CTS: CO2 Transport and Storage directly from a ship: flexible and cost-effective solutions for European offshore storage.

It is widely accepted that CCUS (Carbon Capture, transport, Utilization and Storage) is required to address the emission from hard-to-abate sectors in the net-zero society. It is a key technology enabler to decarbonize a wide range of industrial applications. In many regions of Europe offshore storage provides a viable option due to a large variety of technological factors (such as availability of fitting geological formations) but also societal factors, as it is often easier to accept offshore storage rather than local storage onshore.

Traditional solutions for offshore storage comprise onshore terminals and hubs and pipelines or ships connecting these to subsurface templates or offshore hubs. Ships are considered solely as the transport solution for gathering the CO₂ at ports and delivering it to the above-mentioned hubs. CTS will investigate the possibility of using ships as injection vessels. The project builds on previous projects such as ACT ECO-BASE, H2020 Strategy CCUS, and the existing collaboration between NORCE and NEMO Maritime in the NEMO IPN project supported by the Research Council of Norway.

The direct injection from ships for permanent CO₂ storage aims to provide a low-cost, scalable, and flexible solution that can be applied worldwide with a short implementation time. Using ships for injection also helps decrease the visual impacts of permanent offshore injection facilities in the areas relying on coastal and marine tourism, and reduces the constrain to other marine activities, such as fisheries, since it avoids the need for permanent large-scale infrastructures (such as offshore platforms).

Overall, this solution has the potential to transform and boost CCUS in Europe and globally due to:

• decentralization and, hence, more flexible and effective matching emitters and storage sites
• faster deployment and circumventing limitations of pipeline transport
• enhancing CCUS adoption by connecting smaller emitters and regions lacking storage capacity
• contributing to the creation of an all-European (and, potentially, global) market for on-demand CO₂ storage

The project combines research and industrial partners in Norway, Denmark, Portugal, Estonia, Romania, and Ukraine to study potential technology applications in North, Baltic, Black Sea, and Atlantic coast of Portugal.