First cross border CO2 transport & storage in EU

Yara, a European chemicals & fertilizer firm, and Northern Lights, a firm developing CO2 transport & storage infrastructure have signed the world’s first commercial agreement on cross border CO2 transport and storage.

What does this rather complex sounding pact mean?

It refers to a plan in which Northern Lights would capture CO2 emitted from Yara’s Netherlands fertilizer factory transport it through ship to western Norway and store the CO2 in a geological reservoir some 2,500 metres under the seabed.

While carbon capture and storage in itself is in its nascency, what makes this project even more interesting is that it involves movement of CO2 across two countries before it finds it resting place!

The entire activity falls under the category of carbon capture and sequestration in which industries that find it hard to cut down emissions – called hard to abate industries – instead capture their emissions and store them underground, thus preventing their release to the atmosphere.

The chemicals and fertilizers sector represents a hard-to-abate industry. Other prominent examples of hard to abate industries include steel and cement. Carbon capture and storage can thus be expected to be explored seriously by these industries as well.