World's first commercial carbon storage facility gets first CO2 injection

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Oslo —The world's archetypal commercialized work offering c retention disconnected Norway's seashore has carried retired its inaugural CO2 injection into the North Sea seabed, the Northern Lights consortium operating the tract said Monday.

The task by Northern Lights, which is led by lipid giants Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies, involves transporting and burying CO2 captured astatine smokestacks crossed Europe. The purpose is to forestall the emissions from being released into the atmosphere, and thereby assistance halt clime change.

"We present injected and stored the precise archetypal CO2 safely successful the reservoir," Northern Lights' managing manager Tim Heijn said successful a statement. "Our ships, facilities and wells are present successful operation."

In factual terms, aft the CO2 is captured, it is liquified and transported by vessel to the Oygarden terminal adjacent Bergen connected Norway's occidental coast.

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It is past transferred into ample tanks earlier being injected done a 68-mile pipeline into the seabed, astatine a extent of astir 1.6 miles, for imperishable storage.

Carbon seizure and storage (CCS) exertion has been listed arsenic a clime instrumentality by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel connected Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA), particularly for reducing the CO2 footprint of industries specified arsenic cement and alloy that are hard to decarbonize.

The archetypal CO2 injection into the Northern Lights geological reservoir was from Germany's Heidelberg Materials cement works successful Brevik successful southeastern Norway.

But CCS exertion is complex, arguable and costly.

Without fiscal assistance, it is presently much profitable for industries to acquisition "pollution permits" connected the European c marketplace than to wage for capturing, transporting and storing their CO2.

Northern Lights has truthful acold signed conscionable 3 commercialized contracts successful Europe. One is with a Yara ammonia works successful the Netherlands, different with 2 of Orsted's biofuel plants successful Denmark, and the 3rd with a Stockholm Exergi thermal powerfulness works successful Sweden.

Largely financed by the Norwegian state, Northern Lights has an yearly CO2 retention capableness of 1.7 cardinal tons, which is expected to summation to 5.5 cardinal tons by the extremity of the decade.

While efforts specified arsenic Northern Lights are focused connected capturing c straight from the astir highly-polluting sources — concern fume stacks — determination person besides been efforts launched to seizure the state from the ambient air, an adjacent much arguable methodology.

Mark Jacobson, a Stanford University prof of biology engineering, told CBS News earlier this twelvemonth that helium was dubious of the motivations for and the efficacy of some kinds of c capture, and helium said bluntly that "direct aerial seizure is not a existent solution. We bash not person clip to discarded with this useless technology."

Jacobson thinks nonstop aerial capture, successful particular, is simply a boondoggle, and much effort should beryllium focused connected switching to cleanable vigor sources.

Currently, the U.S. gets astir 60% of its energy from fossil fuels.

"You person to deliberation astir who's proposing this technology," Jacobson said. "Who stands to payment from c seizure and nonstop aerial capture? It's the fossil-fuel companies."

"They're conscionable saying, 'Well, we're extracting arsenic overmuch CO2 arsenic we're emitting. Therefore, we should beryllium allowed to support polluting, support mining," Jacobson told CBS News, adding that his stance has not made him fashionable among galore successful the vigor sector.

"Oh, yeah, diesel radical hatred me, gasoline radical hatred me, ethanol radical hatred me, atomic radical hatred me, ember radical hatred me. They do, due to the fact that I'm telling the truth," helium said. "We don't request immoderate of these technologies."