A sentiment analysis of public opposition to carbon capture and storage technology

Abstract

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is recognized as an important technology for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and achieving climate targets, yet some segments of society express public opposition. Public opposition, even when expressed by minority groups, has at times influenced CCS project outcomes. Opposition extends beyond technical risk concerns, including emotional, symbolic, and territorial dimensions. This study examines how such opposition was constructed through protest materials, social media content, and press articles related to a specific CCS project. A mixed-methods design combined sentiment analysis using a natural language processing (NLP) model with qualitative content analysis. Because the corpus was deliberately sampled from oppositional channels, these sentiment scores characterize how opposition is expressed rather than the balance of public opinion at large. Within this corpus, opposition was articulated largely through negative sentiment (mean sentiment -0.44), particularly in materials from environmental NGOs and labor unions, with recurring concerns including seismic risk, proximity, institutional distrust, and perceived territorial injustice. On the qualitative side, protesters frequently employed emotionally charged metaphors (e.g., “ticking bomb”, “waste”) and comparisons to other CCS projects, reframing the technology as an imposition rather than a climate solution. Nonetheless, the dataset also captured neutral and occasionally supportive tones, especially in citizen and press discourse, indicating that while opposition dominated, public responses were not monolithic. These findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of CCS acceptance by highlighting the emotional, symbolic, and communicative dynamics of opposition. The study also demonstrates the value of sentiment analysis for capturing discursive opposition in contested projects. Moreover, the results underline that the social acceptance of CCS is shaped as much by identity, symbolism, and public discourse as by technical and regulatory considerations.