EU approves Greek state aid of EUR 150 million for Prinos CCS facility

The European Commission’s green light for a Greek state aid package of EUR 150 million is a major step towards the construction of a carbon storage facility in Prinos, offshore Kavala.

The Prinos Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) project, developed by EnEarth, a subsidiary of Energean, is aimed at storing carbon dioxide from domestic and industries from other countries. The investment is on the European Union’s list of projects of common interest (PCI).

The grant will cover around 90% of the funding gap, the European Commission said. It was approved through the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) and the National Recovery and Resilience Plan Greece 2.0.

If the project turns out to be very successful, generating extra net revenues, the beneficiary would return part of the aid to Greece, under the so-called clawback mechanism.

The facility is planned to be deployed in two phases, with the first benefitting from the new package. Initially, EnEarth intends to install a pipeline to transport, from the onshore collecting site to the offshore storage site, up to one million tonnes of CO2 emitted by industrial players per year.

The facility is expected to start the ramp-up phase in 2027 and become fully operational in 2030. An expansion would follow, in the second phase, to as much as 2.5 million tons per year. Total cost is estimated at around EUR 1 billion.

On the supply side, multiple large Greek industries have already obtained EU support via the Innovation Fund for capturing and storing 4.5 million tonnes in total.

It should be noted that Italy has also expressed its interest to transfer and store carbon in Prinos from 2030, as part of its National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP).

The next steps

The final investment decision is expected in the first half of 2025. The government has yet to approve a carbon capture and storage (CCS) regulation, while a storage license is required from the Hellenic Hydrocarbons and Energy Resources Management Company – HEREMA, or EDEYEP in Greek.

However, the Prinos CCS storage project seems to be on a good path since there is ample demand and political support.