Ketzin CO2 Pilot

The Ketzin pilot site is Germany's first CO2 storage project and the longest-operating onshore storage site in Europe. Located near Ketzin in Brandenburg, west of Berlin, it was operated by the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences as an in-situ research laboratory in the Roskow-Ketzin anticline of the Northeast German Basin. The project began in 2004 under the EU-funded CO2SINK initiative and ran a full storage lifecycle through 2017, drawing roughly EUR 50 million in third-party funding across its operational life. CO2 was injected into the Upper Triassic Stuttgart Formation, a saline sandstone aquifer at approximately 630 to 650 meters depth, with channel-facies sands reaching porosities near 26 percent and permeabilities around 100 mD. A multi-barrier seal of Weser and Arnstadt Formation mudstones and anhydrites above, underlain by the Grabfeld Formation, contained the plume. Injection ran from June 2008 to August 2013 and stored 67,000 tonnes of CO2, peaking near 15,000 to 17,000 tonnes per year during the steady phase before tapering toward shut-in. Ketzin's lasting contribution is its monitoring methodology rather than its volume. The site demonstrated safe, verifiable onshore storage in a saline aquifer using an integrated program of time-lapse 3D seismic, pulsed neutron-gamma and magneto-induction well logging, and geochemical sampling, which together tracked plume migration and confirmed storage integrity.