Europe launches major carbon capture project

September 08, 2026

Europe’s largest commercial carbon capture and storage (CCS) project has begun operations at Yara’s Sluiskil ammonia and fertilizer complex in the Netherlands, marking a significant milestone for industrial decarbonization in Europe.

Located in Zeeland province, the new facility is designed to capture and liquefy up to 800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually from ammonia production. Instead of being released into the atmosphere, the captured CO₂ will be transported to Norway and permanently stored deep beneath the North Sea.

The project creates a cross-border carbon capture, transport and storage chain linking industrial operations in the Netherlands with permanent geological storage infrastructure in Norway.

Captured CO₂ to be stored beneath the North Sea

After being captured at the Yara Sluiskil facility, the carbon dioxide will be liquefied and temporarily stored on site before being loaded onto specialized vessels.

The CO₂ will then be transported by Northern Lights to Øygarden on Norway’s west coast. From there, it will be injected into geological formations approximately 2,600 metres beneath the seabed, providing long-term storage designed to prevent the carbon from entering the atmosphere.

Over the next 15 years, the project is expected to capture and permanently store approximately 12 million tonnes of CO₂, provided the necessary market and regulatory conditions remain in place.

How carbon capture and storage works

Carbon capture and storage is a technology designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from industrial processes, particularly in sectors where eliminating emissions completely remains difficult.

The process involves separating CO₂ generated during industrial production before it reaches the atmosphere. The captured gas is then compressed or liquefied, transported to a suitable storage location and injected deep underground into geological formations.

CCS is increasingly being considered as one of the tools for lowering emissions from energy-intensive industries such as ammonia, fertilizers, cement and chemicals.

The Sluiskil project demonstrates how this process can operate across national borders, with carbon captured in one country and permanently stored in another.

Cross-border cooperation supports industrial decarbonization

The project is closely connected to cooperation between the European Union and Norway. It follows the EU-Norway Green Alliance, established in 2023 to strengthen collaboration on climate action, clean energy and the green transition.

Northern Lights' carbon transport and storage infrastructure has also received financial support from the European Union through the Connecting Europe Facility.

By connecting industrial emitters with shared storage infrastructure, projects of this type could make CCS accessible to companies that do not have suitable geological storage sites close to their facilities.

This approach could ultimately contribute to the development of a broader European market for transporting and permanently storing captured carbon.

CCS targets hard-to-abate industrial emissions

Heavy industries remain among the most challenging parts of the economy to decarbonize. In some manufacturing processes, CO₂ emissions result directly from chemical reactions rather than simply from the energy used to operate a plant.

That makes renewable electricity alone insufficient to eliminate certain emissions.

Carbon capture technology offers one potential solution by preventing part of these process emissions from reaching the atmosphere while industries transition toward lower-carbon production methods.

For Yara, the new facility is also intended to reduce the carbon footprint associated with ammonia and fertilizer production and support lower-carbon supply chains in sectors including agriculture, industry, energy and shipping.

Europe expands carbon management infrastructure

The launch of the Sluiskil facility comes as the European Union seeks to accelerate investment in technologies capable of reducing emissions from energy-intensive industries while maintaining industrial production and competitiveness.

European policymakers see carbon management infrastructure as one component of the continent’s broader climate strategy, alongside renewable energy, electrification, energy efficiency and other low-carbon technologies.

The Yara-Northern Lights project provides a commercial-scale example of how such infrastructure could work. Carbon is captured and liquefied at a major industrial site, transported internationally by ship and placed into permanent offshore geological storage.

With capacity to handle as much as 800,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year, the Sluiskil project represents an important test of whether cross-border CCS networks can be expanded across Europe.

Its performance over the coming years could help determine how large a role carbon capture and storage ultimately plays in reducing emissions from Europe's hardest-to-decarbonize industries.