STAVANGER, Norway, Aug 29 (Reuters) – Norwegian CO2 storage company Northern Lights and its owners said on Monday they had signed an agreement to store emissions captured by the Dutch operation of fertilizer maker Yara (YAR .OL) from early 2025.

Founded by Equinor (EQNR.OL), TotalEnergies (TTEF.PA) and Shell (SHEL.L), Northern Lights plans to fight climate change by injecting carbon dioxide from industrial facilities into rock formations under the floor North Sea ocean.

“With the first commercial agreement for the transport and storage of CO2, we are opening up a value chain that is essential for the world to reach net zero by 2050,” Equinor chief executive Anders Opedal said in a statement. a statement.

Some 800,000 tons of CO2 will be transported annually by ships from the Netherlands, which means that the initial capacity of 1.5 million tons per year of the Northern Lights project will be fully used.

The partnership is thus working on an expansion of Northern Lights’ storage capacity of between 5 and 6 million tonnes of CO2 per year, Equinor said.

The International Energy Agency and other proponents say carbon capture and storage (CCS) is key to reducing global CO2 emissions, including those from hard-to-reduce sectors such as cement production, and thus prevent dangerous global warming.

Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis and Nora Buli, editing by Terje Solsvik

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