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CO2 mixed in the natural gas that is produced at development agreements (JDAs) on the scheme
the fields, rather than for abating emissions from in December last year.
general industry. Porthos is vying for €102mn ($118mn) in
However, Norwegian state oil company financial aid from the EU’s Connecting Europe
Equinor wants to apply the experience it has Facility, and the Dutch government has also
gained at Sleipner and Snohvit to a more ambi- pledged to subsidise some of the cost of CCS.
tious project known as Northern Lights. North- This will be vital, as Porthos estimates that stor-
ern Lights represents the transport and storage age and transport costs alone will come to €30
part of Norway’s Longship scheme. per tonne.
Longship will initially involve the capture
of CO2 emitted from a cement factory in Bre- North America
vik and a waste incineration plant in Oslo. The Both the US and Canada are seeing a handful of
waste gas will then be liquefied and transported new CCS proposals, with more likely to come
via ships to a reception terminal north-west of as decarbonisation efforts gather momentum.
Bergen. From there it will be pumped via pipe- However, it will likely be some time before
line to an aquifer in the North Sea for permanent any new CCS projects are developed in North
storage. America.
Northern Lights’ initial storage capacity will Canada considers itself a leader in CCS
be 1.5mn tpy, but Equinor and its partners are thanks to existing schemes that notably include
hoping to upscale the project to 5mn tpy at a later the Quest project, which captures and sequesters
point. By this stage, it is expected that the scheme CO2 from a bitumen upgrader. Another particu-
will not only handle CO2 from Norwegian larly prominent project is the Alberta Carbon
industry but also industry elsewhere in Europe. Trunk Line (ACTL) – the largest pipeline in the
Equinor’s stated ambition is to transport and world for CO2 emitted from human activity with
capture CO2 at a cost of €35-50 ($42-60) per a capacity of up to 14.6mn tpy – which became
tonne by 2030. This means that without other fully operational in June. CO2 transported via
policies in place, carbon tax will have to rise the pipeline is delivered to Central Alberta for
significantly to make Northern Lights commer- both storage and use in enhanced oil recovery
cially feasible. Under the EU’s emissions trading (EOR).
system, in which Norway takes part, emitters “This critical piece of infrastructure supports
must pay just above €30 per tonne of CO2. And significant future emissions solutions, new uti-
the costs at Northern Lights do not factor in the lisation pathways and innovation in the carbon
expense of capturing the CO2. capture space,” ACTL operator Wolf Midstream’s
The overall cost at Longship is projected at president of carbon, Jeff Pearson, said in June,
NOK25.1bn ($2.6bn), including NOK17.1bn in after the pipeline came fully online. “The future
investment and NOK8bn in operating costs over of energy and a lower-carbon economy relies on
its first 10 years. In September, Norway’s govern- key infrastructure like the ACTL.”
ment proposed some NOK16.8bn in state sup- More CCS initiatives are underway in Can-
port for the sector, although it is yet to take the ada, aided by recently unveiled government
FID needed to commit these funds. support at both the federal and provincial lev-
Over in the UK, various consortia have been els. And with Canada increasingly being touted
working on plans to decarbonise the Humber as a potential leader in the development of blue
and Teesside industrial clusters using CCS. The hydrogen – produced through methane steam
Zero Carbon Humber (ZCH) and Net Zero reforming alongside a CCS component to mini-
Teesside (NZT) projects aim to capture 17mn mise emissions – further opportunities for CCS
tpy and 10mn tpy of CO2 respectively. The developments are expected to arise. However,
CO2 will be stored offshore under the Northern as with all emerging technologies, developers
Endurance Partnership (NEP) scheme. will need to balance costs with local and federal
NZT and ZCH also comprise sub-projects to emission reduction goals.
produce blue hydrogen from gas arriving from South of the border, meanwhile, CCS has
the North Sea. Similar developments are also been less visible in the US. However, CCS initia-
underway in Merseyside in England and St Fer- tives are underway there too – having struggled
gus in Scotland. There are also preliminary plans to gain traction initially because they had been
to capture CO2 at the Isle of Grain terminal in designed with EOR in mind, but came as the
Kent in southern England, and in south Wales. shale revolution lowered demand for such tech-
Another key project is Porthos in the Nether- niques. Now, though, the concept of capturing
lands, where gas grid operator Gasunie is lead- CO2 purely for the sake of lowering emissions
ing a consortium that aims to store some 2.5mn is starting to take off, bolstered by a federal tax
tpy of CO2 in the North Sea from industries in credit introduced in 2018.
the Rotterdam area. Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon- For example, at least two proposed LNG pro-
Mobil, Air Liquide and Air Products, expected jects on the US Gulf Coast include a CCS compo-
to be Porthos’ first customers, signed joint nent as they try to position themselves as being

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