Norway’s Equinor has awarded two key contracts in connection with the Northern Lights carbon transport and storage project worth a total of NOK 1.3 billion ($149.8 million).

Earlier this week, following a historic vote in parliament, the Norwegian Government announced its funding decision for the Northern Lights CO2 project.

The project will enable the shipping, reception, and sequestration of CO2 in geological strata in the Northern North Sea, approximately 2,600 meters below the seabed.

The first big contract for the project was awarded back in October for building site preparation and the construction of jetty facilities for the CO2 receiving terminal. The contract was awarded to Skanska.

Now, following the decision by the Norwegian government, Equinor has awarded further contracts for the project. 

Kværner has received a letter of award for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract for the onshore plant facilities at Energiparken in Øygarden. 

The onshore plant will receive and store liquid CO2 before it is exported through a pump and pipeline system for injection offshore. The value of the contract is estimated at around NOK 1.05 billion ($121 million). 

The start-up of the work is planned in January 2021, and completion is planned by 1Q 2024. Kværner is a fully owned subsidiary of Aker Solutions.

Furthermore, Aker Solutions has been awarded an EPC contract for delivering a subsea injection system for the CO2 well in the North Sea. The contract is awarded as a call-off under the framework agreement signed with Equinor in 2017. 

The value of the contract is around NOK 250 million ($28.8 million). The work will start in January 2021 with installation and completion in 2023. The contract also includes options for equipment for future wells.

Northern Lights will be the first of its kind – an open and available infrastructure enabling transport of CO2 from industrial capture sites to a terminal in Øygarden for intermediate storage before being transported by pipeline for permanent storage in a reservoir 2600 meters under the seabed.

“These contracts are key to the success of the Northern Lights project. We look forward to working together with Aker Solutions and Kværner to deliver on our part of the solution to reduce industrial emissions”, says project director for Northern Lights Sverre Overå.

The pre-fabrication for the onshore facilities will be done at Aker Solutions’ yard at Stord before site installation. The scope includes facilities at jetty for import of CO2 from ships, storage tanks for intermediate storage of CO2 and process systems.

“Equinor aims to become a net-zero energy company by 2050. This requires that we together with our suppliers develop new value chains and projects such as offshore wind, hydrogen and carbon capture and storage. These projects will enable the supply industry to build new competencies and will create important activity and spin-offs going forward”, said Peggy Krantz-Underland, Equinor’s chief procurement officer.

The Northern Lights project is the transport and storage part of Longship, the Norwegian Government’s full-scale carbon capture and storage project. Equinor is developing the project together with Shell and Total as equal partners.

The procurement process for the onshore plant facilities is being performed in accordance with the Public Procurement Act and the Public Procurement Regulations . 

Equinor noted that, in line with the requirements, all the bidders in the competition were yesterday informed of the award decision and there is a standstill period that expires on 5 January 2021 when the onshore plant facilities contract will be signed.

A nearly “zero emissions” building site in Oslo, using electric-powered machinery, could be a pioneer for greener construction as the world’s urban areas swell by the equivalent of a Dublin or Dallas, Texas, every week, city experts have said.

Plug-in diggers, saws for cutting stones and other electric-powered machinery have been used to create a pedestrian area in the center of the Norwegian capital — completed in time for Christmas.

The shift aims to help curb climate change, air pollution and noise, officials have said.

C40 Cities, a network of almost 100 of the world’s biggest cities working to slow climate change, called the diesel-ditching project by the left-wing municipality “groundbreaking and unprecedented worldwide.”

“Many cities are looking to Oslo to learn,” said Cassie Sutherland, program director for energy and buildings at C40 Cities in London.

Sitting in chill winter sunshine at the Oslo site, on a new wooden bench by a flower bed planted with purple heather, Oslo Agency for Urban Environment project leader Marianne Molmen said that the revamped street “has become really great.”

The area, lined with shops, cinemas and bars — many closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic — also has new bicycle parking racks and tree saplings. Fossil-fuel-powered vehicles have been banned in much of the area, which includes special chargers for electric-powered taxis.

The revamp project, which began last year, saved 35,000 liters of diesel fuel and 99 percent of greenhouse gas emissions compared with a conventional building site, Molmen said.

The project cost 64 million kroner (US$7.2 million), compared with an estimated 59 million kroner for a more traditional project, largely because electric-powered machines are scarce and cost more.

The “zero emissions” standard used was more stringent than a previous “fossil free” regulation in Oslo, which allowed the use of bio-diesel engines.

Norway generates almost all its electricity from hydropower.

Oslo leads the global “clean construction forum” for C40, whose members include big cities such as Beijing, New York, Tokyo, London and Paris.

In one C40 initiative last month, Oslo, Los Angeles, Mexico City and Budapest pledged to halve emissions from building sites by 2030.

The world’s construction industry accounts for more than 23 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, C40 said, so any cuts would help nations meet goals that they set in the 2015 Paris climate agreement to limit global warming.

Urban areas, especially in developing nations, are expanding at a breakneck pace.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of 2,500 scientists from more than 130 nations, said in its most recent assessment in 2014 that more than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas “and each week the global urban population increases by 1.3 million.”

That means adding urban areas the size of Islamabad, Harare, Dublin or Dallas, Texas, every week or so.

Priorities for green construction include upgrading existing buildings, rather than demolishing and rebuilding, improving designs and using better materials, such as recycled steel or low-emissions concrete, Sutherland said.

Oslo’s “zero emissions” policy seeks to cover all work within the perimeter of building sites, but a lack of specialized electric-powered machinery from suppliers means that the municipality sometimes grants exemptions and permits machines that are powered by fossil fuels.

For example, in its recent project, the municipality allowed a diesel-powered crane onto the site after failing to find an electric-powered one. The crane burned 16 liters of fuel. Also, asphalt was laid at the site by diesel-powered machines.

Among suppliers, Norwegian construction equipment maker Nasta refits excavators built by Hitachi with batteries, enabling them to operate for about four hours before losing power.

Norway, western Europe’s top oil exporter with a US$1 trillion sovereign wealth fund built on fossil-fuel wealth, paradoxically has some of the globe’s most progressive environmental policies.

For example, those have created the highest rate of electric vehicle (EV) ownership in the world. In the first 11 months of this year, 52 percent of all new vehicles sold in Norway were electric-powered, the Norwegian Road Federation said.

Oslo Vice Mayor Lan Marie Nguyen Berg of the Green Party said that cities can often be more ambitious than national governments because voters see the results of climate policies in their daily lives — more parks, cleaner air and cycling lanes.

Oslo was named Europe’s Green Capital for last year by the European Commission.

A problem is defining where the city’s authority ends and less-stringent national building codes — which allow fossil fuels — take over.

The city government only demands emission-free construction on sites that it controls, from roads to kindergardens.

“Four of five construction sites in Oslo are private or owned by the central government,” Berg said, adding that the city has written to the central government saying that it wants to demand that all construction sites in Oslo be zero-emission or fossil-free sites.

It has not yet received a reply.

Among other green changes in the city, the percentage of EVs passing toll points into Oslo has risen to 25 percent of all vehicles from 6 percent in 2015. Diesel vehicles pay a toll five times higher than EVs.

The municipality has built 55km of cycling roads since 2015, after only about 15km were added in the previous decade. More than 100 electric-powered buses operate in Oslo and the surrounding areas.

Those changes have stirred hostility from some vehicle drivers. A new single-issue party, campaigning to abolish road tolls, won nearly 6 percent of the vote in Oslo municipal elections last year.

Despite its greener policies, Oslo has fallen far short of a headline-grabbing goal in 2016 to halve the city’s greenhouse emissions by this year.

Under revised, less ambitious goals, Oslo estimates that emissions this year are to be 25 percent below 2009 levels, which were about 1.4 million tonnes.

A lack of government funding for carbon capture and storage — used to catch emissions and trap them permanently underground — at a municipal waste plant partly explains the shortfall, Berg said.

Revisions to historic emissions data have also played a role, she said.

“We will get there, but it will also be hard work,” Berg said, reaffirming a goal to cut emissions 95 percent by 2030, compared with levels in 2009.

(By Alister Doyle / Thomson Reuters Foundation, OSLO)

Norway has been voted as the best country in the world for quality of life according to United Nation’s latest Human Development Index (HDI) ranking.

Neither the UK or the US came in the top ten while Norway has remained in the top spot for several years.

The HDI ranks a country depending on its life expectancy, expected years of schooling, mean years of schooling as well as gross international income (GNI).

For Norway, its life expectancy is the highest of the 189 countries in the index, with an average of 82.4 years. Meanwhile, the UK’s was 81.3 years, and the US was 78.9.

A massive landslide just north of Oslo, Norway, on Wednesday left 10 people dead or unaccounted for, officials said.

The landslide wiped out more than a dozen buildings in Ask, the administrative center of Gjerdrum municipality about 15 miles northeast of Oslo.

Authorities fear that some victims may be trapped in buildings that collapsed in the slide.

Officials said the landslide, which happened before dawn Wednesday, was roughly 2,300 feet long and dozens of feet wide.

“Those who worked here last night were overwhelmed when they saw the scene after daylight appeared,” local operations manager Roger Pettersen said.

At least six people from Ask were hospitalized and hundreds more from the village were evacuated. Efforts to rescue others were partly stymied by the ongoing danger of the landslide.

“It hurts to see how the forces of nature have ravaged Gjerdrum,” Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg tweeted. “My thoughts go to all those affected by the landslide. Now it is important that the emergency services get their job done.”

About 300 people who were evacuated from Ask took shelter at a hotel in nearby Skjetten, its manager said.

Ask is home to some 5,000 people.

Norway’s king Harald said in a statement that the accident had “made a deep impression on me and my family.

“My thoughts are with everyone affected, the injured, those who lost their homes and are now living in fear and uncertainty of the full extent of the disaster,” he said.

The observations from 2019 show that the annual average CO2 concentration in the atmosphere that year was 411,9 parts per million (ppm) at Zeppelin in Svalbard. This is 2,6 ppm more than the year before.

At Birkenes in Agder, the concentration is 416,1 ppm, which is 0,9 ppm higher than the year before.

This is according to a report by NILU, the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, commissioned by the Norwegian Environment Agency.

Concentration of CO2 is increasing

“We have observed new CO2-records at Zeppelin every year since 2001”, says Cathrine Lund Myhre from NILU in a press release.

“As long as we keep emitting more CO2 than that which is stored, the concentration in the atmosphere will continue to increase”, she says.

If the world is to keep the temperature below the 2 degree limit, the concentration of CO2 needs to stabilize at a level below 400 ppm over time.

Increased concentration of methane

When it comes to methane, the annual average was measured to 1961,2 parts per billion (ppb) at Birkenes, and 1952,9 ppb at Zeppelin.

Compared to 2018-levels, this represents an increase at Zeppelin of 14,3 ppb, the highest annual increase ever registered. At Birkenes, the increase was also considerable, at 8,2 ppb.

According to Lund Myhre, the increase in the concetration of methane is still a mystery to the researchers.

“We don’t know for certain whether the increase is due to emissions of methane from human activity, or if it is because climate change has started processes in nature that release more methane into the atmosphere”, Lund Myhre says.