Myths vs realities: carbon capture and storage — separating hype from evidence

Global carbon capture and storage (CCS) capacity reached approximately 50.5 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) of CO2 by early 2025, yet that figure represents less than 0.1% of the roughly 37.4 billion tonnes of CO2 emitted annually from fossil fuels and industry. The Global CCS Institute tracked 628 CCS facilities in its 2025 database, up from 392 the previous year, while the International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that CCS must scale to over 1 billion tonnes per year by 2030 under net-zero scenarios. These numbers frame the central tension: CCS is growing faster than ever but remains orders of magnitude below what climate models demand. Separating the legitimate promise from the persistent hype requires examining the technology through hard evidence rather than press releases.

Why It Matters

Carbon capture occupies a unique position in climate strategy. It is one of the few tools capable of abating emissions from hard-to-decarbonize industrial sectors such as cement, steel, and chemicals, where process emissions cannot be eliminated through electrification alone. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report includes CCS in virtually all modeled pathways that limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Removing CCS from these models raises the estimated cost of meeting climate targets by 138%, according to IPCC Working Group III.

At the same time, CCS has a troubled track record. Multiple flagship projects have underperformed, been mothballed, or been canceled entirely. Critics argue that the technology serves primarily as a justification for continued fossil fuel production. Proponents counter that dismissing CCS forecloses options the world cannot afford to lose. The truth, as the evidence shows, is more nuanced than either camp typically allows.

Key Concepts

Point-source capture intercepts CO2 from large industrial emitters such as power plants, cement kilns, or steel furnaces before it enters the atmosphere. Capture rates at operating facilities range from 85% to 95% of the CO2 in the flue gas stream. This approach accounts for the overwhelming majority of current CCS capacity worldwide.

Direct air capture (DAC) removes CO2 that has already been dispersed into the ambient atmosphere. Because atmospheric CO2 concentration is roughly 425 parts per million (compared to 10-15% in flue gas), DAC requires significantly more energy per tonne captured. As of 2025, global DAC capacity totals approximately 0.01 Mtpa, with Climeworks and Carbon Engineering (acquired by Occidental Petroleum) operating the largest facilities.

Geological storage injects captured CO2 into deep underground formations, typically saline aquifers, depleted oil and gas reservoirs, or basalt formations. The Sleipner project in Norway has stored over 20 million tonnes of CO2 since 1996 with no detected leakage, providing the longest-running evidence base for storage permanence.

Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) uses injected CO2 to extract additional oil from depleted reservoirs. Approximately 70-80% of current CCS capacity is linked to EOR, which raises valid questions about net climate benefit since the recovered oil generates additional emissions when burned.

KPI	Current Status (2025)	Net-Zero Target (2030)
Global CCS capacity	~50.5 Mtpa	>1,000 Mtpa (IEA)
Operating facilities	48 commercial	200+ needed
Point-source capture cost	$15-$120/tonne CO2	$15-$55/tonne (target)
DAC cost	$400-$1,000/tonne CO2	$100-$300/tonne (target)
CO2 stored without EOR	~30% of total	>60% (target)
Average capture rate	85-95%	>95%

Myth 1: CCS Is a Proven, Mature Technology Ready to Scale

Reality

CCS works at the component level, but the claim of technological maturity overstates the evidence. Of the 628 facilities tracked by the Global CCS Institute in 2025, only 48 are fully operational commercial plants. The rest are in various stages of development, feasibility, or early construction. History suggests many will never reach final investment decision (FID): between 2010 and 2020, over half of announced CCS projects were ultimately canceled or indefinitely postponed.

The technology performs reliably in certain applications, particularly natural gas processing and ammonia production where CO2 is already separated as part of the industrial process. The Sleipner and Snohvit projects in Norway, Quest in Canada (operated by Shell), and the Century Plant in Texas have demonstrated consistent operation. However, post-combustion capture at power plants has proven far more challenging. The Boundary Dam project in Saskatchewan, operated by SaskPower, has frequently operated below its 1 Mtpa design capacity since opening in 2014, capturing roughly 4 million tonnes total through 2023 rather than the projected 10 million tonnes over that period.

The IEA's 2024 CCUS report notes that the project pipeline has expanded dramatically but warns that "reaching FID remains the critical bottleneck." An estimated 130 Mtpa of capacity was in development as of mid-2025, but converting announcements into operating plants requires resolving financing, permitting, and infrastructure challenges that have historically derailed CCS projects.

Myth 2: CCS Is Too Expensive to Matter

Reality

Cost criticisms often rely on outdated or cherry-picked figures. The cost of CCS varies enormously depending on the CO2 source, capture technology, and whether transport and storage infrastructure already exists. Capturing CO2 from ethanol production or natural gas processing costs as little as $15 to $25 per tonne because the gas stream already contains high concentrations of CO2. Cement and steel applications range from $50 to $120 per tonne. Post-combustion capture at coal power plants sits at the upper end, roughly $60 to $120 per tonne.

These costs are meaningful when compared to alternatives. For cement production, which generates roughly 8% of global CO2 emissions, no commercially viable alternative exists that eliminates the process emissions released when limestone is heated to produce clinite. HeidelbergCement (now Heidelberg Materials) is constructing a full-scale CCS project at its Brevik plant in Norway, targeting 400,000 tonnes of CO2 per year by 2025. The project's cost premium of approximately $30 per tonne of cement represents a roughly 30% increase in production cost, a figure the company considers manageable as carbon pricing rises.

Policy incentives have also shifted the economics. The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 increased the 45Q tax credit to $85 per tonne for geological storage and $180 per tonne for DAC with storage. These incentives have driven a surge in project announcements, particularly in the U.S. Gulf Coast where existing pipeline infrastructure and favorable geology reduce transport and storage costs.

Myth 3: CCS Is Just a Fossil Fuel Industry Greenwashing Tool

Reality

This criticism contains a legitimate kernel but paints with too broad a brush. It is true that the oil and gas industry funds significant CCS advocacy and that roughly 70-80% of current CO2 capture is linked to enhanced oil recovery, which enables additional fossil fuel extraction. ExxonMobil, Chevron, and other majors have made CCS central to their "lower-carbon" strategies while continuing to expand oil and gas production. The fossil fuel industry's cumulative CCS investment, while substantial in absolute terms, represents a fraction of its upstream capital expenditure.

However, dismissing all CCS as greenwashing ignores critical applications. The IPCC identifies industrial CCS as essential for sectors like cement, steel, and chemicals. The Northern Lights project, a joint venture between Equinor, Shell, and TotalEnergies, began operations in 2024 as the world's first open-access CO2 transport and storage infrastructure in the Norwegian North Sea. Its business model stores CO2 from third-party industrial emitters, including Heidelberg Materials' cement plant, rather than enabling more oil extraction.

Climeworks, a Swiss DAC company, stores CO2 in basalt rock formations in Iceland through its Orca and Mammoth facilities. The company's business model is entirely detached from fossil fuel production, selling carbon removal credits to corporate buyers including Microsoft, Shopify, and Stripe. As of 2025, Climeworks has raised over $800 million in funding and is scaling toward its Mammoth plant capacity of 36,000 tonnes per year.

The key distinction is between CCS that reduces net atmospheric CO2 and CCS that primarily extends fossil fuel production. Blanket rejection of the technology risks discarding applications where no viable alternative exists.

Myth 4: Underground CO2 Storage Will Leak and Cause Disasters

Reality

Storage safety is one of the best-evidenced aspects of CCS, though public perception lags far behind the science. The Sleipner project in Norway has injected over 20 million tonnes of CO2 into the Utsira sandstone formation since 1996. Continuous seismic monitoring shows the CO2 plume behaving as predicted, with no detected leakage over nearly three decades. The IEAGHG concluded in its 2024 review that "well-selected and managed geological storage sites retain CO2 with very high confidence over millennia."

Multiple natural analogues reinforce this finding. Natural CO2 accumulations have remained trapped in geological formations for millions of years across sites in the Colorado Plateau, the North Sea, and Australia's Otway Basin. The physics are well understood: CO2 injected at depths greater than 800 meters exists as a supercritical fluid denser than water, trapped by impermeable caprock, dissolved into formation brine, and eventually mineralized into solid carbonate.

The often-cited 2006 Lake Nyos disaster in Cameroon, where a limnic eruption of naturally accumulated CO2 killed approximately 1,700 people, bears no resemblance to engineered geological storage. Lake Nyos involved CO2 dissolved in surface water under volcanic conditions, not CO2 injected into deep, sealed rock formations with continuous monitoring. Conflating the two misrepresents the risk profile.

That said, wellbore integrity remains the primary technical risk. Improperly sealed legacy wells can provide pathways for CO2 migration. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Underground Injection Control program requires comprehensive well integrity testing, and the 2024 updates to EPA Class VI well regulations tightened monitoring requirements. No commercial CCS project has experienced significant storage leakage to date.

Myth 5: CCS Distracts from Renewable Energy and Real Climate Solutions

Reality

This framing presents a false binary. Global renewable energy capacity additions reached a record 560 GW in 2024, according to the IEA, driven primarily by solar and wind. CCS investment, at roughly $10 to $14 billion annually, represents a small fraction of the $450+ billion flowing into renewables. There is no evidence that CCS funding displaces renewable deployment; the capital sources, policy mechanisms, and project developers are largely distinct.

The more substantive version of this critique focuses on opportunity cost: could the money spent on CCS achieve greater emissions reductions if directed elsewhere? For power generation, the answer is increasingly yes. New solar and wind plus battery storage is now cheaper than operating many existing fossil fuel plants, let alone building new ones with CCS. The Petra Nova project in Texas, which captured CO2 from a coal plant, was mothballed in 2020 partly because falling gas prices made the host plant uneconomical.

But for industrial emissions, the calculus differs. Cement production generates roughly 2.7 billion tonnes of CO2 annually, with about 60% coming from the chemical reaction of converting limestone to clinker rather than from fuel combustion. Electrifying the kiln does not eliminate these process emissions. Similarly, hydrogen production from natural gas with CCS (blue hydrogen) can provide a bridge to green hydrogen in regions where renewable electricity is insufficient for large-scale electrolysis.

The evidence supports a portfolio approach. The IEA's 2024 Net Zero Roadmap allocates roughly 8% of cumulative emissions reductions to CCS by 2050, with the remainder distributed across renewables, efficiency, electrification, and behavioral change. CCS is not a silver bullet, but removing it from the portfolio raises the cost and difficulty of meeting climate targets.

What the Evidence Shows

The data paints a picture of a technology that is necessary but insufficient, real but overhyped, and growing but far too slowly. Three conclusions emerge from the current evidence base:

First, CCS works technically but struggles commercially. The fundamental chemistry and geology are sound, demonstrated by decades of operation at sites like Sleipner. The challenge is building a business case that justifies the capital expenditure, particularly for post-combustion capture at power plants where renewables offer a cheaper alternative.

Second, industrial CCS has the strongest case. Cement, steel, chemicals, and waste-to-energy applications generate emissions that cannot be eliminated through electrification or fuel switching alone. These sectors represent roughly 25% of global CO2 emissions and will likely require CCS as part of any realistic decarbonization pathway.

Third, the gap between announcements and operations remains enormous. The CCS project pipeline has expanded roughly 60% year-over-year since 2022, but the conversion rate from announcement to FID to operation has historically been below 50%. Closing this gap requires stable policy frameworks, streamlined permitting, and shared transport and storage infrastructure like the Northern Lights model.

Key Players

• Occidental Petroleum - Acquired Carbon Engineering; building Stratos, the world's largest DAC facility in Texas at 500,000 tonnes/year capacity
• Climeworks - Swiss DAC pioneer operating Orca and Mammoth facilities in Iceland with mineralization storage
• Equinor - Leading Northern Lights, the first open-access CO2 transport and storage project in the Norwegian North Sea
• Heidelberg Materials - Constructing full-scale CCS at Brevik cement plant in Norway, targeting 400,000 tonnes CO2/year
• Shell - Operating Quest CCS in Alberta (capturing ~1 Mtpa from oil sands upgrading) and partner in Northern Lights
• ExxonMobil - Largest industrial CCS operator with ~9 Mtpa capture capacity across its global portfolio
• SaskPower - Operating Boundary Dam CCS in Saskatchewan, the first commercial post-combustion capture at a power plant
• Global CCS Institute - International think tank tracking CCS deployment, publishing annual status reports

FAQ

Q: How much CO2 can CCS realistically capture by 2030? A: The IEA's Net Zero Scenario requires over 1 billion tonnes per year of CCS by 2030, but current capacity is roughly 50 Mtpa with approximately 130 Mtpa in development. Reaching even 200 to 300 Mtpa by 2030 would require unprecedented acceleration in project completion rates. Most analysts consider 150 to 250 Mtpa a more realistic target.

Q: Is direct air capture viable at scale? A: DAC works but remains extremely expensive at $400 to $1,000 per tonne of CO2, compared to $15 to $120 for point-source capture. Occidental Petroleum's Stratos facility in Texas aims to demonstrate costs below $400 per tonne at scale. The technology requires substantial cost reductions, likely through next-generation sorbents and cheaper clean energy, before it can contribute meaningfully to emissions reduction.

Q: Does CCS make financial sense without government subsidies? A: In most applications, no. The U.S. 45Q tax credit ($85/tonne for storage, $180/tonne for DAC), the EU Emissions Trading System (carbon price of roughly EUR 60 to 70 per tonne in 2025), and Norway's carbon tax (approximately $90/tonne) are essential for project economics. However, as carbon prices rise and technology costs decline, the subsidy dependence is expected to decrease over the next decade.

Q: What happens to CCS if fossil fuel use declines rapidly? A: Reduced fossil fuel combustion would shrink the addressable market for power-sector CCS, but industrial applications (cement, steel, chemicals) and carbon dioxide removal (DAC, bioenergy with CCS) would remain relevant regardless of the pace of fossil fuel phase-out. The IEA projects that industrial and removal applications will account for over 70% of CCS deployment by 2050.

Sources

• Global CCS Institute. (2025). "Global Status of CCS 2025." https://www.globalccsinstitute.com/resources/global-status-of-ccs/
• International Energy Agency. (2024). "CCUS Projects Database and Net Zero Roadmap Update." https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-tools/ccus-projects-explorer
• IPCC. (2022). "Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Working Group III Contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report." Cambridge University Press.
• IEAGHG. (2024). "Review of CO2 Storage Site Integrity and Monitoring." https://ieaghg.org/publications/
• Heidelberg Materials. (2024). "Brevik CCS Project Update: Full-Scale Carbon Capture at Cement Production." https://www.heidelbergmaterials.com/en/carbon-capture-storage
• Climeworks. (2025). "Mammoth: Scaling Direct Air Capture in Iceland." https://climeworks.com/plant-mammoth
• U.S. Department of Energy. (2024). "Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage: 45Q Tax Credit and Regional Direct Air Capture Hubs." https://www.energy.gov/fecm/carbon-capture-utilization-and-storage