The Northern Lights CO2 project in the Norwegian North Sea has started injecting the first biogenic CO2 from wastewater treatment delivered to the receiving terminal in Øygarden.
Carbon removal company Inherit has delivered CO2 cargos to Northern Lights from Veas, Norway’s largest wastewater treatment plant which handles wastewater from more than 800,000 inhabitants in the Oslo region, in Slemmestad since February.
As the wastewater is processed in the company’s biogas production unit, biogenic CO2 from the process is captured, liquified and then transported to the Northern Lights receiving terminal by cargo trucks. In Øygarden, Inherit offloads the CO2 trucks to the tank farm from where CO2 is transported offshore via pipeline for storage 2,600 meters below the seabed.
This is said to represent a pilot project for Northern Lights, where it offers capacity to receive up to 7,000 tons of CO2 per year from Veas in the two-year agreement period.
The Northern Lights joint venture (JV) is equally owned by Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies. Equinor, as the Technical Service Provider (TSP), has been responsible for the construction of the Øygarden facility and the offshore facilities and has operational responsibility for the CO2 plant.
The project’s first phase is part of Longship, the Norwegian Government’s full-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) project. The government is covering approximately 80% of the cost for phase 1.
Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies injected and stored the first CO2 volumes at the project in August 2025, marking the start of operations of what is said to be the world’s first third-party CO2 transport and storage facility.
The project will transport and store CO2 from two Norwegian industries, including Heidelberg Materials’ cement factory in Brevik and Hafslund Celsio’s waste-to-energy plant in Oslo. In addition, the JV has signed commercial agreements with Yara in the Netherlands, Ørsted in Denmark, Stockholm Exergi in Sweden, and Inherit in Norway.