Northern Lights: Ready, set, go with first CO2 on board!

Inaugural CO2 has been loaded onto Northern Pioneer, the first in a fleet of four liquefied CO2 transport ships built for Northern Lights, a carbon capture and storage project in Norway.

“We’re proud to share that commissioning has started, with liquefied CO₂ from our first customer Heidelberg Materials in Brevik, now beginning gassing up our vessel Northern Pioneer,” Northern Lights, a joint venture of energy majors Shell, Equinor and Total Energies, said in a LinkedIn update.

“This marks an important milestone in establishing Europe’s first open and commercial CO₂ transport and storage value chain.”

Northern Lights is said to be “the first” project in the world allowing industrial companies to transport and sequester their CO2 emissions. Approved by the Norwegian government in 2020 and designated as a Project of Common Interest (PIC) by the European Union, Northern Lights aims to transport, receive and store CO2 in geological layers buried at approximately 2,600 meters below the seabed in the Northern North Sea. The goal is to help European industrial companies reduce their CO₂ emissions.

Northern Lights can receive and store CO₂ since September 2024.

During Phase 1 of the project, Northern Lights is expected to offer a storage capacity of 1.5 million tons of CO2 per year. The first phase includes CO2 transport and storage from Heidelberg Materials’ cement factory in Brevik, as part of the Longship project by the Norwegian government.

The JV recently announced the decision to increase the transport and storage capacity from 1.5 million to a minimum of 5 million tons of CO2 annually for the second phase of the development. Unveiled in March 2025, the investment decision to expand capacity follows a commercial agreement with the Swedish energy provider, Stockholm Exergi, for cross-border transport and storage of up to 900,000 tonnes of biogenic CO2 annually. The expansion is enabled by a grant from the Connecting Europe Facility for Energy (CEF Energy) funding scheme.

Northern Pioneer and three more 7,500 cbm liquefied CO2 ships are to contribute to the carbon capture and storage (CCS) value chain.

Two units, Northern Pioneer and Northern Pathfinder, were delivered to the JV in 2024, and the remaining two, currently under construction in China, are yet to join the fleet.

K Line LNG Shipping (UK), a London-based subsidiary of Japanese shipping major K Line, has been contracted to operate the first three vessels.