The partners were awarded the permit for the CO2 Storage Kalundborg project today. The reservoir is approximately 1400 meters below ground and has the potential to store up to 12 million tons of CO2 per year.
If successfully developed and approved by Danish authorities, the CO2 storage facility could start operating by the end of the decade.
“We are delighted to receive this exploration permit with Ørsted and Nordsøfonden. Developing large-scale CO2 solutions is critical for reducing emissions in hard-to-abate industries while maintaining industrial activity and value creation. Our first task is to meet environmental requirements before beginning seismic and subsurface data collection. The exploration phase will take several years before the license area can be approved for safe and permanent CO2 storage,” said Grete Tveit, senior vice president for Low Carbon Solutions at Equinor.
Equinor holds a 60 percent share in the exploration license, with Ørsted and Nordsøfonden each holding 20 percent. Equinor expects 4-8 percent real base project returns for its early-phase CO2 storage business, with further value potential as commercial markets develop.
“We will use our experience from nearly 30 years of safely storing CO2 on the Norwegian Continental Shelf and other CCS developments when exploring the permit in Denmark. Expanding CO2 storage capacity aligns with our ambition of achieving 30 to 50 million tons of CO2 transport and storage capacity per year by 2035. A storage facility near Ørsted’s existing infrastructure is a good fit, combining our strengths to create a complete CO2 capture, transport, and storage value chain,” Tveit added.
The awarded license is near Ørsted’s shipping and storage terminal, Ørsted Kalundborg CO2 Hub. Here, Ørsted is constructing a CO2 capture facility at the Asnæs Power Plant, set to become operational in early 2026, with CO2 shipped to the Northern Lights storage facility in Norway. Ørsted’s terminal will play a key role in receiving and transporting CO2 to the potential storage facility.
“We are pleased to explore the suitability of the Kalundborg area for carbon storage with Equinor and Nordsøfonden. From 2026, we will capture 430,000 tons of biogenic CO2 from two of our combined heat and power plants. Being part of this collaboration is a natural next step in building our Ørsted Kalundborg CO2 Hub, as we are already developing the logistics, infrastructure, and terminal solutions for handling CO2 at Kalundborg. This makes us a good partner for Equinor, who will operate the CO2 storage site,” said Ole Thomsen, senior vice president and head of Ørsted’s Bioenergy business.
