Jan 13 2009
Europe is to invest NOK 730 million in joint European laboratories for CO2 capture and storage - and will use almost a third of the total in Norway. NTNU and SINTEF will coordinate the international effort, which will involve building five CO2 laboratories in Trondheim.
A cooperative body, whose members will be appointed by the ministers for research in the nations of the EU and the EEA, has decided that Europe will make a joint effort to build new CO2 laboratories.
The decision allocates a key role in this process to Norway:
Norway will be the host country for the effort, and five of the total of 15 joint laboratories will be built in this country, at a cost of NOK 210 million.
This sum, almost a quarter of a billion kroner, will go to laboratories that will be created at NTNU/SINTEF in Trondheim.
International cost-sharing
Since Norway is the host nation, the Norwegian authorities are expected to contribute between 30 and 50 percent of the total funding of NOK 720 million.
The effort will take the form of a shared-cost project that will involve the ministries of research of nine European countries.
“The laboratories will play a decisive role in ensuring that the world will be able to put into operation efficient technology for the capture, transportation and storage of CO2 from coal- and gas-fuelled power stations and industrial plants,” says Professor Arne Bredesen of NTNU, and Nils A. Røkke, SINTEF’s director of climate research.
Joint effort
Some types of laboratory are so expensive that it would not make sense to build one in each individual country.
The cooperative body ESFRI (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures) therefore decides which laboratories it would be rational for European to set up as joint ventures.
The application that has now led ESFRI to go in for joint European laboratories for the development of CO2 capture and storage technology was led by NTNU and SINTEF.
Nine countries in cooperation
Nine countries supported the application, led by Norway as the host nation.
The go-ahead from ESFRI means that NTNU and SINTEF will coordinate the development of CO2laboratories at a total cost of €81 million (NOK 730 million) in Norway, Germany, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Hungary. Poland, Croatia and Denmark.
Trondheim laboratories will cost a quarter of a million kroner