What you need to know about carbon capture and storage

There has been a lot of talk recently in the media about carbon capture and storage. Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre was at the opening of the visitor centre for the transport and storage project Northern Lights. Minister of Petroleum and Energy Terje Aasland signed an agreement that will see carbon capture technology installed at the energy recovery plant in Klemetsrud, Oslo. And Norcem has also set the construction of a carbon capture plant at Brevik into motion. But what is CCS, and why do we need it?

CO₂ is a greenhouse gas

Carbon capture and storage is often shortened to CCS, and although we talk about “carbon capture”, what we really mean is capturing carbon dioxide, or CO₂. CO₂ is a naturally occurring gas found in our atmosphere and which is also a key component of photosynthesis. When burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas, CO₂ is released from carbon that has been out of natural cycles for millions of years. This means that the CO₂ level in the atmosphere increases. Since CO₂ is a greenhouse gas that affects the atmosphere’s ability to trap heat, it contributes to global warming.

The Paris Agreement

For many years, researchers have been sounding the alarm about the coming climate challenges if the world does not cut its greenhouse gas emissions, including CO₂. Therefore, at the COP climate summit in 2015, the Paris Agreement was adopted. Most UN member nations have signed up to the Agreement, which binds countries to setting new goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions every five years. The goal is that by 2050 there will be a “balance” between the capture and emission of greenhouse gases.

Norway’s greenhouse gas emissions

Like many other countries, Norway is working to cut its greenhouse gas emissions. A number of actions have already been taken, but it is nowhere near enough. The Norwegian government recently announced a more ambitious climate goal of reducing emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030 compared to their 1990 levels. According to the Norwegian Environment Agency, we have only cut our emissions by 4.5% compared to 1990.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), carbon capture and storage is one of the tools that will be necessary to cut greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently by 2030. This is because it is difficult for a number of sectors to cut their emissions. The automotive industry is switching from petrol-run to electric vehicles to cut carbon emissions, but things are not so simple for something like the cement industry. Limestone is currently used to create cement, and for the time being no other alternative has been found that can cut carbon emissions in cement production. The cement industry must therefore capture the carbon before it gets out into the atmosphere and leads to more warming.

Storage under the seabed

CCS then is a technology that can be used to capture and then permanently store CO2 from factory emissions. In Norway, we have a state-sponsored CCS project called Longship which is responsible for the entire chain from capturing the CO₂, through to transporting and storing it. The Norcem cement factory in Brevik and the Hafslund Oslo Celsio energy recovery plant at Klemetsrud are two of the capture operators for the project, which is now in the construction phase. Through Longship, Northern Lights will transport the CO₂ in tankers from the capture sites to the specially designed reception terminal near Bergen on the west coast of Norway. The CO₂ will be stored here in pressurised tanks before being pumped offshore along a pipeline to an injection well. The CO₂ will be stored here in the sandstone permanently around 3,000 metres below the seabed. This is how carbon capture and storage will contribute to preventing huge amounts of CO₂ being released into the atmosphere.

Please visit our CCS dictionary if there are professional expressions or abbreviations in this text you are not familiar with.