TotalEnergies, along with partners Equinor and Shell, has announced the first successful shipment and storage of carbon dioxide from Heidelberg Materials’ cement factory in Brevik, Norway to the Northern Lights facility in Øygarden. The CO2 was transported by vessel and injected 2,600 meters below the seabed at a site located 100 kilometers off Western Norway.
Northern Lights is described as the world’s first merchant project for transporting and storing CO2. Its initial phase can store up to 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 per year, with all capacity already booked by clients from Norway and continental Europe. A second phase, announced in March 2025, will expand capacity to more than 5 million tonnes per year starting in 2028.
The development of CO2 transport and storage services is seen as an important step for reducing industrial emissions across Europe. Northern Lights has established a customer base that includes five industrial companies: Hafslund Celsio and Heidelberg Materials in Norway, Yara in the Netherlands, Ørsted in Denmark, and Stockholm Exergi in Sweden.
“With the start of operations of Northern Lights, we are entering a new phase for the CCS industry in Europe. This industry now moves to reality, offering hard-to-abate sectors a credible and tangible way to reduce CO2 emissions,” said Arnaud Le Foll, Senior Vice-President New Business – Carbon Neutrality at TotalEnergies.
Northern Lights is jointly owned by TotalEnergies, Equinor, and Shell. The project delivers cross-border CO2 transport and storage services aimed at helping industries lower their emissions that cannot be avoided through other means. The company leverages over two decades of experience with CO2 storage on the Norwegian Continental Shelf.
TotalEnergies states that its approach prioritizes avoiding emissions where possible before deploying technologies to reduce them further. For remaining emissions from its own operations or those of customers, it is developing several large-scale carbon storage projects across Europe and North America—including Northern Lights (Norway), NEP (United Kingdom), Bayou-Bend (US), Aramis (Netherlands), and Bifrost (Denmark).
TotalEnergies operates globally across oil, biofuels, natural gas, biogas, low-carbon hydrogen production as well as renewables and electricity supply. The company employs over 100,000 people worldwide across about 120 countries.
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