Port of Antwerp carbon capture project receives EU support

The consortium partners say they are aiming to reduce emissions by developing applications for carbon capture, reuse or storage quickly and at reasonable cost.

The EU has now awarded two subsidies of almost €9M (US$10M) to the consortium through the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) grant for Trans-European Energy Networks. The CEF funding will go towards supporting studies for an export terminal for liquid CO_2, a CO₂ pipeline in the Port of Antwerp and a CO₂ cross-border pipeline to the Netherlands.

Driving CO2 emissions to zero (and beyond) with carbon capture, use, and storage, a June 2020 publication by global management consultants McKinsey and Company, laid out some of the ways infrastructure for carbon capture, storage and use is needed in order to develop a value chain that would utilise and lay a foundation to improve the commercial viability of the practice.

The Port of Antwerp said its cross-border CCS project would become “one of the first and largest multimodal open access CO₂ export infrastructures in the world.” Calling the news of this financial support a “new milestone”, the Port said Antwerp@C is a step closer to realising its ambition of halving CO₂ emissions in the port (18.65M tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions as of 2017) by 2030.

Port of Antwerp chief executive Jacques Vandermeiren said “We now have to make the transition to a carbon-neutral economy. Europe is the world leader in this. With Antwerp@C, the port of Antwerp holds the key to realising an innovative and cross-border carbon capture utilisation storage project, a first in terms of both concept and scale. We are proud to receive the necessary financial support for the study phase, as this project will contribute to the Flemish, Belgian and European climate targets and to the increased EU 2030 targets for emissions reduction to at least 55%.”

Consortium partners are currently preparing applications for "expression of interest", which will be submitted under the European Innovation Fund to support the development of the full carbon capture value chain from capture to storage.

The port of Antwerp is home to the largest integrated energy and chemical cluster in Europe. The consortium is also investigating the technical and economic feasibility of CO₂ infrastructure in support of possible future carbon capture utilisation and storage applications.

Antwerp@C partners include Air Liquide, BASF, Borealis, ExxonMobil, INEOS, Fluxys, Port of Antwerp and Total. The two applications for EU funding, were submitted by Air Liquide, Fluxys, Total and Port of Antwerp.