GFZ, one of the Excellence Research Centres of the Helmholtz Association, is the German National Research Centre for Geoscience. Its campus hosts 980 between scientists and technicians, as well as laboratories, in-field activities and theoretical studies in geodesy, geology, geophysics, mineralogy, palaeontology and geochemistry, natural disasters, in a multidisciplinary environment. The GFZ is also home to the International Continental Scientific Drilling Programme (ICDP). The campus also hosts the Alfred-Wegener-Institut (AWI) for Polar and Marine Research, with a marked vocation in climate and environmental sciences. A series of Geo-Engineering Centres, e.g., for tsunami early warning, for geothermal energy research, and underground storage of CO2 (CCS), are especially devoted to technical applications of world-wide relevance and decisive to the development of our societies.
Expertise and capacity
The GFZ Centre for CO2-storage is in charge of management and research at the CO2 storage site of Ketzin, close to Berlin. There, the storage of about 100000t of CO2 is planned and several European and German projects are integrated, among them CO2SINK and CO2ReMoVe. Their synergy is leading to an exhaustive characterisation of the site and has allowed the development and deployment of a rich and innovative monitoring park to observe the plume migration, likely the richest monitoring park in the world. Monitoring techniques include multiple combinations of seismics, from surface and boreholes, Electro-Magnetic arrays installed in the three “smart wells” (1 injection well and 2 observation wells) and surface arrays, gas monitoring, microbiological monitoring. The term “smart well” is used for the wells in Ketzin, which are equipped with multiple sensors.
The GFZ Centre for CO2-Storage is very present on the international scene, for example as member of the International Performance assessment Centre for CO2-Storage (IPAC). Among the numerous international collaborations, the Helmoltz-Alberta Initiative (HAI) with the University of Alberta.