Europe's Leading Carbon Capture Project Hit by Rising Costs

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--Spiraling costs have forced a key project in one of the world's leading carbon capture and storage (CCS) initiatives to be put on hold for a year.

A US$320 million project to capture carbon emissions from the Klemetsrud waste plant in Norway's capital city, Oslo, has been delayed for at least a year by developer Hafslund Oslo Celsio who announced that it cannot complete the project within the budget allocated by the government. The company said that its updated estimate showed "a sharp increase in the price of equipment deliveries due to inflation, geopolitical instability and a reduced krone exchange rate" that would cause the project to exceed the investment framework.

"Our clear ambition is still to establish carbon capture at the waste incineration plant at Klemetsrud, but we have to adjust the way to the goal," explained the company's managing director, Knut Inderhaug. "We take the situation seriously. New cost calculations show that we cannot carry out the carbon capture project according to the original plan within the existing budget. It is therefore necessary to take the CCS project into a cost-reducing phase."

The carbon capture plant at the Klemetsrud waste incineration plant is designed to capture up to 400,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. It will reduce Oslo's emissions by 17%. Industrial Info is tracking the project, which is part of the main Norwegian CCS project, Longship, and its Northern Lights sister project, which is creating the transport and storage infrastructure. Longship will capture CO2 from industrial sources in the Oslo-fjord region--initially the Brevik cement plant and the Klemetsrud waste plant--and ship the liquid CO2 to an onshore terminal on the Norwegian west coast. From there, the liquefied CO2 will be transported by Northern Lights' pipeline to an offshore storage location subsea in the North Sea, for permanent storage. Phase One of the project will be completed in mid-2024 with a capacity to transport and store up to 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 per year. For additional information, see December 29, 2020, article - Norway To Fund World's Largest Carbon Capture Project.

Norway's state-owned energy company Gassnova, which is overseeing the nation's CCS efforts, commented on the delay. "We raised our concerns last November and asked Celsio to consider putting the project on hold," said Roy Vardheim, Gassnova chief executive officer. "Celsio has now concluded that it would be sensible to do so. We have maintained an open channel with Celsio that has been characterized by good dialogue throughout a series of monitoring activities during the winter. These have included a third party audit and a maturity study." Gassnova claimed that the delay "will not have any impact on the completion of Longship as a whole chain for the capture, transportation and storage of CO2. The Heidelberg [Brevik Cement] and Northern Lights projects have both passed the halfway point in their construction process and will be in a position to capture and store CO2 from 2025."

Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is the leading provider of industrial market intelligence. Since 1983, IIR has provided comprehensive research, news and analysis on the industrial process, manufacturing and energy related industries. IIR's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) helps companies identify and pursue trends across multiple markets with access to real, qualified and validated plant and project opportunities. Across the world, IIR is tracking over 200,000 current and future projects worth $17.8 Trillion (USD).