The Danish Crown Prince Frederik opened a CO₂ storage facility in Esbjerg on Wednesday. Denmark wants to store up to eight million tons of the climate-damaging greenhouse gas annually in an exhausted oil reservoir under the North Sea. However, the method is controversial among scientists.
According to the operators, the “Greensand” project is the world’s first cross-border carbon dioxide (CO₂) storage project. The reservoir is located far offshore in the North Sea between Denmark and Norway: the stored CO₂ is transported by pipeline to the Nini West platform, where it is pressed into an old oil reservoir.
Storage at 1800 meters depth
Through “Greensand”, up to eight million tons of greenhouse gas should be stored annually at a depth of 1,800 meters until 2030, with a significant participation of the British chemical company Ineos and the German energy company Wintershall Dea. The system, which is still in a pilot phase, was officially launched on Wednesday.
The so-called CCS technology for capturing and storing CO₂ is intended to permanently bind the emissions generated by the burning of fossil fuels and thus contribute to climate protection. However, the process is controversial among environmentalists and researchers.
Storage is very energy intensive
The liquefaction and storage of carbon dioxide is very energy intensive in itself and there can also be hazards from leaking storage facilities. Moreover, critics see CCS as only a mock solution that cannot solve the fundamental global problem of high CO₂ emissions.
There are about 200 projects in progress or in preparation worldwide, but the technology is still in its infancy and very expensive. The North Sea is considered a suitable storage area because there are many oil and gas fields there that have been exhausted after decades of production. That is why there is already infrastructure there, such as pipelines, that could possibly be used to store the greenhouse gas.
The Danish government sees a lot of potential
The Danish government sees great potential in CCS technology to achieve climate neutrality by 2045. She wants to turn the country on the North Sea into a destination for foreign CO₂. “The storage potential of our subsurface is much greater than our own emissions. Therefore, we can also store carbon from other countries,” Danish Energy Minister Lars Aagaard told AFP.
Source: Krone
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