
Brussels, 27 January 2025 --
An announcement today that a final investment decision has been taken to equip a major waste-to-energy facility in Europe with the means of capturing and storing CO2 emissions has been warmly welcomed by industry campaigners.
Advocacy group CCS Europe says that the decision by Hafslund Celsio, a company wholly owned by the Oslo municipality, gives hope that 2025 will be the year when CCS investment finally takes off in Europe.
The carbon capture plant to be built at Oslo’s Klemetsrud waste-to-energy facility is expected to capture nearly 350,000 tons of CO2 annually by 2029.
The gas will be transported by ship to the Northern Lights storage field off the coast of Norway.
The project is expected to reduce Oslo’s CO2 emissions by 20%, and with half the waste said to be of organic origin the capture and storage of the gas should reduce the concentration of CO2 already in the atmosphere.
Chris Davies, director of CCS Europe, said that Norway deserved congratulations for its pioneering work in developing the technology.
“Norway has been capturing CO2 since 1996 when operations commenced at the Sleipner gas field, and it has now removed more than 30 million tonnes of the gas for permanent storage in rock two kilometres underground.
“The world’s first cement plant to be equipped with CCS technology, at Brevik in Norway, is due to start capturing CO2 this year, and now we have this good news about Oslo’s waste to energy plant.
“Net-zero cannot be achieved without industry’s use of CCS technology to curb hard-to-abate emissions, and this announcement reinforces the urgent need to accelerate its deployment.”
There are more than 500 waste-to-energy plants in Europe, and a significant number could be equipped with CCS technology. Two capture plants are now in operation at smaller facilities in the Netherlands, with captured CO2 sent to greenhouses to promote plant growth.