Why Norway is pumping carbon deep beneath the sea

Posted: November 15, 2024

If you boarded a ship in Bergen, on Norway’s west coast, sailed out 100 kilometers into the North Sea and dropped anchor partway to the Shetland Islands, you’d likely see nothing but water in every direction. Yet far below, more than 2.5 kilometers underneath the bottom of the seabed, the future of European industry is taking shape. 

Soon, a trio of oil companies plan to start pumping carbon dioxide deep into a rock formation, where most of the liquefied gas should theoretically stay sequestered for millions of years. The project to transport and store that CO₂, called Northern Lights and jointly owned by Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies, wrapped up its first phase in September and the first injections are scheduled for next year.

Northern Lights forms part of an even larger scheme to eventually capture and bury carbon from industrial plants across Europe. It will cost at least $2.7 billion to complete and marks one of the first efforts to build large-scale infrastructure for CO₂ transport and storage in the world. Its success could herald not just a big new business model for oil and gas companies, but also a crucial tool for industrial companies to decarbonize their operations. 

Why companies are investing in carbon capture technology 

The Norwegian government, which is financing the bulk of the project, started planning for Northern Lights at least eight years ago. Back then, it was already becoming clear that meeting climate goals would likely require capturing large amounts of emissions. 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change now counts carbon capture and storage (CCS) as critical in most of its scenarios for mitigating climate change. Its modelled pathways for keeping warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius call for a median of 665 billion tons of CO₂ to be captured between 2020 and 2100. 

CCS equipment, which traps emissions directly at the source, has only been installed in around 40 facilities to date, capturing around 50 million tons of CO₂ per year. But companies have announced plans for hundreds of projects, which could bring annual capacity to 435 million tons by 2030. In addition to industrial carbon capture, start-ups are also trapping carbon through direct air capture, which actually lowers the CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere. 

Of course, all that gas needs to go somewhere. The North Sea has become a particular hotspot for carbon storage, with countries such as the Netherlands and the UK already granting licenses for similar projects. Part of its suitability comes down to legacy fossil fuel exploration: depleted Dutch gas fields now offer ample space to sequester carbon in their porous rock, for example.^[1]

Altogether, researchers have calculated that the sandstone layers beneath the North Sea could hold up to 100 billion tons of CO₂, and accommodate up to 40 million tons of injections per year.  

Field studies in the Mediterranean have shown that CO₂ storage there would significantly increase ocean acidification. But acidification is much less of a concern in the North Sea, where the water already has a higher CO₂ concentration and is rapidly recirculated by fast tidal currents.

How the Northern Lights CO₂ project works 

Norway aims to be a pioneer in this burgeoning industry. The government says its Longship project, of which Northern Lights forms the transport and storage component, will be Europe's first full-scale value chain for CO₂ management. 

Shell, Equinor and TotalEnergies have already finished construction of their onshore terminal near Bergen, where specially built ships will deliver the liquefied CO₂. A battery of towering storage tanks will hold the gas before it is pumped via pipeline to the offshore storage well, far out at sea. 

The hub’s initial capacity of 1.5 million tons per year is already booked: cement maker Heidelberg Materials plans to start sending CO₂ from its factory in Brevik, Norway, next year. Northern Lights will also transport and store carbon from chemical producer Yara’s ammonia and fertilizer plant in Sluiskil, in the Netherlands, and power producer Ørsted’s biomass-fired power plants in Denmark. 

While the companies behind the project hope it will pave the way for growing cross-border trade in industrial emissions, decarbonizing sectors such as cement, fertilizers and steel would require many more similar efforts. There are now plans for some 30 large-scale carbon capture hubs offering transport and storage worldwide, according to BloombergNEF, and governments are stepping up support.^[2] Many of them will likely be looking at Northern Lights as an important test run.

References:

^{[1] https://www.gasunie.nl/en/expertise/co2/carbon-storage-north-sea
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-01-31/norway-s-carbon-capture-scheme-boosted-by-germany-s-change-of-heart}