Mon, Sep 05, 2022 page5

• Norway’s carbon capture cemetery is taking shape

  • AFP, OYGARDEN, Norway
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  On the shores of an island off Norway’s North Sea coast, engineers are building a burial ground for unwanted greenhouse gas.

  The future terminal is to pump tonnes of liquefied carbon dioxide captured from the top of factory chimneys across Europe into cavities deep below the seabed.

  The project in the western municipality of Oygarden aims to prevent the gas from entering the atmosphere and contributing to global warming.

  

  A Shell employee walks through the company’s new Quest Carbon Capture and Storage facility in Fort Saskatchewan, Canada, on Oct. 7 last year.

  Photo: Reuters

  It “is the world’s first open-access transport and storage infrastructure, allowing any emitter that has captured his CO2 emissions to deliver that CO2 for safe handling, transport and then permanent storage,” project manager Sverre Overa said.

  As the planet struggles to meet its climate targets, some climate experts see the technique, called carbon capture and storage (CCS), as a means to partially reduce emissions from fossil-fuel-based industries.

  Norway is the biggest hydrocarbon producer in western Europe, but it also boasts the best carbon emissions storage prospects on the continent, especially in its depleted North Sea oil fields.

  The Norwegian government has financed 80 percent of the infrastructure, putting 1.7 billion euros (US$1.69 billion) on the table as part of a wider national plan to develop the technology.

  A cement factory and a waste-to-energy plant near Oslo are set to send their carbon to the site.

  The most original feature of the project is on the commercial side — inviting foreign firms to send their carbon pollution to be buried out of harm’s way.

  Using CCS to curb pollution is not a new idea, but despite generous subsidies, it has never taken off, mainly due to its price.

  One of the world’s largest carbon capture facilities, at a coal-fired plant in Texas, was mothballed in 2020 because it was not economical.

  There are only a couple of dozen operational CCS projects around the world, the industry-run Global CCS Institute said.

  However, many country’s failure to reduce carbon emissions in line with the Paris Agreement and a massive influx of government subsidies have breathed new life into the technology.

  Energy giants TotalEnergies, Equinor and Shell have set up a program — dubbed Northern Lights — which would be the world’s first cross-border carbon emissions transport and storage service at its scheduled launch in 2024.

  A pipeline is planned to inject the liquefied carbon dioxide into geological pockets 2,600m below the ocean floor, and the idea is that it would remain there for good.

  The Northern Lights partners on Monday last week announced a first cross-border commercial agreement.

  From 2025, 800,000 tonnes of carbon emissions is to be captured each year at a plant in the Netherlands owned by Norwegian fertilizer manufacturer Yara, then shipped to Oygarden and stored there.

  On Tuesday, two energy firms — Norway’s Equinor and Germany’s Wintershall Dea — announced a plan to take emissions captured in Germany to the Norwegian site.

  If confirmed, the partnership between Equinor and Wintershall Dea could involve building a 900km pipeline connecting an emissions collection facility in northern Germany with storage sites in Norway by 2032.

  In its first phase, the Northern Lights scheme should be able to process 1.5 million tonnes of carbon emissions per year, then later 5 million to 6 million tonnes.

  However, that is a slim fraction of annual carbon emissions across Europe.

  The EU emitted 3.7 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2020, the European Environment Agency said.

  Many climate experts have said that carbon capture is no silver bullet for the climate crisis.

  Critics caution that CCS could prolong fossil fuel extraction just as the world is trying to turn toward clean and renewable energy.

  Greenpeace Norway campaigner Halvard Raavand said the group has always opposed the practice.

  “In the beginning, it was very easy to oppose all kinds of CCS, and now because of the lack of climate action it’s of course a more difficult debate to be in,” he said. “This money should instead be spent on developing [a] proper solution that we know [works] and that could reduce the electricity bills for regular people, such as insulating homes or solar panels.”
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