Today is Wednesday, March 13 2024.
To combat climate change, the Dutch government wants to reduce the Netherlands’ greenhouse gas emissions by 49% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels, and a 95% reduction by 2050.
One way to achieve the climate objectives is to capture and store CO₂ (Carbon Capture and Storage, CCS in short). The Dutch Climate Agreement underlines the importance of CCS for the energy transition.
Porthos is the first big Dutch project to store excess CO2 under the North Sea. Porthos stands for Port of Rotterdam CO₂ Transport Hub and Offshore Storage. As Porthos has been recognised by the European Union as a Project of Common Interest, it was awarded €102 million in subsidy, as you can see here in this list of projects across Europe.
The Port of Rotterdam complex represents 15% of CO2 emissions in the Netherlands. Emitters are oil refineries and hydrogen producers.
The plan is to start storing 2.5 million tons of captured CO2 per year, that will be pipelined to an offshore platform 20km off the coast and then pumped into a depleted - empty - gas field, located around 3km below the bottom of the North Sea (picture below).
The final investment decision for Porthos has been taken in October 2023, after Dutch administrative court has given the green light to the project.
The Porthos infrastructure requires an investment of €1.3 billion. This is almost triple the first estimate of €500 million when the project was launched five years ago.
After a series of setbacks, construction is due to start this year of 2024, with the system expected to be operational with actual storage to begin in 2026.
Click at the image below to access Porthos portal and know much more about this initiative.
If more interested in carbon capture, here is our full list of articles.
