(Reuters) – Efforts to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from industry and store them underground have gathered pace across Europe over the past few years as countries scramble to meet climate goals.
The interest in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology has been also driven by rising EU carbon permit costs, which hit a record of 100 euros a tonne in February.
Scientists have said CCS needs to be rapidly scaled up to help keep global average temperature rise under 2 degrees Celsius this century.
Here are some CO2 storage projects planned or under development in Europe:
NORTH SEA
NORWAY * Northern Lights, a joint venture project by Equinor, TotalEnergies and Shell, plans to start injecting up to 1.5 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of CO2 into saline aquifer near the Troll gas field from the middle of 2024. There are plans to increase storage capacity to 5-6 mtpa from 2026, pending demand. * Smeaheia, a project by Equinor to develop a storage site in the North Sea, with a potential to inject up to 20 mtpa from 2027/2028.
Equinor, awarded the exploration licence in 2022, said it is looking at injecting the CO2 captured from its own hydrogen production, as well as some industrial customers in Europe. The company aims to make the final investment decision in 2025. * Luna, a project led by German Wintershall Dea, to store up to 5 mtpa of CO2 at a site some 120km west of Bergen. Wintershall Dea and its Norwegian partner, Cape Omega, were awarded an exploration licence in October.
Wintershall Dea has 60% stake and Norway’s Cape Omega the remaining 40% in the licence.
* Havstjerne is a second project led by Wintershall Dea in the North Sea, in partnership with Altera Infrastructure Group Ltd., to explore a CO2 storage with potential capacity to inject 7 million tonnes of the gas each year.
* Trudvang, a joint project by Sval Energi, Storegga and Neptune Energi to develop a storage site east of the Sleipner gas field in the North Sea with a capacity to inject about 9 mtpa of CO2 from 2029.
Sval is the proposed operator with 40% ownership, while Storegga and Neptune each have 30%.
* Poseidon, an Aker BP-led project to explore for a CO2 storage in the North Sea with potential capacity to inject more than 5 million tonnes a year.
Aker BP, Norway’s second-largest listed oil and gas firm, has a 60% stake and Austria’s OMV has a 40% stake. The site could potentially store emissions from OMV’s majority-owned Austrian plastics group Borealis.
BRITAIN * Acorn CCS, a project off the coast of Scotland to develop a storage site with an annual capacity of 5-10 mtpa of CO2 by 2030. Storegga, Shell and Harbour Energy each hold 30% stakes and North Sea Midstream Partners (NSMP) the remaining 10%. * Viking CCS, led by independent oil and gas firm Harbour Energy, aims to store up to 10 mtpa of CO2 by 2030 at the depleted Viking gas field in the southern North Sea.
It plans to start injecting CO2 in 2027, initially at a rate of 2 mtpa of CO2, ramping up to 10 mtpa by 2030 and 15 mtpa by 2035. RWE, Phillips 66, VPI, West Burton Energy are looking at storing CO2 emissions at the site.
* Northern Endurance, a BP-led partnership, aims to develop infrastructure to transport and store about 20 mtpa of CO2 under the seabed in the southern North Sea from 2030.
The project, which also includes National Grid, Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies, aims to store CO2 emissions captured at industrial clusters in Teesside and Humberside. THE NETHERLANDS * Porthos, a project by the port of Rotterdam, Gasunie and EBN, aims to store 2.5 mtpa of CO2 in depleted Dutch gas fields in the North Sea.
All storage capacity has been already contracted by 4 industrial partners: Air Liquide, Air Products, ExxonMobil and Shell.
The project planned to start CO2 injections in 2024-2025, but a legal dispute has delayed startup until 2026. * L10, a project led by Neptune Energy, to store 4-5 mtpa of CO2 in depleted gas fields in the Dutch North Sea.
Other project partners are ExxonMobil, Rosewood Exploration and state-owned EBN. They partners plan to apply for a storage licence in March, with the first CO2 injections seen in 2027-2028, later than previously planned 2026.
DENMARK * Greensand, a pilot project led by INEOS Energy and Wintershall Dea, to demonstrate that CO2 can be stored underground in the Danish part of the North Sea.
The project aims to inject initially up to 1.5 mtpa of CO2 from 2025-2026, increasing capacity to 8 mtpa by 2030. * Bifrost, a project led by TotalEnergies, aims to inject up to 3 mtpa of CO2 into depleted Harald gas fields in the Danish North Sea from 2027, and increase capacity to more than 10 mtpa by 2030.
The project also involves Orsted, which operates offshore pipelines, and the Technical University of Denmark. In February, Denmark awarded TotalEnergies two CO2 storage licences including the Harald area.
GERMANY * Wilhelmshaven CO2 export terminal, a project led by Wintershall Dea to build a CO2 liquefaction and temporary storage facility at Wilhelmshaven, Germany’s only deep-water port, and then the CO2 could be shipped or piped to permanent storage sites under the North Sea.
It aims to initially handle about 1 mtpa of CO2 from 2026.
OTHER STORAGE POINTS
BRITAIN
* HyNet North West project aims to convert gas and fuel gas from the Stanlow refinery in Cheshire into low-carbon hydrogen, capturing and transferring the CO2 produced during the process by pipelines to offshore storage in the Liverpool Bay.
Pre-existing salt caverns in Cheshire will also be used as storage. Operations are expected to start in 2025 and will store about 4.5 mtpa of CO2, rising to 10 mtpa by 2030.
BULGARIA
* ANRAV, a project led by private Irish energy company Petroceltic, will link CO2 capture facilities at HeidelbergCement’s Devnya cement plant in north-eastern Bulgaria with offshore permanent storage in the depleted Black Sea gas field of Galata.
Expected to start operations in 2028, it will have a capacity of 800,000 tonnes of CO2 a year.
FRANCE
* PYCASSO, a project capturing carbon from industries in the southwest of France and north of Spain to be stored in a depleted gas field in Aquitaine. It is planned to transport about 1 mtpa of CO2 by 2030.
ICELAND
* The Coda Terminal will be a cross-border carbon transport and storage hub in Straumsvík, operated by Icelandic carbon storage firm Carbfix.
CO2 captured from industrial firms will be shipped to the terminal to be dissolved in water before being injected into basalt bedrock. The operations, scaled up in steps, are set to reach up to 3 mtpa of CO2 from 2031.
* The Silverstone project, coordinated by Carbfix, will deploy commercial-scale CO2 capture, dissolve CO2 in water and inject it into underground basalt rock for mineral storage in the Hellisheidi geothermal power plant, near Mount Hengill.
Silverstone will capture and store about 25,000 tonnes of CO2 a year. It is expected to start up in the first quarter of 2025.
ITALY
* CCS Ravenna Hub, led by energy company ENI, is a project to capture CO2 and transport it to offshore depleted gas reservoirs off the coast of Ravenna in the Adriatic Sea.
The first phase is scheduled in 2023. The full capture, transport and storage chain will handle up to 100,000 mtpa of CO2.
IRELAND
* The Cork CCS project aims to store carbon captured from Irish industrial facilities in a depleted gas field in the Celtic Sea, potentially re-using an existing pipeline for transport. The project is lead by utility Ervia.
SWEDEN
* Slite CCS, a CCS project led by HeidelbergCement and its Swedish subsidiary Cementa, at its Slite cement plant on the Swedish island of Gotland, in the Baltic Sea.
It aims to capture up to 1.8 mtpa of CO2, about 3% of the country’s total emissions, and store those at several sites under development in the North Sea.
(Compiled by Dina Kartid and Nerijus Adomaitis; Editing by Nina Chestney and Clarence Fernandez)
