Modular evaluation method subsurface activities: Analyzing the spatial coordination of the subsurface in the Netherlands from a social acceptance perspective.

The subsurface in the Netherlands will continue to be increasingly exploited, in both the number and types of subsurface activities. To minimize negative effects and optimize positive ones, the governments in the Netherlands have started to formulate subsurface policy. In addition, recent incidents have led to the realization that social acceptance should play a larger role in the decision-making processes for the subsurface and corresponding activities. This thesis investigated the possibility of improving the current decision-making process for the subsurface by formulating a decision support system (DSS) that addresses social acceptance to a greater extent.We analyze the decision-making process of the abandonment of the Northern-Netherlands carbon capture storage (CCS) initiative. We investigate the social acceptance of the Northern Netherlands CCS initiative by using the results from a survey among the key stakeholders. We find that local resistance can be held only partially responsible for the abandonment of the CCS project. This result differs from the broadly accepted notion of “no local public acceptance, no CSS.” Our study shows that the views of private companies regarding the prospects of the CCS initiative conflicted and played a role in abandoning the initiative. Furthermore, our results suggest that the key stakeholders were reserved in supporting CCS. We conclude that the way the responsibilities were shared between the key stakeholders had a dominant impact on the level of the initiative’s acceptance.

We therefore conclude that the decision-making process for subsurface activities in the Netherlands cannot cope with the driving forces related to social acceptance, as made clear in several recently proposed subsurface activities. We therefore investigated the possibility of including the triangle of social acceptance in the decision-making process. Our conceptual model relates the stakeholders, their goals, and the driving forces to each other. We developed a framework that describes the interaction between 11 DSS design criteria. This framework will enable us to design a better DSS, from a social acceptance perspective, for subsurface activities in the Netherlands. Since the goals addressed in the decision-making process are very broad and the stakeholders are quite diverse, a single, uniform DSS cannot provide a satisfactory solution. We therefore suggest designing a DSS that is matched to each social acceptance class.

This has resulted in a novel perspective for evaluating subsurface activities that increases the role of social acceptance in the decision-making process. We use the triangle of social acceptance to structure and analyze the decision-making problem in three classes: social–political, market, and community acceptance. This allows the inclusion of strategic and social concerns besides economic and environmental aspects in the evaluation of subsurface activities. We analyze the requirements of a DSS for each class according to three aspects: the requirements originating from the context, the requirements derived from the decision-making process, and the extent to which the DSS can fulfill these requirements. Furthermore, we identify the mechanisms that shape and govern the interactions between the requirements and limitations that result from the context and decision-making process of subsurface activities. We conclude that the requirements of a DSS for subsurface activities are very different for each class of social acceptance. In addition, we find that several aspects need to be included in an earlier phase of the decision-making process for subsurface activities.

These requirements resulted in the Modular Evaluation Method Subsurface Activities (MEMSA) DSS. The purpose of the MEMSA approach is to facilitate an informed decision-making process for permit applications for subsurface activities. To this end, we analyze the extent to which the MEMSA approach allows for a transparent dialog between stakeholders. We use the exploration permit for the underground gas storage facility at the Pieterburen salt dome in the Netherlands as a case study. The results suggest that the MEMSA approach is flexible enough to adjust to changing conditions. Furthermore, MEMSA provides a novel way to identify structural problems and possible solutions in the permit decision-making processes for subsurface activities, based on the sensitivity analysis of intermediate rankings. We suggest that the planned size of an activity should already be specified in the exploration phase, because this would allow for a more efficient use of the subsurface as a whole. We conclude that the host community should be involved to a greater extent and in an early phase of the permit decision-making process, for example, during the initial analysis of the project area of a subsurface activity. We suggest that strategic national policy goals be regularly reevaluated in the form of a strategic vision for the subsurface to account for timing discrepancies between the realization of activities and policy deadlines, because these discrepancies can have a strong impact on the necessity and, therefore, acceptance of a subsurface activity.

To identify possible implementation issues and the added value of the MEMSA approach in practice, especially when formulating strategic policy for the subsurface, we implemented the MEMSA approach in a real situation. We analyzed Dutch practices and found that the desire to reduce uncertainty is so strong among decision makers—especially those not directly responsible for subsurface activities—that they are substituting uncertainty with a false sense of certainty based on oversimplification. The result is a heavily skewed debate based on preconceptions and a lacking of understanding of the subsurface and possible activities. Good decision-making process and policy, especially from a social acceptance perspective, require decisions and evaluations based on sound principles. DSSs, such as the MEMSA approach, allow for a structured decision and evaluation process that fulfills many of the requirements set forth in this thesis. As shown, the MEMSA approach can provide decision makers with better insight into the subsurface than just its complexity. However, due to lacking information on the demand for subsurface and relevant activities, for example, concrete policy goals, the possibilities of managing the subsurface in an adaptive manner as a whole are limited. It is therefore imperative that policy goals be reassessed for the subsurface in terms of both levels and priority, because, otherwise, it will be nearly impossible to manage the utilization of the subsurface in a sustainable, efficient, and acceptable manner.

Dissertation: http://hdl.handle.net/11370/b2aaf394-155f-429d-8549-27664de2cb5c