Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
7/3/2014
The Norwegian Government has agreed this week to participate in a carbon capture and storage research effort under the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Program according to a release from the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy. The effort will establish a program to support research to be done in the operational phase of a full scale CCS project in the European Union. Currently no such project exists, but according to the release the ROAD project in the Netherlands is a possible candidate as it is the furthest along in the EU.
The ROAD project is a venture of E.ON Benelux and GDF SUEZ Energie Nederland which would capture 1.1 million tonnes of CO2 annually for storage under the North Sea. “Technology development and cost reductions are necessary for a broad deployment of CCS, and more full scale projects have to be realized to achieve this. I will be highly pleased if we can contribute to realizing a new full scale project in Europe through this research cooperation,” Minister of Petroleum and Energy Tord Lien said in the release. The Horizon 2020 program is the largest EU research and innovation program to date with €79 billion available for research funding from 2014-2020.
The design of the program to be developed with the contribution of Norwegian government is ongoing. The Norwegian Government’s Political Platform states the intent to pursue CCS technology however, the government’s involvement in the program will not exempt the nation’s commitment to develop their own full scale CCS project. “A research program such as this will be a useful contribution to the CCS strategy the Government is working on. I would like to emphasize that this effort does not replace the work considering the feasibility of full scale CCS in Norway,” Lien said in the release.
