Cost-effective balance between CO₂ vessel and pipeline transport: Part II - Design of multimodal CO₂ transport: The case of the West Mediterranean region

As part of large scale application of CO₂ capture and storage, million tons CO₂ per year have to be transported by pipelines and/or vessels from capture to storage sites. In previous studies, costs of, pipeline systems and point-to-point vessel connections have been estimated. In this research, these cost analysis are supplemented by adding a transport system combining vessel and pipeline transport. The cost savings potential of this multimodal CO₂ transport system has been analyzed for the West Mediterranean region (i.e. Spain, Portugal, and Morocco) - where vessel transport can play an important role. In detail: A multimodal extended adaption of a pipeline system optimization model has been defined and was then parameterized adapting a nonlinear vessel and pipeline transport cost model. Next, cost savings due to vessel transport were quantified for the West Mediterranean region. When CO₂ emissions are stored in the region itself, cost could be lowered by up to 20% on routes with low transport volumes and in a complementary way by a redirection of flows at the expense of longer transport distances to prevent costly offshore storage. In case of a European CO₂ transport infrastructure including North Sea storage, transport of CO₂ by vessel could be profitable if CO₂ is used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). However, North Sea neighboring countries can be expected to crowd out Iberian CO₂ of the market for EOR storage volumes.