– We see more and more alarming climate reports from the UN. It is incredibly important that we move from talk and ambitions to concrete action, says CEO Svein Tore Holsether in Yara to news. The agreement is described as unique: Two companies in two different countries enter into a commercial agreement, without government support, that one will store the other’s greenhouse gas emissions. The sender of emissions is Yara’s plant in Sluiskil in the Netherlands. The recipient is the storage company Northern Lights. The latter is the storage part of the billion-dollar project “Longship” which the Solberg government launched in 2020. Northern Lights already has two agreements through the Longship project, but these are heavily financed by the state. Yara thus becomes Northern Lights’ first “real customer”. – This is an incredibly important agreement for us. It is the first of its kind, it shows what is possible, and it shows the way for others, says CEO Børre Jacobsen of Northern Lights to news. Svein Tore Holsether in Yara and Børre Jacobsen in Northern Lights. Photo: Lise Marit Kalstad / news Large amounts of CO₂ The factory in the Netherlands is scheduled to deliver up to 800,000 tonnes of CO₂ a year from 2025. This corresponds to well over the annual emissions from car traffic in Oslo. In fact, it is the same amount as the two capture facilities in “Langskip” must deliver together: The cement factory Norcem in Brevik and the waste plant at Klemetsrud in Oslo must deliver around 400,000 tonnes a year each. The big difference, however, is that while the state takes the lion’s share of the bill in Brevik and Klemetsrud, Yara pays for it herself. Facts about “Langskip” “Langskip” is a project within carbon capture and storage (CCS). This technology is highlighted as important for reaching the climate targets in the Paris Agreement by, among others, the IPCC and IEA. “Langskip” consists of two capture facilities and a storage site for the greenhouse gas CO₂. The one capture plant will be built at HeidelbergCement’s factory in Brevik. Here, 400,000 tonnes of CO₂ will be captured annually. The second capture facility will be built at the recycling facility at Klemetsrud in Oslo. The facility is owned by Oslo Municipality, Hafslund Eco, Infranode and HitecVision. Here, too, around 400,000 tonnes of CO₂ will be captured annually. The storage project is called “Northern Lights” and is owned by Equinor, Total and Shell. From a terminal in Øygarden, CO₂ will be pumped via a pipeline to a well and permanently stored 2,600 meters below the seabed. The cost of all three projects was estimated to be NOK 25.1 billion over ten years. Since then, cost increases have been announced both in Brevik and at Klemetsrud. According to the plan, the central government will contribute NOK 16.8 billion. Physically, CO₂ will be delivered to Northern Lights’ terminal in Øygarden outside Bergen. From there, the greenhouse gas will be pumped in pipes down 2,600 meters below the seabed and stored there. The aim is for this to start early in 2025. – This is an important step on the way to reducing our emissions, stresses Holsether in Yara. CEO Anders Opedal in Equinor. Photo: Lise Marit Kalstad / news Northern Lights is owned by Equinor, Shell and Total. Equinor CEO Anders Opedal believes the agreement between Yara and Northern Lights is very important. – You capture CO₂ in one country, bring it to another and ensure that it is stored safely underground in the North Sea. Carbon capture and storage has now become a commercial service, he says. Equinor itself aims in the future to offer CO₂ storage on a much larger scale than what Northern Lights is designed for. Will not reveal the price Neither Yara nor Northern Lights will say how much Yara will pay for the storage. – We will come back to that later. The agreement does not require us to announce the prices in the media right now. But just look at the numbers, it’s about 800,000 tonnes of CO₂. So there are large amounts every year, says Holsether in Yara. For Northern Lights, it is tactical to keep the price cards close to the chest with a view to negotiations with future customers. – We do not go out with prices and commercial details. There are confidential discussions between Yara and us. But we are talking about investments in the billions, says Jacobsen in Northern Lights. But it is in the cards that Yara believes CO₂ storage is economical compared to the alternative: paying for emissions by buying climate quotas. – It is uncertain what the emission quotas will be and how much they will cost. But our attitude has been that it is more important to get rid of the emissions, than that we pay for emissions, says Holsether. The quota price in the EU is currently around NOK 900 per tonne. Important climate technology The agreement is a feather in the cap both for Langskip as a project and for carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a technology. CCS has been highlighted by the UN climate panel as a very important technology for reaching the world’s climate goals. Because even with rapid emission cuts in transport, energy and industry, there will still be some emissions from, among other things, industry that are difficult to cut directly. An alternative solution is therefore to capture the emissions and store them somewhere where they do not escape into the atmosphere. The technology of CCS has been known for many decades. The question has always been whether it would be possible to make it happen on a large enough scale at a price that business can live with. The agreement between Yara and Northern Lights indicates that they have come a long way. – Carbon capture and storage is a crucial technology for reaching “net zero” by 2050. But it has been difficult to achieve profitability and to reduce costs. Now we can scale up the technology and bring costs down even further, says Opedal in Equinor.
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Yara signs huge agreement with Norwegian climate project
