Licensing in progress, agreements signed
Direct air capture will supply some of the CO2 in the first industrial-scale carbon capture and storage project in the southeastern Mediterranean
EnEarth, a subsidiary of the London-based oil and gas company, Energean, recently that direct air capture (DAC) will supply some of the CO2 that will be stored underground in the company's Prinos carbon capture and storage (CCS) project planned in Greece, in the northern Aegean Sea. Prinos is a oil field.
The project initially will store 1 million tonnes of CO2 per year that will be captured from the exhausts of industrial plants in the region, as well as CO2 captured from open air by the DAC plant. The relative proportions of CO2 from DAC and industrial plants were not specified in the announcement. The €500 million first phase of the project is expected to be operational in Q4 2025, with DAC going on line in 2026.
EnEarth anticipates CO2 storage at Prinos in its first phase will rapidly achieve CO2 storage of 1 million tonnes per year—equivalent to about 10% of the annual industrial CO2 emisssions in Greece. Capture and storage is expected to eventually rise to 3 million tonnes per year.
Project Objectives and CDR Status
The primary purpose of the project—as it is for almost all CCS projects worldwide—will be to capture CO2 emissions directly from industrial sources that are hard to decarbonize such as petroluem processing plants, cement plants, and fertilizer plants (including some of Energean's own emissions). EnEarth has signed ten non-binding CO2 storage agreements with emitters in Greece and surrounding countries. The company's announcements about Prinos in recent years focus on storing CO2 and do not not mention enhanced oil recovery.
The DAC plant will be powered by renewable energy sources, thus making it—in the jargon of the greenhouse gas reduction industry—a " " technology. The DAC portion of the project will also meet the definition of "carbon dioxide removal" (CDR) because it will remove CO2 directly from the atmosphere and store it permanently. In contrast, CO2 capture from industrial exhaust prevents addition of new CO2 to the atmosphere, but it does not remove CO2 from the atmosphere from past emissions, as does CDR.
Carbon capture from industrial exhausts and from the air using DAC methods have been developing in recent years as many companies and countries hope to achieve carbon by the year 2050. Almost all projects are focused on capturing CO2 from industrial emissions, rather than from the open air. After all—capturing a concentrated stream of CO2 directly from an industrial plant that may be 30% CO2 is much easier (and cheaper) than capturing CO2 directly from the air that is only about 0.2% CO2.
DAC Plant Technology
RepAir Carbon, an Israel-based carbon technology start-up will provide the DAC system for EnEarth's Prinos project. RepAir describes their direct air carbon capture system as being fully electric and uses 600 kWh of electricity per tonne of CO2 captured. The system uses no liquids or solvents and produces no waste or hazardous materials.
The system uses an electrochemical process, similar to a fuel cell or battery, with ions migrating in a cell between a cathode and anode. The ions bind to CO2 molecules in the cathode and are released in the anode, creating a concentrated stream of CO2. The system is designed to be constructed in modules to enable deployment on an industrial scale.
RepAir's electrochemical DAC method is unique in that it does not use consumables such as liquid or solid sorbents for separating CO2 from air as in more common DAC designs.
RepAir projects its cost to capture CO2 will fall to $70 (USD) per tonne when its system is eventually built at a per year scale. It currently has been demonstrated at the field prototype scale.
CO2 Storage in Prinos Oil Field
RepAir's DAC plant will be installed at Energean's onshore oil and gas facility at Kavala, Greece. The captured CO2 will be compressed to a liquid-like (supercritical) state. The supercritical CO2 will be transported by an undersea pipeline to the Prinos storage site located in the northern Aegean Sea, about 17 km south of the onshore facility.
Prinos is an oil and gas field that Energean has produced since the 1980s. Water depth in the field area is about 100 meters. Oil and gas production has been from sandstone and layers of where the layers of rock have been folded, forming a large anticline (an arch fold) that crosses the area. These rock layers are of age and are located at depths of more than 1600 meters below the seafloor.
The captured CO2 will be stored inside microscopic pore spaces between grains in the sandstone and conglomerate layers. The sandstone and conglomerate layers comprise the former oil and gas reservoir and underlying A topseal for the stored CO2 would be provided by overlying layers of evaporite rocks (salt and ) and shale.
Project Status and Funding
In July 2024, EnEarth submitted a multi-part application for a storage permit to the Hellenic Hydrocarbons and Energy Resources Management Company, the licensing authority that oversees CO2 storage in Greece. The application included a MRV plan.
The Greek Government has committed to providing €150 million (Euro) to partially fund Energean’s Prinos capture and storage project, sourced from the European Recovery and Resilience Facility. The project is included in the European Union's sixth list of . The Prinos CO2 project is a key part of the Mediterranean Carbon Capture and Storage Strategic Plan developed by France, Italy, and Greece, which aims to create the first commercial-scale CO2 storage hub in the southeastern Mediterranean.
Energean is one of the largest oil and gas producers in the Mediterranean region. Its stock trades on the London and Israel stock exchanges.
RepAir is a carbon technology startup, that received $1.5 million of seed money in 2021 and $10 million in a series A round of funding 2022. The company is based in Israel and the US.