Europe will store carbon underground: overview of CCS projects

Europe is striving to meet its ambitious climate targets. As part of efforts to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions from industry, it also plans to capture carbon and store it underground using CCS and CCU technologies. 

The number of projects and companies focused on carbon capture and storage in Europe is growing significantly, as Reuters recently reported. Interest in capturing carbon directly at industrial sites and then storing it or incorporating it into new products is being driven, among other factors, by the rising cost of EU ETS carbon dioxide emission allowances, which have fluctuated around 100 euros per tonne since the start of this year.

CCS and CCU (carbon capture and storage / utilisation) projects focus on developing and applying technologies that capture carbon emissions at their source (for example, at a chimney) or directly from the air (this energy-intensive technology is being developed, for example, by Swiss company Climeworks).