At the Baker Hughes annual conference held in Firenze, EnEarth Head of Carbon Storage, Nikolas Rigas considered the importance of carbon storage as the major driver of industrial carbonisation available to us today – and how EnEarth has learned to overcome some of the primary barriers to success.
A vital consideration for everyone in the value chain to understand is that decarbonisation is a policy decision; and one that we wholeheartedly support. However as with many policy based dynamics, if politicians and regulators want to create the industrial reality, there must be an incentive for private capital deployment.
It is vital therefore that subsidies the EU funding infrastructure eg our recently successful CEF application (https://www.enearth.earth/_files/ugd/a147f3_665280a1614a42bab67c80e9555b0709.pdf) are seen in the context of demonstrating the EU & member states’ strategic commitment to decarbonisation. It supports the development from theory and power point studies – of which there are many in the CCS world – into operational reality.
Prinos co2 is one of the most advanced CO2 storage projects globally. We aim to be one of the first large scale commercial / market facing CO2 storage projects in operation. Prinos CO2 was not designed and developed to decarbonise a single asset, or a portfolio of assets owned by a single shareholder – as is the case with a number of other well supported projects across Europe. It was designed as a solution to the Greek and European hard to abate industrial emissions challenge. These emissions are an inherent result of socio economically vital heavy industry. The choice is decarbonise, or move – as we have seen already in the process of European deindustrialisation.
Speaking of policy, we want to positively highlight the role of the Greek Government, with the support of the EU. There has been an understanding that policy, regulation and funding has to progress across the entire value chain. We all share a common goal. The challenge, which has been recognised by Greece is that we must align along the value chain. Emitters, transporters and storage sites can all share the common goal of decarbonising, and smart policy can facilitate this alignment.
Finally, one hears the questions, “why CO2 storage? and what if we find a solution to re-use CO2 in 10 years?” a lot. There are two answers. The first is to say that there is limited sign that a 10 year horizon on removing CO2 emissions at large scale from certain industries for reuse is as close as 10 years. The second, and most important is that we have to recognise the challenge of today. Currently between just Greece and Italy we have close to 70mtpa of industrial emissions that needs a solution today. Carbon storage is a large scale solution that can be implemented today for the vital hard to abate industrial sectors, and thanks to the policy and regulation in place, we cannot wait 10 years. We must act now.