Norway Backs Full-Scale Carbon Capture Project

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--Norway's government has chosen to back its first full-chain carbon capture and storage (CCS) project at a cement plant in Brevik.

Developed by Norcem, a subsidiary of HeidelbergCement AG (Heidelberg, Germany), the government has agreed to fund front-end engineering and design (FEED) studies with an award of 80 million NOK ($9.9 million) in 2018. Total funding for the demonstration project to date will amount to 280 million NOK ($34.6 million), which includes money from last year. The Norwegian government has been assessing two other projects: Yara (Porsgrunn, Norway) at its ammonia production plant at Herøya in Porsgrunn and Fortum Oslo Varme (FOV) at its waste incineration plant at Klemetsrud in Oslo. However, the government opted for the Brevik project because: "Norcem has the best conditions for a successful implementation. Norcem has demonstrated project execution abilities and relatively low cost per tonne CO2 captured compared to the other two capture projects. The cement industry is also a significant contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions."

Norway's Minister of Petroleum and Energy Terje Søviknes said: "We have reached a milestone in the Norwegian CCS demonstration project. I am very pleased to announce our continued commitment to CCS, although many issues remain to be resolved through FEED to bring forward reasonable cost estimates and contribute to global knowledge dissemination and technology development".

Three different post-combustion technologies have been tested on real cement flue gas at the Brevik plant in pilot projects running from 2013 to 2017, while investigations on a fourth technology were performed on a pilot installed at Stuttgart University. The government views CCS as a "necessary option" to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions in line with the climate goals at the lowest possible costs. After its external quality assurance tests, it decided that Fortum Oslo Varme's original project had greater implementation risks, in particular the length of the transport pipeline, public fears about having emissions of amines close to a city and the project management experience in the organisation. The cost estimates are "considerably higher" compared to the other two, it stated. However, new information has been provided by the developer and the government will re-assess the project's suitability for funding.

The government will not support continued studies on CO2-capture at Yara's ammonia plant. It felt that the project "has a smaller learning potential compared to the two others, and some uncertainties concerning the plan." Yara said it will no longer proceed with the project.

As part of the CCS project, state-owned Gassco AS (Kopervik, Norway) has carried out a ship transport study and Equinor (NYSE:EQNR) (Stavanger, Norway), formerly Statoil, has studied the feasibility of CO2 storage at three different sites on the Norwegian Continental Shelf.

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