Waste-to-Energy (WtE)  is joining the carbon removal market, in a major milestone for the sector.

Hafslund Oslo Celsio, one of Norway’s largest suppliers of district heating, has signed an agreement for Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) credits with Frontier, a group of tech companies that includes Google.

Under the deal, Hafslund Celsio will remove 100,000 tons of CO₂ between 2029 and 2030. The captured CO₂ will be delivered to the storage site of Northern Lights, in the North Sea.

When non-recyclable biogenic waste is burned, the recovered energy and heat content contributes to the decarbonisation of the economy. Since more than half of WtE plants’ emissions are biogenic, there is significant untapped potential for WtE to develop into the CDR market, further reducing carbon capture costs and contributing to the WtE sector’s decarbonisation.

As the The Wall Street Journal wrote in a recent article on the initiative, this is “just the beginning”: 500 other sites in Europe could replicate this methodology.

Image: the Klemetsrud WtE facility near Oslo. Courtesy: Kanadevia Inova