Yara has started up Europe's largest carbon capture and storage system at its ammonia plant in Sluiskil, the Netherlands. The retrofit can capture up to 800,000 metric tons of CO2 per year, liquefy it on site, and ship it by sea to the Northern Lights storage site in Norway. Linde supplied the liquefaction equipment, Baker Hughes the compressors, and Northern Lights is a joint venture run by Equinor, Shell, and TotalEnergies. Because ammonia synthesis already produces a concentrated CO2 stream and the plant sits on the water, the project is not a perfect model for cement, steel, or power generation. But it does show that a full cross-border chain of capture, sea transport, and storage can work. Yara's business case depends on European carbon taxes and public support, not on customers paying a green premium. The project cost $228 million, including $35 million in government support and $30 million in tax relief. The start-up comes roughly a year after Northern Lights injected its first CO2 from Norwegian cement makers, and it lines up with ExxonMobil's recent start of CCS at a Nucor iron smelting plant in Louisiana. The near-term pattern is that storage and transport infrastructure, not just capture technology, will determine where CCS projects get built.
