April 1, 2025
This approach could remove 400 million tons of CO₂ per year by 2050.
Retrofitting existing infrastructure positions Hafslund Celsio to deliver carbon removal cheaply at scale.
Frontier facilitated offtake agreements with Hafslund Celsio, Norway’s largest supplier of district heating and owner/operator of Norway’s largest waste incineration plant in the outskirts of the capital, Oslo. This offtake enables the first-ever carbon removal retrofit of a waste-to-energy facility. Frontier buyers will pay $31.6 million to remove 100,000 tons of CO₂ between 2029 and 2030.
Hafslund Celsio’s facility in Oslo processes around 350,000 metric tons of sorted residual waste each year. The facility incinerates this waste, and the excess energy is used to produce electricity and heat.
The incineration process results in two types of CO₂ emissions, each responsible for about half:Biogenic CO₂ emissions from the burning of organic material like spoiled paper and cardboard.
Fossil CO₂ emissions from the burning of inorganic materials like plastics.
Through this offtake, Hafslund Celsio will retrofit its waste incineration facility with a unit that captures both types of CO₂ emissions. The CO₂ will then be transported by ship to the Northern Lights facility for permanent geological storage. Hafslund Celsio estimates that it could capture up to 175,000 tons of biogenic CO₂ emissions per year from this single facility, in addition to the 175,000 tons of fossil CO₂ each year. Although these abated fossil emissions are not part of Frontier’s offtake, this retrofit offers notable additional decarbonization for the facility.
Hafslund Celsio’s method of removing CO₂ by retrofitting a waste-to-energy facility with a capture unit.
The case for retrofitting waste-to-energy facilitiesWhen done right, waste-to-energy is the best way to manage pre-sorted, residual waste with no other useful purpose. Waste in Norway is regulated according to the EU Waste Framework Directive, which means the residual waste entering this waste-to-energy facility has had recyclable material sorted out, and is the last fraction of waste that could not be prevented, reused, or recycled. This waste, such as spoiled paper and cardboard, generates methane if left untreated. Incinerating it for heat or electricity turns methane-emitting waste into a low-carbon source of heat and electricity. Hafslund Celsio employs state-of-the-art scrubbing equipment that allows it to operate in a dense urban environment with minimal impacts on air quality.
Adding a unit to capture CO₂ from these facilities has the potential to deliver 400 million tons of carbon removal per year by 2050, in addition to driving other decarbonization benefits. The potential for carbon removal from waste-to-energy retrofits stands at around 100 million tons of CO₂ today¹ and could exceed 400 million tons by 2050². In addition to the tons of CO₂ removed from the atmosphere, these retrofits also result in an equivalent amount of avoided CO₂ emissions.
Because most of the infrastructure already exists, retrofits can deliver affordable tons at scale. European policies have led to increased deployment of waste-to-energy facilities over traditional landfills. In Europe alone, there are approximately 500 such facilities currently operating that could be retrofitted, enabling the removal of hundreds of millions of tons of CO₂. Instead of needing to build new infrastructure for carbon removal, retrofits make the most out of existing structures.
The CO₂ capture retrofit project at Hafslund Celsio is enabled by the combined contributions of public and private actors. The Norwegian government’s Longship program supports CO₂ capture and storage at Northern Lights, while the City of Oslo provides financial investment, and offtake agreements from Frontier buyers ensure reliable revenue for the project.
Frontier founders Stripe, Google, Shopify, McKinsey Sustainability, and members Autodesk, H&M Group, JPMorganChase, Workday, and Salesforce purchased as part of this round of offtakes. Aledade, Match Group, Samsara, SKIMS, Skyscanner, Wise, and Zendesk will also participate with purchases via Frontier’s partnership with Watershed.
Hannah Bebbington, Head of Deployment, Frontier: “Waste-to-energy retrofitted with carbon capture is a no-brainer solution for managing pre-sorted, residual waste: it generates carbon-free energy and removes CO₂ from the atmosphere. Hafslund Celsio is set to become the first to do it, charting a path for the 500 waste-to-energy facilities across Europe to remove tens of millions of tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere.”
Jannicke Gerner Bjerkås, Director CCS and Carbon Markets, Hafslund Celsio: “We’re proud to be the first to take a step toward retrofitting waste-to-energy with carbon removal. Frontier buyers are not only enabling this project to get off the ground, but also validating a model that could be replicated throughout Europe, with the potential to remove tens of millions of tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere.”
Terje Aasland, Minister of Energy of Norway: “I am pleased to see that the voluntary carbon removal market is adopting carbon removals in hard-to-abate sectors such as waste incineration. This kind of public-private cooperation contributes to creating a functioning market that will accelerate development of further projects in this segment both nationally and internationally.”
¹ https://datatopics.worldbank.org/what-a-waste/trends_in_solid_waste_management.html
² Frontier estimate based on projected increase in global waste by 2050, and an assumption that the share of waste treated at waste-to-energy facilities increases from 11% to 25%.