Northern Lights injects first carbon dioxide for storage

After several years of development and public investment, the Northern Lights carbon dioxide sequestration project has injected its first load of waste CO₂ for permanent storage 2,600 m below the seafloor off the coast of Norway. The facility is a joint venture between the European energy firms Equinor, TotalEnergies, and Shell and is operated by Equinor.The CO₂ was captured at a cement factory in Norway owned by Heidelberg Materials. The firms have not disclosed how much CO₂ was in the first load, but the marine vessels that Northern Lights uses can carry up to 7,500 m3 of liquid CO₂, which equates to roughly 8,000 metric tons (t).Currently, Northern Lights has an annual intake capacity of 1.5 million t. In March, the partners made a final investment decision on a $700 million plan to expand that capacity to 5 million t.For the rest of the year, the facility will inject CO₂ from Heidelberg and from a waste-to-energy plant that provides district heating to Oslo, Norway. In 2026, the partners will start picking up the greenhouse gas from the energy firm Ørsted’s biomass-burning power plants in Denmark and a Yara ammonia plant in the Netherlands. Northern Lights also has a contract to take CO₂ from biomass-fueled power plants in Sweden starting in 2028.Cement is a good place to start because of the industry’s scale and climate impact, says Patrice Lahlum, vice president for industrial innovation and carbon management at the energy nonprofit Great Plains Institute. “Cement and concrete, the world’s second-most used