Microsoft Purchases Over 1 Million Carbon Credits From Norway Waste-to-Energy CCS Project

Oslo-based power and heat provider Hafslund Celsio has signed a ten-year carbon removal offtake agreement with Microsoft, covering more than 1 million tonnes of carbon credits to be generated by a new carbon capture project at the Klemetsrud waste-to-energy facility in Oslo. The plant, expected to begin CO2 capture in 2029, is part of Norway's government-backed Longship CCS project.

The Klemetsrud facility incinerated around 350,000 metric tons of sorted residual waste each year, with excess energy used for electricity and heat. The full-scale CCS project is anticipated to capture approximately 350,000 tonnes of CO2 annually, with roughly half from biogenic emissions and the remainder from fossil-derived CO2. Only the biogenic portion will generate carbon removal credits under the agreement, while the fossil CO2 capture is expected to reduce the City of Oslo's annual emissions by 20%. Once captured, CO2 will be transported by ship for permanent geological storage at the Northern Lights facility.

Microsoft has been building one of the world's most diverse corporate carbon removal portfolios as part of its carbon negative by 2030 strategy, recently contracting nearly 22 million tons of removal in a single year across technologies including biochar, bioenergy with carbon capture, soil sequestration and reforestation. The Hafslund Celsio deal adds biogenic waste-to-energy carbon capture to that portfolio and signals growing corporate confidence in the scalability and permanence of the bioenergy CCS removal pathway. Hafslund Celsio CEO Martin Lundby called the agreement 'a significant contribution to the commercial success' of the CCS project.

The Klemetsrud CCS project is designed as a blueprint for the approximately 500 other waste-to-energy plants in Europe, demonstrating how the continent's existing waste infrastructure can be transformed into a source of permanent carbon removal. Norway's Longship project, which has supported the development of carbon capture and storage as a prerequisite for meeting Paris Agreement targets, shows how government risk-sharing can catalyse commercial carbon removal offtake agreements. For India, which is developing its own waste-to-energy sector, the Longship model offers lessons in how CCS can be integrated into residual waste management as part of a national carbon reduction strategy.

Key figure — 350,000 tonnes of CO2 anticipated to be captured annually from 2029