Why are Norway and the U.S.
ahead on carbon capture and storage?
And what is it exactly?
Both countries benefit from the technical know-how of their oil
and gas industries.
While the CCS tech is banned in Germany, the USA and Norway are
investing heavily in it.
The Norwegian government has supported our part of the project
with 80% funding.
The Norwegians are more technology optimistic than Germans.
On this episode of Transforming Business we’ll explore why.
In Brevik, Norway, Heidelberg Materials began revamping a cement
factory last year.
They’re installing a carbon capture plant — without disrupting daily
operations The German company wants to launch the world’s first net-zero
cement, produced using Carbon Capture and Storage.
Here's how it works: An industrial facility — like the one in Brevik —
separates and captures the CO2 from its smoke Stack emissions.
The CO2 is liquified and shipped to a storage location.
Then it’s injected through a pipeline up to three kilometers under
the seabed, into deep sandstone formations.
The CO2 can also be stored on-land — and transported by truck,
rail or pipelines.
The CO2 from Brevik will travel 300 nautical miles to Oygarden.
Then it will be injected into a pipeline and stored off
the Norwegian coast.
The storage facility is called Northern Lights.
It belongs to Shell, TotalEnergies and Equinor.
We’ll return to the role of oil and gas companies later.
So -- why is it so hard to produce cement without carbon emissions?
Clinker is the main ingredient of cement and in that kiln process
there's a lot of CO2 coming out of the limestone.
This is Jan Theulen.
He’s a 30-year veteran of the cement industry.
We try of course to reduce the amount of clinker in cement and that's
a ever decreasing factor.
But there is a limit because at a certain moment your cement will
not perform anymore.
You will not have concrete with which has the performance that it needs.
So there are technical limits for this.
CCS technology is intended for use in ‘hard to abate’ sectors like steel,
chemicals, and the cement industry — industries that can’t completely
eliminate carbon emissions.
But why is Heidelberg Materials coming all the way to
Norway for this?
To find out more, we have to go to Germany.
CCS technology is banned here.
Economics Minister Robert Habeck wants to change that.
He also paid a visit to Brevik.
But 15 years ago, things looked a lot different.
In German states like Schleswig-Holstein, people took to
the streets against CCS.
Including Robert Habeck, member of parliament and later environment
minister in that state.
I can well remember how CCS, so carbon capture and storage, was
discussed in my federal state of Schleswig-Holstein when this
technology was proposed for use in Germany in the noughties — and it
was discussed negatively.
A lot has changed since then, in my view two things in particular:
Firstly, the technology has been further developed in many areas and,
in my view, it is reliable and safe.
Norway introduced CCS as far back as 1996, in good part due to
the country’s massive oil and gas industry.
The petroleum industry accounts for 36 percent of Norway’s tax revenue.
It’s what helped make the country rich.
But Norway was also a forerunner in implementing environmental
protection standards.
What happened that really incentivized or kick started
the history of CCS in Norway was a CO2 tax that was introduced by the
labor government that was in charge in 1992.
This is political scientist Åsta Dyrnes Nordø.
She says some Norwegian politicians realized early on that climate
protection was key.
It incentivized the oil and gas industry to take measures.
And I think also they quite early saw the potential for CCS in
their production to take emissions down because they didn't want to have
to pay this tax, at least not more than necessary.
Norway is now investing some 1.5 billion euros to develop a complete
CCS value chain -- the Longship project.
I think this really is a shift in the debate that they are interested
in CO2 to make money of their storage capacity.
This is Felix Schenuit.
He studies European climate policy.
So, they are really asking the EU member states: Do you want to
export your CO2?
We have the capacity here; we have the technology.
Northern Lights is part of this project.
The new CO2 storage facility belonging to Shell, TotalEnergies and
Equinor – which we mentioned a moment ago – is due to go online in 2024.
The companies have partnered with the Norwegian government.
They’ll receive subsidies in the development phase and the first
ten years of operation.
The goal: Job creation as well as a lucrative business in CO2
transport and storage.
Industrial partner Heidelberg Materials is also profiting from
the new technology – and the generous subsidies that will help
revamp its facility.
The Norwegian government has supported our part of the project
with 80% funding.
And the whole investment is a few 100 millions.
But Brevik is just one of about 140 facilities operated by Heidelberg
Materials, one of the world’s largest concrete manufacturers.
They're planning to invest some 1.5 billion euros by 2030 –including
in the U.S.
That’s also because President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act
offers financial incentives to companies that invest in carbon
capture and storage.
It is important to mention that they have a tax credit which makes it or
implements an incentive to deploy CCS.
The Inflation Reduction Act strengthened these tax credits
and extended them.
So, they really use it as one of the instruments to to push
for carbon management.
In 2023, the largest number of CCS facilities were under construction in
the US – followed by Canada, the UK, China and Norway.
And this map depicts the commercial ventures that are
already in operation.
But why is the U.S.
so advanced in this area?
It is also important that they don't really have this discussion about
hard to abate emissions, at least not the way we have it in Germany.
So, in the US you could also capture fossil CO2 and store it underground.
To find out more, let’s take a look at what’s called Enhanced Oil
Recovery – a technology that’s been employed mainly in North America for
more than 50 years.
High pressure CO2 is injected into an oil field, raising
the pressure underground.
The crude oil becomes more viscous, and can be pumped to
the surface more easily.
So it’s a way to pump up even more oil.
...
Does it really make sense to collaborate with Big Oil when it
comes to climate protection ?
So they know how these systems work, so they have the expertise
and the technology.
This is Klaus Wallmann.
The geoscientist is a well-known expert on CCS technology.
Therefore it makes sense that they are doing this kind
of storage operation.
But the Norwegians I think are currently the only ones that are
really going for it at an industrial scale.
A survey has shown that the Norwegian population supports CCS.
As mentioned, they’ve been using the technology since 1996, and they
have a carbon tax.
67% of Norwegians support CCS.
They’re topped by Denmark 69% and the UK 68%.
..
And followed by the Netherlands 57% — and finally Germany 49%.
Norwegians are more technology optimistic than Germans and we also
think that has something to do with the support for
this specific technology.
Asta Dyrnes Nordø helped conduct the survey — which also came to
a second conclusion.
When you introduce these elements of cross-border cooperation or trade
the support drops.
We did a similar survey five years ago, then the drop was considerable.
In Norway it moved from 80% support when you introduced them to
a domestic situation where you store your own CO2 to 40% when you
introduced them to a project where you would import CO2
from other countries.
And it’s likely that’s what Germany would have to do — export
CO2 to Norway.
Remember, CCS was previously taken off the table after protests.
And demonstrators had one big objection.
I think most of the criticisms some 10 years ago, also in Germany came
from the fact that CCS was originally planned for the coal industry.
So, it was for coal power plants.
And then the valid criticism was OK, if we do CCS for coal power plants,
we will never get the transition to renewable energies.
Germany has now proposed legal changes that would permit CCS — but
only in the North Sea, not on land.
And subsidies will focus on sectors like steel and cement, where some 10
per cent of the emissions are classified as “hard to abate”.
So here CCS, so capturing and storing the emissions, is pretty much
the only option that we have to avoid these emissions.
This is Jessica Strefler.
The physicist studies CCS and other carbon management strategies.
The vast majority of scenarios that keep global mean temperature
well below 2°C need CCS.
But what are the risks?
Scientists say that some 150 Bbillon tonnes of CO2 could be stored under
the North Sea – a region that includes a number of
marine protection zones.
By way of comparison, the mid-sized cement plant in Brevik plans to
capture 400,000 tonnes of CO2 annually.
But what if there’s a leak?
Leakage is possible and the biggest problem are probably the old wells.
So, when we look at the North Sea as an example, we have something like
17,000 wells that have been drilled in the past or the last decades,
mostly to look for oil and gas, and it’s often unclear whether these old
wells, these abandoned wells may be a pathway for CO2 leakage.
That's something that needs to be considered.
Let’s recap.
Countries like Norway have been on board with CCS for quite a while.
They have a big technological edge and are subsidizing CCS on
a grand scale.
That’s also true in the U.S.
under Biden.
Norway and the U.S.
also benefit from the know-how of their oil and gas industry.
Germany still has to legalize CCS and might export CO2 to Norway.
One thing’s for sure — the technology is expensive, and it’s
not without risk.
But at this point, do we really have a choice?
What is important from my perspective is to acknowledge these risks and
mitigate them as good as we can, and then also compare those risks of
using CCS to the risk of not using CCS, because also what we're not
doing has impacts.
In this case, if we don't use CCS, it means we accept more emissions, which
leads to more climate change.
So, from my perspective, the risk of not using CCS exceeds the risks
of using it.
Do you think CCS technology is the wave of the future?
Let us know in your comments!