Høynivåkonferanse CCS

Commissioner and Ministers,

Excellencies,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Today is an important day. European countries, industries, and other relevant stakeholders are meeting here in Oslo to discuss the role for CCS, to achieve the ambitious climate targets set in the Parris Agreement.

 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as the IEA have made it absolutely clear - CCS is one of the necessary building-blocks to reach our common climate goals. 

The Panel's special report, on the impact of global warming of 1.5 degrees, underscores this yet again.

All realistic scenarios include the use of CCS, in particular deployment of bio energy with CCS, leading to negative emissions.

Core industries in Europe, like cement, steel, chemicals and waste, have limited or no alternatives to CCS if they are to become decarbonized, CCS is necessary to keep and establish new jobs, and industries, in a low-emission European society.

In the European Commission's proposal for a long term strategy for Europe – "A Clean Planet for all" – CCS is one of seven building blocks to-wards reducing emissions in line with the targets in the Paris Agreement.

I am pleased to see it happened, and that CCS received this recognition.

 

CCS has been on the political agenda in Norway for more than two decades.

There is a broad political consensus that we need CCS. Norwegian NGOs are actively promoting CCS – in Norway and in the rest of Europe.

This creates an important foundation for CCS in Norway. I believe our experiences are valuable for other countries in the next steps towards realizing the potential for CCS – both for Europe and globally.

So why do we think it makes sense to do CCS in Norway?

• We have 50 years of knowledge and experience with reservoir management from oil & gas development on the Norwegian Shelf.
• We have a huge storage capacity.
• We have more than 20 years of experience from CO₂ storage at Sleipner and 10 years from CO₂ storage at Snøhvit.
• And, we have a global research community centered around the CO₂ Technology Centre at Mongstad.

The Norwegian government wants to contribute to the development of CCS, and we have an ambitious CCS policy.

We have an ambition to realize a cost-effective solution for full scale CCS in Norway, provided that it leads to technology development internationally.

The Norwegian full chain project is a true European project – with participation from a number of European companies: Equinor, Shell, Total, Fortum, Heidelberg. They are supported by European construction and engineering contractors.

The project is on track for an investment-decision next year.

This project is unique because it commercially
decouples storage from capture. In addition, the storage facilities will have spare capacity. 

The additional capacity may be available for other capture projects, opening up for faster deployment of CCS in Europe. The use of this capacity is the key indicator of the storage project's success.

A full scale CCS project in Norway must be a catalyst for other European projects, and for international technology development. The government will provide funding only if we believe that this will be the first of many, rather than the last of a few, CCS projects.

Today we see a first step towards this goal. Equinor, Shell and Total will sign MoUs with several European partners.

The MoUs show that we are on track for a broad deployment of CCS in Europe.

 

Going forward we need to see more initiatives like the one from Equinor, Shell and Total.

The high level meeting this morning gave us the opportunity to gather government, industries and other stakeholders to discuss how we can work together to commercially deploy CCS across Europe.

For the first projects, governments and industries across national borders must share costs and risks.

Strong support and contribution from EU and its member-states is also necessary to realize projects to follow – and to demonstrate that the first projects are relevant.

In a longer perspective, we need efficient business models in order for industries in Europe to investment in projects.

We need to tackle remaining regulatory obstacles like the London Protocoll. And encourage all Parties to the protocoll to formally accept the 2009 amendment to article six.

On this issue, the Netherlands and Norway have recently submitted a proposal for a resolution allowing for provisional application of the amendment.

If the resolution is adopted at the Meeting of the Con-tracting Parties to the London Protocol this October, it would provide legal certainty for both industries and governments wishing to deploy CCS.

We hope for support for the proposal. In parallel to that, we do of course continue to encourage further ratifications of the amendment.

 

Commissioner and Ministers

Excellencies,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Dear friends.

There are bumps in the road ahead for CCS, like technical), financial and legal issues.

But this day has made me optimistic. With close cooperation – both between countries as well as industry, and other stakeholders, we are in a much better position to solve them. I am convinced that we will succeed in our cooperation to realize CCS as an effective climate tool in Europe – and globally.

Thank you for your attention!