Letter on carbon: Free movement

Europe must unlock cross-border CO₂ trade if it wants to build a viable CCS sector for the long term

Europe has operated a financial market for CO₂ for nearly 20 years in the form of the EU ETS. If it is serious about deployment of CCS at scale across the continent, it also needs to create a borderless physical CO₂ market: shipment of the greenhouse gas across borders for injection into open-access storage is essential for de-risking the massively expensive projects taking shape in the North Sea. Only with the ability to ship or pipe in CO₂ from other regions will large-scale storage facilities start to become viable businesses that can be weaned off state subsidies in the long term. On the other side of the CCS trade, industrial emitters will engage in some offsetting or locational swaps t