Waking up to CCS: an interview with Tor Martin Anfinnsen from Equinor

Tor Martin Anfinnsen is the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Trading at Equinor (formerly Statoil). Following on from their change of name earlier this year, Equinor have placed decarbonisation at the heart of their investment strategy, and the message they relay to consumers. We spoke to Tor Martin about the need for a wider uptake of carbon capture and storage technology, the risks of an all-electric, nuclear dependent approach, and the public’s perception of green gas a viable decarbonisation pathway.

“It’s very difficult to see how not spending money on CCS will lead to a viable solution for the decarbonisation of the energy portfolio in Europe.”

You’ve been on a panel talking about decarbonisation, an area a lot of people feel very passionately about. What direction do you see decarbonisation going in – what method do you see coming more to the fore?

So what we do see is that there’s a very forceful drive towards decarbonisation across the entire energy portfolio, both in terms of the outcome of COP 21, and also in terms of how this is now on the EU agenda and also on the national agenda of all governments in Europe. And as an industry and as a company we need to see ourselves as part of the solution, not only part of the problem. The decarbonisation from our point of view then will be focused on what we can do as an industry to contribute to the goals of limiting the temperature increase to one and a half degrees.

That is the goal, but how do you get there? How do you see the main way, the main mechanics of getting there?

So from our point of view as a company, what we have done for a long time is that we have reduced our CO2 footprint in our exploration and our production significantly. But the next major step will of course be to see if we can green gas as we say – i.e. to take the CO2 out of gas, which would then leave emissions free hydrogen.

And how do you see that happening – do you see more money being put into CCS? What’s the actual method that you see coming to the fore now?

So in Europe’s aim towards a decarbonised energy portfolio, there is no doubt that there will be a cost associated. In the full electric version and in alternative versions as well. So yes, decarbonisation of gas will come with a cost, but a much lower cost than the alternatives. What we aim to do now is to incite the sponsorship of governments for CCS projects. The Norwegian state is right now footing the bill for a large pilot project in Norway, and we already have in operation two CCS activities , where we inject more than one million tonnes of CO2 every year, and have done so for the last twenty years. So that’s the route we think all need to be heading down, and we all want to be at the vanguard of that.

I think there was a disagreement on your panel earlier with the Dutch Green Party’s Bas Eickhout, who was saying that actually there shouldn’t be any more money going to CCS and it was the wrong way of doing it.

It’s a very brave statement. What we do know is that if you become over-reliant on a single solution – for example the all-electric solution – that will come at a very, very high cost. Higher than a wider approach which also includes the decarbonisation of gas. So it’s very difficult to see how not spending money on CCS will lead to a viable solution for the decarbonisation of the energy portfolio in Europe.

You’ve mentioned one government spending money and putting more towards a project. Do you think more governments throughout Europe should actually be considering this, and actually there should be more of a policy drive towards it?

Absolutely. And although Norway is now in the lead on this, it won’t work unless there’s a wakeup call throughout Europe on CCS.

What’s going to bring that wakeup call then? The issue of CCS has been there either slightly under or slightly above the radar for a while now – what’s going to make it more front and centre? What’s going to change?

I think there is now a growing realisation that to go the all-electric route will firstly not be the full solution for all of the industry, and secondly which actually be a very vulnerable solution in terms of that you are then dependent on a single source of energy. And it will entail also a lot of nuclear power generation. Now we know that nuclear is not so popular in all countries, and should there be a single nuclear catastrophe, that would completely undermine this route towards decarbonisation. So I do believe that’s it’s sensible, and that there’s a growing realisation that we need a broader platform. As I’ve said before, a more holistic approach is needed, and there’s a growing realisation that that is so.

You’ve mentioned nuclear as not being acceptable, or a very difficult thing to convince the public of (I’m assuming you mean the public). Do you think investing more money into R&D around gas, do you think that’s more acceptable to the public, or do you think there still needs to be some work to be done to convince voters that that’s going to be the way forward?

I still think that natural gas has a good name, so to speak, amongst the public in most countries. I think in the Netherlands, where we are now, the sentiment is increasingly going against gas – but gas is widely used all across Europe, and it is a very popular fuel. Now if we can also assure the European population and consumers that gas can also be a viable energy source in a decarbonised world, I think there will also be strong support for investigating that route further.

Carbon is a global issue. Climate change is a global issue. There has to be some form of global solution to this. We’ve been talking a lot about Europe, but what do you see as being the way forward? What would be your ideal picture to paint now?

So the ideal picture would be a global accord on what is required to deliver on the 1.5 degrees target. Unfortunately that’s not where we are, and I think it’s probably naive to think we will ever be there. So I do think what we will see is a multi-speed approach to this. But there are very few countries in the World who say they are completely rejecting the global aim of the COP21 of limiting temperature increase.

Although some of those are very big, powerful countries.

Absolutely, absolutely. But even in the US, which has pulled away from the COP21, we actually do see that the market mechanisms are leading to a reduction in CO2 emissions by promoting gas, and that is pushing out coal.

Do you think then that actually, we keep talking about policies to tackle emissions, but actually maybe the market is going to do it.

I think it is going to a combination again. Companies are going to move in what they believe to be their best long term interests, and that is of course amongst other things to keep their customers happy. And companies will be swayed by customer opinion, in addition of course to government policies.