Denmark’s Crown Prince Frederik has given the go-ahead for the first storage of carbon dioxide in the seabed under the Danish part of the North Sea. Around 50 years after the start of Danish oil production at the same place, the heir to the throne gave the command to start storage at the depleted Nini West oil field in the port city of Esbjerg on Wednesday. In the pilot phase of the Greensand project, up to 15,000 tons of liquefied CO2 from Belgium are to be pumped down a good 1,800 meters by the beginning of April. The consortium of companies involved hopes that politicians will also create the legal framework for the technology in Germany.
“New chapter for the North Sea”
“Today we are opening a new chapter for the North Sea, a green chapter,” said Frederik. He was then connected via video link to a team at the oil field a good 200 kilometers away, which initiated the storage at his command.
The technology behind it is called Carbon Capture and Storage, or CCS for short. CO2 is captured during industrial processes, taken to an underground storage facility and stored there.
A consortium led by the BASF subsidiary Wintershall Dea and the British chemical company Ineos is working together on Greensand. According to Wintershall, this is the world’s first cross-border offshore CO2 storage facility with the explicit purpose of reducing climate change.
“The Greensand project is a milestone in the development of a Europe-wide CCS infrastructure and thus in climate protection,” said Mario Mehren, CEO of Wintershall Dea. “We show that the transport and storage of CO2 is possible safely and reliably across national borders and can make a contribution to a decarbonized future in the near future.” EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also made a positive statement in a video message. “This is a big moment for the green transition in Europe.”
Agreement with Belgium enables CO2 transport to Denmark
Denmark recently issued the first permits so that corporations can store CO2 under the North Sea bottom on a larger scale. One of them went to Wintershall Dea and Ineos. A bilateral agreement with Belgium enables CO2 to be transported to Denmark. The consortium hopes that politicians will also create the legal framework for this in other countries – especially in Germany.
“On the one hand, we need a CO2 law in Germany that allows CO2 to be transported and exported. Ideally, it should also be stored in Germany,” Mehren told the German Press Agency. “And then we need a bilateral agreement between the countries to make this cross-border transport possible.”
In Germany, the law only permits the storage of carbon dioxide for research, testing and demonstration purposes to a limited extent. The federal government would like to change that in order to make it easier to build CO2 lines and also to regulate the use of CO2 and remove obstacles to its export. An important destination country for German CO2 exports would be Norway, where Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) was a guest at the beginning of the year.
CCS technology as part of the German climate strategy
On its website, Habeck’s ministry already presents CCS technology as part of the German climate strategy. Germany wants to be climate-neutral by 2045, i.e. not emit more greenhouse gases than can be bound again. From 2050 onwards, the aim is to remove even more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than we emit. In order for this to work, the ministry says that capture with subsequent use or storage can be an option for unavoidable or difficult-to-avoid CO2 emissions.
The Federation of German Industries (BDI) considers CCS and the closely related CCU technology, which relies on CO2 reuse, to be essential. “If Germany wants to achieve climate neutrality, this can only be done using the CCS and CCU process,” said Holger Loesch, deputy BDI general manager. In processes in the cement and lime industry, for example, emissions are unavoidable.
CCS controversial among environmental groups and climate protection groups
On the other hand, CCS is controversial among environmental groups and climate protection groups. They fear that the technology will dampen ambition for climate protection and the expansion of renewable energies, and warn of dangers to the environment, for example from carbon dioxide leaks.
“CCS is a bogus solution that is neither sustainable nor emission-free,” says Greenpeace climate expert Karsten Smid. The CO2 compression in the North Sea harbors considerable risks, for example through leaks. “Disused oil fields in the North Sea are not a place for disposing of CO2 waste,” emphasized Smid. The climate problem can only be solved by drastically reducing emissions at source.
Wintershall Dea boss Mehren counters that CCS is a tried and tested, safe technology. The geological construct around the oil and gas deposits has also proven over millions of years that it is tight. At the same time, Wintershall Dea is aware that CCS is not a panacea. “CCS is not the silver bullet for everything in the energy transition,” said Hugo Dijkgraaf, responsible for carbon management on the Wintershall Board of Management. “But it is an extremely important element for the industrial sector, where there really is no alternative.”
