Esbjerg, Denmark. To clean the planet and also the consciences. Above all, to start a business that promises to be very rich. To the heir to the Danish crown, the Prince Frederikit was enough to radio the oil platform to start the operation: at his order, two hundred and fifty kilometers north of the coast of Jutland, the CO2 has begun to be introduced into the now depleted reservoir. It will be able to contain up to eight million tons a year, roughly 10% of the greenhouse gases produced by a country like Denmark. Or at least this is the goal starting from 2030. “Fifty years after the start of the exploitation of the North Sea oil fields, inaugurated by my father, now we reverse the process by postponing the CO2 where it was extracted“, explains the prince. In the solemnity of the moment he admits that he would have much preferred to be able to push a button. He willingly settles for the video call with the oil rig.
Therefore, carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere, transformed into liquid gas, then solidified, and finally stored underground, where once there was oil. The Greensand project, just presented in the port of Esbjerg, also has another particularity: day CO2 it comes from Belgium and was transported here by land. The system needs to be refined, ships are planned to be used next time, but already now the aim is to create an alternative to the carbon credit market.
“This is a great moment for Europe’s green transition and for our cleantech industry,” he comments Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, via a video message. “You’re showing that it can be done, that we can grow our industry through innovation and, at the same time, remove carbon emissions from the atmosphere through ingenuity and cooperation.”
PROS AND CONS
“CO2 absorption is our only real hope for the climate”
by Peter Wadhams
However, we are on slippery ground, capturing CO2 it could lend itself to environmentalism on the face, providing the excuse to continue to pollute as has been done up to now. But here in Denmark they believe there aren’t many alternatives to removing greenhouse gases because, they argue, there is no alternative to the current modus operandi of many of the manufacturing sectors, starting with chemicals, which can never be carbon neutral.
“Half of the CO2 it will have to be removed from the atmosphere if we want to achieve the 2050 carbon neutrality goals, reducing emissions is not enough”, he explains Brian Gilvary, head of Ineos Energy, a division of the British chemical giant, second only to BASF and Dow Chemical. He is behind the Greensand project, together with twenty-three other organisations, not all with a candid soul from an environmental point of view, and which include the governments of Belgium and Denmark. “I don’t think we will be able to go without fossil fuels, not in the next few decades,” Gilvary continues. “The Greensand project is proof that there is an alternative to carbon credits“.
The carbon credit system, a deal valued at over 700 billion dollars a year, makes it possible to continue to emit greenhouse gases in exchange for the purchase of a certificate which bears witness to compensation with projects linked, for example, to planting trees. Currently, a carbon credit in Europe, which is equivalent to the possibility of producing a ton of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases, costs around 92 euros. At Ineos they are convinced that the Greensand project can therefore turn into a prosperous market with the progressive reduction of the costs of storing CO2 and process optimization. In short, the aim is to arrive at a price for each ton that is competitive with carbon credits. But the road is long. According to Canada’s Carbon Engineering, funded by Bill Gates among others, the capture of CO2 it’s around $150 a ton.
The analysis
Where are we in Italy with the capture and storage of CO2
by Luca Fraioli
Sonia Isabelle Seneviratneclimatologist at ETH Zurich, who has co-signed three different reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), argued that CO capture2 it is in fact not an effective measure. Too expensive, it cannot help since we have to reverse the trend in emissions by 2030 and not from then on. In your opinion, the only way is to cut emissions in half if we are to hope that temperatures don’t exceed a one-and-a-half degree rise, and we’re only seven years old.
According to Global Ccs Institute there are 197 CO storage projects2 globally. The vast majority it injects it underground to increase the efficiency of oil extraction, through the technique called Enhanced Oil Recovery (Eor). Carbon dioxide and water are fed into the reservoir to push the oil up. There are only nine projects born for geological storage and only one involves the transport of greenhouse gases beyond national borders. This is the Weyburn-Midale which uses a gas pipeline between the United States and Canada. Other initiatives, such as Carbfix1 in Iceland, were not counted because they are not for commercial purposes, as is the Greensand project.
Belgium’s carbon dioxide comes from Ineos’ own chemical plants, which produced about 1.2 tons in ten years. But the company guarantees that the choice of its Belgian plant is only for testing, to demonstrate that it is a system that works. Greensand will open to Danish and Belgian customers at the end of 2023, pending that in other countries we also have laws that allow the transport and storage of CO2. However, we need to see who and how will be able to collect it. In Belgium it was made directly from the waste from the production process, it may not be so easy in other cases.
It insists on the need for state subsidies for the formula to work. “In the beginning, wind farms were not cost-effective and could not have evolved if they had not been financially supported,” insists Gilvary. “This also applies to the use of solar panels, so why the collection and storage of CO2 shouldn’t they be supported?”
The Danish subsoil, according to the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), could host 22 billion tons of carbon dioxide, which corresponds to about 700 years of emissions of a nation like Denmark itself at current levels. Copenhagen’s energy minister, Lars Aaagaard, he is convinced that this is an area in which his country can build a promising sector and thousands of jobs.
Technology
The first major alliance of Big Tech to capture CO2 from the air
by Jaime D’Alessandro
“It is a European story of success and cooperation”, underlined Ursula von der Leyen. “The CO2 which is captured in Belgium, and soon in Germany, will be transported on ships in the port of Antwerp-Bruges and stored thanks to the Danish pioneering spirit. It is a story involving dozens of small European companies, research institutes and industrial giants“.
In short, an opportunity and not just for the Danes. But there is still a long way to go before it becomes an economically viable system. We’ll see what happens at the end of 2023, when Greensand will officially become a commercial enterprise. Here in Esbjerg they believe it is a turning point, especially for those countries bordering the North Sea. The promised land of oil half a century ago and today the new frontier for cleaning up the environment and the rotten product elsewhere.