No Trade for Decarbonization. Public Resistance to Cross-Border Electricity and CO₂-Infrastructure

• Citizens across five North Sea countries (Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, the UK; N = 9,750) consistently rate cross-border electricity and CCS in-frastructure projects more negatively than identical domestic projects, a robust "trade penalty".

• The direction of opposition depends on the good being traded: for electricity, exporting attracts the strongest resistance; for CO₂ storage, it is importing. Elec-tricity is perceived as a valuable national resource, CO₂ as foreign waste.

• The trade penalty is not driven by fears of import dependence: respondents who value energy independence object most strongly to electricity exports, not im-ports. The underlying concern is national control over resources, not supply se-curity.

• Neither climate concern nor general support for international cooperation over-rides the preference for domestic solutions. Citizens who see decarbonization as a national responsibility (88 percent of respondents) show the strongest trade penalty.

• Expectations of concrete economic benefits, such as jobs or lower energy prices, improve acceptance of cross-border projects. This points to a communication lever that climate framing alone does not offer.

• Policymakers should foreground domestic benefits, make the costs of purely na-tional solutions visible, establish transparent rules for sharing costs and benefits across countries, and calibrate communication to each technology.

Kiel Institute Expert