Although Shell and other companies have been pioneers, developing and applying CCS technology capture processes and storing millions of tonnes of carbon, one project in particular is addressing a fundamental challenge: offering emitters a “carbon transport and storage solution” at a price that is profitable enough to persuade more companies to build storage facilities.

While several governments around the world have provided support for CCS projects, Norway, through the Longship project, has taken CCS to a new level – with the specific aim of kick-starting a commercial market for the service.

Both a cement factory and a large municipal waste incineration company in Norway are receiving funding to capture carbon from their industrial processes. The captured carbon will be transported to ports, where it will be transferred onto specially designed ships owned by the company Northern Lights. Shell, Equinor and TotalEnergies co-own Northern Lights and have received considerable financial support from the Norwegian government to develop the transport and storage parts of the Longship project.

When the terminal that receives this CO₂ starts pumping the gas through pipelines to subsea reservoirs off the coast of Norway in 2024, Northern Lights will become the first ever cross-border, open-source carbon transport and storage infrastructure network to offer companies across Europe the opportunity to store their carbon safely and permanently underground.

While Northern Lights is already planning to triple its capacity – without subsidies – Shell and other companies are also exploring other areas to store carbon on the Norwegian Continental Shelf.

This is the fruit of years of patient and systematic work to develop processes including methods to capture carbon. Shell is a partner in the world’s most advanced full-scale test centre for carbon capture technology at Mongstad (TCM) outside Bergen. In fact – the Shell Cansolv technology that is due to be installed at Hafslund Oslo Celsio’s waste incinerator is one of the capture technologies developed and tested at TCM.

We also expect CCS to enable the next wave of technology – to capture and safely store carbon directly from the air. That’s as good as putting the genie back in the bottle. But is now not beyond the realms of possibility.

You can read more about Northern Lights here

CO₂ will be stored in a reservoir in the Norwegian North Sea

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Norske Shell – siden 1912

I 110 år har Shell vært en energipartner til Norge. Vår historie er bygget på innovasjon, teknologiutvikling og omstilling.

Dette gjør vi

Shell er et globalt konsern som består av energi- og petrokjemiselskaper. I Norge har vi omkring 500 ansatte.