A carbon storage project owned by three major European oil firms has secured its first commercial deal in what they billed Monday as a "major milestone" in the decarbonisation of heavy industry.

Northern Lights -- owned by France's TotalEnergies, Norway's Equinor and Anglo-Dutch giant Shell -- reached an agreement to transport and store carbon dioxide captured from Yara Sluiskil, an ammonia and fertiliser plant in the Netherlands.

From early 2025, 800,000 tonnes of CO2 per year will be captured, compressed and liquefied in the Netherlands.

It will then be transported by ship to the Northern Lights site in Norway to be buried some 2,600 metres (8,530 feet) under the seabed off the coast of Oygarden.

"This agreement, the first of its kind worldwide, is a major milestone in the decarbonisation of heavy industry in Europe, paving the way for international CO2 transport and storage as a service," TotalEnergies said in a statement.

Northern Lights managing director Borre Jacobsen said the agreement "will establish a market for CO2 transport and storage".

The facilities for the first phase of the project are scheduled to come on stream in 2024, with the capacity to handle 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 per year.

In its latest baseline report on climate change, the United Nations said the world will need to capture and store CO2 from the air and oceans regardless of the rate at which countries succeed at reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.

Long seen as a marginal effort or an industrial ploy to avoid reducing carbon emissions, carbon dioxide removal measures are now a necessity, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

But some environmentalists see carbon capture and storage as a "false solution" that would justify maintaining dirty production, with the risk that stocked CO2 could leak.

Related Links
Carbon Worlds - where graphite, diamond, amorphous, fullerenes meet

Tweet

Thanks for being here; We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain. With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords. Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year. If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor $5 Billed Once credit card or paypal		SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter $5 Billed Monthly paypal only

China launches terrestrial ecosystem carbon monitoring satellite
Taiyuan, China (XNA) Aug 05, 2022
China successfully launched a terrestrial ecosystem carbon monitoring satellite and two other satellites from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China's Shanxi Province Thursday. The satellites were launched at 11:08 a.m. (Beijing Time) by a Long March-4B carrier rocket and entered the planned orbit successfully. The carbon monitoring satellite is mainly used for terrestrial ecosystem carbon monitoring, the surveying and monitoring of terrestrial ecology and resource, and major nat ... read more