Private equity-backed upstream oil and gas company Neptune Energy and Norwegian energy infrastructure firm CapeOmega will work on a cross-border CO2 transport and storage solution, which would involve shipping CO2 from industrial emitters in Europe and directly injecting it at offshore location, the companies said today.
The project, NoordKaap, will look at opportunities for industrial clusters in Germany, Belgium, Scandinavia and northern France, with access to CO2 storage sites offshore the Netherlands and Norway. It should start up in 2028 and aims to provide carbon capture and storage (CCS) solutions "to industrial clusters where ship transport is the primary or earliest available export option", Neptune said. The project has been submitted to the EU for the sixth project of common interest list.
CapeOmega and Neptune have signed a letter of intent with German utility RWE, to assess the option to ship CO2 emitted from the latter's 1.6GW co-fired Eemshaven power plant in the Netherlands, for storage in the Dutch North Sea. This would result in "negative emissions", chief executive at RWE Generation Roger Miesen said. "Our ambition is to make this happen in 2030", he added. Eemshaven runs on coal and roughly 20pc woody biomass, but the plant must stop burning coal by January 2030, as the Netherlands phases out coal-fired generation. Bioenergy with CCS is technically classed as negative emissions under EU legislation, as biomass is defined as carbon neutral.
Europe's CCS industry is ramping up, while record high price levels for carbon provide support for a commercial future. But while capture projects at hard-to-abate industrial emitters have shown success, the infrastructure to transport and store the CO2 captured is largely not yet in place.
Shipping CO2 could overcome some early gaps in infrastructure, but any cross-border CO2 transport requires a bilateral agreement between the importing and exporting countries, as well as a declaration submitted to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO). The London Protocol — which prohibits the export of waste to other states for dumping or incineration at sea — has an amendment for CO2 export for storage under certain conditions, but it has not been ratified by all signatories to the agreement.
