New Energy World™
New Energy World™ embraces the whole energy industry as it connects and converges to address the decarbonisation challenge. It covers progress being made across the industry, from the dynamics under way to reduce emissions in oil and gas, through improvements to the efficiency of energy conversion and use, to cutting-edge initiatives in renewable and low-carbon technologies.
CCS innovation and offshore CO2 storage development
5/10/2022
6 min read
Feature
Carbon capture and storage looks set to take-off after decades of research. Francesco Finotti of SINTEF Energy Research examines the latest technological initiatives and developing value chain.
After more than two decades of research and development, and a few false starts, the carbon capture and storage (CCS) market is set to blossom. Sustained government support and the foresight of the research community and key industry actors have put Norway at the forefront of this development.
Since the introduction of the CO2 tax in 1991, Norway has been a pioneer in the field of CCS. It has more than 20 years of experience in CO2 storage in the Sleipner and Snøhvit enhanced oil recovery projects on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, in addition to an extensive public funding programme, CLIMIT, managed by the Research Council of Norway and Gassnova on pilot projects.
The most evident result of the effort to implement CCS is the development of the world’s first open-source CO2 transport and storage infrastructure, Northern Lights, as a step toward deploying CCS at a commercial scale. Phase one of Northern Lights is due to be completed in mid-2024, with a storage capacity of about 1.5mn t/y of CO2. However, this is a drop in the ocean compared to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Sustainable Development Scenario, which requires almost 1bn t/y of CO2 to be stored underground by 2030.