Berlin Per Brevik was not enthusiastic about the project from the start, on which he has now been working for a decade and a half: “In 2005 I thought it was crazy to capture CO2 in a cement factory and then store it underground,” says Brevik. But that is exactly what will happen very soon. And that will also be thanks to Brevik.
Like no other at Norcem, the Norwegian subsidiary of the German company Heidelberg Cement, he stands for CCS. The abbreviation means “Carbon Capture and Storage”, so it stands for the separation and underground storage of carbon dioxide.
What sounded like a fantasy 16 years ago is gradually becoming a reality here at the Norcem site in Brevik. The new plant is scheduled to go into operation in May 2024; 400,000 tons of CO2 are to be captured annually and stored underground. That would then be half of the total CO2 produced in the cement factory per year.
Brevik has been driving the project forward since 2006. His surname, which is very common in Norway, is only coincidentally identical to the name of the factory location. He used to be a skeptic, today he is a pioneer for CCS technology. The plant in Brevik, a two-hour drive south of Oslo, will be the first in Europe with large-scale carbon capture, says Brevik. And that’s what he’s proud of. “We are pursuing a number of CCS projects around the world. With all of these projects we want to learn from our plant in Brevik, ”says a spokesman for Heidelberg Cement.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
Norcem is part of a big plan that is being implemented in Norway. The plan is called “Longship”, so it is named after the longships with which the Vikings sailed across the Atlantic 1000 years ago.
Topic is gaining momentum worldwide
“Northern Lights” is an essential part of the “Longship” project. Behind this CCS consortium are the companies Equinor, Shell and Total as well as numerous cooperation partners from seven European countries, including companies such as Arcelor-Mittal and Air Liquide.
With “Northern Lights” the focus is on the transport and storage of CO2.
(Photo: Klaus Stratmann, Handelsblatt)
The Norwegian state is massively supporting the project. The EU Commission has classified it as a Project of Common Interest (PCI). The Norwegians want to permanently store CO2 from all over Europe.
But the technology is controversial, especially in Germany there are concerns. On the one hand because of the fear that the CO2 could escape uncontrolled from its underground storage facilities. On the other hand, because CCS could also be used as an excuse: Why bother with decarbonisation when you can simply hide the result of your environmental sins – underground, out of your mind.
More and more, however, the realization is gaining ground that it will be almost impossible to meet the climate targets without CCS. The topic of driving has taken off all over the world. There are CCS projects in the USA, Qatar, Australia and Brazil and in Europe, for example, in Denmark, the Netherlands and Great Britain. But Norway is particularly ambitious, has a very broad approach and can look back on by far the longest experience.
Norway introduced a carbon price back in 1991. This has motivated the Norwegian oil and gas industry to reduce CO2 emissions in production. In 1996, the “Sleipner” gas rig began to capture escaping CO2 and store it underground.
In addition to the cement plant in Brevik, the Fortum heating and power plant operated with household waste in Klemetsrud near Oslo is one of the Norwegian flagship projects. Here, CO2 separation is already practiced on a small scale: 1500 tons of CO2 are filtered out of the exhaust gases from the combustion process every year. But that’s just a practical test.
Later it should be 400,000 tons, as in Brevik. “That would then correspond to 95 percent of the annual CO2 emissions of the thermal power station,” says Jannicke Bjerkas, who heads the CCS project in Klemetsrud. What is being planned here on the outskirts of Oslo can be transferred to around 500 comparable plants in Europe, she says. Her enthusiasm also resonates: the project in Klemetsrud is “the most advanced of its kind in the world”.
The challenge also lies in the transport
Extracting 400,000 tons of CO2 per year from the exhaust gases is a challenge. The next challenge is transportation. Jannicke Bjerkas calculates as follows: Seven tankers have to make a total of 40 trips a day with liquefied CO2 the ten kilometers from the thermal power station to the port so that it can be reloaded onto ships there.
The CO2 is delivered to the port in liquefied form by ship. The corresponding infrastructure is currently being built.
(Photo: Klaus Stratmann, Handelsblatt)
The ships then bring the CO2 to Kollsnes near Bergen. Here, on the Norwegian southwest coast, the transfer point for the final storage of the carbon dioxide is being built as part of the “Northern Lights” project: From 2024, the CO2 will flow from the ships into a pipeline. It is pumped about 100 kilometers out to sea through the pipes and then pressed into a layer of sand at a depth of 2,600 meters below sea level, which is covered by a 75-meter-thick layer of slate. The CO2 can no longer escape through this layer of slate.
Sverre Overa, Northern Lights project manager, leaves no doubt that underground storage is a safe bet from his point of view. “We have been doing this for 25 years, the process is reliable and tried and tested,” he says.
The aim is to make the technology developed on the Sleipner gas rig usable for other CO2 emitters. Many issuers from north-western Europe, such as Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Great Britain, are “within reach,” he says. You have expressions of interest from European customers, but no binding contracts yet. And there is also no price list yet.
For which issuers is storage in Norway possible? With the two applications in Norway – cement production and waste recycling – it becomes clear where the journey is headed: Wherever CO2 emissions cannot be avoided or can only be avoided with great effort, CCS could be the salvation.
With the project in Kollsnes, the Norwegians are only making a start; other possible storage locations for CO2 have already been defined. The storage potential under the Norwegian seabed is immense. The Norwegians themselves say that they had storage facilities which, in purely mathematical terms, made it possible to permanently store Europe’s inevitable industrial emissions from “several centuries”.
A solution is needed in Germany for unavoidable emissions
The Federal Environment Agency puts the unavoidable CO2 emissions from industry as well as waste and wastewater management in Germany at 43 million tons annually. A total of 739 million tons of greenhouse gases were released in Germany in 2020.
A solution is needed for the almost six percent unavoidable emissions. Just a few years ago, the industries affected were betting that, in view of the CO2 reduction target of 80 to 95 percent by 2050 compared to 1990, they would still be allowed emissions. But since complete climate neutrality has been the goal, there is no longer any room for unavoidable emissions.
Germany has already had a long debate about CCS. In April 2009, the then federal government passed the first draft of a CCS law. It would have enabled the large-scale application of CCS technology in Germany.
After the first company activities to store CO2 met with great resistance from the population, because leakages and groundwater contamination were feared, the federal government withdrew the law.
The Federal Environment Agency puts the unavoidable CO2 emissions from industry as well as waste and wastewater management in Germany at 43 million tons annually.
(Photo: picture alliance / dpa)
A new draft came into force in August 2012 after long debates. The law differs considerably from the draft from 2009. It restricts the technology to demonstration and pilot projects and considerably limits the permissible storage volume. In addition, the federal states have the option of excluding CO2 storage for their country.
The bottom line is that the law prevents CCS technology in Germany. However, the signs have changed. A decade ago, the critics of CCS technology had argued that CCS primarily serves the purpose of giving coal-fired power plants a chance for survival.
Use all available means
In fact, companies like RWE or Vattenfall were among the actors who pushed the topic forward at the time. But that’s history, the coal phase-out in Germany is a done deal.
Today it is only about process-related emissions that cannot be avoided. For this, CCS could become the method of choice.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has repeatedly pointed out in recent years that climate neutrality can only be achieved if all available means of CO2 reduction are used, including CCS.
It was only in October that an alliance of industry and climate protection activists demanded a clear commitment to CCS technology. CCS is one of the “central pillars on the path of industry to climate neutrality”, it said in a statement by the alliance.
The declaration is supported by industrial associations such as the Association of Industrial Energy and Power Management (VIK), the Steel Federation and the Association of the Chemical Industry (VCI) as well as by the 2 Grad Foundation and the Norwegian environmental organization Bellona.
Companies that are committed to ambitious climate protection have come together under the umbrella of the 2 Grad Foundation. These include Allianz, Deutsche Bahn, the copper manufacturer Aurubis, Deutsche Wohnen, the energy company EnBW – and also Heidelberg Cement.
Bellona has a relaxed relationship with CCS. You can find a video on YouTube that shows the Bellona activist Olav Oye with guitar in hand in front of the Norcem cement works in Brevik. He sings a song composed by himself in which he praises CCS as a necessary instrument on the way to climate neutrality.
The traffic light coalition seems basically ready to deal with the issue. A long-term strategy for dealing with unavoidable residual emissions will be worked out, according to the coalition agreement. In Brevik you can already see what such a strategy could look like.
More: Climate neutrality is becoming a question of survival for German industry