Oslo —The world’s first industrial service providing carbon storage off Norway’s coast has carried out its inaugural CO2 injection into the North Sea seabed, the Northern Lights consortium working the location mentioned Monday.
The challenge by Northern Lights, which is led by oil giants Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies, entails transporting and burying CO2 captured at smokestacks throughout Europe. The intention is to stop the emissions from being launched into the ambiance, and thereby assist halt local weather change.
“We now injected and stored the very first CO2 safely in the reservoir,” Northern Lights’ managing director Tim Heijn mentioned in a press release. “Our ships, facilities and wells are now in operation.”
In concrete phrases, after the CO2 is captured, it’s liquified and transported by ship to the Oygarden terminal close to Bergen on Norway’s western coast.
The liquefied CO2 (LCO2) provider Northern Pioneer of Northern Lights is pictured at Akershuskaia, Oslo, June 17, 2025 in reference to the worldwide high-level convention on carbon administration.
STIAN LYSBERG SOLUM/NTB/AFP/Getty
It’s then transferred into giant tanks earlier than being injected by means of a 68-mile pipeline into the seabed, at a depth of round 1.6 miles, for everlasting storage.
Carbon seize and storage (CCS) know-how has been listed as a local weather device by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change (IPCC) and the Worldwide Vitality Company (IEA), particularly for decreasing the CO2 footprint of industries resembling cement and metal which might be troublesome to decarbonize.
The primary CO2 injection into the Northern Lights geological reservoir was from Germany’s Heidelberg Supplies cement plant in Brevik in southeastern Norway.
However CCS know-how is advanced, controversial and dear.
With out monetary help, it’s presently extra worthwhile for industries to buy “pollution permits” on the European carbon market than to pay for capturing, transporting and storing their CO2.
The Northern Lights carbon storage web site in Øygarden, Norway, is seen on Could 28, 2025.
The Washington Submit/Getty
Northern Lights has up to now signed simply three industrial contracts in Europe. One is with a Yara ammonia plant within the Netherlands, one other with two of Orsted’s biofuel crops in Denmark, and the third with a Stockholm Exergi thermal energy plant in Sweden.
Largely financed by the Norwegian state, Northern Lights has an annual CO2 storage capability of 1.7 million tons, which is predicted to extend to five.5 million tons by the top of the last decade.
Whereas efforts resembling Northern Lights are centered on capturing carbon immediately from probably the most highly-polluting sources — industrial smoke stacks — there have additionally been efforts launched to seize the fuel from the ambient air, an much more controversial methodology.
Jacobson thinks direct air seize, specifically, is a boondoggle, and extra effort must be centered on switching to scrub vitality sources.
At the moment, the U.S. will get about 60% of its electrical energy from fossil fuels.
“You have to think about who’s proposing this technology,” Jacobson mentioned. “Who stands to benefit from carbon capture and direct air capture? It’s the fossil-fuel companies.”
“Oh, yeah, diesel people hate me, gasoline people hate me, ethanol people hate me, nuclear people hate me, coal people hate me. They do, because I’m telling the truth,” he mentioned. “We don’t need any of these technologies.”
ClimateWatch: Local weather Change Information & FeaturesMore
