COMET · Integrated infrastructure for CO2 transport and storage in the west Mediterranean

COMET aims at identifying and assessing the most cost effective CO2 transport and storage infrastructure able to serve the West Mediterranean area, namely Portugal, Spain and Morocco. This is achieved considering the time and spatial aspects of the development of the energy sector and other industrial activities in those countries as well as the location, capacity and availability of potential CO2 storage geological formations. Special attention is given to a balanced decision on transport modes, matching the sources and sinks, addressing safety and lifetime objectives, meeting optimal cost - benefit trade-off, for a CCS network infrastructure as part of an international cooperation policy. The need for a joint CCS infrastructure in the West Mediterranean is related to the geographical proximity, to the increasing connections between the energy and industrial sectors in the area, to the continuity of sedimentary basins that can act as possible storage reservoirs and to the existing experience in managing a large gas transport infrastructure, such as the natural gas pipeline coming through Morocco, to Spain and Portugal. The consortium is coordinated by INETI (Portugal), and comprises 7 research institutions, 4 Universities, 1 SME and 5 energy companies from 6 European countries and Morocco. COMET aims to optimise the connection between sources and sinks by comparing the several possible transport modes (pipelines, trains, ships and trucks) and existing and to be realized infrastructures and expects to find the least-cost transport mode and routes from clusters to sinks. It is expected that each source cluster will be rigorously matched to the most suitable sink, while minimising the required investment in infrastructures and taking advantage of the effect of scale associated to an integrated infrastructure. COMET will be an important step towards the safe and commercial deployment of large scale near zero emission power plants in SW Europe and North Africa.