On 28 March, ACCSESS Project Coordinator Kristin Jordal presented the ACCSESS project at Trondheim Tech Port as part of the Powering a Sustainable Future session. The session also featured talks from Espen Barth Eide (Norway’s Minister of Climate and Environment), Astrid Svarva (NTE) and Tomas Fiksdal (H2 Marine), with Nils Røkke (SINTEF) acting as the host.
The theme of the conference this year was “bridging the gap” – which, in this case, refers to the gap between public administrations, start-up companies and policy makers. By connecting these different actors, Trondheim Tech Port aimed to act as an arena for sustainable innovation:
“We need to create pathways and relations to connect all these different parts of the innovation ecosystem so that we can innovate even more, while continuously nurturing and learning from the relations that already exist and innovate.”
Collaboration for sustainable innovation could not be a more appropriate theme for the ACCSESS project, which brings together 18 partners from eight countries, all with the common goal of making carbon capture and storage (CCS) implementation more accessible in both industry and society.
The concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere is still increasing, and CCS has been described by the International Energy Agency (IEA) as “critical” for achieving net zero emissions. However, as Kristin stated in her presentation, it won’t be enough to just curb CO2 emissions; we also need to remove them from the atmosphere.
That’s why ACCSESS will test an enzymatic solvent technology in three different industries that each use different concentrations of biogenic fuel. As plants naturally absorb CO2, if we capture the emissions produced when plant-based materials (or “biomass”) are burnt, we will remove that CO2 from the Earth’s natural cycle.
As part of her presentation, Kristin described the journey that ACCSESS will take across Europe in order to test this CO2 capture technology, outlining the process each step of the way.
“I don’t think my daughter will ever experience CO2 levels below 400 ppm, no matter what her textbook says. However, we owe it to her and all other young people in Norway, Europe and the rest of the world, to do what we can to reduce CO2 emissions as much as possible,” she concluded.
Unable to attend Trondheim Tech Port this year? You can read Kristin’s presentation in blog post form.
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