Assessment of CO₂ storage potential in Europe (CO₂StoP)

Begin of project: January 2, 2012

End of project: March 18, 2013

Status of project: March 18, 2013

CO2StoP partner countries in Europe (highlighted in colour) Source: BGR

The main objective of the EU project CO₂StoP was to establish a data set of geological parameters to be held in an EU database that will enable the assessment of potential geological CO₂ storage capacity of EU member states and surrounding countries on a common basis. The project was built on the results of previous EU projects that have assessed potential CO₂ storage capacity in the various EU or wider European countries (The Underground Disposal of CO_2, GESTCO, CASTOR and GeoCapacity).

The project comprised the following steps:

• developing a harmonized methodology for CO₂ storage capacity estimation and geological risk assessment
• developing a database with search and calculation tools
• developing data input sheets to capture the data necessary to implement the methodology
• putting existing data into the database

The CO₂StoP project included 29 partners and was organized by a small consortium of national geological surveys with GEUS as coordinator and BGS and TNO as contractors. The consortium was in charge of the realization of the described steps. All other partners including BGR were subcontractors.

Based on the results of the former projects Storage Catalogue of Germany and GeoCapacity, BGR provided data for the German territory to be entered in the EU database. In essence, GIS polygons (shapefiles) were provided on the following topics:

• areas of reservoir rock units categorized as worthy for further investigation from the ‘Storage Catalogue’
• potential CO₂ storage structures in the German North Sea
• natural oil- and gas fields in Northern Germany

Partner:

29 research institutions from 28 countries