Norway approves Northern Lights CCS expansion

The Norwegian government has approved plans for the second stage expansion of the Northern Lights carbon capture and storage (CCS) project.

The expansion will increase the transport and storage capacity at Northern Lights from 1.5Mt to at least 5Mt of CO₂ per year.

Based in Øygarden, Norway, Northern Lights will transport CO₂ from industrial plants across Europe for storage 2,600m beneath the seabed in the Norwegian North Sea. It is part of the state-funded “Longship project”.

With construction concluded late last year, the first customer injection of CO₂ is expected this year from Heidelberg Materials’ cement factory in Brevik.

Sweden’s Stockholm Exergi have also booked a large volume of the added available capacity in phase two, alongside Yara of the Netherlands and Ørsted in Denmark.

The second phase represents an investment of US$700m from the project’s developers Equinor, TotalEnergies and Shell.