Slovakia may redirect millions from recovery plan to carbon storage project

4 months ago 18

Prime Minister Robert Fico’s government is considering redirecting €300 million from its recovery plan to building an underground carbon dioxide storage facility, even though the plan, which needs European Commission approval and must be ready by 2026, was originally aimed at making Slovakia’s industry more environmentally friendly.

Slovakia’s Environment Ministry, together with its Economy Ministry, intends to launch a call for industrial emission reductions to make use of the €300 million from the Recovery and Resilience Plan.

The funds were initially earmarked for the US steel plant in Košice, but a change in ownership has halted the investment. As all investments under the Recovery Plan must be made by 2026, the government urgently sought alternative solutions to avoid losing funds.

Already last week, Environment Minister Tomáš Taraba (SNS) announced that Slovakia had received the green light from the EU Commission to launch a new call for proposals aimed at industrial companies. The government will evaluate the number of proposed projects after one month.

If not enough projects are proposed, the Environment Ministry has a backup plan that “could help meet and even exceed all climate targets”. This would involve capturing CO2 emissions from Slovak industrial plants and storing them underground, a process known as carbon capture and storage (CCS).

Carbon capture technology is a way to reduce CO2 emissions from power plants or industrial facilities by separating CO2 from other gases. The carbon is captured before it enters the atmosphere and then permanently stored underground or used to make concrete or chemicals.

According to Taraba, the main advantage of this solution is that Slovakia ”would not have to pressure its already modern industrial plants to invest in reducing emissions and changing production technology in order to remain competitive.”

Industry representatives came up with the idea and proposed using empty natural gas production wells and existing gas infrastructure to store emissions, the Minister explained.

The government hopes to justify the project to the European Commission through a feasibility study, although success is not guaranteed.

However, Slovakia’s recovery plan is currently beset by problems. According to Fico’s government, several milestones have been missed, jeopardising the disbursement of billions of euros. The European Commission suspended the assessment of Slovakia’s fourth disbursement request, which was submitted in December.

Although the assessment was resumed in June after the Slovak government partially met several conditions, the implementation of the milestones remains chronically delayed. The radical change in the industrial decarbonisation strategy will likely cause further setbacks.

(Irena Jenčová, Natália Silenská | Euractiv.sk)