- Northern Lights injects CO₂ beneath the North Sea, establishing the first commercial carbon storage service worldwide.
- Expansion will increase storage from 1.5 million to five million tonnes annually, backed by EU funding.
Commercial carbon storage begins beneath the Norwegian North Sea as Northern Lights injects the first CO₂ volumes. Consequently, the company now leads this service globally.
Equinor, TotalEnergies, and Shell own Northern Lights. The company transported CO₂ through a 100-kilometre pipeline and safely injected it into the Aurora reservoir, 2,600 metres below the seabed.
Tim Heijn, Northern Lights JV Managing Director, called the milestone “exciting.” He also confirmed that the ships, facilities, and wells now operate fully.
Northern Lights will transport and store CO₂ from Norway for the rest of 2025. In addition, it will add volumes from Denmark and the Netherlands in 2026. Two Norwegian industrial sites, Heidelberg Materials’ cement factory in Brevik and Hafslund Celsio’s waste-to-energy plant in Oslo, will supply CO₂.
The company has also signed commercial agreements with Yara in the Netherlands, Ørsted in Denmark, and Stockholm Exergi in Sweden. This operation forms part of Longship, Norway’s full-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) project. Therefore, Longship creates Europe’s first complete industrial CO₂ capture, transport, and storage value chain. The government also supports Northern Lights’ infrastructure to ensure the project succeeds.
Ships carry CO₂ from capture sites to an onshore reception terminal in Øygarden. From there, a pipeline transports it to the injection well, where workers store it in the subsea reservoir. Heidelberg Materials and Celsio will each deliver roughly 400,000 tonnes of CO₂ annually.
Northern Lights also plans expansion. As a result, phase two will raise storage capacity from 1.5 million tonnes to at least five million tonnes annually. The company reached a commercial agreement with Stockholm Exergi and, in addition, received a EUR 131 million EU grant. Consequently, the expansion will add storage tanks, pumps, a new jetty, extra injection wells, and more CO₂ transport ships to boost volume.