Europe's largest carbon-capture plant opened this month in the Netherlands. None of the carbon it captures will be stored in the Netherlands.
Yara inaugurated the facility at its Sluiskil ammonia and fertilizer complex on 7 September 2026. It captures and liquefies up to 800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year from the site's ammonia production — about half a percent of the Netherlands' entire annual emissions, from one plant.
The gas then leaves the country. Northern Lights ships lift the liquefied CO2 from a jetty at Sluiskil, carry it north across the North Sea to a terminal at Øygarden on Norway's west coast, and inject it into rock 2.6 kilometres beneath the seabed.
The hard part was never the chemistry
Pulling CO2 out of an ammonia plant is the straightforward half of carbon capture. The plant makes hydrogen by steam methane reforming, and that reaction throws off a stream of CO2 that is already concentrated and clean. No novel solvent is needed, and no energy is spent pulling the gas out of thin air. The CO2 is compressed, cooled until it turns liquid, and held at pressures and temperatures the industrial-gas sector has handled for decades.
What was actually built is a logistics operation inside a fertilizer plant: a liquefaction unit, on-site storage, a ship-loading terminal, and shore power so the vessels plug in rather than idle on their own fuel. Linde supplied the liquefaction plant. The company calls it the largest of its kind in the world, and the regional development agency Smart Delta Resources put the unit's investment at €194 million.
Capture capacity at full operation
Up to 800,000 tonnes a year, or roughly 12 million tonnes over the 15-year Northern Lights contract. · Yara International, 2026
Seven tanks hold up to 15,000 tonnes of liquid CO2 on site — a buffer of a few days, sized so the ships keep to a rhythm instead of a schedule. Under the agreement, the terminal expects a collection roughly twice a week.
It is, the two companies say, the first complete cross-border CCS value chain. In practice it is a sequence of handoffs: capture, liquefaction, short-term storage, ship loading, marine transport, intermediate storage in Norway, and injection. Each link is ordinary. Nobody had run them together across a national border at this scale before.
Why the fertilizer business moves first
Yara is not a startup assembling a pilot around a grant. It is the world's largest fertilizer producer, and Sluiskil is Europe's largest ammonia and fertilizer plant. The site makes about 1.2 million tonnes of hydrogen a year for ammonia and fertilizer, and it has been cutting emissions since 1990 — down 3.4 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent a year while output nearly doubled over the same period.
Volume is what makes the transport economics close. Eight hundred thousand tonnes a year justifies purpose-built ships, a dedicated receiving terminal and a 15-year offtake contract. A cement works or a steel mill emitting a tenth of that cannot finance its own marine corridor. It has to buy space on somebody else's.
That is the market Northern Lights is building. The company is a joint venture of Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies, and it forms the transport-and-storage leg of Norway's Longship project — the state-backed plan to turn the North Sea into a depository for other people's carbon.
Sluiskil proves the merchant-CCS model at commercial scale — 800,000 tonnes a year on a 15-year contract, not a subsidised demonstration.
Europe's 2030 injection target of 50 million tonnes a year is far ahead of the capacity now on the drawing board.
Storage is the scarce asset
The constraint sits on the storage side, not the capture side. Northern Lights' Phase 2 expansion, backed by a €131 million award from the EU's Connecting Europe Facility, more than doubles the Øygarden terminal's capacity to at least 5 million tonnes a year. Nine additional tanks arrived in mid-2025, each 680 cubic metres and standing more than 30 metres tall, built in Spain by IDESA and shipped north. The venture now holds three commercial cross-border agreements. Its own contract is the largest.
| Stage | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Capture and liquefaction | Up to 800,000 t of CO2 a year; Linde-built unit reported at €194 million | Yara, 2026 |
| On-site buffer | Seven tanks; up to 15,000 t of liquid CO2 | Yara factsheet |
| Marine transport | Roughly two pickups a week to Øygarden, Norway | Environment+Energy Leader, 2026 |
| Permanent storage | Injected about 2.6 km beneath the seabed | Yara / Northern Lights |
The Sluiskil chain, step by step. Sources: Yara International, Northern Lights JV, 2026
The binding agreement was signed in November 2023, after the two sides agreed commercial terms in August 2022 and reached final investment decision the same month. The gap between signature and first capture was under three years — quick by the standards of European energy infrastructure.
The tanks are here, which marks a milestone in scaling CCS to meet European decarbonisation targets. By increasing storage capacity, we commit to offering CO2 storage to a growing number of industrial customers across borders.— Tim Heijn, Managing Director, Northern Lights
The output is framed as a product rather than only an emissions cut. Lower-carbon fertilizer, and lower-carbon ammonia for shipping and industry, are what the captured carbon is meant to make saleable. A molecule that would have gone up a stack becomes a line item in a premium product.
Yara's CCS project in Sluiskil will deliver lower-carbon fertilizer and low-carbon ammonia for energy, shipping and industrial applications.— Svein Tore Holsether, CEO, Yara International
Brussels is trying to buy a market
Europe's CCS build-out is policy-led, and the policy carries a number. The Net-Zero Industry Act sets an EU-wide target of at least 50 million tonnes of annual CO2 injection capacity by 2030. The European Commission's own modelling puts the eventual need higher: around 250 million tonnes of captured CO2 a year will require permanent storage by 2040.
The near-term pipeline is thinner than the target. In its May 2026 progress report, the Commission counted roughly 19 million tonnes a year of planned new injection capacity across seven sites. Brussels is weighing national carbon-removal targets as part of a climate and energy package officials say is due before the end of the year.
Sluiskil counts toward that arithmetic because it is commercial, not demonstrative: a working plant, a signed contract, a licensed storage site and a shipping schedule. The International Energy Agency's net-zero roadmap assigns carbon capture and storage about 8% of cumulative emissions reductions to 2050. Europe's share of that depends on whether injection sites and ships arrive on time.
Can Europe reach 50 million tonnes of annual CO2 storage by 2030?
Probability: 70% — planned capacity sits near 19 million tonnes against a 2030 deadline that leaves little room for permitting and shipbuilding delays.
✅ Arguments for
Political momentum is real — carbon-removal targets may become binding across member states.
Confirmation criteria: two or more of the seven planned sites clear final investment decision before 2028.
❌ Arguments against
Cross-border shipping adds a logistics layer that onshore pipelines avoid.
Disconfirmation criteria: announced injection capacity stays below 25 million tonnes a year through 2028.
Development scenarios
🟢 Optimistic scenario (25%)
Implications: transport and storage operators capture most of the value, as the capture step commoditises.
🟡 Base-case scenario (50%)
Implications: the EU misses the 2030 target but keeps a credible path to the 2040 storage requirement.
🔴 Pessimistic scenario (25%)
Implications: CCS remains a niche tool for ammonia, gas processing and ethanol rather than a broad industrial fix.
Northern Lights Phase 2 tank commissioning and first commercial deliveries beyond Yara.
Final investment decisions at the seven sites in the Commission's 2026 injection-capacity pipeline.
Whether the EU's end-2026 legislative package makes carbon-removal targets binding on member states.
Yara Sluiskil's realised capture rate against the 800,000-tonne nameplate.