Norway might be most famous for its own brand of ski-ing and whaling, and even the Northern Lights but the country is also starting to hit the headlines with its green policies.

The country is about to undertake a £32m research and development programme to develop a more cost effective and efficient carbon capture technology.

According to the press release, SINTEF, the independent research organisation, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and Aker Clean Carbon, the industrial technology company, have signed an agreement for an eight-year science and development programme called SOLVit. The programme has a total financial value of 317m Norway Kroner (£32m) and the first phase of the project, which runs until the end of 2010 has received 34m Norway Kroner (£3.4m) of financial support from Gassnova SF, the Norwegian government’s vehicle for CO2 management.

Aker believe it can come up with a process that will work whilst using half the energy of current technologies. The first stages will be to build a £4.2m lab in the north of the country.

After this, a mobile capture facility, large enough to process part of the exhaust from actual power stations will be created.

SINTEF CEO, Unni Steinsmo, stated in the release:

“Results from the development research in the new laboratory in Trondheim will be tried out in test centres and hopefully also in full-scale facilities already in the first phase of the programme.”

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