Ineos Starts Up EU’s First Full-scale CO2 Storage Site

Chemicals manufacturer Ineos announced the official opening of Project Greensand in the Danish North Sea, the first full-scale facility for the permanent storage of CO2 in the EU with initial capacity of 400,000 tonnes of CO2 per year, and the potential to scale to as much as 8 million tonnes in the future.

The EU’s Net-Zero Industry Act has set a target of at least 50 million tonnes of CO2 injection capacity annually by 2030, and the European Commission has estimated that the EU will need to capture and permanently store approximately 250 million tonnes of CO2 per year by 2040, in order to stay on track for its climate targets.

Launched in 2021, Project Greensand was established as a first-of-a-kind project to explore the cross-border transport of CO2 and its offshore storage in the Danish North Sea. The project is led by Ineos alongside Harbour Energy and the Danish State Subsurface Resource Company Nordsøfonden.

Ineos Chairman Sir Jim Ratcliffe said:

“Europe will not achieve net zero by closing factories and exporting its jobs. We need solutions that allow industry to remain competitive while reducing emissions. Greensand proves it can be done. This is not a pilot project, a concept or a political ambition. It is a fully operational carbon transport and storage business.”

In its first commercial phase, Greensand will store CO2 primarily from Danish biomethane plants. Across the projects value chain, CO2 captured at the plants will be liquefied and delivered by truck to a dedicated CO2 terminal at Port Esbjerg, and then shipped aboard the EU’s first purpose-built CO2 carrier, “Carbon Destroyer 1,” and injected into a depleted oil field 250 km offshore, approximately 1,800 meters beneath the seabed.

Greensand expects to store up to 400,000 tonnes of CO2 annually in the first commercial phase, scaling toward an expected 4–8 million tonnes annually at full capacity.

Attendees at the opening ceremony, at the Port of Esbjerg, included King Frederik X of Denmark, European Commissioner for Energy and Housing Dan Jørgensen, and Danish Minister of Finance Peter Hummelgaard.

Jørgensen said:

“With the launch, here in Esbjerg, of the first fully operational site for offshore carbon storage in the European Union, we prove that carbon storage is a practical reality. We show that we can move from demonstration to deployment. We set out a path for European industries: to continue their transition to a low-carbon future, while maintaining production, investments, and employment in our continent. And we open a new front in the existential fight against climate change.”