The Norwegian company Aker Clean Carbon may be closed. Its value is set to zero. The market for carbon capture and storage is dead according to their CEO.
Guest Post by Geir Hasnes, Norway
Article in today’s net edition of Norwegian Teknisk Ukeblad (Technological Weekly).
Aker Clean Carbon may be closed
This article brings important news especially damaging for the Norwegian politicians and believers in carbon capture and storage because Norway has put itself as the avant-garde of this totally useless technology and spent untold billions of dollars on it. The moon-landing that crashed that is referred to in the article refer to Norwegian prime minister Stoltenberg’s way of comparing the development of a technology for carbon capture and storage as equivalent to the US project of putting a man on the moon. The price tag of the Mongstad moonlanding project became too high and untold obstacles kept popping up continuously during the project until it crashed last year.
Below is a quick translation of the articles as it appeared at http://www.tu.no/industri/article293599.ece
Aker Solutions gives up efforts to clean CO2 emissions.
By NTB and Mona Strande Published: 11/04/2011 at. 7:42
The market for the company’s technology for capturing and storing CO2 is “dead”, according to chairman Øyvind Eriksen. He confirmed that the closure of Aker Clean Carbon is one of the options.
No full-scale
– The market has disappeared for several reasons. It relies on support from public authorities. Today, the assumption of support from the government and the consensus among energy companies no longer exist. There is in reality no full-scale projects for the ACC to pursue, he tells “Dagens Næringsliv” (Norwegian financial newspaper, literally translated “Today’s Business”).
The company has lost enormously because the so-called moon landing at Mongstad crash-landed.
In addition, the British government decided to withdraw from plans for a full-scale project in Scotland: they were prepared to go in with one billion pounds in the project, but now, the operator Scottish Power believes that the bill will be closer to 13.5 billion. Then the costs became too high, and the authorities said no.
Zero value
In Aker Solutions’ accounting for the third quarter, which was presented on Thursday, the value of Aker Clean Carbon is written down to zero. Aker Solutions had an operating profit before depreciation of NOK 322 million in the third quarter, down from 733 million in the same period last year.
Anthony, there’s a major accounting error in the original post. Estimated costs for Scotland’s Longannet CCS project were of the order 1 – 1.5£Billion, not 13.5£Billion as stated. There are multiple sources confirming this.
For example:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-15511590
Sorry for a hasty translation. I translated the sum in Norwegian kroner into pounds for the first, but not the second sum.
Pete,
The idea of a reverse UHI in central Australia has been proposed, as long ago as 1938.
The Bradfield scheme called for the diversion of rivers in far north Queensland inland, to the Thompson or Flinders Rivers, the resulting cyclone run off being directed inland and ultimately draining into Lake Eyre instead of being ‘wasted’out to sea.
It might arguably work, but the cost even then was jaw slackening. It is imponderable to contemplate the cost of irrigating central Australia with desalinated sea water (the most expensive potable water you can buy) which is produced by intermittent wind and solar power (which are the most expensive electricity you can buy).
An alternative means of inducing permanent climate change in central and southern Australia is to join the low lying Lake Eyre to Spencer Gulf,first considered in 1883, again at astronomical cost (it would require a 400km long, 1.5km wide canal, cut deep through Lake Torrens, and high volume pumping (owing to the limited hydraulic gradient) which would lead to a permanently filled Eyre Sea, increased precipitation and the end of dry northerly winds dehydrating the pastoral lands south.
All flights of fancy, though the squander contemplated by the incumbent watermelon government in taxing thin air and then buying votes and funding more bird munchers might actually be sufficient – a rough (1986) estimate for the 1883 scheme was 10 billion (1986) dollars.
The centre of Australia, mostly arid, was never a vast forest, you may be thinking of the Arabian peninsula or North Africa. Eastern-Central Australia was a shallow sea which separated the cratons of western Australia from the Great Dividing Range. One of the problems then of irrigating this is the shallow deposits of salt which are readily brought to surface with an elevated water table. Quite aside from getting enough water to storage without it all evaporating en route.
Am I right in thinking that to sequester a CO2 molecule is to sequester
1 * C atom
2 * O atoms
?
As a mammal, I am in favour of oxygen. I also like more plant food.