The Green League, Finland’s environmental party, wants the EU to class nuclear power as a sustainable alternative in the climate transition. This comes amid an expansion of Finnish nuclear power, where a third reactor is planned at the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant next year - making it Finland’s fifth reactor. Maria Ohisalo, party leader of the Green League, claims that nuclear power can not be excluded to stop the climate crisis, which conflicts with their Swedish counterpart, Miljöpartiet, which deems nuclear power to be an unsustainable alternative (DI).
The new government in Norway, under Johan Gahr Støre (Ap), will send a proposal to revise prioritised areas to the current government’s latest budget in an attempt to accelerate the green transition. The changes to Norway’s climate politics will be seen by voters as soon as this autumn according to Espen Barth Eide, Minister of Climate and the Environment, and Jan Christian Vestre, Minister of Trade and Industry (Ap) (Aftenposten).
Perstorp, the chemical utilities company, eyes an investment to build a Carbon Capture- and utilization (CCU) facility. Instead of storing captured carbon emitted from their operations, Perstorp wants to use the carbon as a cornerstone for new products in a circular process. By adding hydrogen and biogas from external suppliers, the company is able to produce sustainable methanol that is used as raw material in several chemical products according to Håkan Kihlberg, Vice President Strategic Projects and Processes at Perstorp Group. The investment is expected to total to SEK 2 billion and goes under the “Project Air” initiative, which is a collaboration with Fortum and Uniper (DI).
CO2 Nordic Hub, the carbon capture project, has received financial support from the Norwegian state enterprise, Gassnova’s CLIMIT-Demo program, to install a mobile carbon capture unit to smelters in Norway - starting with Elkem Rana’s and SMA Mineral’s smelters. Regardless if the captured carbon is to be stored or utilized for the production of new industrial products, carbon capture processes are imperative for reaching emission targets according to Jack Ødegård, Vice President Research at SINTEF Industry. In total, the partners have identified 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 that can be captured from their operations, which amounts to 3% of Norway’s total emissions (Press release).
The Nordic countries are some of the most dynamic and successful economies in the world. They are also leaders in sustainability, from renewable energy, biofuels, carbon capture and storage and the hydrogen economy, circular economy business models and battery development, the Nordics are pioneers in policy design, technology development and consumer uptake. Mundus Nordic Green News is covering this transition for the international community. Every day we clip the stories of most relevance to international businesspeople and policy experts from the flow of news. Mundus Nordic Green Indices summarise the meta-data from our daily coverage to enable easy tracking of trends. We supplement these with our own opinion pieces and commentary.