New, holistic review of major carbon capture and storage projects shows the technology is working, highlights opportunities for increased climate benefit

A new report from Clean Air Task Force (CATF), Carbon capture and storage: What can we learn from the project track record, examines the performance of 13 significant carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects and provides a means to evaluate the success of existing projects to better understand the technology’s future impact on climate action. Significantly, the findings show that several large-scale projects have consistently met high levels of technical performance, providing a foundation for increased climate benefits at future projects.  

“This review shows that carbon capture and storage projects can perform well at large scales and that the technology is already contributing to global efforts to reduce emissions,” said Toby Lockwood, Technology and Markets Director for Carbon Capture at CATF. “Many of the projects operating today were not aimed at prioritizing benefit to the climate, but they have nonetheless driven technological progress that will pave the way for more ambitious, climate-focused initiatives. When combined with innovation and thoughtful policy — like we’re beginning to see in the U.S., Europe, and Canada — we can ensure that the emerging wave of large-scale CCS projects build on these early successes and establish a high standard for climate performance moving forward.”  

The report’s findings highlight that:  

• Several large-scale projects, including Sleipner, the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, and Quest, have consistently met high levels of technical performance, demonstrating an achievable standard that should – and must – be built upon by an increasing proportion of projects so climate goals remain in reach. 

• Commonly cited ‘large-scale’ CCS projects represent a fraction of the many commercial technologies actively capturing, transporting, and storing CO2. 

• Most early large-scale CCS projects were designed to meet a narrow set of objectives, specific market conditions, or regulations, and the majority have not been incentivized to maximize their CO2 mitigation potential. By understanding these factors, we can better evaluate project success.     

• Operational experience, technological learning, and innovation can help overcome technical challenges that arise as CCS is used at larger scales or in more diverse applications. Several large-scale CCS projects have been developed primarily to gain such experience and have led to clear improvements in reliability and performance. Maximizing continuous technical performance, however, is often subordinate to this goal. 
• To help build public confidence and accelerate technology improvements, CCS projects should be encouraged or required to report their performance data and challenges as transparently as possible. 
• The right policies and regulations can ensure that new CCS projects are designed and operated to maximize their climate impact. As the current wave of planned CCS deployment is increasingly driven by climate-focused policies, project performance can be expected to steadily improve. 

Lockwood continued: “Climate science and energy system modeling affirms we need CCS technology at massive scales to both cut emissions quickly from existing sources and remove emissions from the atmosphere. While its role in climate mitigation is relatively new, the constituent technologies have been successfully used in commercial settings for decades. Future projects will increasingly be incentivized to focus on deep carbon reductions, but this report provides a critical resource for interpreting the performance of previous projects with narrower objectives.” 

In the U.S., the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) have generated momentum to combat the climate challenge and meet U.S. emissions targets by installing critically needed carbon capture and storage technologies. The dedicated spending and expanded tax credits in the IRA and IIJA have given developers even more reason to focus on capturing carbon pollution from air emissions waste streams and permanently storing it underground.   

In Europe, the Net Zero Industry Act (NZIA), which aims to boost investments and market conditions for clean tech, includes carbon capture and storage as one of the key technologies for the clean energy transition. In February 2024, the European Commission adopted the Industrial Carbon Management Strategy (ICMS). It outlines actions at EU and national levels to scale up carbon management, establish a single CO2 market, and attract investments in carbon management technologies. Several countries of the European Union, such as Denmark, Germany, France, and Austria have already published national carbon management strategies, and more countries are expected to introduce their plans soon.    

For more on CATF’s work in this space, explore our carbon capture page.