CCUS and Climate Change

Climate change is an urgent challenge facing humanity today, and the science is clear that we must use every tool at our disposal to avoid the worst of its impacts.

The world’s leading climate and energy bodies – the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) – have outlined a clear and important role for CCUS in reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. Moreover, experts agree that CCUS will be particularly vital for hard-to-abate sectors like cement and steel production, where no other viable solutions currently exist, and for removing CO2 already in the atmosphere. Simply put, we are running out of time to reduce our global emissions, and it is becoming increasingly clear that any realistic path forward on climate action will include CCUS.

CCUS is already happening around the world. There are currently more than 40 operating facilities with a cumulative capture capacity of nearly 50 million tonnes per year, the equivalent of taking nearly 11 million cars off the road. There are now over 350 facilities across all stages of development and a range of sectors, but much more needs to be done.

“The climate action efforts we’re seeing globally, while encouraging, are not enough. The sooner we include carbon capture use and storage technologies into the fold of widespread decarbonization initiatives, the more likely we will be able to achieve Paris Agreement climate targets and get to net zero emissions.”
King Charles III
“CCUS (carbon capture, utilization and storage) is a necessary bridge between the reality of today’s energy system and the increasingly urgent need to reduce emissions. Not only can it avoid locking in emissions from existing power and industrial facilities, it also provides a critical foundation for carbon removal or negative emissions.”
Dr. Faith BirolExecutive Director, International Energy Agency
“We have little time left to avoid some of the worst impacts of climate change. We can tackle this challenge by avoiding carbon emissions through point source carbon capture coupled to reliable storage (CCS) and by removing carbon dioxide from the accumulated pool in the atmosphere (CDR)… If done strategically and collaboratively, deploying these approaches will not only help us address the climate crisis, but it will also spur the creation of high-quality clean economy jobs – helping those populations and communities that have been disproportionately affected by climate change.”
Dr. Jennifer WilcoxPrincipal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, Department of Energy, formerly Presidential Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania
“CCUS is proven to deliver massive emissions reductions. It provides a pathway for the low-carbon utilization of fossil fuels and to achieve negative emissions and will also make a significant contribution to clean energy production, such as hydrogen… CCUS is not only essential for CO2 emissions reduction, but is an indispensable technology to build a resilient, versatile, and complementary future energy mix.”
Prof. Jin HongguangMember of China Academy of Sciences; Chair Commissioner of CCUS Professional Committee; Chinese Society of Environmental Sciences
"The stars have begun to align for carbon management, including CCS, carbon-to-value (CO2 recycling) and carbon removal. [Due to] the uncomfortable recognition that most major economies won’t achieve their climate targets for Paris [and] the unsettling facts in the IPCC’s recent 1.5°C report. Thankfully, dramatic progress in technology, policy, investment, and business around carbon management balances the scales and drives current interest and progress on many fronts.”
Dr. Julio FriedmannSenior Research Scholar, Center on Global Energy Policy, Columbia University. CEO of Carbon Wrangler
“We have long known that CCUS will be an essential technology for emissions reduction; its deployment across a wide range of sectors of the economy must now be accelerated. Low-carbon technologies, including renewables and CCUS, point toward a viable pathway for achieving net-zero GHG emissions by 2050, even in sectors that were considered “too difficult” to decarbonize just a few years ago, such as steel, cement, aviation, and long-distance transportation.”
Lord Nicholas SternIG Patel Professor of Economics and Government, London School of Economics Chair, Grantham Research Institute
“Both CCS and CCU are strategic climate mitigation technologies for the EU. We need to make our carbon cycles sustainable and ensure that hard-to-abate industrial processes decarbonize to reach net-zero as soon as possible… We now need to invest in the necessary CO2 transport and storage infrastructures to allow our industries to neutralize their process emissions, in line with our climate targets for 2030 and 2050.”
Clara De La TorreActing Director General, DG Climate Action, European Commission
“As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the International Energy Agency make abundantly clear, we cannot meet our global climate targets without the economywide, at-scale deployment across the entire carbon management value chain, including carbon capture, direct air capture and other carbon removal, carbon conversion, and CO2 transport and storage."
Brad CrabtreeAssistant Secretary for the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management at the U.S. Department of Energy
“Communities of color have borne the brunt of the climate crisis and pollution for far too long. The carbon management sector must recognize that environmental harms impact frontline communities disproportionately and these harms are perpetuated throughout the energy and industrial sectors. As tools like carbon capture and storage become more necessary to draw down emissions in difficult-to-abate sectors like heavy industry, communities and their needs must be understood and prioritized in all aspects of project development."
Dr. Simone H. StewartIndustrial Policy Specialist, Climate & Energy Policy at the National Wildlife Federation
“Without question, the world needs CCS to achieve net-zero…Good planets are hard to find, so let’s keep the CCUS momentum going as one of the many needed, and proven, climate solutions.”
Tim DixonGeneral Manager, IEAGHG
“It is increasingly well understood that carbon capture and storage is an indispensable part of climate mitigation. To accomplish the deployment of CCS at necessary scale, we need action through enduring policy and financing frameworks.”
Toshiaki NakajimaPresident of Japan CCS Co., Ltd. (JCCS), CCS Ambassador
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What is CCUS?

Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) is a suite of technologies that can achieve significant emissions reductions, and is considered a critical tool for tackling climate change and reducing emissions.

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