Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage

CCUS broadly includes the following components:

• CO2 Capture technology installed at the site where CO2 emissions are produced, such as a power plant, a cement production facility, or an ethanol plant, to collect these emissions before they can enter the atmosphere.
• Transportation of CO2 from the capture site to the underground storage or sequestration or utilization site, usually via pipeline in compressed form.
• Long-term storage of CO2 in underground geological repositories such as saline formations or depleted oil and natural gas reservoirs, or in products such as concrete.
• Utilization of captured CO2. The most common use of captured CO2 today is injection into oil wells to extract yet more fossil fuels, a process called Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). However, captured CO2 can also potentially be used as an input in other processes, such as the production of fuels, chemicals, plastics, and construction materials.

• To limit combustion emissions. This refers to capturing CO2 emissions from combusting fossil fuels to produce heat or power. Some examples include fossil fuel-fired power plants and industrial applications that require very high temperatures, like blast furnaces for steel production or kilns for cement production.
• To limit process emissions. This refers to capturing CO2 emissions produced as a by-product of industrial processes. For example, separating and capturing CO2 from fossil gas processing plants or CO2 that is created as a by-product of fermentation used to produce ethanol. In addition, about half of the CO2 emissions from cement production come from the chemical reaction required to extract lime from limestone (known as clinker production).

CCUS has several aspects that overlap with carbon dioxide removal (CDR) approaches. CCUS technologies target emissions at the source where they are created and limit them from entering the atmosphere, while CDR technologies reduce CO2 emissions already in the atmosphere and are not tied to a specific source. Some CDR approaches directly rely upon use of CCS technologies, such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). CCUS and CDR can pose many similar social, environmental and climate risks. Many scientific studies show that reaching global climate goals will require achieving net-negative global heat-trapping emissions in the latter half of this century. That will require “negative emissions” CDR options, going beyond “net zero” CCUS technologies.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), there are currently about 45 commercial CCUS facilities in operation around the world, with a total annual capture capacity of an estimated 62.5 million metric tons of CO2 (MtCO2) in 2026. That’s equivalent to about 0.1% of current global GHG emissions. The United States had approximately 22 MtCO2 per year in operational CCUS capacity in 2024, of which 19 Mt (86 percent) was directed at EOR. Billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on CCUS research, development and deployment over the years, although the priorities and focus of these programs have been inconsistent and the results limited.

Based on existing experience with this set of technologies, there are significant questions about the real-world feasibility of scaling up CCUS infrastructure—including capture, transportation and storage infrastructure—safely or quickly. The costs of scaling up CCUS also remain a significant barrier.
The fossil fuel industry and its allies frequently make misleading claims that exaggerate the potential for CCUS to justify continued fossil fuel use. These companies have long tried to maintain their market power and boost their profits by delaying climate action and have deliberately mischaracterized the use of CCUS as an alternative to the rapid phaseout of fossil fuels. The science is clear that CCUS is not a substitute for deep, rapid, direct emissions reductions via fast, fair phaseout of fossil fuels.

Relying on CCUS where fossil fuels can and should be directly displaced would put the world at greater risk of breaching critical temperature thresholds and unnecessarily prolong avoidable social and environmental harms resulting from the ongoing use of fossil fuels. Technological CCUS cannot contribute meaningfully to emission reductions to meet near-term climate goals—in this decade and beyond, we must prioritize a fossil fuel phaseout focused on deep, direct cuts in fossil fuel use. Without that, there will be worsening climate and public health harms, with disproportionate impacts on low-income communities and communities of color. In both the near and the long term, the core climate solutions which advance the direct displacement of fossil fuels are renewable energy, energy efficiency, energy storage, and widescale electrification of energy uses across the economy, together with more transportation options and beneficial land use planning.

These technologies should only be targeted to address CO2 emissions from processes where fossil fuels cannot be directly phased out or where non-fossil CO₂ emissions are intrinsic to a production processes, and where direct electrification or other more efficient, less polluting solutions are not available or practicable. For example, capturing CO2 from fossil power generation is expensive, inefficient and more polluting than replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy and energy storage, and it is therefore a vastly inferior decarbonization strategy. Subsidizing processes like Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), which facilitate yet more fossil fuel extraction, conflicts with the need to phase out fossil fuels. CCUS may be needed for applications that currently have very few direct options for complete decarbonization, but it is important to note that there is active research underway to expand options in sectors like cement, steel and aviation fuels that have been considered harder to decarbonize.

To ensure that CCUS technology can make a meaningful contribution to the reduction of heat-trapping emissions, it must be subject to rules that maximize CO2 capture rates and long-term storage and minimize leakage. Rigorous CO2 accounting standards for the full life-cycle of the CCUS process are also essential to ensure accuracy in measuring emissions reductions and prevent double counting.

These safeguards are essential since deploying CCUS can pose significant social, environmental and health risks—especially for communities living in proximity to fossil fuel and CCUS infrastructure.

They must also consider the specific conditions and context in which this set of technologies is being deployed. The suitability, feasibility, and risks of deploying CCUS needs to be evaluated against potentially superior and less risky strategies to limit the heat-trapping emissions that are driving climate change, as well as other fossil fuel pollutants that harm public health and the environment.

Companies’ claims that CCUS is an effective means of addressing their carbon emissions deserve scrutiny from policymakers, regulators and investors, and these companies should be held accountable for aligning their short and long-term business plans with the transition away from fossil fuels that science shows is necessary to meet climate goals.