Exploring the global potential of permanent CO₂ storage
To keep global warming to pre-industrial levels, science agrees that is not enough to only reduce emissions – we have to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere.
Key take-aways:
CO₂ removal technologies are essential for the world to reach its climate targets
Climeworks’ direct air capture technology combined with permanent storage is one of the most scalable forms of CO₂ removal.
The collaboration with Northern Lights, which offers safe and permanent storage as a service, marks an important milestone in the direction of commercialising critical climate technology
Climeworks and Northern Lights have agreed to explore the realisation of a full-chain CO₂ removal project in Norway
Climeworks and Northern Lights have agreed to explore realisation of a full-chain CO₂ removal project in Norway, including possible use of the Northern Lights facilities as part of new negative emission solutions, addressing the need of companies in non-industrial sectors to become carbon neutral and/or carbon negative.
Climeworks is a world leading company in the field of direct air capture. Its technology runs exclusively on renewable energy and waste heat and the modular collectors can be stacked to build machines of almost any size. Climeworks’ direct air capture technology can reach a net CO₂ removal efficiency of more than 90%, taking into account full life-cycle emissions.
Beyond its existing collaboration with Carbfix in Iceland, where the captured CO₂ is mineralised in basalt, Climeworks is looking globally for other opportunities for safe and permanent CO₂ storage including in regions without basaltic bedrocks. Northern Lights provides ideal conditions for deep geological CO₂ storage in its offshore saline aquifer under the North Sea.
Northern Lights delivers carbon storage as a service to enable the decarbonisation of industrial process emissions and to facilitate the removal of CO₂ from the air. The project includes capture of CO₂ from industrial point sources in the Oslo-fjord region, which is then shipped to an onshore terminal on the Norwegian west coast. From there, the liquefied CO₂ will be transported by pipeline to an offshore storage location 2,600 metres below the seabed in the North Sea for safe and permanent storage.
In this way direct air capture enables carbon negative operations using the Northern Lights infrastructure, contributing to Norwegian and European organizations’ and businesses’ net zero ambitions. Norway has one of Europe's leading renewable energy grids, enabling constant access to renewable energy for Climeworks' direct air capture plants.
Christoph Gebald, co-founder and co-CEO of Climeworks
We are pleased to explore a full-chain carbon dioxide removal project together with Northern Lights, offering ideal conditions for safe and permanent storage of CO₂ captured by our direct air capture technology.
Børre Jacobsen, Managing Director Northern Lights, comments: “There is growing awareness of the need to build capacity to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere to achieve net zero by 2050. We are enthusiastic about this collaboration with Climeworks. Combined with safe and permanent storage, direct air capture has the potential to get the carbon cycle back in balance.”
Learn more about geologic CO₂ storage:
Geological storage of CO₂
The global potential for geological CO₂ storage is huge - here is what you should know about it.
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