The Roads to Carbon Neutral - Season 4 - Episode 8 - Northern Lights: Storing CO2 for a More Sustainable Future
The Roads to Carbon Neutral - Season 4 - Episode 8
Northern Lights: Storing CO2 for a More Sustainable Future
The Roads to Carbon Neutral
The fourth season of our program entitled "The Roads to Carbon Neutral", in partnership with CNBC Catalyst, provides an insight into the solutions and innovations making the transition to low-carbon energy a reality and helping us achieve a carbon-neutral future*. These powerful on-the-ground stories are led by TotalEnergies' employees.
For this eighth episode, we are heading to Øygarden in south-west Norway, where we are developing the Northern Lights carbon capture and storage (CCS) project. Frode Nebell, Project Manager at TotalEnergies, explains how this technology is one of the keys to addressing climate change challenges and reaching our ambition of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, together with society. Read on for a behind-the-scenes look at this trailblazing project.
In Norway, our lives are entwined with the sea.
Our explorers were the first to reach the South Pole and were pioneers in the way that they used the sea to travel Here, deep under the water.
We are developing something that can help us tackle the climate change.
Carbon capture and storage, or CCS, is a crucial part of meeting our ambitions to reach Net 0 by 2050 together with Society Northern Lights.
The project we are developing here is not just an opportunity for Norway, it could be a game changer in our collective fight against climate change.
I've been part of the project since the beginning, when it was on a sketch and we were developing the concept.
Northern Lights is a pioneering project to bring CO2 from an industrial emitter for storage.
It's the first time it's been done at this commercial scale, meaning anybody could have access to safe CO2 storage.
Here in the Norwegian Continental Shelf has an estimated capacity to store up to 80 billion tonnes of CO2.
It is an incredible opportunity we have here so simplified.
The vessel arrives at the jetty, we use the loading arms to offload the CO2 and onto the storage tanks.
Then they go further into the pumps, through the pipeline to offshore, where it will go down into the wells and down into the reservoir.
There is an incredible untapped potential under the seabed here.
When the CO2 reaches the reservoir, it goes into a porous sandstone like this where it is safely and permanently stored.
Now we are approaching the ground moment where we are announcing for the world that we are ready to receive CO2.
It's a big moment, so everything has to be perfect.
TotalEnergies teamed up with Equinor and Shell and working together with the Norwegian state, developed this first project and they are now ready to receive CO2.
It's a symbolic moment.
We know that every time CO2 arrives here, it means that the CO2 is not released into the air.
Congratulation and thank you very much.
Once fully operational, Northern Lights will be able to store up to 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 per year.
Northern Lights is designed for large industrial emitters with CO2 emissions that cannot easily be avoided.
What we are doing is to give the emitters an alternative to releasing the CO2 into the air, so this shows that ambitious ideas can become reality and help society reach its goals.
It feels great to be at the edge of the world like we are here and be pioneering something so important.
The developments here are giving us hope for the future.
It's like to see sometimes you make small ripples and sometimes you make big waves.
I get to work on a project that we hope will make a big difference for the world now and for many years to come.
Northern Lights: a pioneering project for decarbonizing heavy industry
Northern Lights is the first project in the world allowing industrial companies to transport and sequester the CO2 emissions from their business activities. Owned in equal shares by TotalEnergies, Equinor and Shell, and developed in partnership with the Norwegian government, the facilities near Bergen have been ready since September 2024 to receive their first cargoes of CO2. Once captured, the CO2 is liquefied and shipped to the Øygarden terminal, from where it is transported through a 100 km pipeline to an undersea storage site in the North Sea. This innovative infrastructure prevents CO2 from being released into the atmosphere by storing it safely and permanently in deep geological formations.
Find out how the Northern Lights facilities work
During Phase 1, the project will be capable of storing approximately 1.5 million tons of CO2 per year. Studies are underway to increase Northern Lights’ capacity to over 5 million tons per year in Phase 2.
Northern Lights represents a major step forward in developing a European CCS value chain. It paves the way for decarbonizing such sectors as cement production, the lime industry, fertilizer production and waste incineration, whose CO2 emissions are hard to reduce (known as hard-to-abate sectors). Most of the time, these unavoidable emissions come from their processes rather than from the combustion of fossil fuels. By demonstrating that CCS projects are technically and economically feasible on a large scale, Northern Lights could inspire other similar projects around the world and thereby help achieve net zero targets.
Northern Lights in figures
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2,600 mDepth of the geological storage layers below the seabed
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1.5 Mt CO2/yearStorage capacity of the Phase 1 facilities
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2025Northern Lights begins receiving the first volumes of CO2
The Norwegian seabed holds incredible untapped potential. [...] According to estimates, the Norwegian continental shelf can store up to 80 billion tons of CO2. […] This project proves that ambitious ideas can become a reality and help society achieve its goals.Frode Nebell Project Manager at TotalEnergies
Supporting our industrial customers in decarbonizing their activities
We are actively committed to reducing CO2 emissions across our operated sites by implementing the best available technologies. To realize our ambition of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, together with society, we are also supporting our customers in decarbonizing their applications. For our industrial customers, this means developing CO2 capture and storage with the aim of reaching a storage capacity of more than 10 million tons per year by 2030.
In addition to Northern Lights, our teams are working on a number of CCS projects in the North Sea, including the Bifrost project in Denmark, which could ultimately transport and permanently store more than 5 million tons of CO2 per year, the Aramis project in the Netherlands, and the Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP) project in the United Kingdom.
The Roads to Carbon Neutral
* TotalEnergies is committed to a balanced multi-energy strategy. Our strategy is built on two pillars: oil & gas (particularly LNG), and electricity, the energy at the heart of the transition. The Company is forging a strong position to support its customers with their energy transition.