ABB technology is to be used for Norway’s Northern Lights carbon capture and storage (CSS) project, the world’s first open CO2 transport and storage solution.
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ABB has been contracted by engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contractor Aker Solutions, a leader in sustainable energy solutions, to deliver the main electrical, automation and safety systems for Norway’s Northern Lights project.
A joint venture between Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies, Northern Lights is the first industrial carbon capture and storage project to develop an open and flexible infrastructure to safely store CO2 from industries across Europe. The first phase of the project is due to be completed mid-2024 and will have the capacity to permanently store up to 1.5 million tons of CO2 per year, with the ambition to expand to over five million tons per year in a second development phase.
ABB’s automation, electrical and digital solutions will be integrated into the Northern Lights project to enable the remote operation of a new carbon capture terminal and ensure that the facility runs at optimum efficiency. Leveraging its market-leading distributed control system, ABB Ability™ System 800xA, operators will gain greater visibility into the operation of the Northern Lights terminal, with the ABB system analysing real-time and historical data and instantly showing plant metrics and KPIs. As a result, operators will be able to make more accurate and informed decisions and review options for optimising performance of assets and processes.
“ABB is a market leader in distributed control systems and a long-standing partner with a thorough understanding of our business and expertise in both on- and offshore, as well as in subsea projects,” said Kristin Glenna, project manager for Northern Lights at Aker Solutions. “This was key to our decision-making process. We needed to entrust our remote operations to a partner with a successful track record in reliability and optimisation to provide strong foundations for this important development.”
“The ability to capture and store industrial CO2 emissions, which cannot currently be prevented, is critical if the world is to reach net zero by 2050. Global capacity of 1.7-billion tons of CO2 capture is required by 2030,” says Per Erik Holsten, Head of ABB Energy Industries in Northern Europe.
“Northern Lights is an important development, not only for its contribution to rebalancing the carbon cycle, but also for its commitment to innovation. We are very pleased to be part of this exciting project, which will contribute to a safer, smarter and more sustainable future,” he adds.
Purpose-built ships will transport captured and liquefied CO2 from emitters to the Northern Lights Øygarden Terminal in western Norway, which will be remotely operated from Equinor’s facilities at the Sture Terminal located approximately
7.0 km away. To enable remote operations, ABB will build a state-of-the-art Extended Operator Workstation at the Northern Lights Terminal, which will work in tandem with the central control room in Sture, with the two communicating seamlessly to minimise response times and support 24/7 remote operations.
Apart from the shore-to-ship solution, ABB technology will also power the entire project, implementing the main electrical system via its power process management system and incorporating high and low voltage switchgear and transformers.
The Northern Lights CSS project
Together with Shell and TotalEnergies, Equinor is developing infrastructure on the Norwegian Continental Shelf for the transport and storage of CO2 from onshore industries across Europe. The project, called Northern Lights, involves transporting liquified CO2 by pipeline for permanent offshore subsea storage.
The Northern Lights project is part of the Norwegian full-scale CCS project, which includes the capture of CO2 emissions from industrial capture sources in the Oslo fjord region’s cement and waste-to-energy plants and shipping liquified CO2 from these industrial capture sites to an onshore terminal on the Norwegian west coast. From there, the CO2 will be transported by pipeline to a subsea storage location in the North Sea for permanent storage.
The solution being considered will have an initial storage capacity of around 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 per year. Once the CO2 is captured onshore, it will be transported by ships, injected and permanently stored
1 000—2 000 metres below the seabed.
This a unique solution that enables large CO2 volumes from across Europe to be sequestrated —emissions that would otherwise be contributing to global warming.
