No country that invests in CO2 storage should count on being rich

Minister Jetten (D66) mentioned it “breaking news” for the climate battle. On Wednesday, the Council of State finally gave the green light to one of the most controversial parts of climate policy, after a legal procedure of more than a year.

The construction of a huge installation that produces CO₂ must ‘capture’ at refineries and hydrogen factories in the port of Rotterdam, and then pump that greenhouse gas into an empty gas field three kilometers below the North Sea, may continue. According to the judge, concerns of environmental group Mobilization for the Environment (MOB) were unfounded. There would be no ‘significant’ damage to nearby nature during construction.

Jetten was pleased with that statement. The project, called Porthos, is an essential part of its climate policy. The installation must ensure that 2.5 million tons less CO2 is produced every year₂ ends up in the atmosphere – about 1.5 percent of the total Dutch emissions now. That is a big bite through one policy measure. Without Porthos, the (now outgoing) cabinet would never achieve its goals. “The climate does not wait, and Porthos makes a major contribution […]”, says Jett.

_{The companies that will build the installation, the Port of Rotterdam Authority, Gasunie and state-owned company Energie Beheer Nederland (EBN), believe that they can finish this by 2026 at the latest, and that CO can then be used.2 to pump under the seabed.}

Over the past fifteen years, large-scale capture and underground CO₂storage (CCS) above all a promise. In 2010, a Shell initiative to build a residential area in Barendrecht CO₂ because of fierce resistance from residents. They did not feel safe: CO₂ is deadly to humans in high concentrations, what if a leak were to occur? In 2017, two operators of coal-fired power plants on the Maasvlakte, Engie and Uniper, pulled the plug on their plan to₂ to store it under the North Sea because it was too expensive.

The public reactions this time are mostly positive. Even Nature & Environment showed itself “somewhat relieved”, because that way the climate goals will not get even further out of the picture. Although the environmental organization noted that the ’emergency measure’ would of course never have been necessary if the industry had taken action earlier.

International trend

The opponents may be strongly critical of it – MOB and Greenpeace believe that oil companies should simply stop using CO₂ to emit. But the fact is that more and more countries worldwide are relying on technology to achieve their climate goals. The International Energy Agency (IEA) noted in its World Energy Outlook last year that CCS “momentum” has. Around 260 plans have now been launched worldwide – a ninefold increase since 2018. Billions of euros and dollars in grants are made available. Last year, 35 storage locations were already fully operational, three of which were in Europe.

If all plans are realised, several hundred million tons of CO2 can be produced annually from 2030 onwards₂ be put underground. Companies that have a lot of CO₂ emissions are happy with it, because that way they don’t have to immediately cut their activities, and therefore their profits, in order to reduce emissions.

The European Commission, once skeptical, has this year an ambitious goal assumed that in seven years’ time EU countries together must have built a minimum of 50 megatons of underground storage capacity. There are thirteen projects in the pipeline within the EU, according to A count of a gas lobby club, including in France, Greece, Croatia, Bulgaria and Italy. Some of them are even (much) more ambitious than Porthos. Shell, together with Total, EBN and Gasunie, is also considering another storage facility in the North Sea, called Aramis, in which twice as much CO₂ can be stopped if in Porthos. The United Kingdom is also considering projects. Denmark even sees trade in storage. In March, it became the first country in the world to announce that it would reduce CO₂ to import from other countries. A contract has already been signed with Belgium.

feasibility

At the same time, critics still have many questions about the technology. Whether it is financially and technically feasible, to begin with. According to MOB, capturing and then transporting CO under high pressure and pumping it into the ground eats up₂ energy. In the US a few years ago it had to be done specifically for a CCS project a gas-fired power station to meet the huge energy demand.

There are (plenty of) examples of technical defects at existing locations, and unforeseen circumstances during the construction of new ones, as a result of which ambitions are not always realized, or with delays – and at considerable extra costs. In Australia it does Chevron’s flagship project, Gorgon, still not what to do – four years after it started. The American group must buy 80 percent of the CO₂ that is released during gas extraction a little further down the road, it has promised to the Australian government. But that goal is met due to technical difficulties not.

Porthos himself points out that the technique has been around for 25 years. The Norwegian storage location Sleipnir was already commissioned in 1996. Another store, Schnovit, was opened in 2008. Porthos cites both as examples of “successful” projects, as does Canada’s Quest project. Finally, the organization points out that fossil fuel companies have years of extensive experience in injecting CO₂ in gas fields. They do this to increase the pressure in those fields and thus improve production (Enhanced Oil Recovery, in slang). It’s essentially the same technique.

But there have also been problems at Schnovit and Sleipnir, reports the British energy think tank Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) in a survey from last summer to the global state of affairs regarding CCS. For example, the pressure in Schnovit rose to “alarming levels” three years after commissioning, because the storage did not have as much CO₂ turned out to be able to take on if the operator Equinor had thought in advance. As a result, a temporary emergency well had to be drilled, costing millions of euros extra. Sleipnir has also had several problems since 1996.

According to the think tank, it is therefore not too bad with Norway’s ‘success story’. In fact, the IEEFA rather sees those projects as a “warning” for other companies with “many great aspirations”. “CCS is technically much more complex and surrounded by uncertainties.”

Safety

Concerns about safety seem more pregnant. Some environmental movements fear leaks, Greenpeace Netherlands director Andy Palmen calls the Porthos project “gambling with human lives”.

Risks do indeed not seem to be ruled out. Although that is probably a slightly different story at sea than on land. Things almost went wrong at Sleipnir. Three years after the start, CO₂ to have trickled up to strata where Equinor had not expected, the IEEFA reports. According to the organization, it was fortunate that the earth layer was ‘close’ enough. Otherwise there “may have been a leak”.

Michelle Prins, program leader for sustainable industry at Natuur & Milieu, summarizes her concerns as follows: “This must of course first and foremost be temporary. Otherwise there is no incentive for fossil fuel companies to change. It is true that not much experience has been gained worldwide. But the expectation is that safety is not a showstopper. At the same time: what happens in Norway is different from what needs to happen here. In Norway it concerns different types of earth layers, here the storage must take place in gas fields. Each location has its own unique characteristics and geology is not an exact science. In the Netherlands, there are considerable depths and difficult conditions in which construction and work must take place. It is therefore very important that there is long-term monitoring for breaks and leaks.”

Prins also calls it essential that the ecology is handled carefully during construction. “The North Sea is a large nature reserve.”

Finally, the IEEFA warns that the question is whether the companies responsible for the CO₂ emitted can also be held liable in the event of a leakage. In many countries, regulations for CCS are currently missing or are still being developed. Liability agreements are often relatively short-lived, the think tank writes. In Australia they last about fifteen years. While CO₂ must remain underground for thousands of years and something could theoretically go wrong all that time.

The _{Emitters in the Porthos project, including Shell and Exxon, are not liable for leaks, says Prince of Nature & Environment, which has been agreed in the Climate Agreement of 2019. Only the operators of the infrastructure are liable: in addition to the state-owned companies EBN and Gasunie and the Port of Rotterdam Authority (30 percent of the state and 70 percent of the municipality of Rotterdam), so is Abu Dhabi’s state oil and gas company, TAQA.}

They are up to twenty years after injecting CO₂ responsible for safety and liable for leaks, says Prins. In the thirty years that follow, only the state is responsible for security. The operators pay a fee for this. They are still liable for any leaks. But after those thirty years that also stops. “Longer liability cannot be put into a business case for companies, they say,” says Prins.

The ultimate question remains: is CCS really good for the climate?

Opponents say it actually slows down the climate fight because it removes the incentive for oil companies to reduce their emissions. After all, it has been rendered ‘harmless’. But the proponents say: that is not too bad, and it is now also crucial that time is gained. Green hydrogen, an alternative clean energy source that could possibly be used to replace fossil fuels, is currently generally not expected to become available on a large scale before 2035.

In any case, no country that bets on CCS should count itself rich. In the latest IPCC report notes the scientific climate panel of the UN that even with all current plans, the world is still ‘far’ below the modeled scenarios where the average temperature increase is limited to 1.5 or a maximum of 2 degrees. According to the IEA, the plans are just enough for “one-fifth” of what is needed to be carbon neutral by 2050. To achieve that goal, ten new CCS installations would have to be opened every month – until 2030.

Read also: Storing CO2 under the North Sea may continue. Johan Vollenbroek loses the battle, but may have already won the battle

A version of this article also appeared in the August 19, 2023 newspaper.