On Tuesday 10 December, the Greensand Future project in the North Sea was granted the Final Investment Decision (FID).

The project is set to be the first full-scale carbon storage facility in the EU and will see an investment of $150 million in commercial agreements across the entire value chain, from CO₂ emitters to logistics, storage, and shipping.

The investment consortium is led by LSE-listed independent oil and gas conglomerate Harbour Energy, global petrochemicals manufacturer INEOS, and Nordsøfonden, the Danish state subsurface resource company.

Greensand Future aims to safely capture and permanently store 400.000 tonnes of CO₂ annually as a start. Storage capacity will be gradually expanded towards 2030 as CO₂ volumes increase, with the potential to store up to 8.000.000 tonnes of CO₂ per annum.

The European Commission has estimated that the European Union will need to establish a carbon storage capacity of 250 million tonnes of CO₂ per year by 2040 to achieve the objectives of the Paris Agreement. CCS is also considered a key technology in reaching the Danish 2045 net-zero targets.

In the first phase of Greensand Future, CO₂  will be captured and liquified at Danish biomethane production plants, transported to the port of Esbjerg, and then shipped by Royal Wagenborg to the Nini field in the Danish North Sea for safe and permanent storage.

Quoted in a release published on the INEOS website, Mads Gade, Head of INEOS Energy Denmark said, “With Greensand Future and the establishment of the full value chain we are sending an important message to the Danish and European emitters currently considering large-scale capture projects, that it can be done.”