Cleaning up your garbage: Arguments on Carbon Capture and Storage

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a promising technology for cutting carbon emissions, but the public does not support its implementation. Communicators reach out to the public to improve understanding and support, but it is completely unclear how the arguments that they use affect citizens. For this reason, we surveyed 920 respondents from a Dutch online panel and determined the persuasiveness, importance and novelty of 32 arguments for and against CCS. We used a discrete choice experiment where respondents made eight consecutive choices between two pro or two con arguments. Latent class models were used to identify segments of the population that choose differently. The results show that it does not pay off to focus exclusively on arguments about climate change problems. Rather, arguments should present the role of CCS in the energy mix and its relative advantages over renewables. Furthermore, communication should include arguments that appeal to personal norms such as ‘cleaning up your CO2 garbage’. In this manner, a message is presented to the public that fits with the values of citizens and that has a better prospect of generating public support for CCS.