Cement Is a Big Polluter. A Plant in Norway Hopes to Clean It Up
By Stanley Reed, The New York Times.
Excerpt: As Mr. Houg toured the site, workers were fine-tuning equipment that held chemicals designed to absorb vast quantities of the carbon dioxide emitted through cement production. More than half a ton of the gas arises from every ton of cement that a plant like this turns out. ...Early next year, carbon dioxide from the facility will be chilled to a liquid, loaded onto ships and carried to a terminal near the city of Bergen, farther up the Norwegian coast. From there, it will be pumped about 70 miles offshore into rocks a mile and a half below the bottom of the North Sea. ...It helps that the Norwegian government is underwriting 85 percent of the up to 400-million-euro cost of what will be the first large, commercial-scale effort to strip carbon dioxide from cement and bury it. ...Cement production, which accounts for nearly 7 percent of energy-related emissions, presents one of the knottiest problems for emissions reduction....