CO2 Transport and Storage

Countries and regions making notable progress include: 

• Europe continues to make progress to advance CO₂ ­transport and storage infrastructure with now over 160 Mt CO₂ of storage capacity planned by 2030, mostly around the North Sea. Notably, the Porthos transport and storage project in the Netherlands reached a final investment decision (FID) in October 2023. The pilot phase of Project Greensand in Denmark also became operational in March 2023, with a first shipment of liquid CO₂ from Belgium to a depleted oil field in the Danish North Sea for storage. Beyond the North Sea, the Ravenna hub is set to start injecting 25 kt CO₂ per year offshore Italy in 2024, and storage projects continue to make progress in Croatia, Bulgaria, France and Greece.
• Initial licensing round for CO₂ storage is also advancing in Europe. As part of their first-ever licensing rounds, the United Kingdom awarded 21 CO₂ storage licences and Denmark awarded three CO₂ storage licences. In Norway, two CO₂ storage areas in the North Sea were opened to applications in March 2024.
• The European Commission provided over USD 500 million to CO₂ transport and storage projects under its Connecting Europe Facility programme that funds projects across member states. This follows the Commission’s proposed Net Zero Industry Act, which was released in March 2023 and sets an annual CO₂ injection target of 50 Mt CO₂/yr for 2030.
• Japan issued a CCUS roadmap in January 2023, setting an annual CO₂ storage target of 6-12 Mt CO₂ per year for 2030 and 120-140 Mt CO₂/yr for 2050. In June 2023, seven CCUS hubs were selected for funding by JOGMEG.
• The United States continues to increase CO₂ storage capacity with 2.5-fold increase in planned capacity by 2030 in 2023 compared to 2022. An FID was also taken for a CO₂ sequestration hub in California, and permit applications for CO₂ injection in dedicated storage sites have increased dramatically in the last years, with now 43 projects with permits currently under review. In April 2024, the United States announced USD 11 million for four CO₂ transport projects.
• The Asia-Pacific region has seen rising commitment towards CO₂ infrastructure, including project announcements from China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand for the first time ever, and further expansion of the CO₂ management industry in Japan, Korea and Indonesia.
  

Historical storage capacity has been largely tracking capture capacity since 1996 and the first injection at the Sleipner field of 1 Mt CO₂/yr. Today, global capture and storage capacity both culminate at just over 50 Mt CO₂/yr, with a minor discrepancy between the two that is attributed to CO₂ utilisation.

Over the past two years, there has been a large acceleration of CO₂ management infrastructure development within the CCUS landscape. Planned capacity for CO₂ storage for 2030 has increased by 70% in the last year, reaching around 615 Mt CO₂ per year. This is currently greater than planned capture capacity by 2030 based on currently available data, with variations seen across regions. However, efforts must continue to increase on both CO₂ capture and CO₂ storage across all regions to address the gap observed between planned capacities and the global target outlined in the NZE scenario for 2030.

Today, just over 10 Mt CO₂/yr of captured CO₂ is injected for dedicated storage within ten large-scale sites, but based on the project pipeline planned storage capacity could reach around 615 MtCO₂/yr by 2030. Out of this planned capacity, at least 80% could be in dedicated storage sites, against just around 20% of storage capacity in operation today. A combination of factors which include regulatory requirements for the incentivisation of dedicated CO₂ storage development (such as in Canada), and the critical role of CCUS in facilitating the transition to net zero for certain economies (e.g. Norway, the United States, and the United Kingdom), is helping driving this shift away from CO₂-EOR.

Shipping of CO₂ for the purpose of geological storage made a landmark achievement in early 2023. The pilot phase of Project Greensand in Denmark pioneered CO₂ shipment with the first volumes of liquid CO₂ transported from Belgium and injected into a field in the Danish North Sea for storage. Similarly to pipelines, a CO₂ shipping service creates connectivity for industries looking to decarbonise but located far from viable storage assets. Other examples of shipping projects in development include:

• Construction is underway for the first CO₂-receiving terminal (Northern Lights project) in Norway, for commissioning in 2024. In December 2023, Northen Lights placed an order for a fourth LNG-fuelled and wind assisted LCO₂ carrier, which currently grants the Norwegian project the world’s largest CO₂ dedicated fleet.
• Chevron and Mitsui O.S.K Lines established an agreement in 2022 to investigate the feasibility of transporting CO₂ from Singapore to storage locations offshore in Australia. This complements a memorandum of understanding signed between Singapore and Australia, as well as a recently announced industrial consortium to explore CCUS solutions in Singapore.
• The NoordKaap project will ship CO₂ collected from European emitters in Germany, Scandinavia, Belgium and northern France for storage in the Norwegian North Sea and offshore in the Netherlands. The first storage licence application has been submitted to the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy for approval.
• Japanese energy companies plan to join the Bayu-Undan CCS project in Australia looking to transport CO₂ via shipping from Japan for offshore storage in the Timor Sea.
• In July 2023, an agreement between Capital Gas Ship Management, Hyundai Mipo Dockyard, and Lloyd’s Register was signed with the intent of working together for the construction of two 22,000m³ low-pressure LCO₂ carriers that will be delivered in 2025 and 2026.
  

Multi-user CO₂ transport and storage infrastructure is becoming a mainstream business model in the CCUS landscape with the emergence of new players. Now that at around 14 500 km of pipelines are under development globally – with far more expected, as many announced infrastructure projects have not disclosed planned pipeline length – under-used CO₂ infrastructure capacity is available in some regions. Depending on location, this can enable a greater number of small-scale emitters to consider CO₂ capture a feasible option to decarbonise their operations. Examples of major pipeline networks run by specialist operators where this may be possible include:

• The 240 km Alberta Carbon Trunk Line in Canada, operated by Wolf Midstream since 2020, has a design capacity of around 15 Mt CO₂/yr and aims to connect more facilities in the future, even though it currently transports less than 2 Mt CO₂/year from two sources. In September 2023, Wolf Midstream announced an FID on a 40 km pipeline extension, the "Edmonton Connector", which will expand the ACTL network into the Edmonton region to enable greater emissions-reduction opportunities.
• In the United States, in addition to the approximate 9 000 km of operating pipeline that is transporting around 70 Mt of CO₂ annually, three cross-state pipeline projects across the Upper Midwest region had been planned to collectively add nearly 6000 km of new pipeline to the existing infrastructure network. However, recent rejections of permit applications have created setbacks for these projects, and resulted in the cancellation of the Heartland Greenway pipeline (planned to be longer than 2 000 km).
• In continental Europe, multiple cross-border infrastructure projects are being developed to access storage resources in the North Sea. In March 2023 Wintershall Dea and Fluxys jointly proposed a major open-access CO₂ transmission network to connect industrial clusters in Germany to Belgium’s Zeebrugge Port, with capacity to transport 30 Mt CO₂/yr. There are also plans for an onshore carbon transit grid that will serve as a collection point at the Zeebrugge port to facilitate onwards transport for storage in the North Sea by the offshore Belgium-Norway trunk line (1 000 km). This joint venture between Equinor and Fluxys will aim to transport 20 to 40 Mt CO₂/yr.
  

Monitoring, measurement and verification technologies continue to be developed. In Denmark, a new first-of-a-kind buoy will in 2023 be subject to final tests conducted by Resen Waves as part of Project Greensand. The device utilises renewable wave energy to collect and transfer CO₂ storage data remotely to operations on land. This offshore monitoring method could reduce costs and avoid occupational injuries associated with offshore surveying activities.

CO₂ mineral storage involves using highly reactive mafic rocks to sequester CO₂ is also being increasingly developed. In January 2023, 44.01 announced a new collaboration with ADNOC and other partners to launch a commercial scale pilot project in the United Arab Emirates to inject CO₂ into peridotites, a type of rock that contains a high proportion of reactive minerals to CO₂. Moving forward, more demonstration projects are needed to assess whether these resources can store CO₂ at commercial volumes.

The food and beverage industry is currently the main shipper of CO₂ and usually transports it at medium pressure (13 to 18 bar and -30°C to -28°C) as users have no need to move high volumes and do not require large cargos. In Japan, Mitsubishi Shipbuilding, launched the construction of a demonstration ship designed for CCUS initiatives in March 2023. In Europe, the Hunter Group and DNV entered a joint agreement in 2023 to design a 40 000 – 70 000 cubic metre vessel to be available for CO₂ transportation in European waters.

Countries and regions have recognised the importance and urgency of developing CO₂ transport and storage infrastructure. A number of countries have recently enacted policies:

• The Connecting Europe Facility-Energy (CEF-E) is a funding instrument to help implement large-scale cross-border energy infrastructure in the European Union. In 2023, four CCUS hubs were awarded over USD 500 million through CEF-E, a massive increase from the USD 170 million awarded to three CCUS hubs in 2022.
• In the United Kingdom, the North Sea Transit Authority awarded 21 CO₂ storage licences to 14 companies as part of the UK’s first-ever licensing round. Once in operation, the new storage sites could store up to 30 Mt CO₂ by 2030, around 10% of the country’s annual emissions.
• In Denmark, three CO₂ storage licences were awarded in February 2023 as part of the country’s first licensing round, including one licence to the Greensand project, which started pilot operations in March 2023, and two licences to TotalEnergies. The second licensing round was opened in December 2023, with projects expected to be awarded in 2024.
• In Norway, two CO₂ storage areas in the North Sea were opened to applications in March 2024.
• Facilitated by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Department of Energy (DOE) in the United States opened applications in 2023 for a nearly USD 2.3 billion funding announcement for CO₂ storage and validation projects. In April 2024, the DOE announced USD 11 million to four CO₂ transport projects under the same legislation.
• Germany made its re-entry into CCUS with plans to amend legislation to allow for the regulation of CCUS activities, including offshore CO₂ storage.
• Japan is progressing on its draft CCS Business Act, which will establish a legal framework for CCUS across the value chain and allow for the transfer of closed CO₂ storage sites to JOGMEC, a state-owned enterprise. It is also advancing a proposal to amend the London Protocol to allow for the transboundary storage of CO₂.
  

• Tim Dixon, Technology Collaboration Programme on Greenhouse Gas R&D/IEAGHG, Reviewer 
• Nicola Clarke, Technology Collaboration Programme on Greenhouse Gas R&D/IEAGHG, Reviewer 
• Jasmin Kemper, Technology Collaboration Programme on Greenhouse Gas R&D/IEAGHG, Reviewer 
• Iain Macdonald, Shell, Reviewer 
• Rachael Moore, CO₂ Management Solutions, Reviewer 
• Stuart Haszeldine, University of Edinburgh, Reviewer