CO2 is preferably transported by pipeline, with ships being used when a source of CO2 is too far from a suitable storage site or greater flexibility is required. There are over 5,000 kilometres of underground pipelines in North America which have been successfully transporting CO2 for more than 30 years, and shorter pipelines are used in other locations by the beverage and chemical manufacturing industries.

Establish a long-term CO2 transport plan for CCS in Europe

In order to ensure rapid deployment of CCS, a business model for CO2 transport and storage must be established as part of a long-term infrastructure plan for Europe.

Large-scale CCS requires an infrastructure capable of transporting 100s of millions of tonnes of CO2 every year – from power plants, hydrogen production facilities, and energy-intensive industries to storage sites, across the whole of Europe. However, due to long lead times – 6 to 10 years to build facilities such as pipelines and storage sites – development must start now.

The Innovation Fund and Connecting Europe Facility are EU funding mechanisms which can enable the infrastructure development that will be critical for the EU to meet its climate change targets.