Europe’s carbon capture and storage (CCS) landscape is developing unevenly. The North Sea basin hosts the most advanced and bankable CO₂ transport and storage (T&S) systems, supported by established offshore infrastructure, stable regulation, and public funding. By contrast, Southern and Eastern Europe remain at earlier stages, with limited transport networks and greater permitting uncertainty. For industrial emitters facing carbon prices of around USD 120/t by 2030, timely access to operational T&S capacity may be as important as tariff level.
This paper presents a structural screening framework to assess T&S competitiveness from both emitter and developer perspectives, using Germany as the reference demand market and Wilhelmshaven as a potential CO₂ aggregation and export hub. Competitiveness is evaluated across four criteria: transport distance, transport mode, storage type, and capacity scale with utilization over time.
The results show that distance is only a first-order filter. Levelized T&S costs cluster around USD 40–60/t, indicating that system configuration and scale matter more than routing alone. Hybrid systems offer greater flexibility than single-mode options, while storage type and infrastructure reuse strongly affect costs. Overall, T&S competitiveness is systemic rather than purely geological, shaped by regulatory clarity, financing visibility, scalable infrastructure, and commercial flexibility.