Full value-chain offering from Aker and Northern Lights to speed up CCS deployment

Norwegian company focused on capturing CO₂ emissions, Aker Carbon Capture, has joined forces with Northern Lights JV to work on accelerating the carbon capture and storage (CCS) market through full value-chain offerings in a bid to expedite the deployment of CCS projects in Europe.

The two players informed on Thursday that they had signed a non-exclusive Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to collaborate on the realisation of CCS projects in Norway and across Europe.

To remind, Northern Lights is the transport and storage component of Norway’s Longship project for establishing full-scale CO₂ capture, transport and storage facilities in line with the country’s international climate agreements.

Valborg Lundegaard, Chief Executive Officer of Aker Carbon Capture, remarked: “Through the Longship project, Norway has taken a leadership position in enabling industrial decarbonization through Carbon Capture and Storage. This collaboration between Northern Lights and Aker Carbon Capture aims to build on learnings from the Longship project and enable the accelerated deployment of CCS projects across Europe.”

In addition, the deal seeks to optimize logistics and standardize ship-shore interfaces while taken together, the two companies represent a full value chain offering from carbon capture through transport and storage.

Børre Jacobsen, Managing Director of Northern Lights JV, commented: “Interest in CCS is picking up across Europe. Northern Lights is well-positioned to contribute to accelerating the development and we are looking forward to working with Aker Carbon Capture to realize the potential of the CCS market in support of climate targets. This will require technical and commercial innovation as well as cross-sector collaboration.”

Furthermore, this collaboration will allow emitters access to full value chain offerings at locations where the combined technical concept of Aker Carbon Capture’s technology and the CO2 transport and storage capabilities of Northern Lights is best suited. 

Jon Christopher Knudsen, Chief Commercial Officer of Aker Carbon Capture, explained: “Northern Lights is a first-mover in enabling open-source CO2 transport and storage infrastructure across north-west Europe. With operations starting in 2024 they are an essential player in enabling the accelerated deployment of the CCS industry.”

“Their ambitious plans link very well with Aker Carbon Capture’s ambition to have 10 million tonnes of CO2 on contract by 2025. Together with Northern Lights and with our ‘Carbon Capture as a Service’ offering, we can now develop source-to-storage decarbonization on a pay per tonne of captured CO2 model,” concluded Knudsen.

Northern Lights JV DA is a registered, incorporated General Partnership with Shared Liability (DA) owned equally by Equinor, Shell, and TotalEnergies. The Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy approved the development plan for Northern Lights in March 2021.

The Northern Lights carbon capture and storage project is developing an open and flexible infrastructure to transport CO2 from industrial emitters by ship to a receiving terminal in western Norway for intermediate storage, before being transported by pipeline for permanent storage in a geological reservoir 2,600 meters under the seabed.

As operations are scheduled to start in 2024, the facilities are under construction and will enable Northern Lights to offer a safe and reliable shipping and storage service to industrial emitters from across Europe. With increased interest from industrial sectors in Europe, additional shipping and storage capacity will be developed as demand grows. 

Northern Lights JV is constantly on the lookout to add further enhancements and improvements to its project and, in January 2022, the JV selected Schlumberger to deliver its DELFI digital platform for the project in order to optimize performance in carbon transport and storage.