How to best transport CO2 to offshore storages?

Abstract

In Europe, most of the ${\text{CO}}_2$ that needs to be captured is expected to be stored offshore due to the lack of social acceptability for onshore ${\text{CO}}_2$ storage. This means that in the coming decades, infrastructure to transport several hundred million tonnes of ${\text{CO}}_2$ from coastal locations to offshore storage sites will be required. In practice, multiple transport strategies and technological options could be used, and a key question of CCS stakeholders is how to best do so and what the associated costs would be. The present study addresses this question for Northern Europe using a geographical visualisation approach. Base case evaluations, which consider commercial technologies, show the predominance of shipping to floating receiving facilities as a cost-efficient way for transport to offshore sites. However, transport via an onshore receiving facility and pipeline-based transport are used for storage locations near shore and near the port, respectively. The precise boundaries between optimal transport strategies depend on the annual volume of ${\text{CO}}_2$ being transported. If low-pressure shipping (i.e. at 7 barg) becomes available, the ship-based approach will be further advantaged. Similarly, once shipping with direct injection becomes commercially available, it would become cost-competitive for transport volume up to a couple of million tonnes per year and lead to similar costs as conventional shipping above. The development of low-pressure shipping and direct injection could be key to cost-efficiently reach storage locations in the Scottish and Norwegian part of the North Sea.