• Norway inaugurated the gateway to a massive undersea vault for carbon dioxide on September 26. 

• The Northern Lights project plans to take CO2 emissions captured at factory smokestacks in Europe and inject them into geological reservoirs under the seabed.

• The aim is to prevent the emissions from being released into the atmosphere, and thereby help halt climate change.

• The facility, a joint venture grouping oil giants Equinor of Norway, Anglo-Dutch Shell and TotalEnergies of France, is a key component of Longship, the Norwegian government’s full-scale carbon capture and storage project.

• It will have an initial capacity of 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 per year, before being ramped up to five million tonnes in a second phase if there is enough demand.

• The Norwegian government has financed 80 percent of the total cost of Northern Lights.

What is Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS)?

• CCUS involves the capture of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil power generation and industrial processes for storage deep underground or re-use.

• If not being used on-site, the captured CO2 is compressed and transported by pipeline, ship, rail or truck to be used in a range of applications, or injected into deep geological formations such as depleted oil and gas reservoirs or saline aquifers.

• It can tackle emissions in hard-to-abate sectors, particularly heavy industries like cement, steel or chemicals. 

• CCUS is an enabler of least-cost low-carbon hydrogen production, which can support the decarbonisation of other parts of the energy system, such as industry, trucks and ships.

• CCUS also includes Direct Air Capture (DAC), which involves the capture of CO2 directly from the atmosphere.

• The first CCUS projects started in the 1970s and 1980s in Texas for capturing CO2 from natural gas processing plants and supplying it to local oil producers for utilising the CO2 for enhanced oil recovery. Since then, CCUS has spread to other regions and countries.

• Given the scale of global CO2 emissions, CCUS needs to significantly scale up in an accelerated time frame to make a meaningful contribution to global decarbonisation.

How will the Northern Lights project work?

• The captured CO2 is compressed, liquefied and pumped deep down into the sub-surface to isolate the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere.

• On the island of Oygarden, a terminal is built on the shores of the North Sea.

• It is here that the liquified CO2 will be transported by boat.

• The site consists of 12 metal tanks onshore, capable of temporarily storing a 7,500 cubic metres cargo from one of the custom-made ships commissioned to deliver liquefied CO2.

• From the tanks, it will travel through a 110-kilometre pipeline before being injected into the seabed, at a depth of around 2.6 kilometres, for permanent storage.

• Northern Lights’ first phase can inject 37.5 million metric tonnes of CO2 over a 25-year period, or 1.5 million tonnes per year.

• The first delivery will come from a capture facility at the Brevik cement plant in southern Norway owned by Heidelberg Materials, which is also part of the Longship project.

• It is the first ever cross-border, open-source CO2 transport and storage infrastructure network. 

• It will offer companies across Europe the opportunity to store their CO2 safely and permanently deep under the seabed in Norway. 

• The ability of Northern Lights to receive CO2 captured across Europe means that it can play an important role in meeting not just Norway’s ambitious climate goals, but those of the entire region.

Additional Read:

Decarbonisation challenge for India

India is the third largest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the world after China and the US.  India has set a target to achieve a 45 per cent reduction in emission intensity by 2030 and is aiming for Net Zero by 2070. This makes CCUS one of the important measures to achieve decarbonisation from the hard-to-abate sectors.

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