Denmark’s first CO2 storage facility ready to store large volumes of CO2

Project Greensand, Denmark’s CO2 storage facility in the North Sea subsoil, is ready to receive large amounts of CO₂. The project is now awaiting the Danish authorities' approval for permanent storage, with an ambition that Greensand will be the first operational CO₂ storage facility in the EU and will start storing CO₂ by the end of 2025

The 23 partners behind Project Greensand have now submitted the final report from the pilot project, which has aimed to develop, test and demonstrate safe and efficient storage of CO₂ in the North Sea subsurface. Thus, the results from the EUDP-supported work in the consortium behind Project Greensand's pilot phase are ready.
 
The thorough technical verification ensures that the stored CO₂ remains safely and permanently in the closed Nini West reservoir 1800m below the North Sea seabed, as expected. This is clear after the results of Project Greensand have been verified by the independent and world-leading provider of risk, verification and standardisation services, DNV.
 
“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 leading partner behind Project Greensand.

As the first in the world, Project Greensand demonstrated that captured CO₂ can be transported across borders and stored offshore to mitigate climate change. With a completed and verified pilot phase, the way has been paved for the development of CCS in Denmark. The lead partner in Project Greensand, INEOS, has already applied for approval on behalf of licence partners Wintershall Dea (now Harbour Energy) and Nordsøfonden for Denmark's first large-scale CO₂ storage facility, and is now working hard to start CO₂ storage in the North Sea by the end of 2025 or the beginning of 2026. The ambition is that up to 400,000tpa of CO₂ will be stored with a plan to store up to 8Mta of CO₂ in the area under the North Sea's seabed from 2030.
 
At the same time, work is also underway to investigate whether it is possible and safe to store CO₂ underground on land in Denmark, and earlier this year, the Minister for Climate, Energy and Utilities awarded INEOS, Wintershall Dea (Harbour Energy) and Nordsøfonden an exploration licence for an area of the Danish subsurface in Jutland in the Gassum reservoir. The experience from Greensand will be included in the work to demonstrate safe storage also on land.
 
“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. 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 five per cent of a future CCS market in Europe, it could mean up to 9000 jobs, with an economic potential of DKK50bn. At the same time, we can support the EU's objectives, because we have all the prerequisites to create a new industry that is part of the solution to the challenges of the climate”, says Mr Gade.