Danube Removals Carbon Storage Project

The Danube Removals Project is a full-chain carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in Central Hungary developed by Danube Carbon Storage (Danube CCS Ventures) to capture, transport, and permanently sequester biogenic CO₂ from one of Europe’s largest biorefineries, Pannonia Bio. The project will collect and pipe more than 500,000 metric tons of CO₂ annually—primarily from yeast fermentation and anaerobic digestion processes—and inject it into a nearby onshore saline aquifer in the Pannonian Basin for long-term geological storage. The CO₂ storage site is part of a regionally extensive saline formation conducive to secure containment and scalable CCS expansion. Danube Removals has secured **support from the EU Innovation Fund, including roughly €48.4 million, and is designed to generate EU-certified carbon removal credits under the EU’s Carbon Removal Certification Framework (CRCF), helping to accelerate growth of high-quality voluntary carbon markets. The project represents one of the first large-scale, integrated bio-CCS initiatives in Europe, showcasing low unit cost CCS driven by fermentation-derived CO₂ streams and contributing meaningfully to European climate targets. On an annual basis, Danube Removals will deliver more than 1 % of Europe’s 2030 annual CO₂ storage target (50 million t/yr) and over 10 % of anticipated annual carbon removal volumes in the EU by 2030, while also creating ~200 jobs during development and ~50 in operation. Its full-chain approach—capture, transport, and permanent storage—serves as a replicable model for broader CCS deployment across the Pannonian Basin and beyond, with potential to handle tens of millions of tonnes of CO₂ as the European biogenic and biomethane sectors grow