Digging deep to reach global climate goals
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the world must capture and store more than 100 billion tonnes of CO₂ by 2060 to meet global climate and energy goals. With the Net-Zero Industry Act, the EU is ramping up its focus on capturing and storing of CO₂ with CCUS named one of the scalable technologies needed to reach the EU's climate goals.
Unlike most solutions that focus on reducing emissions, CCUS addresses excess CO₂ already in the atmosphere making it possible to achieve negative emissions, which is essential since humans have emitted 2,400 gigatons of CO2 from 1850-2019, with about 950 gigatons ending in the atmosphere.
In Denmark, CCUS is seen as a necessary complement to renewable energy and energy efficiency measures for hard-to-electrify industries and is coupled with a legally binding ambition to discontinue the use of fossil fuels. A recent roadmap details the latest breakthroughs in Danish CCUS technologies, outlining clear strategies for scaling up technologies to help Denmark achieve its climate ambitions by 2050.
This and much more were on the agenda, as the Danish CCUS Summit 2024 gathered the full ecosystem of stakeholders from industry, academia and public institutions in Copenhagen this week. With key speakers from the US, UK and Canada, the summit aimed to discuss the direction of carbon capture, utilisation and storage, with tangible solutions leading the way.
With the potential to store CO2 emissions hundreds of times the nation’s annual output, Denmark is one of the most promising locations for CO2 storage in Europe. These days, the CCS community is awaiting the decision on the exploration licenses for the onshore sites of Gassum, Havnsø, Rødby, Stenlille and Thorning from the Danish Energy Agency. The sites granted a permit will receive an exploration license to investigate the potential for storage of CO2 at the specified onshore site.
But Denmark's ambitions for CCUS reach beyond its borders. Driven by initiatives, such as forming the ‘Group of Negative Emitters’ (GONE), launched at COP28 in Dubai, Denmark has made several cross-border agreements for CO₂ transport and supply. In March, Denmark and France signed an arrangement to transport captured CO₂ between the two countries, while a Northern European agreement for CO₂ transport and storage secures collaboration between Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden. Most recently, Ørsted also made a deal to supply Microsoft with one million tonnes of carbon removal over ten years.
Learn more about Denmark’s approach to reap the benefits and drive the transition across the global CCUS value chain below.
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