CO2 Transport and Storage

Countries and regions making notable progress include: 

• The North Sea region has made prominent progress to advance CO₂ infrastructure with over 30 new transport and/or storage projects in development since 2022. Projects aim to connect clusters of capture facilities from cement, hydrogen, and industrial plants along the shores of continental Europe with storage locations in the North Sea. Notably, the pilot phase of Project Greensand in Denmark 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.  
• 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 European Commission proposed the Net Zero Industry Act in March 2023, setting an annual CO₂ injection target of 50 Mt CO₂/yr for 2030. The Act proposes improved permitting procedures for key net zero mitigation technologies, including CCUS.  
• The United States continues to increase CO₂ storage capacity with a near doubling in new announcements in 2022 compared to 2021. There are currently around 9 500 km of CO₂ pipelines in operation, the vast majority of which (92%) are in the United States.  
• 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 45 Mt CO₂/yr, with a minor discrepancy between the two that is attributed to CO₂ utilisation.  

Over the past year, there has been a large acceleration of CO₂ management infrastructure development within the CCUS landscape. The total planned capacity for CO₂ storage has more than doubled since January 2022. Consequently, assuming all announced projects are completed in full and on time, the anticipated global storage capacity of CO₂ (including storage through enhanced oil recovery, [EOR]) will be greater than the announced annual 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 MtCO₂/yr of captured CO₂ is injected for dedicated storage within 9 commercial-scale sites, but based on the project pipeline dedicated storage capacity could increase to around 345 MtCO₂/yr by 2030. The substantial shift away from CO₂-EOR (from around three-quarters of capacity today to just over 10% of capacity in 2030) towards dedicated storage is driven by a combination of factors, including regulatory requirements for the incentivisation of 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) 

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:  

• 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.  
  

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 C_O2/year from two sources.  
• In continental Europe, multiple cross-border infrastructure projects are being developed to access storage resources in the North Sea. The latest announcement from March 2023 includes a major open-access CO₂ transmission network jointly proposed by Wintershall Dea and Fluxys to connect industrial clusters in Germany to Belgium’s Zeebrugge Port. The pipeline’s capacity is expected to be 30 Mt CO₂/yr. There will be 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. This joint venture between Equinor and Fluxys, announced in June 2022, will reach 40 Mt CO₂/year at maximum capacity.  
  

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:  

• At the federal level, Canada’s Budget 2022 details a CCUS Tax Credit of 37.5% for eligible transport, storage and use equipment. In addition, the federal government opened an expression of interest in January 2023 for CO₂ transport and storage R&D projects. At the provincial level, in November 2022 25 proposals were selected to work with Alberta Energy to begin the evaluation of their pore space. 
• The Connecting Europe Facility-Energy (CEF-E) is a funding instrument to help implement large-scale cross-border energy infrastructure in the European Union. From the lists of Projects of Common Interest (PCI), three CCUS hubs were awarded EUR 160 million in 2022 through CEF-E. Under recently revised regulations, five cross-border CO₂ transport and storage projects have applied for the status of Project of Mutual Interest connecting the European Union with four non-EU countries. Successful projects will be announced in November 2023.  
• In the United Kingdom, the North Sea Transit Authority awarded 20 CO₂ storage licences to 12 companies as part of the UK’s first-ever licensing round. Once in operation, the new storage sites will contribute to storing up to 30 Mt CO₂ by 2030, around 10% of the country’s annual emissions. 
• Facilitated by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Department of Energy in the United States announced more than USD 90 million for 11 large-scale CO₂ storage projects awarded under the “CarbonSAFE Phase II” funding opportunity in 2023. In addition, the United States also announced more than USD 2 billion in funding towards projects eligible under CarbonSAFE Phase III and IV for site characterisation, permitting and construction. 
  

• 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