Puro.earth has certified Europe’s first biogas-based BECCS project, at Norway’s VEAS wastewater plant, where captured CO2 is stored under the North Sea and sold as permanent carbon removal credits.
Puro.earth has certified Europe’s first biogas-based bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) project, gasworld reported. The project, at Norway’s VEAS wastewater treatment plant, captures biogenic CO2 from biogas production and stores it permanently beneath the North Sea.
Developed by Inherit Carbon Solutions, the scheme is the first biogas-based BECCS to earn Puro.earth CO2 Removal Certificates (CORCs). The certifier validated it after a third-party audit under its Geologically Stored Carbon methodology. In its first four months, from February to May 2026, the project earned more than 700 certificates, with more to follow.
Three companies run the chain. Inherit develops and manages the project. HoopCO2 captures and liquefies the biogenic CO2 at VEAS, which serves more than 800,000 residents around Oslo. Northern Lights then transports and stores it.
The liquefied CO2 is trucked to Northern Lights’ terminal at Øygarden, west of Bergen, then piped to a storage site about 2,600 metres below the seabed. Under the agreement, Northern Lights will store up to 7,000 tonnes of biogenic CO2 a year from the plant. It is the venture’s first biogenic CO2 operation, after it began commercial offshore storage of fossil emissions in 2025.
Because the carbon comes from organic waste rather than fossil fuel, storing it produces negative emissions. The biomass absorbed the CO2 as it grew, so locking it underground removes carbon from the cycle rather than only avoiding new emissions.
“Biogenic CO2 that would otherwise have been released is instead captured and permanently stored,” said Jan-Willem Bode, president of Puro.earth. He said the potential for BECCS across Norway, the Nordics and Europe was significant given the scale of biogas production. Kaja Voss, chief executive of Inherit, said the certification gave “a clear and credible pathway to bring these credits to market”.
The model reuses existing infrastructure. Wastewater and biogas plants already produce biogenic CO2, so adding capture and connecting to transport and storage turns routine waste processing into carbon removal. Smaller BECCS projects like VEAS also need less upfront capital and shorter build times than large capture plants.
The certification lands as the EU weighs a larger role for engineered removals in its 2040 climate plan. Analysts estimate BECCS could remove tens of millions of tonnes of CO2 a year in Europe by 2040 if capture spreads across biomass and biogas sites. For now, VEAS shows the approach working at commercial, if modest, scale.
