Norway opens world’s first commercial site to bury captured CO2

Norway  – (Special Correspondent / Web Desk) – Norway has made history by starting the world’s first commercial offshore carbon storage project. The Northern Lights group — made up of Equinor, Shell, and TotalEnergies — has safely stored its first CO2 under the North Sea.

The project helps stop harmful emissions from reaching the air. It captures CO2 from factories across Europe, ships it to Norway, and buries it deep under the seabed.

“We have now safely injected and stored the very first CO₂,” said Tim Heijn, Northern Lights’ managing director. “Our ships, storage tanks, and pipelines are all working.”

Here is how it works: after CO2 is captured, it is turned into liquid and taken by ship to the Øygarden terminal near Bergen. It goes into large tanks and then is pushed through a 110-kilometre (68-mile) pipeline deep under the seabed—almost 2.6 kilometres down—where it will stay safely forever.

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a technology recommended by the UN and the International Energy Agency to fight climate change. It is especially useful for heavy industries like cement and steel, which are hard to make green.

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The first CO2 came from Heidelberg Materials’ cement plant in Brevik, Norway. CCS is expensive, so many companies still find it cheaper to buy carbon permits than to capture and store their own CO₂..

Northern Lights has signed three deals so far: one with Yara’s ammonia plant in the Netherlands, two with Ørsted’s biofuel plants in Denmark, and one with Stockholm Exergi’s power plant in Sweden.

The Norwegian government helps fund the project. Right now, it can store 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 a year. By 2030, it plans to store 5 million tonnes a year, making it an important part of Europe’s climate plan.