Transport and storage of CO₂ are the elements in the CCS chain with the lowest cost, but they may well prove to be the elements defining the timeline for CCS development. The EU FP7 COMET project aimed to pave the road towards CCS development in the West Mediterranean (Portugal, Spain and Morocco). This paper provides the main highlights of the work conducted within COMET. The project addressed the temporal and spatial aspects of the development of the energy sector and other industrial activities in relation with CCS and its participation to CO₂ emission reduction taking into account location, capacity and availability of CO₂ sources and of potential CO ₂ storage formations. Special attention was given to a balanced optimization on transport modes, matching the sources and sinks, meeting optimal cost - benefit trade-offs, for a CCS network infrastructure as part of an international cooperation policy.

This paper presents results of potential CCS infrastructures in the West Mediterranean region including trajectories for CO₂ pipelines. The preliminary results are generated with a combination of geographical (GIS) and partial equilibrium optimization modelling (MARKAL/TIMES-COMET). Furthermore, as a result of active stakeholder involvement in the research project, the CCS infrastructures were critically reviewed and obtained insights were used to improve the models and their input parameters. Stakeholderś feedback regarding difficulty in crossing hard rock terrains and the reasonability of trying to replicate the existing natural gas network, had a large impact on the resulting CCS infrastructure.