Renewables giant Orsted wins first Danish carbon capture tender

Denmark-based Orsted expects to capture about 430,000 tpa of CO2 at the hub — 380,000 tonnes from the Asnaes power station and 150,000 tonnes from Avedore — which will be liquefied and sent by ships to the Northern Lights offshore CO2 storage facility in the Norwegian North Sea, expected to be completed next year.

The company said the Kalundborg hub could potentially provide shipping for CO2 produced by third-party emitters.

The project has support from Microsoft, which signed agreements in 2021 with Orsted and Aker Carbon Capture that will see the US technology company purchase 2.76 million tonnes of biogenic carbon removal over 10 years.

Commercial value

Orsted said the agreement “demonstrates the commercial value associated with carbon capture and removal.

“Given the nascent state of bioenergy-based CCS, Danish state subsidies and Microsoft’s

Denmark-based player secures 20-year deal for Kalundborg Hub that already has agreement with Microsoft contract were both necessary to make this project viable.”

Construction of the carbon capture units at Asnaes and Avedore is expected to begin in June this year.

CO2 from the Avedore power station will initially be carried by truck to the Asnaes facility “until a shared pipeline infrastructure across Zealand has been established”, Orsted said.

The company said the straw for the Avedore station is an agricultural by-product and the approximately 380,000 tonnes of wood chips burned to generate heat, electricity and process steam at Asnaes “come from sustainably managed production forests and consists of residues from trimming or crooked trees”, primarily in the Baltics.

“Capture and storage of biogenic CO2 is an important tool to mitigate climate change, and we look forward to initiating the work,” said Ole Thomsen, senior vice president and head of Orsted’s bioenergy business, adding that the company plans to have the CCS systems up and running “at the beginning of 2026”

The O2 – rated at 2 MW with twin 20-metre rotors sweeping more than 600 square metres of area below the surface – is connected via subsea cable to the local electricity grid and is helping power communities in Orkney in a sustainable way.

According to Orbital, it has the ability to generate enough electricity to meet demand for around 2,000 homes and offset approximately 2,200 tonnes of carbon dioxide production every year.

Commenting on the role played by the Intelligent Plant team, Steve Aitken added: “User-friendly dashboards enable quick, secure and easy access to relevant data streams from anywhere in the world. This enables Orbital's engineers to access data from the O2 turbine in real time without a requirement for manual intervention.

“The Industrial App Store also provides data to EMEC's performance test engineers, streamlining the analysis of the tidal turbine's performance as part of EMEC's accredited testing services.”