German state to ban CCS

The new state government, which came to power last month, this week presented a bill for a “CCS law” to the state parliament, proposing to block any applications for storing carbon in the state.

The state is making use of its right to reject CCS based on a recently passed federal CCS law. “No-one in the state wants CCS — no party, and certainly not the citizens,” Schleswig-Holstein's energy transition and environment minister Robert Habeck said, adding: “CCS technology serves to justify the construction of new coal-fired power plants. But we do not need or want them for the energy transition.”

Schleswig-Holstein is viewed as one of the federal states with the biggest potential for carbon storage, together with Lower Saxony and Brandenburg. But Schleswig-Holstein's politicians — from all parties — have from the start been against allowing carbon storage in the state. When Germany's biggest coal-fired power generator RWE in 2008 planned to build a pipeline from a novel CCS power plant in North Rhine-Westphalia to Schleswig-Holstein to transport CCS, it met with such massive resistance from politicians and citizens that it gave up the plans in 2011.

Germany's CCS law was passed last month. The law gives the states the right to veto carbon storage on their territory, although the states must accept CCS pipelines within their borders leading to other regions.

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