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.
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.