World's first commercial CO2 storage service

Norway on September 26 inaugurated the "gateway" to a giant _CO2 storage facility, moving towards opening the first commercial _CO2 transport and storage service .

The Northern Lights commercial _CO2 transport and storage project in Norway aims to capture CO2 emissions _from European factory chimneys and pump them into geological reservoirs under the sea. The aim is to prevent the emissions from entering the atmosphere , thereby helping to prevent climate change.

_CO2 transport and storage facility on Oygarden Island. (Photo: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP).

The newly inaugurated 'Gateway' is actually a facility on Oygarden Island with 12 giant, shiny storage tanks. Pipes run around the tanks, including one that leads into the North Sea. The CO2 _from the tanks will travel through 110km of pipeline before being pumped to the seabed, some 2.6km deep, for permanent storage. The North Sea, with its depleted oil and gas fields and vast network of pipelines, is an ideal place to bury greenhouse gases.

The Oygarden Island facility, jointly operated by Equinor (Norway), Shell (UK-Netherlands) and TotalEnergies (France), is expected to capture the first batch of CO2 _in 2025. The facility will have an initial capacity of 1.5 million tons of CO2 _per year, increasing to 5 million tons in the second phase if there is strong market demand.

'Northern Lights is a demonstration project that shows that carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a technically feasible solution ,' said project director Tim Heijn, adding that it is a tool that can help combat climate change.

CCS technology is complex and expensive but has been advocated by the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA), particularly to help reduce CO2 emissions from industries such as cement and steel, which are difficult to decarbonize.

_{Global CO2} capture capacity is currently just 50.5 million tonnes, or about 0.1% of the world's total annual emissions, according to the IEA. To limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, CCS would have to prevent at least a billion tonnes of CO2 from entering the atmosphere each year by 2030. _However , the technology is still in its infancy and is being developed slowly due to its high costs. The Norwegian government has funded 80% of the total cost of the Northern Lights project.