Environmental groups are warning that Norway’s Northern Lights project – the world’s first commercial offshore carbon storage scheme – could end up masking continued fossil fuel use. It began operations this week, pumping CO2 into a reservoir deep beneath the North Sea seabed.
The first injection came from Heidelberg Materials’ cement plant in Brevik, in southeastern Norway.
"We now injected and stored the very first CO2 safely in the reservoir," Northern Lights managing director Tim Heijn said in a statement. "Our ships, facilities and wells are now in operation."
Northern Lights is run by oil companies Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies.
The scheme collects CO2 from smokestacks across Europe, liquifies it and ships it to the Oygarden terminal near Bergen on Norway’s west coast. From there it is pumped through a 110-kilometre pipeline into a reservoir about 2.6 kilometres beneath the seabed.
The project is intended to stop emissions entering the atmosphere and help limit climate change.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is backed by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) as a tool to cut pollution from heavy industries like steel and cement.
Norway launches world’s first commercial carbon storage vault
A smokescreen?
But environmentalists fear it could become a smokescreen.
"I think it's worrisome because we've previously seen that the oil industry which is a very powerful industry in Norway, has used the carbon capture and storage [to justify] prolonging the extraction of oil and gas," Halvard Raavand, deputy programme manager for Greenpeace Norway, told RFI.
"In itself, storing isn't necessarily bad, but what we've seen so far is that the potential in CCS is overhyped. Even the International Energy Agency has come out and warned against a kind of overoptimism on CCS."
"This cannot end up as a sleeping pill for Norway and other countries when talking about climate action, because what's most urgently needed is just to phase out fossil fuels."
The technology is also complex and costly.
Without subsidies, industries often find it cheaper to buy "pollution permits" on the European carbon market than to pay for capture and storage.
'Costs are huge'
"The costs are huge. At Greenpeace, we think it would be better if this money were invested in real solutions," Raavand said.
"We need more investments in offshore wind power. Especially Norway which has a huge potential."
Northern Lights has signed three commercial contracts so far: with a Yara ammonia plant in the Netherlands, two Orsted biofuel plants in Denmark and a Stockholm Exergi thermal power plant in Sweden.
The project is largely funded by the Norwegian state. Its current storage capacity is 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 a year, with plans to reach five million tonnes by 2030.
Countries including the United States, India and Japan are also moving ahead with carbon capture and storage projects.
(with newswires)
