Europe’s carbon capture and storage landscape is entering a phase where early-stage geological validation is becoming as critical as industrial deployment. Croatia’s allocation of €2.7 million in EU-backed funding for CCS development reflects this shift, targeting foundational data gaps that continue to constrain large-scale carbon storage investment across the region.
The initiative, embedded within Croatia’s national recovery and resilience framework supported by the European Union, focuses on mapping subsurface CO2 storage potential, including deep saline aquifers and depleted geological formations both onshore and offshore. While Europe has accelerated policy support for carbon management technologies, actual deployment remains uneven, largely due to limited site characterization and high upfront development risk.
A central component of the program is a pre-FEED study for a potential storage site at Bockovac, which is intended to establish preliminary engineering parameters for future infrastructure development. Such studies are critical in carbon storage projects, where geological uncertainty directly affects project bankability, injection capacity assumptions, and long-term containment integrity.
The funding also supports the development of digital tools and system design software for CCS infrastructure planning. This reflects a broader trend in carbon management projects, where modeling and simulation capabilities are increasingly used to reduce exploration risk and optimize site selection before large capital commitments are made. In markets with limited historical injection data, these tools play a key role in narrowing viable storage options.
Croatia’s estimated storage potential of more than 1.3 million tonnes of CO2 positions it as a relatively small but strategically relevant contributor to regional carbon management capacity. In the context of the European Union’s decarbonization pathways, such mid-scale storage hubs are expected to complement larger industrial clusters rather than operate as standalone solutions.
The development pipeline already includes multiple industrial applications that could supply captured CO2 to future storage sites. Among them is the Holcim KOdeCO Net Zero project, which targets emissions from cement production, one of the most carbon-intensive industrial sectors with limited abatement alternatives. Cement alone accounts for roughly 7 to 8 percent of global CO2 emissions, making it a priority sector for CCS integration.
Additional proposed projects span fertilizer production, refining, ammonia manufacturing, and biorefinery operations. These sectors share a common constraint: high process emissions that are difficult to eliminate through electrification or fuel substitution alone. CCS therefore remains one of the few technically viable decarbonization pathways, although its scalability depends on transport infrastructure, storage availability, and long-term regulatory certainty.
One of the most technically significant developments is the planned storage integration with depleted gas fields, including projects in Sisak and offshore areas. Repurposing hydrocarbon reservoirs for CO2 storage offers advantages in terms of known geological behavior and existing subsurface data, but it also introduces challenges related to legacy infrastructure integrity and monitoring requirements.
The Croatian approach highlights a broader European pattern in CCS development, where public funding is being used to reduce early-stage exploration risk and enable private sector participation. Similar mechanisms under the EU Innovation Fund have been used to support first-of-a-kind industrial capture projects, particularly in sectors with limited alternative decarbonization options.
However, despite increasing policy momentum, CCS deployment across Europe remains constrained by infrastructure gaps. Transport networks for CO2 remain underdeveloped, and cross-border coordination for storage utilization is still in early stages. Without integrated pipelines and shared storage frameworks, isolated national projects may struggle to achieve economies of scale.
