Northern Lights

Chronicle

2024: Project Launch

In early October 2024, a consortium of oil companies backed by the Norwegian government launched the world's first commercial carbon dioxide storage project called Northern Lights. The goal of the project is to capture CO2 emissions from industrial sources across Europe and collect them deep beneath the seabed in geological reservoirs to clear the air. The construction of a new CO2 storage facility is 80% subsidized by the Norwegian government.

Norway's long-term climate strategy involves storing liquefied carbon in safe tanks instead of generating greenhouse gases. Carbon capture and storage technology can eliminate harmful emissions from industrial enterprises and power plants. Once captured, CO2 is compressed, liquefied, and transported to a storage location, usually deep underground, in depleted oil and gas fields.

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However, although the Northern Lights project will save 1.5 million tons of excess CO2, which it will be able to take annually, this is just a drop in the sea compared to the 33 billion tons of CO2 that enter the planet's atmosphere every year. Even in Norway, the project will dispose of only about 4% of CO2 emissions. In addition, this approach does not solve the real problem, since it does not reduce the demand for fossil fuels - the main factor in global warming. By enabling oil and gas companies to continue extracting and selling fossil fuels while capturing only a fraction of the emissions generated, the technology delays the transition to cleaner energy sources. A number of environmentalists therefore view the Northern Lights project as a dangerous red herring undertaken by the government and industrial giants.^[1]

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