Development potential for onshore CO2 geological storage in France

In order to keep global temperature rise well below 2°C as set out in the Paris Agreement, efforts must accelerate to enable the further development and deployment of CO2 Capture and Storage. CCS is one of the 7 challenges of Mission Innovation, one of the 10 key actions of the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan and, in France, is part of the National Strategy for Energy Research. According to previous studies, France would need to store 1Gt of CO2 over the 2020-2050 period. Studies of the Paris, Aquitaine and SouthEast basins have shown that they offer sufficient CO2 storage potential. In the Paris basin, several structures with storage capacities of 50-100 Mt CO2 were assessed through dynamic calculations. In the Aquitaine basin, a CCS pilot operated by TOTAL injected 51 Kt of CO2 into a depleted gas field. In the SouthEast basin, natural CO2 occurences have been studied and a feasibility study for CCUS in the industrial area of Fos-Marseille was performed. Complementary to the 'classic' way of storing CO2 in supercritical form, an innovative 'CO 2-Dissolved' concept of storing CO2 in dissolved form while extracting geothermal heat is being developed. It is well suited for small industrial CO 2 emitters and local solutions. France is thus investigating three complementary approaches: large storage offshore in the North Sea or Mediterranean Sea (ca. 10 Mt/a), medium storage onshore (ca. 1 Mt/a), and small decentralised storage combined with heat recovery (ca. 80-150 kt/a). BRGM is deeply committed to advancing research for enabling CO2 storage and is currently 1) preparing the ground for an industrial CO2-Dissolved pilot, 2) coordinating the H2020 ENOS research project 'Enabling Onshore CO2 Storage in Europe', 3) coordinating the French node of the ECCSEL European Research Infrastructure, and 4) carrying out upstream research on site characterization, monitoring, modelling and risk assessment.