Shared Principles for Community Collaboration in West Calcasieu Parish

Program Areas – Responsible Innovation, Sustainability, Science and Technology Policy, Complex Socio-technical Systems, Education and Engagement

Shared Principles for Community Collaboration (Shared Principles) is a community engagement process designed to help project developers and funders collaborate with community members on local energy projects. The Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes at Arizona State University (CSPO) is currently leading a Shared Principles process for a direct air capture project, called Project Cypress, located in Vinton, Louisiana. 

We know each community is different. Shared Principles is meant to help us learn about what matters to residents living near Project Cypress, so the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) and Project Cypress can implement a community engagement process that best serves communities’ goals and needs. Shared Principles will help us answer questions like: 

  • What hopes and concerns do community members have for their community? 
  • Who are trusted community leaders? 
  • How can OCED and Project Cypress best collaborate with community members as the project progresses? 
  • What communication methods (like in-person events, social media posts, or others) work best to get people involved? 
  • How can OCED and Project Cypress make engagement opportunities and information accessible to the community (like through language translation)? 
  • What questions and concerns do community members have about the project that need to be addressed?

After getting community input to answer these questions, CSPO will work with OCED to develop a community engagement guide tailored to the project and the local community. This document will outline ground rules for how OCED and Project Cypress will collaborate with the community in the future. It will also include an action plan for how OCED and Project Cypress will respond to concerns identified during the Shared Principles process. The document will be shared publicly and set the stage for long-term cooperation between the community, OCED, and Project Cypress.

The Shared Principles process for Project Cypress includes multiple in-person community events, spread out over 9-12 months. The diagram below summarizes the Shared Principles process for Project Cypress.

CSPO and OCED have hosted two local community dialogues and are now recruiting for a third and final community dialogue on October 19, 2024. This dialogue is for members of the general public who reside in Calcasieu Parish. Previous knowledge of Project Cypress or direct air capture is not required to attend this event. 

If you live in the Calcasieu Parish area and are interested in attending, please complete this interest form.

We will keep this site up to date with our next engagement opportunities. Please see our FAQ page for more information.

 

Project Objectives

Shared Principles is a way for OCED and Project Cypress to hear directly from community members about how they would like for Project Cypress to engage them throughout the project by:

  1. Creating or deepening relations between the community, Project Cypress and OCED
  2. Establishing trusted methods of communication to support the community’s meaningful engagement in Project Cypress. 
  3. Developing a document of Shared Principles to guide community collaboration across the future of the project. 

The community input gathered during the Shared Principles process will directly influence the way that OCED and Project Cypress will engage with the community in the future.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

Please see our FAQ page for additional information.

 

Funder

This project is called Project Cypress and is funded in part by the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). CSPO was hired by OCED as an independent facilitator for the Project Cypress Shared Principles process.

 

Project Partners

Meet the Project Team

Principal Investigators

Additional Team Members