Denmark Will Import and Bury Other Countries’ CO2
Denmark will store CO2 under the ocean.
Denmark started the world’s first project to buy CO2 from abroad and bury it beneath the ocean this week. Denmark will bury the CO2 about 5,900 feet or 1,800 meters under the North Sea.
Called the “Greensand” project, it is led by the German oil company Wintershall Dea and the British chemical company Ineos, and is part of a larger plan to reduce CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, and lessen the effects of climate change.
Danish Climate Minisiter Lars Aagaard says that “It will help us reach our climate goals, and since our subsoil contains a storage potential far larger than our own emissions, we are able to store carbon from other countries as well.”
A project like the Greensand project is known as a CSS (carbon capture and storage) project. The Greensand project hopes to fight climate change by storing 8 million metric tons of CO2 per year by 2030. There are currently 30 or so CSS projects in development in Europe.
According to a report by Euronews, the North Sea is a great place to store CO2, as the pipeline infrastructure is already in place after decades of oil and gas production.
Though the 8 million tons of CO2 sounds like a lot, the member states of the EU emitted 3.7 billion tons of CO2 in 2020, according to the European Environmental Agency (EEA).
What makes the Greensand project special is that it gets the CO2 from far away. Captured at the source, the plan is for the CO2 to be liquified and transported by ship, but later by pipeline, and stored under the ocean in geological cavities or depleted oil fields.
However, the energy intensive process of storing the CO2 emits 21% the carbon it stores, and is by no means a cure for climate change. Some environmentalists say it is not fixing the root problem and is keeping longer the structures that are harmful to the environment.
Related Articles
https://www.euronews.com/2023/03/08/denmark-the-first-country-to-import-co2-and-bury-it-undersea
https://www.projectgreensand.com/en
Take Action
https://www.carboncommunity.org/donate
https://blog.boomerangapp.com/2021/11/help-us-find-where-to-donate-for-carbon-capture-research/
