Unique Project to Save the Planet – Møre Trafo on Carbon Capture

15 transformers

“It’s really exciting to win a project like this, a pioneering effort to save the planet,” says Sales & Marketing Manager at Møre Trafo, Ivar Lifjeld.

In connection with building the carbon capture plant, Møre Trafo secured a contract to deliver 15 different transformers worth six million kroner over a two-year period. Møre Trafo has also supplied a lot alongside this contract, such as doors, valves, and some substations.

Wild Idea

The carbon capture plant started as a wild idea in 2005, and the initiators were seen as highly unconventional for even thinking along these lines. The project was outlined the same year Gassnova was established.

No one else

“Since no one had done this before, it in many ways became pioneering work in collaboration with Gassnova and Tel-Tek, which is now part of SINTEF. We received partial funding so we could start the first screening of potential and opportunities,” says Per Brevik, Head of Sustainability for Norcem and the Heidelberg Group in Northern Europe, in a press release about the long journey and the many small steps leading up to where they are today.

Brevik has a vision that the group will have zero CO2 emissions from its products in 2030, and to reach that goal, CO2 capture must be implemented.

High Expectations

“We’ve put in a lot of volunteer work and our own effort to keep the project alive with relatively limited resources. That’s why we’re incredibly proud that Parliament now trusts us to realize this project,” says Brevik. There are high expectations that the project at Norcem Brevik will drive technology development and learning, so that investment costs for the next cement plants can be reduced significantly.

Challenging Documentation

“Since the state is putting in several billion in support, the documentation for such a delivery was demanding, and the reporting requirements are enormous,” says Lifjeld, referring to the 15-page tender document for the framework agreement for transformers.

Major emissions

Today, the cement industry accounts for five to eight percent of total CO2 emissions worldwide. More than half of production takes place in China, which offers the biggest opportunities for reductions from a global perspective, but the potential is also large in Europe, where the cement industry emits over 100 million tons of CO2. In Norway, cement industry emissions make up two percent of the total.

The Capture Method

The project at Norcem Brevik will cut Norway’s total emissions by about one percent and capture around 50 percent of its own. In practice, that means 400,000 tons of CO2 will be captured from the flue gas stacks in Brevik, converted to liquid, and shipped on specialized vessels for intermediate storage, then sent on through a pipeline south of Troll in the North Sea. Carbon capture and storage creates major industrial opportunities for Norwegian companies and can generate many thousands of new jobs toward 2050, according to a study from SINTEF.

Norway’s Most Important Contribution

The government’s decision to invest in full-scale CO2 capture at Norcem’s cement plant in Brevik, and in the Northern Lights transport and storage project, marks the start of what could become a major Norwegian industrial adventure and a turning point in Norwegian and European climate policy. It could potentially be Norway’s biggest and most important contribution to European and global climate efforts, according to NHO.

“If other companies follow the example set by Norcem Brevik, it will help achieve both national and global climate targets,” concludes Per Brevik.