Spotlight on ACCSESS at Arendalsuka

ACCSESS was at the forefront of Arendalsuka on Tuesday during a panel discussion focused on CCS as a solution to urban climate problems, hosted by ACCSESS partner Hafslund Oslo Celsio. Arendalsuka (lit. “Arendal’s week”) is a Norwegian political festival that takes place in August every year in Arendal, Norway.

The project was introduced by Mona Mølnvik, centre director of the Norwegian CCS Research Centre (NCCS), which is one of the projects that ACCSESS originated from. She mainly described the work being performed in Innovation 1 with testing a new CO2 capture technology, and explained how tests would be conducted on three different industries in Norway, Sweden and Poland.

“This shows that this project has a “lead and learn” philosophy, and it shows that both what we’re doing in Norway – collaborations financed by the government and the Research Council of Norway (NFR) in large research centres that are open for new partners, where we’re paid by the government to develop new knowledge that we can share – and building new innovation and business opportunities for industry, which they can pick up and take to market together with us, are extremely important,” she said.

Read more: ACCSESS project pilot launched in Norway with Saipem’s CO2 Solutions technology

NCCS Centre Director Mona Mølnvik

Collaboration the key to CCS success

International collaboration between industry and research was a recurring theme of the discussion, as was the CCS work that ACCSESS partners Hafslund Oslo Celsio and HeidelbergCement are performing outside of the project.

Read more: ACCSESS partner is allocating €1.5 billion to CCUS projects as part of goal to reduce CO2 emissions by 47% by 2030

Hafslund Oslo Celsio’s CCS Director Jannicke Bjerkås was also in attendance to speak about the company’s recent success with securing funding to realise CO2 capture and storage at the Klemetsrud waste-to-energy plant in Oslo.

“In 2015, no one was speaking about CO2-capture for waste-to-energy. Today, in 2022, everyone is speaking about it. And not just talking about it, but actually doing something about it,” she said.

Hafslund Oslo Celsio CCS Director Jannicke Bjerkås

Currently, the plant is responsible for approximately 17% of Oslo’s CO2 emissions.

“This project is completely essential if Oslo is to reach its climate goals. And the same will apply to other Norwegian cities that have waste-to-energy plants. These are significant emission points, and while it’s true that doing something about these emission points will cost money, CCS is an extremely effective solution for reducing these emissions,” Jannicke said.

Read more: Interview with Jannicke Bjerkås: Oslo to have the first full-scale CCS facility for waste incineration

“It is a big task to succeed in carbon capture and storage in a safe way and to handle it in a positive way as well,” said the Norwegian Minister of Petroleum Terje Aasland. “So also having collaboration, having technologies, expertise that find each other, I think that is extremely important. And that we also gain – actually in a whole broad European context as well – the understanding that we must use carbon capture as part of the solution to the climate challenges.”

Norwegian Minister of Petroleum Terje Aasland

Keep the conversation going

Interested in continuing the conversation curbing industrial CO2 emissions in European cities, as well as a tour of the Klemetsrud waste-to-energy plant? Registration is now open for ACCSESS’ first open event on 22 September in Oslo and online. Participation is free of charge and you don’t need to have any prior knowledge of CCS in order to attend.

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