Jakarta – Northern Lights, the world’s first underwater carbon transportation and storage project jointly developed by TotalEnergies, Equinor, and Shell, has begun operations in Norway. The first volume of carbon dioxide (CO₂) was transported from the Heidelberg Materials cement plant in Brevik to the Northern Lights facility in Øygarden, Norway. The gas was then injected into a reservoir 2,600 meters below the seabed, precisely 100 kilometers off the west coast of Norway.
Arnaud Le Foll, Senior Vice-President New Business – Carbon Neutrality at TotalEnergies, in a press release on Monday, August 25, emphasized that this project is an important milestone for the global energy industry.
“With the start of operations of Northern Lights, we are entering a new phase for the CCS industry in Europe. This industry now moves to reality, offering hard-to-abate sectors a credible and tangible way to reduce CO₂ emissions,” he said.
In the first phase, Northern Lights will have a capacity of 1.5 million tons of CO₂ per year. This capacity is already fully booked thanks to commitments from industrial customers in Norway and Europe. The five major companies that are listed as early users of this project are Hafslund Celsio and Heidelberg Materials (Norway), Yara (Netherlands), Ørsted (Denmark), and Stockholm Exergi (Sweden).
Seeing the high demand, the consortium has prepared for expansion. The final investment decision (FID) for the second phase was announced in March 2025. The follow-up project is targeted to increase storage capacity to more than 5 million tons of CO₂ per year starting in 2028.
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology is seen as one of the most effective solutions for industries that find it difficult to reduce emissions, such as cement, steel, and power generation. For Europe, Northern Lights is also a pioneer in cross-border carbon transportation and storage services.
With this initial operation, Norway is not only strengthening its position as a pioneer in CCS technology, but also paving the way for new carbon storage business models that could potentially be replicated in other parts of the world. (Hartatik)
Banner photo: Image generated by OpenAI’s DALL·E via ChatGPT (2024)
