Insights and Commentaries
Capacity building workshop in Romania highlights opportunities and challenges for CCS deployment in the country
7th April 2025
On 25-26 February 2025, the Institute and the Dutch public company, EBN, co-organised a CCS capacity-building workshop in Bucharest, Romania with the support of the Institute’s member OMV Petrom.
This invitation-only event aimed to enhance understanding Romania's CCS landscape and foster knowledge-sharing on lessons learned and best practices from Europe’s CCS leaders. The workshop followed a similar capacity-building initiative organised by the Institute and EBN in September 2024 in Athens, which delved into the topic of CCS permitting processes in Greece.
The two-day workshop in Bucharest welcomed over 80 local Romanian participants, including representatives from the national government and agencies, private sector stakeholders, and other local entities engaged in CCS project development.
The workshop provided an excellent platform to facilitate discussions on the state of play of CCS in Romania, as well as the next steps required to create an enabling environment for the technology’s deployment in the country.
Through the workshop, attendees had the chance to take part in insightful high-level and technical conversations, hearing local and international experts unpack several key CCS topics, including:
- The role of CCS in Romania’s net-zero roadmap, as well as opportunities and challenges offered by the technology in the country;
- The Romanian national vision for CCS deployment;
- Best practices emerged from the implementation of CCS projects in the Netherlands and Denmark;
- CO2 geological storage potential in Romania and principles guiding CO2 storage permitting process in Romania and other countries;
- CO2 transport via pipeline and allocation of pipeline responsibilities;
- Funding opportunities for CCS, and recent developments in the EU ETS framework as they relate to CCS.
Romania’s existing oil and gas expertise provides a strong foundation for advancing CCS deployment. The workshop highlighted the country’s significant CO2 storage capacity, positioning it to take a leading role in the development of a regional hub in Eastern Europe.
CCS offers Romania a pragmatic pathway as part of its net-zero transition, which can help the country meet its climate targets while sustaining industry. Local emitters, such as the Romanian cement sector, have recognised the key role that CCS can play in supporting their decarbonisation efforts while preserving their competitiveness, and are currently driving the discussion around the technology’s advancement in Romania.
To scale CCS in Romania, however, participants highlighted the necessity of supportive policies and regulatory frameworks, along with funding mechanisms. Public perception also emerged as a key factor to take into account, especially for CCS projects involving the storage of CO2 onshore. To this end, it is crucial to encourage ongoing dialogue and adequately address concerns raised by the general public and communities directly impacted by projects, demonstrating that CCS initiatives are conducted in accordance with the highest environmental and safety standards.
Public-private partnerships have been instrumental to de-risking investments and advancing European CCS projects across all stages of development. The lessons learned from other CCS front-runners and the significant progress made by landmark projects in the North Sea demonstrate that the State has a crucial role to play in supporting the advancement of these first-of-a-kind initiatives.
Finally, workshop participants emphasised that collaboration across the entire value-chain is essential to make CCS projects a reality. Facilitating conversations between industry, government institutions and relevant stakeholders is an integral part of the process to promote synergies and create an enabling environment able to drive CCS deployment forward.
The productive discussions held during the capacity-building workshop demonstrate that CCS represents a vital climate mitigation solution to support Romania in its journey towards climate neutrality, ensuring that the country and its industry are not left behind during the net-zero transition.
The Institute is ready to support governments and companies in their CCS journey and continues to work with its members and partner organisations to foster dialogue across the value chain and drive new forms of cooperation. Workshops for other countries are currently being considered.