Carbon Capture (CCUS): Governance, Policy, & Social License

In this course, you’ll learn the governance rules and stakeholder dynamics behind CCUS/CCS policy, CO₂ transport, storage, and public acceptance. CCUS is often presented as a purely technical fix: pipes, compressors, and storage sites. This course shows you the bigger picture: CCUS as a policy system, regulatory challenge, and social undertaking that depends on public trust, political choices, and real-world institutions. Through real-world case studies, it unpacks how laws, incentives, and community responses shape projects on the ground. It connects climate models, international law, national regulation and local social license, giving you a clear view of why some CCUS projects move forward while others stall or fail in practice.

It draws on examples from Norway, the United States, the Middle East and East Asia to illustrate how geology, industrial structure and politics produce very different CCUS pathways. Alongside short lectures, you’ll encounter regulatory diagrams, policy documents, media narratives and stakeholder voices that reveal how debates over risk, equity and responsibility play out in practice. The course speaks to professionals and students across policy, industry, finance, NGOs and academia who need a grounded, critical understanding of CCUS debates, whether they are skeptical of the technology, cautiously supportive, or simply trying to make sense of its rapidly expanding role in climate strategies. No prior technical background is required, only curiosity.