Total is committed to working towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to ensure a brighter and more sustainable future for all. For this reason, the Group is constructing a sustainable development approach based on four pillars: integrating climate change into its business strategy, preserving the environment, respecting and mobilizing employees and suppliers, and contributing to the economic development of the regions where it operates.

To this end, the Northern Lights project, because of its co-benefits, will help to achieve 3 of the SDGs and to meet specific targets:

• SDG 7: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy
  • The project ensures the generation of reliable, sustainable and modern energy by transporting and storing the emissions from power plants.
• SDG 9: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation
  • The project’s CO₂ transport and storage service provides a solution to the CO₂ captured by industrial companies and will therefore enable the development of a sustainable, low-carbon industry in Europe.
• SDG 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
  • The aim of the project is to develop geological storage capacity, which is essential for fighting climate change.

The Northern Lights solution can be replicated for all emitters (waste-to-energy, hydrogen, cement and steel producers and other CO₂ emitters) as well as for all communities who would like to be involved in the decarbonization effort.

To date, 15 projects are being examined in Europe. No such project is currently under consideration in France.

Climate-related issues

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has described CCS technology as essential in order to achieve a worldwide “net-zero” carbon balance by the second half of the 21st century.

Today, approximately 40 MT/year of CO₂ is stored geologically. In its 2020 “Sustainable Development” scenario, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that these volumes must be increased to 850 MT/year by 2030 and 5.6 GT/year by 2050 in order to meet the Paris Agreement objective.

In France, the National Low-Carbon Strategy (SNBC) has set a target of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. Its reference scenario, “With Additional Measures” (Avec Mesures Supplémentaires – AMS), forecasts 15 MT/year of CCS (5 MT/year in industry and 10 MT/CO₂ in bioenergy). ADEME has selected 3 industrial centers of interest for CCS deployment (Dunquerke, Le Havre-Rouen, and Lacq), with a combined potential capacity of 24 MT/year.

Conditions for the project’s success:

In the project’s later stages of development, it will be possible to increase capacity at the site in accordance with market demand from major CO₂ emitters across Europe.

The main conditions for the success of the project and of the CCS industry as a whole, are as follows:

• The net-zero emission aims of governments, companies and communities
• The conversion of these aims into quantified targets and action plans

In addition, value must be created for CO₂ through:

• Recognition of the added value of low-carbon products (cement, steel, chemicals, etc.)
• Decarbonization incentives based on regulation as well as carbon taxation

Committed partnerships

Total is working in partnership with Equinor and Shell on this project.

The Norwegian government is supporting the project through subsidies in return for reserving 0.8 MtCO₂eq/year of storage capacity over the first 10 years of operation.

Business development

A non-binding Memorandum of Understanding has already been signed with nine European companies for the development of CO₂ capture and storage value chains. The signatory companies include: Air Liquide, Arcelor Mittal, Ervia, Fortum, Preem, HeidelbergCement, and Stockholm Exergi.

The establishment of binding commercial agreements will depend on, among other things, a favorable decision by the Norwegian authorities, the decision to develop CO₂ capture facilities by third-party customers and the conclusion of bilateral agreements between Norway and third-party countries, where these customers are based, for CO₂ transport and storage. This cross-sectoral collaboration provides a unique solution to managing large volumes of CO₂ and preventing their release into the atmosphere. These new value chains and the infrastructure for CCS projects can only be developed through cooperation between governments and the private sector.