Accelerating a Europe-Wide CO2 Storage Market
Carbon capture and storage prevents CO2 from industry and power generation reaching the atmosphere, and can also remove CO2 from the atmosphere. CO2 can be captured from point sources or from the air, then securely and permanently stored in geological formations in the subsurface.
There is often a mismatch within countries between the amount of CO2 they need to capture and the amount they are able or willing to store, so the ability to use geological CO2 storage in other countries is essential.
An integrated EU/EEA-UK cross-borders CO2 storage market can provide cost-efficient, close-at-hand and rapid storage solutions for industrial emitters.
The European Commission recognises this and has put in place a framework that enables member states to store their captured CO2 in other parts of the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA).
This supports countries with limited availability of CO2storage to decarbonise using CCS and enables countries with available CO2 storage to provide it as a service.