When he was 15, Eivind Berstad began working as a course of technician together with his father on the Ineos petrochemical plant close to Brevik, a middle of heavy trade on the southeastern coast of Norway.
“It was pretty cool to work a night shift and operate machines with 10,000 horsepower – it was dirty and hot and high pressure,” he says. “For me, industry is close to home.”
Now, Berstad works for Bellona, a Norway-based environmental group. While previously, environmental teams have been usually met with skepticism in Brevik, instances have modified. Attitudes have softened, and dialogue comes extra simply, he says.
“To be taken seriously by the public, or policymakers, or industry, you have to come up with a solution scenario,” he says. “If we’re going to build offshore wind, we need mining for materials. If we’re going to produce cement, then we need carbon capture and storage to reduce emissions.”
Brevik is the location of a pioneering challenge to seize carbon dioxide emitted by the massive Norcem cement manufacturing facility there. Carbon dioxide, separated from different emissions, shall be turned from a gasoline to a liquid so it may be transported after which saved in reservoirs so far as 2,600 meters beneath the Atlantic Ocean off Norway’s west coast.
The challenge at Brevik is a component of a bigger, nationwide effort in Norway to turn out to be a serious participant in carbon seize and storage, or CCS.
For a long time the nation has developed experience within the extraction of fossil fuels from offshore wells. Now it’s utilizing that experience to do the precise reverse: Create the infrastructure to seize carbon dioxide and retailer it deep beneath the continental shelf, the place a few of the gasoline that generated these emissions was discovered within the first place.
An organization referred to as Aker Carbon Capture is constructing the seize plant in Brevik now. When it opens in 2024, it will likely be the primary large-scale carbon seize plant at a cement manufacturing facility.
Berstad has a grasp’s diploma in industrial chemistry and biotechnology and is an skilled on CCS. In his position at Bellona, he has been an advocate of the challenge and want to see extra prefer it. He says it has the potential to chop emissions whereas saving jobs. More importantly, if it proves environment friendly, it will likely be a mannequin for comparable operations elsewhere.
Norway’s nationwide effort on CCS known as Longship, and it’s a uncommon instance of collaboration on such a grand scale to pursue local weather objectives. Norwegian authorities officers, Aker Carbon Capture, three oil-and-gas firms, Norcem and Microsoft are among the many disparate gamers working collectively to create a system to seize, transport and retailer carbon dioxide. (Northern Lights, a three way partnership of Shell, Equinor and TotalEnergies, shall be transporting and storing the carbon dioxide.)
Aker Carbon Capture’s operation on the Norcem plant would be the first of what’s hoped to be many contributors in that system from Norway and the remainder of Europe.
Cement manufacturing is among the many largest producers of greenhouse gasoline emissions. By some accounts, it contributes about 8 p.c of all of the carbon dioxide emitted into the environment – a number of instances greater than aviation, for instance.