Norway-headed pure-play carbon capture company Aker Carbon Capture AS has announced that it has been awarded a feasibility study by Nordbex AB, a Swedish developer of modular carbon-negative power plants, for the integration of two Just Catch 100 carbon capture units into an electric power generation project in southern Sweden.
Waste residues from local forestry management, timber, and pulp and paper industries will be utilized as feedstocks for the new power plant.
The biogenic feedstock will be utilized in a gasification process to produce a clean and hydrogen-rich synthesis gas, which will be combusted in gas engines to produce 20-25 MW of electricity for the grid in southern Sweden.
Aker Carbon Capture will provide two Just Catch 100 modularized carbon capture units to capture up to 200,000 tonnes per year of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the flue gas of both the gasification process and the gas engines.
The CO2 will be liquefied for transport by train to storage. As the captured CO2 will be biogenic in origin, sequestering it in permanent geological storage will result in negative CO2 emissions.
We are excited to support Nordbex with our carbon capture technology on their path to providing clean baseload energy to local communities in Sweden while removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) has been identified as playing a key role in Sweden’s goal to achieve net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2045. The award from Nordbex further strengthens Aker Carbon Capture’s position in the growing Swedish market, where we were awarded several study contracts over the course of 2023, said Jon Christopher Knudsen, Chief Commercial Officer at Aker Carbon Capture.
An opportunity for the bioenergy sector
Sweden aims to become carbon neutral by 2045 and to achieve negative net CO2 emissions in the ensuing years.
As part of these ambitions, Sweden, a country with a large bioenergy sector, is positioning itself to become a global leader in generating high-quality and durable carbon dioxide removal (CDR) credits from bioenergy with carbon capture and storage.
The European Commission recently presented a 90 percent net GHG emissions reduction proposal compared to 1990 levels as the recommended target for 2040.
To deliver a reduction of net GHG emissions of 90 percent, the EU GHG emissions in 2040 should be less than 850 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2eq), and carbon removals should reach up to 400 million tonnes of CO2, a large part of which will have to be BECCS.
We are very pleased to be working with Aker Carbon Capture for the engineering study of our first project in the Nordic region. With our background of developing power plants with carbon capture and utilization (CCU) in the UK, we’ve been selective with the companies that we have engaged in this project. We want to work with the best partners that share the same objective to make a real impact in the race to Net-Zero, said Carl Berglund, CCO at Nordbex.
Distributed and scalable
The electricity grid in Southern Sweden needs clean, reliable, affordable baseload power to support increased demand.
Nordbex is developing solutions that utilize sustainable natural resources from the local area, in combination with the innovative configuration of proven technologies to provide 20-25MW of carbon-negative electric power generation capacity to the grid.
By delivering a distributed and scalable BECCS solution, we will support the need for carbon removal and provide additional power at the same time. We believe that like-minded partners will help take us there faster, and that’s why we have selected Aker Carbon Capture for this project, said Håkan Karlsson, CTO at Nordbex.
Aker Carbon Capture is currently delivering seven carbon capture plants. At Twence waste-to-energy WtE) facility in the Netherlands, Aker Carbon Capture is currently delivering a Just Catch unit with a capacity of 100,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.
For Heidelberg Materials’ cement plant in Brevik Norway, Aker Carbon Capture is delivering a carbon capture plant with a capacity of 400,000 tonnes per year, and for Ørsted in Denmark Aker Carbon Capture is delivering five Just Catch 100 units.
The Ørsted contract was enabled by a partnership between Ørsted, Microsoft, and Aker Carbon Capture where the creation and offtake of CDRs was a key enabler for the business case.
All these flagship projects contribute to Aker Carbon Capture’s mission to standardize and modularize carbon capture plants, with reduced footprint and significant cost and energy benefits.
