Portugal’s New Plan Pipes Industrial CO₂ to Atlantic Storage

Portugal’s next big ​step in the climate race might be invisible to most citizens—compressed CO₂ coursing through pipelines and disappearing beneath the Atlantic seabed. Lisbon’s environment ministry is quietly finalising proposals that could decide where the gas will be captured, how it will travel and who will pay for keeping it locked away for centuries.

Quick view

• Pilot projects are already running in Greater Lisbon and in university labs.

• Government lawyers are rewriting the 2012 storage decree so that offshore sites can be licensed.

• Industry wants a 680-km pipeline grid to link cement plants to the coast.

• The Bacia Lusitânica could hold up to 300 Mt of CO₂ in its first phase alone.

• Brussels has set aside €1 B in state-aid slots that Portugal hopes to tap.

Why a nation of renewables still needs carbon sinks

Portugal often celebrates its record wind and solar days, yet heavy industry still emits roughly 14 Mt of CO₂ every year. Cement, lime, glass and waste-to-energy operators argue that electrification alone cannot erase process emissions. That is why the climate law, which sets carbon-neutrality for 2045, treats carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a strategic back-up. Ministers insist that, without CCS, the final 10 % of hard-to-abate pollution would cost dramatically more to remove through other means.

The legal maze Lisbon must redraw

Portugal’s only dedicated CCS statute, Decree-Law 60/2012, was written before offshore hubs were considered realistic. A working group inside the Environment Ministry is now assessing how to authorise sub-sea reservoirs, regulate cross-border CO₂ pipelines and align with the EU’s forthcoming Net-Zero Industry Act. Early drafts seen by industry sources would shorten licensing deadlines, clarify who owns captured CO₂ once it enters a pipeline and create a long-term liability fund financed by emitters.

Where could the carbon go?

Geologists from the PilotSTRATEGY consortium have mapped three prospects off Peniche, highlighting Q4-TV1, a sandstone structure deep under the Lusitanian Basin. Combined with onshore saline aquifers near Leiria, Portugal’s theoretical storage capacity tops 7 Gt, equivalent to more than two centuries of current industrial releases. Over 90 % of that volume, however, lies offshore, requiring costly subsea wells and monitoring systems.

Early experiments in the field

The most tangible progress sits on the banks of the Tagus. Since last year Valorsul has been running a 100 % electrified capture unit at its waste-to-energy plant in São João da Talha. Initial data suggest the solvent technology can cut capture costs by 20 % compared with first-generation amines. Meanwhile, the NET4CO2 alliance—a partnership between academia and oil-services engineers—has been stress-testing membranes and sorbents in Porto. Both teams feed results into the PilotSTRATEGY model that will inform a pre-investment decision scheduled for the middle of the decade.

Money, risk and local acceptance

Industry lobby ATIC estimates a €2.2 B price tag for the transport-and-storage network alone, plus €200–300 M per plant for capture equipment. Environmental economists warn that public subsidy should be tied to strict leak-monitoring rules and transparent cost reports. Social scientists at the University of Évora have begun outreach in coastal municipalities, finding that jobs in well-paid drilling services boost support, while fears of seismicity remain a hurdle.

What happens next?

Madrid and Paris have signalled interest in shipping Iberian CO₂ streams to a shared Atlantic hub, an idea that could turn Portugal into an export corridor. For now, Lisbon’s priority is simpler: publish the new legal framework, apply for Brussels money and decide whether the first pilot injection well should break ground before 2030. If those milestones are hit, Portugal could shift from modelling slides to a live carbon sink within a single parliamentary term—an invisible infrastructure project that might prove essential to meeting its climate promise.