A Historic Breakthrough for CO2 Management

“This is a historic moment, not only for Northern Lights and Øygarden, but also for Norway as a nation and for the world in terms of the development of carbon capture, transport, and storage,” says Minister of Energy Terje Aasland.

The Northern Lights project constitutes the transport and storage component of the full-scale CO2 management project, Longship. The costs have been shared between the state and the companies, and next year, Longship will be fully operational when Heidelberg Materials’ capture plant in Brevik is completed.

The carbon transported and stored by this facility will have a lasting positive impact on the climate. Northern Lights will collect and transport liquid CO2 by ship from both Norway and Europe to Øygarden in Bergen. Here, the CO2 will be transported via pipeline110 kilometers off the coast inthe North Sea and down into a reservoir 2,600 meters below the seabed for safe and permanent storage.

In the first phase, the facility has the capacity to store 1.5 million tons of CO2 per year, while the pipeline from the onshore facility to the reservoir is dimensioned for 5 million tons. Northern Lights plans to increase the capacity to 5 million tons per year through several expansion phases and growing customer demand.

“This is a concrete solution to a concrete problem. We must cut emissions to meet our commitments under the Paris Agreement—both domestically and globally,” says the Minister of Energy.