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Northern Lights, the consortium running the world's first commercial carbon storage project, has officially begun operations in Norway, with the first injection of CO2 into the North Sea floor.

The world's first commercial carbon storage project. (Source: Carbon Herald)

The project, led by oil and gas giants Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies, aims to capture, transport and bury CO2 from industrial plants across Europe to prevent it from escaping into the atmosphere and help combat climate change.

According to Northern Lights CEO Tim Heijn, the company has succeeded in injecting and safely storing the first amount of CO2 into a reservoir.

Currently, the project's vessels, facilities and wells have been put into stable operation.

Specifically, after being captured, CO2 will be liquefied and transported by ship to the Oygarden station near Bergen, on the west coast of Norway. Here, the gas will be transferred to large tanks and pumped through a 110km long pipeline to the seabed, at a depth of about 2.6km, for permanent storage under the ocean.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology has been recognized as an effective tool in combating climate change, particularly important in reducing CO2 emissions from hard-to-decarbonize industries such as cement and steel.

The first CO2 injected into Northern Lights' reservoir comes from the German cement plant Heidelberg Materials, located in Brevik, southeastern Norway.

However, CCS technology remains potentially complex and costly. Currently, without financial support, industries prefer to buy carbon credits on the European carbon market rather than invest in CO2 capture, transport and storage.

To date, Northern Lights has signed commercial contracts with three customers in Europe, including the Yara ammonia plant in the Netherlands, two Orsted biofuel plants in Denmark and the Stockholm Exergi thermal power plant in Sweden.

With funding mainly from the Norwegian Government , the project has the capacity to store up to 1.5 million tons of CO2 per year and is expected to scale up to 5 million tons per year by the end of this decade./.

According to VNA

Source: https://baothanhhoa.vn/mo-cua-nghia-dia-co2-thuong-mai-dau-tien-tren-the-gioi-259536.htm