Europe Celebrates Largest Carbon Capture Project

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for IIR News Intelligence (Sugar Land, Texas)

Summary

Europe's largest carbon capture and storage (CCS) project is up and running at a fertiliser plant in the Netherlands as the EU continues to push for large-scale CCS rollout across heavy industry.

New Facility

European officials gathered to celebrate the commissioning of the world's first commercial cross-border carbon-capture and storage (CCS) chain at Yara's Sluiskil plant in the Netherlands. It comes at a time when the European Union (EU) is struggling to promote carbon capture on a large industrial scale. 

The plant, Europe's largest fertilizer plant, will capture and liquefy approximately 800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually from ammonia production. The liquefied CO2 will be stored temporarily at Sluiskil before it is collected by ships from the Northern Lights group, established by Equinor, Shell plc and TotalEnergies SE, for injection into subsea reservoirs 2,600 meters beneath the seabed at Øygarden, near Bergen, in Norway. The Sluiskil project is expected to capture and store approximately 12 million tons of CO2 over 15 years. According to Industrial Info Resources data, there are 450 carbon capture-related projects in Europe worth US$39 billion in investment. 

"This is an important day for Yara and for European industry," said Svein Tore Holsether, president and chief executive officer of Yara International. "The carbon capture facility in Sluiskil proves that large-scale industrial decarbonization is possible today. As global competition intensifies, Europe must find ways to cut emissions while keeping industry, jobs and critical value chains in Europe. That is exactly what this project is about."

EU Reaction

Wopke Hoekstra, Climate Commissioner at the European Commission (EC), welcomed the project at the inauguration: "We are here at one of the first fertilizer plants in the world to be decarbonised through carbon capture and storage. What a major milestone and proud moment: for the two countries cooperating, but also for Europe as a whole. Why is this important? First, we all experienced this past scorching summer. Wildfires, deadly heatwaves. And only a few days ago, UNEP's report highlighted that the 1.5°C [target for global warming] is now out of reach. We're moving to a world of 1.8°C. That matters. So we have a very significant climate problem on our hands. We need fertilizers to be cheaper. We need them to be cleaner. And clearly we need them to be more European because our current dependency -- even with everything that has happened since 2022 -- is simply too dangerous. Europe can and will need many, many more of these." 

Northern Lights

Northern Lights is the transport-and-storage component of Project Longship, Norway's flagship full-scale carbon capture, transport and storage project and the largest climate project in Norwegian industrial history. CO2 arrives by ship from capture sites, including Heidelberg Materials, Hafslund Celsio, and now Yara Sluiskil at a receiving terminal in Øygarden from where it is piped to a former gas reservoir under the seabed on the Norwegian continental shelf for permanent geological storage.

In July, Norway's government announced the operational start of Project Longship, confirming that the  first shipment of CO2 captured from Heidelberg Materials' cement factory in Brevik had been shipped. The planned annual CO2 capture capacity will be 400,000 tonnes from Heidelberg Materials in Brevik and 350,000 tonnes at Hafslund Celsio in Oslo, which is expected to be commissioned in 2029. The initial 1.5 million-tonne-capacity of Northern Lights' first phase is already booked out. Industrial Info Resources is tracking 5 Northern Lights projects worth US$1.1 billion. 

CCS Investment Falling

The carbon capture sector is facing declining investment. In 2025, the volume of carbon capture capacity cancelled in Europe exceeded that reaching final investment decision (FID), according to research from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). It found that 5.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (MtCO2) of capture-related projects were cancelled, while only 4.2 MtCO2 of projects received investment approval. Of the cancelled projects, blue hydrogen represented the largest share of capture volume at 71%, followed by a refining project at 20%. The balance was from a waste-to-energy plant. The largest project cancelled was oil and gas major BP ditching plans to build one of the U.K.'s largest blue hydrogen projects, H2Teesside, last December. Using research data from the International Energy Agency's CCUS database, IEEFA stated that there has been a marked decline in new European CCS project announcements, which peaked at 100 in 2021 and fell to 24 in 2025.

Key Takeaways

• Europe's largest carbon capture and storage (CCS) project is up and running at a fertiliser plant in the Netherlands.
• Yara's Sluiskil plant will capture and liquefy 800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually from ammonia production.
• Industrial Info Resources is tracking 450 carbon capture-related projects in Europe worth US$39 billion in investment.

About Industrial Info Resources
Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is the leading provider of industrial market intelligence. Since 1983, IIR has provided comprehensive research, news and analysis on the industrial process, manufacturing and energy related industries. IIR's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) helps companies identify and pursue trends across multiple markets with access to real, qualified and validated plant and project opportunities. Across the world, Industrial Info Resources is tracking over 250,000 current and future projects worth $30.2 Trillion (USD).