The Northern Lights carbon dioxide storage joint venture has received official approval from the Norwegian Ministry of Energy for the plan for development and operation (PDO) of its recently announced expansion phase.
In March, Northern Lights announced its final investment decision for Phase 2, which will increase transport and storage capacity from 1.5 million tonnes to a minimum of 5 million tonnes of CO2 per year. The expansion is supported by a grant from the Connecting Europe Facility for Energy and will be financed primarily through commercial investments.
“This is a major milestone for the carbon capture and storage chain in Norway. Receiving PDO approval for Phase 2 enables us to move forward with delivering increased capacity to our existing and future customers,” said Tim Heijn, managing director of Northern Lights.
As part of this expansion, Northern Lights has signed a commercial agreement with Stockholm Exergi to handle up to 900,000 tonnes of CO₂ annually from its bioenergy facility in Sweden. Stockholm Exergi is Northern Lights’ third commercial customer, alongside Yara in the Netherlands and Ørsted in Denmark. In addition, Northern Lights will transport and store CO2 from Norwegian emitters Hafslund Celsio in Oslo and Heidelberg Materials in Brevik as part of the government-supported Longship project.