Fortum Oslo Varme incineration plant is edging closer to having a carbon capture facility added to it, with an essential decision looming imminently, as Euractiv reports. Having secured conditional Norwegian government funding for the project, Fortum are now hoping to be awarded €300 million (US$357 million) in funding from the European Commission’s Innovation Fund, which distributes monies collected through the EU Emissions Trading System. This funding would go towards operating costs over a decade as well as capital costs.

While the Innovation Fund has received 311 project applications and only 70 will advance to phase two of assessment, the fact that the Oslo Varme project is tied to the wider Longship project, and has the potential to offer ‘negative’ emissions because a significant part of the waste can be considered biofuel (and a capture efficiency of 90% is the target), one would imagine that it will have a strong chance of going ahead. However, there is some criticism from groups such as Zero Waste Europe, which argue that more efficient than capturing carbon from incineration is separating organic material from other waste and then producing biogas. Euractiv reports that a decision from the EC is to come this quarter, which means news should come very soon of its success.