Dr. Katerina Sardi, Managing Director and Country Manager for Energean in Greece, participated in a panel discussion at the 4th OT Forum held in Athens.
Ms. Sardi emphasized that the Prinos CO2 storage facility in Kavala was originally designed to store up to 1 million tonnes of compressed CO2 annually, transported by road, to capture emissions from nearby industries. However, the need to accommodate hard-to-abate industries located further away has arisen. As a result, the potential capacity of the facility has been increased to 3 million tonnes of CO2 per year. To meet this demand, infrastructure must be developed to allow ships to transport liquefied CO2. This part of the project was not included in the original design from 2019 and is not covered by the Recovery Fund. Therefore, additional funding is required, as Ms. Sardi noted. For this reason, Energean's subsidiary, EnEarth, has applied for support under the Connecting Europe Facility.
The goal of the Prinos CO2 Storage project is to contribute to local and regional decarbonization by storing CO2 captured from industries that are unable to avoid emissions, such as cement factories, where CO2 is an inherent part of the production process. “Domestic industry accounts for about 10% of GDP and employs nearly 400,000 people. If carbon dioxide emissions are not stored, these industries will simply cease to exist in the coming years,” said Ms. Sardi, CEO and Country Manager of Energean in Greece.