Cement Is a Big Polluter. A Plant in Norway Hopes to Clean It Up.

Heidelberg Materials is betting it can profit from an expensive process that will reduce the carbon dioxide emitted from one of the world’s most polluting industries.

Even in the idyllic Norwegian summer, with anglers casting for mackerel from nearby piers, the century-old cement plant on the edge of the harbor town of Brevik is a forbidding place. The screeching of gulls echoes off the mud- and dust-caked passageways between concrete walls, which rise on the edge of the water like the ramparts of a medieval fortress.

“Imagine being here on a winter day,” said Vetle Houg, managing director for cement in Norway for the plant’s owner, a German company called Heidelberg Materials.

Despite its ominous appearance, the plant promises to be a milestone in efforts to tackle climate change by taking steps to clean up cement production, one of the world’s most polluting industries but one necessary to create an essential ingredient for a wide range of construction projects, such as highways and office buildings.

For more than two years, engineers have been erecting a set of towers and columns at the plant, clearing away snow and ice in the wintertime. As Mr. Houg toured the site, workers were fine-tuning equipment that held chemicals designed to absorb vast quantities of the carbon dioxide emitted through cement production. More than half a ton of the gas arises from every ton of cement that a plant like this turns out.

Early next year, carbon dioxide from the facility will be chilled to a liquid, loaded onto ships and carried to a terminal near the city of Bergen, farther up the Norwegian coast. From there, it will be pumped about 70 miles offshore into rocks a mile and a half below the bottom of the North Sea.

Dominik von Achten, chairman of Heidelberg’s management board, described the tortuous journey to this point, including lining up suppliers and shippers and deciding on the right carbon capture technology, as “an art in itself.”