STRATEGY CCUS: developing the CO2 capture and storage industry in 8 European regions

Issues and needs

Today, everyone agrees that Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) is a key factor in achieving the objectives of the Paris Agreement, because of the significant reduction in CO₂ emissions that it opens up for the European industrial and energy sectors.

CCUS reduces "non-avoidable" non-energy emissions, as well as the energy still emitted during the energy transition period. It is a mature technology option that can be implemented quickly and massively to help achieve the drastic emission reductions that countries committed to under the Paris Agreement. In 2017, the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced that CCUS was not being developed fast enough to meet the 2015 Paris Agreement target.

The STRATEGY CCUS project, a 3-year, EU-funded H2020 CSA (Coordination and Support Action) project (April 2019 to July 2022), aims to promote the transition to low carbon emissions in Eastern and Southern Europe. Eight promising regions have been identified in 7 European countries (France, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Poland, Greece and Romania) to study the possibilities and prospects for deploying these technologies. Among its activities, the consortium has planned:

• to explore development avenues: emission zones, potential storage sites, transport infrastructures and transport corridors and possibilities for valorising CO₂ capture, utilisation and storage,
• to carry out economic and environmental studies such as an in-depth life cycle assessment (LCA) [1] and a technical and economic analysis (TEA), to support proposals (scenario building) and the exploitation of results,
• to work and collaborate with local and decision-making stakeholders at regional, national and European levels by consulting them and taking into account their feelings, needs and expectations throughout the project.

The objective is to establish detailed roadmaps on carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) and propose solutions that can be applied in other regions, in particular for non-energy emissions, which result from industrial processes (cement plants, incinerators, fermentation processes, distillation, etc.).

Results and use

In April 2020, the partners of the STRATEGY CCUS project selected three of these eight "promising" regions in Southern and Eastern Europe to benefit from these detailed CCUS roadmaps.

The regions selected for further study have the best potential for large-scale deployment of these climate mitigation technologies: existence of clusters, options for transport and geological storage of CO₂, possibilities for CO₂ utilisation. They cover the following industrial and geological areas:

• The Rhone Valley in France includes the Fos-Berre/Marseille CSU cluster covered by Action 9 of the SET-Plan (as a flagship project), and the Lyon metropolitan area.
• The Ebro basin in Spain includes the industrial area of Tarragona and the regions of North Castellón and North Teruel.
• The Lusitanian Basin in Portugal includes CO₂ sources along the Leiria-Figueira da Foz axis and extends to the Lisbon industrial region.

The three selected regions are currently undergoing an in-depth life cycle assessment (LCA) and a Multiregional Input Output Assessment (MRIO) in addition to the economic analysis that is being conducted for all 8 regions.

• The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) will assess the environmental impacts of the deployment of the CCUS at all stages (from development to full-scale operational implementation, including emissions, intrinsic energy and resource use).
• The MRIO analysis will examine the socio-economic impact of the deployment of CCUS technology on the valorisation of products or services, on the gross domestic product (GDP) and on job creation.

In line with their aim to promote a transition to low-carbon emissions in Eastern and Southern Europe, the project partners have also developed a detailed economic model on CCUS for northern Croatia, which came fourth in the selection process, offering opportunities for the use of CO₂ for enhanced oil recovery (EOR).

The other four regions – France (Paris-Ile de France Basin), Greece, Poland and Romania, which are part of the initial group identified as promising for the development of CCUS technologies – will be the subject of economic studies during the new phases of the STRATEGY CCUS project.

These results for the eight regions studied, expected in early 2022, will be used as input for the scenarios for the deployment of CCUS in 10, 20 and 30 years.

Concomitantly, regular stakeholder consultation and surveys at different levels (regional, national and European) will continue in order to underpin the technical-economic and environmental studies and to ensure the feasibility and viability of the proposed scenarios and the support of local stakeholders.

The resulting roadmaps, which will offer business models, technical know-how and best practice on issues such as social acceptance, aim to demonstrate to national governments and regional authorities and businesses that the development of CCUS is both feasible and essential to meeting the Paris Agreement's commitments to climate action.