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CCS also serves a vital role in capturing the CO2 its first 10 years. In September, Norway’s govern-
that is produced when natural gas is converted ment proposed some NOK16.8bn in state sup-
into hydrogen via methane reforming. This port for the sector, although it is yet to take the
low-carbon, so-called blue hydrogen can also FID needed to commit these funds.
play a part in decarbonising certain sectors, such Over in the UK, various consortia have been
as energy-intensive industries and maritime and working on plans to decarbonise the Humber
other areas of transport. and Teesside industrial clusters using CCS. The
The consensus among scientists and inves- Zero Carbon Humber (ZCH) and Net Zero
tors is that large-scale deployment of CCS is pos- Teesside (NZT) projects aim to capture 17mn
sible, but will require significant state support. tpy and 10mn tpy of CO2 respectively. The
Governments are currently looking to finance CO2 will be stored offshore under the Northern
the technology on a project-by-project basis, but Endurance Partnership (NEP) scheme.
broader incentives, including a high enough tax NZT and ZCH also comprise sub-projects to
on CO2, will be needed for the sector to live up produce blue hydrogen from gas arriving from
to its potential. In this special feature, we take a the North Sea. Similar developments are also
look at some of the countries at the forefront of underway in Merseyside in England and St Fer-
CCS development. gus in Scotland.
There are also preliminary plans to capture
Europe CO2 at the Isle of Grain terminal in Kent in
Europe has been researching and trialling CCS southern England, and in south Wales.
for decades, but the sector is now reaching a tip- Another key project is Porthos in the Nether-
ping point, with a number of major projects now lands, where gas grid operator Gasunie is lead-
working towards FIDs. Many of the schemes are ing a consortium that aims to store some 2.5mn
situated in North-west Europe, where offshore tpy of CO2 in the North Sea from industries in
reservoirs can be used for storage. the Rotterdam area. Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon-
There are currently only two CCS projects Mobil, Air Liquide and Air Products, expected
in operation in Europe, at Norway’s offshore to be Porthos’ first customers, signed joint devel-
Sleipner and Snohvit fields, with a combined opment agreements (JDAs) on the scheme in
storage capacity of 1.5mn tonnes per year (tpy). December last year.
But here the technology is used only to capture Porthos is vying for €102mn ($118mn) in
CO2 mixed in the natural gas that is produced at financial aid from the EU’s Connecting Europe
Facility, and the Dutch government has also
the fields, rather than for abating emissions from This will be vital, as Porthos estimates that stor- “
general industry. pledged to subsidise some of the cost of CCS. CCS serves a vital
However, Norwegian state oil company
Equinor wants to apply the experience it has age and transport costs alone will come to €30 role in capturing
gained at Sleipner and Snohvit to a more ambi- per tonne. the CO2 that is
tious project known as Northern Lights. North-
ern Lights represents the transport and storage North America produced when
part of Norway’s Longship scheme. Both the US and Canada are seeing a handful of
Longship will initially involve the capture new CCS proposals, with more likely to come natural gas
of CO2 emitted from a cement factory in Bre- as decarbonisation efforts gather momentum.
vik and a waste incineration plant in Oslo. The However, it will likely be some time before is converted
waste gas will then be liquefied and transported any new CCS projects are developed in North into hydrogen
via ships to a reception terminal north-west of America.
Bergen. From there it will be pumped via pipe- Canada considers itself a leader in CCS via methane
line to an aquifer in the North Sea for permanent thanks to existing schemes that notably include
storage. the Quest project, which captures and sequesters reforming
Northern Lights’ initial storage capacity will CO2 from a bitumen upgrader. Another par-
be 1.5mn tpy, but Equinor and its partners are ticularly prominent project is the Alberta Car-
hoping to upscale the project to 5mn tpy at a bon Trunk Line (ACTL) – the largest pipeline in
later point. By this stage, it is expected that the the world for CO2 emitted from human activ-
scheme will not only handle CO2 from Nor- ity with a capacity of up to 14.6mn tpy – which
wegian industry but also industry elsewhere in became fully operational in June. CO2 trans-
Europe. ported via the pipeline is delivered to Central
Equinor’s stated ambition is to transport and Alberta for both storage and use in enhanced oil
capture CO2 at a cost of €35-50 ($42-60) per recovery (EOR).
tonne by 2030. This means that without other “This critical piece of infrastructure sup-
policies in place, carbon tax will have to rise ports significant future emissions solutions,
significantly to make Northern Lights commer- new utilisation pathways and innovation in the
cially feasible. Under the EU’s emissions trading carbon capture space,” ACTL operator Wolf
system, in which Norway takes part, emitters Midstream’s president of carbon, Jeff Pearson,
must pay just above €30 per tonne of CO2. And said in June, after the pipeline came fully online.
the costs at Northern Lights do not factor in the “The future of energy and a lower-carbon econ-
expense of capturing the CO2. omy relies on key infrastructure like the ACTL.”
The overall cost at Longship is projected at More CCS initiatives are underway in Can-
NOK25.1bn ($2.6bn), including NOK17.1bn in ada, aided by recently unveiled government
investment and NOK8bn in operating costs over support at both the federal and provincial levels.

P6 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 46 18•November•2020