Image: Prinos Kavala Greece
There are now three CO2 capture and storage (CCS) investments in Greece, which confirms that the technology will play a key role in the decarbonisation of industries and the achievement of the ambitious goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030.
In particular, the IRIS projects of Motor Oil and the IFESTOS of the cement industry TITAN both managed to secure funding from the EU Innovation Fund. Projects have secured funding with the key condition of successfully completing the grant dossier preparation process. Accordingly, the "Prinos CO2" project, submitted by Energean and DESFA under the 6th PCI list of the European Commission, is under development. The project "passed" the technical evaluation, which makes it eligible for inclusion in the relevant preliminary list.
The adviser to the prime minister, Nikos Tsafos, welcomed the pre-selection of the two Greek projects, the IRIS project of Motor Oil and the IFESTOS project, with a related post and spoke of "a great day for the energy transition of Greece".
The "qualification" of the two projects comes just a few weeks after the positive completion of the first evaluation cycle of Energean's proposal, with the support of DESFA, for inclusion in the Projects of Common European Interest (PCI) for CO2 storage infrastructures. Regarding the details of the 'Prinos CO2' project, it is envisaged to be an industrial/commercial scale CO2 storage hub in the Mediterranean. The project aims to manage CO2 produced from both local and remote sources. DESFA's practical contribution includes the construction of a special CO2 pipeline, which will connect the emitters from the Attica region. In fact, this pipeline will concentrate the volumes of CO2 in a port near Elefsina, where the CO2 will be liquefied and temporarily stored in a special facility,until it is loaded onto CO2 ships, which will transport it by sea to the Prinos storage facilities. The budget of the project is almost 1.4 billion euros, of which 500 million euros correspond to the DESFA department.
Accordingly, the "IFESTOS" carbon capture project of the TITAN Group, to be implemented in Greece, envisages the construction of a large-scale carbon capture plant at Titan's factory in Kamari, Boeotia, near Athens. According to the group, this facility will allow the reduction of CO2 emissions during cement production and the supply of innovative, "green" construction materials to our markets. The demand for these materials is constantly increasing, as they contribute to creating a sustainable and climate-friendly living environment. TITAN will produce approximately 3 million tons of zero-carbon cement per year to serve the growing needs for "green" construction in the Athens metropolitan area and beyond. Depending on the relevant regulatory and licensing framework,the operation of these technologies can lead to an annual avoidance of greenhouse gas emissions of more than 1.9 million tons of CO 2, making Kamari one of the largest carbon sequestration facilities in Europe. The project will be part of an ecosystem of projects combining carbon capture facilities with transport and storage infrastructure. TITAN has already signed memorandums of cooperation with potential partners and will continue to mature the project.TITAN has already signed memorandums of cooperation with potential partners and will continue to mature the project.TITAN has already signed memorandums of cooperation with potential partners and will continue to mature the project.
At the same time, the Innovation Fund of the European Union also selected Motor Oil's IRIS project for funding of 127 million euros, subject to the successful completion of the Grant Agreement Preparation process. According to the company announcement, the IRIS project concerns the capture of carbon dioxide from the hydrogen production unit of the Motor Oil refinery. IRIS will reduce the refinery's carbon footprint while demonstrating an ultra-low-carbon industrial hydrogen production ecosystem and its use as a clean energy carrier. With this project, Motor Oil is given the possibility to substantially reduce its carbon footprint, to produce 56,000 tons of blue hydrogen per year, which meets all sustainability limits,and finally to lay the foundations for the production of e-fuels through the construction and operation of a new low-carbon synthetic methanol production unit. This is another small stone in the context of the "green" transformation of Motor Oil.
It should be noted that in this year's third call for proposals for large-scale projects, in which the EU will invest more than 3.6 billion euros, a total of 239 proposals were submitted, claiming 18 billion euros. 41 projects were selected, of which 8 in the "general carbonization" category. These include the IRIS and TITAN projects. The two Greek projects "locked in" European funding in the "coalification" category, along with 6 other projects from Belgium, Croatia, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden.
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