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 kilometres 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 hard‑to‑decarbonise industries such as cement and steel.
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 because of the extensive data gathered 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 can hold about 78 billion tonnes. In Denmark, the Bifrost project, led by TotalEnergies, estimates a potential storage capacity of 335 million tonnes of CO₂. The European Union has set a target to achieve at least 50 million tonnes of storage capacity per year by 2030 under the Net‑Zero Industry Act (NZIA). Greensand plans to increase its injection capacity to up to eight million tonnes per year by 2030.
Despite the promise of CCS, the cost of capturing, transporting, and storing emissions remains high, making adoption challenging for industrial actors. Nevertheless, the project is significant because 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, underscoring the need for effective solutions like CCS. As the world continues to grapple with climate change, initiatives such as the Greensand project offer a glimmer of hope for a more sustainable future.
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