Yara has today (Monday, November 20) announced that it has signed a binding agreement to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) from its Dutch ammonia plant and store it under the Norwegian seabed.
The fertiliser company said that its aims to reduce its annual CO2 emissions by 800,000t from the production facility at Sluiskil.
This would correspond to 0.5% of the total annual emissions (2022) in the Netherlands.
Over the next 15 years, Yara said that it will remove approximately 12 million tonnes of CO2 from its production in Sluiskil.
Yara
The agreement between Yara and Northern Lights is the first cross-border transportation and storage of CO2 in the world.
The CO2 will be liquefied and shipped by Northern Lights from the Netherlands to permanent storage on the Norwegian continental shelf, 2.6km under the seabed.
“This is a milestone for decarbonising hard-to-abate industry in Europe and for Yara it’s an important step towards decarbonizing our ammonia production, product lines and the food value chain at large,” Svein Tore Holsether, chief executive of Yara International, said.
Since 1990, Yara Sluiskil has cut 3.4 million tons of CO2 equivalents per year from its ammonia and fertiliser production, while at the same time almost doubling its production.
This carbon capture and storage project (CCS) forms part of Yara’s ongoing strategic transition to decarbonise and future-proof its core production assets.
The production facility at Sluiskil is one of the world’s largest ammonia and mineral fertiliser plants.
Yara is considering an number of options to fund the transitions, including a minority divestment of its Yara Clean Ammonia (YCA) business.
The company said that CCS is “a cost-efficient decarbonisation solution that is compatible with existing European production infrastructure, especially in the case of ammonia and fertiliser production”.
It added that CCS projects need to be supported by a dedicated regulatory environment for CO2 transport and storage infrastructure.
“To succeed with the green transition, we need strong partnerships and support from governments and the EU.
“CCS is an important part of the solution. Together we can significantly reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and take us further step closer to transform industry and reduce emissions,” Holsether said.
The managing director of Northern Lights, Borre Jacobsen, added that “Norway has the potential to provide Europe with significant CO2 storage, which will help the EU to reach their climate targets”.
