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Although carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects have received billions of dollars in private and government funding, over 80% of projects are abandoned or put on indefinite hold.

Summary​

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) initiatives have consistently underperformed despite significant investment, with over 80% of essential projects ultimately failing. While successful in gas processing plants (70% success rate), the technology has particularly struggled in power generation where nearly 90% of proposed projects never materialized. Of 149 globally proposed CCS projects focused solely on carbon capture, over 100 were abandoned by 2020. The technology's limited success stems largely from its dependence on enhanced oil recovery projects, which account for 70% of captured CO₂ use. These patterns suggest future carbon capture approaches like direct air capture may face similar challenges without substantial government support or regulatory mandates, risking continued absorption of clean energy funds without meaningful emissions reductions.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS), often referred to as carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS), has largely been unsuccessful in achieving its stated goals laid out in the late 1990s and 2000s. The International Energy Agency (IEA), which has historically emphasized the importance of fossil fuels for maintaining energy security, stated in the very first line of their Special Report on Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (2020) that "The story of CCUS has largely been one of unmet expectations: its potential to mitigate climate change has been recognized for decades, but deployment has been slow and so has had only a limited impact on global CO2 emissions" 1.

In the early 2000s, the promises of CCS as a method for combating climate change by reducing atmospheric CO₂ concentrations were immense, and this led to significant incentivization through direct cash and tax incentives. Throughout the 2000s, billions of dollars of government and private investment were channeled into a few dozen CCS projects 2. A significant portion of that money was directed into enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects as it was seen as a way to gain experience using the technology and increase its maturity. Globally, approximately 70% of all CO₂ captured is from gas processing plants for use in EOR 2.

Although the initial enthusiasm and investments were high, CCS technologies have historically had extremely high failure rates, with estimates showing that more than 80% of projects that are essential for CCS commercialization have ended in failure 2. It should be noted that the success rate for CCS in gas processing plants is much higher, with over 70% ending in success. However, this is contrasted in the power sector by the fact that almost 90% of proposed CCS capture capacities were never completed 2.

When considering CCS projects whose sole intention is to capture and store some portion of carbon, the US Department of Energy (DOE) calculated globally that 149 projects had been proposed or built. By 2020, over 100 of the original 149 projects had been abandoned or put on indefinite hold 2.

The promises and failures of CCS over the past decade can serve as a cautionary tale for future carbon capture projects such as direct air capture (DAC). History has shown that it is extremely difficult to run a CCS project at a profit unless the CO₂ is utilized for EOR. Without significant and sustained government funding or strict legal requirements for carbon capture implementation enforced on the industry, CCS and DAC projects will continue to absorb funding intended for achieving a clean energy transition whilst providing little to no net emissions reductions.

Sources​

Footnotes​

  1. International Energy Agency. (2020). CCUS in clean energy transitions. IEA. https://www.iea.org/reports/ccus-in-clean-energy-transitions ↩

  2. bdulla, A., Hanna, R., Schell, K. R., Babacan, O., & Victor, D. G. (2020). Explaining successful and failed investments in U.S. carbon capture and storage using empirical and expert assessments. Environmental Research Letters, 16(1), 014036. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abd19e ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5