Denmark’s CO2 storage pilot project paves the way for large-scale CCS

The consortium partners behind Project Greensand have submitted the final report for the CO2 storage pilot project, paving the way for the development of large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) in Denmark.

Project Greensand marked a world first on March 8, 2023, with the first-ever injection of CO2 in the North Sea, demonstrating that captured CO2 can be transported across borders and stored offshore.

A couple of months later, classification society DNV verified the safety of all aspects of the project’s CO2 storage in the closed Nini West reservoir 1,800 meters below the seabed.

“We now have documentation that we have a well-functioning storage for CO2 in the North Sea subsoil, where large amounts of CO2 that would otherwise have been emitted into the atmosphere can be safely and permanently stored. We can see that the stored CO2 behaves as expected in the reservoir 1,800 metres below the seabed. That confidence gives us a solid foundation to take the next steps that will be crucial for CCS in Denmark,” said Mads Gade, Country Manager at INEOS Denmark and Commercial Director at INEOS Energy.

The 23 partners behind the project have completed and verified the pilot phase, with lead partner INEOS already having applied for approval on behalf of license partners Wintershall Dea, now Harbour Energy, and Nordsøfonden for Denmark’s first large-scale CO2 storage facility, and is working to start CO2 storage in the North Sea by the end of 2025 or the beginning of 2026.

The ambition is that up to 400,000 tonnes of CO2 will be stored per year, with the plan to store up to 8 million tonnes of CO2 per year in the area under the North Sea’s seabed from 2030.

According to INEOS, experience from Greensand will be included in the work to demonstrate safe storage on land in Denmark as an investigation is underway whether it is possible and safe to store CO2 underground on land. Earlier this year, the Minister for Climate, Energy and Utilities awarded INEOS, Wintershall Dea and Nordsøfonden an exploration license for an area of the Danish subsurface in Jutland in the Gassum reservoir.

“We emphasised that Denmark has moved to the forefront of CCS in the world when we stored the first CO2 in the North Sea. Now we are in the process of investigating how to take the next step, and here we stand on the shoulders of the invaluable experience from Project Greensand’s pilot,” Gade said.

“We are keen to continue this momentum with an ambition that Greensand will be the first CO2 storage facility in operation in the EU, and we are now awaiting the Danish authorities’ approval of a permanent storage. This is an important step, because if Denmark takes just 5% of a future CCS market in Europe, it could mean up to 9,000 jobs, with an economic potential of DKK 50 billion.”

To remind, the Danish Energy Agency granted the first-ever permit for a CO2 storage project in Denmark at the end of 2022 to INEOS E&P and Wintershall Dea for the Greensand Pilot Injection Project. In February 2023, the partners received the first full-scale CO2 storage permit for the Danish North Sea.