To meet the ambitious EC target of an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, CO2 Capture and Storage (CCS) needs to move rapidly towards full-scale implementation with geological storage solutions both on and offshore. Onshore storage offers increased flexibility and reduced infrastructure and monitoring costs. Onshore storage can support the management of decarbonisation strategies at territory level while enhancing security of energy supply and local economic activities, and securing jobs across Europe. However, successful onshore storage also requires overcoming some unique technical and societal challenges.
ENOS aimed to provide crucial advances to help foster onshore CO2 storage across Europe through:
1) Developing and demonstrating key technologies in onshore contexts, with consideration of their social aspects and using research and development at testbeds and pilot sites to advance technologies for safe and environmentally sound storage.
2) Contributing to the creation of a favourable environment for onshore storage across Europe, by:
a. supporting knowledge sharing,
b. integrating research results and setting out good practices,
c. supporting the preparation of new pilot projects,
d. bringing innovation to society through dialogue and communication,
e. demonstrating and presenting the role for CCS through training and education.
The main objective to enable onshore CCS was to strengthen the confidence of the public, operators, emitters, investors, policy-makers, and regulators, through:
- Demonstrating, through practical experience, that injection operations can be run safely and efficiently onshore, supporting development of an enabling regulatory environment;
- Ensuring that estimated storage capacities are reliable and affordable, to enable investment;
- Demonstrating our capacity to understand, detect and manage potential leakage risks, which is key for regulatory issues and to demonstrate CO2 storage is being carried out in a manner which is environmentally sound and safe;
- Integrating CO2 storage into the local economic activities to create financial incentives and local benefits, thereby supporting early storage projects;
- Engaging and collaborating with the local population, without which project development is impossible.
Due to the cancelation of CO2 injection at the Hontomin site in Spain, ENOS was interrupted and not all planned activities could be performed. The project nevertheless produced sound research outcomes as summarised below.
