By Will Nichols, Source: BusinessGreen

Norway has abandoned plans to build a full-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant at the Mongstad refinery, curtailing a $1bn project known as the country’s “moon landing”.

The Ministry of Petroleum and Energy confirmed late last week the plans would be halted and the government will instead look to develop “at least one full-scale CCS project … by 2020” in another location. However, government funding for the CCS test centre at Mongstad will be increased by 400 million kroner (£42m) over four years.

Ola Borten Moe, the Norwegian Minister of Petroleum and Energy, said in a statement that integrating a full-scale capture facility at Mongstad would be both challenging and costly.

“A full-scale CO2 capture facility is still the objective,” he said. “The government has, however, concluded, after careful consideration, that the risk connected to the Mongstad facility is too high and has for that reason decided that the work on the full-scale facility will be discontinued.”

When announcing the project in 2006, then Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg likened Mongstad to the US putting a man on the moon in the 1960s. The two-part project would allow the development CCS technology that could become an important export for Norway and pave the way for a full-scale plant at the site from 2020.

CCS is seen as a crucial element in meeting global climate goals while allowing countries to keep fossil fuel-fired power stations open.

However, a shadow was cast over the project when Stoltenberg’s government was voted out in a general election earlier this month as the winning Conservative Party had been highly critical of the amount spent on Mongstad when in opposition.

And last week, Norway’s auditor general said the project was 1.7 billion kroner (£180m) over budget, saying the “complexity” of implementing CCS at a large scale was underestimated in the planning stages.

But while the government insisted its commitment to CCS “remains as strong as ever”, the decision to halt the Mongstad plant drew criticism from green campaigners.

“This is some of the worst form of incompetence I’ve seen from the government,” Frederic Hauge, head of environmental group Bellona, told news agency Bloomberg. “This will stand as the symbol of this government’s total failure on climate policy.”