Brevik CCS

Brevik CCS refers to the CCS project located at the Brevik Cement Plant in Brevik, Norway. The CCS project is a part of the wider Longship programme, and supplies CO₂ to the Northern Lights transport and storage project. Brevik Cement Plant is a cement production facility, creating cement from limestone. The facility is owned by Heidelberg Materials.

CCS Project

Capture

Heidelberg Materials (then HeidelbergCement / Norcem) reports that early work on full-scale capture concepts at Brevik dates back to the mid-2000s. The Brevik site was subsequently included among candidate industrial facilities evaluated under Norway’s broader CCS maturation efforts, which progressed through feasibility and engineering phases during the 2010s.

Key milestones include:

• May 2013–2017: Norcem ran a CO₂ capture project programme at Brevik (reported in technical presentations as launched in 2013).
• December 2020: Norway’s Parliament approved investment in Longship, including a full-scale capture facility at Brevik.
• January 2021: Initial project implementation work began at Brevik following the parliamentary decision.
• December 2024: The capture facility reached mechanical completion (as reported by SLB Capturi).
• May 2025: The project recorded early ramp-up capture of the first 1,000 tonnes of CO₂, including liquefaction and temporary storage on-site.
• June 2025: The facility was officially opened; Heidelberg Materials reported first volumes of CO₂ captured, liquefied and stored, with initial Northern Lights shipments beginning during ramp-up.
• Summer 2025: The project stated it entered operation during summer 2025.
• August 2025: Reuters reported first CO₂ injection and storage for Northern Lights using CO₂ shipped from Brevik.

Brevik CCS captures CO₂ from the cement kiln flue gas using a post-combustion chemical solvent solvent process. The capture plant is supplied by SLB Capturi and described as based on its Big Catch™ concept, including CO₂ capture, conditioning, compression, intermediate storage, and ship loading facilities integrated with the operating cement plant.

SLB Capturi reports the design includes heat integration and use of recovered (waste) heat from the cement plant and compression system to support capture operations.

Transport

Main Article: Northern Lights

The Brevik CCS project supplies CO₂ to the Northern Lights joint venture for transport and storage. CO₂ is transported to the receiving terminal by liquid CO₂ ships

Storage

Main Article: Northern Lights

The Brevik CCS project transfers CO₂ to the Northern Lights joint venture for transport and storage. CO₂ is injected via subsea pipeline to an offshore reservoir.

Technology

The plant uses the SLB Capturi absorption technology to extract CO₂ from the flue gas of the cement kiln. The capture system treats approximately half of the flue gas stream.

Brevik CCS applies a solvent-based post-combustion capture liquid amine chemical solvent, a technology family that has been demonstrated in other industrial and power applications and adapted here to cement kiln flue gas conditions.

Waste Heat Integration

The capture facility at Brevik is limited by the available thermal energy to regenerate the new capture plant. During design, it was identified that no significant new steam facilities were to be constructed, hampering the regeneration of the amine solvent.

The decision was then made to make use of three primary heat energy sources

1. Flue Gas Waste Heat: Approximately XXX MW
2. New CO₂ Compressor Waste Heat: Approximately XXX MW
3. Small Electric Boiler: Approximately XXX MW

INSERT FURTHER DETAILS

Costs

Public cost reporting for Brevik CCS is commonly presented within the wider Longship full-chain context (capture + transport + storage), with values varying by reporting boundary (e.g., inclusion of multi-year operating support) and by update year.

• Longship (programme-level): Norway’s government stated in June 2025 that it supports Longship with approximately NOK 22 billion(XXX million USD) in grants for construction and operation, with total estimated cost (including ten years of operation) around NOK 34 billion(XXX million USD).
• Capture facility (Brevik-specific, media reporting): Reuters reported in January 2023 that the Brevik capture facility cost was about €400 million(XXX million USD), with Norway providing 85% of that cost (as reported in that article).
• Abatement cost (Brevik CCS): CCS Norway reports an abatement cost at KS-2 of NOK 842 per tonne CO₂(XXX USD per tonne CO₂) (2020 currency) for Brevik CCS, later updated to NOK 965 per tonne CO₂(XXX USD per tonne CO₂) (2020 currency), and expressed as approximately NOK 1,150 per tonne CO₂(XXX USD per tonne CO₂) in 2024 currency value terms.

Performance

Heidelberg Materials reports Brevik CCS is designed to capture around 400,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year, corresponding to roughly 50% of the Brevik plant’s emissions.

During commissioning and ramp-up:

• SLB Capturi reported capture, liquefaction and temporary on-site storage of the first 1,000 tonnes of CO₂ in May 2025.
• Heidelberg Materials reported that first volumes had been successfully captured, liquefied and temporarily stored, and that Northern Lights began initial shipments to Øygarden during June 2025 as ramp-up progressed.
• Reuters reported that the first CO₂ injected in Northern Lights operations was shipped from the Brevik cement factory and transported onward via pipeline from the Øygarden terminal.

Performance continues to be monitored in the initial years of deployment at the Brevik site.

Future Plans

Heidelberg Materials has described Brevik CCS as a blueprint for industrial decarbonisation in hard-to-abate sectors and indicated that ramp-up would enable customer supply of its carbon-captured cement product (marketed as "evoZero").

On the transport-and-storage side, Equinor states that Northern Lights Phase 1 includes capacity to inject and store up to 1.5 million tonnes CO₂/year, while Phase 2 (announced March 2025) targets an increase to a minimum of 5 million tonnes CO₂/year. Reuters also reported that Northern Lights partners committed additional investment toward a second phase expansion following the start of operations in 2025.

Reception

Brevik CCS has been highlighted by industry, government, and parts of the environmental NGO community as a major milestone for decarbonising cement and demonstrating an integrated CCS value chain:

• Heidelberg Materials framed the project as the world’s first industrial-scale CCS facility in the cement industry and a template for other industrial decarbonisation efforts.
• Norwegian authorities characterised Longship as a flagship climate and industrial initiative supported through substantial public grants for construction and operation.
• Norwegian environmental NGO Bellona described the start of full-scale CCS at Brevik as a major climate success and emphasised CCS as necessary for cutting emissions in hard-to-abate sectors.

At the same time, commentary on Brevik CCS and Longship has noted ongoing debates and concerns, including the cost of first-of-a-kind deployments, reliance on subsidies, and the importance of pursuing other decarbonisation levers alongside CCS:

• Reuters reported that Longship is heavily subsidised and quoted stakeholders indicating that wider rollout will require stronger commercial drivers and business cases over time.
• Analysts have discussed CCS as expensive and energy-intensive, and included perspectives warning against “all eggs in the CCS basket” in cement, pointing to complementary measures such as clinker substitution and demand reduction, though without addressing the inherent process emissions of cement production that would still remain.