Environmental impact assessment of Project Greensand (CO₂ storage in the Danish North Sea)

Subject: Environmental impact assessment of Project Greensand (CO2 storage in the Danish North Sea)

The Danish and German companies INEOS Oil & Gas Denmark, Maersk Drilling, GEUS and Wintershall Dea are currently planning to permanently store 8 million tonnes of CO2 per year in depleted oil and gas reservoirs in the Danish North Sea. Known as ‘Project Greensand’, this undertaking will transport CO 2 captured in onshore facilities offshore for injection and storage beneath the seabed. This project is highly controversial, however, since the areas envisaged for carbon capture and storage (CCS) are interspersed with old wells, which will leak once pressure and acid are used.

1. Has Denmark conducted a transboundary environmental impact assessment in accordance with Directive 2011/92/EU1 in order to establish whether Project Greensand might create any risks and, if not, is the Commission planning to take any procedural steps to remedy this transgression?

2. The summary drawn up by the company Energistyrelse lacks a proper assessment of risks and an investigation into the causes of accidents and spills that have been reported to date in the extraction of hydrocarbons, especially by means of enhanced oil recovery and fracking. Does the Commission agree that the listing of major blowouts in the North Sea is incomplete, so that the risk is being massively underestimated?

1 Directive 2011/92/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 2011 on the

assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment, OJ L 26, 28.1.2012, p. 1.

Answer given by Mr Sinkevičius on behalf of the European Commission (4 November 2021)

The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Directive (2) provides that Member States must ensure that, before development consent is given, projects likely to have significant effects on the environment undergo an assessment of their environmental effects. Furthermore, geological storage of CO2 requires a storage permit, which ensures that all requirements of the Carbon Capture and Geological Storage Directive (3) and of other relevant Union legislation are complied with. The Member State issues, after consulting the Commission, such permit only for storage sites in suitable geological formations, i.e. where under the proposed conditions of use there is no significant risk of leakage, nor significant environmental or health risks, and provided that necessary monitoring of the site, a corrective measures plan and financial security mechanism are in place.

The Commission has no information if a transboundary environmental impact assessment has been conducted for the Project Greensand, as Member States are not obliged to inform the Commission on the assessments undertaken on individual projects. Assessing environmental impacts and risks falls within the responsibility of the developer and the competent authorities.

Member States are primarily responsible to ensure compliance with EC law. In parallel, the Commission prioritises its enforcement efforts on cases pointing to a systemic breach of EC law (4). Moreover, the EIA Directive, as transposed into Danish law, contains specific provisions related to access to justice. The Commission is not planning to take any action in this context.

⋅1∙ Directive 2011/92/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 2011 on the assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on

the environment, OJ L 26, 28.1.2012, p. 1.

⋅2∙ Directive 2011/92/EU on the assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment (OJ L 26, 28.1.2011), as amended by

Directive 2014/52/EU, OJ L 124, 25.4.2014.

⋅3∙ Directive 2009/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2009 on the geological storage of carbon dioxide and amending Council

Directive 85/337/EEC, European Parliament and Council Directives 2000/60/EC, 2001/80/EC, 2004/35/EC, 2006/12/EC, 2008/1/EC and Regulation (EC) No 1013/2006, OJ L 140, 5.6.2009, p. 114.

⋅4∙ Communication ‘EC law: Better results through better application’ — OJ C 18, 19.1.2017, p. 10-20.