Norway is one of the world”s biggest producers of oil and gas – but it’s working to reduce the carbon footprint of fossil fuel industries.
The government announced this week that it will finance two-thirds of a large-scale project to capture and store carbon dioxide at sea.
Carbon capture has long been touted as a way to reduce CO2 emissions and curb global warming, but few commercial projects exist.
“Somebody has to start. So we are starting. And we are doing this because we want this technology to be developed so that more people, more countries, more companies can participate in it in the future,” Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg told Euronews.
“Especially these industries that cannot just cut CO2 emissions by shifting to a different type of energy, because their CO2 emissions come from the industrial process, not their use of energy,” she said, citing the cement industry, which accounts for around 7 per cent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.
Norway has called its new project “Longship” – after the vessels used by the Vikings – and it argues it could help the world reach the goals of the Paris climate agreement.
Watch more of Erna Solberg’s interview in the video player above.
