Status june 2023, Longship

Brevik CCS is 60,4% completed and the Northern Lights storage facility is 81,3% completed. Hafslund Oslo Celsio decided to put construction of the CO₂ capture plant on hold in April 2023. 

• Longship will be operational with captured CO₂ from Brevik, transport and storage in 2025, slightly behind the initial plan (late 2024), according to the latest communication from the Government (Prop. 118 S (2022-2023))
• Northern Lights has entered into a transport and storage agreement with Ørsted to store 430,000 tonnes biogenic CO₂ annually from two power plants in Denmark from 2026.

Background – about Longship

• The CCS project Longship, partly funded by the Norwegian government, includes capture, transport and storage of CO₂.
• A carbon capture facility is currently being built at Heidelberg Materials’ cement plant in Brevik, Norway. According to plan, the facility will capture approximately 400,000 tonnes of CO₂.
• Celsio started building a carbon capture facility at their waste-to-energy plant in Oslo in August 2022, but decided to put construction on hold in April 2023 due to a large increase in cost estimates. The project has entered into a cost reducing period of 12 months. According to the initial plan, approximately 400,000 tonnes of CO₂ will be captured annually from Celsio’s plant.
• Northern Lights is currently developing a solution for the transport and storage of CO₂. The CO₂ will be transported by ship from the various emission sources, including the CO₂ from the industrial capture sites of Heidelberg and Celsio, to a receiving facility near Bergen, before being transported by pipeline for permanent storage in a reservoir located 2600 metres below the seabed.
• Several measures are needed to enable European countries to achieve carbon neutrality. Longship will help the hard-to-abate industries reduce their CO₂ emissions and make industrial carbon removals possible through capture of biogenic CO₂ (negative emissions).

Status Northern Lights

• Construction of the Northern Lights CO₂storage facility is 81% completed (2023.05.31).
• Fabrication and installation of the onshore plant is on schedule and budget and will be ready in 2024. All of the 12 storage tanks are installed.
• The visitor centre was opened in October 2022 by the Norwegian prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre.
• Preliminary results from drilling operations confirm the storage capacity of at least 5 million tonnes CO₂per annum. The drilling of one CO₂ injection well and one contingent injection well is completed.  
• Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Co., Ltd. (DSIC) is building two ships dedicated for CO₂ transport for Northern Lights. The overall progress for the ships, including detailed design, engineering, procurement etc., are now 34 % completed (2023.05.31) and the first ship will be delivered in 2024.
• Northern Lights has entered into transport and storage agreement with Ørsted to store 430,000 tonnes biogenic CO₂per year from two power plants in Denmark from 2026. Northern Lights is labelling this as an essential step for creating a commercial market for CCS in Europe. In August 2022, Yara and Northern Lights agreed on the main commercial terms on cross border CO₂ transport and storage. From early 2025, up to 800,000 tonnes of CO₂ will, according to plan, be captured from Yara’s ammonia and fertiliser plant in Sluiskil in the Netherlands and transported and stored by Northern Lights.
• Northern Lights plan to increase storage capacity to 5 million tonnes per year through an additional development phase (Phase 2) and an increasing customer base. The phase 2 development plan is subject to a final investment decision. FEED studies for phase 2 have been completed.

Status Heidelberg Materials

• Overall accumulated actual progress is 60,4% for the Brevik CCS Project (2023.05.31).
• Generally, Brevik CCS is progressing well, but the project organisation expresses some concern about delays from subcontractors due to the global disturbances in crucial supply chains caused by war in Ukraine and covid-19, leading to major uncertainties in supply of critical materials, equipment, and logistics.
• Heidelberg Materials and the Norwegian state have, in accordance with the state aid agreement, negotiated over financing the communicated cost overrun in the project. A proposed solution is agreed upon and awaits approval from ESA. In the meantime, the project is progressing as planned.
• Brevik CCS has experienced vast interest internally and externally. Heidelberg Materials now has several emerging projects in other countries, mainly in Europe and North America. Brevik CCS is the frontrunner both within the company and within the industry.

Status Celsio

• In April an updated cost estimate from Hafslund Oslo Celsio showed that the carbon capture project at their waste incineration plant at Klemetsrud would exceed the maximum budget stipulated in its government funding agreement. Celsio decided to introduce a twelve-month cost reduction phase and place the construction on hold. During this phase, Celsio aims to identify possible cost reduction areas, then narrow down and prioritize areas to be investigated before reaching a new decision in the fall of 2024.
• Celsio’s carbon capture project started the civil works, blasting and ground works on site in August 2022.
• There is still a clear ambition for Celsio’s carbon capture project to become the world’s first carbon capture plant on waste incineration in a full value chain with transport and permanent storage of CO₂. Celsio is owned by Hafslund, Infranode and HitecVision.
• The changes to Celsio’s project will not have any impact on the completion of Longship as a whole chain for capture, transportation and storage of CO₂. The Heidelberg Materials and Northern Lights projects have both passed the halfway point in their construction process and will be in a position to capture and store CO₂ from 2025.

CO₂ storage in Norway

• In total, five exploration licenses to store CO₂ on the Norwegian Continental Shelf have so far been awarded pursuant to the CO₂Storage Regulation, in addition to Northern Lights’ exploitation permit.
  • In March, two exploration licenses for CO₂ storage in the southern part of the North Sea were awarded. Aker BP ASA and OMV (Norge) AS was awarded the eastern CO₂storage acreage. Wintershall Dea Norge AS and Altera Infrastructure Group through its subsidiary Stella Maris CCS AS were awarded the northwestern acreage.
  • In October 2022, two companies – Wintershall Dea Norge AS og CapeOmega AS – have been offered exploration license for CO₂ storage in an acreage in the Norwegian part of the North Sea.
  • In April 2022, three companies were offered exploration licenses to store CO₂in two areas on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. The area in the North Sea was offered to Equinor ASA, and the area in Barents Sea was offered to a group including Equinor ASA, Horisont Energi AS and Vår Energi AS.
  • Northern Lights was awarded an exploration permit for the storage part of Longship in 2019.

Resources

• Spørsmål og svar om Langskip-prosjektet – regjeringen.no / Tidslinje for Langskip (CCS) – regjeringen.no
• Full-scale CCS project in Norway – Longship