The world’s pioneering commercial carbon storage service has successfully injected CO2 into the seabed of the North Sea, as announced by the Northern Lights consortium on Monday, August 25.
This initiative, managed by Equinor, Shell, and TotalEnergies, aims to capture CO2 emissions from industrial smokestacks across Europe, transport them, and securely store them beneath the seabed to prevent their escape into the atmosphere.
"We have now injected and safely stored the very first CO2 in the reservoir," stated Tim Heijn, managing director of Northern Lights, confirming that the consortium’s ships, facilities, and wells are fully operational.
The captured CO2 is liquefied and transported to the Oygarden terminal located near Bergen on Norway’s west coast, where it is transferred into storage tanks before being piped 110 kilometers offshore. The gas is then injected at a depth of 2.6 kilometers beneath the seabed.
The inaugural CO2 shipment originated from Heidelberg Materials’ cement plant in Brevik, situated in southeastern Norway. Cement and steel production are among the industries most targeted for carbon capture and storage (CCS), which the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the International Energy Agency have emphasized as vital for reducing global emissions.
Despite its promise, CCS remains costly. Without subsidies, many industries find it more economical to purchase carbon permits on the European market rather than invest in capture and storage. So far, Northern Lights has secured only three contracts, including one with a Yara ammonia plant in the Netherlands, two of Orsted’s biofuel plants in Denmark, and Stockholm Exergi’s thermal power plant in Sweden.Primarily supported by the Norwegian government, the facility currently boasts an annual storage capacity of 1.5 million tonnes of CO2, which is projected to increase to five million tonnes by 2030.