NORTH SEA, Denmark — Appearing first as a dot on the horizon, the remote Nini oil field in Europe's stormy North Sea slowly comes into view from a helicopter.
A site used to extract fossil fuels is now getting a second life as a means of permanently storing planet-warming carbon dioxide. under the seabed.
Chemical giant INEOS plans to inject liquefied CO2 deep into depleted oil reservoirs, 1,800 meters (5,900 feet) below the seabed.
The Associated Press made a rare visit to the Siri platform located near the unmanned Nini field, the final phase of the INEOS project. carbon capture and storage effortscalled Greensand Future.
When the project begins commercial operations next year, Greensand is expected to become the European Union's first fully operational offshore. CO2 storage website.
Environmentalists say carbon capture and storage, also known as CCS, has a role to play in fighting climate change but should not be used as an excuse by industry to avoid cutting emissions.
Mads Gade, chief executive of INEOS Energy Europe, says the company will initially start storing 400,000 tonnes (363,000 metric tons) of CO2 per year, rising to 8 million tonnes (7.3 million metric tons) per year by 2030.
“Denmark has the potential to store our own emissions for more than several hundred years,” says Gade. “We can create an industry where we can support Europe in storing large amounts of CO2 here.”
Greensand has reached agreements with Danish biogas companies to bury them captured carbon releases into depleted Nini reservoirs.
A “CO2 terminal”, intended for the temporary storage of liquefied gas, is being built in the port of Esbjerg, on the west coast of the Danish peninsula of Jutland.
A purpose-built transport vessel called the Carbon Destroyer 1 is being built in the Netherlands.
Proponents of carbon capture technology say it is a climate solution because it can remove greenhouse gases, a major driver of climate change, and bury them deep underground.
They celebrate Intergovernmental Panel on Climate ChangeThe world's leading body of climate scientists said the technology is a tool in the fight against global warming.
The EU has proposed developing at least 250 million tonnes (227 million metric tons) of CO2 storage per year by 2040 as part of plans to achieve “net zero” emissions by 2050.
Gade says carbon capture and storage is one of the best ways to reduce emissions.
“We don’t want the deindustrialization of Europe,” he said. “Instead, we want to have multiple tools for decarbonization.”
Experts at the Geological Survey of Denmark say the Greensand sandstone rock is well suited for storing liquefied CO2. Nearly a third of the rock's volume is made up of tiny cavities, says Nils Schowsbo, a senior scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.
“We found that there are no reactions between the reservoir and the injected CO2. And we found that the cap rock on top of it has a fair amount of capacity to withstand the pressure that occurs when we store CO2 in the subsurface,” Shovesbaugh added.
“These two methods make it ideal for storage right here.”
But although there are many of them carbon capture factories around the world, the technology is far from scale, sometimes uses fossil fuel energy in its operations and captures only a tiny part Global emissions.
Project Greensand aims to bury up to 8 million tons (7.3 million metric tons) of CO2 per year by 2030. The International Energy Agency reports that nearly 38 billion tons (34.5 billion metric tons) of CO2 were emitted worldwide last year.
Environmental activists say the industry has used CCS as an excuse to delay emissions cuts.
“We could use CCS in those very few sectors where emissions are really difficult or impossible to reduce,” said Helen Hagel, head of climate and environmental policy at Greenpeace Denmark.
“But when all sectors of society are almost saying: we just need to capture emissions and store them, rather than reduce emissions, that’s the problem.”
As the chemical giant ramps up carbon storage efforts, it also hopes to begin developing another previously undiscovered oil field in the North Sea.
“The impact we get from importing energy versus domestically or regionally producing oil and gas is much more important to the transition than higher-impact imports,” Gade said, defending the company's plans.
“Our vision is to do this while we create a transition period for Europe.”
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