EPA’s regulation of new marine carbon dioxide removal research should require much better public engagement

Controversy is bubbling regarding the permitting of a field trial proposed off the Massachusetts Coast for a marine carbon dioxide removal technology. Marine carbon dioxide removal, or mCDR, encompasses various methods for removal and storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide in ocean waters. The Massachusetts trial proposes to test one mCDR approach known as ocean alkalinity enhancement, which involves the addition of alkaline material to the ocean in order to increase its ability to draw down and durably store atmospheric carbon dioxide. Led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the trial is the first instance of an effort at permitting an mCDR trial under the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act (MPRSA). As such, this permitting process will likely set a precedent for other mCDR research studies.

According to an August 14 article in Science, local residents and environmental organizations are pushing EPA to delay or stop the study. Concerns from groups include potential environmental impacts to marine species and coastal communities, and conflicts with other marine users. For example, members of the New England Fishery Management Council have expressed fears that such experiments could disrupt already fragile ecosystems. While some advocate for more precautions being taken, others call for the study to be stopped altogether. 

This controversy highlights that what scientists consider a good idea may not be perceived as such by the public. As social scientists, we are aware of many instances where scientists overlooked foundational public concerns that ultimately limited a technology’s viability. Public questions are often extremely valid points of concern, and indeed, scholarship shows that involving communities in the research process can identify important areas of scientific oversight that improve the proposed research. Community and public engagement is a key path to bringing these concerns, objections, and possible areas of improvement to the fore.

Currently, public engagement is required by the MPRSA, but EPA’s only requirements are a single public hearing (if requested) and a comment period. The MPRSA is one of the two main sets of regulations that will oversee mCDR activities; as such, how engagement is handled in this first instance of an mCDR permit under MPRSA will set the precedent for future practices. Indeed, doing engagement well could provide a template or model for doing engagement along mCDR research trials in other places. Currently, the EPA’s public engagement approach is not fit for new interventions like mCDR that bring potentially very large ramifications and pose complex tradeoffs. Such interventions, in our view, warrant significantly more democratic input than what is currently required under the MPRSA. On the other hand, a lack of attention to public engagement in the MPRSA could spell trouble for mCDR. For trials like these to address the public’s full set of concerns - and to receive social support - they must engage with people early on.

Engagement is always necessary, but particularly so with something like mCDR, which shows important promise for addressing climate change (alongside critical emissions reductions), but has many remaining questions that need to be answered. Critically, engagement on mCDR should not be about projects doing public relations, ‘selling’ the research, ‘managing’ sentiments, or trying to convince people of anything. Rather, it should serve as a way to understand what public concerns are and address them - and highlight if and where there is public support (or not) to proceed with research.

For something as early-stage as mCDR, multiple phases of engagement are needed. Engagement needs to be done very early on - when developers or researchers are contemplating a trial, and well before any permit is underway. The goal of early engagement is to understand what concerns people have, and - transparently -respond to these concerns by modifying project planning. In order to do this, engagement needs to be in-depth and detailed, so that participants have a chance to deeply understand the planned research. mCDR is complex and complicated, and in order to begin to understand it, people need to have both information but also time to think it through in depth. 

A big part of early engagement is also understanding the existing context in which a project is planning to operate. For example, in the context of WHOI’s proposed Massachusetts trial, there is a history of negative experiences involving past wastewater treatment approaches and upgrades that have been made to wastewater treatment facilities. This negative history - involving concerns about ecological impacts like nuisance seaweed growth and disappearance and shrinking of local species, and a general sense that these concerns have been ignored and dismissed - lays the groundwork for an mCDR project like WHOI’s.

Once a permitting process is underway, more structured engagement activities are needed that not only introduce participants to mCDR but introduce a structured and rigorous democratic process for decision making about the research trial. For technologies like mCDR, which are novel with the potential for substantive impacts, the EPA should go well beyond its current ‘public hearing and comment period’ to require this kind of structured engagement activity. Options could be referenda, citizen juries, or other processes where citizens participate in weighing in on a decision about whether a permit should move forward or not. Particularly for permitting the first-in-kind of mCDR research studies, a goal of these engagement activities should be to establish groups of educated and informed citizens that are able to participate in not only this permitting process but future decisionmaking on the subject.

Across all stages of engagement, it must do a few things. First, engagement must adhere to rigorous standards regarding representative sampling. This means making sure that engagement brings together a diverse group of people - that involves all relevant and rightsholding groups (from Tribes to fishers to recreators) and proactively includes those who have been historically and currently excluded from decisions like this. It must always incorporate independent input - e.g., the inclusion of independent scientists (i.e., those not involved in the project) to discuss the project and answer community questions. It must also have full transparency around not only findings from engagement, but how those findings will shape the final permitting process.

The LOC-NESS case is not the first instance of pushback against mCDR projects. One of the risks of missing the opportunity for rigorous engagement is not only that a project will get stopped - it is that local opposition might have spillover effects onto other projects and indeed mCDR as a whole. One problematic project could impact other projects that have carefully done their social and environmental due diligence. 

A critical challenge for governing early mCDR trials is establishing when opposition to a project merits halting research. We would argue that achieving unanimous support from all parts of a community is unlikely, and an unrealistic bar for even novel trials to hold; but we also would argue that it is important to have collective and explicit agreement on the circumstances under which a trial like LOC-NESS should not move forward. In our view, principles of justice and equity require that historically oppressed communities, who have borne the brunt of environmental harms while having the least say to date, have greater decision making control here. There is a difference, in our view, between opposition from wealthy homeowner groups vs. economically disadvantaged fishing communities. These questions of consent are difficult, but essential for a novel technology like mCDR, and ones that we suggest EPA and the MPRSA - and indeed the broader mCDR research and development community - should address head-on.