By Johannes Birkebaek and Nora Buli
COPENHAGEN, May 15 (Reuters) – Denmark’s government has awarded energy group Orsted a 20-year contract to capture and store 430,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually from two heat and power plants, the Danish company said on Monday.
In 2021, Denmark allocated 16 billion Danish crowns ($2.37 billion) in CCS subsidies as part of a plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 70% by the end of this decade compared to 1990 levels, one of the world’s most ambitious climate goals.
Orsted will receive about 8 billion crowns of this to establish the CCS project, the Danish Energy Agency said in a separate statement.
Orsted in turn said it had awarded Norway’s Aker Carbon Capture (ACC) a contract to provide CO2 capture technology, sending the Oslo-listed shares of the Norwegian company up 18% by 1045 GMT.
ACC said its new contract was worth more than 200 million euros ($220 million).
The project also involves U.S.tech giant Microsoft , which in 2021 agreed to cooperate with Orsted to further its plan to remove as much carbon as it has emitted since its founding in 1975.
Microsoft will purchase 2.76 million tonnes of carbon removals over 11 years from the CCS project at the wood chip-fired Asnaes Power Station, Orsted said, without providing a value for the contract.
“Given the nascent state of bioenergy-based CCS, Danish state subsidies and Microsoft’s contract were both necessary to make this project viable,” Orsted added.
The captured CO2 will be shipped from Denmark to Norway for injection under a seabed at the Northern Lights CO2 storage site, Orsted said.
It is the second commercial CO2 storage contract for Northern Lights.Norway’s Yara signed one last year. ($1 = 6.7638 Danish crowns) ($1 = 0.9084 euros) (Reporting by Johannes Gotfredsen-Birkebaek in Copenhagen and Nora Buli in Oslo; writing by Nerijus Adomaitis; editing by Terje Solsvik and Barbara Lewis)
Leave a Reply