to “bullshit” people” (OF1, O&G, Session 2).

Alternately, the oil and gas group thought that the community would want the following types of information.

O1F: A nice simple diagram that helps them understand what’s happening underground, what will happen underground, cause that is the biggest unknown for people, what’s happening underground, it’s hard for people to get their head around.

O3M: I think simple, asking, ‘how do you keep it underground?’, you know, cause people think about it as a gas and they don’t realize that it is pumped as a liquid and most cases….[and] seismic risks.

Like the other groups, the oil and gas participants thought that engagement should start “as early as possible” and “as soon as they think they are going to go forward” with the project. One thought that selected stakeholders should be initially consulted, before widening the net, and that initially engagement should be about education, prior to getting people “on board”.

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During the second session, the council were asked how they would engage with the community around CCS and its appropriate legislation. I asked one participant to explain, in lay terms, the process.

Well we’d get all the key stakeholders in the room. Firstly, before we even did it we’d get all the key stakeholders in the room, and say hey we are thinking of doing this, what do you think? Is this a good idea or not? Tell us. Then we’d go and do it, then we’d bring it back to that same group, or a wider group, and then ask for their views. A bit like social research. And get their views. And then on the basis of that there’s other things that we might do, around commissioning the necessary research, establishing base line conditions, those sort of things (C2M, Council, Session 2).

Here, C2M appears to describe a standard stakeholder consultation approach to community engagement, but adds that “the key is to get the other people in the room early, so that what you end up doing is going to address their concerns…we pride ourselves in our early social research”. Here, he makes reference to the importance of early engagement in identifying and addressing community concerns. He also acknowledged that whilst the council might identify some issues, the community knowledge was invaluable as a means of ensuring the recognition of all variables.

However, invariably, the council group thought that the responsibility of taking the lead around CCS should fall to the company itself. It was not up to the regulator to promote one industry or another. For the company, this was seen as establishing their credibility and a relationship with the community, identifying who should be involved, talking to the local authorities and coming up with a long-term strategic plan. Like the other groups, they agreed that this communication should occur as early as possible.

And even at the concept stage, people hate having things dumped on them and say make a decision, they like having an opportunity to look at something, maybe do their own research, and then come back with questions and then more detail. So I think you’d want to, they’d need to decide whether they wanted to do it at a conceptual stage or when they were actually ready to make an application for resource consent and have a lot more information, so that they have draft assessments and environmental effects and things (C2M, Council, Session 2).

Similarly to other groups, council participants also wanted certain types of information from a prospective company, although for a different purpose: legislation.

C2M: Well it would be about the environment, well it would be about the description of the, what they want to do and what they consider the environmental effects might be. What they are going to do to avoid remedy and mitigate those. And we’d like to sight the colour of their eyes and meet them as people and see what sort of people they’re like, and see whether they’re all dealers, fancy people who are going to come and go.

Facilitator: So whether there’s a cowboy element?

C4M: Well that they’re credible.

C2M: That they’re credible. Cos the public soon see through people that aren’t.

What was interesting here was that, similar to other groups and following the general approach of this community, the council participants valued personal communication, and were wary of the cowboy element in prospective industries.

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In addition to the information that they required, council participants thought that the wider community would want more information on employment, environmental safety and the social side of CCS. Paralleling other groups in the community, they were aware that at some point community decisions had to move forward, whether there was consensus or not.

You can have too much, you can have consultation for Africa, and you’ve got to draw a line. Because you are going to have some that are going to be against it until the day they die you’re going to have some that think it’s a great idea, you’re going to have some in the middle and they’re going to move between the two, at some point you have to decide to make a decision (C2M, Council, Session 2).

The oil and gas group also wanted to be informed about the CCS operation, but in much more technical detail than they expected would be provided to the community. Moreover, they also had the technical expertise to be able to ascertain, for themselves, the viability of the project. The following excerpt provides their immediate reaction.

Facilitator: If Tellus Enterprises comes to Taranaki how would you like them to communicate to you as oil and gas companies?

O1F: We want them to tell us all about their reservoir and they know it’s sealed and how they know it’s going to stay where it is.

O3M: I think from our side we will probably look at in-depth technical assessments we wouldn’t be looking at the glossy stuff cause we have enough expertise to look through it so we look at us to be more informed from a more technical basis then what they’re trying to do for the neighbourhood which is potentially dumbed down, whatever you want to call it.

O4M: I mean as operators, we don’t have any legal control over it so we would anticipate TRC would look after the interests of the communities. If we were part of and definitely if we were the next door neighbours and we were part of the consultation group we wouldn’t just want a pamphlet; we would want to know what they’re doing, how they’re doing it. Do as much as they can, obviously there will be intellectual property and stuff that we can’t have but we would push them for as much information as we can get, as you said the full seismic stuff, unless we can’t get that off of [unclear] and other operators but you know we’d want as much information as we can get in the public profile. How it’s going to work, how they going to ensure it’s not going to impact on us.

The preferred methods for the oil and gas group would be through the company’s communications team, and possibly a technical specialist, and as O3M added, he would ask “difficult questions”. However, the possibility of a public forum was also raised.

Interestingly, the oil and gas companies wanted to prevent the local community from being “glossy pamphleted”. If in-depth, multi-stakeholder discussion sessions were employed as a means to establish an entire community view, this technical expertise, if shared, could actually benefit the rest of the community. Namely, the oil and gas staff knew the right types of questions to ask, and provided the answers were in a language that could be translated into lay terminology, a mixed group process would be a worthwhile endeavour.

Like the other members of the community, the oil and gas group felt that the company should be responsible for initial communication. However, based on the Australian experience, where the Government participated in the latter stages of community engagement on a Chevron project, one oil

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and gas participant thought that that once a project was officially approved, the same should apply in New Zealand. If Government was to take on long-term liability, they should be involved in community discussions.

During conversation in some of the groups, I raised the issue of open days at the Otway Pilot project in Australia. This idea was well-received by participants, as a practice for any Taranaki-based company.

Facilitator: At the pilot study site in Otway they also encourage people to come onsite and they show them around.

U5F: That may be alright to, cause then it wouldn't be so like, you go there and filmed, and probably shot on site if you did go on there, unannounced. That's what U4M said the more people know the less frightening it is and the more accepting it'll be.

U3F: Your imagination goes wild whereas the practicalities of it when you see it, you say hey what was I worrying about. Imagining all these terrible things that are likely to happen but in reality you're reassured because it's nowhere as bad as you thought it was…

U2M: Public open days would be good PR… It creates awareness, it creates people gathering focuses and talking, communicating with their personnel onsite. Answering the questions, they have nothing to lose. I mean the power station look how often that's an open day, not too often.

Whilst one of the scientists pointed out that companies would have a number of safety and security hurdles to overcome, participants did think that if sufficient numbers of people were supportive, that it was a distinct possibility.

Many of the urban community participants were in favour of inclusive, integrated public meetings. These would circumvent the need for separate individual, council and public consultations and theoretically lead to more transparency. The idea of being “open and honest with the public” was seen by U5F as leading to a more willing audience. U2M, another member of the group, thought that this form of communication would allow companies to “get first hand appreciation of what the average person in Stratford is thinking or wants to know”.

Targeting “the right demographic” was seen as vitally important, with the urban group relating experiential knowledge that public meetings were generally populated by similar folk to themselves – often retired and “meeting groupies”.

I would want to have the younger ones there as well, ‘cause at the end of the day, you know, we will leave this mortal coil but they will still be here so they need to be carrying the baton forward so I'd make sure that I targeted this message, yeah, nah, gotta hate that but…we need to ensure that we aim the intricate process at the right level and a variety of groups (U4M, Urban, Session 2).

Certainly needs to be younger people than us ‘cause they are the ones that are going to wear it for longer, aren't they, 40–50 years we're sort of not gonna do that (U6M, Urban, Session 2).

The provision of information before these public meetings was highlighted, with the potential for an innovative “Tellus app”.

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Have a Tellus App. They have a little bit of a look at the PDF that we were given so that people before they go to public meetings, cause what happens when people go ill-informed they want to have a particular point of view they end up taking sides, it ends up becoming a combative process rather than an informing and educating one and a collaborative one so I think the preferred duck pond would ensure a good duck shooting season. I'd have information available to people in a variety of forms before they have the public meetings or any other meeting for that matter (U4M, Urban, session 2).

As U4M pointed out, mis-information or the lack of a balanced approach can orchestrate a stand-off between people with quickly-formed and opposing perspectives. The best way to convey this information, as U4M stated, was through a variety of formats. Such information might also include the track record of the company, positive changes in their “green” policies, reputation etc. However, timing was also a key issue; U3F, from the community group, recognised that companies could only have a limited degree of communicable information at the early stages of a CCS operation.

Another suggestion was good company relations with the local community, particularly with a dedicated staff member available to answer community questions.

U2M: I'd be looking for good company relations, that's getting us out and interacting, open door if you like.

Facilitator: What would you expect from an open door?

U2M: Well it's somewhere where you could phone or personally call, contact to seek answers, enquiries, awareness.

In particular, U2M’s recommendation for what he called the “silent, secretive industries” that they drove past every day, was quite simply, to “introduce themselves”.

Nevertheless, not all participants were in agreement that it should be companies who communicated information to the community. As U4M put it, “Immediately you think ‘hello, what are you not telling us?’”. Hence, the situation was far from simple, with a dichotomy between a desire for industry to be more transparent and an immediate distrust of what they communicated, simply due to their corporate status.

Facilitator: U5F brought up that if a company was coming to be open and honest and more willing to talk. I just wanna know, ‘cause we've had it as well, said that immediately there's this kind of distrust, so it’s a bit of a conundrum. How would a company show to you that they were honest and trustworthy and willing to talk?

U5F: Show that they're trying to improve how there company is run. That they're going the more greener way and more responsible about the environment even if they started off quite bad if they could show, you can come and talk to us we're not gonna try and lord anything over you, that's your opinion but it’s wrong and we're right cause we're the company.

Facilitator: You got into the track record before so yeah that relates directly…

U5F: You don't feel like they're hiding something or they're there to make the money. That there is a better purpose for what they are doing.

However, as the following excerpt reveals, other members of the group were aware of the complexities of a company taking this stance:

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The difficulty with oil companies is the secretive, if you want to use that word, is commercial sensitivity and they don't want to tell anybody else what they do or what they are likely to have found in this well or that well or whatever. I can understand from their point of view but from the public’s point of view suddenly in your back paddock there's this oil rig going up, what, how did that get there. Kind of shocking to the person, general public who's immediately involved with it. They don't really know too much about it, like I say, kind of been there where all of a sudden there's a drilling rig in the back corner of your paddock and you know (U3F, Urban, Session 2).

An obvious deterrent, this could be remedied by communications coming from a “scientific base, GNS or whomever”. This could take the form of a presentation, with companies attending, but taking “a back seat”. As U4M went on to say, “They are part of the collaboration; they're not leading the collaboration. It needs to be led by informed people, like you guys”. Here, the words “independence” and “independent” were used to describe the communicating body.

Even then, with an independent body and scientific input, urban community participants were still equivocal about the integrity of the communicating scientists.

They can be objective but not necessarily biased, cause again, you get any set of figures, raw analysis or data and you can interpret your way and I can interpret it entirely different way all together, and who’s right? (U3F, Urban, Session 2).

Their opinion was based on familiarity with “radical” climate change scientists and also debates on the fluoridation of water. The outcome was a desire for scientists, “scientists that are not convinced totally one way or the other”, who are “unbiased” and not trying to “push their view”.

Questions

Post-research, participants in the stakeholder groups came back with a number of questions that were inspired by their research, some of which particularly related what they found online to the local context and geology. A number of these questions, with their respective answers, are listed in APPENDIX VIII.

In particular, the urban group spent at least half of their second session in a Q&A session, with questions generally emanating from one or two individuals. This could be indicative of curiosity, but also signified that the provision of information on the internet always had gaps, and that these gaps were more easily clarified by inter-personal communication at this level, with an expert in the local area.

Summary

Whilst overtly, these risk perceptions dominated discussions, certain narratives emerged, which suggest that a ‘sensitivity to initial conditions’ underlies them. Namely, New Zealand’s unique physical, cultural, political, social and historical geography plays a pivotal role in shaping risk perceptions about CCS (see Mabon, 2012; Mabon et al., 2014). Although CCS was presented and couched as one of a range of solutions to climate change, it was predominantly evaluated by experiences with the oil and gas industry. CCS as a climate change solution did not appear to make it more appealing to the community and the main concerns were with risks and their management.

The next chapter focuses solely on describing the final multi-stakeholder deliberative forum, its process of information-exchange, commonalities and differences, and solution-focused outcomes.

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8. Multi-Stakeholder risk perceptions I assume they’re coming from a totally different angle, but we’ll see (F2M, Farmers, Session 2).

Because at the end of the day, you know, if this did happen, we are all going to be put together as a group and it’d be, you know, beneficial to us just to see what their thoughts are. They might be very similar to ours or something we hadn’t thought about or what they accepted as acceptable risk and ours is not (F7M, Farmers, Session 2).

Many of the participants concluded session two by stating that they were curious as to what the other groups would bring to the final session. As the statement above suggests, among some, there was an assumption that different groups would have different takes on the subject. In fact, the final stakeholder forum revealed that the risk perceptions and needs of the stakeholder groups were remarkably coherent. However, I should also stress that groups did not place the same emphasis on these issues, but spent more time discussing issues of concern to the group or particular individuals who were present.

In the final multi-stakeholder session, nine group representatives were present, along with a GNS scientist, Rawiri Faulkner (the GNS Māori Strategy manager), two members of the local marae and the facilitator (myself). For the benefit of anonymity, the names of the group representatives have been coded specifically to correspond to the final session, in a new format: multi-stakeholder (MS), original group (I, F, U, O, C), number (1 or 2), gender (F/M). An example would be: MSO1M, as the first of two males from the oil and gas group.

The next sub-sections of this report note the dominant points arising from each stakeholder group discussion, before I move onto a more detailed analysis of arising issues. However, first I outline the objectives that emerged for the evening.

Objectives for the evening

Via the sticky notes exercise described in chapter two, participants came up with a number of outcomes they wanted out of attending the session. These are described in Figure 11, overleaf. They were then verbally placed into three distinct themes, by participants as a whole (Figure 12). These themes were:

Community views, input and understanding;

Knowledge and Information; and

Rules, processes and risks.

They constitute some community-derived general objectives for the evening, on what we, as a group were to achieve. The specific details of each objective are listed, below.

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Figure 11: Outcome of sticky notes exercise.

Figure 12: Three main themed objectives for the deliberative forum.

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8.1.1. Community views, input and understanding

Under the heading “community views, input and understanding” were grouped the following stickies. Quotes are word-for-word:

Community input and consultation

Community view on CCS (X2)

Achieve broad understanding of positions of focus group

Better understanding of wider community views

Know: general perception on CCS

If proceed how would community respond?

How will iwi community input into the “decisions”?

Would like the whole community involved in the process of the decision-making

We want to take back what the consensus of the parties involved in the group discussion

We want to make a process available to form a community group representing everybody fairly

The main emphasis was that participants wanted to find out the range of views, what kind of response would occur and to find out about how the community could participate in decision-making.

8.1.2. Knowledge and information

Knowledge and information, whilst one of the identified categories, only had four comments requesting:

Accurate scientific information

Broader understanding of how CCS can add value

Understand how this will be used to benefit New Zealand

Bring back how much education is required

8.1.3. Rules, processes and risks

Alongside participants wanting to find out about general community views, the other main objectives were to find out about risks and risk management as a whole.

Willingness to compromise and put environment first

Guarantees around the safety of the project

Who will make the “decisions”

Transparent community driven process

Monitoring – what assurances can be given?

Know: perceived risks

Local regulator concerns with CCS

Understanding how to mitigate risk!

Know: what regulations are anticipated

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Control a blowout?

What are the “RULES!”

Bring back: how does regulator see CCS

We want to know what the oil and gas industry thinks of carbon capture

Presentations

In addition to the defined objectives, the presentations set the agenda for topics to be discussed as a multi-stakeholder group. They also gave the participants the opportunity to listen, without interruption, to the perspectives of each single-stakeholder group, prior to engaging in dialogue. The order of these presentations was far from random, developed from the perspectives put forth in the second sessions and the order of the original groups. The council group, for instance, were placed last, due to their specific emphasis on regulation. The three main community groups were scheduled to be upfront, in order to provide a broad overview of residents’ perspectives, before the industry and council views. As it was, and quite coincidently, the pairs of representatives were sitting together, from left to right across the room, in the exact order that they would be giving their presentations: iwi, farmers, urban community, oil and gas, and council.

Summaries of the presentations are listed in bullet-points, paraphrasing the participant’s own words. Some additional discussion/quotation on particular points also occurs.

8.2.1. Iwi

Only one of the iwi representatives was able to make the session, but two more people from the group turned up for the first half of the forum, in part, to make a statement about their wish for iwi to be involved in these processes. The presentation given was purely an oral one, from memory and notes from the prior session. In particular, MSI1M, the speaker, said that it had been initially difficult to get enough interest in the topic, to recruit people for the focus groups. The following issues were covered in summary form, paraphrased from the speaker’s own words:

Most of us didn't know much about it; not enough to take a position

Iwi were more used to people wanting to get stuff out of the ground

Kaitiakitanga: the nearest technical term is sustainability, looking after the environment, everything has to be in balance, caretakership, to leave this place in a better state in than before but with a broader conceptualisation

Concerns about the impact on land, at depth

Need to know more about it until we can come up with an informed decision

Management: based on kaitiakitanga we look after our own waste, there is a difference between waste coming in from outside the district and our own waste

If we see CO2 as waste, we need to ask where it comes from

We should have a broader discussion about it; we've only scratched the surface now

Question to GNS: what is next? Where do we take it from here?

Questions that arose: What are the rules? Who will make the decisions and how? What part will the community and iwi play?

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The pivotal ethic, from which the iwi group drew their conclusions, has already been discussed in depth in chapter six. However, it is important to establish how kaitiakitanga was presented at the multi-stakeholder session, because the group as a whole took note of this emphasis on sustainability.

And the way that [carbon] was presented to us is, like managing waste; because managing waste is the key component, of, I suppose, that responsibility we have in terms of being Kaitiaki and Kaitiakitanga. So how you manage the waste is just as important as you know trying to make a living off it. And so you know and of course the discussion centred on the waste that was coming in from outside the district, to here into Taranaki. The concept that we as every Māori have, is that when there is waste generated say in my patch, there is waste generated in Rawiri’s patch, then responsibility of looking after that is mine because I generated it, it’s Rawiri’s if he generates it. And so, that notion of looking after the waste was actually quite, quite, I suppose quite topical amongst us who were sitting there, because it’s actually quite recent. So, carbon dioxide, explained to us was a waste, and so we think well where’s this waste going to come from? What’s it been through, to actually, before it comes to us? Now we’re fine if we generate within say our area, we’re okay with that, because it’s our responsibility, but if it comes from the other side of the island or the other side of the world then that’s a different kettle of fish (MSI1M, Iwi, Presentation, M-S Forum).

Whilst MSI1M reiterated what was decided in the previous sessions, he added that it was difficult to make an informed decision without enough knowledge about CCS.

And I guess the real thing that really bothered us is that we actually didn’t really know enough about it, to actually make an informed response to it. And, so it comes down to that, and it’s quite clear up there, as what we really need to do is, is we need to know more about this. If it is to be a, a something that’s going to happen, then we need to actually know a lot more, before we can actually come with an informed response (MSI1M, Iwi, Presentation, M-S Forum).

For iwi, the traditional way of learning this knowledge would be marae-based learning, and discussion (hui), for which an invitation was extended.

8.2.2. Farmers and landowners

The farmers brought a wider political view into the final meeting, reflective of their conversations in session two, and one which was very much focused on the co-governance of risk. With this presentation immediately following that of iwi, the first point that the speaker raised echoed the emphasis on environmental and social responsibility inherent in kaitiakitanga.

When we first discussed it the first thing that everybody said was very similar to what’s been said here. The first thing everybody said yeah it’s a good idea but we don’t want it here. And then once we rationalised that a bit we thought well we have to be a little bit responsible and try and, take care of the stuff that we are creating (MSF1M, Farmers, Presentation, M-S Forum).

There was a good degree of honesty about the way that this sense of responsibility had emerged through discussion in session two, rather than being an immediate gut reaction to the deployment of CCS.

As was relayed from previous sessions, the farmers did not want to feel as if CCS was a burden to the community, which required compensation: “We didn’t want to think it would be a burden to Taranaki: that we would be looked on by the rest of the country as a polluted area or an area that was liable to pollution because of this” (MSF1M, Farmers Presentation, Stakeholder Forum). However, if

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compensation was needed, the process of allocating it should be both community-driven and perceived to be fair. Alternately, the farmers wanted to think of the storage location as “an investment in the community”, that the company had consideration for the local populus and to feel that there were robust safeguards in place.

Their full list of points, which served as a basis for the presentation, comprises Figure 13, overleaf. The presentation of these results, following the same format as the others, is in bullet points, below.

Might be a good idea, but initially didn’t want it here. Turnaround, to take care of stuff we are creating

Amount of energy needed to re-inject CO2 back into ground a big issue

Concerns about viable process, accountability, in case something happens once CO2 is put in the ground

Concerned with the credibility and accuracy of information available on the net on CCS

“As a community or as a farming community we would want to know that we had some really good scientific credibility around the information that was made available to us”

Liability question: Who is responsible? The government? Industry? Bonds that were in place so that future compensation was covered

Positive side: carbon could be reused in the future with a future technology, benefits for Taranaki in the form of jobs, long term employment through monitoring of the site

Issue: “We would like to think that those opportunities would be Taranaki opportunities versus maybe, NZ’s opportunities, seeing as we were the people that were stuck with the process, we should be the ones picking up the benefits of it”

Land access: the issue would involve access to farmer’s land, so transparency around this necessary

Effects on community: noise, light

Do not want to feel like CCS seemed like a burden that needed compensation

Minimize impacts on community from day one

Safeguards: good monitoring and reporting, contingency plans, risk assessment (onshore vs. offshore)

Big one for us, consultation process, needs to be by driven by the community. “We thought this process that we’re going through at the moment, was the sort of process that we needed to use going forward”.

Showed newspaper clippings about oil and gas from this week's newspaper. “Media reporting, it’s not doing anybody any good and it’s because we haven’t got it right at the start, we haven’t had enough discussion and enough consultation around it”.

Consultation is hard when things are already happening, everybody is affected differently

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Figure 13: Summary of points from session two with the farmers and landowners.

8.2.3. Urban community

As the third presenter, MSU2F noted that a lot of the same issues were emerging in the two previous overviews. At the start of her presentation, she noted that, “just from sitting here listening, it’s a lot of the same things coming through of what we’ve all discussed”. MSU2F presented the local urban community views, although had conducted further research and added some additional points of her own.

Main issues: environment, safety, legislation, education

"It's gonna cost too much" not an argument, we need to do something with our stuff

Health and safety, both of animals and people, onsite and offsite

Close monitoring of atmosphere, soil, ground, water, “especially after heavy rain, flooding, drought, and seismic activity”

A stringent contingency plan for humans, animals and environment

Guarantee only CO2 being injected, “there is not something being slid down there with it”

Public consultation and notification prior to any decisions being made, without distinction between affected and non-affected people (everyone is affected)

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Communications: flyers in letter boxes, as not everyone has access to newspaper or computer, getting people interested will be an issue due to a “it won’t affect me attitude”, public meetings with information that is easily understandable

Transparency, honesty and integrity of the companies needs to be proven and will lessen public suspicion of hidden agendas

Regulation and legislation has to be clear and direct, no room for interpretation of the script

Consent and monitoring by an independent body, not the council

Responsibility and credibility – admission of any fault, and acceptance of full responsibility to gain respect and credibility with the public

Alternatives to CCS: R&D directed to solar power, needs to be affordable, missing opportunity with new houses going up, geothermal could be built upon

Asking the public to fund it is impossible

More CCS R&D from the oil companies using it for oil recovery, they should fund it because they benefit from it

Community benefits extending out to rural sector: companies could offer apprenticeships in energy sector, IT, farming, education/school curricula: environment, different ways of using energy

“I think the public is willing to change, and there are changes being made, but there’s no leadership from the authorities to instigate change, because no-one can agree if there is a problem or not. There is too much conflicting evidence”.

8.2.4. Oil and gas

The oil and gas presentation was conducted via a PowerPoint presentation, and was contrary to what the rest of the group was anticipating. In our previous study, there was an assumption that stemmed from a CCS video devised by Shell/Imperial College London that oil and gas companies were supportive of CCS, so that they could continue to extract fossil fuels. Whilst participants here were aware that overseas oil and gas companies were involved in projects, they were not aware of the national context; at least as discussed in the oil and gas group. The speaker, MSO2M, started his presentation by quashing this perception.

I’m thinking, in contrast to popular belief, I don’t think the oil and gas industry, basically, see this as a good concept to pursue. I think, you know, if you actually want to talk about the broader things, you know, I think the oil and gas industry thinks that trying to actually eliminate emissions or reduce emissions is a far better way of, you know (MSO2M, O&G, Presentation, M-S Forum).

MSO2M pointed out during his talk, that it was important that the solution for CO2 emissions did not create a worse problem than the one we were trying to address on a global level.

Moreover, his opinion that, as well as being “commercial suicide” in the current New Zealand context, the existing physical infrastructure in the oil and gas fields was not suitable for CCS as it stood.

One of the things you might have picked up in your research, water and CO2 corrode, creates a carbon-like acid. Most of our wells are cemented with ordinary cement and that combination simply eats away cement around my casings. That means I cannot use that, I need to use special cement, so using the existing wells is not a good recipe (MSO2M, O&G, Presentation, M-S forum).

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The full list of points from the oil and gas presentation lies below:

CCS is “commercial suicide”

Contrary to the public view, oil and gas want to avoid CCS

It's us, the consumer, not the oil and gas industry that will pay for CCS (indirect payment via increased fuel prices)

At Kapuni, surface costs alone would be 30–35 dollars per tonne

Very expensive, existing infrastructure not suitable for CCS. Most wells have cement, cement and CO2 react and become acidic

Oil and gas will voluntarily only pursue niche opportunities, to enhance oil recovery and in some gas fields with high CO2 concentration

CO2 emissions are “a global problem, which needs to be tackled in a global way”. CCS in Taranaki will impact on farmers’ ability to export farming produce and has potential to damage local economy

Global competitiveness is significantly undermined if CCS regulatory framework is introduced

Polluter needs to pay for it, people using fossil fuels will have to pay for it

Problem: we (oil and gas) cannot pass costs to the consumer

Technical challenges: seismic activity in NZ means that NZ is probably not the best site

Unwanted chemical reactions from chemical cocktail created (likely can be solved): need to make sure that the cure is not worse than the problem we're trying to address e.g., biofuels

“We need to make sure that we look at the total picture and not blind ourselves on this solution”

If a neighbouring company introduced CCS, it could potentially interfere with our whole project. Oil and gas companies would therefore have lots of questions: Where do they want to inject? What do they want to do? How will that affect our oil field? What are the geological risks?

“The brochure doesn't do it for us”

There is a risk to the reputation of an oil and gas company if a CCS company drills next to them and does a bad job. A similar problem with another oil and gas company already exists

Need for long-term liability scheme and legislative certainty approved by government, as the company won’t exist in the future

Benefits for the region: centre of excellence with technical expertise in CCS, job creation, economic benefits

Public concerns: monitoring wells with new seismic techniques.

The general message from the oil and gas group was that CCS was not currently practically viable for a number of reasons: too expensive for New Zealand, unsuitable current infrastructure and unpredictable seismic activity. Moreover, a global solution was required for a global problem.

8.2.5. Council

The council presentation also utilized PowerPoint, and had a particular focus on legislation, representing what was discussed in session two. The main issues raised were consequently about the extent existing frameworks would cover CCS, and bringing in international and local expertise and knowledge to adapt them and develop new legislation applicable to the local context. In New Zealand, this included a

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consideration for significant iwi sites. Following the other presentations, the main points are paraphrased, below.

Make sure it stays down there by ensuring integrity of the well. This is an issue we're already facing now with deep well drilling!

Regulatory capacity: knowledge and expertise are necessary. Where are we going to get it from?

Contingency plan: How to react if something happens? How is the stuff going to spread under the ground?

Cultural considerations – “where are the sites of significance to iwi” in relation to CCS?

Cost-benefit analysis: if the costs are that much, what will be the benefits?

Research international best practice examples: RMA, health and safety regulations for petroleum industry

Assess NZ regulatory policies and statutes, assess existing framework in Taranaki

Commission an investigation

Response: publish non-statutory working paper, seek public input, then next step to obtain resource consent, process in itself

Question: Can risk be assessed appropriately?

The council presentation concluded the presentation sessions, with a focus on regulation and legislation.

A very short question period occurred, which ended up with some discussion about the independence of the council. It was agreed, amiably, that this was not an issue that would be resolved during this session. Questions were also directed at the oil and gas representatives, around technical issues involved with piping CO2 into the Taranaki region.

Multi-stakeholder forum

As a council perspective, I sat and listened, and there’s a lot of commonality across the ground. What a well-informed community we have. Really well informed about some quite technical things, now whether that’s a function of already having an oil and gas industry here or not, I think it probably is, it has to be related to the knowledge of the terms you used: contingency plan, wells, integrity of everything, you know, you guys are onto what the issues are. You actually know more than you actually give yourselves credit for, so I actually thought it was encouraging (MSC2M, Council, M-S Forum).

This viewpoint started the main part of the multi-stakeholder forum: coming up with a perspective from the entire community of stakeholder representatives using the same technique that they had experienced in session two. Figure 14 and Figure 15 constitute photographs of the actual flipchart notes that I made during the session, through the guidance of the participants in this deliberative forum. Figure 14 comprises the list of commonalities that participants named and briefly discussed, and Figure 15 is a list of other considerations that arose, all of which ultimately were acknowledged as being part of the picture. Hence, Figure 15 is actually an addendum to the finalized community views.

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Figure 14: Community stakeholder view on CCS: commonalities.

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Figure 15: Community stakeholder view on CCS: other points.

The flipchart notes were subsequently typed up and emailed to participants after the forum, and the more formal summary of this discussion is overleaf.

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8.3.1. Key points

Commonalities were identified with a quick-fire round of questions, before going back to ask participants to fill in the details of what each should entail. They were asked specifically to identify what the groups had raised in their presentations that were commonalities. This was followed by the identification of other important issues raised by the group, but which also included new issues that emerged during the session. Due to time limitations, there was only brief discussion around some of the issues, which have already been presented in some depth in the earlier sections of this report. The typed-up version (word-for-word) of both flipcharts is presented below and is followed by some more detailed analysis of some of the discussion that took place.

Commonalities

Accountability/Liability: Who takes care of the CO2?

- Government (preferred method)

- Bond from CCS industry (suggested but dropped in favour of government)

Geological Risk

- Proper technical assessment of well integrity and geology

- Understanding seismic risk – checking for presence of faults etc.

Regulatory capacity

- HSE & E

- Competency – to increase expertise hire an expert (“hire Brad”)

Community desire to be informed

- Awareness raising

Flyers in letterboxes (accessible, readable and inform everybody) Community must be able to understand – “everybody” who is interested and affected

by it

- Communication (mode)

Avoiding initial problem – look at alternatives to CCS

Who pays? Responsibility

What’s in it for the region?

- Sponsor training/apprenticeships in energy, engineering, IT, farming, for young people

Others Issues (discussed/accepted by the group)

Cost-benefit

Kaitiaki – sustainability/stewardship/guardianship of the environment

Risks associated with being first to do CCS

Local versus national/international waste – “don’t want to be a dumping ground”

Who picks up the community if something goes wrong?

Rather than repeat what has already been discussed in the previous chapters, I now focus on some key discussions that emerged during this session, plus some observations about those discussions.

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8.3.2. Key discussions

Of note during the session were five key discussions, which involved some deliberation either between two participants or the group itself. The first of these was a long discussion about the impact of CCS on the region, both in terms of its practicality and regional identity. MSU1M, from the community group raised the issue of how Taranaki would be perceived if it was the first area in New Zealand to deploy CCS. His view was that national perception of the region could go either way: “that would put us right at the top of the pinnacle wouldn’t it, or to be looked down on or contaminated, or something like that”. This initiated some key discussion, which served to interweave narratives from other discussions into a metanarrative. Primarily, this linked together the concepts of regional identity, risk perception, kaitiakitanga and responsibility. A greatly abridged version of this discussion below, serves to illustrate some of the comments and how these linkages were introduced.

Facilitator: What do people think?

MSI1M: That’s a risk…

MSU2F: …Like MSF1M said to with us being seen as a dumping ground, and you guys…

Facilitator: …What else could we add to this?

MSI1M: I would put in there, that topic we raised around local waste compared to waste coming in from the outside…

MSF2M: …Well it came back to what you said before doesn’t it, we don’t want to import someone else’s rubbish really, why should we?

MSF2M’s comment ended the discussion; a discussion which highlighted a key dilemma about the importance of the impact of regional identity in the deployment of CCS and the perceived limits of social responsibility.

The second important discussion was on long-term liability. In session two, three of the groups (iwi, the farmers and the council) had raised the possibility of a long term bond, or insurance scheme that could be utilized in the event of an emergency. The council group had previously come to the conclusion that a bond was not viable, and that Government would have to take on long term liability. Notably, a similar discussion occurred during this session, with the key actors being from the urban community, iwi and farmers, but with some important input from the oil and gas industry and council about the viability of such a bond. With some deliberation over these issues, the discussion ended with similar conclusions, as one of the council members eventually brought up some of the legal issues that had emerged in their earlier conversations.

MSC2M: There are some legal issues about getting that through the system for all the reasons you’ve just talked about.

Facilitator: What kind of legal issues?

MSC2M: Creating some memory cells. It’s in the RMA but it’s around rationale for it, reasonableness for, a bond that could be set. And then there are other tricky issues as MSO2M alluded to, that unless you actually have the loot in a bank account, lawyers and accountants in business could do all sorts of fancy things, so your money can disappear in a signature of pen. Unless you hold the money, you inflation-proof it, someone independent holds it. And you’ve got issues around who holds it, its inflation proof, and then there’s [unclear]. And generally companies will fight, that may turn,

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with a turn of proposal, on or off, that one thing, whether it occurs or not, cause it’s all factored into the business case.

MSO2M: You think about your reality is you’re probably better off as a kind of levy system like the EQC type of levies, I mean that’s a likely more viable scenario than a bond. Which is essentially linked the bond concept back to the government.

MSI1M: Isn’t the US government heading down that track? Forcing bonds on companies as a result of what happened in the Gulf.

MSO2M: I’m not a hundred per cent sure what they do there.

MSC2M: The response is either to make them have more insurance, which it has the same effect, that’s what they’re doing with the government here, same thing.

MSO2M: We’ve also increased our insurance and things like that. It’s hard to imagine twenty billion dollars of cost, in reality, let’s be real, that one it’s, regulation is one thing, but if people decide to float, float the rules, nothing helps.

MSC2M: So bonds, they’re quite tricky.

What was particularly rewarding, here, was that the council participant did not jump in with this comment at an early stage (which could have cut off all further discussion), but allowed some time for deliberation to raise some of the same issues. Ultimately, though, the forum brought up what MSO2M from the oil and gas group identified as a moral question comparable to current dilemmas over the funding of pension schemes: “The real question is do you make allowances for it, or do you leave it for the future generation to pick up the bill?” Once again, the issue of societal responsibility for future generations came to the fore.

A third theme that, not surprisingly, had some discussion, was that of risk. Interestingly, a great deal of this discussion was between the oil and gas participants, and the GNS scientist. Whilst both insisted that there was no such thing as a risk-free process, there was some disagreement about what might constitute the actual risks. It stemmed from different scientific understandings of underground processes, their impact on the stored CO2 and ultimately, their potential impact on a community.

1. For the GNS scientist, the “danger time” was during initial injection and the risk to future generations would gradually decline over time, as the CO2 dissolved in underground water, slowly resulting in stabilization and a decrease in reservoir pressure.

2. For MSO2M, the key danger was from geological faults, where “the CO2 will find the route of least resistance” and “ultimately it could break through”.

This discussion never did resolve and eventually had to be halted, but did lead into the management of such potential risks: “you don’t put a well on a fault line that you know about, so that’s inherent in that first one. Otherwise we wouldn’t do anything as a society until we had a hundred percent certainty” (MSC2M, Council, M-S Forum). Supporting this, it was subsequently pointed out that there were already other types of injection operations in the Taranaki region.

However, at a later point, this discussion was taken up again, but from a different perspective: what counts as low risk and high risk. This was an interesting discussion, as it very clearly demonstrated the demarcations between how risk is perceived professionally (industry, science) and how it is perceived by individuals and communities who may be subject to that risk.

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The discussion was initiated by a new point raised by MSI1M from the iwi group: “If something was to go wrong, and we’ve already talked about liability, and we talked about the role of the government in this thing, so what about the community? Who picks up the community?”. This comment was contextualized by the post-disaster situation in Canterbury, with a “huge” impact to residents and moved beyond the question of “who pays”.

MSO2M, from the oil and gas group, used this as an opportunity to find out what participants thought might go wrong, with the following exchange ensuing.

MSO2M: The problem I’ve got a little bit is say okay imagine, tell me how you see what type of scenario do you imagine it going wrong? If it sits in the air and it leaks back into the air are, we really, is it that much of an issue?

MSC2M: It’s not a poisonous gas as such is it?

MSO2M: Well it obviously is deadly on a hundred per cent basis, but all I’m asking is, is that risk actually that high, you know, and again it depends on how it happens but if it is multi logical scenario that it simply starts leaking at a lower rate, not dissimilar like we have oil spills, natural oil seeps, and natural gas seeps all over NZ. We wouldn’t even know it probably.

MSI1M: I guess in response to that, who would have ever thought that we would have such an earthquake in Christchurch? I would never have thought that Christchurch would be affected like that. I would have picked Wellington to be the most logical position as opposed to Christchurch. Christchurch would have been the last one I would have picked. So the risk is always there.

MSU2F: It’s a live planet.

MSO2M: No but all I’m saying is, is a leak, a CO2 leak, if you filled it in that reservoir and it starts leaking, more than likely it’s not going to be very catastrophic.

For industry and scientists, CCS was perceived as low risk, with the most likely scenario of leakage being at a low-level, similarly to natural gas/oil seepage, and of a gas that was already in the atmosphere (CO2). Alternately, the unpredictability of the Christchurch earthquakes and the catastrophic damage they caused to property and people’s lives, once again played a pivotal role in envisioning the potential impacts of major leakage. From the perspective of an affected community, risk was frequently perceived as, ‘what is the worst case scenario that could happen?’ and ‘what would be the consequences for us’? There was a gaping discrepancy here between risk as a statistical and technical probability and risk as a lived-experience and outcome.

This is a crucial difference, and some detailed discussion to understand the different perspectives would be necessary in any form of community engagement. In this case, a very detailed example from the GNS scientist, helped to illustrate what might happen in a leakage scenario and how this might be monitored and managed. The example from CO2CRC’s Otway project, where deliberate rapid release of CO2 resulted in a “big pile of ice and dry ice” that eventually had to be trucked away as it did not melt led MSI1M into the question: “so the risk is actually smaller than we’re talking about”? Here, Brad, the GNS scientist, tentatively agreed, but repeated that there would always be risk.

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8.3.3. Observations

What was key in these discussions was made clear by some informal post-forum comments; that the community as a whole got along to the point that they could amiably discuss their differences and also reach agreement. It was a comment that echoed back to session one discussions on regional identity. The social interactions that occurred in this session were consequently of interest, and are important in understanding a deliberative process and why it worked in this case.

First, when asked about the commonalities between the group, some participants deliberately made reference to what others had said, on a first-name basis. Some of the following phrases were used: “commonalities around the awareness levels in education”, an issue “that was inherent in what a lot of people were saying” and “I agree with [name]” in the comment made earlier”.

Second, whilst some participants were more dominant in the group (particularly as some discussions got into technicalities around CCS and legislation), they did make an effort to bring in the perspectives of others and integrate them into the conversation. For instance, MSC2M from the council deliberately brought MSU2F, from the urban group into the discussion: “But to be fair, MSU2F talked about having open days, and pamphlets and informing people”.

Third, participants sometimes presented their points as questions that invited further discussion, or questioned each other to gain clarification or additional information. For instance, “would avoiding the initial problem, shouldn’t that come under developing something else”? or “how big would [a bond] have to be?”.

Fourth, sometimes the group answered as a whole to my own questions, demonstrating a verbal coherence on particular issues. For instance:

Facilitator: Who should be informed [about CCS]?

Group: Everyone.

Facilitator: If it comes, what benefits do you want for the region?

Group: Economics, jobs, employment

The commonalities between the perceptions of the group were further highlighted at the end of the multi-stakeholder forum, when participants were asked what they would take back to their original groups.

8.3.4. ‘The parking lot’

The ‘parking lot’ is a facilitation tool, used to identify and recognize important items and issues do not fit the theme or agenda of a meeting. All that is required is a large poster, and some pens, where these items can be written. In simple terms, the process of writing means that ‘I’ve heard you’, ‘won’t forget’, ‘we will come back to these points’.

Although an official ‘parking lot’ did not feature in the multi-stakeholder forum, there were three discussions that started to break the official rules, and hence were unofficially noted as important and then parked, for discussion that should and could occur in a different context. They were:

The polluter (all consumers) must take responsibility for all mitigation measures (off topic)

The role of the council as an independent body (one-to-one irresolvable conversation)

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The fate of CO2 under the ground and its impact on risk (one-to-one irresolvable conversation)

All topics were noted as requiring further deliberation, either if CCS became a reality or in a different conversation entirely.

Whilst this brings me to the end of the substantive part of this report, the next chapter provides a critique of the small-scale deliberative engagement method, as it was used in this study. This, in turn, provided some valuable insights into how to fine-tune the method for use in future community engagement.

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9. Methodological critique To provide some closure to the methodological side of this research project, this chapter provides a critique of the overall process: stakeholder selection and motivations, contextualising the project via an in-depth exploration of regional identity, the science presentation, the fictional future scenario, the use of a CCS researcher to allow one-to-one question sessions, the facilitation techniques adopted and the utilisation of the deliberative process. This critique is the assimilation of comments fed back by the GNS team (scientists, note-takers and Māori strategy manager), my own general observations and a combination of verbal feedback and anonymous feedback from the online survey from participants.

If I reiterate that the experiential aim of this research was to create a space that acted as a complex adaptive system in order to foster dialogue, deliberation and decision-making around CCS in the community, how well did it work? How early is too early for upstream engagement on controversial technologies such as CCS?

Stakeholder selection

In this particular instance, due to financial constraints, we limited the stakeholders to five groups: iwi, urban community, farmers and landowners, councils and the oil and gas industry. However, in a real-time situation, with appropriate funding, the method can easily be adapted to open up constructive conversations with a wider group of people. This could include, but not be limited to: local and national media, environmental groups, local politicians, high school pupils (long-term risk management), healthcare representatives and representatives from local business.

Another important point to make is that the iwi group wanted to be involved, at some stage, with the rest of the local community, as opposed to approached separately via Treaty obligations. Whilst they favoured an invitation to the marae, as the most comfortable form of engagement and that which would lead to the most fruitful dialogue, this invitation could be extended to the wider community.

Stakeholder motivations

Participant introductions revealed a wide range of backgrounds, as well as reasons for being willing to commit to the research. Some participants actively wanted to learn about CCS.

So we’re here to learn. We want to know exactly what’s going to happen to do this or where’s it going to go or what happened to, I thought it was going into the hole…(I2M, Iwi, Session 1).

I’m always learning (O4M, O&G, Session 1).

For others, such as I4M from the iwi group, there was a definite element of curiosity about CCS and the notion of storing CO2 underground.

I’m interested in this kind of conversation cos’ like I said before, most people want to take stuff out but you guys want to put something back. Now, that’ll be interesting (I4M, Iwi, Session 1).

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Participants (with the exception of the council, who were unable to accept them) were also provided with compensation for travel costs and time in the form of a $50 supermarket voucher, per session attended. It should be noted that some of the participants kindly donated these vouchers to the community food bank. However, if the situation was a real one, assisting some members of the community with travel costs may help with access to discussions.

Regional introduction

Including a long section on participant’s perceptions of the region was crucial to this study. First, it provided the GNS team with some understanding of the complex, interrelated social, cultural, economic and political issues in Taranaki. These issues were of vital importance in understanding just where individuals and stakeholder groups were coming from; namely, the role that their attitudes, values and experiences played in their approach to evaluating CCS. Some anonymous feedback included:

Useful grounding and opportunity to assess participants.

It was useful in terms of settling everyone in with each other given that some of the participants had never met before.

A good cross section of input created a clear appreciation of 'our local Central Taranaki region’

Good idea, as got participants relaxed talking about their views/values. Established a good environment for your social research project.

In particular, discussions about regional issues also helped in understanding why the experiences of oil and gas exploration in the region were imperative to perception of risks around CCS, and expectations in terms of benefits to the community. However, the other vital element, here, was the community’s sense of place and pride in the region, which they believed CCS could potentially threaten if the region was nationally perceived as a “dumping ground”, as opposed to a community taking responsibility for tackling climate change.

Science presentation

The science presentation was pared down by Scientist 1, from a conference presentation aimed at a scientific audience, with personal input as by social scientist and lay person into making sure the science was in an accessible language. Moreover, the voiceover for this presentation was altered throughout the research process, leading to a lengthened, but altogether more understandable and accessible talk for a mixed audience, in response to its reception by each audience. Notably, for the oil and gas representatives, it was of a more technical persuasion.

Responses from the anonymous feedback survey supported this approach.

Appropriate and professional approach.

It was an interesting presentation about something I knew nothing about. I found it easy to understand.

I had no issue with the level of pitch and I did not see or note any issues from the other participants. The PowerPoint presentations were good as our group interact better with that type of format.

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Brad gave an excellent presentation – I personally would have like to have spent more time in this area. Be allowed to answer questions as he is going through it. When giving presentations – the more down to earth talking, it is easier for some to understand. If you start using big words, many people will just stop listening instead of saying that they don't understand.

In the iwi group, the talk was re-presented by a second scientist at the start of the second session. What was interesting was the impact of repeating the science talk for the benefit of new participants, after those from the original group also had time for reflection and research.

I4M: Well I, after, this is the second time I’ve seen that presentation, and the second time actually helps me a lot more now.

Facilitator: In what ways did it help you more?

I4M: Well the first one, I’ve got this thing where it’s all new, never seen this before. I think I’m looking at it differently; I’m probably in a more cautious mode than anything else, because I don’t know anything about it. Okay, but now I’ve seen it the second time and then there are bits and pieces that are starting to just sort of click in my mind, ah okay. So the second time I’ve seen this thing, what it does provide to me, it does say to me, is we do have some options, and this is one of them.

In the first session, a Q&A period was planned for the end, but in response to participant’s desire to ask questions as they emerged, we invited further groups to interrupt the presentation, particularly for clarification. This move was supported by the feedback survey, with 50% of respondents supporting questions throughout the presentation and 40% supporting this, plus time for a Q&A period at the end. Whilst the one participant who preferred a Q&A session at the end stated that it was useful for time management, those who wanted ‘questions-as-they-arose’ did so for the following reasons: “Given the issue is totally new, I would prefer to have the option of asking questions as we go”; “It's just my preference in this situation, i.e. informal presentation to a small group” or; “While the subject information is on screen”, which gave participants the opportunity to ask questions with visible stimulus material present.

These Q&A sessions proved to be valuable for participants, with 80% and 89% of feedback survey respondents reporting that our two scientists had fully answered their questions. Of the remainder, some admitted to not having any questions to ask, due to pre-existing subject knowledge; another comment was that: “Brad had some questions that he could not answer but would go away and find out or it was outside of his area of work”.

Fictional scenario

The vast majority of participants supported the use of the fictional scenario and information pamphlets as a way of prompting engagement with local stakeholders. Some of the supportive comments were: “Useful in terms of teasing out the scenario and it created a platform of commonality between the groups as we found in the last session”; “Again it engaged us in the problem – is a good way of thinking about it” and; “I would be interested – it would give the people of Taranaki time to consider that this could happen here”.

On reflection, I would agree with a comment from one survey participant, that the information leaflet was “too shallow” in depth to convey any detailed information and the verbal comments from the oil and gas industry that they would not be persuaded by a “glossy brochure”. The information leaflets, however, did

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appear to be sufficient as a launch point for the urban and farming community members to engage in their own research in the topic. In particular, as has already been stressed, the use of flyers in letterboxes as a way of initially informing the community was raised as a potential form of early communication in a real situation.

There was also commentary in the feedback survey that we “had not thought through the regulatory discussion which would have had to occur prior (Select Committee process)”. However, whilst regulatory processes around any future CCS site would be central to its implementation, and stakeholder concerns, should deployment ever occur, the main aim of the scenario was simply to set the scene and stimulate debate.

Nevertheless, in response, if the fictional scenario became ‘real’, a company seeking to engage the local community would be wise to include a section on regulation if pamphlets or flyers were used as a notification method. As a whole, the pamphlets seem to have been a useful tool for the provision of basic information, to encourage further research and to stimulate discussion. One participant called it: “a good practice example to help us better understand the issues”.

Use of the CCS researcher

In general, providing the community as a whole the opportunity to interact with a CCS researcher, particularly those with some expertise in climate change science, was a definite success. This was supported both by feedback from the questionnaire and comments made throughout the process.

Reference has already been made to the issue of scientific trust that occurred during session two with the farmers. Namely, participants’ preferred to get the information directly from scientists, but always bearing in mind just who was funding those scientists. We were informed that GNS, due to its status as a Crown Research Institute (CRI) was viewed as “impartial”, although Scientist 1 did acknowledge that GNS Science has funding from CO2CRC. Hence, we received statements such as these:

I’m more like F5F. I want it proved to me but I would be more likely to come to you and say, ‘what do you think?’ than read all the scientific information. I’ll, you know, go to a trusted person rather than actually read all that stuff (F6F, Farmers, Session 2).

However, what needs to be borne in mind is the power balance between scientific citizens who have educated themselves to the level of “lay experts” and CCS researchers who have expertise in a particular sub-field. And here, no matter how much you try to level the playing field, and foster genuine exchange, the scientific expert will ultimately be seen as such, even if the community members present have located new research or pilot projects with which they are not yet familiar.

Whilst the scientists involved in the project were open about their areas of uncertainty, there were occasions where the power inequalities became more apparent. These sparse incidents tended to be where participants presented new information/findings on CCS that was unfamiliar to the science “expert”, and hence, took on the role of lay-expert with regards to that specific area of knowledge.

With the amassing numbers of CCS projects and research, it is not possible even for an “expert” to maintain familiarity with what can become something of an ‘information overload’. However, the lesson is that in order to gain and maintain trust, it is important for any expert to openly admit the limits of their knowledge and their own uncertainty on a topic, listen to what the person who has conducted the research has to say, and follow-up on it. Moreover, this excerpt also points to an important learning

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lesson in science communication and outreach: the need for active listening, non-judgement and mutual learning.

It should also be noted that this unequal power relationship that occasionally manifested, differed during the sessions with oil and gas participants who were familiar with CCS, and hence, also considered themselves as having expert status on the topic.

Whilst some social scientists deliberately avoid framing the science via the adoption of a scientific “expert” in the research process, based on the community response to being able to address their personal questions on a one-to-one basis, I still advocate that this method is invaluable in the deliberative process. The main issue would be making sure that all parties adopt an active listening approach, and that the participating scientist is sufficiently briefed on their role.

A briefing/process for participating scientists has been devised for future engagement that ideally would include the following:

The focus groups guides – should be read prior to a verbal briefing, to provide an idea of structure and time allocations for presentations and question sessions in relation to other aims and objectives of each session

A brief explanation of the methods of social science, aims of engagement and comparison to scientific methods

A time-limited Q and A session (albeit some flexibility) with the scientist; an egg-timer could be used to clarify the end point, with any further discussions saved for after the process finishes or questions via email

Highlight the importance of listening, as well as speaking

Emphasize the use of short, concise answers in non-technical terms, and to clarify that these answers have been understood

If available, and funded, attendance at a facilitation skills course for any scientists engaging in social science research, with particular emphasis on open questions, probe questions and group management

Dry runs in an informal setting

Discussions on risk perception (whole team) prior to engagement

Homework exercise

The homework exercise was modified from the previous GNS study (Doody et al., 2012) and aimed to give participants the opportunity to conduct the type of research they might want to do in the event of a real CCS facility being planned for Taranaki. Participants engaged well with the topic, and the depth of research that some people went into was impressive, and helped inform the questions that were later directed at the CCS expert. With some basic information and facts provided in the CCS presentation as the basis for this exercise, participants were able to research into the issues that personally concerned them, or they were merely curious about.

The approach that the iwi participants took, a hui, also provided some guidance on how the small-scale deliberative process could effectively work in a real situation. Group discussions with the wider community, led by participants involved in the process, could help to disseminate and gather information.

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Whilst this could be asking too much in a theoretical research process such as this, in an actual situation, it could help to ensure that the wider community remained informed of developments and different perspectives.

The multi-stakeholder forum

The additional facilitation techniques utilised in the final multi-stakeholder session, are well-established within the profession. Whilst participants seemed a little surprised at the use of non-standard consultation techniques, they very quickly engaged. Due to the noise level that ensued during the “speed dating” exercise, the recording we had was a cacophony of sound. However, from observation, participants seemed to enjoy the exercise, it encouraged conversation and set up an informal atmosphere for the evening, which was the intended outcome. Moreover, using this method initiated a realisation of what I already knew from participating in all previous sessions: there were very important commonalities in the way people perceived and valued the region, and the issues over CCS that had been raised. This was an important starting point for the session. Finally, by pivoting the final verbal exchange around “one thing your group said about CCS”, it focused participants on the aim of the session – to exchange and discuss views.

The sticky notes exercise, aimed at deriving an agenda based on participants needs, clarifying those needs and the creation of group objectives, also worked very well. Again, participants seemed a little surprised at the exercise, although some were familiar with it. The one critique that came from our note-taker was that following the speed-dating exercise, where participants were coupled with someone from another group who they were unfamiliar with, that they should sit down and do the exercise with this person. Instead, I let them go back to their seats, hence, back to their selected seating preference with someone from their own group. This, I consider, to be an important point, and in future sessions, would follow it, as it would help to forge new relationships within the multi-stakeholder group.

Whilst there was no hijacking of the process, a facilitation procedure entitled ‘the Vulcan death grip’ (Pattillo, 2013) was convivially employed on two occasions, where one-to-one, irresolvable dialogue between participants with diametrically opposing views took centre stage, excluded other participants and/or had to be halted in the interests of time. As reported in the previous chapter, the unresolved issues were noted and identified as topics for more in-depth discussion, should CCS ever be planned for the region.

The main issue in the final session was one of time, and towards the end of the session, with some participants needing to travel long distances to get home, there was a strong push to finish. Hence, if I was repeating this method, I would set aside 3 hours in the evening (e.g. 5.30-8.30pm), with a short break in the middle, or split this into two sessions: a presentation session with questions and answers (each presenter introduced as an expert on their group view/local knowledge) followed a week later by a session which would allow more thorough discussion of the issues from a variety of perspectives, as opposed to simply compiling a list of point that would need to be addressed. Moreover, if CCS ever was planned for the region, these sessions would need to be ongoing.

Feedback from participants

As a team, we have thoroughly critiqued the approach, but verbal and anonymous feedback from the 14 participants who kindly filled in a long, open-ended online survey (Survey Monkey) provided an alternative response. Feedback from this suggested that the process did not require the majority of

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adjustments to the overall process that I suggested in the survey. More direct comments emerged throughout the research project, and during the roundup session, during the deliberative forum.

Verbal feedback also occurred throughout the engagement process, and the small-scale deliberative method was sometimes compared to the standard consultation process, which it seemed was the only technique with which participants were familiar.

I tell you one thing I think it’s great the process that you people are doing here because it doesn’t happen at the moment with the oil and gas industry, it doesn’t happen with the regulatory outfits around here. The regulatory thing would have to improve a million per cent because the regulatory thing at the moment relies solely on complaints, pretty much. They don’t really monitor anything they rely on people laying a complaint, and then the people that complain are branded as anti this or over the top or whatever…the process that you’re talking about there would have to be a full understanding and full transparency by the whole population of basically Taranaki (F3M, Farmers, Session 2).

The implication, here, was that current engagement was powered by a complaint-based process, as opposed to more of an ‘up-steam’, proactive dialogue, where a more complex picture could emerge and relationships could be built in a different environment. Here, rather than an evolving situation where complainants see themselves perceived as “troublemakers”, there is the opportunity to discuss issues and opportunities in a more informal setting, amidst a group of people with a range of views.

One of the things that some of the participants valued, was that the process allowed them to gain some insight into the perspectives of other groups within the wider community. Moreover, these perspectives included those of groups such as the oil and gas industry whose views might not normally be heard in such an informal setting.

I agree with MSC2M in the comment made earlier that actually the community here has a great understanding and knowledge of the whole process, come up with some good points and there seem to be a lot of consistency, there wasn’t anybody who completely disagreed with anybody else. And so we’ve all sort of come along in almost the same sort of angle from different paths, and I thought that was interesting, so that’s what I’ll feed back (MSO1M, O&G, M-S Forum).

Yeah, just the industry’s perspective of it, it’s good to get that, because obviously most of the community stuff obviously are relying on the farming industry, and they’ve all got the same concerns but the industry’s perspective on it was really good, talking about the costs and that sort of thing, so that’s what I’ll be feeding back cause that was something our group asked so (MSF2M, Farmers, M-S Forum).

There was also particular commendation for a process that engaged the community at an upstream level, well-ahead of any planned project.

One of the things that we as Māori that I’ll always hear when I go out there that they’re always asked after the fact. The communities and iwi communities and isolated communities in general are always in reactive mode because they seem to think that they are always asked afterwards. So by this process, it means we are front loading, we are talking about it, talking through issues before we even get to it, now I think that’s the useful part. I liked the process and we should do it more often (MSI1M, Iwi, M-S Forum).

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And just the process of the whole thing we’ve done, the ability to sit down and discuss and understand in advance, not once the process has happened, I think it’s been really good (MSF1M, Farmers, M-S Forum).

I think that the real good thing about this is that all these discussions are so well in advance of anything happening, which is the best way to approach it. You don’t want to wait until they’re ready to move in with the machines. So you’re approaching with a very open mind and, yeah, you haven’t got any decisions made; I think that’s good (F4M, Farmers, Session 2).

The first key point is that it is never too early to engage, and discussing issues prior to them becoming problematic allows time for relationship-building, questioning and clarification of the issues and risks, as well as their potential resolution. The second key point, here, was approaching the engagement with an open mind; in a true, two-way dialogue, this means both CCS companies and all sectors of the community. Downstream, this is difficult to do, and once again supports the need for early engagement and the building and demonstration of trust.

In addition to the feedback, there were also two major outcomes from the project. The first major outcome emanating from the final discussion group was an invitation for our GNS scientists to a local marae, to talk about carbon dioxide and CCS.

The only thing I’d like to ask, is that at some time could you bring this sort of meeting to the Marae so you can explain it to our Iwi. Cause some of the people, what is carbon dioxide? So what is it? You know the people that don’t know about it. And where we can get rid of it, where they don’t want it; at the hui, pa’s, or at their Marae, or at spiritual places. They will disagree about that and they’d go on. A lot of the people that really don’t know what it is, and I reckon to bring it to the Marae and have even a public meeting, because I don’t think half the public know about it, what’s going on, only a few of us here (MSI2M, Iwi, M-S Forum).

The second major outcome that occurred was that a member of the community with team-building skills was not only enthusiastic about the method, but expressed a plan to take this model to use in the real-time community situation to open up discussions about oil and gas exploration.

Hence, although a future endeavour might require some revision of the process and adaptation to a specific geographical, temporal and scientific context, early onset, small-scale deliberative engagement around CCS appears to have been welcomed by the community and could prove to be an effective way to engage different groups in co-governance of the technology.

Best practice discussion forum guides

Based on the team critique of the small-scale deliberative engagement method and the feedback from participants, it is possible to conclude this section with some best practice guides for the adapted focus groups, discussion forums and multi-stakeholder deliberative forum. Three revised guides, based on our learning from the process, comprise Appendices IX-XI. These guides, with adaptations to suit the context, will provide the basis for any future engagement around CCS. However, it should be stressed that they were designed for a context-specific upstream engagement scenario, and some significant revisions would be needed for a) a genuine project in the planning stage and b) a project already underway and c) a project around which there is considerable conflict and anxiety .

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10. SUMMARY This report explored both the use of a small-scale deliberative dialogue process for community engagement and the corresponding community views on a fictional scenario, where a CO2 storage facility was planned for the Taranaki region in 2030. In particular, this report is also the written documentation of an in-depth social characterization of the region: its culture/s, values, history, geography, economy, challenges and visions for the future. As I have argued throughout, having an insight into the complex palimpsest of people, places and processes that characterize a region is essential to understanding and acknowledging the range of community responses to the possible deployment of CCS in the region. This final chapter summarizes, interrelates and extrapolates the main findings of the study, whilst simultaneously assessing the usefulness of the process employed to acquire this knowledge.

Community risk perceptions: space, place and culture

Whilst CCS has been couched as part of a portfolio of strategies to tackle the growing problem of climate change, and was introduced to participants via this framing, it did not feature to any significant degree in how the community perceived the technology (see also Wong-Parodi and Ray, 2009). Alternately, the main lens through which participants viewed CCS was experiences with the dominant industries in the region: oil and gas exploration, and dairy farming. Added to this was some sensitivity to induced seismicity, influenced by the catastrophic impact of the Christchurch earthquakes, and regional debate on hydraulic fracturing. Moreover, attitudes to CCS and its potential impact on Taranaki’s ‘sense of place’ were coloured by a strong sense of regional identity and ethical stance towards maintaining and even improving the quality of life for future generations. There was a demonstrable correlation between the views of different parts of the community, with participants in the final multi-stakeholder forum recognizing both this, and the sense of purpose that characterized the region as a whole.

Paralleling international studies, there was little prior knowledge of CCS, aside from some members of the oil and gas community, who were familiar with the technology. However, provided with some basic information about CCS though an interactive science presentation, participants achieved a good level of knowledge via self-education through the internet, written materials and informal discussion. This was particularly evident at the final multi-stakeholder forum, when this level of knowledge was noted and commended by one council participant.

Again, similar to international studies, issues of cost, logistics, concerns over leakage, ensuring there was adequate monitoring, emergency planning and legislation, as well as issues of who should take on long-term liability were all considered in turn. However, the local community drew particular attention to issues that they had already had experienced through oil and gas exploration, with drilling, noise, the potential for leakage and land access having some insightful discussion. The oil and gas participants also frequently drew discussions back to the root causes of CO2 emissions, and how to address them through behaviour changes, as opposed to technological innovation. Although some viewed CCS as an idea worth pursuing, this group generally favoured addressing the emissions problem at source. For all groups, the issue of problem-solution-problem (Beck, 1992) was a recurrent concern, with a variety of examples where innovative solutions had created further problems of their own, requiring new solutions.

The issue of how the community should benefit from taking on the responsibility of hosting a facility that would both reduce the nation’s carbon emissions, but would always be associated with a degree of risk that would be passed down the generations, was also raised. Notably, though, these discussions were always relegated to the end of the sessions, or only emerged with prompting from the facilitator.

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Moreover, participants wanted to see the CCS facility enhance, as opposed to ruin , the image of the region and provide added value, increasing local employment and training, with the company following the lead of the oil and gas industry and sponsoring internships and local facilities. However, there was a concern from some that they did not want to either be or feel like they were being ‘bought off’ and a preference would simply be for all risks to the community to be well-managed to the point of “minimal risk”.

Although there was some deliberation over the risks associated with both, the majority of participants preferred a CCS facility to be offshore due to the reduced potential for any leakage to impact directly on their community. However, as a consequence of technical ease, reduced cost and ability to manage risk, the oil and gas group thought that an onshore facility would be a better option.

Whilst most of these findings bear a strong resemblance to those of other studies, some were unique to the region. Whilst CO2 was recognized as a gas that is essential for life, some discussions were characterized by the simultaneous construction of CO2 as a “waste product”. Notably, this is in direct contrast to the oil and natural gas, currently occupying the potential storage reservoirs, and viewed alternately as resources. In turn, this precipitated some trepidation around how the region would be viewed by the rest of the nation. There were some very real concerns that participants ‘home’ region could be construed as a “dumping ground”, hence shattering its sense of place. As discussions in the final session revealed, the place image of Taranaki as a “dumping ground” was not one to be revered or supported. In more practical terms, this image could permanently damage the reputation of the dairy industry, if such a waste product was perceived by consumers as having tainted milk exports. As the farmers made clear, “the land is our lifeblood”.

However, this construction of CO2 as a waste product led to a second perspective: that of a regional community taking responsibility for their waste. Here, it was local iwi who led the way, with an introduction to the concept of kaitiakitanga, roughly translated as caretaking or environmental sustainability. In this view, addressing the issue of local carbon dioxide emissions by underground storage was an example of “taking care of our waste”. With the concept of environmental sustainability at the forefront of current dairying practices, the farming group seconded this approach, followed by the rest of the stakeholder representatives in the final session. In addition, there was one facet of this approach that should be noted: the willingness was to take care of “our waste”, as opposed to that emanating from the rest of the nation, or any CO2 imported from overseas.

Alternately, the host community to a CCS facility could be identified as a “green community”, similar to the more complex concept of a “green town” (see Cheng et al., 2013). In theory, the concept meshes well with the existing place identity of the community, the concept of environmental sustainability adopted by the farming community, the green measures adopted by some of the international oil and gas companies, and the general concept of “clean green New Zealand”. However, it should be borne in mind that this must be more than just a marketing ploy, and similarly to the visions for a symbiotic relationship between the existing industries, a CCS facility should merge with and enhance the existing sense of place.

Ultimately, though, with especial input from the oil and gas representatives in the final forum, CCS was not seen as having a business case in the current economic climate, nor was it technically possible without significant (and costly) adjustments to the existing infrastructure in the region.

Risk management

In this study, the message from the oil and gas participants who were familiar with CCS was that it was a low risk venture, but like any technology, was never risk free. In simple terms, what this means, is that

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with best practice techniques in operation, there is a low probability of something going wrong. Whilst this honesty was important, it is also essential to be mindful of the differences between envisioning risk as a statistical probability and community perceptions of how this probability could play out in a real situation, should a problem occur. Here, people are aware of other potentially low risk situations, from which transpired very severe consequences: Bhopal, Fukashima, Chernobyl, Lake Nyos and Canterbury, are pertinent examples.

Bearing in mind this discrepancy in the way risk is perceived, it was not surprising that in other studies, participants have revealed that they were concerned that the issues they were raising were not being taken seriously by scientists and policy-makers (Wade and Greenberg, 2011). Hence, the issue of how to manage perceived risk, statistical risk and any untoward event that might occur was paramount to these conversations. Here, the role of the wider community should be considered crucial in identifying key perceived risks and utilizing local knowledge to establish a satisfactory framework for the co-governance of risk management.

Local communities have a wealth of real-time, on-the-ground knowledge about the area, its history and culture, all of which are important in constructing a risk management strategy, and developing a project that fits in with community values and plans for the future. Moreover, involving the local community in decision-making allows for the co-governance of risks, and active involvement from members of this community. Local people, with obvious concerns about the safety of their home environment, with some training and a well-founded incentive to help, could potentially assist in the monitoring process on a voluntary basis. This could enable a tighter, more widespread monitoring programme. Moreover, allowing the community to share control over this process would both enhance transparency and help to alleviate concerns over what was going on behind the scenes, as well as bolster risk management plans in general.

Risk management would also be achieved via adherence to an appropriate legislative framework. The council group had devised a multi-step approach to creating such documentation, with the RMA already covering many of the issues at hand. It was determined that some “tweaks” to existing legislation could cover everything else, although the oil and gas group also saw that further work would be needed to secure their existing fields, particularly from a stratigraphic perspective. Whilst the process of creating this appropriate legislation was a thorough and arduous one involving independent peer review, there was some concern among specific individuals, about the difference between guidelines and hard legislation. The concerns pivoted around the flexibility of the former, which could lead to misinterpretation of their meaning and subsequent problems. Alternately, concise, succinct rules were a preference, to make sure that “best practice” was indeed adhered to.

Finally, to a prospective CCS company, part of a risk management strategy would also be identifying how to maintain good relations with the host community, which brings me to the next section: understanding their information and communication needs.

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Information and communication needs

Central to the Taranaki region and regional identity is Mount Taranaki, which had particular spiritual significance for local Māori, but also towers above, as a symbol of ‘home’ for most participants. This was coupled with an understanding that under this mountain resided a diverse community with a “can do attitude”, and who had achieved far more than what might be expected for an area of this size. Moreover, there was a sense of community coherence, resilience, neighbourliness, a desire to communicate, and goodwill. This was accompanied by a strong sense of pride in being part of this region. However, there were challenges for Taranaki, and it was also characterized by an aging population, a drift of younger people out of the region, slow internet connections, a challenging transport network and general isolation from the remainder of North Island.

Whilst a sense of good will was one of the key attributes of the community, it was not exhaustive, nor was there room for it to be exploited by any CCS company that might consider developing a storage site in the distant future. There was a desire among many to learn from the past, with an openness to new industries being balanced by a sense of caution, and a desire for early and transparent face-to-face communication. These factors form an important base from which to understand the communication needs of the community as a whole.

Based on responses in this study, a possible (and thorough) mechanism for communication for the wider community might be a multi-step approach that should be initiated as early as possible. There was a strong desire for it to be community-driven, and hence a process that empowered the people who participated. Moreover, any approach should allow people to be and feel included in the overall decision-making process. Some action points could include the following:

First, alerting the local community to proposed plans for a CCS facility, via pamphlets in letterboxes, similar to the ones used in this project. Participants wanted to see information presented in an accessible language, alongside diagrams to explain the science in a visual format. The rationale behind this was that everyone was a stakeholder when a storage facility was in close proximity to people’s homes, and hence needed to be informed. The distribution of pamphlets would therefore ensure that the first stage of communication was egalitarian in nature; everybody was informed and hence, provided with an opportunity to educate themselves on what this could mean for them.

Second, consult with key community members to find out the history of the region, the makeup of the community as a whole, and local concerns. Moreover, since the history of oil and gas exploration in the region played a significant role in how CCS was evaluated gather as much information about this as possible, particularly in terms of the relative successes and failures of communication strategies by existing industries.

Third, follow this up by face-to-face, facilitated engagement with key community groups, and key individuals within the region, from whom information could filter through to a wide number of people. Concurrently, any queries or comments to the company could be fed back through the same process. This could be conducted through adapted consultation procedures (but with open invitations), or similar to this process, via small single-stakeholder groups. Community concerns should be acknowledged and addressed in a proactive manner, although it should be borne in mind that people were willing to compromise, and aware that full consensus would never be reached on everything. The important stance, here, is listening and genuine empathy towards people’s concerns. Finally, this process, once initiated, should be ongoing on an indefinite basis.

Fourth, local iwi had a preference for hosting these types of meetings on a marae, both to be part of discussions involving the wider community and to encourage stronger and broader participation. These

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hui should also involve the younger generations, who, as future leaders, were recognized as needing to be involved in the learning process. Local iwi were particularly interested in CCS, and had extended an open invitation for the GNS scientists to talk about it in more detail. In the case of a CCS company, it was felt that a Māori-liaison officer should be appointed to initiate engagement in a culturally appropriate way that acknowledged and enhanced, rather than threatened, mana.

Fifth, the community wanted to have access to an independent scientific advisor, such as a GNS scientist, who they could turn to for impartial advice. Face-to-face question and answer sessions are important, but this could also be achieved via an online Q&A blog, for instance.

Sixth, the community wanted access to monitoring information, with a combination of raw data and interpreted data, as well as contingency plans. One participant suggested utilising accessible technologies and devising a company ‘app’, which could feature regular progress updates, information about meetings, and monitoring reports.

Seventh, accessing local schools to educate the younger generations was also advocated, as a CO2 storage facility would be a permanent fixture that will remain with the passing of generations of local residents. As I have already stated, this was especially important for Māori.

Eighth, after raising the effectiveness of the community open days at Australia’s Otway Project (see Steeper, 2013), participants thought that this was a good idea, in order to increase transparency, alleviate concerns and build effective relationships.

For the oil and gas industry, a different approach would be required. This would again, be pro-active and entail face-to-face meetings, utilizing an appointed community liaison officer, alongside a more technical expert. Involved parties would be using their technical knowledge to ask very specific questions and ascertain the legal implications of being neighbour to a CCS facility, whether it was horizontally adjacent, or in stratigraphic proximity to their existing fields.

However, what would also be beneficial for the wider community, is inviting oil and gas representatives to join in the general discussions. With the technical know-how to ask the right questions, and their own set of expertise, this would greatly benefit other stakeholders, and help to maintain sound community relations with these industries.

As far as the main engagement method was concerned, many participants favoured a similar approach to the one utilized in this project, which will be briefly discussed in the following section.

Small-scale deliberative engagement: a complex systems approach

At this point I return to the three pivotal questions that underpinned the research methodology. These questions were:

1. Could a scaled-down, cost-effective deliberative engagement process be designed and utilised to help identify and address any foreseeable areas of conflict?

2. Could such a methodology create a space that acts as a complex adaptive system as opposed to one defined by the chaos of a conflict situation?

3. Could this promote the emergence of dialogue, ideas and solution-focused outcomes, as opposed to miscommunication and misunderstanding?

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It is also important to return to the fourth question: ‘how early is too early’ to engage a community about controversial technologies that might impact on them?

Whilst this research, arguably, may have occurred earlier than necessary, participants welcomed the opportunity for upstream engagement, even adding that it should have been used in the region a long time ago. Moreover, if a real CCS project was ever planned for the region, the community members that I engaged with wanted to be made aware of the project from the outset, and also be actively involved, again, from the outset. This outset was defined as the planning, as opposed to probable implementation stage. And in reality, this makes sense.

The opportunity to interact with a GNS scientist was once again, welcomed by participants, and provided a forum for exploring their individual interests, underlying concerns, questions that had emanated from internet research and hui at the marae, and genuine curiosity about CCS. Whilst some researchers have been concerned about the kinds of power-relationships that introducing an expert can pre-construct (for instance, McNaghten and Szerszynski, 2013), I would argue that this form of face-to-face communication, where learning was driven by individual questions, can be an empowering experience for the community, with careful facilitation and genuine two-way dialogue. Here, the expertise of individual participants must be acknowledged, alongside the knowledge gaps of the CCS experts.

Whilst power-play and micro-politics almost inevitably transpired in the deliberative forum, in order to empower participants, a certain level of trust had to be cultivated within the room. The development of mutually-agreed ground rules at the beginning of the session took a pivotal role in this process and helped to define the ethical boundaries of dialogue and deliberation. To some extent, I surmise that the initial focus on listening to interrupted presentations also opened up the space and time for participants to identify areas of common ground (as well as differences in opinion), prior to more interactive discussions.

Moreover, with these ground rules in place, a recognition that all groups wanted to be understood and trusted by the wider community, entering the conversation with a mind-set that people wanted to hear each other’s views and good-humoured nature of participants, I can say that this small-scale deliberative process achieved its aims. A general list of issues and potential solutions was achieved, and areas for further discussion were identified, and temporarily ‘parked’. Participants engaged with each other, respectfully, which also permitted the building of trust, as other important regional issues were able to emerge during conversation. When dialogue started to transform into debate (and potentially beyond), it was allowed to continue to see if it led to an agreeable outcome, but early intervention and the use of humour prevented any genuine conflict. Finally, the whole process was characterised by the generation of ideas, potential solutions and a genuine desire to sort out any misgivings about different sections of the community.

The benefits of the process are possibly best communicated via a summary of community responses, as this is the real outcome, as opposed to theoretical intention. In sum, verbal feedback from participants was that:

The process encouraged group empowerment.

It should have been used in the region a long time ago.

“Front end loading”, with early, open discussions is a really useful process and helps to prevent people ending up in “reactive mode”.

Participants would like to have more opportunities for this kind of process to happen.

In the event of a real situation, deliberative dialogue should occur immediately and be on-going, at regular intervals.

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This method could be used to open up a dialogue on other important regional issues, including oil and gas exploration.

But how could this be utilized, in practice? An ideal situation would be to employ a deliberative process to assist with setting up the co-governance of risk, with elected and trusted members of the community participating in key meetings, monitoring and the development of legislation, acting as a conduit of information for the wider community (both translating processes and feeding back responses and queries to the company). However, logistically, this may not be possible due to financial constraints or time demands.

As an alternative, ongoing small-scale deliberative engagement is a means to break down the standard consultation repertoire, with its invited stakeholders, formal proceedings and top-down process. With careful facilitation, the opportunity and time to research into some of the potential issues, the chance to ask questions of an independent expert and the breaking of traditional barriers by inviting lay publics, iwi, council and the two dominant industries in the region to converse and learn from each other, this process could be extremely effective. A potential CCS company (such as the fictional Tellus Enterprises), could utilize it to tailor the CCS operation to the community’s needs, including the minimization of risk, and maximization of benefits. Early engagement at the planning stage would also provide some indication of whether a community was indeed amenable to hosting a storage site; as previous research has indicated, this has not always been the case (Brunsting et al., 2011; Feenstra et al., 2010), and any social risks to a prospective company should be addressed early on, including the possibility of withdrawal, altogether.

In order to further this small-scale deliberative process, it needs to be tested out in a real-time scenario: both a planned CCS project and a project that is already underway. The process could also further be adapted for a conflict situation, but with much more emphasis on identifying key areas of disagreement, and a solution-focused approach, with practical measures for addressing them.

Finally, I wish to conclude by making reference to the final question underlying this research: ‘how early is too early’ to engage? The conclusions of this project are that it is never too early to engage a community in a planned, potentially controversial project. Moreover, by engaging in an open and transparent way, employing active listening and deliberative dialogue, you also promote the expansion of ‘scientific citizenship’ into the wider community, empowering people to self-educate and participate in a workable democratic process that is endemic to what has been termed, “responsible innovation” (see Stilgoe et al., 2013; Stirling, 2007).

I think that the real good thing about this is that all these discussions are so well in advance of anything happening, which is the best way to approach it. You don’t want to wait until they’re ready to move in with the machines. So you’re approaching with a very open mind and, yeah, you haven’t got any decisions made; I think that’s good (F4M, Farmers, Session 2).

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Acknowledgements This project was funded through GNS Science core funding as an in-kind contribution to CO2CRC. First, I would like to give a whole-hearted ‘thank you’ to the members of the Taranaki community who participated in this research project. Thanks for welcoming us into your lives, and sharing your extensive knowledge of the region and views on CCS. Second, I would not have been able to complete this project without the GNS scientists who participated in this project: the project leader, Brad Field, and scientist, Malcolm Arnott, for their presentations and input to the study. Third, I am indebted to the note-takers, Yvonne Davidis, who assisted in the first and final sessions, and Maureen Coomer, who assisted in the second sessions. Fourth, I am extremely grateful to Clare Gibbons, Jan Bushby, Maureen Coomer and the various transcribers, for speedily producing transcripts for the different sessions. Fifth, the report reviewers, Brad Field and Julia Becker of GNS Science and Anne-Maree Dowd of CSIRO, did a remarkable job and I’d like to give them especial thanks for reading so thoroughly through a very long report. Finally, I would not have been able to conduct this study, without the help of Taranaki Regional Council. Thank you for assistance in recruitment, refreshments and hosting the sessions.

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Appendix I

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Appendix II

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Appendix III

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Appendix IV Adapted focus group guide: Session 1

Capturing the Future: A Focus Group Guide on Community Stakeholder Opinions: SESSION 1

Introduction [5 minutes]

Thank you Thank you for coming this evening, realise you are busy professionals/people, appreciate that you are willing to give up your time for these focus groups. I think we’re all going to learn a lot from you, today, which will really help in our projects.

Intros Moderator and note-taker introduced as social researchers from GNS Science

Roles Explain that the moderator will facilitate the discussion and note-taker will listen, take notes and operate the tape recorder.

Use of recordings

Explain the use that will be made of the tape recordings – they will only be used by the researchers for the purpose of the study, and that absolute confidentiality of participants will be adhered to. Names will be coded then translated into pseudonyms in reports or publications.

Funding Explain that this research is funded by GNS Science, from its core science funding.

Focus We will be discussing your understandings of climate change, energy options and introducing a new technology that is part of a range of options to help address global warming. When we talk, useful to support what you say with examples from your experience – will encourage you to do so. There will also be an expert presentation with an opportunity for questions and answers.

Opinions Explain that participants should feel free to express their own opinions, that these are important and there are no right or wrong responses to questions.

Framework and limits

State that whilst I have a series of areas to cover, if something participants consider to be important should develop outside this framework, that we may be able to explore it.

One-at-a-time

As the sessions are being recorded and transcribed, that participants should try not to talk at once, and either wait for the person speaking to finish or put their hand up to signal they have something to say.

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1. Introductions 18:00–18:05

1. Go around the room and get everyone to quickly introduce themselves to the rest of the room – name, what you do for a living, how long you lived in the region and how you came to be here.

2. Place Attachment 18.05–18.15

To provide some context to our discussions we first want to find out about your views about where you live. We’ve already asked about how long you’ve lived here and why, so we’ll continue by asking:

1. What do you like about the area? What are your favourite places and what do you like about them?

2. What are the disadvantages to living in this area?

3. What do you see as the biggest challenges facing your community? What would you like to see happen to the region in the future?

3. Climate Change 18.15–18:35

1. There is a lot of talk these days about climate change. What do you think people mean when they use the words ‘climate change’?

2. What do you think about climate change, in general?

a. What do you think are the causes of climate change?

b. What human activities are affecting the climate?

3. What information have you heard/seen about climate change?

a. How easy to understand is the information you get, e.g., from the media/ scientists?

b. What do you think about it?

c. How would you like to see it presented?

d. How much do you trust that information?

5. How do you think climate change will affect you as an individual?

a. What signs of climate change, if any, have you noticed in the local area?

b. What might you expect to see/experience in your local area in the future, with rising global temperatures?

c. How do we tackle climate change?

d. Whose role is it to tackle climate change?

e. In what ways? What should they do? How should they do it?

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4. Energy 18:35–18:50

1. What do you know about current energy supplies and resources in New Zealand? [Can show graph of current mix].

2. If this is the current mix, what sort of mix of energy resources would you like to see as part of New Zealand’s energy supply? What makes you say that?

a. What would be the ideal mix?

b. What would be the worst mix?

3. How can we make the transition to that mix before carbon dioxide levels rise to a level where they trigger rapid climate change?

5. Energy technologies 18:50–19:10

1. As one of a group of ways to help address the effects of climate change, there is an idea out there of capturing carbon dioxide and storing it underground.

a. What have you heard, if anything, about this idea?

b. What do you think of it?

c. What do you understand by the term, carbon capture and storage?

2. Now, we are going to carry on with a brief presentation from a scientist I work with, who knows a few things about this technology. You’ll then get a chance to ask some questions, based on what he says and your own research.

Expert presentation [10 minutes].

3. Having listened to this presentation, what do you think about the idea? Do you have any questions?

6. The Scenario 19:10–19:25

As part of this broader research project we are interested in finding out about perceptions of this technology from people in a local area that could host the industry. The Taranaki region has been identified as a likely place for a CCS storage facility, possibly located in one of the gas fields, now in operation. At the current time, this isn’t planned to happen, but in the event that it does, it’s worth making sure that you, as stakeholders, or groups of people who could be impacted by this development, are informed. Just as importantly, it’s important that we’re informed by you, and that other groups are aware of your opinions and how best to discuss any plans with you. In the next session, we’re going to imagine that its 2045, and that a CCS company called Tellus Ventures is looking to set up a CCS facility in your local area, either onshore or offshore. For this fictional scenario, we’re going to take on the position of Tellus Ventures, and we’ve prepared a fictional information leaflet for you.

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[Hand out leaflets]

[Read out leaflets] [Possibility of Video for those who can’t read]

What we’d like you to do, is to go away and think about it, talk about it and become a researcher for your community group. Think about what you’d need to know or what you’d like to know, in the event that a CO2 storage facility was coming to your region. What I’d also like you to do is make a list of sources that you use to do this research, as you do so, that you can hand in at the end of the next session. Please also read over and give this document some consideration in light of what you have heard.

Conclusion 19:25–19:30

Thank you for all coming tonight. Next time we will talk in more detail about your thoughts about carbon, capture and storage in your local area and select a couple of people to represent the group for a final discussion with people from other groups. So have a think about whether you’d like to do this, or who you think should do this. In the next session Brad will also be here to address any further questions you might have around carbon, capture and storage, throughout the session.

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Appendix V

Discussion forum guide: Compilation


Introduction [0–5 minutes]

Thank you Thank you for coming again, after some really interesting session we had last week. I hope you’ve had time to have a think about Brad’s presentation, last week, and a spare moment to have a think about carbon capture and storage, particularly in relation to this region and community.



Use of recordings



Focus We will be discussing carbon capture and storage in general, in relation to New Zealand and in the context of a fictional future scenario in your region.



State that whilst I have a series of areas to cover, if something participants consider to be important should develop outside this framework, that we will explore it.

One-at-a-time


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1. Re/Introductions 6–10 Minutes

1. Go around the room and get everyone to quickly introduce themselves to the rest of the room – name, what you do for a living, how long you lived in the region and how you came to be here.

2. Introduction 11–20 Minutes

Today, we’re going to discuss your views on Carbon Capture and Storage, with our final aim being to construct a summary that fairly represents the range of views of the group. I’ll take you through the process, with the help of Malcolm and Maureen.

So, I’m going to start by asking for some feedback on your research and your initial thought about CCS. You’ll then get a chance to ask some more questions of our CCS researcher, based on your own research. We’re then going to spend the rest of the time talking about your thoughts on CCS in the Taranaki region and compiling a list of points that you want your representatives to raise when talking to other group members at the final meeting.

So, to begin,

1. Having had more time to think about carbon capture and storage what do you think of it, as one of a mixture of ways to help manage climate change?

2. Where did you do your research? How was it presented? How reliable do you think that information is?

3. Under what circumstances would you consider carbon capture and storage as being a good idea for New Zealand?

Q and A Session 21–30 Minutes

Now, it’s time to engage the services of Malcolm. After your research, do you have any more questions for him?

Scenario 31–35 Minutes

Now, we’ll move back to the scenario.

The Taranaki region has been identified as the most likely site for a future Carbon Capture and Storage facility, possibly located in one of the gas fields, now in operation, or possibly if another large field opens up. At the current time, no CCS is planned to happen but in the event that it does, it’s worth making sure that you, as stakeholders, or groups of people who could be impacted by this development, are informed. Just as importantly, it’s important that we’re informed, and other groups are aware of your opinions.

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So, the scenario I created is for 2030, but it could be later or earlier, as the government has recently given the go-ahead for further exploration to take place. Just to make it more realistic, Malcolm will take you through the years leading up to 2030.

[Malcolm and slide]

So, I’m going to take on the position of a Social Scientist interested in initiating engagement with the community before this process starts, and Malcolm is accompanying me as a technical research expert.

What I’d like now, is a volunteer scribe, who can come up and make a list of summary points when we go through some questions. That scribe is also free to talk.

We’ll go through some general discussions, and after each main area that comes up, I’ll ask you to clarify what the main points are.

General 36–50 Minutes

1. After your research, how do you feel about a CCS storage site underground in the Taranaki region?

2. What about an offshore site?

3. What do you think might be the benefits to the region/local community/yourself and family?

4. What benefits would you like to see for the community/landowner hosting the storage site?

5. What concerns do you have about having a storage site under your community?

Monitoring and Regulation 51–60 Minutes

1. What kinds of regulations would you want to be put in place? Who should be responsible for creating these regulations and making sure they are followed?

2. What level of monitoring would you like to see? How long should it go on for? Who should take responsibility for it?

3. What kinds of safeguards should be in place to protect the community?

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Communication 61–75 Minutes

1. If a company such as Tellus Enterprises is looking to site a CCS facility close to your community, to what extent would you like to be involved the planning stages?

a. How would you like to be approached by a company such as Tellus Enterprises?

b. How do you think other groups of stakeholders would like to be approached? Would you like to be approached by the company that runs it? What kinds of information would you want? How would you like to get it? How often?

2. Who should be responsible for community liaison/assurance on CCS – company, council, central government, all?

Key Issues 76–85 Minutes

Can we make a list of key issues that could summarise a response from the local community/farmers and landowners/council/oil and gas industries/Māori and you would like other stakeholders to acknowledge and comment on?

Get note-taker to make list on board.

Conclusion 86–90 Minutes

Thank you all for coming to both sessions. We’ve learnt a lot from you, and hope you’ve learnt something about carbon capture and storage, both from us, and from each other’s research.

For those going on to the final session in a week and a half, you might want to have a chat about what you want to present to the other group representatives, and think about questions you might have for them, particularly any we can’t answer.

As far as presenting goes, you can do it any way you want: could be point form, with a bit of talk about them, or a more general overview. Could be PowerPoint, or written on a piece of paper and read off. Or you might want to bring a large piece of paper for the clipboard.

What we’ll do next week is go through these presentations, and then give you a chance to ask questions of each other, before coming up with an overall picture of what community aims and objectives would be if this ever happened.

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Council – regulatory questions

1. If a CCS company wants to locate in your area, what would your role be as the TRC/District Council?

2. To what extent are current regulations sufficient for CO2 injection, either as part of enhanced recovery, or as part of pure CO2 storage? Where are the biggest gaps in regulations, if any?

i. What kinds of regulations do you think would need to be in place? What would you base them on? Where would you get the information to back up this decision?


4. Would you need additional expertise in assessing applications and, if so, where would you like to get it from?

5. For people who are aware of the Gorgon iterative peer review approvals process, what do you think of it as a process applicable to the Taranaki context?

6. Who should take on permanent liability for this site, say from 5–10 years post-injection?

Oil and Gas Industry – additional questions

1. What impacts might a CCS operation have on the oil/gas industry, in general in New Zealand? In this region?

2. How would you feel about CCS operations adjacent to your permit area? Any concerns? What monitoring and verification requirements would you want in place?

3. How would you feel about having oil/gas enhanced recovery operations using CO2 adjacent to your permit area? Concerns?

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Appendix VI

Multi-stakeholder deliberative forum guide



TABLES: U-shape formation.

FLIP CHART – ground rules on sheet 1 (turn over), aim of evening on sheet 2, Q&A on sheet 3.

1 sheet paper and pen for each participant

Thank you/ Māori Blessing

Thank you for coming to the final focus group on Carbon Capture and Storage.

Focus The focus of tonight’s discussion is to gain a picture of community views on a fictional carbon capture and storage project in 2030. The main aim of tonight’s session is also to allow you, as representatives of your community groups, to come up with ways to approach a possible CCS project – key issues, information needs, communication needs, legislation needs and more.

Ground Rules You’re all here representing different facets of the community as a whole, and that having that diversity draw together is important for the meeting tonight, as it will add some richness and depth to the session. Yet, in saying that, there were two key commonalities that came out of the initial focus groups. First, was that you all really care about the Taranaki region. Second, you all want to be understood by the rest of the community. Following on from this, in this discussion, I’d like to make the turf as even as possible, so there are some ground rules:

Respect Remember that we are likely to see a range of views tonight, which may or may not agree with your own or those of your initial group. Out of respect, I’d like you to listen and speak to the other participants, as you’d like to someone to listen and speak to you.

Group vs personal agenda

Representatives should bear in mind that you are responsible for representing the views of your initial group, some of which may include your own some may be issues you don’t agree with. Issues of concern to yourself are okay, but if I see a personal agenda start to dominate, and take over discussions to the extent that we’re not covering other issues in the time we have, I’m going to ask you to discuss it with us after the meeting closes.

Off-topic The same will apply, if we go off the topic of CCS. Whilst some local and national events will be relevant to this discussion, we only have 2 hours to reach a tentative outcome. So don’t take it personally, if I intervene and get us back on track.

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One-at-a-time As the sessions are being recorded and transcribed, you should try not to talk at once, and either wait for the person speaking to finish or put their hand up to signal they have something to say.

Scientist/Māori Liaison Role

Brad and Rawiri have come along, for the main purpose of listening to what you have to say on CCS and how it relates to your community and the region. This space tonight is about you – learning from each other and defining the needs and views of your community.

Other Is there anything else you think should be added to the ground rules?

STOPWATCH or TIMER

1. Focus 6–10 Minutes

Rather than going round the table with some formal introductions, we’re going to do a more active method of getting to know each other. So stand up, stretch your legs and go and stand next to someone you don’t know. If you can’t do that, find someone you don’t know very well – i.e. not from your original group.

1. With that person, you have 40 seconds to say your name and one thing you like about living in the region.

2. Now, find another person you don’t know. You have 40 seconds to say your name and one thing you learnt about Carbon Capture and Storage.

3. Now, find a third person you don’t know. You have 40 seconds to say your name and one point your group made about Carbon Capture and Storage.

Put out post-it notes and markers

Window/wall space for comments

Aim of session: to identify the range of community views on a fictional scenario around the use of carbon capture and storage in 2030, and from this, potential information needs, communication needs and regulatory needs.

2. Objectives 11–20 Minutes

With your partner, go and sit down. You’ll see some sticky notes in front of you. I’ve put the aim of the session on the flip chart, and I’m going to give you 5 minutes to work together to write down what you want to achieve from this session, whether personally, or for your community group. What do you want to get out of the session this evening? What do you want to know/take back to the people in your initial group? Write one concept or thing per sheet using the black marker pens. Brad and I are also going to join in.

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Now, what I want you to do is to come up and stick these on the window/wall. While you do this, can you please group them with similar suggestions until you are all satisfied with the layout on the window/wall.

What groupings can you see here??

Write groups on larger stickies

[Note-taker to photograph final product X3]

3. Presentations 21–70 Minutes

With this in mind, we’re now going to go into the presentations. If you can start by officially introducing yourselves, then you will have up to 10 minutes to present your stakeholder group views to everybody. While they are presenting, please listen, feel free to make some notes and have a think about what you’d like to ask them, as we’ll run a Q and A session in the same way we did for the scientists, after everybody has presented. So think, what do we need to know from the other groups present to improve our understanding of any issues relating to CCS in Taranaki? Or you might simply be curious or interested in something they brought up and want to talk about it.

We’ll start with our iwi representatives, so the general running order is:

Iwi

Farmers

Urban Community

Industry

Council

4. Q and A Session 71–85 Minutes

We’ll now have 15 minutes for questions and answers.

Does anybody have any questions for the speakers? Brad?

5. Clarifying Objectives 86–110 Minutes

Write up on flipchart

(spider diagram to start, then one sheet per main issue)

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Main issues

Based on what you have heard, today and in your own sessions, what issues do the groups have in common around a CCS facility in this area?

What issues would need to be addressed, if its 2030 and CCS is coming to your area?

What points did ___________ make?

What other issues were raised?

Which of these issues should be added to those representing the community view, here tonight?

Which issues raised by the presentations need further discussion?

Which would we need to revisit in the event that CCS ever come to the area?

Who has had a similar experience/problem?

Who in the group has the information you want? Direct the question to them.

Can anybody in the group answer that question?

Tackling issues

ISSUE X: What should be done? What can be done?

What would other people do?

What do you NOT want to see happen? What is your greatest concern about CCS in the region?

Prioritisation of Options

This can be done if there are issues around consensus on some options, to get a way to move forward.

Opportunity to vote on solutions using sticky labels. Give each person 3 stickies and instruct them that they can place 1, 2 or all 3 on each of the proposed solutions.

Which of these issues needs to be addressed the most?

OR

What are the three most important issues for you?

OR

What 3 outcomes do we need to avoid?

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Are you happy with that result as a way to proceed?

6. Conclusion 111–120 Minutes

1. Summarise the group result from the flip chart.

2. To conclude, I’m going to ask you:

What will you take back to your community groups from tonight’s session?

What will you tell people that you have achieved?

What new insights have you gained from the conversations tonight?

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Appendix VII

Selection of questions from the CCS presentation

Climate change

Q: When the gas is burnt will more carbon dioxide be produced then?

A: Yes. Whenever you burn gas, on your home cooker or whatever, it’s producing carbon dioxide.

Q: So how have they been able to measure carbon dioxide, going back four hundred and fifty thousand years?

A: You can measure directly from bubbles trapped in ice in Greenland and Antarctica, so you drill a hole and you get a core of ice right down through the whole ice cap. You can actually measure the CO2 content in the atmosphere that’s trapped in the ice. You can go back millions of years but it starts getting a bit more fuzzy and your margins of error are higher, but you can still see trends although not in as much detail, whereas the closer you get to the present you get a much more detailed record…So that’s the normal variation we’ve had for the last few hundred thousand years of CO2 concentrations during ice ages and glacials. We are in a warm period, now.

CCS and enhanced recovery (General)

Q: Is there a lot of interest from the petrochemical industry in using this to flush out and make these wells last longer as well as storage like sort of the dual effect?

A: There is overseas but I don’t know of anyone interested in it in New Zealand.

Q: And you just mentioned that Shell and all the other companies are doing this overseas, is that because, purely because of the carbon tax or are they doing it because of they feel that it’s a good thing to do?

A: I think it’s a bit of both. Oil company people, the ones I’ve met, are generally pretty nice people. They enjoy the outdoors and as individuals they do care about the environment and global warming. As a company that might be different.

Q: So in that one field of injection you put back eight to nine million tonnes [of CO2] in that one fairly small field?

A: Yeah, that’s an old, slightly old slide. There’ll be more going in [to Sleipner in the North Sea]. So far they’ve injected sixteen million and they’re aiming for about twenty to thirty million tonnes, so they take it out here, it’s got nine percent CO2, strip out some of the CO2, most of it I think, and pump it underground at a shallower level. They started injecting in 1996 and they’re doing it at a rate of one million tonnes a year.

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Q: Why the eight hundred metres [storage depth]?

A: At that pressure it stays as a liquid…If you go shallower than that it will start to work back to a gas.

Q:How many of these bores are we looking at to make a substantial difference to the CO2 emissions, like you know there’s a lot of CO2 being emitted out there at the moment, how much does one bore get rid of?

A: It varies entirely on the interval that you’re injecting into. So you’d inject it into a reservoir interval or a saline aquifer similar to where they get the oil and gas from. In fact, the first options that have been going on overseas, are injecting into depleted oil and gas reservoirs. So there is a known containment there already. Now, depleted oil and gas fields, not all of them are suitable, for various reasons, but that is the first option in terms of level of uncertainty in knowing the subsurface. In terms of how much do you need to put in, it depends. For example, a scenario of the gas field that we’ve got here, you’d only be looking for capacity to contain what that field is producing. So again, internationally, at the moment they basically work on a case by case basis. This power plant is going to work for X years, it’s likely to produce this amount of CO2, so we’ve got to look for options for putting in that amount. And the containers, the subsurface, you know the reservoirs you might look for would be different sizes.

Q: In some various scenarios I've heard you about three times mention that emissions, you're looking for an empty oil well to utilize, if that's not handy, or what is handy for the oil industry, piping this 20 miles or whatever, what's the next answer?

A: The depleted oil and gas scenario is the easy one because we know a lot about them. There are other options in terms of what we call dry reservoirs. So, for an example, an oil company may have drilled a target, they've drilled into what we call a water wet reservoir, so there is no oil and gas there, but it still actually has the containment, it's just no oil and gas ever got there, and so there’s another option, so that's what we call a dry field. A dry target. There's other ones called saline aquifers, so this is like a water aquifer but its saline, so much, much more saline than say the sea. It's not drinkable, it's not potable. And you can inject into those, and they'll be a large aquifer, you can inject in one point in the CO2 slowly moves through it. As I said, over time the CO2 slowly dissolves into the saline water, and so over time you are getting less and less CO2 moving; it's all being held into solution. That's one of those more advanced scenarios, it's not been tested.

The other option, and this was mentioned in the presentation, is enhanced oil and gas recovery, and that’s actually used now, it's been around for quite a while using, in Taranaki they usually use water because it is more suitable. Internationally there are some oil and gas reservoirs where it is more suitable to use CO2, and at the time it wasn't understood but actually they're storing some CO2 in the process of sweeping the oil out, so now there's some thoughts on going to some oil and gas, oil fields in particular, overseas were never economic to extract the oil. But now they have a potentially cheap supply of CO2, because actually CO2 is quite expensive to produce, if you want some. For companies doing enhanced oil and gas recovery, internationally, it's traditionally been quite expensive to do, because CO2 is expensive to get. But there's a Weyburn field in Canada. In Dakota in the States they have a coal-fired power

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station. It's got a capture facility on it, so it captures flue gases, CO2 and other stuff. They have a 205 mile pipeline to the Weyburn oil field and they inject that and they're using that to push out the oil.

Monitoring

Q: Is it possible to have that level of assurance?

A: Well, within reasonable risks. It’s a question of cost, so initially when you start off thinking of an area you’ll come up with some approximate calculations and you’ll say “yeah, this looks like it might be okay, we’ll take the first step and we’ll apply to see if we can get some approval”. You might get tentative approval but you have to do this, this, and this. So you go away and you spend a hundred thousand or a few million checking out this, this, and this and you come back and say “we’ve done that. What’s the next step?” and they’ll check that and say “well, you’ll have to do that, that, and that,” so it’s an iterative process.

Leakage

Q: If there was some leakage on the surface or at groundwater level, what does it look like, what would we see?

A: There are lots of natural seeps. Sometimes you notice a bit of vegetation change. Some trees like more, some trees like less. At one of the pilot sites involved in Australia they created an artificial catastrophe where after they had injected CO2, they released some and that basically came out as snow. If you rapidly drop the pressure of the CO2 and it changes temperature, it freezes. So if you have an aerosol can, you spray it, your hand goes really cold, that’s exactly the same concept. So it came out as snow, like a huge ice-block around the side of the hole where they let stuff out. So catastrophically, you wouldn’t see that. It would be more likely happen slowly and you would be monitoring vegetation changes and things like that.

If the council is monitoring groundwater regularly it will be picked up with an increase in carbon or CO2 in the groundwater.

Q: The fault line throughout Taranaki, how close is it, because in the Christchurch earthquake when the earth came up from underneath it was grey, wasn’t it?

A: There’s things that we can look at where for example we know there’s oil and gas fields where there’s been large earthquakes and the oil hasn’t suddenly started leaking out. So we do know that much of the stuff that’s buried underground like in oil and gas fields when there are large earthquakes nearby we don’t suddenly get all the oil and gas leaking out. So the concept would actually be the same for CO2. You do have to treat it as a risk and understand it and do a lot of extra work in understanding it, but there aren’t that many cases where seismicity has caused oil and gas fields to leak, so the concept would be the same for this.

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Q: So given that there is indication of natural seepage in Taranaki, would that not be a concern anyway straight away?

A: Yes it is a concern. The offset of that is that there are some fairly large accumulations of oil and gas that aren’t all leaking out. But yes, yes it’s a perfectly valid concern and something that would be taken into consideration by 1) the operators who would think about doing this, and 2) council, iwi, community groups.

Q: If you put it into storage and there are leakages what’s the effect like on the water or water quality?

A: Depends. Because CO2 in water, it’s a bit like Coca Cola, okay, you leave your tooth in Coca Cola it will dissolve. So it’s a weak acid, it’s carbonic acid, so if CO2 mixes with water it’s slightly acidic, so if it goes out through some other rocks as it’s leaking through, for example, it can dissolve minerals and trace elements in those rocks, so it could introduce those to the groundwater, so it’s not just a matter of necessarily of having fizzy groundwater, you might actually have some additional chemicals added or you may not. It depends on the site. The whole idea is to avoid having that happen in the first place. Ideally, you have more than one seal. You’ve got eight hundred metres to play with so hopefully a good hundred metres or two or three will be seal rocks so it will make it quite difficult to for CO2 to get up to groundwater level.

Q: That’s why you prefer to go into like old oil sites because they’re sealed already?

A: Yeah, not all sites are sealed. It’s slightly different. For hydrocarbons, you don’t worry about the seal because you have found the hydrocarbons; you just pump the hydrocarbons out. Just because you have found hydrocarbons, it doesn’t mean it’s got a good seal because you have what’s called a rate seal, where the rate of leakage of hydrocarbons out of the top is bound by the rate of hydrocarbons migrating in and there are several examples of those in Taranaki, where you can see chimneys of gas coming up through the rock, where the seal is leaking, but it’s still a commercial discovery. Obviously, one of the things you’d want to check is that the depleted field hasn’t been leaking, so yeah, it’s not always the case that an oil or gas field will have a good seal.

Q: So would that groundwater that’s got extra carbon in it, would that have any effect on say animal life?

A: Yes. After a while it becomes what we call un-potable. It is like all these things, there’s a certain amount. So there’s some parts of the country where the groundwater runs through limestone…you know it tastes different, but yes the water will be a level where it would not be suitable for animal or human consumption. There are things that can be done, so for example, you can drill relief wells that divert the CO2 away. Ideally, you don’t want to get into those situations. You can divert pressure relief wells if you suddenly find there’s some leaking through you could drill a well that will relieve the pressure. So there are, what we call, mitigation measures. If something went wrong there are things that can be done. And there

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are techniques that are often used for existing groundwater contamination. Some of the techniques that would be used are not brand new; they’re using experience and knowledge that’s already happening for other things.

The concept of sticking a large amount of CO2 in the ground is new and there is a lot of new science that has to be done to understand that in more detail. Which is why a lot of these pilot studies have been done actually putting some CO2 in the ground, small amounts, and seeing what happens.

Q: With the possibility of it done at deep sea exploration, is that also an opportunity there to actually pump the CO2 back down through those deep well sites?

A: Yeah if you had a, for example, a gas field, in a deep water environment or an offshore environment, like Sleipner the one in Norway, you could process the gas on board, strip the CO2 off, and if you had a suitable storage formation, usually higher up, you would put the CO2 back underground, and that would never come onshore. The options in around NZ are offshore options and onshore options. In Salah, which is in Algeria, is an onshore one but it’s way up the desert. The issue for NZ is everything is relatively close to a community compared to some of the places globally, which is something you have to take into consideration.

Risk Perception

Q: Nuclear is hoping for an eighty percent [reduction in emissions]. Was that before Fukushima, and restart the planning again with nuclear?

A: Fukushima. Yes, I think so, and in fact that’s one of the lessons at the Greenhouse Gas Conference in Japan, recently. One of the final speakers, a Japanese chap, said, when you’re talking about CCS, ‘remember Fukushima’. It just takes one accident and your whole industry can fall over, or perceptions can change for your whole industry, so it’s one of the reasons people involved with CCS are trying to be very, very careful not to have any mishaps.

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Appendix VIII

Selection of questions emanating from personal research (Session 2)

Q: How are they getting the driver to do those ones overseas what’s their business case?

A: In Australia, eighty per cent of their electricity generation comes from coal, so per capita they are one of the largest emitters in the world. The companies are very aware that there is a need to do it and they’re aware that legislation will probably change, making them do it; in terms of public opinion, in terms of plants not being allowed to operate. Gorgon has jumped the gun, in that they could see this coming, and also because a lot of the international companies are involved doing CCS globally, their company policy becomes, ‘we should be doing this forever’. It’s not always true but so Chevron, Shell, and the ones in Exon Mobil who are involved in the Gorgon project, a lot of that is from the way they run it internationally, as well. In Salah, Algeria, is the same again. The companies feel like it’s something they should be doing. And in Europe a lot of it is public opinion; there is a very strong awareness of climate change and to be able to keep going with the business, there is a need to be seen to be doing something.

Q: There's some concern expressed about leakage. What would be the worse adverse effects?

A: The most likely scenario for leakage is slow leakage and effectively there's likely to be little effect. It's not a poisonous gas; you might see some local vegetation changes like you do see around the natural CO2 that's leaking out. Catastrophically, it is a quite difficult scenario to get through, yes. But, even then, there have been seismic events near to all the gas fields and there haven't actually been any catastrophic leakages or failures from those. You might get some increase in local seepage that was already there, it is possible, but it’s relatively low risk. However, it's one of the uncertainties that has to be looked at. Now, catastrophic leakage of CO2, there's no real examples of it. In terms of the CCS Scenario at the Otway site in Australia, which is a research project involved with, they're doing a pilot study where they've been injecting some CO2 into the ground. They had a staged catastrophic leak where they just popped the valves open and because of the pressure change, it actually comes out as snow. You end up with a big ice block. So it's quite a different thing from a methane gas leak or an oil leak. It's a different thing.

Q: The major aquifers in Taranaki can you just give us a simple outline?

A: Yes, Taranaki is actually relatively shallow. I’m not a ground water geologist but I’ve done a little bit of work here for Taranaki Regional Council, indirectly. They are relatively shallow, most of them are on the 300–400 hundred metre mark, the deeper ones. Unlike overseas where some aquifers can be down to 1500 metres, they can be quite deep. So they are relatively shallow here and they recharge pretty quickly with the topography of the mountain. A point that was highlighted in the presentation is that the minimum depth for CCS storage is 800 metres.

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The CO2 is injected as a liquid form because it’s denser and you can put more in. So the minimum depth would be 800 metres. Typically it is deeper than that, but that’s the minimum depth to make it work. You’d drill through the aquifers. But, typically with drilling projects you do what they call casing the well, so you seal it off over those intervals.

Q: With what [would you seal the bore]?

A: Typically with cement. And that’s done, typically, on a well, that’s done over the whole interval for a petroleum well, except the interval where they are actually extracting the hydrocarbons. Often, they have plugs part of the way up, that their flow pipe actually runs through. Normally an oil well would be, and would be the same for a CO2 bore-hole, it would be cased all the way down. One thing that has to be taken into consideration, though is, you have to use different cements for CO2…The cements in typical oil wells aren’t CO2 resistant. So it’s a risk that needs to be taken into consideration.

Q: Over long periods how good is concrete?

A: I guess there are two considerations: there’s the injection phase when you’re actually putting it in. Think of the life of an oil field, which may be anywhere between 10, 20 years, 30 years. Some of these fields, Kapuni and stuff, have been around for a while. And that would be considered like the active phase when you’re injecting things. Once the CO2 is in the ground, it’s slightly different. The risk of leakage drops off over time and we’re talking hundreds to thousands of years, so it’s beyond our lifetimes, but in geological time it’s relatively quick, so the risk of leaking out later on reduces because the CO2 goes into solution and that means it effectively dissolves into the saline water. Much the same as a disprin in a glass; you put a disprin in, stir it up, and it dissolves in the water. Over time, the CO2 will actually do that, into the saline water and that actually keeps it there. And over far geological time, it becomes a mineral. You’re all familiar with the pink and white terraces? They’re silica, but this is a carbonate. It would form something similar underground. It becomes a rock and that’s effectively permanently stored, you’d have to go and dig it up. Or through tectonics or whatever, earth movements and stuff, but it’s effectively a rock.

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Appendix IX

Adjusted Focus Group Guide Session 1


Introduction [5 minutes]

Thank you Thank you for coming this evening, realise you are busy professionals/people, appreciate that you are willing to give up your time for these focus groups. I think we’re all going to learn a lot from you, today, which will really help in our projects.



Use of recordings



Focus We will be discussing your understandings of climate change, energy options and introducing a new technology that is part of a range of options to help address global warming. When we talk, useful to support what you say with examples from your experience – will encourage you to do so. There will also be an expert presentation with an opportunity for questions and answers.



State that whilst I have a series of areas to cover, if something participants consider to be important should develop outside this framework, that we may be able to explore it.

One-at-a-time As the sessions are being recorded and transcribed, that participants should try not to talk at once, and either wait for the person speaking to finish or put their hand up to signal they have something to say.

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1. Introductions 18:00–18:05

1. Go around the room and get everyone to quickly introduce themselves to the rest of the room – start with ourselves – name, work, personal background and connection to region.

2. Place Attachment 18.05–18.20

To provide some context to our discussions we first want to find out about your views about where you live:

1. What do you like about the area? What are your favourite places and what do you like about them?

2. What do you see as the biggest challenges facing your community?

3. What would you like to see happen to the region in the future?

3. Climate Change 18.20–18:35

1. There is a lot of talk these days about climate change. What do you think people mean when they use the words ‘climate change’?

2. What do you think about climate change, in general?

a. What do you think are the causes of climate change?

b. What human activities are affecting the climate?

3. What information have you heard/seen about climate change?

a. How easy to understand is the information you get, e.g., from the media/ scientists?

b. What do you think about it?

c. How would you like to see it presented?

d. How much do you trust that information?

4. How do you think climate change will affect you as an individual?

a. What signs of climate change, if any, have you noticed in the local area?

b. What might you expect to see/experience in your local area in the future, with rising global temperatures?

c. How do we tackle climate change?

d. Whose role is it to tackle climate change?

e. In what ways? What should they do? How should they do it?

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4. Energy 18:35–18:50

1. What sort of mix of energy resources would you like to see as part of New Zealand’s future energy electricity supply? What makes you say that?

a. What would be the ideal mix?

b. What would be the worst mix?

2. How can we make the transition to that mix before carbon dioxide levels rise to a level where they trigger rapid climate change?

5. Energy technologies 18:50–19:10

1. As one of a group of ways to help address the effects of climate change, there is an idea out there of capturing carbon dioxide and storing it underground.

a. What have you heard, if anything, about this idea?

b. What do you think of it?

c. What do you understand by the term, carbon capture and storage?

2. Now, we are going to carry on with a brief presentation from a scientist I work with, who knows a few things about this technology. Feel free to ask questions as the presentation progresses, particularly if you’re not clear on something. Expert presentation [10 minutes].

3. Having listened to this presentation, what do you think about the idea?

6. The Scenario 19:10–19:25

As part of this broader research project we are interested in finding out about perceptions of this technology from people in a local area that could host the industry. The Taranaki region has been identified as a likely place for a Carbon Capture and Storage underground storage facility, possibly located in one of the gas fields, now in operation.

At the moment, this isn’t planned to happen or even likely to happen, but in the event that it does, it’s worth making sure that you, as stakeholders, or groups of people who could be impacted by this development, are informed. Just as importantly, it’s important that we’re informed by you, and that other groups are aware of your opinions and how best to discuss any plans with you.

In the next session, we’re going to imagine that its 2030, and that a CCS company called Tellus Enterprises is looking to set up a CCS facility in your local area, either onshore or offshore. For this fictional scenario, we’re going to take on the position of Tellus Ventures, and we’ve prepared a fictional information leaflet for you.

[Hand out leaflets and homework sheets]

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What we’d like you to do, is to go away and think about it, talk about it and become a researcher for your community group. Think about what you’d need to know or what you’d like to know, in the event that a CO2 storage facility was coming to your region.

What I’d also like you to do is make a list of sources that you use to do this research, as you do so, that you can hand in at the end of the next session. Please also read over and give this document some consideration in light of what you have heard.

Conclusion 19:25–19:30

Thank you for all coming tonight. Next time we will talk in more detail about your thoughts about carbon, capture and storage in your local area and select a couple of people to represent the group for a final discussion with people from other groups. So have a think about whether you’d like to do this, or who you think should do this. In the next session Brad will also be here to address any further questions you might have around carbon, capture and storage, throughout the session.

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Appendix X

Adjusted Focus Group Guide Session 2

Capturing the Future: A Focus Group Guide on Community Stakeholder Opinions: SESSION 2: Community


Thank you Thank you for coming again, after some really interesting session we had last week. I hope you’ve had time to have a think about Brad’s presentation, last week, and a spare moment to have a think about carbon capture and storage, particularly in relation to this region and community.



Use of recordings



Focus We will be discussing carbon capture and storage in general, in relation to New Zealand and in the context of a fictional future scenario in your region.



State that whilst I have a series of areas to cover, if something participants consider to be important should develop outside this framework, that we will explore it.

One-at-a-time


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1. Introduction 11–15 Minutes

Today, we’re going to discuss your views on Carbon Capture and Storage, with our final aim being to construct a summary that fairly represents the range of views of the group. I’ll take you through the process, with the help of [Scientist] and [Note-taker]. There will be the opportunity for further questions for our [Scientist]. We’re then going to spend the rest of the time talking about your thoughts on CCS in the Taranaki region and compiling a list of points on the flipchart that you want your representatives to raise, when talking to other group members at the final meeting. The representatives will get a presentation slot of up to 5 minutes to get across the main points you made. You can present alone or each person can speak.

The time we have booked is the [DATE] at 6pm at the War Memorial Centre. Can we have a couple of volunteers to represent the group’s viewpoint and present to the others?

2. Initial perceptions of CCS 16–30 Minutes

Egg Timer – set to 2 minutes for each person

Flip Chart: What did you find out? What sources did you use? How reliable do you think that information is?

So to start, turn to the person next to you. I’m going to give you 2½ minutes each to find out what research the other person did, what sources they used and what they thought about these different sources. You are then going to feed this back to the group. I’ll let you know when to switch roles.

Now, can I have any volunteers to go first? Can you introduce your partner, and then tell us a little about his/her research. What sources? What did he/she find out? How reliable was that information?

To follow on from this,

1. Having had more time to think about carbon capture and storage what do you think of it, as one of a mixture of ways to help manage climate change?

a. Under what circumstances would you consider carbon capture and storage as being a good idea for New Zealand?

Q and A Session 31–40 Minutes

Now, it’s time to engage the services of [Scientist] for a fifteen minute question and answer session. I’m going to start an egg timer, so we’ll stop when it goes off. So, after your research, do you have any more questions for [Scientist]?

Scenario 41–45 Minutes

Now, we’ll move back to the scenario.

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The Taranaki region has been identified as the most likely site for a future Carbon Capture and Storage facility, possibly located in one of the gas fields, now in operation, or possibly if another large field opens up. At the current time, no CCS is planned to happen but in the event that it does, it’s worth making sure that you, as stakeholders, or groups of people who could be impacted by this development, are informed. Just as importantly, it’s important that we’re informed, and other groups are aware of your opinions.

So, the scenario I created is for 2030, but it could be later or earlier, as the government has recently given the go-ahead for further exploration to take place. Just to make it more realistic, [Scientist] will take you through the years leading up to 2030.

[Scientist and slide]

What I’d like now, is a volunteer scribe, who can come up and make a list of summary points when we go through some questions. That scribe is also free to talk.

We’ll go through some general discussions, and after each main area that comes up, I’ll ask you to clarify what the main points are.

General 46–60 Minutes

1. After your research, how do you feel about a CCS storage site underground in the Taranaki region?

a. What about an offshore site?

2. What concerns do you have about having a storage site under your community?

3. What benefits do you think it might have for the region?

Monitoring and Regulation 61–75 Minutes

1. What kinds of regulations would you want to be put in place? Who should be responsible for creating these regulations and making sure they are followed?

2. What level of monitoring would you like to see? How long should it go on for? Who should take responsibility for it?


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Communication 76–90 Minutes

1. If a company such as Tellus Enterprises is looking to site a CCS facility close to your community, to what extent would you like to be involved the planning stages?

a. How would you like to be approached by a company such as Tellus Enterprises?

b. How do you think other groups of stakeholders would like to be approached? Who should approach you? What kinds of information would you want? How would you like to get it? How often?

2. Who should be responsible for community liaison/assurance on CCS – company, council, central government, all?

Key Issues 91–110 Minutes

Could I have one of the representatives to come up and act as a scribe? Can we make a list of key issues that could summarise a response from the local community and you would like other stakeholders to acknowledge and comment on? What should go on the chart?

Get scribe to make list on board.

Take photograph of list [send to all participants]

Give paper to representatives

Conclusion 111–120 Minutes

Thank you all for coming to both sessions. We’ve learnt a lot from you, and hope you’ve learnt something about carbon capture and storage, both from us, and from each other’s research.

For those going on to the final session in a week and a half, you might want to have a chat about the presentation, and think about questions you might have for the other group representatives, particularly any we can’t answer.

As far as presenting goes, you can do it any way you want: could be point form, with a bit of talk about them, or a more general overview. Could be PowerPoint, or written on a piece of paper and read off. Or you might want to bring a large piece of paper for the clipboard. Remember, that its 5 minutes max to allow plenty of discussion time afterwards – I’ll use an egg-timer.

What we’ll do next week is go through these presentations, and then give you a chance to ask questions of each other, before coming up with an overall picture of what community aims and objectives would be if this ever happened.

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Appendix XI

Capturing the Future: A Focus Group Guide on Community Stakeholder Opinions: SESSION 3: 10/6/13


TABLES: Rectangular formation.

FLIP CHART – ground rules on sheet 1 (turn over), aim of evening on sheet 2, Q&A on sheet 3.

1 sheet paper and pen for each participant

Thank you/ Māori Blessing

Thank you for coming to the final focus group on Carbon Capture and Storage.

Focus The focus of tonight’s discussion is to gain a picture of community views on a fictional carbon capture and storage project in 2030. The main aim of tonight’s session is also to allow you, as representatives of your community groups, to come up with ways to approach a possible CCS project – key issues, information needs, communication needs, legislation needs and more.

Feedback After the session, we’d like you to get back in contact with your original group members and tell them about the session, so they get to know the outcome and key points as well.

Ground Rules You’re all here representing different facets of the community as a whole, and that having that diversity draw together is important for the meeting tonight, as it will add some richness and depth to the session. Yet, in saying that, there were two key commonalities that came out of the initial focus groups. First, was that you all really care about the Taranaki region. Second, you all want to be understood by the rest of the community. Following on from this, in this discussion, I’d like to make the turf as even as possible, so there are some ground rules:

Respect Remember that we are likely to see a range of views tonight, which may or may not agree with your own or those of your initial group. Out of respect, I’d like you to listen and speak to the other participants, as you’d like to someone to listen and speak to you.

Group vs personal agenda

Representatives should bear in mind that you are responsible for representing the views of your initial group, some of which may include your own some may be issues you don’t agree with. Issues of concern to yourself are okay, but if I see a personal agenda start to dominate, and take over discussions to the extent that we’re not covering other issues in the time we have, I’m going to ask you to discuss it with us after the meeting closes.

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Off-topic The same will apply, if we go off the topic of CCS. Whilst some local and national events will be relevant to this discussion, we only have 2 hours to reach a tentative outcome. So don’t take it personally, if I intervene and get us back on track.

One-at-a-time As the sessions are being recorded and transcribed, you should try not to talk at once, and either wait for the person speaking to finish or put their hand up to signal they have something to say.

Scientist/Māori Liaison Role

Brad and Rawiri have come along, for the main purpose of listening to what you have to say on CCS and how it relates to your community and the region. This space tonight is about you – learning from each other and defining the needs and views of your community.

Other Is there anything else you think should be added to the ground rules?

STOPWATCH or TIMER

1. Focus 6–10 Minutes

Rather than going round the table with some formal introductions, we’re going to do a more active method of getting to know each other. So stand up, stretch your legs. Now, think about how long you have lived in the region. Place yourself, in a line, with people who have lived a long time at this end [demonstrate] and people who haven’t been here very long at this end. You might need to have a chat to people to see where you go.

Now, fold the line, with the person at the furthest and nearest end starting that fold. You should end up standing next to someone.

1. With that person, you have 40 seconds to say your name and one thing you like about living in the region.

2. Now, find someone you don’t know, or don’t know very well. You have 40 seconds to say your name and one thing you learnt about Carbon Capture and Storage.

3. Now, find a third person you don’t know. You have 40 seconds to say your name and one point your group made about Carbon Capture and Storage.

Put out post-it notes and markers

Window/wall space for comments

Aim of session: to identify the range of community views on a fictional scenario around the use of carbon capture and storage in 2030.

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2. Objectives 11–20 Minutes

With your partner, go and sit down. You’ll see some sticky notes in front of you. I’ve put the aim of the session on the flip chart, and I’m going to give you 5 minutes to work together to write down what you want to get out of the session this evening? Write one concept or thing per sheet using the black marker pens. Now, what I want you to do is to come up and stick these on the window/wall. While you do this, can you please group them with similar suggestions until you are all satisfied with the layout on the window/wall.

What groupings can you see here??

Write groups on larger stickies

[Note-taker to photograph final product X3]

Groupings to constitute the format of the main part of the session – post-presentation.

3. Presentations 21–45 Minutes

If you remain seated with your new partner of the rest of the session. With this in mind, we’re now going to go into the presentations. If you can start by officially introducing yourselves and the second group representative, then you will have up to 5 minutes to present the main points of your stakeholder group views to everybody. While they are presenting, please listen, feel free to make some notes and have a think about what you’d like to ask them, as we’ll run a Q and A session in the same way we did for the scientists, after everybody has presented. So think, what do we need to know from the other groups present to improve our understanding of any issues relating to CCS in Taranaki? Or you might simply be curious or interested in something they brought up and want to talk about it.

We’ll start with our iwi representatives, so the general running order is:

Iwi

Farmers

Urban Community

Industry

Council

4. Q and A Session 46–60 Minutes

We’ll now have 15 minutes for questions and answers.

What questions do you have for: iwi; the farming community; the urban community; industry; the council (NAME the two reps).

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5. Clarifying Objectives 61–110 Minutes

Let’s stand up again and walk back over to the general and sub-objectives that you wrote out earlier, just to refresh our memories. What have we got as the main objectives here?

Write up on flipchart

(spider diagram to start, then one sheet per main issue)

Main issues

Possible prompt questions: deal with each objective in turn

Knowledge and Information; Rules, Processes and Risks; Community Views, input and understanding

What common issues raised by the groups should go under _____________?

Based on what you have heard, today and in your own sessions, what issues do the groups have in common around a CCS facility in this area?

What issues would need to be addressed, if its 2030 and CCS is coming to your area?

What points did ___________ make?

What other issues were raised?

Which of these issues should be added to those representing the community view, here tonight?

Which issues raised by the presentations need further discussion?

Which would we need to revisit in the event that CCS ever come to the area?

Who has had a similar experience/problem?

Who in the group has the information you want? Direct the question to them.

Can anybody in the group answer that question?

Tackling issues

ISSUE X: What should be done? What can be done?

What would other people do?

What do you NOT want to see happen? What is your greatest concern about CCS in the region?

Prioritisation of Options

This can be done if there are issues around consensus on some options, to get a way to move forward.

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Opportunity to vote on solutions using sticky labels. Give each person 3 stickies and instruct them that they can place 1, 2 or all 3 on each of the proposed solutions.

Which of these issues needs to be addressed the most?

OR

What are the three most important issues for you?

OR

What 3 outcomes do we need to avoid?

What do you think about that result as a way to proceed?

6. Conclusion 111–120 Minutes

1. Summarise the group result from the flip chart.

2. To conclude, I’m going to ask you, what will you tell the people in your original groups that you learned from tonight’s session?

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rpaonin

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CONTACT US

CanberraDr Richard AldousChief Executive

GPO Box 463, Canberra, ACT 2601

Ph: + 61 2 6120 1600

Fax: + 61 2 6273 7181

Email: [email protected]

Ms Carole PeacockBusiness Manager

GPO Box 463, Canberra, ACT 2601

Ph: + 61 2 6120 1605

Fax: + 61 2 6273 7181


MelbourneDr Matthias RaabProgram Manager for CO

2 Storage

School of Earth Science

The University of Melbourne

VIC 3010

Ph: +61 3 8344 4309

Fax: +61 3 8344 7761


Mr Rajindar SinghOtway Operations Manager

School of Earth Science

The University of Melbourne

VIC 3010

Ph: + 61 3 8344 9007

Fax: + 61 3 8344 7761


SydneyProf Dianne WileyProgram Manager for CO

2 Capture

The University of New South Wales

UNSW Sydney, 2052

Ph: + 61 2 9385 4755


AdelaideProf John KaldiChief Scientist

Australian School of Petroleum

The University of Adelaide, SA 5005

Ph: + 61 8 8303 4291

Fax: + 61 8 8303 4345


PerthMr David HilditchCommercial Manager (CO2TECH)

PO Box 1130, Bentley

Western Australia 6102

Ph: + 61 8 6436 8655

Fax: + 61 8 6436 8555


researching carbon capture and storage

Tackling climate change: Small-scale deliberative engagement with Taranaki community stakeholders on...

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