Mar 25
On March 23–24, KN Energies, together with Sweco Lietuva, met with the board of the Klaipėda Community Association (KBA) as well as the communities of Melnragė and Vitė. During the meetings, the CCS Baltic Consortium project being developed in Lithuania and Latvia, along with the planned carbon dioxide (CO₂) transshipment terminal in Klaipėda, were presented.
Residents were introduced to carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, which enables the capture of CO₂ emissions generated in industry – for example, during cement production – followed by liquefaction and safe transfer for long-term storage, preventing CO₂ from entering the atmosphere. This technology is one of the key tools that can help industry reduce its environmental footprint while continuing operations and contributing to climate change mitigation.
To establish the first CCS value chain in the Baltic region, the CCS Baltic Consortium was launched in 2022, with KN Energies acting as both project coordinator and partner. The consortium also includes Lithuanian cement producer Akmenės cementas, Latvian cement producer SCHWENK Latvia, Japanese shipping company Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, and Norwegian ship management company Larvik Shipping.
Participants of the CCS Baltic Consortium will ensure the operation of the entire CCS value chain – from CO₂ capture at cement plants, through transportation and liquefaction, to safe loading onto vessels at the planned transshipment terminal in Klaipėda and transport to long-term storage sites beneath the seabed of North Sea.
“This will be the first infrastructure of its kind in the Baltic States, creating conditions for rapid decarbonization of industry in Lithuania and across the region. It will enhance regional competitiveness by modernizing industrial sectors, create new jobs, contribute to Lithuania’s climate neutrality goals, and attract new investments and innovation to the Baltic economies,” says Rūta Tumėnienė, Head of New Energies at KN Energies.
A key role in the CCS Baltic Consortium project will be played by the CO₂ transshipment terminal in Klaipėda, planned within the territory of KN Energies’ Liquid Energy Products Terminal. This year, KN Energies, together with its partners, is carrying out an environmental impact assessment (EIA) for the construction and operation of the terminal in Klaipėda, as well as a front-end engineering design (FEED) study. These activities will enable the preparation of technical solutions required for the final investment decision. The terminal is planned to be completed by 2030.
Vytautas Belickas, Head of the Environmental Protection and Planning Department at Sweco Lietuva, the contractor preparing the EIA, notes that an EIA program is currently being developed to define the scope and areas to be assessed. Based on this program, an environmental impact assessment will be conducted, and an EIA report will be prepared, presenting the results of the assessment. Both the EIA program and the EIA report will be reviewed by the public, relevant authorities, and the responsible institution – the Environmental Protection Agency.
“During meetings with the communities, we aimed to hear and discuss the issues that matter to them so that these could be included in the EIA program and assessed during the analysis. We seek to make this process as open as possible – from the EIA program to the final report, we will invite the public to actively participate and provide comments and suggestions,” says V. Belickas.
The planned CO₂ transshipment terminal infrastructure in Klaipėda will initially operate in cooperation with the mentioned cement plants in Lithuania and Latvia. It is foreseen that later the infrastructure will operate on an open-access basis, allowing additional sectors and companies to connect and thereby promoting the adoption of CCS technologies.
In 2024, the European Commission granted the CCS Baltic Consortium project the status of a Project of Common Interest (PCI), recognizing it as a significant cross-border infrastructure project contributing to the implementation of the European Union’s energy policy and climate goals. The CCS Baltic Consortium is co-funded by the EU under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) energy programme.
