Enabling onshore CO2 storage in Europe: fostering international cooperation around pilot and test sites

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. Enabling onshore storage will support 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 will provide crucial advances to help foster onshore CO2 storage across Europe through: 1. Developing, testing and demonstrating in the field, under "real-life conditions", key technologies specifically adapted to onshore storage. 2. Contributing to the creation of a favourable environment for onshore storage across Europe. The ENOS site portfolio will provide a great opportunity for demonstration of technologies for safe and environmentally sound storage at relevant scale. Best practices will be developed using experience gained from the field experiments with the participation of local stakeholders and the lay public. This will produce improved integrated research outcomes and increase stakeholder understanding and confidence in CO2 storage. In this improved framework, ENOS will catalyse new onshore pilot and demonstration projects in new locations and geological settings across Europe, taking into account the site-specific and local socio-economic context. By developing technologies from TRL4/5 to TRL6 across the storage lifecycle, feeding the resultant knowledge and experience into training and education and cooperating at the pan-European and global level, ENOS will have a decisive impact on innovation and build the confidence needed for enabling onshore CO2 storage in Europe. ENOS is initiating strong international collaboration between European researchers and their counterparts from the USA, Canada, South Korea, Australia and South Africa for sharing experience worldwide based on real-life onshore pilots and field experiments. Fostering experience-sharing and research alignment between existing sites is key to maximise the investment made at individual sites and to support the efficient large scale deployment of CCS. ENOS is striving to promote collaboration between sites in the world through a programme of site twinning, focus groups centered around operative issues and the creation of a leakage simulation alliance

The ESTMAP Project (Energy storage Mapping and Planning): focus on the subsurface data collection

International audienceThere is a strong link between energy security and the "2030 climate and energy framework" of European Commission. Reaching the goals of the "2030 framework" both efficiently and at the lowest possible costs for all is seen as a key step to address the energy security challenge in the long run. This requires elaboration of the framework for investments in renewables and energy efficiency. This planning has to be based on a robust and integrated set of data.As most data relevant to energy storage exists in a fragmented form, the major work in the ESTMAP project consists of compiling existing data in a unified database and exploiting it to optimise energy systems planning. Geologists, engineers and system modellers joined forces to define the format and the content of a database of both subsurface and above surface storage sites (existing, planned and potential). The idea is to ensure that the newly compiled dataset will fit the needs for robust modelling, planning and designing on a coherent basis and comparable among Member States and other European neighbouring countries. One of the project output consists of a geographical database providing information on distribution and expected capacity of existing and future energy storage sites in Europe, including costs and accessibility. Both subsurface storage options (hydrogen, compressed air, natural gas, underground pumped hydro, etc.) and above ground storages (pumped hydro, LNG, liquid air, etc.) are taken into account.In this project, BRGM, assisted by TNO, CGS and VITO, is in charge of data collection of subsurface energy storage. The objective of this task is to gather readily available and public data on existing and future potential storage sites. These data incorporate (1) the geographic location, description, characterization, subsurface properties and feasibility and capacity assessments of the subsurface reservoirs, as well as (2) the identification of known subsurface storage facilities attached to these reservoirs.A co-operation with European national geological institutions has been established. Co-operation agreements were concluded with members of EuroGeoSurveys and ENeRG groups. In countries not represented in these networks, national partners were contacted individually.The ESTMAP subsurface database populates data from EU member countries, the countries of the European Free Trade Association-EFTA (4 countries) and the Member of the Energy Community (8 countries). More than 920 sites spread around Europe have been identified during the subsurface data collection. Some of these have assessment information in term of proven, possible, probable, or assumed energy storages. All these data are forwarded for integration in the database to propose further modelling during the year 2016.ESTMAP project provides the opportunity to review the available public subsurface data in the European countries. The first encouraging results let open the possibility for further European cooperation in the next future