The project was recently officially inaugurated by His Royal Highness Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark, with CO₂ captured at an Ineos Oxide site in Belgium being liquefied and shipped cross-border to be safely and permanently stored at a depth of 1,800 metres below the seabed in the Ineos-operated depleted Nini oil field in the Danish North Sea.

Project Greensand is being developed by a consortium of 23 organisations, led by Ineos and its partner Wintershall Dea. It aims to safely capture and permanently store up to 1.5mn t/y of CO₂ in 2025/2026, and potentially up to 8mn t/y of CO₂, some 40% of Denmark’s total emission reduction target, once the Siri Fairway Expansion phase of the project completes in 2030.

Award of the safety verification for Project Greensand follows years of involvement by DNV of the entire value chain’s concept, design, components, underground sites and facilities.

‘Our safety verification of Project Greensand’s entire pilot phase clearly shows that the project is fit for purpose, safe and compliant with all relevant Danish and international regulations and the highest standards,’ says Mick Cramer Jakobsen, Regional Head of Customer Relations for DNV and project director for the safety verification.

Commenting on the verification, which covers everything from the fabrication by the individual subcontractors to the actual offshore installation, Mads Gade, Head of Country for Ineos Denmark, says: ‘We are convinced that safety will be a vital competitive parameter in the future CCS market. DNV’s thorough work and verification guarantee that our system can ensure that the stored CO₂ remains underground, and that the safety of our employees remains paramount in the North Sea.’

There are 197 carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects currently operating on a commercial scale worldwide, according to the Global CCS Institute (GCCSI). The majority of the operational projects inject CO₂ into the subsoil for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Only nine projects with a dedicated geological storage purpose (ie not using EOR) are currently operational, and none are for the sole purpose of storage to mitigate climate change. Furthermore, only one of the 197 projects transports CO₂ across national borders – the Weyburn-Midale project, which transports CO₂ for EOR via a pipeline from the US to Canada. (The Carbfix1 CO₂ storage project onshore Iceland is operational, cross-border and is intended to mitigate climate change. However, it is pilot-scale, hence not part of the 197 commercial-scale projects listed by GCCSI in its 2022 report.)

According to The Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), it is estimated that there is the potential to store 22 Gt of CO₂ in the Danish subsoil – corresponding to approximately 700 years of Danish CO₂ emissions at current levels.

Meanwhile, the European Commission estimates that the European Union will need to store up to 300mn t/y of CO₂ by 2050 to meet its climate goals.