Norway has launched the world’s first commercial CO₂ “graveyard” as the Northern Lights consortium—comprising Equinor, Shell, and TotalEnergies—successfully injected captured emissions into a seabed reservoir off its western coast, marking a milestone in carbon capture and storage efforts.
Norway’s Northern Lights consortium—a joint venture between Equinor, Shell, and TotalEnergies—has inaugurated the world’s first commercial CO₂ storage facility, delivering its inaugural cargo of carbon dioxide into the North Sea seabed. The injection marks the official launch of operations for this pioneering carbon capture and storage (CCS) project.
Captured emissions from industrial smokestacks across Europe are liquefied, transported by ship to the Oygarden terminal near Bergen, transferred into storage tanks, and then injected via a 110-kilometre pipeline into a geological reservoir about 2.6 km beneath the seabed.
“We now injected and stored the very first CO₂ safely in the reservoir,” said Northern Lights’ managing director Tim Heijn. “Our ships, facilities and wells are now in operation.” Equinor CEO Anders Opedal added that the milestone “demonstrates the viability of carbon capture, transport and storage as a scalable industry.”
While CCS is recognized by the IPCC and IEA as a key tool to reduce emissions in hard-to-abate sectors like cement and steel, the technology remains complex and expensive. Without subsidies, buying carbon permits is currently cheaper for many industries. Northern Lights has secured three commercial contracts—from a Dutch ammonia plant, Danish biofuel plants, and a Swedish thermal power facility—and currently operates with an annual capacity of 1.5 million tonnes, aiming to scale up to 5 million tonnes by decade’s end.