Carbon Capture & Storage Industry - Introduction

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We all know the story by now. Our collective focus has shifted to decarbonization, reducing CO2 emissions as quickly as possible, with net zero as the ultimate goal. Net being an operative word. CO2 levels are like a bathtub filling up with water. Emissions are the running tap. As long as there are emissions, the water level will continue to rise. And even under the most optimistic scenarios, we should expect the tap to stay running for a while. We're going to keep emitting CO2 for years to come. Why? In part because change is slow. Decarbonization is happening at different rates in different places. But beyond that, there are simply some activities and industries that don't have great zero-carbon alternatives yet. We've solved for car exhaust with EVs. But what about planes? And there are some tricky industrial activities too. Steel and cement production are both major carbon emitters. These are the so-called hard-to-abate emissions, and they're going to continue for some time. Let's put some numbers to this. By 2050, we'll hopefully have done a lot of decarbonizing, slowing down the tap. Some estimates suggest we'll have reduced gross emissions by nearly 65% from today's levels, from 40 billion metric tons of CO2 emitted per year to around 15. So that would still leave 15 billion tons of new emissions each year. The tap will still be running, and that means the water level in the bathtub will still be rising. To offset the rising water, we'll need to open the drain. This means finding a way to remove carbon even as more is being emitted. Net zero will be the moment when we can remove the same amount of carbon dioxide that we emit. Once we remove more than we emit, then the problem will finally start to reverse. So how do we open the drain and remove CO2? Enter Carbon Capture and Storage, or CCS, a growing industry focused on solving this very problem. There are two primary CCS pathways. One is the natural way, planting more plants. But it's hard to plant our way out of this entirely. We would need 30 net new Amazon rainforests to close that 15 billion ton gap. So that leaves us with the second pathway, artificial means, trapping carbon dioxide and storing it permanently deep underground. So artificial CCS is a must-do, no-brainer, right? Yes, according to some. However, there are also skeptics who argue that CCS merely creates excuses for delaying and under-investing in decarbonization efforts. They'd rather focus on stopping the tap before focusing on opening the drain. We won't pick sides in the debate, but we can help you get smart on the activities and economics of CCS. One thing to clarify before we dive in, CCS is still a nascent industry. As of 2025, there were only around 50 large-scale CCS projects in operation worldwide, capturing just over 50 million tons of CO2 per year, about 0.1% of our current emissions. But that is changing fast. More than 600 new projects are in the planning stages. Much activity and investment are yet to come.