By Nora Buli
OSLO, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Swedish utility Vattenfall
and Norway's Aker Carbon Capture <ACC-ME.OL> have
signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to accelerate the
evaluation of future carbon capture plants in Sweden and
Northern Europe, they said on Thursday.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has long been viewed as a
way to reduce CO2 emissions but there are few commercial
projects in existence, partly due to the cost. However, Norway
in September announced it would finance two-thirds of a
large-scale project dubbed "Longship".
The International Energy Agency (IEA) said in September
carbon capture technology was key to achieving global climate
goals.
Thursday's agreement, which would focus on commercial
bio-CCS plants, would help deliver on Vattenfall's ambitions to
achieve negative emissions.
Capturing the CO2 released by sustainably grown biomass fuel
can be counted as carbon-negative, as less CO2 is released into
the atmosphere than is removed by the crops during their growth.
The MoU is non-exclusive and covers services related to
advancing initiatives for CCS at Vattenfall and has a two-year
timeline, the companies said.
Vattenfall first started testing CCS technologies between
2008 and 2014.
"However, CCS has taken many steps forward since then,
leading to several projects moving forward both on the capture
and on the storage side," it added, highlighting Norway's
Longship project led by oil and gas majors Equinor,
Total and Shell.
"As we prepare to deliver the capture plant for Longship,
the Norwegian full scale demonstration project, we see a sharp
increase in companies across sectors that want to explore and
realise carbon capture plants in the future," Valborg
Lundegaard, CEO of Aker Carbon Capture, said in a statement.
(Reporting by Nora Buli; Editing by Mark Potter)