Transdisciplinary Risk Assessment for the Development and Implementation of CCS Projects

This study investigates how risks related to Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) are understood and perceived across five European countries: Norway, the Netherlands, Germany, Romania, and Greece. As part of the RamonCo project, we apply a transdisciplinary framework to assess risks not only from a technical standpoint but also through societal, political, and economic lenses. Drawing on both stakeholder focus groups and representative public surveys, we examine how perceived and systemic risks interact, using the societal embeddedness level methodology as our guiding framework. Our findings highlight a range of interdependent risks across all CCS stages (capture, transport, storage, and monitoring) with recurring concerns including regulatory uncertainty, financial risk, public acceptance, and long-term liability. Many of these risks are shaped by context-specific factors and stakeholder perspectives, underlining the need for adaptive, participatory risk assessment approaches. By capturing both technical and socially constructed risks, this research lays the foundation for the development of inclusive risk governance strategies that can support more effective and publicly acceptable CCS deployment. In the next phase of the project we will apply adapted bow-tie analysis to collaboratively map risk pathways and identify targeted mitigation strategies.