(Bloomberg) -- Heidelberg Materials AG’s carbon-capture plant at the Brevik cement factory in Norway is fully assembled, the government said, marking a key milestone in a $2.6 billion plan to sequester emissions under the North Sea.
The German company aims to capture about 400,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year from its factory west of Oslo. The CO2 will be transported by ship to a storage facility controlled by Equinor ASA, Shell Plc and TotalEnergies SE at Blomoyna near the coastal city of Bergen.
Cleaning up the cement industry has long been a technological and economic challenge. Production of the construction material generates emissions from burning fuel to heat kilns, from the decomposition of limestone and from quarrying and grinding. For Heidelberg Materials, carbon capture — or CCS — could be one way of curbing pollution, though it’s a costly and complex process.
The company’s new plant is a major component of the Longship project, which is due to be the world’s first large-scale CCS hub for industrial emissions. The receiving terminal at Blomoyna, completed in September, will hold the CO2 in 12 tanks — each about as high as a 10-story building. The liquefied gas will then be pumped to a reservoir more than a mile beneath the sea bed.
The European Union has said hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 will need to be captured annually by 2050 to reach net zero goals. The project in Norway is an important test of what’s feasible, with ramifications for multiple sectors including the global oil and gas industries.
The partners in Northern Lights, the transport and storage component of the Longship project, said Nov. 25 that the first of four ships being built in Dalian, China, is complete. The Northern Pioneer is due to arrive in Norway early next year.
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