Every day, Stockholm Exergi supplies Stockholm with electricity and heat from our biofuel plant in Värtahamnen. We are also planning to build a new facility that will capture more carbon dioxide than Stockholm’s road traffic emits every year. Meet the person who will bring this unique project ashore. According to him, it is fun, difficult and important at the same time.
– It’s a challenging and absolutely necessary job. If we succeed, and if we do it quickly, it will be of great importance for Stockholm, Sweden and Europe’s climate work, says Per Ytterberg, who has overall responsibility for the carbon dioxide capture initiative at Stockholm Exergi.
The work is extensive and takes time to complete. To successfully move from idea to reality, Per and his colleagues initially explored and evaluated different ideas and alternatives. Keeping an open mind from the start was crucial.
– Before we knew how and if we were going to succeed, we had to allow ourselves to think outside the box. But now that we have to implement what we have planned – management, control and details become more important. It is always about finding the right balance between working fast and making smart choices”, says Per Ytterberg.
It will be an important balancing act. To combat climate change, we need to significantly reduce our carbon dioxide emissions. But that’s not enough, we need to remove emissions as well. This is where carbon dioxide capture comes in, as a necessary effort to meet the climate targets. The plant that Stockholm Exergi plans to build is expected to be completed in 2027, making Stockholm one of the first cities in the world to use the technology on a large scale.
The idea of doing something around carbon capture started soon after Stockholm Exergi commissioned the new bioenergy plant in Värtan in 2016. After some creative employees raised the idea internally, a couple of years of global technology studies followed before work could begin.
– In the beginning, there was only a research facility in a container. Today, it is one of our biggest and most important projects ever, which has attracted substantial global attention, says Per.
Once operational, the plant will be able to capture 800 000 tons of biogenic carbon dioxide per year, which is more than the emissions from Stockholm’s road traffic. Stockholm Exergi is already looking at how it can take the technology further and build similar plants across its existing operations. If the technology is scaled up further to cover the whole country, 30 million tons of carbon dioxide can be captured each year. An investment of this magnitude would mean up to 28,000 new jobs across the country.
– “This is a unique opportunity for Sweden. We have a well-developed energy production from biomass and waste and an extensive forest industry. This means that we could capture more carbon dioxide than we need to reach our climate target, which could help countries that do not currently have the same conditions. In other words, carbon capture has the potential to become a new green Swedish industry”, says Per.
