Norwegian oil refinery looks to lead on climate change

Norway's most polluting industrial site, the Mongstad oil refinery, is now looking to lead the way on fighting climate change.

Located on the country's west coast, the refinery spits out around 1.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year - a gas that is widely blamed for global warming.

But the Mongstad site will soon start roadtesting new technology known as Carbon Capture and Storage as its owners look to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted in its day-to-day operations.

"CO2 is a real threat but we believe it can be addressed with technology and different consumption patterns," said Jon Arnt Jacobsen, StatoilHydro executive vice president for manufacturing and marketing.

The refinery will first host a small-scale project pilot capable of capturing 100,000 tonnes annually from 2011. A few years later a full-scale facility which will remove most of the CO2 emitted by the refinery and the gas power plant being built here.

CCS technology is already deployed on a number of smaller factories. It uses solvents to separate the carbon dioxide produced from industrial fumes. It can then be transported by ship or pipeline and buried underground.

This method will contribute 20 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions cuts needed by 2050 to keep global warming at an acceptable level, according to the International Energy Agency.

"If you are going to burn coal, as indeed we have committed to doing in thousands of power plants around the world, we don't have any option apart from being able to capture carbon dioxide," said Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the UN climate panel that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

The G8 group of nations, the world's eight leading industrialised economies, have thrown their weight behind the idea of launching 20 large scale CCS projects by 2010.

StatoilHydro says the Mongstad project is leading the way in this field and it could help cut as much as four per cent of the Scandinavian country's greenhouse gas levels.

But the only illustration so far of this ambitious project is a flat, empty space where a carbon capturing unit is meant to stand.