Current status of the CCS legislation in Germany

The European Commission directive has been transposed into national law (“Gesetz zur Demonstration und Anwendung von Technologien zur Abscheidung, zum Transport und zur dauerhaften Speicherung von Kohlendioxid” vom 17. August 2012 – KSpG). The national law allows a limited amount of CO2 to be stored underground for demonstration purposes until 2017. At the end of 2017 the effectiveness and application of the law shall be reviewed. The execution of the federal law is regulated by state legislation. Even before that above mentioned date, on May 30th 2012, the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern passed a state law prohibiting the storage of CO2 within the state territory and in the Baltic Sea, out to the 12 NM limit. In 2014 appeared a similar state law. On March 27th 2014 Schleswig-Holstein passed a state law banning CO2 storage in all regions of the state territory including the 12 NM zone in the Baltic and North Sea. The government of Lower Saxony prepared a comparable state law, which is expected to be finalized soon, exluding the storage in the entire state territory. The parliament and government of Brandenburg have rejected a proposal of the green party (Die Grünen) for a state law prohibiting CO2 storage in Brandenburg, as they do not want to exclude the entire territory without an examination of each individual site. However, without common criteria for the suitability or exclusion of regions for CO2 storage on a federal level, Brandenburg does not want to allow further storage projects, apart from the research storage in Ketzin. Most of the CO2 storage potential in Germany is expected to be in the North German basin. The four states that currently exclude CO2 storage, cover most of the area of this basin. Which reduces the potential area for CO2 storage demonstration projects in Germany considerably. The federal KSpG includes various issues that shall be regulated in decrees that shall be elaborated in agreements between federal and state governments. Amongst those issues are also specifications for suitable storage sites, which are claimed by Brandenburg as a prerequisite for permitting future storage projects. Because of the fundamental differences between the federal and some state governments, none of these decrees has been produced jet. These legal uncertainties and other obstacles, such as the low carbon credit price, are the reason why all planned industrial demonstration projects in Gemany, proposed by Gas de France, RWE, and Vattenfall, have been withdrawn. Thus, CCS does not seem to be a promising option in the national climate protection portfolio for the near future in Germany. However, despite of the current pessimism in Germany, the global progress of CCS projects, especially in combination with its utilization, mainly for enhanced oil recovery, must not be forgotten. And, storage underneath of the North and Baltic Sea out off the 12 NM-boundary is still an option. Both in national and in international waters