To Fight Climate Change, Norway Wants to Become Europe's Carbon Dump (msn.com) 69
Liquefied CO2 will be transported by ship to "the world's first carbon shipping port," reports the Washington Post — an island in the North Sea where it will be "buried in a layer of spongy rock a mile and a half beneath the seabed."
Norway's government is covering 80% of the $1 billion first phase, with another $714 million from three fossil fuel companies toward an ongoing expansion (with an additional $150 million E.U. subsidy). As Europe's top oil and gas producer, Norway is using its fossil fuel income to see if they can make "carbon dumping" work. The world's first carbon shipment arrived this summer, carrying 7,500 metric tons of liquefied CO2 from a Norwegian cement factory that otherwise would have gone into the atmosphere... If all goes as planned, the project's backers — Shell, Equinor and TotalEnergies, along with Norway — say their facility could pump 5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide underground each year, or about a tenth of Norway's annual emissions...
[At the Heidelberg Materials cement factory in Brevik, Norway], when hot CO2-laden air comes rushing out of the cement kilns, the plant uses seawater from the neighboring fjord to cool it down. The cool air goes into a chamber where it gets sprayed with amine, a chemical that latches onto CO2 at low temperatures. The amine mist settles to the bottom, dragging carbon dioxide down with it. The rest of the air floats out of the smokestack with about 85 percent less CO2 in it, according to project manager Anders Pettersen. Later, Heidelberg Materials uses waste heat from the kilns to break the chemical bonds, so that the amine releases the carbon dioxide. The pure CO2 then goes into a compressor that resembles a giant steel heart, where it gets denser and colder until it finally becomes liquid. That liquid CO2 remains in storage tanks until a ship comes to carry it away. At best, operators expect this system to capture half the plant's CO2 emissions: 400,000 metric tons per year, or the equivalent of about 93,000 cars on the road...
[T]hree other companies are lined up to follow: Ørsted, which will send CO2 from two bioenergy plants in Denmark; Yara, which will send carbon from a Dutch fertilizer factory; and Stockholm Exergi, which will capture carbon from a Swedish bioenergy plant that burns wood waste. All of these projects have gotten significant subsidies from national governments and the European Union — essentially de-risking the experiment for the companies. Experts say the costs and headaches of installing and running carbon-capture equipment may start to make more financial sense as European carbon rules get stricter and the cost of emitting a ton of carbon dioxide goes up. Still, they say, it's hard to imagine many companies deciding to invest in carbon capture without serious subsidies...
The first shipments are being transported by Northern Pioneer, the world's biggest carbon dioxide tanker ship, built specifically for this project. The 430-foot ship can hold 7,500 metric tons of CO2 in tanks below deck. Those tanks keep it in a liquid state by cooling it to minus-15 degrees Fahrenheit and squeezing it with the same pressure the outside of a submarine would feel 500 feet below the waves. While that may sound extreme, consider that the liquid natural gas the ship uses for fuel has to be stored at minus-260 degrees. "CO2 isn't difficult to make it into a liquid," said Sally Benson, professor of energy science and engineering at Stanford University. Northern Pioneer is designed to emit about a third less carbon dioxide than a regular ship — key for a project that aims to eliminate carbon emissions. The ship burns natural gas, which emits less CO2 than marine diesel produces (though gas extraction is associated with methane leaks). The vessel uses a rotor sail to capture wind power. And it blows a constant stream of air bubbles to reduce friction as the hull cuts through the water, allowing it to burn less fuel. For every 100 tons of CO2 that Northern Lights pumps underground, it expects to emit three tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, mainly by burning fuel for shipping.
Eventually the carbon flows into a pipeline "that plunges through the North Sea and into the rocky layers below it — an engineering feat that's a bit like drilling for oil in reverse..." according to the article.
"Over the centuries, it should chemically react with the rock, eventually being locked away in minerals."
Norway's government is covering 80% of the $1 billion first phase, with another $714 million from three fossil fuel companies toward an ongoing expansion (with an additional $150 million E.U. subsidy). As Europe's top oil and gas producer, Norway is using its fossil fuel income to see if they can make "carbon dumping" work. The world's first carbon shipment arrived this summer, carrying 7,500 metric tons of liquefied CO2 from a Norwegian cement factory that otherwise would have gone into the atmosphere... If all goes as planned, the project's backers — Shell, Equinor and TotalEnergies, along with Norway — say their facility could pump 5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide underground each year, or about a tenth of Norway's annual emissions...
[At the Heidelberg Materials cement factory in Brevik, Norway], when hot CO2-laden air comes rushing out of the cement kilns, the plant uses seawater from the neighboring fjord to cool it down. The cool air goes into a chamber where it gets sprayed with amine, a chemical that latches onto CO2 at low temperatures. The amine mist settles to the bottom, dragging carbon dioxide down with it. The rest of the air floats out of the smokestack with about 85 percent less CO2 in it, according to project manager Anders Pettersen. Later, Heidelberg Materials uses waste heat from the kilns to break the chemical bonds, so that the amine releases the carbon dioxide. The pure CO2 then goes into a compressor that resembles a giant steel heart, where it gets denser and colder until it finally becomes liquid. That liquid CO2 remains in storage tanks until a ship comes to carry it away. At best, operators expect this system to capture half the plant's CO2 emissions: 400,000 metric tons per year, or the equivalent of about 93,000 cars on the road...
[T]hree other companies are lined up to follow: Ørsted, which will send CO2 from two bioenergy plants in Denmark; Yara, which will send carbon from a Dutch fertilizer factory; and Stockholm Exergi, which will capture carbon from a Swedish bioenergy plant that burns wood waste. All of these projects have gotten significant subsidies from national governments and the European Union — essentially de-risking the experiment for the companies. Experts say the costs and headaches of installing and running carbon-capture equipment may start to make more financial sense as European carbon rules get stricter and the cost of emitting a ton of carbon dioxide goes up. Still, they say, it's hard to imagine many companies deciding to invest in carbon capture without serious subsidies...
The first shipments are being transported by Northern Pioneer, the world's biggest carbon dioxide tanker ship, built specifically for this project. The 430-foot ship can hold 7,500 metric tons of CO2 in tanks below deck. Those tanks keep it in a liquid state by cooling it to minus-15 degrees Fahrenheit and squeezing it with the same pressure the outside of a submarine would feel 500 feet below the waves. While that may sound extreme, consider that the liquid natural gas the ship uses for fuel has to be stored at minus-260 degrees. "CO2 isn't difficult to make it into a liquid," said Sally Benson, professor of energy science and engineering at Stanford University. Northern Pioneer is designed to emit about a third less carbon dioxide than a regular ship — key for a project that aims to eliminate carbon emissions. The ship burns natural gas, which emits less CO2 than marine diesel produces (though gas extraction is associated with methane leaks). The vessel uses a rotor sail to capture wind power. And it blows a constant stream of air bubbles to reduce friction as the hull cuts through the water, allowing it to burn less fuel. For every 100 tons of CO2 that Northern Lights pumps underground, it expects to emit three tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, mainly by burning fuel for shipping.
Eventually the carbon flows into a pipeline "that plunges through the North Sea and into the rocky layers below it — an engineering feat that's a bit like drilling for oil in reverse..." according to the article.
"Over the centuries, it should chemically react with the rock, eventually being locked away in minerals."
Greenwashing (Score:4, Insightful)
This effort will only ever capture a minuscule amount of CO2 compared to the massive amounts we create daily by burning fossil fuels. (Lots sourced from Norway so I see why they feel guilty.)
The only solution to excess CO2 is to stop burning stuff.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
37,800,000,000 metric tons of CO2 -- what human activity generates in a year
400,000 metric tons a of CO2 -- what they hope to capture in a year with this approach.
400,000,000 -- the current annual INCREASE in human CO2 emissions -- we haven't even flat-lined our consumption yet.
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We need things like this. (Score:5, Interesting)
This effort will only ever capture a minuscule amount of CO2 compared to the massive amounts we create daily by burning fossil fuels. (Lots sourced from Norway so I see why they feel guilty.)
The only solution to excess CO2 is to stop burning stuff.
What you're saying is only true if we can only ever have one solution to this giant problem. As a planet we're not reducing our emissions anywhere near fast enough to where switching to renewables alone is going to solve all our problems. We need other solutions to bring to bear on this issue as without them we're in for a significant decline in our standard of living. It's already a given we'll pass 1.5C, I doubt we'll be able to keep it below several times that without other solutions given that as a planet we haven't even halted our rate of increase on emissions let alone started to reduce them https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com] .
Things like carbon capture and weather manipulation arent solutions on their own but will be necessary as part of the broader solution as temps continue to increase given that we're not getting to net zero as a planet any time soon.
We have multiple solutions (Score:2, Interesting)
We are already at the point where renewable energy is cheaper and better than fossil fuels it's just that the fossil fuel industry has hundreds of billions of dollars and is fighting for their lives so the propaganda is off the hook.
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Then there's the fact that we dont even have solutions yet for quite a few things like concrete production or air travel. Net zero is a loooooonnnggg way off.
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Air travel can switch to synthetic fuel. Gas turbines don't much care about what they burn as long as it burns.
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Ha, yeah that's a bad example as that's approachable. There still are things we don't know how to solve yet though.
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Just science. Synthetic fuels - created with the Fischer-Tropsch process - have been around for a century. Aircraft can use it without any difficulties, SAF actually has better quality and burns cleaner than the usual aviation grade kerosene. The only reason SAF is not widely used is its cost and limited production.
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And that's the rub. Going Green in any fashion won't be 'cheap'. It will be far cheaper than not doing so but that still remains the hurdle.
Until we price the full cost of burning fossil fuels into their usage, renewable/green options are fighting up hill.
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It's not a question of it being cheap, it's a question of if we don't do it we are leaving huge economic benefits on the table.
There are a lot of jobs and business opportunities related to the transition away from fossil fuels. The only question is who is going to get them, and how soon.
And that's not even considering the costs of mitigating uncontrolled climate change.
It has to be said though that in a lot of cases it is now cheaper to be green. Wind is by far the cheapest source of electricity. For a rela
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One ironic thing about how cheap grid scale renewable is....it's too cheap for profit oriented businesses to build.
Our power grids, while ostensibly publicly owned, are run by for profit companies. The regulatory environment those companies operate under (i.e. purchased with PAC donations) is geared towards them only making serious money on big infrastructure builds.
Solar and wind farms don't allow them a similar return on capital investment. I haven't seen similar analysis about grid scale storage but
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The only reason SAF is not widely used is its cost and limited production.
Why the high cost and limited production? Is it a lossy process like ethanol, that it takes more energy to make than it produces?
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Because you say so?
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An acre of U.S. corn yields about 7,110 pounds of corn for processing into 328 gallons of ethanol. But planting, growing and harvesting that much corn requires about 140 gallons of fossil fuels
The energy economics get worse at the processing plants, where the grain is crushed and fermented. As many as three distillation steps are needed to separate the 8 percent ethanol from the 92 percent water. Additional treatment and energy are required to produce the 99.8 percent pure ethanol for mixing with gasoline. Adding up the energy costs of corn production and its conversion to ethanol, 131,000 BTUs are needed to make 1 gallon of ethanol. One gallon of ethanol has an energy value of only 77,000 BTU. "Put another way," Pimentel says, "about 70 percent more energy is required to produce ethanol than the energy that actually is in ethanol. Every time you make 1 gallon of ethanol, there is a net energy loss of 54,000 BTU."
https://news.cornell.edu/stori... [cornell.edu]
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In the real world gas turbines can burn vegetable oil which is significantly more efficient than fermenting grain to ethanol. This is called SAF - sustainable aviation fuel.
An alternative real world solution is biomass pyrolysis to methanol and then reforming methanol to any chosen hydrocarbon using the Fischer-Tropsch process (invented in my former home town in 1925 by the way).
In the real world synthetic fuel can also literally be created out of air, water and electricity. This is called eSAF or Power-to-
Re:We have multiple solutions (Score:5, Interesting)
Electricity and heating is about double the world CO2 output of travel (ground, air, and sea combined). Travel is about 2 to 2.5 times the CO2 of buildings and construction (which represents your concrete production argument).
I don't mind pointing out all the little short poles in the set of problems we have before us. But we could ignore those short poles and attack just two long poles and be well on our way to halting this.
Don't get your heat and electricity from fossil fuels, and that solves half of our problems. Cut transportation output in half with EVs and better transportation options (trains, walkable cities, etc) and you have perhaps two-thirds of the problem under control. That's all with technology we have today. No need to wait around for some new kind of concrete or new kind of plastics to show up.
sources [ourworldindata.org]
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Everyone around here is always looking for the one-solution-to-rule-them-all, and that's simply never going to happen.
The only way this big problem (climate change) is solved is by breaking it down into hundreds of solvable problems, and then actually solving them. We have so many solutions to the smaller problems now that there are only two big problems which can't be further broken down: politics and luddites.
Not sure what the solution to those are, but those need solving before any of the other stuff ca
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So your personal problems with plastic bag bans where you cant figure out how to get your garbage into your outside collection bin without a plastic bag means all green policies are there just to enrich others and buy AOC a dress?
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All of the resources are controlled by a very small group of people. All of this discussion is pointless as the people who control the resources don't give a fuck about what we think, say, or do. They will do what they want and they do not care about how the environment is changing or their effect on it. They will "deal" with it when it become unavoidable. The fact that it will be too late then will be met with, "why didn't anyone warn us"... which brings us back to the first part of my first statement.
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The rich will "deal" with the problem by taking more things away from the poor.
A little class consciousness and a little public outcry would do our society some good.
I'm afraid of a potential timeline where people have to fill guillotines to get to the heart of their social and environmental problems.
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it's just that the fossil fuel industry has hundreds of billions of dollars and is fighting for their lives so the propaganda is off the hook.
No, that isn't the problem. The problem is that people own a lot of stuff that requires petroleum to produce or use and they aren't willing to replace it all. Does the industry propaganda take advantage of that? Yes, But that isn't the reason we haven't stopped using fossil fuel. Its because people are unwilling to make the necessary changes. The people blaming the fossil fuel industry still want to use airlines. They still want to drive 70 mph. They still want paved roads. Blaming the fossil fuel industry
Not Germany (Score:2)
Germany has shutdown all its nuclear reactors, see:https://www.base.bund.de/en/nuclear-safety/nuclear-phase-out/nuclear-phase-out_content.html
The nuclear disaster in Fukushima on 11 March 2011 was the cause for the vote in the German Bundestag(30 June 2011) - and the subsequent decision to phase out nuclear power.
France and China are still building new reactors.
But EDF(Électricité de France) are having serious problems with new reactors(and existing plants) see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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This story is about burying waste CO2 from creating cement.
That's a chemical reaction that you cannot replace with anything.
Cement is 7% of emissions.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
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We aren't going to stop emitting CO2 entirely though, just reach net zero and beyond. That means we will need to capture some and extract some from the atmosphere.
While I'm sceptical about this project, if it works and it scales then it would be welcome. We must not stop investing heavily in renewables though. The North Sea should be half a million square kilometres of wind turbines.
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And it seems crazy to ship CO2 to Norway when they could just pay Norway to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere instead. It's not like there's any difference at the end of the day, unless you happen to own a shipping company that can make $$$$ from transporting CO2 for no good reason.
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Part of what makes the CO2 capture feasible is it is being captured at the site it is produced, specifically in the making of cement. If the cement is made in Norway then it is likely to have cured and be worthless in the shipping to where it is needed. So something would still be shipped, it is that it is more convenient to ship the CO2 than then cement.
If this were some system that extracted the CO2 from the air then maybe you'd have a point but that is not the case.
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Do you happen to have some kind of system that can efficiently remove carbon from air, at atmospheric scale?
No? Why would you think Norway does?
They are shipping liquefied CO2, which is created as a byproduct from various industrial processes. TFA specifically mentions a process used at cement plants, pulling a large double-digit percent of total CO2 out of their effluent.
If Norway has a sequestration method that allows them to "consume" industrial waste, seems like shipping it to Norway isn't beyond the
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CO2 sinking isn't billed as the solution to the massive amount of stuff we are burning. It's the solution to the few small things we have no choice but to continue burning for any foreseeable future.
Also no one in Norway is feeling guilty. This is an investment. They expect financial returns when people pay them to sink carbon. Also why would they feel guilty. Your burnt the product. If they didn't exist you'd still burn the product - probably just sourced from somewhere else.
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So they want to use climate guilt to double dip. First sell the fuel, then offer to buy back the by products ( in comparatively tiny quantity )
Pump it in the same wells the crude oil and gas came out of without any real assurance it stays there or consequences if it does not.
clever, very clever.
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Dismissing Norway’s carbon storage project as “greenwashing” is a textbook example of the nirvana fallacy—the misguided belief that if a solution isn’t perfect, it’s pointless. Industrial carbon capture is not a magic bullet. It’s a power tool for tackling the toughest, most chemically unavoidable emissions on the planet—like cement and steel. Pretending these don’t matter because the project won’t instantly eliminate all global CO emissions is mor
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People are too lazy to consider the alternatives.
Lots of people have shown how you can make low carbon cement but these fools would rather keep doing business as usual with the added expense (and carbon emissions) of transporting and storing carbon.
It's Wall-E for the Atmosphere (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not just the people can't see it, you can't see that spoon's worth of plastic in your brain after all.
The problem is that between the overwhelming propaganda and a little bit of voter suppression you can win any election you want for any reason. That's what I learned last November.
You can literally get a guy with 26 credible rape accusations in
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I am so glad (Score:3)
The story title could not be misinterpreted in any way, shape, or form.
Centuries? (Score:2)
"Over the centuries, it should chemically react with the rock, eventually being locked away in minerals."
Or we could spend some research money on CO2 mineralization [wri.org] and possibly achieve that in months.
But that would run headlong into the wealth transfer proponents. "Just give money to the third world and it's all good."
You could also stop consuming propaganda (Score:2)
Also we have the technology to solve this within a few decades if we just roll out the renewable energy technology we already have. It would create a huge economic boom and tons and tons and tons of great paying jobs.
But Fox News wants to make sure that you don't think for yourself
Re:You could also stop consuming propaganda (Score:5, Interesting)
But Fox News
Sorry to disappoint you. But PBS had a panel of climate scientists and politicians on not long ago. I think the program is called "The Open Mind". A bunch of leftists without a doubt. But they all agreed with the conclusion that carbon sequestration technologies were the most reliable at ensuring that expenditures on CO2 mitigation actually mitigated anything. Not the cheapest. But at least we'd get verifiable results for the money spent (pounds of carbon per dollar). No such promises could be made by mitigation, because the actual planting of trees or saving of forests could not be guaranteed once monies had changed hands.
Credits for "green" technologies were judged to be only somewhat less bad. Because the people who got the money were inevitably "big business", who would take the money and run (lefties talking, of course). Not that I don't disagree with them. If green energy was economically viable, big business would already be doing it on their own (some are).
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Simply pouring money into R&D doesn't make it succeed, nor does it cause breakthroughs to happen faster. Simply diverting money from one area to another won't solve anything.
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Simply diverting money from one area to another won't solve anything.
So you're saying that Shell, Equinor and TotalEnergies investments in Norways carbon storage plan are ill considered?
We need a true carbon tax (Score:2)
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From the left: "Study finds tonnage estimates overstated in greenwashing conspiracy!!"
It is just impossible to make a CO2 regime that won't immediately be pilloried from the right and left.
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We've got one in Washington State. At first I was a bit skeptical. Fearing that it was just a wealth transfer to the poor. But the numerous highway expansion projects it is funding have changed my mind (other than having every major route in the Seattle area bottlenecked at once). But all the new lanes are going to make driving a joy again.
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Hollywøød leads the way (Score:2)
How does it stay below the sea ? (Score:2)
Does anyone have any insight into how the liquified CO2 stays where they are planning to pump it below the seabed?
The article only says it'll be below a 400 foot thick layer of shale which they think will prevent it escaping, but it's not clear why this is so given that presumably it'll warm up and turn back into a gas, and want to escape from any tiny crack it can find.
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Your english parsing skills are lacking ... I was asking a question.
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So Mar-a-Lago is moving (Score:1)
to Norway?
400 ppm = zero (Score:1)
What could go wrong ?? (Score:2)
Oh FFS (Score:2)
- The same pressure anything would be experience at the same depth. Oh but it's a submarine, so much more intuitive.
- 500 ft is about 150m
- rho.h.g can be approximated as 1 bar per 10m
"pressurizing the gas to approximately 15 bar". Thank you.
Haha (Score:2)
Haha. Call me when global CO_2 is shown to have declined.
Oh, the irony (Score:2)
First, you sell them the product that ostensibly causes all manner of problems. Then you sell them the cure for it. Geez, it's almost as though they're copying the Big Pharma business model.