The turning point for CCS has arrived, with capture and storage capacity expected to quadruple by 2030
North America and Europe will drive this short-term scale up, with natural gas production still the main application. There will also be growth across many sectors and regions, including first-of- a-kind applications. Cumulative investments in CCS in the coming five years are expected to reach about USD 80 billion.
After 2030, the strongest growth will be in hard-to-decarbonise sectors, with manufacturing accounting for 41% of annual carbon dioxide captured by mid century
Manufacturing, particularly cement and chemicals, will be the biggest application of
CCS in Europe; in North America and the Middle East it will be hydrogen and ammonia; in China, coal power.
Although capture from natural gas production will continue, its share falls from 34% in 2030 to 6% of total capture in 2050.
CCS will grow to capture 6% of global CO2 emissions in 2050; that falls significantly short of what is required for any net-zero outcome
Uptake will grow from 41 MtCO2/y captured and stored today to 1300 MtCO2/y in 2050.
Despite positive policy and investment signals, CCS will need to scale to over six times the forecast level to reach DNV’s Pathway to Net Zero Emissions.
Scaling is particularly important in hard-to-decarbonise sectors.
CCS is growing where there is policy support. In most sectors, it will only scale with mandates and price incentives. Europe has the strongest price incentives and will catch up with — and eventually surpass — current North American deployment dominance.
Average costs will decline by around 40% towards 2050 as technologies mature and scale.
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) will capture 330 MtCO2 in 2050 — one-quarter of total captured emissions
As global emissions continue to accumulate, CDR becomes important to reduce the large carbon budget overshoot.
Bioenergy with CCS (BECCS) is generally the cheaper CDR option.
Direct air capture (DAC) costs remain higher at around USD 350/tCO2 up to 2050, but voluntary and compliance carbon markets still ensure the capture of 32 MtCO2 in 2040 and 84 MtCO2 in 2050.
Beyond the forecast period, an enormous amount of CDR, alongside nature-based solutions, will be required to ensure net-negative emissions.
DAC is a promising CDR technology due to its flexibility and ability to remove CO2 directly from the air. A challenge is the amount of energy required due to the low concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Two leading DAC technologies are readily scalable: solid-sorbent; and liquid-solvent.
In solid-sorbent systems, solid adsorbents selectively capture CO2 from the air, which is then released using changes in temperature, pressure, or humidity. The sorbent is regenerated at 80–120°C with minimal degradation, enabling continuous reuse.
The liquid-solvent method uses strong hydroxide solutions (eg, potassium hydroxide) to absorb CO2, which then reacts with calcium to form calcium carbonate. To release CO2, high temperatures (900°C) are required.
Looking ahead, several emerging DAC technologies are in the early stages of development, such as electro-swing adsorption and membrane-based separation. These emerging approaches offer certain advantages that help solve some of the challenges posed by ‘traditional’ DAC technologies. For example, electro-swing adsorption directly uses electrons for sorbent regeneration, potentially yielding higher energy efficiencies.
However, many emerging DAC techniques have only been tested in laboratory settings and have lower technology readiness levels (TRL).
Reducing failure rates
Historically, CCS project failure rates have been high.
Additionally, operational projects have performed at less than their nameplate capacity, on average. In some cases this is by design, and in others this is due to technical and/or economic issues.
CCS deployment is not growing in line with most IPCC assessed scenarios consistent with 1.5 to 2°C. Indeed, DNV forecasts that deployment by mid-century will be less than one-sixth of that required under its own Pathway to Net Zero scenario. Accelerated deployment is clearly needed, and reducing the number of project failures and improving the performance of operational facilities is fundamental.
Lessons from prior failed and operational projects are well documented and critical to consider as new CCS projects, policy, and regulations emerge globally.
A recent analysis of carbon capture project announcements, realisations, and cancellations by Kazlou et al**, found that carbon capture projects suffered from high failure rates of around 88% from 1972 to 2022. Failure rates are higher in more recent years due to sectors with higher failure rates comprising a larger share of the total planned project pipeline. The research also shows, via analogue industries, that much stronger government support could reduce failure rates down to almost 45%.
Historically, gas processing has dominated the CCS sector, comprising around 85% of installed capacity globally. Gas processing is a mature industry with more than 60 years of experience, a firm business case to achieve market specifications for gas, and close ties to gas and oil prices as most of the CO2 is used for enhanced oil recovery. Gas processing projects have similar failure rates to other mature industries at around 40%.
In the past 25 years, other sectors have also deployed carbon capture and storage — predominantly in power and industrial processes. With emissions reductions a much less firm business case, and the technology still adapting to the very different conditions, the performance of these projects is far more variable.
Such projects have much higher historical failure rates, in excess of 70%, and require strong policy and financial support to succeed.
One of the key reasons for project failure is a lack or removal of policy and/or financial support. For a CCS project to proceed, there must be a means to cover the associated costs. This is typically provided through policy support. In the period 2010 to 2015, as governments adjusted their priorities following the global financial crisis, policy support for CCS projects often failed to materialise or was removed. For example, the removal of UK government financial support impacted investor sentiment and ultimately led to the cancellation of the White Rose project in 2015.
Cross-chain risk is another key issue as the different parts of a CCS value chain are often developed by different, but interdependent, parties. Many early CCS projects failed due to issues with a specific part of the value chain, for example, the Kemper project in 2017, which planned to capture CO2 from coal gasification. The availability of cheap natural gas made the coal gasification process itself economically unattractive. This was compounded by both budget and construction issues.
In some cases, stakeholder concerns of governments or the public have contributed to project failure. In 2010, the Barendrecht CCS project in the Netherlands was cancelled due to a combination of a change in consensus on the need for the project at the government level and local opposition. To avoid similar cancellations, CCS project developers must transparently engage with and consider the concerns of stakeholders.
Project performance
No two operational carbon capture projects are the same; project performance is highly project specific.
To investigate historical performance, DNV has developed a comprehensive database of annual and monthly carbon captured, as reported by operators, for over 30 operational projects globally.
This represents over 90% of global carbon capture capacity and covers the period from 1986 to 2023.
The utilisation rate appears relatively variable in the 1980s and 1990s due to the outsized influence of one major project on the data. From the mid-1990s onwards utilisation has remained relatively stable at around 40 to 60%.
DNV has found that the communication around carbon captured, capacity, and capture rates can be unclear, and the three terms are often used interchangeably.
The deep-dive into each project has addressed these issues to give accurate capacities.
Between 1986 and 2023, the average utilisation rate (amount of CO2 reported captured vs the reported capture capacity of a project) is 53%, and increases to around 60% in the most recent five years of data.
Excluding gas processing projects (as they have different economics and incentives), the utilisation rate drops to 46% between 2000 and 2023, with a value around 50% in the most recent five years of data. The total amount of CO2 captured in 2023 was around 33 Mt, with the majority of this used for enhanced oil recovery or vented. Of the total capacity, around 85% captures CO2 for EOR.
The reasons behind the performance numbers are unique to each project, however one general observation is that gas processing projects connected to large gas fields tend to have higher utilisation rates with less variability. This is due to the constant production of gas, high CO2 concentrations in the feed gas, and a need to remove CO2 to meet technical product specifications that is decoupled from a need to store CO2.
A consistent approach to reporting operational performance and transparency regarding the data could offer significant benefits to the CCS industry.
*dnv.com Energy Transition Outlook: CCS to 2050
** T Kazlou, A Cherp, J Jewell, Feasible deployment of carbon capture and storage and the requirements of climate targets, Nature Climate Change, 14, 1047–1055, 2024
