On the shores of an island off Norway’s North Sea coast, engineers are building a burial ground for unwanted greenhouse gas.
The future terminal is to pump tonnes of liquefied carbon dioxide captured from the top of factory chimneys across Europe into cavities deep below the seabed. The project in the western municipality of Oygarden aims to prevent the gas from entering the atmosphere and contributing to global warming. It “is the world’s first open-access transport and storage infrastructure, allowing any emitter that has captured his CO2 emissions to deliver that CO2 for safe handling, transport and then permanent storage,” project manager Sverre Overa told AFP.
As the planet struggles to meet its climate targets, some climate experts see the technique, called carbon capture and storage, or CCS, as a means to partially reduce emissions from fossil-fuel-based industries.