It is called Northern Lights, and it is Europe’s promise to reduce CO2 emissions by storing it under the sea of the coast of Norway. On 26 September, Northern Lights was officially opened, despite the sub-sea storage facility is not ready yet.
However, Norway’s Energy Minister Terje Aasland pushed a big button to officially inaugurate the land facility of the Northern Lights project, in Øygarden. A fuel truck with liquid CO2 arrived to mark the start of the filling of the storage tanks on land.
Still under preparation is an empty gas field off the coast of Norway, 2,600 metres (8,500 feet) down in the seabed, for the permanent storage of CO2. The liquid-made carbon will be transported from the Øygarden facilities on land to the sub-sea reservoir by pipeline of about 100 kilometres (62 miles) in length.
Shipping CO2 from Europe to Norway
Plans call for an initial storage of 37.5 million tonnes of CO2, followed by up to 1.5 million tonnes annually in the next 25 years. The Northern Lights project is owned by Equinor (Norway), TotalEnergies (France) and Shell (Great Britain). The partners plan to ship captured CO2 from other parts of Europe to the facilities in Øygarden.
Taking care of existing or newly-produced CO2
According to the Paris Climate Agreement, carbon capture and storage (CCS) is an integral part of reducing CO2 emissions that are heating up the earth. From 2030 on, the European Union wants to permanently store 50 million tonnes of CO2 annually in storage facilities like Northern Lights. These CCS projects only take care of the existing or newly-produced CO2, they do not reduce the carbon emissions of the polluters. Which is why environmental organisations are very critical or full-out negative towards CCS.
The Norwegian government has calculated that empty gas and oil reservoirs off the Norwegian coast have the potential to hold the equivalent of a 1000 years worth of carbon emissions of Norway alone. | © 2024 Marcel Burger, nordicreporter.com. Press photo by Northern Lights/Equinor