NTNU hosts carbon capture and storage conference

Carbon capture and storage in depleted North Sea oil wells has the potential to transform coal into an environmentally friendly fuel that can be called into service as the world makes the transition to sustainable energy production.

If the world succeeds in safely sequestering gigatons of carbon dioxide, “coal will not be a dirty fuel,” said Erik Lindeberg, chief scientist at SINTEF Petroleum Research, at the 5th Trondheim Conference on CO2 Capture, Transport and Storage, held at NTNU in Trondheim this week. “Instead, it will be an attractive transition energy source,” that can help the world gear up to exploit wind, solar and wave power more effectively.

Lindeberg was one of five keynote speakers at the conference, hosted by NTNU and SINTEF’s jointly operated Gas Technology Centre.

Meeting global goals for controlling greenhouse gas emissions in the next few decades will require European nations to capture and store as much as two gigatonnes of carbon dioxide per year, or half of what Europe emits today. Lindeberg said undersea reservoirs will play a deciding role in meeting this demand. “Large scale EU CO2 storage capacity will rely on offshore aquifers,” he said. “The North Sea has natural capacity for this storage.”

Moving 2 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide to the North Sea could be done with 10 large pipelines, Lindeberg said, the equivalent of what is already in use by the oil and gas industry to bring its products onshore. Assuming costs of €40 per tonne of CO2, carbon capture, transport and storage could become a €80 billion per year industry

At the same time NTNU researchers launched a new Carbon Footprint Calculator on the Web, showing how much of each country’s carbon dioxide emissions come from imported food and goods.

The website was developed in collaboration with the Centre for International Climate and Environment Research in Oslo. The site, enables users to check the importance of different consumption categories for their nations, particularly for imports and exports. The researchers also published a paper that details the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the final consumption of goods from 73 nations and 14 world regions.