Flagship Project Danube Removals

Danube Removals is the flagship project of Danube Carbon Storage. In October 2024 the project was selected for EU Innovation Fund support. Under the grant agreement Danube Removals will generate 5.6 million tonnes of carbon removals credits over a ten year period. The project commenced in April 2025 and is set to receive 48.4 million euros in EU support.

Project Summary

Danube Removals is a full chain Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) operation in Central Hungary. It will collect more than 500 000 tonnes of biogenic CO2 per year from the yeast fermentation and anaerobic digestion processes of Pannonia Bio, one of Europe’s largest biorefineries. The collected CO2 will be transported via pipeline and injected into a nearby permanent onshore geological storage site in a saline aquifer of the Pannonian Basin. The project will generate EU-certified carbon removal credits for the voluntary carbon markets. Europe’s existing fermentation sector has the potential for over 10 million tonnes per year of similar carbon removals using biogenic CO2. This impact could further increase as the EU biomethane sector grows. The Danube Removals project will demonstrate the first large-scale integration of bioCCS in Europe, with low CCS unit costs. The proposed CO2 storage model could also be scaled up to handle tens of millions of tonnes of CO2 across the Pannonian Basin.

The Danube Removals project aims to set a new benchmark for economic feasibility and demonstrate strong potential for scalable expansion and replication across Europe. The project will deliver over 1% of Europe’s 2030 annual CO2 storage capacity target (50 million tonnes per year) mandated in the Net-Zero Industry Act. It will also deliver more than 10% of the 5 million tonnes of annual Carbon Removals anticipated for 2030 in the 2021 Communication on Sustainable Carbon Cycles. Additionally, Danube Removals will complement the implementation of the upcoming EU Regulation Establishing a Certification Framework for Carbon Removals by providing a substantial volume of CRCF-compliant credits, helping to accelerate the growth of Europe’s Voluntary Carbon Markets. Danube Removals will generate approximately 200 jobs during development and around 50 in operation. Indirect employment and expansion to new sites point to thousands of additional jobs. The project will demonstrate the potential of Central Europe, and Hungary in particular, as promising regions for low-cost, high-volume CO2 storage.

The Danube Removals project will demonstrate the first large-scale integration of bioCCS in Europe, with low CCS unit costs. The proposed CO2 storage model could also be scaled up to handle tens of millions of tonnes of CO2 across the Pannonian Basin. The Danube Removals project aims to set a new benchmark for economic feasibility and demonstrate strong potential for scalable expansion and replication across Europe.

The project will deliver over 1% of Europe’s 2030 annual CO2 storage capacity target (50 million tonnes per year) mandated in the Net-Zero Industry Act. It will also deliver more than 10% of the 5 million tonnes of annual Carbon Removals anticipated for 2030 in the 2021 Communication on Sustainable Carbon Cycles. Additionally, Danube Removals will complement the implementation of the upcoming EU Regulation Establishing a Certification Framework for Carbon Removals by providing a substantial volume of CRCF-compliant credits, helping to accelerate the growth of Europe’s Voluntary Carbon Markets.

The economic viability of Danube Removals depends on the continued emergence of a large and efficient voluntary carbon market.

The commercial impetus for the project was the 2024 EU Carbon Removal Certification Framework (CRCF) regulation. This legislation has the purpose of establishing a unified EU system for certifying carbon removals for the voluntary carbon market, in order to ensure quality, create trust, build public and investor confidence, and enable market and policy integration.

NZIA - Working with Companies Covered by the EU Net-Zero Industry Act

DCS injection capacity is compliant with the Union level objective for 2030 of at least 50 million tonnes annually, under NZIA. On this basis DCS actively engages with companies that have obligations under Art. 23 of NZIA, requiring certain entities to contribute CO₂ injection capacity within the Union. As a third-party CO₂ storage project developer, DCS is exploring how it can support these companies by way of Art. 23 compliance agreements for EU-based storage capacity in line with applicable permitting, regulatory, and monitoring requirements.

The initial development phase at Danube Carbon targets around 500,000 tons of annual injection capacity. The DCS approach to CCS is inherently scalable. The approach is cost-effective, agile and low risk, and represents a pathway to enable rapid expansion of Union storage capacity over the coming decade, with the potential for many millions of tonnes of annual CO₂ injection capacity by the early 2030s - using the same full-chain model.

The European Union is a key partner for Danube Carbon, in part because of the funding agreement, but more importantly, because of the pivotal role of the European Commission in supporting quality, growth and fairness in the nascent carbon market.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

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EU Innovation Fund

Danube Removals in EU Innovation Fund

Project Status

Companies and necessary legal entities have been established and appropriately resourced.

Local, regional and national stakeholders have been involved by way of town hall events, press coverage, written communication and in-person meetings, in order to assure consensus, feedback and support.
Companies and necessary legal entities have been established and appropriately resourced.

Permitting has been granted by the national CCS authorities pursuant to the EU CCS Directive 2009.

Detailed seismic survey and analysis has been carried out over an area of 140 square kilometres. Injection and test well locations have been identified.

Support from EU Innovation Fund has been granted, allowing for partial financial de-risking of the project, and more importantly, for the conduct of a successful and comprehensive assessment of the carbon management calculations, technologies, carbon removals criteria, regulatory compliance and climate action contribution of the project, by a panel of independent experts selected by the European Commission.

Project carbon removals credits are compliant with the draft EU CRCF certification methodology.

The CO2 intake agreement has been established.

Engineering design, costing and procurement studies have been carried out.

Extensive consultations have taken place with policy makers, certification bodies, and carbon market players.

There is ongoing knowledge sharing and engagement with sector stakeholders, by way of direct contact with officials of several EU Member State governments and DG CLIMA, and by way of EU, CCS and carbon removals outreach and events participation. Danube Carbon is a member of the EU Zero Emissions Platform, the official advisor to the European Union on industrial carbon management.