Isra-Mart srl:NEWS ANALYSIS: Finland abandons development of carbon capture and storage technologies

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EUR 500 million and several years’ worth of work.
This is what was recently thrown out, when the energy company Fortum announced that it would be abandoning its plans to proceed with testing of carbon dioxide capture and storage at its Meri-Pori power plant.
Meri-Pori was the only advanced project dealing with the development of a CO2 capture system in Finland.

The project’s burial confirms the message that critics have been repeating for some time now: the development of technologies to capture and store carbon dioxide may be promising, but without substantial government support or notably higher prices for emission rights its commercial realisation will continue to be on very shaky ground.

Carbon capture and storage, also known as CCS, is a method on which high hopes have been pinned in the efforts to combat climate change.
With the help of CCS, the carbon dioxide that is to blame for the warming of the atmosphere can be separated from the emissions of factories and fossil fuel power plants.
Once captured, the CO2 can be stored deep in the crust of the earth instead of allowing it to enter the atmosphere.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) for one has estimated that bringing the harmful climate change to a stop will be very difficult indeed if some competent CCS methods are not introduced in the near future.

According to the Fortum announcement, the company is now backing away from the Meri-Pori project because of an “updated strategy”.
The company wants to focus on hydroelectric and nuclear power instead – in other words on tried and tested technologies.
Teollisuuden Voima (TVO), Fortum’s partner in the undertaking, pulled out already earlier this autumn.
In practice, pulling the plug on the project is largely a case of CCS quite simply being considered too costly with respect to all the related uncertainty factors.
There were no promises in Finland of domestic public funding for the effort.

The cost estimate for the Meri-Pori installation was EUR 500 million.
In the best case scenario, around half of the sum could have been received in the form of EU support.
The European Union is about to begin a large support and testing project for new energy technologies.
Fortum had plans to take part in the programme.
In addition, the Finnish government would have been expected to chip in to the tune of at least EUR 100 million, in order for the Meri-Pori project to be realised.
Mikko Iso-Tryykäri, who was in charge of the project at Fortum, keeps the precise figures to himself.
He simply states that in the countries where CCS projects are moving ahead on track, they have been almost completely publicly-funded.
This is the case for example in Great Britain, where a special tax has been planned to support CCS projects.
Public funding has been promised to four different CCS operators.

In Finland the Centre Party-led government has been eager to save its extra ammunition first and foremost for wood-based energies as well as wind power.
For bio refineries, an approximately EUR 100 million stake from the public purse was promised in the spring.
“Presumably the Meri-Pori undertaking would have require such heavy investments from the state’s part that finding that kind of money would have proved, if not impossible, at least very difficult”, says the government’s climate expert, MP Oras Tynkkynen (Green).

So what is the harm of the Meri-Pori project’s being thrown out?
Many would say that there is none: the government has estimated that Finland will be able to reach its climate change targets even without the early introduction of CCS.
The environmental organisations, on the other hand, only offer praise if the support efforts and companies’ investments are directed towards those low-emission technologies that have already been demonstrated to work.

Still, the subject could also be approached from a different angle.
For example China is currently building coal power plants at such a rate that sooner or later some kind of carbon capture and storage technology will be needed there.
There is a lot of interest towards CCS.
If the technology becomes a worldwide hit, its markets will be enormous.
If and when that happens, the benefits from the growth spurt will be reaped by companies in those countries where the field’s strong knowhow was developed early.
Burying the Meri-Pori project means at least that Finland will now not be in the vanguard of this new and potentially lucrative technology.