9. International Collaboration

9.1 Increased impact from International Research Collaboration

The CLIMIT program has for many years allocated around a quarter of available funds to international joint calls. This is because international research collaboration can more easily create an international market for CO₂ Capture and Storage (CCS).

9.1.1 Collaboration Coordinated by the Research Council of Norway

The Research Council of Norway has been the coordinator for the platform Accelerating CCS Technologies (ACT), where 16 countries collaborated on four joint calls from 2016 to 2022. ACT is an ERA-NET Cofund, which means a collaboration supported by the European Commission through the EU’s research and innovation framework program, Horizon Europe. ACT has awarded a total of 108 million euros in support to 39 projects. Norwegian partners have participated in 26 of these projects, with total support to Norwegian partners through CLIMIT amounting to 23 million euros.

Countries and regions participating in ACT are shown in the map below:

Figure 1: ACT member countries: Alberta-province in Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, the Nordic countries, Romania, Spani, Switzerland, Turky, UK and USA (Illustration: ACT)

9.1.2 ACT Continues in CETP

ACT will continue as an integrated part of the Clean Energy Transition Partnership (CETP). This is a larger collaboration for research and innovation across the entire energy sector. CO₂ Capture, transport, utilization, and storage (CCUS) is one of many fields included in the collaboration. More than 50 funding agencies from 33 countries participate in CETP.

CETP has annual joint calls, with the first launched in 2022. The following year, 45 new projects started, including 10 projects within CCUS, of which six have Norwegian partners. CETP’s second call resulted in an additional 62 new projects starting in December 2024, including nine new projects within CO2 management, of which four have Norwegian partners.

CETP will have deadlines for submitting applications every November in the coming years. CLIMIT typically allocates a budget of 30-40 million NOK to CETP’s calls. These funds are intended for Norwegian partners within CCS projects. In addition, the Research Council of Norway contributes funds to Norwegian applicants in other fields such as renewable energy and hydrogen.

Countries participating in CETP is shown in the map below:

Figure 2. CETP member countries are marked. In addition to many European countries, there are several other members, including USA, Canada, India, Israel, South and Tunisia. (Illustrasjon: CETP)

9.2 International Collaboration Yields Results

The international research platform Accelerating CCS Technologies (ACT) has over the years supported 39 projects within CCUS. This has helped close knowledge gaps and establish well-functioning collaboration on research, development, and industrialization across borders.

The relationships created between academia and industry have made important contributions to disseminating knowledge beyond the scientific community. The projects have delivered results highly relevant for the development and construction of industrial-scale CCS.

The results from international collaboration are documented in the article “ACT: How International Collaboration Fosters CCUS Research and Innovation“, which was presented at the GHGT16 conference in 2022. The main findings are summarized below.

9.2.1 Larger Grants Due to Close Collaboration

Through ACT, researchers have been able to work much more closely together at an international level. ACT has brought together participants from several countries, where the flow of knowledge, competence, and data across borders has been much more efficient than would have been possible through national calls alone.

Some countries have allocated fresh money to ACT calls, while others have redirected national funds to these calls. Consequently, some countries have ended up with less funding for national calls within CCS. However, overall, ACT has resulted in higher budgets for research and innovation within CCS than would have been the case without ACT. The significant contribution from the European Commission to the first ACT call would likely have been directed to other fields if the ACT platform had not been established.

It is also believed that several countries have more comprehensive research and innovation within CCS than would have been the case without ACT.

International cooperation can also lead to faster investments in up-scaling with a lower cost per ton of CO₂ that is captured. However, this is difficult to quantify.

9.3 High Industrial Participation Has Been a Priority

Applications with high industrial participation and relevance have been prioritized. The calls have also requested applications that align with the EU’s Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET-Plan) and Mission Innovation’s research priorities within CCS.

ACT projects have received funding from several countries, distributing the financial burden across multiple funding agencies. Furthermore, ACT has a positive structural effect on international research and innovation through the coordination of research goals and activities across borders.

9.3.1 Challenging Administration

ACT has resulted in more administration because each country has its own procedures for managing calls for applications. Setting up international calls that respect national procedures in all participating countries has required significant administrative resources from all funding agencies. Effective administration of the calls has only been possible through a pragmatic attitude from all participating countries, which has been essential for efficient and coordinated application processing.

Projects funded through ACT have been asked to establish consortium agreements signed by all project partners. This has been challenging for several projects due to significant variations in legal procedures and cultures across countries. Projects with only European partners have often handled this relatively smoothly by building their consortium agreements on templates from the EU’s framework programs, Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe. However, such templates do not always work for projects with partners outside Europe. Researchers have challenged the ACT consortium to establish a template for consortium agreements that fits all partners in all countries, but this has not been possible to achieve.

9.3.2 Annual Workshops

ACT has organized annual workshops focused on knowledge sharing. This has created an efficient and fruitful flow of information and new knowledge. The workshops have provided excellent networking opportunities between projects and have connected ACT projects with key stakeholders outside ACT. Projects funded by ACT have been encouraged to emphasize dissemination, making results widely available to international researchers, industrial stakeholders, and decision-makers interested in CCUS.

International collaboration can be of greater importance for CCS than other fields because CO₂ point sources and potential utilization or storage sites are unevenly distributed across countries. Some countries can find it beneficial to store their CO₂ in other countries. Collaboration already in the research phase increases the likelihood of transnational implementation of the developed strategies and technologies.

The ACT collaboration on joint calls has resulted in larger projects with a higher focus on industrial needs than is usual through national calls. This gives ACT a particularly large potential for the spread of results.

9.3.3 Results with High Relevance for Large-Scale Projects

Research and innovation projects supported by ACT have delivered results highly relevant for industrial large-scale projects, such as Longship in Norway, Porthos in the Netherlands, and the UK’s large-scale CCS initiative.

For example, the Pre-ACT project has delivered new knowledge on how to handle pressure build-up during CO₂ injection. Industrial stakeholders have pointed out that this knowledge is of great value for the Northern Lights CO₂ storage project. Another example is the ACORN project, which led to a CO₂ storage license in the UK. A third example is the ALIGN CCUS project, which generated a blueprint for scaling up CCUS to industrial scale.

9.4 Strong Focus on Knowledge Sharing

The ACT collaboration has been a fruitful platform for knowledge sharing, not only during the annual workshops organized by the consortium but also in activities organized by the projects themselves. Several ACT-funded projects have worked closely together, sharing knowledge, competence, and results, and reaching out to relevant stakeholders in joint workshops. Additionally, knowledge sharing is ensured by continuously updating the ACT website with information and results from ACT projects.

The first CETP projects started at the turn of the year 2023-24 and have so far delivered interesting results. Everything indicates that CETP projects will continue where ACT left off and deliver results of great importance for the development and deployment of large-scale CCS.

9.5 Projects

ACT and CETP projects within CO₂ management are listed below.

Table 1. Projects funded under the first ACT Call for proposals. Project period 2017-2020. See ACT web site for details

Project	Coordinator	Objectives / Achievements	CLIMIT project number
3D-CAPS	TNO	Reduced the size of the equipment needed to remove and recover CO₂ from industrial gases, using two promising new adsorption-based technologies with an inherently small energy footprint. The required adsorbents for these technologies were prepared using the latest innovations in additive manufacturing, commonly known as 3D-printing.	276322
ACT ACORN	Pale Blue Dot Energy	Produced a technical development plan for a full-chain CCS hub that would capture CO₂ emissions from the St Fergus Gas Terminal in Northeast Scotland and store the CO₂ under the North Sea. The project paved way for obtaining a storage license.	276630
ALIGN-CCUS	TNO	Covered the whole CCUS chain, including public perception and the benefits of clusters. The outcome was a blueprint of how to accelerate the transition of current industry and power sectors into a future of continued economic activity and low-carbon emissions, in which CCUS plays an essential role.	617178
ECOBASE	NORCE	Investigated the potential of commercially deploying CCUS by screening available data, developing roadmaps and exploring the potential CO₂ Enhanced Oil Recovery (CO₂-EOR) pilots in South-East Europe. Case studies in Romania and Turkey provided insight into prospective revenue streams and business models	276320
ELEGANCY	SINTEF Energy	Addressed fast-tracking the decarbonization of Europe’s energy system via hydrogen and CCS. Technological, economic, and legal barriers were studied, and five national case studies adapted to the national conditions in Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, and the UK	617179
DETECT	Shell	Generated guidelines and technologies for determining the risk of CO2 leakage along fractures across the primary caprock using an integrated monitoring and hydro-mechanical-chemical modelling approach	No Norwegian partners
GASTECH	SINTEF	Performed techno-economic studies for power production schemes from solids fuels integrating Gas Switching Combustion (GSC) and Gas Switching Oxygen Production (GSOP). A key result is the design of a flexible power and hydrogen production plant	276321
Pre-ACT	SINTEF Industry	Developed methodologies for monitoring and assessment of conformance for CO₂ storage sites at all scales, from pilot to full-scale. The monitoring methods are universally applicable, and not limited by scale or geology.	274199

Table 2. Projects funded under the second ACT Call for proposals. Project period 2019-2022. See ACT web site for details.

Project	Coordinator	Objectives / Achievements	CLIMIT project number
AC2OCEM	University of Stuttgart	Conducts pilot-scale experiments and analytical studies to advance key components of oxyfuel cement plants with the aim of reducing the time to market of the oxyfuel technology in the cement sector.	305080
ACTOM	University of Bergen	Aims at advancing offshore monitoring of stored CO₂ by building a unique web-based toolkit designed to optimize monitoring programs for offshore geological storage sites.	305202
ANICA	TU Darmstad	The ambition to develop a novel indirectly heated carbonate looping process for lowering the energy penalty and CO₂ avoidance costs for CO₂ capture from lime and cement plants.	No Norwegian partners
DIGIMON	NORCE	Develop and demonstrate an affordable, flexible, and intelligent digital monitoring early-warning system for monitoring any CO₂ storage reservoir and subsurface barrier system.	619153
FUNMIN	University of London	Optimize the process of CO₂ mineralization into Magnesite (MgCO3) by combining simulation and experimental techniques to identify the key factors for catalysing the formation of MgCO3 under mild, non-hazardous, and non-toxic conditions.	No Norwegian partners
LAUNCH	TNO	Improve CO₂ capture technologies by establishing a faster and more cost-effective method to predict and control the degradation of next generation solvents	619154
MemCCSea	CERTH	Develops hyper compact membrane systems for cost-effective and flexible operation of post-combustion CO₂ capture at ships.	305048
NEWEST-CCUS	University of Edinburgh	CCUS deployment in the Waste-to-Energy sector is studied. Guidelines are developed for the selection of robust, fuel flexible technologies resistant to Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) impurities.	305062
PrISMa	Heriot-Watt University	Will integrate molecular science and process engineering to develop a technology platform that allows for customized carbon capture solutions to optimal separation for a range of different CO₂ sources and CO₂ use and storage options.	Parallel Norwegian project: 305042
REX-CO2	TNO	Develop a procedure and tools for evaluating the re-use potential of existing hydrocarbon wells for CO₂ storage to help stakeholders make informed decisions on the potential of certain wells or fields for CO₂ storage	305342
SENSE	NGI	Will utilise new technologies and optimized data processing to develop reliable and cost-efficient monitoring programs for stored CO₂ based on ground movement detection combined with geomechanical modelling and inversion techniques	619155
SUCCEED	Imperial College London	Demonstrate at pilot scale the feasibility of utilising produced CO₂ for re-injection in a geothermal field to maintain and enhance reservoir pressure and improve performance, while also storing the produced CO₂ that would typically be vent to the atmosphere under standard geothermal operations	No Norwegian partners

Table 3. Projects funded under the third ACT Call for proposals. Project period 2021-2024. See ACT web site for details.

Project	Coordinator	Objectives / Achievements	CLIMIT project number
ABSALT	University of Nottingham	Demonstrate that basic silica-polyethylenimine (PEI) in solids adsorption looping technology (SALT) can achieve low CO₂ capture cost.	No Norwegian partners
ACTION	Imperial College London	Research is directed towards how to obtain efficient regional infrastructure, connecting CO₂ sources with CO₂ geological storage and non-geological utilisation options	No Norwegian partners
CEMENTEGRITY	IFE	Will address the chemical, thermal and mechanical mechanisms that may damage wellbore integrity during CO₂-injection and -storage.	332458
CoCaCO2La	TWI Ltd	Develop a flexible and economically viable electrolyser to convert CO₂ to ethylene, using nano-structured copper catalyst.	No Norwegian partners
CooCE	University of Padova	Harnessing the potential of biological CO₂ capture for circular economy by producing chemicals, fuels and materials using renewable resources such as biomass instead of fossil materials, allowing a drastic reduction of the GHG emissions.	No Norwegian partners
CREATE	Carbonova Corp.	Technological advancement of a circular economy model in a cement plant, i.e., capture and conversion of CO₂ and waste heat from a cement plant into solid additives for composites in building and transportation.	No Norwegian partners
ENSURE	NORSAR	Progress micro-seismic monitoring technologies to become a robust, cost-effective, and publicly accepted tool for seal integrity verification for large-scale CO₂ sequestration.	329865
EverLoNG	TNO	Accelerate the implementation of the Ship-Based Carbon Capture (SBCC) technology by demonstrating it on board of LNG-fuelled ships.	332409
LOUISE	TU Darmstad	Prepare for pre-commercial demonstration of Chemical Looping Combustion (CLC) of solid waste-derived fuels, i.e., an innovative process for poly-generation of power, heat, and chemicals from waste (waste-to-energy, WtE) providing a concentrated stream of CO₂ that is ready for transport and storage or utilization.	329886
NEXTCCUS	Iritaly Trading Company S.R.L	Develop sustainable energy technology with negative carbon footprint by producing methanol from CO₂ capture, direct conversion and storage as liquid fuel using a sustainable electrochemical system.	No Norwegian partners
RETURN	SINTEF Industry	Enable safe and cost-efficient use of depleted reservoirs as long-term storage sites for CO₂ by an in-depth understanding of the subsurface processes occurring during CO₂ injection.	329837
SCOPE	SINTEF	Improve the understanding of amine-based CO₂ capture by addressing and closing critical knowledge gaps along the entire flow path for the exhaust gas.	332511
SHARP	NGI	Quantify and reduce CO₂ storage risks by a more accurate estimation of rock stress states and related rock failure scenarios. The project will contribute to ensure safe storage of CO₂ at the gigaton per year scale.	621260

Table 4. Projects funded under the fourth ACT Call for proposals. Project period 2022-2025/26. See ACT web site for details.

Project	Coordinator	Objectives / Achievements	CLIMIT project number
3D PRINTING	Indian Institute of Science	Maximizing carbon sequestration in cement-based constructions through material innovation and additive manufacturing. Adopt 3D printing technology to overcome the challenge of maximizing CO2 diffusion into the structure and optimizing material chemistry to maximize carbon sequestration without affecting the strength and durability of the concrete.	No Norwegian partners
AMIGO	Peyto	The Amigo project will evaluate technical and regulatory aspects of large-scale CO2 storage in a pressure-depleted gas carbonate reservoir operated.	No Norwegian partners
MACE	NREL	Direct Carbon Conversion to Chemically Enhance Supplementary Cementitious Materials for Building Construction	No Norwegian partners
MeDORA	SINTEF	Post combustion CO2 capture, including a membrane contactor to remove dissolved O2 from the amine-based solvent, limiting degradation and prolonging solvent lifetime.	340946
PERBAS	GEOMAR	Permanent sequestration of gigatons of CO2 in continental margin basalt deposits	340832
SPARSE	SINTEF	Develop a low-cost monitoring system to assure containment and conformance, consisting of node-based multi-physics geophysical monitoring and automatic conformance evaluation. Through full integration and optimization of all components during the design process the aim is to ensure reliable conformance monitoring, practical technical solutions, and low cost for installation, operation, and maintenance.	340953

Table 5. Projects funded under the CETP Joint Call 2022. Project period 2023-2026. See CETP website for details.

Project	Coordinator	Objectives	CLIMIT project number
ACLOUD	Chalmers	Advancing chemical-looping combustion of domestic fuels	No Norwegian partners
AMbCS	Aqualung Carbon Capture	Develop and demonstrate an advanced membrane-based CCUS solution for shipping industry using novel membranes and innovative processes at TRL6 to address the challenges and thereby fast track CCUS deployment in shipping industry by 2030	348564
BUCK$$$	University Roma La Sapienza	Optimize CO2-mineralisation and optimize relevant sourcing and use of the added-value products generated; all assisted by digitization and computational modelling of the entire process.	No Norwegian partners
CO2RR	South Pole	Establish the first commercial international multi-modal CO2 transport value chain in the Europe. The project will demonstrate the feasibility and viability of creating such value chains for all parties and establish framework agreements for all emitters to have an easy access to transport and storage services.	No CLIMIT funding
CTS	NORCE	CO2 Transport and Storage directly from a ship: flexible and cost-effective solutions for European offshore storage.	347649
DRIVE	TNO	Provide guidance on how to cost-effectively lower the residual emissions associated with CO2 capture, demonstrating innovative technology pathways to reach improved CO2 reduction. Minimize the costs of achieving carbon neutral or carbon negative operations at specific point sources	No Norwegian partners
GreenSmith	TNO	Demonstrates the recovery of both H2 and Syngas with CO2 capture from the main residual steel gases of all steelmaking routes.	No Norwegian partners
LEGACY	SINTEF	Field studies for de-risking existing wells and CCS site geology. Develop tools and technologies for screening, modelling, monitoring, and mitigation of well integrity issues and leakage, thereby enabling safe and cost-efficient, large-scale storage of CO2 in areas with legacy wells	347682
RamonCO	NORCE	Risk-based framework for assessing CO2 storage monitoring. Mature and apply modelling/inversion framework at full field scale and quantify societal challenges and requirements, as well as cost, to draw risk governance strategies for industry and regulators and incorporate them in decision support tools	350706
SENSATION	SINTEF	Sorbent Assisted Carbon Capture Tailored for Low CO2 Concentrations from Air and Low Industrial CO2 Emissions	349693

Publication: CLIMIT`s Project Portfolio