Prioritizing Countries and Regions for Carbon Capture and Utilization in Europe

In recent years several strategies have been developed and adopted to reduce the levels of the Greenhouse Gas Emissions emitted to the atmosphere. In the last decade Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU) has been rapidly developing worldwide through the development from pilot and demonstration plants to full scale projects (Roh, Lee, & Gani, 2016). The adoption of CCU technologies may contribute for carbon sequestration as well as to the creation of value-added products (Bocin et al. 2013). This study presents a top-down methodological approach to identify key European countries as well as regions with potential for developing CCU partnerships. To that end a methodology was developed to quantify the amount of CO2 emitted from industrial stationary sources, and assess the potential of CO2 utilization, using for that nine carbon dioxide utilization technologies as example of some of the most promising CCU technologies. The results show that Germany, UK and France followed by Spain, Italy and Poland are the countries with the larger quantities of emitted and available CO2 and they also have the highest potential for utilizing CO2. The study has also discovered several specific regions where reuse schemes based on CO2 could be developed both in Central Europe (Dusseldorf and Cologne - Germany, Antwerp Province and East Flanders - Belgium and Łódzkie - Poland) and in Scandinavia (Södra Sverige - Sweden and Etelä-Suomi and Helsinki-Uusimaa - Finland). Finally, among all the selected technologies, concrete curing and horticulture production are the technologies with the higher potential for CO2 utilization in Europe.