The community support tool will provide geospatial analyses of environmental, regulatory and legal constraints to project deployment coupled with analyses of potential environmental justice constraints. Strategic stakeholder convening will inform the model of issues that are most important to communities. This project defines equitable carbon management technology deployment and geologic carbon storage exploration that is inclusive of a spectrum of environmental social considerations.
To incorporate equity into the tool, the Great Plains Institute will work with local partners to identify and convene stakeholders that represent diverse community voices. The facilitated stakeholder groups will work with experts to devise a support tool that incorporates community values into siting criteria and project deployment best practices.
The technical team will convey regulatory and policy constraints to project siting, including permitting, and work with community members to conduct spatial analysis of priority areas and areas less suitable for carbon management technology deployment. For example, in addition to the technical and regulatory siting constraints, some communities feel strongly about proximity of infrastructure to schools or other land uses. The model will disclose these metrics through facilitated activities that help assess values for a more resilient future and the technical team will help transform the values into siting metrics.
The metrics that stakeholder engagement identifies will be translated into spatial GIS layers that can be overlayed with demographic information and social indices to help further refine the gradient of project location acceptability. The team at the Great Plains Institute will work with the local partner and stakeholder groups to provide periodic updates and discussions through meetings with community members to facilitate community inclusion and opinions.
The Great Plains Institute team will also provide insights and primary information on carbon management technologies, including the energy use, upstream and downstream effects, and material inputs of its operations and the impacts each may have on communities. These impacts inherently include tertiary benefits such as improved air quality. Project staff will work with the stakeholder group to capture the results of the process and analytical work into a summary report that will provide policy recommendations to state, regional, and industry partners, on how best to proceed with carbon management deployment in a way that considers the community’s vision for a more resilient, low carbon future.
Please check back later for more updates on the community support tool.