Norway is to grant 360 million kroners (£35.4m) for the continued planning of a full-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) demonstration facility.

CCS is one of Norway’s five prioritised areas for tackling climate change.

The government also plans to continue CCS operations at the Technology Centre Mongstad (TCM) and grant 200 million kroner (£19.7m) for the research program CLIMIT.

Gassnova, the state’s CCS enterprise, will soon announce concept studies to explore new CCS technologies that could be implemented.

The authorities will enter contracts to finance up to three CCS projects, one of which will be based on developing a carbon storage site to the east of the Troll field.

The concept studies will go on until autumn 2017. Continuation of the projects to an engineering and design phase will be considered in the budget for 2018.

Tord Lien, Petroleum and Energy Minister said: “It is important that we work systematically, using best practice from industry. The feasibility studies have demonstrated that it is possible to implement all three projects. My concern is developing a good basis to make a decision. We now have the opportunity to mature all three capture projects to concept selection.”