Denmark has launched the European Union’s first full-scale facility dedicated to the permanent storage of carbon dioxide. The Greensand project, developed by INEOS Energy together with Harbour Energy and Danish fund Nordsøfonden, has entered commercial operations, with its first phase designed to inject up to 400,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. Ultimately, the facility is expected to be expanded to store between 4 million and 8 million tonnes of CO2 annually, creating infrastructure that could also be used by industrial companies outside Denmark.
The official opening took place on September 18 at the port of Esbjerg, with King Frederik X of Denmark in attendance. Greensand is thus moving from the demonstration stage into commercial operations. The infrastructure encompasses not only the underground storage site itself, but also CO2 reception, liquefaction, marine transport and injection. INEOS Energy operates the project, with Harbour Energy and Nordsøfonden as its partners. The company stresses that launching the entire chain is intended to create infrastructure that, in subsequent stages, can be connected to emission sources from different parts of Europe.
Greensand was not initially developed as an industrial-scale facility. In December 2022, the project received permission to investigate the possibility of injecting and storing up to 15,000 tonnes of CO2 in the Nini West structure over a four-month period. Several months later, on March 8, 2023, the project made history as the first instance of CO2 being injected beneath the North Sea seabed as part of the initiative. The pilot phase was significant not only from a technological perspective, as it also made it possible to test the operation of the entire chain, including gas capture, transportation and permanent storage beneath the seabed.
The next stage came with the investment decision made by INEOS Energy and its partners in December 2024. The Final Investment Decision paved the way for the first commercial phase of the Greensand Future project and the launch of an investment covering the entire CCS chain. A year later, the Danish Energy Agency issued the first permit in the country’s history for a full-scale CO2 storage facility, enabling the project to move into commercial operations.
The earlier phase was independently verified by DNV, a company involved, among other things, in risk assessment and certification of energy projects. The verification confirmed the technical assumptions concerning CO2 storage in the Nini West structure. The reservoir is located approximately 1,800 meters beneath the North Sea seabed and is a depleted oil field whose geology allows the existing structure to be used for permanent carbon dioxide storage.
CO2 will travel from industrial sites to the port and then out to sea
The first phase of Greensand has been designed primarily to use CO2 originating from Danish biomethane production facilities. Once captured, the gas is liquefied and transported by truck to a dedicated CO2 terminal at the port of Esbjerg. There, the liquefied carbon dioxide is temporarily stored and prepared for marine transport.
The next stage takes place at sea. CO2 is transported aboard the Carbon Destroyer 1, described by the operator as the European Union’s first vessel built specifically to transport carbon dioxide. The cargo is then delivered to the Nini West offshore storage site, located approximately 250 kilometers from the Danish coast. The process therefore makes it possible to connect dispersed emission sources to a single permanent storage location without having to build a separate underground storage facility for every industrial plant.
Mads Gade, CEO of INEOS Energy Europe, says the project’s first phase is intended to be the starting point for a much larger system.
– Greensand starts with biogenic CO2, but its significance reaches far beyond that first step. We are ready to expand capacity to receive CO2 from industries across Europe. Greensand is open for business, and a new European market for permanent CO2 storage can now begin to take shape – said Mads Gade.
The current model is based primarily on Danish biomethane because such sources make it possible to launch the full CCS chain using CO2 volumes that are already available. As carbon-capture facilities are developed in other sectors, Greensand’s infrastructure is expected to serve additional emission sources. The ability to combine transportation and storage for multiple customers is likely to determine whether the project can evolve from a single facility into a European network of CO2-related services.
First 400,000 tonnes, then up to 8 million tonnes a year
In its first commercial phase, Greensand will have the capacity to store up to 400,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. Compared with the scale of European emissions, this is a relatively small volume, but the project’s significance lies in the possibility of further expansion. The operator expects that, provided demand grows sufficiently, capacity could eventually be increased to between 4 million and 8 million tonnes of CO2 annually.
The planned expansion is significant for industry because capturing carbon dioxide alone does not solve the emissions problem if there is no infrastructure available to transport it and store it permanently. An industrial plant may install a carbon-capture system, but without access to a terminal, transportation and an appropriate storage site, it still needs to find a way to handle the captured gas. Greensand is intended to provide this missing link by offering industry the ability to transfer CO2 to infrastructure that operates independently of where the emissions were generated.
The European Commission expects the EU to need substantially greater storage capacity than is currently available. According to figures presented by INEOS, the EU’s target is to reach CO2 storage capacity of 50 million tonnes per year by 2030, followed by 250 million to 280 million tonnes annually by 2040. Even after expansion to the upper end of its planned capacity, Greensand will therefore be only one component of a much larger infrastructure that Europe has yet to build.
The launch of Greensand comes at a time when Europe’s energy-intensive industries are under pressure from high energy costs, international competition and increasingly stringent emissions requirements. Sectors such as cement, steel and chemicals include industries where emissions cannot always be eliminated simply by switching energy sources, because some CO2 is generated directly by industrial processes. In such cases, carbon capture and permanent storage could become one of the tools available to reduce emissions without completely relocating production outside Europe.
– Today marks an important milestone for Europe. With the launch, here in Esbjerg, of the first fully operational site for offshore carbon storage in the European Union, we prove that carbon storage is a practical reality – said Dan Jørgensen, European Commissioner for Energy and Housing.
– We show that we can move from demonstration to deployment. We set out a path for European industries: to continue their transition to a low-carbon future, while maintaining production, investments, and employment in our continent. And we open a new front in the existential fight against climate change – Dan Jørgensen added.
For industrial companies, the key significance is that infrastructure is being created that makes it possible to physically remove CO2 from a plant and transfer it to permanent storage. Under the Greensand model, a company does not need to own its own geological reservoir or build an entire transportation infrastructure. It does, however, need a CO2 capture facility and access to a logistics chain covering transportation to the terminal, handling, marine transport and injection beneath the seabed.
Denmark is leveraging the experience of the oil industry
The project uses a solution well known from the oil and gas industry: underground geological structures left behind after fields have been depleted. In the case of Nini West, this involves a geological formation located approximately 1,800 meters beneath the seabed that can be repurposed after oil production has ended. In practice, this means changing the use of existing infrastructure and geological expertise developed through decades of activity in the North Sea.
This approach is also relevant from the perspective of the cost and construction time of new facilities, as the energy sector already has experience with drilling, field development, monitoring underground structures and conducting offshore operations. CCS requirements are different, however, because the objective is not to extract a resource but to permanently contain CO2 within a geological formation and monitor whether the gas remains in the designated location.
Greensand also demonstrates that commercial CCS requires much more than injection technology itself. An entire infrastructure chain is needed, beginning with the CO2 source and continuing through liquefaction and road transport, a port terminal and marine transportation, all the way to a facility located hundreds of kilometers offshore. Bringing all these elements together within a single project is one of the reasons why the launch of Greensand has significance beyond Denmark itself.
Europe is only beginning to build a CO2 storage market
The launch of Greensand does not yet mean that a large-scale European CCS market has been established. The current capacity of 400,000 tonnes per year remains small compared with the EU’s projected needs, while increasing it to several million tonnes will require additional CO2 sources and expanded transportation infrastructure. The project is nevertheless significant as operational infrastructure that can be connected to additional carbon-capture facilities.
INEOS stresses that this element is intended to form the basis for Greensand’s further development. The project is starting with a relatively limited CO2 source in order to establish the entire logistics chain, and then plans to increase volumes as additional capture facilities come online. If this model can be replicated in other locations, CO2 storage could become an infrastructure service available to numerous European industrial sectors.
For the European economy, the key issue will therefore not simply be the opening of the storage facility in Denmark, but the speed at which the other elements of the system are built. New capture facilities, terminals capable of receiving liquefied CO2, vessels designed to transport it and additional permanent storage sites will all be required.
Greensand is starting operations at 400,000 tonnes per year, but its intended long-term role is considerably broader: it is designed to become one of the nodes in a European infrastructure system that will allow industry to transfer CO2 for permanent storage even when emissions are generated hundreds of kilometers from the injection site.
Sources covering the launch and parameters of the project confirm that Greensand began commercial operations on September 18, 2026, with an initial capacity of up to 400,000 tonnes of CO2 per year and the potential to expand to between 4 million and 8 million tonnes annually.
Photo: INEOS
