Hafslund Celsio announces the sale of 1.1 million tonnes of permanent carbon removals to Microsoft over a 10-year period. The agreement is a significant contribution to the commercial success of Hafslund Celsio’s full-scale CCS project in Oslo and is a recognition of the waste-to-energy sector as a credible provider of permanent carbon removals.

As part of the Norwegian Longship project, Hafslund Celsio is adding carbon capture to Norway’s largest waste-to-energy plant, making it one of the world’s first carbon capture projects in the waste management industry and part of a full value chain from capture to permanent storage. The plant will commence capturing CO₂ from 2029 and the captured CO₂ will be permanently stored by Northern Lights beneath the seabed on the Norwegian continental shelf. Waste-to-energy with carbon capture and storage is a three in one solution for handling pre-sorted residual waste with no alternative use: it solves society’s challenge of non-recyclable waste, provides carbon-free energy through utilization of the excess heat, and removes CO₂ from the atmosphere by capturing and permanently storing biogenic CO₂.

The agreement with Microsoft is a significant contribution to the commercial success of Hafslund Celsio’s carbon capture and storage project. Microsoft’s purchase is a strong recognition of our CCS project and highlights the crucial role of the waste-to-energy sector as a credible provider of permanent carbon removals,” says Martin S. Lundby, CEO, Hafslund Celsio.

“This contract marks an important milestone for waste-to-energy and demonstrates the carbon removal potential in this industry, which will help new projects establish a pathway towards a sound business case. Our CCS project will contribute to Microsoft meeting its carbon negativity goal while also supporting national Norwegian commitments under the Paris Agreement,” says Jannicke Gerner Bjerkås, Director CCS and Carbon Markets, Hafslund Celsio.

About Hafslund Celsio’s CCS project

Hafslund Celsio is Norway’s largest waste-to-energy and district heating company. The company is currently building a carbon capture facility at its waste-to-energy plant at Klemetsrud in Oslo. Operationally from 2029, the facility will capture about 350,000 tonnes of CO2 annually. equivalent to the annual emissions of 200,000 cars. About half of this CO2 will come from biogenic sources like unsorted food waste, with the remainder coming from fossil origin sources like non-recyclable plastic. Only the biogenic portion, as measured using a well-established radiocarbon analysis, will create carbon dioxide removals, while the fossil portion will reduce the City of Oslo’s annual emissions by 20 percent.

The carbon capture project is made possible through a public-private partnership between the Norwegian government, the City of Oslo and Hafslund Celsio. As part of Norway’s state-supported demonstration project, Longship, the project will contribute to establish a full value chain for the capture, transport and permanent storage of CO₂ in geological formations below the seabed in the North Sea. The value chain has already been expanded with commercial agreements with large emission points in Northern Europe.

The ambition of the project is to create a model that can serve as a roadmap for the 500 other waste-to-energy plants in Europe.