International energy company Equinor is working alongside Breeze Ship Design to develop a CO2 carrier with direct offshore injection capabilities.
So far, the energy giant’s efforts have largely been focused on advancing technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions and transport them on to a processing plant, instead of injecting it directly underground for permanent storage.
This groundbreaking partnership with Norwegian design firm Breeze Ship Design will allow the company to skip the step of taking the CO2 to a processing plant and directly inject it from the carrier ship.
“Equinor believes that the direct injection concept is an interesting way to implement ship-based transport and injection solutions for CO2. We need to make sure the technical risks are reduced to an acceptable level and that the business case is sound,” said Elisabeth Birkeland, VP for Carbon capture and storage solutions at Equinor.
On its end, Breeze Ship Design is focused primarily on environmental compliance with both existing and future regulations and has reported that, thus far, the key design factors include the safe loading and transport of CO2, as well as its injection with the least amount of emissions possible.
Breeze Ship Design has shared that the new project is very much in line with the company’s strategy to propel the energy transition and design vessels for low-carbon shipping.
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The future CO2 carrier with injection capabilities will be able to carry roughly 40,000 tons of carbon dioxide and is expected to be operational in Northern Europe and Scandinavia.
It is planned to transport captured CO2 emissions from different industrial sites to storage locations in the North Sea.
Equinor is also involved in another carbon capture effort in the North Sea, known as the Northern Lights CCS project, which also recently marked an important CO2 carrier milestone.
A Chinese shipbuilding company has just started construction on two liquefied CO2 carriers that will participate in the transportation of CO2 from industrial emitters in Europe to a processing plant in Norway before further subsurface injection.
Read more: Chinese Shipbuilder To Provide Liquefied CO2 Carriers For Northern Lights
