Equinor and Captura Partner to Develop Ocean Carbon Removal

• The partnership will begin with an initial pilot plant in Norway that removes 1,000 tons of excess CO2 from the ocean annually. 

• The partners intend to test, mature and industrially scale the technology with the ambition to build large-scale, commercial plants.

Multinational energy company Equinor, and Direct Ocean Capture (DOC) company Captura, announced a partnership to develop industrial scale solutions to remove carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the ocean. The partnership will begin with an initial 1,000-ton-per-year pilot plant in Norway that can potentially serve as a launchpad to build large-scale, commercial plants in key regions around the world.

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The partners will form a joint team to collaborate on various configurations of Captura’s technology, with the goal to scale. The initial pilot plant will be located at Equinor’s Kårstø natural gas processing facility on the west coast of Norway. It will have a capture capacity of 1,000 metric tons of CO₂ annually. Feasibility and design of the Captura pilot has already commenced, with installation planned in Fall of 2024.

The pilot will be built onshore, drawing in seawater and removing a measurable stream of CO₂ from it. The captured CO₂ is planned for the commissioning of the Northern Lights facilities – the world’s first open-source CO₂ transport and storage infrastructure. This will test how DOC technology can deliver high-quality carbon removal credits that are reliable, safe, and certified. Such removals will be required to meet net zero targets by counteracting hard-to-decarbonize emissions. They can also be used to address emissions from the past.

“We believe that Captura has a promising and sustainable technology that could play a pivotal role in removing CO₂ from the carbon cycle,” said Morten Halleraker, senior vice president and head of New Business and Investments in Equinor. “We look forward to the collaboration with Captura by bringing in our industrial capabilities in order to de-risk and scale the deployment of the technology.”

The ocean is one of the world’s largest carbon sinks. It absorbs approximately 30 per cent of global CO₂ emissions as part of a natural equilibrium with the atmosphere. Captura’s DOC solution enhances this natural carbon removal capability, without increasing CO₂ levels in the ocean. It uses renewable energy and electrodialysis technology to capture CO₂ directly from seawater. The CO₂-depleted seawater then has the capacity to absorb the same quantity of CO₂ from the air that was originally removed.

The Kårstø plant will be the final system in Captura’s pilot and scale-up program and is designed to demonstrate the technology’s readiness for commercial deployment. It follows a one-ton-per-year system that commenced operations at Newport Beach, California in August 2022, and a 100-ton-per-year system that was recently installed at the Port of Los Angeles.

“This marks a pivotal moment in our company’s progress,” said Steve Oldham, Captura CEO. “This significant partnership with Equinor enhances our reach and capability exponentially and signifies a huge advancement in our efforts. We’re thrilled to be joining forces with the Equinor team to continue driving towards climate relevant carbon removal.”

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Captura’s process has been designed to be highly scalable and cost-effective, while at the same time creating minimal to zero impacts on the ocean ecosystem. It creates no by-products and doesn’t add anything new to the ocean – it simply removes excess CO₂ that the atmosphere then replaces.

Captura’s business model is to license its technology to deployment partners globally to enable rapid and widespread roll-out of its DOC technology. Equinor is an investor in Captura and its second plant deployment partner. Captura is also working with Deep Sky, a Montreal-based carbon removal project developer, to build DOC plants in Canada.

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