Today, Northern Lights JV has received official approval from the Norwegian Ministry of Energy for the plan for development and operation (PDO) of our recently announced expansion phase. This approval marks a key milestone in our ambition to develop a large-scale, commercial CO₂ transport and storage service for Europe.

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 (CEF 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”, says 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.

With this approval, we continue to demonstrate our commitment to providing reliable CO₂ transport and storage services, helping European industries reduce emissions and supporting the development of a scalable CCS value chain.