Our Work

CCUS plays an essential role in decarbonizing industries such as cement, steel, and fertilizer production, in which options are limited. These same industries have scant knowledge/expertise in capturing, transporting or storing CO₂ or integrating CCUS into their business. The Foundation will support the efforts of the global CCUS community to partner with various industry associations to raise the level of awareness, understanding and acceptance of the role that CCUS plays in their members’ businesses through a series of workshops and targeted engagements. A program of work that includes industry associations in key geographies around the world will be further developed, leveraging the capabilities of the Global CCS Institute and relevant regional partners.

Major state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are important elements of national economies in both advanced economies (e.g., France, Italy, Norway, Saudi Arabia, UAE) and emerging markets (e.g., China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia). Energy and industrial SOEs are often among the world’s leading CO₂ emitters at both country and global levels.  SOEs are also major providers of low-carbon alternatives, such as renewables and nuclear power. The state-ownership structure of SOEs allows governments to exercise shareholder power to advance the implementation of their various policy priorities, including climate change, energy, and industrial policy.  

The Role of State-Owned Enterprises in Advancing CCUS program explores the potential for state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to drive CCUS development and evaluates strategies to increase their impact.  The work under this program will include desk research; engagement with government officials, SOEs and academia; analysis of how the form of government impacts the government/SOE relationship; development of strategies for increasing impact of SOEs on CCUS deployment, and roundtables to discuss initial findings and conclusions. The program will result in a raised awareness and understanding of the possibility of utilizing SOEs more effectively to advance CCUS in selected countries.

Carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) has significant potential to support climate ambitions in emerging economies. Despite the potential, many countries have not created a policy environment to encourage investment in CCUS, nor do they have supporting markets and regulatory frameworks. Meanwhile, social justice, environmental justice, and climate justice are also significant concerns and are not always addressed adequately in environmental policy and regulations. The CCUS and Environmental Justice in Emerging Economies program will support the establishment of policy and regulatory frameworks necessary to deploy CCUS in emerging economies at scale, while ensuring that environmental justice considerations and community engagement are embedded in the process. 

The CCUS and Environmental Justice in Emerging Economies program will contain four components: CCUS regulation, enabling policy, critical industry sector engagement, and climate justice sector engagement. The program will increase understanding of and support for CCUS among policymakers/regulators and environmental justice advocates, ultimately reducing the time required to establish supportive CCUS policies and appropriate regulations. The program will also ensure that environmental justice factors are identified and considered in CCUS policies and regulations.

Voluntary carbon markets continue to grow and play an invaluable role in facilitating the achievement of net zero goals in the technology sector. In April 2022, online payments technology provider Stripe teamed up with Alphabet, Meta, Shopify, and McKinsey to launch an initiative called Frontier, which plans to purchase $925 million worth of carbon removal by 2030 from nascent carbon removal companies to accelerate research and development efforts and lower costs. Technology companies and countries dependent upon fossil fuel production will need carbon removal technologies such as CCUS to reach GHG emissions targets by 2030 and 2050. These targets and initiatives that reflect social, environmental and climate justice considerations will be needed for the technology sector to meet its ESG goals, which the industry has indicated as a priority. CCUS is rarely included in voluntary carbon markets or mentioned in the ESG realm. In collaboration with an esteemed university or financial institution, a comprehensive program to inform and educate policymakers, communities, finance institutions, and investors on the impact of CCUS on environmental justice and communities and the importance of including CCUS in carbon markets to reach net zero and ESG goals will be developed. The program will address:

• The value of CCUS as a climate risk mitigation measure
• Environmental justice considerations of CCUS deployment
• The advantages (e.g., measurability, permanence, and transparency) of integrating CCUS into carbon markets. 

Investors, governing bodies, and associated stakeholders require reliable estimates of subsurface geologic CO₂ storage capacities in order to inform national and multinational climate change analysis and policy decisions, and prior to identifying and selecting potential sites for commercial-scale CO₂ storage projects. A recent report by the International Energy Agency recommends that government geological surveys should undertake pre-commercial CO₂ storage assessments to develop an atlas or inventory of CO₂ storage resources. While many developed countries have assessed and reported their national geologic CO₂ storage capacities, many developing countries have not, as they often have more dire issues to address, and may lack the expertise or budgets to initiate or fund such endeavors. This program of work is intended to address the data gap, and includes the following key elements:

• Conduct a scan of relevant developing countries to identify where the greatest potential for benefit exists.
• Engage with relevant governments, academia, and the private sector to evaluate the availability of data and identify data gaps.
• Collect and compile available CO₂ storage potential assessments and other relevant data. This effort will need support from governments to tap into geologic survey expertise and data.
• Develop reports on data availability/gaps, including basic maps and geologic information on a country/regional basis.
• Communicate the information gathered to governments, investors (including the global financing community), academia, and potential CCUS project developers.

SEACA is an initiative working with governments, multilateral organizations, and the private sector to help accelerate investment in CCUS in Southeast Asia as an essential component of the region’s broader efforts to mitigate climate change. SEACA is structured under three pillars that broadly represent the most significant challenges to investment in CCUS in Southeast Asia:

• Enabling CCUS policy
• Comprehensive CCUS regulation
• Geological storage resource data and appraisal

SEACA will compress the timeline for establishing supportive CCUS policies, creating appropriate regulations, and developing subsurface data. The result will be safely sequestering more CO₂ in multiple countries in Southeast Asia years earlier than would otherwise occur.

In many countries where geography and emissions provide the opportunity for CCUS there is a high need and significant demand for professional education on CCUS. There is a gap between the amount of CCUS need/opportunity, and the expertise available to deploy it, resulting in significant demand for professional education on CCUS. While governments and businesses are often willing and able to pay for receiving such professional training, there is no sufficient commercial incentive for a knowledgeable, credible institution to invest in the development of an educational curriculum. The purpose of the program for CCUS Professional Education is to build CCUS technical expertise in these geographies that are critical to the global transition to a low-carbon economy. A comprehensive education program is under development covering:

• CCUS Fundamentals/Overview
• Technical aspects of capture
• Technical aspects of transportation/storage
• Policy/legal/regulatory considerations
• CCUS economics, financing, and project development

Content will be curated from program partners’ existing research, education, and information products, adapted to address region-specific issues and context, and supplemented by new materials to ensure currency and relevance. The program will increase the supply of individuals with deep knowledge of CCUS, enabling both governments and businesses to more effectively advance CCUS projects to operational status.

President XI Jinping’s September 2020 announcement that China will achieve (a) carbon peaking by 2030; and (b) carbon neutrality before 2060, has activated government ministries, state-owned enterprises, and private businesses to identify viable pathways to reach those goals. While CCUS has long been in development in China, the 30/60 goals have elevated interest in CCUS. It is now a critical component for China in achieving its climate targets. Research has highlighted the potential role for CCUS, suggesting that it may account for reductions of 2Gt of CO₂ per annum in China by 2060.

The three-year China CCUS Accelerator program (2023-2025) will support efforts to work with policymakers, financial organizations, and business decision-makers to develop and advance a durable, practical, and financially feasible environment for CCUS deployment in China. The first project year will lead China to begin a journey to develop a comprehensive policy framework, including monetary incentives and environmental regulations. By 2025, China should have developed a preliminary CCUS policy and regulatory framework. Research recommendations of this working group should be incorporated in China’s 15th-Five Year Development Plan, 2026-2030.