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quietus [soylentnews.org] writes:

“The green transition is not easy, but it is possible."

(Terje Aasland, Minister of Energy, Norway [archive.ph])

Ultimately, to manage this climate change thingy, we need to put back all the carbon dioxide emitted since about the 1960s somewhere in a deep hole.

Now Norway has taken the first serious step towards that goal.

We've mentioned their industrial scale carbon-capture-and-storage [CCS] project -- dubbed NorthernLights -- earlier before [soylentnews.org], when it was still in the proof-of-concept phase. Now NorthernLights has turned fully operational.

The first shipment of carbon dioxide left Heidelberg Materials’ plant in Brevik in southern Norway this month by ship, and will be injected in reservoirs under the North Sea in August. It is set to store 5mn tonnes of carbon dioxide under the sea, at a cost of $3.4bn, spread out of 10 years. The Norvegian government subsidizes 64% of the costs, while the rest is covered by a consortium of 3 oil companies (Shell, Equinor, and TotalEnergies).

Proponents of CCS argue that it is the most promising solution for so-called hard-to-abate sectors — such as cement, steel and coal-fired power — to eliminate their emissions. But critics contend that it is a costly process, difficult to scale and dependent on massive subsidies. These are often difficult for most cash-strapped governments to provide, except for the likes of Norway, western Europe’s largest petroleum producer and home to the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund.

To put this in context, the European Union has set a target of capturing and storing 300 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, by 2050.

The driver to do so is the increasing cost of carbon permits. These are publicly traded in the EUs Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) [europa.eu] under a cap-and-trade system. The cap means that the amount of carbon permits given to a company each year are decreasing in time, ending up at 0 in 2050. The scheme currently covers only the largest emitters, i.e. approximately 10,000 companies in the power sector and manufacturing industry as well as airlines operating between airports located in the European Economic Area, covering roughly 40 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions of the EU. There are talks going on to extend the system to other companies as well.

The EU ETS market didn't come out of the blue: it was inspired by the USA's Clean Air Act of 1977, which laid down a trading scheme to curb acid rain by capping-and-trading sulphur dioxide emissions. Other countries, as well as separate US states, are now copying this approach for their own carbon dioxide emissions, e.g. China [iea.org] and California [ca.gov]. The global value of carbon markets is expected [wikipedia.org] to reach 2.68 trillion dollars by 2028 and 22 trillion by 2050.

Albert Rösti, Switzerland’s energy minister, said on Tuesday that CCS was “too expensive” for his landlocked country and that it would be the “last step” to meeting climate targets after easier measures such as cutting transport emissions. Nonetheless, he added: “It is not only theory, but Norway has gone to action.”

Original Submission