Construction work at the Northern Lights project in Norway | Credit: TotalEnergies
CO2 captured from Yara's ammonia and fertiliser plant in the Netherlands to be transported and then stored by TotalEnergies at Northern Lights subsea facility from 2025
CO2 captured at an ammonia and fertiliser plant in the Netherlands could soon be transported for permanent storage under the seabed to the west of Norway, under a major first-of-its-kind agreement announced this week.
Set to start in early 2025, the deal would see up to 800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide captured, compressed, and liquefied at Yara Sluiskil's Dutch production plant before being transported by TotalEnergies to its Northern Lights carbon storage facility off the coast of Øygarden in Norway, where the oil and gas giant aims to permanently store the CO2 in geological layers some 2,600 metres under the seabed.
TotalEnergies hailed the deal as "the first of its kind worldwide" and a "major milestone" in the decarbonisation of European heavy industry, which it said which could pave the way for a global market for the international transport and storage of CO2.
"Developing CO2 transportation and storage services is crucial for decarbonising European industry: we are pleased to welcome Yara as first commercial partner for Northern Lights, which will help support its decarbonisation strategy," said Patrick Pouyanné, TotalEnergies' chairman and CEO. "TotalEnergies aims to develop a CO2 storage capacity of more than 10 million tons per year by 2030, both for its own facilities and for its customers, in line with its ambition to get to net zero by 2050, together with society."
The Northern Lights Project, which is owned in equal shares by oil and gas giants TotalEnergies, Equinor, and Shell, is a cross-border value chain solution which has been designed to give European industrial companies a solution for safely and permanently storing their CO2 emissions underground.
Børre Jacobsen, Northern Lights managing director, said that as its first commercial customer, Yara would fill the available capacity for phase one of the CO2 storage project.
"This agreement will establish a market for CO2 transport and storage," he said. "From early 2025, we will be shipping the first tonnes of CO2 from the Netherlands to Norway. This will demonstrate that CCS is a climate tool for Europe."
Phase one installations for the geological storage site are scheduled to come on stream in 2025 and are designed to handle up to 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 per year, TotalEnergies said.
Following "growing interest" from several industries, the firm said it is now exploring options to develop additional capacity at Northern Lights to accommodate rising demand - potentially ramping up total capacity to five million tonnes a year.
Yara International CEO, Svein Tore Holsether, said the deal struck with TotalEnergies would take it a step closer to enabling carbon-free food production while helping to "accelerate the supply of clean ammonia for fuel and power production".
"We urgently need to take action to decarbonise industry, and Yara is a frontrunner in the field," he said. "I am very pleased to announce that we are now on our way to removing CO2 emissions from our production plant in Sluiskil."
