The first volumes of carbon dioxide have been injected and stored as part of Norway’s Northern Lights’ carbon capture and storage (CCS) project, marking the start of operations, owners Shell, Equinor and TotalEnergies said on Monday.
The CO2 is being stored in a reservoir 2,600 metres (8,530 ft) below the seabed, marking a major milestone for CCS, the companies said.
“This demonstrates the viability of carbon capture, transport and storage as a scalable industry,” Anders Opedal, CEO of Equinor, said in a statement.
The facility is part of Norway’s heavily subsidised Longship carbon capture and storage project aimed at commercialising CCS as a way to reduce CO2 emissions, especially for sectors that rely on fossil fuel input and are hard to decarbonise.
The CO2 now stored was shipped from the Brevik cement factory operated by Heidelberg Materials in southern Norway, and first offloaded into onshore tanks, before being sent through a 100-kilometre (62-mile) pipeline to the storage reservoir.
The commenced injection completes phase 1 of the Northern Lights development, which can inject 37.5 million tonnes of CO2 over a 25-year period, or 1.5 million tons per year, and is fully booked. The partners also committed to invest 7.5 billion crowns ($743.93 million) into a second phase, which targets an additional 3.5 million tonnes a year.
(Reporting by Nora Buli, editing by Gwladys Fouché)
