Eight transnational projects funded with € 38 million to accelerate CCS technologies in Europe

The Norwegian-led European Research Area Network initiative "ACT - Accelerating CCS technologies" has selected 8 high quality transnational projects for a total funding of € 38 million.

These are the first projects from this initiative that aims to fund research and innovation projects that lead to safe and cost effective technology for CO2 capture, transport and storage (CCS). The eight projects together cover a broad scope and scale, encompassing all elements of the CCS and CCU chain, legal and social sciences, and studies of scales as large as entire port areas down to the miniature scale of 3D printed solid adsorbents of CO2

The projects have participants from Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

- CCS is emerging as one of the most promising and required technologies for mitigating global climate change. This initiative aims to put the technology into use in industry faster and on a larger scale, says ACT Coordinator Ragnhild Rønneberg from the Research Council of Norway.

- ACT has already during the 1st call led to enhanced international cooperation and sharing of knowledge between the scientific community, industry, NGOs and public funding agencies in a number of European countries. This is of great benefit to all partners involved in the projects and also for the respective funding agencies in the nine member countries of ACT, says Ragnhild.

- By joining forces and working in the same dedicated direction we achieve better results than the sum of those of individual partners and, we have high expectations of the results coming out during the next three years, Ragnhild concludes.         

ACT – a multinational cooperation

Responding to a call from the European Commission in December 2014 under the Horizon 2020 Programme on Energy, nine European countries have joined forces and made funds available for research and innovation actions on Carbon Capture, Transport and Storage (CCS). The initiative is called ACT – Accelerating CCS Technologies.

The ambition of ACT is to facilitate the emergence of CCS via transnational funding through accelerating and maturing CCS technology via targeted innovation and research activities. In order to accelerate the CCS implementation in the energy sector and the energy intensive industry sector (such as steel, paper mills, cement etc.) projects with industrial relevance and cooperation have been prioritised.

Funding of €27 million for the projects comes from the nation's existing research and innovation programmes and is topped-up by a financial contribution from the EC of more than € 11 million.

ACT has a broad scope, but underlines the importance of market- and industry-relevant projects. In addition to chain integration, capture, transport and storage, projects including utilisation of CO2 have also been included.

Background – climate and role of CCS

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies is necessary and play a vital role in keeping global temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius, as is also confirmed by scenarios from the International Energy Agency. Further research is needed for the benefit of implementing CCUS in an optimal way. There is a need for more pilot scale projects and focus on full chain elements (incl. a number of technical issues, costs, business models, social and environmental aspects) to enable the successful implementation of CCS in Europe. In parallel policies to implement CC(U)S in the energy and industrial sector are being developed to realise the CO2 emissions reduction.

The European Commission (EC), the European parliament and several of the European countries by themselves, have invested great efforts in driving the debate around climate change goals for 2030.  It is recognized that CCS is a significant step in the right direction to achieving climate targets.  A successful future for CCS is therefore quintessential not only in the energy, but also in the industry sector.

Oslo, 6 November 2017

Ragnhild Rønneberg

Coordinator ACT

The Research Council of Norway

e-mail: rr@rcn.no

phone: + 47 91 55 86 62