Burckhardt Compression Wins Contract for Northern Lights

According to its notice has received a major contract for Northern Lights. The global supplier of reciprocating compressors, headquartered in Winterthur, will provide compression solutions for this project. It provides the world's first cross-border infrastructure for the capture, transport, and permanent storage of CO2 on an industrial scale. The consortium is backed by the energy companies Equinor, Shell, and TotalEnergies. The CO2 is captured at industrial facilities throughout Europe, liquefied, and transported by special ship to the terminal in Øygarden, western Norway. From the terminal, the liquefied natural gas is pumped through an approximately 100-kilometer-long undersea pipeline into a reservoir and permanently stored in saline cavities at a depth of about 2,600 meters below the seafloor (Carbon Capture and Storage/CCS). After it began operations in 2025, the storage capacity of the first phase was 1.5 million metric tons of CO2 per year. Due to high demand, the second phase has been launched, which is intended to expand capacity to 5 million metric tons per year.
Specially developed liquid CO2 (LCO2) transporters play a crucial role in this process: where a fixed pipeline infrastructure is not feasible, they enable the transport of large quantities of captured emissions. “The transport of CO2 on an industrial scale is becoming a cornerstone of economically viable carbon capture and storage,” said Andreas Brautsch, president of the Systems Division at Burckhardt Compression. "This project demonstrates how proven compressor solutions can help translate climate goals into a reliable operational infrastructure."