Site description and planned environmental monitoring of the Prinos CCS site within the COREu project

Abstract

COREu is a pioneering Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) project funded by the European Community that aims to demonstrate key technologies across the entire value chain at study sites in southern and central Europe. As the largest Research and Innovation project in CCS ever funded by a European programme, COREu aims to move industry closer to implementing integrated, transnational projects that connect emitters with storage sites across Europe. The 4-year project started January 1st, 2024, and brings together over 40 partners from industry, research institutes, and universities across 13 countries. A total of four potential transport routes / storage areas (located in Poland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine and Greece) will be studied within COREu. While work on the first three sites will concentrate more on specific issues of local importance, a full-chain demonstration will be performed at the Kavala-Prinos site in NE Greece. Here, CO2 will be injected at 2700-3000 m below the sea floor into a sand unit that underlies the presently exploited oil reservoir, meaning that the project is pure storage with no enhanced oil recovery. In addition to all the other work planned for this site, COREu will also conduct environmental monitoring to define baseline biogeochemical and biological conditions within the shallow sediments and overlying water column, both above the storage reservoir and along the route of a planned CO2 pipeline. Work will be performed during 4 field campaigns, one per season, and will involve the measurement of numerous parameters important for offshore CCS monitoring. This will include, amongst others, atmospheric CO2 values, the concentration and isotopic content of dissolved CO2 and other gases, nutrients, and eDNA analyses of sediment and water to assess biodiversity variations. In addition to this discrete sampling, monitoring probes for the continuous measurement of dissolved CO2 and temperature will be installed to provide a more detailed picture of natural temporal variability of this gas in the water column linked to climatic conditions and the associated biochemical system. COREu; Prinos; CCS; offshore; environmental monitoring; dissolved CO2, eDNA