Stockholm Exergi plans to build Europe’s first large-scale negative emissions plant, a project supported by the EU Innovation Fund with a contribution of €180 million.
When complete, the BECCS plant hopes to capture 800,000 tonnes of biogenic carbon dioxide every year. It is expected to contribute to Sweden’s and Swedish and international companies’ goals of achieving net-zero emissions.
The EU Innovation Fund has chosen to support seven European projects that contribute in various ways to combating climate change with innovative technologies. Stockholm Exergi’s project to establish a large-scale plant for the separation and permanent storage of biogenic carbon dioxide is the only one of the seven projects that deploy BECCS technology.
“The support from the EU Innovation Fund is very important to us. It means that we can maintain our time plan for opening the full-scale plant. The support also represents a clear recognition of the project, a recognition that is particularly important in our work to be a catalyst for establishing a market for negative emissions,” says Stockholm Exergi CEO, Anders Egelrud.
Carbon capture is being developed as an addition to Stockholm Exergi’s already existing bio-cogeneration plant in Hjorthagen in Stockholm. At its research facility, which opened in 2019, Stockholm Exergi says that it has been able to demonstrate the extent of the project’s innovation with very high levels of energy efficiency and sustainability. Tests show that it has been possible to capture almost 90 per cent of the biogenic carbon dioxide at high energy efficiency levels, due to extensive heat recovery and reuse in Stockholm’s district heating network.
To secure financing for the BECCS facility, Stockholm Exergi believes that three main financing streams are needed, with support from the EU Innovation Fund being one of them. The other two sources are the Swedish state – through a so-called reverse auction, the details of which are due to be decided in 2022 – and income from the sale of so-called Carbon Removal Certificates (CRC) on the voluntary carbon market.
“We are working intensively on reaching full financing of the project and have several dialogues with companies that look to purchase CRC to compensate or neutralise their remaining emissions and become ‘net-zero’. Our goal is to enter into agreements with potential buyers ahead of our final investment decision in 2023,” says Egelrud.
