The 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.

A carbon capture plant is to be built at Oslo’s Klemetsrud waste-to-energy facility and is expected to capture nearly 350,000 tonnes of CO2 annually by 2029.

The gas will then 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 per cent, 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.

Advocacy group CCS Europe hopes that the decision by Hafslund Celsio, a company wholly owned by the Oslo municipality, will encourage more CCS investment Europe.

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.”

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.

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