CO2 Highway Europe (CO2HE) could be a game changer for CO2 transport and storage in Northwestern Europe. The project plans to connect European customers with CO2 storage sites in the North Sea via the offshore CO2 Highway Europe pipeline.
annual capacity for CO2 transport and storage from 2030
offshore pipeline to the Norwegian continental shelf
with additional future storage sites
Our ambition with CO2 Highway Europe is to develop large-scale cross-border transport and storage solutions which would entail a major increase in commercial CCS capacity on a global scale.
Developing CO2 transport and storage at speed and scale is essential for Europe to reach its climate goals by reducing CO2 emissions in hard-to-abate industries such as steel, cement, and chemical production.
CO2HE is a CO2 transport and storage project intended to connect Smeaheia and other CO2 reservoirs on the Norwegian continental shelf to Northwestern European emitters via an offshore CO2 pipeline. The pipeline will connect to CO2 export terminals in Zeebrugge, Belgium, and Dunkirk, France, with flexibility for future branch connections to the Netherlands and other European countries.
The initial capacity will be 18 million tonnes of CO2 per year and can be further boosted to 27 million tonnes in a later phase depending on market interest. The pipeline is planned to come onstream in 2030, but an investment decision is dependent on sufficient customer commitment.
Since the project was initiated, Equinor has performed several feasibility studies and matured the technical concept and routing of the pipeline.
In 2024, an offshore pipeline routing survey was performed. A total area of 386 022 km2 was covered in the geophysical survey. The pipeline will cross six economic zones offshore, including Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France.
In addition to Smeaheia Equinor has been awarded two other storage licences, Kinno and Albondigas, which can provide additional storage capacity in the future.
Watch this short film about Equinor’s ambitions for a new 1000 km long pipeline - CO2 Highway Europe – connecting European industrial emitters with massive storage reservoirs like Smeaheia in the North Sea.
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Strategic partnerships are being developed with key European players to ensure that onshore CO2 infrastructure and export terminals are developed along a common timeline, including Fluxys in Belgium and GRTgaz in France. In these partnerships we will bring complementary expertise and experience to the project to create and strengthen a viable business case.
Equinor has applied for funding under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) funding scheme for onshore and offshore infrastructure FEED together with partners Fluxys and GRTgaz.
Equinor has been developing groundbreaking CCS solutions since 1996, including Sleipner, Snøhvit, Technology Centre Mongstad (TCM), Northern Lights, Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP).
Equinor is the pioneer of industrial CCS with nearly three decades of operational experience across several projects in the North Sea region. Building on what we learned from Sleipner and Snøhvit, Equinor is developing more international collaborative projects like Northern Lights and CO2 Highway Europe in Norway and the Northern Endurance Partnership off the coast of the United Kingdom.
Equinor has ambitions to develop further storage licences in the North Sea in the coming years with the aim of building a common, pipeline-based infrastructure that can contribute to substantial cost reductions for the CCS value chains.
Safe capture and storage of CO2 is a prerequisite and enabler for developing blue hydrogen and ammonia from natural gas. With CCS, blue hydrogen and ammonia can help reduce emissions from the use of natural gas, thus ensuring access to large amounts of low-carbon,reliable energy. With the use of CCS, emissions can also be significantly reduced from gas-fired power plants.
Collaboration between industries, governments and organisations is crucial to succeed, and the EU2NSEA project is very important to pave the way for European CCS deployment at scale.
The CO2 Highway Europe project contributes to the EU2NSEA, a project of common interest (PCI) under the EU TEN-E regulation, where Equinor acts as coordinator. The EU2NSEA PCI aims at developing a resilient, scalable onshore and offshore pipeline-based system enabling the transport and storage of CO2 from North-West Europe to the North Sea.
It includes 16 emitters in 10 countries, 31 capture sites, and storage of around 34 million tonnes of CO2 per year at two storage sites in the North Sea.