Norway's plan to create an international CCS value chain

As Norway looks into the feasibility of an innovative CCS project, HeidelbergCement's Norcem could become the world's first cement plant with full-scale carbon capture.

Carbon dioxide emissions are an increasingly pressing issue across industries, and an inevitability for the cement sector. After one failed attempt to make carbon capture and storage economically viable, Norway is back with a groundbreaking project that aims to sequester CO2 emissions from several industries and countries.

Burying the problem

The cement industry has a sustainability problem. According to the Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI) ÔÇô a flagship sectoral project of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) that counts among its members major players such as Cemex, CRH, HeidelbergCement, LafargeHolcim, and Votorantim Cimentos ÔÇô the cement sector is the third-largest industrial energy consumer in the world, responsible for seven percent of industrial energy use, and the second industrial CO2 emitter, accounting for seven percent of global CO2 emissions.

With global cement production projected to grow by 12 to 23 percent by 2050, carbon emissions from the global cement industry are expected to increase by four percent. Nonetheless, according to the Carbon Disclosure Project, thirteen of the world's largest publicly-listed cement companies need to more than double their emissions reductions if they are to limit global warming to below two degrees, as agreed in the Paris climate deal.

What is a company to do when emitting CO2 is almost an inevitability of its production process? It buries the problem. Literally.

A groundbreaking initiative

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies may be a pressing topic today, but capturing, transporting and storing CO2 has been done for decades. Since 1996, as a response to high taxes on carbon emissions, Statoil (now Equinor), Norway's national oil and gas company, has separated and stored over 20 million tons of CO2 underground. Now, Gassnova, the Norwegian state enterprise for carbon capture and storage, has entrusted Equinor with a more ambitious endeavor: the world's first undersea CCS project to capture CO2 emissions from multiple industrial sources, which would then be stored in the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS).

According to Equinor, the first phase of this CO2 project could reach a capacity of approximately 1.5 million tons per year. Norway would thus stimulate new commercial carbon capture projects in the country, Europe and more globally across the world. In addition, the project has the potential to be the first storage project site in the world receiving CO2 from industrial sources in several countries.

The initial plan comprised proposals for capturing CO2 from a cement factory, HeidelbergCement-owned Norcem's Brevik production unit, a waste incinerator from Fortum Oslo Varme, and Yara's ammonia factory. The carbon dioxide would then be shipped from each plant to an onshore facility on the Norwegian West Coast for temporary storage, after which it would be sent through a pipeline in the seabed to several injection wells east of the Troll field on the NCS. In order to accomplish the storage stage of the process, last year, Equinor signed a partnership agreement with Norske Shell and Total E&P Norge.

The challenges of CCS

The Norwegian government estimated the project will cost up to 12.6 billion crowns ($1.6 billion), and announced it would decide whether to invest in 2019. With wind and solar technologies getting increasingly cheaper, carbon capture initiatives may seem like a heavy financial load, since they require significant capital expenditure. Furthermore, this is not the first time Norway gives CCS a try. In 2013, the country abandoned a similar project since it was proving challenging and costly.

When public funds are involved, deploying CCS technology becomes all the more intricate. In October 2017, Norway announced it would slash the budget for the new CCS project by 90 percent, which cast doubt all over the world concerning its continuity. As a pioneering nation in the CCS department, Norway's cancellation of the project would represent not only another failure for the country, but also a worldwide step back regarding the adoption of carbon and capture storage technologies.

For industries such as cement, CO2 emissions are practically inescapable. As Phil Hodgson, Managing Director of Calix, told CemWeek in an interview published on this issue, limestone accounts for roughly two-thirds of emissions from a cement plant, making it all the more important to capture them. In addition, according to the 2017 update of the Global Status of the CCS report by the Global CCS Institute, in order to achieve Paris Agreement targets, more than 2,000 CCS facilities will be needed by 2040, and 14 percent of cumulative emissions reductions must be derived from CCS. Currently, there are only 17 large-scale CCS facilities operating globally, with four more coming online in 2018.

When in doubt, a little incentive canÔÇÖt hurt. In February 2018, Equinor, Shell and Total gathered to urge the Norwegian government to carry the CCS initiative forward. As reported by Bloomberg, at the time, Shell's CEO Ben van Beurden stressed the importance of speeding up the project, since ÔÇ£you do not have a solar route to making cement.ÔÇØ Total's CEO Patrick Pouyanne underlined the struggle of convincing people CCS is an environment-friendly route since ÔÇ£it's not greenÔÇØ and storing CO2 could seem ÔÇ£sort of a waste binÔÇØ.

The world's first CCS cement plant?

Despite the support from the oil industry, in May this year, the Norwegian government declared the decision to invest was postponed to 2020 or 2021. At the same time, Yara was dropped from the project. According to the government, the company was dismissed for not having much commercial motivation to prioritize CO2 capture at its facility. Not only does Yara already capture carbon dioxide, which is then sold to fizzy drinks companies, it is also pondering to change its fuel to liquefied natural gas, which would reduce CO2 emissions.

Nonetheless, the Norwegian government gave HeidelbergCement's subsidiary Norcem the green light. As reported by Reuters, the government affirmed its intention to grant the company 80 million crowns ($10 million) for the annual capture of roughly 400,000 tons of CO2 emissions at its Brevik plant. Norcem announced it received funding from the Norwegian state budget for 2018 for the last stage (FEED-study) before the final construction. According to the company, the aim of the FEED-study is a detailed review of the project to provide a basis for an investment decision. The study will be ready by the end of August 2019.

Recently, in August 2018, the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy said it would also offer Fortum Oslo Varme grants for FEED-studies of CO2 capture at their waste incineration plant at Klemetsrud, in Oslo.

The Next Step: Hydrogen

Concurrently, Equinor is looking into the feasibility of combining carbon capture storage with hydrogen production. In July 2017, the company announced in a press release it signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Swedish power company Vattenfall and the Dutch gas infrastructure company Gasunie to evaluate the possibilities of converting Vattenfall's gas power plant Magnum in the Netherlands into a hydrogen-powered plant. The potential CO2 emission reduction is four million tons of CO2 per year.

Equinor added that the scope of the MoU also includes exploring how to design a large-scale value chain where production of hydrogen is combined with CO2 capture, transport and permanent storage, as well as considering potential business models. For that purpose, in July this year, Jacobs Engineering Group was awarded a feasibility study contract from Equinor to evaluate the possibilities for building a hydrogen production plant, including CO2 capture and export facilities, in Eemshaven, the Netherlands.

When talking about the future and sustainability, people and companies always tend to look ahead. In its pioneering fashion, Norway may prove the world the future is well beneath us.

This article originally appeared on CemWeek45