#yesyoucan
Verbeek and Doust looked at the Equinor project, in which over 20 million tons of CO₂ have been stored in a salt reservoir in the North Sea, 800 metres below sea level. If it works in Norway, they figured, why not in the Netherlands? They launched DOCS in 2019, with a new team of students from the Master’s in Earth Sciences starting each year and building on the previous cohorts’ successes and research results.
The students are passionate about the Earth and fascinated by the study of soil and rocks in applied geology—not to mention the journey through history that exploring global problems through the lens of geology entails. Dr Anouk Beniest, the new project leader, Alexandra Siebels, a PhD candidate in Earth Sciences, and Jonathan Chin, a Master’s student of Geology, discuss the urgency and opportunities of the project. A key challenge lies in bringing the project to the business world—but why? Surely the magnitude of the CO₂ problem is apparent to everybody?
“At present there are three options for storing CO₂,” Siebels explains. “In depleted oil and gas fields, in existing oil and gas fields, and in deeper basins outside oil and gas fields. If you store CO₂ in depleted oil and gas fields, you can use the infrastructure already in place. If you want to store it in salt reservoirs, you have to build the infrastructure. That costs money—lots of it. And with major issues like these, it’s essential to take the economic picture into account too.
“The questions that need answering include: how long will it take to get the project up and running, how much will it cost and what will the outcome be? If you opt for new reservoirs, the advantage is that you can create a very large storage area, so you can dispose of much more CO₂ in a short period of time. And that is beneficial for achieving the climate goals by 2050.
“I’ve studied the possibilities on the coast near IJmuiden, where a large steel manufacturer is located. They were very interested in the storage of CO₂, and have now joined a large-scale project in which CO₂ is pumped into old gas fields. But we as students lack the knowledge, experience and scale to actually implement the findings of the DOCS project. With a new group of students tackling the issue each year, what we don’t have is a fixed core of people willing to commit to the project long term. So we’re not there yet, but ultimately our project could make a major contribution to the CO₂ problem. It’s also interesting for us to collaborate with other universities, like Delft University of Technology, that have a stronger grounding in physics. The focus is now on doing research and persuading companies of our idea, in the hope that they’ll pick up on it and run with it.”
“Knowledge of the substrate is crucial for the energy transition,” Chin says. “I don’t think we can live without oil and gas completely, it’s used in so many products. That being said, research into alternative options is progressing rapidly.”
“It’s not yet possible to fully electrify heavy industry or switch to hydrogen,” Siebels adds, “but who knows, maybe there’ll be a breakthrough in this area, as Jonathan says. Besides, I believe it’s possible to reuse old infrastructure for CO₂ storage. A little recycling won’t hurt.”
Research conducted by the three DOCS cohorts to date has focused on:
DOCS 1:
- seismic interpretation of offshore IJmuiden
- screening for volume potential and risks
DOCS 2:
- evaluation of regional sealing
- cost estimates and feasibility
- DOCS as a safe contribution to the energy transition
DOCS 3 (ongoing):
- northwards expansion of the research area
- core analysis of the Vlieland Sandstone Formation.
The DOCS 3 students are conducting a similar study to that performed in DOCS 2, but in an area a few hundred kilometres to the north. They are analysing the Vlieland Sandstone Formation, a sand deposit at a depth of two kilometres in which it may be possible to store CO₂.
A new group of students will join the DOCS project next academic year.
This project is linked to:
- SDG 12: Responsible consumption and production, with a focus on the materials cycle
- SDG 13: Climate action.