The Vikings once brought death and destruction to the coasts of Europe with their longships.

Now they are to transport hope for the countries south of Norway - and above all for Germany. With the "Langskip" project, the Norwegians want to collect the greenhouse gas CO2 from the continent and unload it by ship on their coasts. From there, it is to be pumped by pipeline to the North Sea and then injected 2500 meters below the seabed into the sandstone - where it will remain forever. To do this, the CO2 must first be captured from blast furnaces or chemical plants, for example. This CCS technology (carbon capture and storage) has been so controversial in Germany that it has been banned to date. Economics Minister Robert Habeck wants to change this and is therefore traveling through snowy Norway to Brevik. There, as part of "Langskip", a cement plant is to capture its CO2 on an industrial scale for the first time in the world.

The German company HeidelbergMaterials developed the idea of implementing such a project on the coast of Norway with its subsidiary Norcem. Ten years ago, all attempts by the German government to make such plants possible in Germany, at least for test purposes, had failed. Citizens' initiatives and environmental associations were up in arms and did not trust the technology, which also hindered the climate-friendly transformation of society. At the forefront of the resistance: the Greens.

This is another reason why Habeck stands in the snow in Brevik and has the project explained to him. In two years, the plant should be able to absorb almost all of its CO2 emissions. A technically complicated and expensive process. However, Habeck argues that if Germany wants to be climate-neutral by 2045 and retain its industry, there is no way around CCS. "We have wasted so much time that we have to make this decision clearly: We'll take what's available." And: "Better to put CO2 into the ground than into the atmosphere."

RAW MATERIALS INDUSTRY WITH BIGGEST PROBLEM IN CLIMATE PROTECTION

While almost everything can be converted to renewable energy in the future when it comes to electricity supply or transportation, this is not possible in industry. The steel and chemical industries may one day be able to work largely with hydrogen produced with the help of wind or solar energy. However, the cement industry still has a special role to play in the basic materials industry; it will not be possible to operate entirely without fossil fuels and therefore CO2. The Brevik project plans to capture around half of the CO2, approximately 400,000 tons per year. Further gas could be directly bound again forever in building materials, for example.

That is expensive. "Above all, the investment in the new plant technology is very high," explains a HeidelbergMaterials spokesperson. "For the capture of CO2 in the cement plant alone, it is more than double that of a comparable conventional plant." For Brevik alone, the costs amount to 400 million euros. 85 percent of this will be covered by the Norwegian state. The further development of storage technology is also being helped with a similar share and billions in subsidies. Norway not only wants to become more climate-friendly itself. It also wants to become an exporter of technology. And above all, it wants to be paid well for storing CO2 with "Langskip" later on.

Habeck, for his part, wants to make CCS technology legally possible in Germany this year. Despite reservations not only from organizations such as Greenpeace but also from his party colleague Steffi Lemke's environment ministry. He is relying on the fact that numerous studies have shown that the technology is safe, that no CO2 escapes from the seabed and that it is not a pretext for allowing coal-fired power plants with CCS to continue operating. And he sees a role model here in the north: "Norway gives me a certain confidence and perspective that this can be a safe, usable technology."

(Contributor: Ilona Wissenbach; edited by Kerstin Dörr If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets).)

- by Markus Wacket