Carbon storage greatly reduces emissions - but the environmental movement is critical

In Värtahamnen in Stockholm, there is a facility that could become a kind of giant vacuum cleaner for carbon dioxide.

The energy company Stockholm Exergi has been testing the technology for a year and now wants to build a large-scale plant that will be able to capture 800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. 

- This corresponds to emissions from all car traffic in Stockholm for one year.

So it is a huge carbon sink we could create, says CEO Anders Egelrud. 

Stockholm Exergi hopes to be able to ship its carbon dioxide in cargo ships to Norway, where it will be pumped far below the seabed in the North Sea.

The facility called Northern Lights does not yet exist, but later this autumn, the Norwegian Parliament is expected to give the go-ahead for the financing of the construction. 

Many in the environmental movement are critical

According to the UN Climate Panel, the technology to capture and store carbon dioxide - called CCS and stands for Carbon Capture and Storage - is probably necessary to limit global warming to well below two degrees.

But many in the environmental movement are critical.

- It maintains an old system that continues to burn things that poison the atmosphere, which creates waste in the form of carbon dioxide, says Carl Schlyter, former environmentalist but now campaign leader at Greenpeace.

He would rather invest in other ways of capturing carbon dioxide, such as felling smaller forests and letting it do the work.

Climate activist Greta Thunberg is also critical of the CCS technology and has said that she doubts that it can be scaled up to the levels needed.

Who will pay for the technology?

But all indications are that the technology can be scaled up, says Filip Johnson, professor of energy technology at Chalmers.

He agrees with the environmental movement that CCS technology is not a universal solution to the problems, but believes that it is one of several technologies and measures needed. 

But the question is who will pay for the technology, which is still expensive.

Each captured tonne of carbon dioxide is estimated to cost approximately one thousand kronor.

Stockholm Exergi wants the state to step in. 

- I share the environmental movement's view that we must move away from fossil fuels.

But we can also state that it will not be enough and the time is quite short.

We will need to do both parts for the foreseeable future, says Anders Egelrud, CEO of Stockholm Exergi.