Horisont Energi, Equinor join in on Polaris CCS project

Norwegian carbon tech company Horisont Energi and energy company Equinor have entered into an agreement for Polaris, the carbon capture and storage project off the coast of Northern Norway.

CCS captures emissions from power stations and other industrial sources, or directly from industrial processes. The CO2 s then liquified and transported offshore, where it is pumped into the underground storage.

Both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) state that it will be more difficult and more costly to reach the Paris Agreement’s goal without CCS. Technology for CCS will also be critical to achieving carbon-negative solutions.

The Polaris project will a total carbon storage capacity in excess of 100 million tonnes, which is equivalent to twice Norway’s annual ghg emissions.

The offshore carbon storage reservoir is a crucial part of the planned Barents Blue project, which will be Europe’s first world-scale carbon-neutral ammonia production plant.

Barents Blue will have a production capacity of 3000 tonnes of ammonia per day. This will make it one of the largest ammonia plants in the world. In its first phase, the facility will convert natural gas from the Barents South region to carbon-neutral blue ammonia, an easily transportable hydrogen carrier, which can be converted back to hydrogen at the destination or used directly.

The project is currently at the end of the feasibility phase and will soon be entering the concept phase. An investment decision for Polaris and the Barents Blue project is expected towards the end of 2022.

Equinor has so far captured and stored 26 million tonnes of CO2 at the Sleipner and Snøhvit fields. The company is also a partner in the Northern Lights CO2 transport and storage project, of which the Aurora CO2 storage off Norway’s west coast is a part. The Polaris project will, if developed, further enhance Norway’s carbon transport and storage position.

In December 2020 Horisont Energi entered into a MoU with Equinor for joint feasibility studies for the Barents Blue project. In the first phase of the project, Polaris will store 2 million tons of CO2 annually from the Barents Blue ammonia production.

Earlier this month, Horisont Energi signed a memorandum of understanding with TGS to identify and develop methods for the identification and classification of CO2 storage reservoirs, as well as 4D monitoring technology for the surveillance of CO2 injection.

In March, Baker Hughes and Horisont Energi signed a memorandum of understanding to explore the development and integration of technologies to minimize the carbon footprint, cost and delivery time of carbon capture, transport, and storage (CCTS).