Editorial comment
June this year will see Norway’s Longship Project finally enter operation. Launched back in September of 2020, the Longship project is a flagship initiative from the Norwegian government in the field of CO2 management. The key aim being to demonstrate how CO2 can be captured from industrial sources, transported, and safely stored beneath the seabed.
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At the core of this project is the cement industry’s first fully operational carbon capture facility at Heidelberg Materials’ Brevik site. CO2 captured here and at Hafslund Celsio’s waste-to-energy plant in Oslo will be liquefied and transported by specially designed ships to the Northern Lights facility in Øygarden, near Bergen. There, it will be injected and permanently stored 2600 m below the seabed in the North Sea. Northern Lights is a joint venture between Equinor, Shell, and TotalEnergies, which is in charge of CO2 transport and storage.
Whilst there are many avenues that cement producers can take to reduce their emissions – alternative fuels, SCMs, renewable energy, process optimisation, etc. – the net zero roadmaps of a host of cement industry associations, like the GCCA, CEMBUREAU, and ACA (formerly PCA), make it clear that CCUS will be perhaps the single-most important component for achieving the industry’s decarbonisation goals. One of the key challenges with CCUS is managing the captured CO2; storage, transport, and utilisation all require infrastructure and supply chains that – in many cases – don’t yet exist. And that’s where projects like Longship show their value, by demonstrating how technologies like CCUS can work – not just at the cement plant, but as part of a broader industrial landscape, thus incentivising the development of the necessary infrastructure.
And, as the years tick by, the urgency of the need for that infrastructure is only going to grow. As you’ll see in the article from CEMBUREAU on pg 10 of this issue, in order to meet its targets, the European cement industry is going to rely on CCUS for managing as much as 43% of its CO2 emissions by 2050, with 14 million t already needing to be transported and stored or utilised by 2030 – just 4 and a half years away! Pipelines, hubs, storage sites, and demand for CO2 in industrial operations all take time to develop. Thankfully, CEMBUREAU notes that EU policymakers have heard the call for action and that discussions are heading in the right direction. Let’s hope the discussions turn into action before too long.
Meanwhile, investigation and investment into CCUS is also underway in the UK. The Mineral Products Association points out in their article on pg 14 that with an offshore storage capacity of 70 billion t, and relatively short distances to the coast, “the UK is ideally placed to be at the forefront of CCUs development.” The differences in approach between the UK and EU will likely make for an interesting comparison as time goes on.
There’s been a proliferation of CCUS projects around the world over recent years, and as 2030 draws ever closer, they’re only likely to become more common. We’ll keep you up-to-date with all the latest developments. Enjoy the issue!
