Aker Carbon Capture ASA: First quarter results 2022

Aker Carbon Capture made good progress with existing projects in the first quarter of 2022. By establishing several strategic partnerships, the pure-play carbon capture specialist aims to pursue innovation and accelerate CCUS deployment. 

“We continued to position for the future market through a significant and growing number of project studies and tenders for customers. Given the rising revenue and the good progress in existing projects, we have started 2022 as we ended last year: on a high note,” said Valborg Lundegaard, Chief Executive Officer of Aker Carbon Capture. “A rising number of industrial companies want to reduce their emissions and establish sustainable business models. CCUS can help enable those climate ambitions. The latest IPCC report stated once again that CCUS remains central to climate mitigation strategies. Further supported by high CO2 quota prices, this makes the business case for carbon capture only stronger.”

Development projects on schedule

Highlights in the first quarter included the start of a FEED (Front End Engineering and Design) contract for Net Zero Teesside Power in the UK, where Aker Carbon Capture is the technology partner to a consortium of Aker Solutions, Siemens Energy and Doosan Babcock. The carbon capture facility at Net Zero Teesside Power will have a capacity of about 2 million tonnes CO2 per annum. This is the world's first commercial scale gas fired power station with carbon capture and marks a very important step forward for large scale CCS.

Both the Brevik CCS and Twence CCU projects are progressing according to schedule. For Brevik CCS, the first carbon capture plant at a cement facility in the world, Aker Carbon Capture has placed all major purchase orders. Onsite activity will pick up in June this year, and the main installation work will take place in 2023. Also at Twence in the Netherlands Aker Carbon Capture is moving forward as planned. This first of a kind modular plant will enable the removal of CO2 from flue gases at Twence’s waste-to-energy facility, with captured CO2 to be used by greenhouses to enhance plant growth. Operations at the plant in Hengelo are scheduled to start at the end of 2023.

Aker Carbon Capture aims to take a leading position in the global CCUS industry, and the company has launched a long-term goal of '10 by 25', which states that the company will have secured firm contracts for carbon capture plants for a total of 10 million tonnes per year by the end of 2025.

Partnering to pursue innovation and accelerate CCUS deployment

It is Aker Carbon Capture’s clear ambition to establish partnerships to pursue joint innovation and explore opportunities to offer services in the CCUS market. Collaboration is key to success and a pre-requisite for reaching net zero. This is exactly why the company has signed a MoU with Microsoft. By fully using the digital capabilities and domain expertise of Aker Carbon Capture and Microsoft, the partnership can support industrial emitters to take action and accelerate the deployment of CCUS.

Aker Carbon Capture has signed a MoU with Northern Lights, aiming to build on learnings from the Longship project and enable the accelerated deployment of CCS across Europe. Northern Lights is developing an open and flexible infrastructure to transport CO2 from industrial emitters by ship to a receiving terminal on the west coast of Norway for intermediate storage. The CO2 will then be transported by pipeline for permanent storage in a geological reservoir 2,600 meters under the seabed. Operations are scheduled to start in 2024. 

Aker Carbon Capture has signed a collaboration agreement with SINTEF to accelerate the transfer of science and research to innovation in the market. SINTEF has conducted research on CCUS since the 1980s, and has collaborated with Aker for more than 25 years. The goal will be to further develop CCUS technology together to reduce CO2 emissions from industry and energy solutions. 

Strong collaboration with transport and storage providers is another key element to the company’s strategy of offering the full CCS value chain, including Carbon Capture as a Service, to industrial CO2 emitters. After the end of the fourth quarter, Aker Carbon Capture announced MoUs with Altera Infra and Höegh LNG and with Dan-Unity CO2.

Financial result

Aker Carbon Capture saw continued strong revenue growth through the last quarter. The first quarter revenue ended at NOK 144 million, which was up 127% compared to the same period last year. This reflects increasing activity on Brevik CCS, Twence CCU and BP Net Zero Teesside Power FEED.

EBITDA (Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) for the quarter was negative NOK 61 million. This continued to be driven by activity related to research and development, digitalization, tenders, business development, sales and international growth. 

Aker Carbon Capture ended the first quarter with a robust cash position at NOK 1.5 billion and equity remained strong at NOK 1.0 billion.

ENDS

Aker Carbon Capture will present the results in a live webcast, followed by a Q&A session, today at 15:00 CEST. Click on the following link to follow the event:

https://channel.royalcast.com/landingpage/hegnarmedia/20220428_12/