CO2 storage begins at Denmark's Greensand site

INEOS said Friday that its Greensand carbon capture and storage project has begun storing carbon dioxide under the seabed beneath an old oil platform in the North Sea.

The Greensand reservoir is beneath the Nini West platform, about 200 kilometers off Denmark's west coast. In its first phase, the project is expected to store 400,000 tonnes of CO2 a year.

INEOS said it intends to scale up the project to inject four million to eight million tonnes annually by 2030. The CO2 is expected to come mainly from Danish biomethane plants and be transported in liquefied form by ship from Esbjerg in southwest Denmark.

INEOS chief executive David Bucknall described Greensand as the European Union's first full-scale CO2 storage site and value chain in operation. European Commissioner for Energy Dan Jorgensen said the project showed carbon storage was a practical reality.

Carbon capture and storage is approved by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the International Energy Agency as one tool to curb global warming, especially for industries such as cement and steel that are difficult to decarbonise. The technology is complex and costly. The EU has set a legally binding target to have at least 50 million tonnes of annual storage capacity by 2030.