Building the Cost Curves for CO2 Storage: European Sector

Publication Overview

This report reviews the development of a CO2 storage cost curve for Europe. The study has been carried out by The Netherlands Geological Survey (TNO-NITG) in co-operation with the geological surveys of Britain (BGS) and Denmark and Greenland (GEUS).

Publication Summary

The study has shown that there is an extensive storage capacity available within Western Europe, which is more than capable of storing most of Europe’s emissions for several hundred years. CO2 emissions in Europe have been observed to be clustered in several regions, notably in the industrial regions Netherlands, Germany and the UK. However, the potential storage capacity occurs mostly in deep saline formations that are principally situated in the North Sea. An extensive network of pipelines will, therefore, be required to match the emission sources with these storage opportunities in the North Sea. The study has shown that a significant investment will be required, close to €120 x103M, to construct the pipeline infrastructure needed to store Europe’s CO2 emissions in these off-shore formations. The infrastructure requirements raise the average cost of CO2 storage from €1-3/tCO2 to €4-5/tCO2. An analysis of different transmission infrastructure schemes has indicated that when all storage opportunities are considered there are no significant cost savings in developing a transmission network with a trunk pipeline or back bone as opposed to allowing individual emission sources to match one to one with storage opportunities. However, there may well be social or regulatory issues that might drive the construction of a pipeline network rather than the construction of large numbers of smaller pipelines. Establishment of such a network will require a large upfront capital expenditure and most likely require some regulatory action or public sector financing to reduce the risk associated with the large early capital outlay.

A comparison of the net storage costs in this and the North American study has clearly shown that the storage costs are extremely sensitive to the number of wells that need to be drilled. In the North American study considerable experience is readily available from the extensive sub surface injection programmes underway in that region. However in Europe, data on injection rates into sub surface geological formations appears to be more limited. Taken together, the two studies are indicating that there is a range of storage costs (from $3-12/t CO2) depending on which well injection rates are used. It would seem that the greater uncertainty lies in the European injection rates because these are based on a single data point at Sleipner where CO2 is injected into a highly permeable loosely packed sand formation. Whether comparable injection rates to those at Sleipner can be achieved in other formations in the North Sea can only be confirmed when more CO2 injection operations take place in Europe and in particular in the North Sea.