The Bifrost project provides insight into the technical, operational, and socio-economic aspects of the development of CO2 storage in the North Sea and has produced interesting results on several fronts.
“We are pleased with the progress of the project confirming that Denmark is uniquely positioned to become a European CCS hub. The work programs have progressed well, and we look forward to presenting the final conclusions by summer 2024. Thanks to the strong partnership between industry and research in the project, we can already now see that we have a solid foundation to continue the development of a Danish CCS industry beyond the project closure”, says Martin Rune Pedersen, Country Manager and Head of CCS at TotalEnergies Denmark, who is coordinating the project.
Especially the work programs analyzing the underground storage potential, the re-purposing of existing offshore pipelines, the socio-economic perspectives, and innovative technologies to monitor CO2 stocks should be highlighted from the past year’s work.
Scaling up CO2 storage: From the Harald field to the rest of the North Sea
The project continues to confirm favorable conditions for storing CO2 in sandstone reservoirs, but most of the Danish fields in the North Sea are chalk reservoirs. It is therefore of importance that the workstream headed by DTU has been able to confirm the significant storage potential in the studies of the chalk layers:
“Our studies have shown that the former gas fields can function as good storage reservoirs. This applies to both the rate at which the CO2 can be stored in the reservoirs as well as the capacity and integrity of the reservoirs. Now we will continue to study the oil fields to see if the same is true for them,” says Elena Pachkova, Centre Director, DTU Offshore.
Analyzing existing infrastructure with the aim of re-purposing offshore pipelines from transport of natural gas to transport of CO2 is also showing promising results:
“With the project, we see that precisely pipelines are a central and cost-effective element in bringing CO2 storage up to scale. This is what is needed if Denmark is to become a European hub for CO2 storage,” says Mikael Brandt, Senior Vice President for Ørsted.
Safety drives innovation and research
At the same time, the project partners can now also confirm the safety of storing CO2 in the Harald field with greater confidence. In-depth analysis has been conducted to track the injected CO2 several kilometers below the seabed and the partnership has identified useful monitoring tools to confirm that it will stay in the reservoirs. The partnership continues the work to deploy new sensor technologies and test their efficiencies.
“It has been exciting to witness the good collaboration between the various partners presenting their specific project needs, their innovative ideas, the practical limitations and finding common ground on practical solutions,” says Elena Pachkova.
Citizens must be a part of the journey
In addition to the technical findings, the partnership studies the socio-economic conditions surrounding the establishment of large-scale CCS in Denmark. Recently, DTU has, among other things, been able to publish that there is still an exciting potential to make Danish citizens more knowledgeable about CCS technology:
“With our research, we unveil the Danes' attitudes towards CCS, and these are insights that we hope will help decision-makers and the industry when CCS is to be established on a large scale in Denmark,” says Jacob Ladenburg, Professor of economics, DTU Management, who is in charge of the two studies and continues:
“So far, we have uncovered that knowledge and trust in the technology are still relatively limited and that CCS at sea is preferred to onshore storage. In the upcoming studies, we will take a deeper look.”
The EUDP-funded partnership started in January 2022 with the aim of gathering knowledge on how best to develop large-scale CCS solutions in Denmark. When the collaboration ends in mid-2024, TotalEnergies’ together with its partners will continue to establish CO2 storage in the Harald field and nearby areas with the goal of initially storing a minimum of 5 million tons of CO2 annually from 2030.
