Equinor has paused the EU-backed CO2 Highway Europe pipeline, a project that would move up to 18 million tonnes of CO2 per year from continental Europe to storage sites on the Norwegian continental shelf. The decision follows weak demand for carbon storage services, even though the project received EUR 13 million in EU funding. The pipeline is meant to be shared CCS infrastructure, but without industrial emitters committing to ship CO2, the business case does not hold. The pause does not necessarily kill the project, but it signals that storage capacity is not the only constraint. Convincing enough paying customers to sign up is now the main bottleneck. For anyone tracking carbon capture and storage, the lesson is that large-scale CO2 transport needs firm offtake agreements, not just grant money. The market for storage services has to mature before infrastructure of this size can move forward.
