NORWAY is raising its carbon game by planning to invest close to £380million (3.5billion NOK) in capturing and storing greenhouse gases next year, according to finance minister Kristin Halvorsen.
It is part of the world’s sixth largest exporter’s drive to get to grips with the challenge of climate change, and the budget is more than a third higher than the allocation under the 2009 Norwegian budget.
Halvorsen said Norway would also raise investments in renewable energies. A fund for developing renewable energy and energy efficiency would get an extra £475million (5billion NOK), raising the pot to £2.4billion (25billion NOK).
Prime minister Jens Stoltenberg’s government has also offered to toughen national cuts in greenhouse gases to 40% below 1990 levels by 2020, from a planned 30%.
This offer will apparently be tabled at the Copenhagen summit in December.
Norway also plans to make the nation “carbon neutral” by 2030, by when any greenhouse-gas emissions will be offset by measures to soak up greenhouse-gas emissions elsewhere, such as by planting forests.
Compared with many other countries, Norway is relatively well ahead in the carbon game. Moreover, it has, since the mid-1990s, successfully re-injected, in situ, CO associated with gas production from the North Sea Sleipner field.
Today, a centre for CO capture is being constructed at the Mongstad terminal, on the west coast, as well as ongoing evaluation of candidate oil/gas fields as possible future sequestration hosts.
The last major study of mature fields such as Draugen and Heidrun suggested that they were non-starters based on the economic hurdles set at that time. However, it is reported that Asbjoern Torvanger, of the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, considers progress in Norway to be less advanced than the government would wish. He sees the US, and even the UK, as competitors, which is bizarre given that tackling climate change is a global issue where the international mantra is supposed to be co-operation, not competition.
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