Norway firm begins capturing CO2 at Dutch plant for underground storage

Norwegian chemicals group Yara said Monday it had begun capturing part of the CO2 emitted by its factory in the Netherlands, hoping to prove the viability of a technology for reducing industrial emissions.

The prime ministers of both countries were on hand to inaugurate what Yara called the biggest industrial carbon capture and storage (CCS) in Europe.

The ammonia and fertiliser plant will capture 800,000 tons of CO2 a year -- or around 0.5 percent of the Netherlands' total annual emissions -- then liquefy it for sending by ship to Norway.

There it will be injected into an aquifer some 2,600 metres (8,500 feet) under the seabed off Norway's western coast, part of the Northern Lights project that began operating last year.

"The carbon capture facility in Sluiskil proves that large-scale industrial decarbonisation is possible today," Yara's chief executive Svein Tore Holsether said in a statement.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology has been listed as a climate tool by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA), especially for reducing the CO2 footprint of industries like cement and steel that are difficult to decarbonise.

But the technology is complex and costly, and it is often more profitable for industrial companies to purchase "pollution permits" on the European carbon market than to pay for capturing and storing their CO2.

So far Northern Lights has signed contracts with just a handful of companies.

It has an annual CO2 storage capacity of 1.5 million tonnes, which is expected to increase to five million tonnes by the end of the decade.

"This is exactly the kind of project Europe needs to combine climate ambition with a strong and resilient industrial base," EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said in the statement.

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YARA INTERNATIONAL