Building Trust Underground: Designing Community Engagement for a New Approach to Carbon Storage
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is widely recognized as essential to meeting global climate targets. However, conventional approaches - which inject CO₂ in a supercritical (high-pressure, liquid-like) state - require massive scale, dedicated pipeline networks, and proximity to a narrow set of geological formations. These constraints concentrate infrastructure in a few regions, drive up costs, and create significant transportation risks that have fueled public opposition.
Backwater has developed an alternative: carbonated brine storage. By sourcing non-potable water from the subsurface and dissolving CO₂ into it before reinjecting it, the process operates safely at much smaller scales and can be colocated directly with industrial emission sources - eliminating the need for long-distance CO₂ pipelines. The technology opens the door to distributed carbon storage across a far wider range of geologies, but it also means siting new subsurface infrastructure in rural communities that may have little familiarity with CCS - or, worse, associate it with the oil and gas industry's legacy.
Backwater's first commercial projects will be located in rural Alberta and Ontario, Canada, and colocated with industrial emitters. Two community-facing challenges are central to the project's success. First, perceived risk to groundwater: although carbonated brine storage is designed to operate well away from potable water sources, public concern about subsurface water contamination is real and must be addressed transparently. Second, the novelty of the technology itself - and its superficial resemblance to conventional CCS - means that community members may import skepticism rooted in the oil and gas sector rather than evaluating carbonated brine storage on its own merits.
The priority question that needs to be addressed: How might Backwater build a scalable, investable model for identifying, approaching, and partnering with local stakeholders? One that becomes a competitive advantage and a licensable service for other distributed CCS developers. The platform identifies and helps Backwater build trust with local stakeholders, transparently demonstrates groundwater safety, and channels tangible economic benefits back into host communities.
Learn more about Backwater at: https://www.backwatercarbon.com/