In a significant development in the fight against climate change, a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project is nearing completion in the North Sea, where Denmark once drilled for oil. The Greensand project, led by British chemicals giant Ineos, will store imported European carbon dioxide under the seabed, approximately 170 kilometers off the Danish coast. This initiative is one of the tools approved by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) to reduce global warming, particularly in industries like cement and steel that are challenging to decarbonize.

The project involves injecting liquefied CO2, sourced mainly from biomass power plants, into a deep, empty reservoir beneath a small oil platform. The CO2 will be shipped from Europe via the Esbjerg terminal in southwestern Denmark to the Nini platform, where it will be stored. According to Mads Gade, Ineos’s head of European operations, “it’s a very good opportunity to reverse the process: instead of extracting oil, we can now inject CO2 into the ground.”

The North Sea is considered an ideal location for CO2 storage due to the vast amounts of data collected over 50 years of petroleum production. The Norwegian part of the North Sea alone has a theoretical storage capacity of around 70 billion tonnes of CO2, while the British side has a capacity of 78 billion tonnes. In Denmark, the Bifrost project, led by TotalEnergies, estimates that it could store 335 million tonnes of CO2.

The European Union has set a target to have a storage capacity of at least 50 million tonnes per year by 2030 under the Net-Zero Industry Act (NZIA). Installations are being put in place, with the Greensand project planning to increase its carbon dioxide injection capacity to up to eight million tonnes per year by 2030. However, the cost of capturing, transporting, and storing emissions remains high, making it challenging for industrial actors to adopt CCS technology.

Despite the challenges, the project is significant, as it demonstrates the potential for CCS technology to play a crucial role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The EU’s greenhouse gas emissions amounted to approximately 3.2 billion tonnes last year, highlighting the need for effective solutions like CCS. As the world continues to grapple with the challenges of climate change, initiatives like the Greensand project offer a glimmer of hope for a more sustainable future.