Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, from the University of California at Berkeley, US, believes that CCS will only be used on a large scale if it has the support of the majority of the general public. And gaining that support will depend upon the views and actions of environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs), such as Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund – groups who have often been influential in shaping public perception of environmental problems and their potential solutions in the past.

So what do the environmental NGOs think of CCS? Wong-Parodi and colleagues have interviewed a number of representatives from environmental NGOs in the US, to gauge how these "movers and shakers" feel about CCS and whether they are likely to promote it or campaign against it.

Nineteen representatives were interviewed, discussing the following four topics: the work done by the interviewee and the organisation; the organisation’s view of CCS as a way to mitigate climate change; education of the public on this policy; and the public’s potential reaction to the technology.

As a result of these interviews the researchers were able to divide the environmental NGOs into four distinct groups – enthusiasts, prudents, reluctants and opponents – according to their position on CCS. They report their findings in Environmental Research Letters.

The seven enthusiasts tended to see CCS as an essential tool to mitigate global warming. "Their main argument is that since energy demand is projected to rise, and the world – China and the US especially, followed by India – has cheap and abundant coal, it is unrealistic that we can achieve the reductions in carbon dioxide necessary to stop catastrophic climate change without CCS," Wong-Parodi told environmentalresearchweb.

Meanwhile, the opponents felt that CCS could only be a stop-gap measure, with investments in CCS potentially taking away from investments in other technologies such as solar and wind power. What’s more, they argued that we already have other technologies – namely, renewables – that can be used now to mitigate climate change, and that coal is never clean as the mining and infrastructure associated with it is damaging.

Interestingly these four groups also differed in their sources of funding and the amount of influence they have over public perception. Enthusiasts, such as the World Resources Institute, tend to receive significant amounts of funding from private firms and have a dominant strategy of co-operative bargaining. These NGOs have tremendous influence and presence with policymakers, but they are less well-known by the public.

At the other end of the scale the opponents, such as Greenpeace, tend to be funded by private donors and use a dominant strategy of confrontational politics, for example demonstrations. "The opponent NGOs have a strong public presence and are very adept at mobilizing public protest," said Wong-Parodi.

Lying somewhere in between, the prudents and reluctants obtain significant parts of their funding from governments and multilaterals. They have reasonable influence with policy makers and government agencies, but again are less well-known by the public.

CCS faces many hurdles. It is an expensive technology and it still needs to be proven on a large scale. Most of the NGOs questioned thought that it would be unlikely that CCS would be commercially viable without subsidies within the next decade.

The findings of Wong-Parodi and her colleagues suggest that it could be an uphill challenge to convince the public of the merits of CCS. The NGOs who are most supportive of the technology, and who have most influence with policy-makers, are virtually unknown to the public. Meanwhile, the NGOs who oppose the technology are well-known to the public and are good at organising campaigns.