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Norway is joining forces with the EU and the UK to accelerate the development of commercial carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

Last week, Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg announced that the country will be earmarking 20% of its contributions to the European Economic Area (EEA) over the next five years to CCS projects.

At least €140 million will support efforts to explore the potential of the North Sea for storing CO₂ and to realising the EU’s goal of establishing 12 CCS demonstration projects by 2015.

Norway and the UK are also embarking on a joint review of the potential of the North Sea to provide storage for CO₂.

The study, announced by Norwegian Minister Terje Riis-Johansen and the UK’s Minister of State for Energy and Climate Change Lord Hunt, will look at how soon the North Sea could be needed for CO₂ storage and what preparations countries like the UK and Norway need to make.

A profile of the whole of the North Sea will be built up during the course of the study, providing an estimation of the potential and projected storage volume of each country, as well as the likely volumes and locations of CO₂ flows.

The study will build on previous ones in 2007 and 2008, which indicated that the North Sea has great potential to provide CO₂ storage. It will also look at how the offshore storage business could develop.

“Carbon capture and storage has the potential to reduce emissions from coal-fired power stations by around 90%,” said Lord Hunt. “This study will help assist the governments in Europe to work together to store carbon dioxide safely under the North Sea and to plan the implementation of CCS.

He added that the UK’s experience of offshore oil and gas industries in the North Sea make it well placed to develop a CCS industry in the region.

Meanwhile, the US and Italy have signed an agreement to work together to advance CCS in their respective nations.

Led by the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory in the US and several universities and research centres in Italy, joint efforts will focus on power generation processes, advanced coal gasification technologies and sequestration.

The collaboration has the potential to allow the two countries to pilot different technologies and compare the results.

“This agreement between the Department of Energy and Italy’s Ministry of Economic Development will play an important role in advancing the development and commercial deployment of CCS technologies in the years ahead,” said US Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

For further information:
www.decc.gov.uk
www.energy.gov/
www.netl.doe.gov/