OSLO (Reuters) – A project to capture carbon emissions from a waste plant in Norway’s capital restarted on Monday following a two-year hiatus to rein in development costs, its operator said.
Engineering group Aker Solutions separately announced that it had won what it called a substantial contract, valued at up to 4.0 billion Norwegian crowns ($355.72 million) as part of the development.
The heavily subsidised project in Oslo’s Klemetsrud district was halted in April 2023 amid projections of large cost overruns and has since been re-designed, while the city council also approved the new cost structure.
It is now expected to cost a maximum 9.5 billion Norwegian crowns, around 1 billion less than when it was paused in 2023, operator Hafslund Celsio, said in a statement.
Of this, 5.1 billion crowns were provided by the Norwegian government and the city in investment and start-up grants as well as support for operations, transport and permanent storage in the contract period, the company added.
Hafslund Celsio, Norway’s largest district heating operator, is owned by utility Hafslund and investment funds Infranode and HitecVision.
The facility is expected to be operational by the third quarter of 2029 and will remove 350,000 tonnes of CO2 annually, cutting nearly 20% of the city’s remaining fossil emissions.
The CO2 captured at Klemetsrud is part of Norway’s prestigious Longship carbon capture and storage (CCS) plan, which also includes carbon capture at a cement plant and the Northern Lights transport and storage project.
Northern Lights officially opened in September, but has yet to receive any CO2 deposits.
Oil and gas-rich Norway is betting big on fledgling carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology as a way to reduce CO2 emissions both at home and abroad.
($1 = 11.2449 Norwegian crowns)
(Reporting by Nora Buli, editing by Terje Solsvik)
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