Could Norwegian bedrock become a future local store for CO₂, and “conjure” carbon away?

Is ancient rock an advantage?

In the international projects that have tested onshore CO₂ storage, the rocks are relatively young, around 15 to 100 million years old. In Norway, we have rocks that are at least thirty times older. Can the process work in Norway too? Will rock that is 500 million years old, with deep fractures, be better or worse suited to storage? Could the age of the rock affect the process, so that it takes longer from the moment the carbon is injected into the bedrock until it has turned to stone?

“Our hypothesis is that, despite its great age, the composition is favourable enough in many places that rock in Norway will be well suited to binding and storing carbon,” says Bohloli at NGI.

He points out, among other things, that the rock is heavily fractured. The fractures can make room for CO₂ and water deep underground.

From research to full-scale demonstration

The project, miniCCS, will run over three years. NGI is joined by research partners the University of Oslo, BI Norwegian Business School and the Geological Survey of Norway (NGU). The state enterprise Gassnova is funding the project together with the other industry partners Gassco, Hydro Aluminium, Equinor and 44.01.

miniCCS is the first phase of a planned three-stage path, from research to full-scale demonstration.

“In this first phase, we are investigating whether the concept is technically and economically feasible. If the results are promising, the next step is to test small-scale CO₂ injection in a pilot area. In the longer term, the goal is to demonstrate full-scale storage involving thousands of tonnes of CO₂,” says Bohloli.

From carbon to stone in just a few years

International projects in Australia, the United Arab Emirates, Iceland, Oman and the United States have already shown that reactive rock can react with CO₂ and bind the carbon permanently underground.

“Our experience from the United Arab Emirates and Oman is that the process works. The CO₂ is mineralised and forms new minerals. The carbon is thereby removed permanently,” says Kari-Lise Rørvik, country manager for 44.01 Norge AS.

She is keen to test whether Norwegian rock can deliver the same eye-opening result that 44.01 has documented in the Middle East, where the injected CO₂ has turned to stone.

“In the United Arab Emirates, the mineralisation process has taken place over a couple of years. Now we are eager to see whether Norway has bedrock that is suitable,” says Rørvik.

The research project will also examine how several natural storage mechanisms work together to keep CO₂ safely stored in the bedrock. After the CO₂ is injected deep underground, it is first held in place by dense rock that acts as a lid. The CO₂ can then become trapped in small pores and fractures in the reservoir rock. Over time, some of the CO₂ dissolves into the saline pore water that occurs naturally in the rock formation, before it gradually turns into stable minerals and becomes part of the rock itself. Together, these mechanisms help reduce the risk of CO₂ migrating back towards the surface.

Could local storage be cheaper?

Emission-cut requirements are becoming ever stricter, and in the future more businesses may face high costs linked to their CO₂ emissions. Most current plans for carbon capture and storage, CCS, involve large hubs, both onshore and offshore. While today’s CCS solutions can work well for large players, they are often less suitable for the many small and medium-sized companies with more modest emissions.

Could capturing and storing CO₂ locally, on land, be a solution?

“Hydro Aluminium emits a total of 1.7 million tonnes of CO₂ per year from our primary aluminium production in Norway. We are working on solutions for capturing CO₂ from our smelters, and at the same time we depend on a well-functioning value chain to handle the captured CO₂. We see this project as one of several options for storing CO₂,” says Nils Håvard Giskeødegård, programme manager for carbon transport and storage at Hydro Aluminium.

Equinor also sees the potential in the technology and believes that solutions for storing CO₂ on land, close to the emission source, have the potential to complement the company’s existing business in CO₂ transport and storage. The company notes that the project draws on Equinor’s strong expertise in ground conditions and the extensive experience it has built up with CCS.

“The project will investigate whether the technology can provide safe and permanent CO₂ storage, how large the potential is, and which framework conditions need to be in place to make scaling possible,” says Uma Ranganathan, head of strategy and early phase at Equinor.

What will it cost?

A crucial part of the project concerns economics and regulation. Today there are regulatory gaps for storing CO₂ on land, and there is considerable uncertainty about the cost picture for smaller inland emitters.

“We are looking into which regulations are already in place. Using this framework as a starting point, we are outlining different scenarios to shed light on what is missing to make land-based storage possible,” says Mehdi Sharifyazdi, associate professor at the Department of Accounting, Auditing and Business Economics at BI Norwegian Business School.

Based on a thorough review of the existing literature on the costs of onshore capture and storage, BI is now developing specific cost models for the project.

“The dominant mode of CO₂ transport in Norway today is by ship, which is well suited to long distances, emitters near the coast and offshore storage. miniCCS, by contrast, focuses on inland storage and inland emitters, so we have to consider entirely different land-based solutions,” Sharifyazdi explains.

While pipelines are technically best suited to large volumes, long pipeline runs are very challenging to build in Norway because of demanding terrain, geography and the need to take protected areas into account. Trucks can handle smaller quantities over short distances, but for companies a long way from the coast this quickly becomes expensive. Preliminary results from the analysis of the Trehørningen energy plant in Hamar show a cost of around NOK 2,000 per tonne for capture, transport and storage.

“Our preliminary analyses show that the existing offshore storage solution itself is the largest expense and accounts for almost half of the total cost, followed by transport costs at about 15 percent. For an inland company, logistics is therefore a significant barrier and may mean that CCS is not yet profitable for many emitters. That underlines the dominant effect logistics has on the economics of inland storage,” says Sharifyazdi.

To address these challenges, the project will study the techno-economic viability of establishing local inland storage sites located near clusters of several emitters.

“By creating such regional ‘CO₂ hubs’, several companies can share the infrastructure. This can deliver economies of scale that significantly reduce the cost per tonne,” Sharifyazdi explains.

A possible new chapter for CCS

In the summer of 2026, fieldwork and the mapping of the first areas will begin. Drilling and the extraction of rock samples are planned for 2027. Even though the geology behind CO₂ storage is well known, many questions remain.

“We still know too little about how CO₂ moves and is stored in Norwegian rock formations over time, how quickly it reacts with different rock types, and which processes help bind the carbon permanently in the bedrock. We will also investigate how much CO₂ can be stored, and whether such solutions could actually be cheaper than today’s centralised offshore storage,” says Bohloli.

If miniCCS succeeds, the implications could reach far beyond Norway.

“Local CO₂ storage in reactive rock has already been demonstrated internationally. Many countries have scattered emissions and limited access to large offshore storage. The knowledge from this project could therefore help make CO₂ management more accessible and economically feasible in other places too,” says Bohloli.