Over 400 CCS projects are tracked in our global CCS projects database. The average project is 2MTpa in size, with capex of $800/Tpa. The largest CO2 sources are hubs, gas processing, blue hydrogen, gas power and coal power. The most active countries are the US, UK, Canada and Europe. However, slow project progress in 2025 has halved our forecasts for 2035’s global CCS capacity to 200MTpa.
An amazing acceleration took place in the global CCS industry in 2019-24. In 2019, there were 30 historical CCS projects, with a combined capacity of 40MTpa. By 2025, there are almost 1,000 projects in various stages, and tracked by the CCS Institute.
However, the big surprise from 2025 was the delay-rate. Across a sample of 100 projects, we estimate that just 14% progressed “on schedule”. 50% were delayed by 1-7 years, with an average delay of 2-years. 15% generated no news flow (a bad sign). And 11% are deemed to have been canceled.
Hence our risked forecasts for future CCS capacity in 2035 were trimmed from 400MTpa (2024 outlook) to below 200MTpa (2025 outlook), which reflects both the 2025 delays, and a higher risking. We now assume that just 15% of the capacity being discussed will ultimately culminate in CCS capacity.
We have also attempted not to double-count projects. About c100 of the projects are hubs, which gather someone else’s CO2. Clearly, if I capture 1MTpa from my autothermal hydrogen reformer, feed it into your 1MTpa CO2 pipeline, and you pass it to a third party’s 1MTpa CO2 disposal facility, then the total quantum of CCS is 1MTpa and not 3MTpa.
For perspective, our roadmap to net zero would have required 7GTpa of CCS by 2050, and a straight-line journey from 2024 to 2050 would therefore require 3.5GTpa of CCS by 2037. Hence it is very challenging to believe that the world is on track to reach net zero.
CCS breakdown by region? 85% of risked CCS capacity in the data-file by 2035 is seen coming from the developed world, led by the US (40%), the UK (11%), Europe (13%), Canada (10%) and Australia (5%). The UK’s ambitions are perhaps boldest.
CCS breakdown by disposal method? A shift from CO2-EOR to geological storage is also seen in the database. Today, 80% of all CCS is associated with EOR activity, while by 2035, 70% is expected to be from geological storage.
CCS breakdown by CO2 source? The biggest change seen by 2035 is the emergence of CCS hubs, which handle 30% of risked CCS by 2035. To the extent that we are including these hubs in our risked forecasts below, it indicates that the CO2 source has not yet entirely been locked down, but will be gathered from regional emitters.
The biggest clear source of CO2 for CCS, in tonnage terms, is still from gas processing, although its proportionate share declines from 55% today to just c25% by 2035. The second biggest source is via the rise of blue hydrogen and blue ammonia projects, which are the source for 10% of risked CCS by 2035. Ethanol projects are most numerous, but also tend to be smaller at 0.2MTpa, and thus only underpin 4% of our risked total by 2035. Note that these are all pre-combustion or non-combustion sources of CO2 and bypass the potential risk of amine degradation and emissions.
15% of risked CCS is associated with power generation, in a split of coal (8%), gas (6%), biomass (1%) and waste (1%). For more details, see our overview of CCS energy penalties.
The full database is available for download below, or for TSE full subscription clients, in case you want to interrogate the numbers, or look into the underlying project details and riskings that we have been able to tabulate and clean up.