CCS research in the Netherlands

CATO-2

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) may become an important means of mitigating climate change. The Dutch government aims to build two demonstration CCS projects.

Project
The mission of CATO-2, the Dutch national R&D program for CO2 capture, transport, and storage, is to facilitate and enable the integrated development of CCS demonstration sites in the Netherlands. The program’s ambition is to support the realization of two or more demonstration sites where the complete integration of carbon capture, transport, and storage will be demonstrated in the Netherlands before 2015. By doing so, CATO-2 will help to establish the Netherlands as an international centre for CCS knowledge and technology.

The CATO-2 program is a demand-driven R&D program. This means that industrial partners and government, as the stakeholders, take the lead in setting research priorities for CCS in the Netherlands. The CATO-2 program is built around 11 sites that each offer opportunities for applied CCS research and together cover the entire CCS chain. Under this program, resources are available to conduct applied research for general CCS-related issues and fundamental research, with the potential to yield applications in 5 to 10 years. The CATO-2 program focuses a significant amount of its applied research efforts on specific regions, such as Rijnmond and the northern Netherlands. In this way, the program supports the national ambition of realizing large-scale demonstration sites in these regions. The program also focuses on off-shore storage and the province of Limburg.

The project’s R&D component is organized into five program lines
> CO2 capture (post-combustion, pre-combustion and oxy-combustion)
> CO2 transport and chain integration
> CO2 storage, monitoring, and verification
> Regulation and safety
> Communication and public perception

We contribute to four of the five program lines, with our primary efforts focused on postcombustion capture, CCS-chain integration, and permitting and legal framework issues.

Benefits
Creating a network and knowledge infrastructure in the Netherlands will help stakeholders better understand and support a complex, long-term transition process to large-scale CCS deployment. A prime project characteristic is that all major stakeholders and multidisciplinary groups work together; this is essential, because system implementation depends on the (potential) performance and impacts of all integrated system elements.

Project coordinator
> TNO, the Netherlands

Project partners
> About 40 partners are involved from all links of the CCS chain, including KEMA. Leading industrial partners in the project include Shell, RWE, and E.ON Benelux.

Project details
> Duration CATO-2: April 2009 – March 2014