Multimodal CO₂ Transport Network Optimization for North Rhine-Westphalia — Results Dataset

This dataset holds the optimization results behind the article "Multimodal CO2 Transport Network Optimization: A Case Study for North Rhine-Westphalia". A multimodal mixed-integer linear optimization determines how the captured CO2 of the North Rhine-Westphalia industrial cluster reaches geological storage at least cost, choosing between pipeline, rail, truck, inland barge and seagoing tanker. For every scenario the dataset gives the resulting network geometry, showing which emitter is served by which mode along which route to which storage site and at what cost, together with the emitter and storage input data and the values plotted in the main-text figures.

Contents

• geojson/ — optimized network geometry, one folder per scenario and one file per layer: 89 files, 11 scenarios, 11 layer types (sources, terminals, onshore pipeline, rail, truck and inland-barge connections, offshore pipelines and their segments, offshore tankers, storage nodes, activated pipeline segments). EPSG:4326. Each file carries authorship, licence, DOI, scenario and layer metadata in its header.
• input_data/ — emitter inventories (sites_S1, sites_S2, sites_EA) and offshore storage nodes, with coordinates, captured quantities, modal access, capacities, injection rates and storage tariffs.
• supplementary_data.xlsx — run index of all reported runs with their settings, captured volume, transport cost, onshore pipeline length and modal split, plus the plotted values of the cost-composition and modal-split figures.
• README.txt — scenario naming, attribute definitions, units, conventions. LICENSE.txt — licence terms and citation.

Scenarios. S1 covers the hard-to-abate industries (cement, lime, waste incineration), about 14.9 Mt CO2 per year; S2 adds steel and chemicals, about 39.4 Mt per year; EA covers the announced pre-FID early-adopter projects, about 5.1 Mt per year. "endo" uses greenfield pipelines only, "plus" adds the announced exogenous corridors, "pure" allows offshore storage only, "both" offshore and onshore. 

Conventions. Flows in tonnes per year, lengths in kilometres, costs annualized in EUR  with a 5 % discount rate. Transport cost excludes storage and injection, and activated exogenous corridor segments are priced at full cost. All GeoJSON attributes are optimization outputs, not model inputs.

Attribution. Rail and inland-waterway route geometry follows the OpenStreetMap network: this dataset contains information from OpenStreetMap, made available under the Open Database License (ODbL) v1.0; map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright. The emitter inventory builds on the E-PRTR / EEA Industrial Emissions Portal (2024), European Environment Agency. Map lines delineate study areas and do not necessarily depict accepted national boundaries.

Citation. Lütz, L., Neuwirth, M., Fleiter, T. (2026). Multimodal CO2 Transport Network Optimization for North Rhine-Westphalia — Results Dataset. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22114700 — please cite the accompanying article as well.