13.12.2023
One of the mainstays of CLIMIT
On Tuesday 5 December, Eva Halland attended her last Programme Board meeting. After 10 years, she is leaving the research programme where she left a clear direction and hope for Norway’s efforts in CO2 storage.
Research funding outwards
When we ask Eva Halland what she would like to look back on, she is quick to answer: “We have managed to get research results out into the world. We meet an enthusiastic Eva via the Teams screen. “There has been a huge development in CCS over the last ten years. It’s historic.
We have shown that carbon capture and storage (CCS) is possible, efficient, and safe. The CLIMIT programme has gone through several stages. In the beginning, the CLIMIT programme supported technology development and knowledge development in various academic environments. We worked on developing new technologies and reducing costs. More recently, the programme has looked more at the whole and how to build efficient value chains and the details in and around them. When the Longship project was launched in 2021, I thought, yes, this can be done with proven technology. Eva also points out that the Technology Centre Mongstad and international cooperation such as ACT and CETP have helped to strengthen both the Norwegian and international professional community in and around CCS, and CLIMIT has made a difference here, she emphasises.
CLIMIT support has been crucial for the CO2 storage community
“You could say that the Sleipner data has been a paradigm shift. The openness surrounding the data has been crucial to the development we have had both nationally and internationally. It has put Norway on the agenda. The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate‘s CO2 atlas was partly based on the experience of several CLIMIT-supported projects. With CLIMIT’s support, a large environment has also been developed within seismic methods that will be used to monitor CO2 storage facilities. “We can be sure that what we put in does not come out,” says Eva Halland.
If we are to have a long-term approach to CO2 storage, it is important that CLIMIT contributes with research so that we get a lot of good PhDs. It is the young people who will drive the technologies forward, and we need their curiosity and knowledge to create a sustainable future. We must not forget that.
Need for more knowledge
Eva Halland identifies four areas where more research is needed:
- Modelling the CO2 processes in a storage reservoir
What happens when CO2 is injected and stored? - Injection strategy, such as different variants of direct injection from ship to well.
What is most cost effective and safe? - Industry clusters
How to find an efficient way to deal with CO2 from Norwegian industrial clusters. - More cost-effective ways of dealing with CO2
How can CCS concepts create sustainable value chains and business models? How do society need to think about this?
Will see CO2 in the ground
Finally, when we ask Eva where the journey goes next. “I want to see things happen. Even though I will be doing a lot of this in a new way, I still will contribute. Using my experience and developing more efficient processes will be one of the areas I want to work on more. Because it doesn’t stop there!