Denmark opens Greensand CO2 storage project in the North Sea

Esbjerg. Denmark's King Frederik Since 2023, CO2 storage has been tested in the depleted Nini West oil field in the Danish North Sea. In the pilot phase of the “Greensand” project, around 15,000 tons of liquefied carbon dioxide ended up in the storage facility at a depth of around 1,800 meters every year. In the future, up to 400,000 tons per year will initially be transported to the disused oil platform and stored in the seabed during regular operations.

The technology is called Carbon Capture and Storage, or CCS for short, and it works like this: CO2 is captured during industrial processes, brought to an underground storage facility and permanently stored there. Experts consider the method to be safe, but environmentalists have concerns - also because they fear that the technology encourages the elimination of harmful greenhouse gases rather than ambitiously reducing emissions at the source.

A facility for commercial CO2 storage already exists off the coast of Norway. The British chemical company Ineos is working with Harbor Energy and the Danish state-owned company Nordsøfonden on the project in the North Sea off Denmark. According to those responsible, “Greensand” is the first storage site in the EU where CO2 is stored on an industrial scale. It could be four to eight million tons of carbon dioxide annually. But even that is “incredibly small” from a European perspective, said Danish professor of sustainable energy planning, Brian Vad Mathiesen, from Aalborg University.

“If we want to become climate neutral, we rely on storing CO2 in one way or another,” explained the expert. Because some emissions are considered almost unavoidable - for example in the cement industry. So far, however, as is so often the case, the price has been a problem, said Mathiesen: the technology is still too expensive in comparison for more companies to resort to this solution and capture CO2 in order to improve their climate footprint. There are many cheaper alternatives.

The 400,000 tons per year is the amount “that the market is prepared to deliver,” according to the consortium. Above all, the project should show that capturing and storing CO2 on a large scale is possible. So far, the carbon dioxide comes mainly from Danish biogas plants. In the future, Ineos and Co. hope to also be able to attract large German industrial companies. But politicians need to create better framework conditions for this, say those responsible.

In Germany, the black-red coalition paved the way for underground storage of greenhouse gases last year. The Federal Republic wants to be climate neutral by 2045, i.e. not emit more greenhouse gases than can be stored again. The federal government sees an opportunity in CCS technology for emissions that are difficult to avoid, for example from industry. Chancellor Friedrich Merz also sees economic opportunities for German companies in this.