Norway pushes ahead with CO2 capture-storage

MONGSTAD, Norway--As countries struggle to find ways to reduce their carbon footprints, an ambitious state-backed project involving Norway's main oil company is under way to capture carbon dioxide and inject it into the seabed under the North Sea.

The project involves extracting CO2 from exhaust from StatoilHydro's refinery and a new natural gas and steam power plant currently under construction here. A special facility to extract CO2 adjacent to the power plant is also planned.

The United States, Britain, Australia and China, among others, are moving ahead with programs of their own using the method, known as carbon capture and storage (CCS), as a long-term global warming countermeasure.

The relative novelty of the technology has prompted some to raise concerns about the possible leakage of CO2 from underground layers. Experts say that the Norwegian project should serve as one of the leading examples for assessing the safety of the method.

"The power plant will be operational by the next year and the whole project will lead the global attempt to combat climate change," said Jon Jacobsen, StatoilHydro's executive vice president.

Estimated investments into the project are projected to be about 25 billion kroner (about 370 billion yen).

This reporter visited the site of the project along with other media representatives at the invitation of the Norwegian government in late May.

The plan involves extracting CO2 from exhaust released through power generation and oil refining operations, liquefying the gas and injecting it about 1,000 meters under the seabed about 250 kilometers offshore.

Robin Martin Kass, minister of petroleum and energy, said "carbon capture and storage offer the potential to reduce CO2 emissions by as much as 85-95 percent from fossil-fueled power plants."

In the future, there is the possibility that neighboring countries could use the storage facility. Widely shared estimates put the extra cost of processing CO2 at around 1 to 5 U.S. cents (1 to 5 yen) for each kilowatt-hour of electricity generated at a power plant, but the amount is expected to differ.

Norway is a pioneer in capture and storage technology. Since 1996, CCS methods have been deployed at the Sleipner gas field in the North Sea, as StatoilHydro has been removing CO2 from natural gas, and returning the greenhouse gas to underground reservoirs using a pressurized tube measuring about 25 centimeters in diameter.

The method was implemented in response to the government's introduction of a carbon tax in the early 1990s levied on such activities as oil excavation in the North Sea.

Hoping to lessen the new tax burden, the energy industry sped up research and development of CCS.

Tore Torp, vice president of StatoilHydro, said: "The cost burden of the offshore CO2 tax and the investment on CCS had become more or less the same. Emission reduction has been the vital company agenda and we have been intensifying the environmental and mitigation effort. In this instance, a tremendous amount of CO2 has been effectively stored over the past years."

Norwegian government officials acknowledge that the carbon tax, served as a proponent for pushing forward environmental measures in the private sector.

The annual amount of emissions cuts at the gas field is about 1 million tons, or approximately 3 percent of Norway's total emissions. With the new Mongstad project, an additional 4 percent will likely be cut from the national total.

It is estimated that carbon capture and storage might account for about one-fifth of all carbon dioxide cuts required worldwide by 2050, and is anticipated to become a key countermeasure for greenhouse gases, following such means as energy conservation.

However, critics raise concerns that gases injected underground still pose a leakage risk. Such concerns are one of the causes for opposition among residents toward the construction of CCS facilities.

Rajendra Kumar Pachauri, chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has been closely watching developments. He said pilot projects such as Norway's would serve as test cases in terms of safety of the technology.

At the High-Level Conference on Climate Change and Technology held in Bergen, Norway, in late May, experts noted that the chances of injected gases leaking to the surface was approximately 0.2 percent over a period of 5,000 years or so.

Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said Oslo's experience with CCS has shown that it is possible to store the gases without leakage.

Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store said that at the current pace of global warming, CCS is a must.

"Ice is melting. Temperature rise in the north (of Norway) is about twice as high as the world average," said Store, adding that "when I grew up ... we had snow in Oslo from November till April. Now we have it between January and March."

"We are at a critical stage," Store said, emphasizing that it would be necessary to have international coordination "to develop sets of new regulation mechanisms which, for example, indicate that there should be no new coal-fired power plant without CCS" facilities. He added that there would need to be incentives for private sector research and investment in such facilities.

The Group of Eight industrialized economies have set a goal of designating 20 full-scale demonstration projects for CCS by 2010, taking into consideration various national circumstances. The projects will be conducted with a view to begin broad implementation of carbon capture and storage by 2020.

Already, the United States has earmarked a CCS-related budget of about $3.4 billion (340 billion yen). The EU has plans to introduce CCS in 10 to 12 locations by 2015, while China has begun construction of a power plant with a carbon processing facility.

Japan is embarking on tests in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, with an eye on practical use of CCS technology by 2020.

A study shows that some 64 projects are slated in the United States, Canada, Britain and Australia, among other countries.(IHT/Asahi: June 30,2009)