Q&A: Carbon capture and storage - Hype or hope for a cooler planet?
Please note: We have inserted sources into this Q&A in academic style to remind readers that these texts represent the scientific consensus as accurately as possible - See question 14 to find out more.
This text is the first part of our new package about frontier technologies, which we will roll out in the coming weeks. It will include further Q&As, factsheets, and interviews.
Content
1. What is carbon capture and storage (CCS)?
4. What is carbon capture and utilisation (CCU)?
5. How much CO2 can be captured by CCS?
6. How much CO2 can be removed from the air by BECCS or DACCS?
7. How much underground storage capacity can realistically be utilised?
8. How expensive is the technology?
10. Does it make sense to use CCS?
11. Does CCS make sense in fossil fuel power plants?
1. What is carbon capture and storage (CCS)?
In carbon capture and storage (CCS), CO2 is captured from an exhaust stream and then permanently stored. A fundamental distinction must be made here as to whether carbon dioxide is captured directly at the sites of large-scale plants or whether CO2 is filtered out of the air afterwards, so to speak, regardless of where it was previously generated (Erlach et al. 2022).
The classic CCS method consists of capturing emissions from fossil fuel power plants or large industrial facilities before they are released into the atmosphere. In this method, the CO2 is captured before, during or after the respective combustion or production processes via chemical processes. The carbon dioxide is then transported via pipelines, road or ships and then stored in long-term storage underground or under the sea, for example. Suitable geological formations for this include empty oil and gas reservoirs or salt aquifers, which are porous rock layers with salt water. In the USA and Canada in particular, compressed CO2 is also injected into nearly exhausted oil and gas fields to extract the remaining hydrocarbons, which is known as “enhanced oil recovery.”
In geological deposits in the earth's crust, carbon dioxide is trapped in various ways: sometimes it is dissolved in underground salt water, trapped in small or large cavities, or it forms solid compounds with certain minerals in the rock. The aim is always to keep CO2 out of the atmosphere as permanently as possible.
In specialist discussions on climate research and (international) climate policy, CCS technology falls under the umbrella term "carbon management" (see illustration). The different areas should be clearly distinguished because they have different fields of application and can play different roles in climate policy and climate protection.
Traditional CCS (carbon capture and storage) technology, which captures carbon dioxide from burnt fossil fuels, is one way of reducing emissions. It can therefore slow down the increase in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. A second part of carbon management is "carbon capture and utilisation" (CCU). Here too, CO2 is captured from (mostly) fossil sources and then utilised as a material. However, depending on the product, the carbon dioxide is usually only temporarily sequestered – see section 4.
A third area of carbon management is called "carbon dioxide removal" (CDR). This sub-area includes various options for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, in other words reducing the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. On the one hand, there are nature-based options, such as reforestation or moorland rewetting, and on the other hand, there are two special technological options for CCS: carbon dioxide is captured from the combustion of biomass (BECCS) or extracted directly from the air (DACCS) and then injected underground – see sections 2 and 3.
2. What is BECCS?
There is another form of CCS known as bioenergy with capture and storage (BECCS). In this process, power plants do not capture carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels such as coal or natural gas, but rather from the combustion of biomass, such as wood chips. The CO2 released when burned was absorbed by plants from ambient air as they grew. By permanently storing that carbon dioxide, BECCS would result in a net removal of the gas from the atmosphere, which would not only slow down global warming (as with conventional CCS), but could even reverse it in the long term.
There is a consensus among researchers that a certain level of CO2 removal from the atmosphere is necessary to meet the two-degree and especially the 1.5-degree limit on global warming laid out in the Paris Climate Agreement. Even with strong climate protection, some emissions will be very difficult or impossible to reduce directly at source (for example in agriculture). BECCS or DACCS (see section 3) would be promising options for offsetting these residual emissions and ultimately achieving "net zero", a balance where the amount of greenhouse gas emissions released is equal to the amount that is removed from the atmosphere.
3. What is DACCS?
In addition to conventional CCS, another process that is currently at the research and development stage is direct air capture and storage (DACCS), in which carbon dioxide is not captured at power plants or industrial facilities, but is extracted from the ambient air by means of direct air capture (DAC), regardless of where, how and when it was previously released into the atmosphere. Like in CCS, the captured carbon dioxide is then compressed, transported and usually stored in geological reservoirs.
DACCS could be used to subsequently remove emissions from a large number of comparatively small individual sources, such as transport or agriculture, which are difficult to reduce directly at the source, from the atmosphere. Like BECCS (see section 2), this technology is also considered a "carbon sink,” in that its use results in overall net negative emissions.
4. And what is carbon capture and utilisation (CCU)?
As an alternative to storage, captured CO2 can also be used directly in industrial processes, for example in the chemical industry to produce urea for fertilisers, plastics or for the production of synthetic fuels (otherwise known as ‘e-fuel’). This technology is called carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) (sometimes also referred to synonymously as carbon capture and usage). At present, the potential of this material utilisation is still low. In its Sixth Assessment Report (IPCC 2022, AR6, Volume 3, Chapter 6.4.2.5), the IPCC gives an estimate of 1-2 billion tonnes per year; however, according to the IPCC, the potential could increase to 20 billion tonnes per year by the middle of the century, in other words: to a very considerable extent. However, dramatic technological developments would still be necessary to achieve this.
However, some CCU options require a lot of energy, which is likely to limit the number of possible applications. And in many cases, the products manufactured in this way do not store the CO2 permanently. In the case of synthetic fuels, for example, the CO2 is quickly released again and is usually released into the atmosphere after just a few days or months. In the case of processing in plastics, the binding is longer-term. However, if this plastic is burned during waste incineration, the carbon dioxide is re-released into the atmosphere. It should also be noted: for material use, CO2 is sometimes required in very high purity or at a very high pressure. For example, in urea production, which is needed for fertilisers, CO2 is required at 122 bar and 99.9 % purified: a very large, costly effort overall.
5. How much CO2 can be captured by CCS?
To date, very little carbon dioxide has been stored underground globally. According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) climate portal, this amounted to around 0.045 billion tonnes per year in 2023, the equivalent annual emissions of around just ten million cars. For comparison: in 2022, human activity produced 40.6 billion tonnes of CO2, according to the Global Carbon Budget report. Of this, 36.6 billion tonnes came from the combustion of fossil fuels.
This means that only around one thousandth of the carbon dioxide emitted every year is currently being stored via CCS. What is worse, a major proportion of this is currently attributable to enhanced oil recovery processes, which, on the one hand, result in additional emissions from the combustion of the extracted quantities of fossil fuels and, on the other hand, will no longer be required when oil and gas production is phased out.
CCS technology has been used so far at a small number of sites in some countries; the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report cited a figure of 28 plants in commercial operation globally in 2022 (IPCC 2022, AR6, WG3, Chapter 6.3). In Norway, CCS has been in operation on a smaller scale for more than 25 years and the CO2 is stored under the North Sea. Denmark has just commissioned its first plant and is planning to store larger quantities of CO2. In the USA, only plants that utilise CO2 to squeeze residual oil and gas from the fields have been operated to date. The world's only operating coal-fired power plant with CCS (Boundary Dam, Block 3) is located in the central Canadian province of Saskatchewan.
There are lists of CCS facilities from various sources, some industry-related, others, for example, from critical NGOs or the media. The number and assessment of the plants mentioned in these lists differ considerably in some cases:
- Facility Database of the Global CCS Institute
- List of European CCS and CCU projects on the Zero Emissions Platform
- List of twelve of the world's largest CCS projects in the online magazine DeSmog
CCS’s potential is considerable. However, according to the IPCC in its Sixth Assessment Report of 2021/22, the deployment and development of the technology took much longer in the past than previously assumed (IPCC 2022, AR6, WG3, Chapter 1.4.3). German science academies have come to a very similar conclusion in a joint paper:
"The individual process steps of CO2 capture, CO2 transport and underground CO2 storage (CCS) are in principle ready for use on an industrial scale. Nevertheless, the development and market launch of CCS technology has progressed much more slowly in recent years than had been expected five to ten years ago." (Erlach et al. 2022)
In principle, the technology is costly and energy-intensive (see section 8), and the storage sites must be regularly checked and maintained, possibly for centuries. It must also be taken into account that plants with CCS are not completely CO2-free. Because the technology increases the total energy input, power plants in which carbon dioxide is captured, for example, initially produce more CO2; a special report on the subject by the IPCC in 2005 spoke of a ten to 40 percent increase in CO2 emissions (SRCCS, Summary for Policy Makers). With the current state of technology, around 90 percent of these emissions can be captured (Dods et al. 2021); in practice, according to media reports, often less. Even if only ten percent CO2 emissions from for example coal-fired power plants remain, these still are enormous quantities and climate neutrality cannot be achieved in this way. Research is currently working on further increasing effectiveness. But it would probably make the technology even more expensive. From a residual amount of two percent CO2, the costs increase sharply (Brandl et al. 2021).
6. How much CO2 can be removed from the air by BECCS or DACCS?
As mentioned, only BECCS and DACCS offer the possibility of permanently removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that has already been emitted in the past or elsewhere, thereby reducing the CO2 composition of the atmosphere (and thus the earth's temperature). The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal report provides an overview of the status of carbon removal from the atmosphere; the four main authors have also contributed to IPCC reports. The report states (Chapter 6.2, Current CDR Deployment) that for BECCS, storage could increase from the current 0.02 billion tonnes of CO2 per year to between 0.03 and 0.2 billion tonnes by 2030. In the case of direct air capture and carbon storage (DACCS), the total quantity could increase from currently less than 0.00001 billion tonnes to up to 0.3 billion tonnes per year over the same period. Nevertheless, even these increased quantities are rather small in relation to the approximately 40 billion tonnes of CO2 currently emitted each year.
In its Sixth Assessment Report of 2021/22 (IPCC 2022, AR6, WG3, Technical Summary TS5.7), the IPCC cites significantly higher figures: in the long term, the potential of DACCS alone is five to 40 billion tonnes of CO2 per year, meaning a significant proportion of the (hopefully then lower) emissions could be removed from the atmosphere by CO2 removal in the long run. However, according to the IPCC, this potential is "limited mainly by requirements for low-carbon energy and by cost" (for the latter, see section 8).
7. How much underground storage capacity can realistically be utilised?
According to the IPCC, approximately 10,000 billion tonnes of CO2 can theoretically be stored in geological structures globally (IPCC 2022, AR6, WG3, Chapter 6.4.2.5), the equivalent of global emissions from around 250 years. The majority (80 percent) of the theoretical storage capacity lies in so-called "salt aquifers", porous rock layers containing salt. Exhausted oil and gas reservoirs are also suitable for storage in principle. Here, existing infrastructure used for the extraction of oil and gas could be used to store the CO2.
However, not all reservoirs where CO2 could be stored can be used in practice. For example, the pressure in a fundamentally suitable formation may be too high for the carbon dioxide to be injected. The potential storage locations might be too far away to be reachable from production sites, or can only be reached at very high additional costs. Nevertheless, the potential for storage is very high. The IPCC writes about this in the 2022 report of Working Group 3:
"Not all the storage capacity is usable because geologic and engineering factors limit the actual storage capacity to an order of magnitude below the theoretical potential, which is still more than the CO2 storage requirement through 2100 to limit temperature change to 1.5°C " (IPCC 2022, AR6, WG3, Chapter 6.4.2.5)
Realistically, according to the IPCC, around 1,000 billion tonnes of CO2 could be stored globally. However, storage capacity varies between regions.
In Germany, depleted natural gas deposits and deep salt aquifers are particularly suitable for storage. A few years ago, two researchers from the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources found that the country could in theory store around 20 to 115 billion tonnes for the German salt aquifers alone; this means that up to 109 billion tonnes of CO2 could be stored in northern Germany alone (Knopf/May 2017). By way of comparison, around 0.66 billion tonnes of CO2 were emitted in Germany in 2022 according to the German Federal Environment Agency. In the CDRmare project, several German marine research institutes are currently investigating the possibilities of storing carbon dioxide in geological formations under the North Sea. According to initial publications, the potential is several billion tonnes. By the end of the century, perhaps 30 million tonnes of CO2 per year could be stored there.
A study of Austria found that up to 0.12 billion tonnes of the gas could be stored (Welkenhuysen et al. 2016), compared with the country’s annual emissions of 0.08 billion tonnes in 2022 according to the Austrian Federal Environment Agency. In 2010, a study for the Swiss Federal Office of Energy put the capacity for Switzerland at around 2.6 billion tonnes of CO2 (Diamond et al. 2010), with annual emissions of around 0.045 billion tonnes according to the Federal Office for the Environment.
However, there are major differences in the methods used to estimate capacity. The given values can therefore only be considered guidelines.
8. How expensive is the technology?
So far, every form of CCS has been very expensive. According to the IPCC, the capture of carbon dioxide at the site where it’s released alone currently costs more than 50 US dollars per tonne of CO2 (IPCC 2022, AR6, WG3, Chapter 6.4.2.5). The investment costs for a coal or gas-fired power plant with CCS are almost twice as high as if CCS is not used, according to the IPCC. In addition, there are increased costs during operation and a lower efficiency of the plant because considerable amounts of energy have to be used just to capture the carbon dioxide.
If storage sites are far away from the emission sources, there are also considerable costs for transporting the gas to the storage site, not to mention expenses for the long-term maintenance and safety of the storage site. The German research consortium CDRmare speaks of a total of 150 to 250 euros per tonne of CO2 for injection in the North Sea.
DACCS, which not only reduces CO2 emissions, but also removes the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere, is even more expensive. The IPCC report puts the costs (for the middle of the century) at 100 to 300 dollars per tonne of CO2 (IPCC 2022, AR6, WG3, Summary for Policy Makers C.11.1). The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal report quotes prices of 780 dollars in 2020 and 1,200 dollars for 2021 for existing pilot plants that are actually in operation (Chapter 3.1 Measuring growth in Carbon Dioxide Removal).
The German Academy of Sciences, a scholarly society, explains the reason for the high costs in clear terms:
"CO2 only makes up a very small proportion of the air (only 0.04 percent by volume). In order to produce one cubic metre of CO2 with 1.96 kg of CO2, at least 2500 cubic metres of air must be 'filtered'. For one tonne of CO2, this corresponds to around 1.27 million cubic metres of air, even if one hundred percent filter performance is achieved." (Erlach et al. 2022)
Prices are likely to fall further as DAC technologies are developed and operationalised. However, whether the costs of generating electricity in coal or gas-fired power plants with CCS, for example, will be able to compete with those of generating electricity from photovoltaics or wind power in the medium or long term is unclear. These forms of energy generation are already significantly cheaper and their costs are also likely to fall further. In other words, the price difference that already exists between renewables, which tend to be cheaper, and fossil-fuelled power plants, which are more expensive on average, is likely to increase further as a result of CCS.
9. What are the risks?
The German science academies write on the subject:
"Possible risks include minor localised earthquakes, the displacement of saline water [underground] and its infiltration into the groundwater, and the escape of CO2 through leaks. Leakages would release some of the CO2 back into the atmosphere, which would impair the effectiveness of CO2 removal. According to many experts, these risks are low in well-implemented projects with professional risk management at suitable locations." (Erlach et al. 2022)
The IPCC assumes that less than 0.001 percent of the CO2 stored in suitable structures will escape each year (IPCC 2022, AR6, WG3, Chapter 6.4.2.5). The risks of CCS are therefore, if implemented carefully, rather low.
One difficulty, however, is that the use of CCS requires a lot of water. Power plants that use CCS have a 25 to 200 percent higher water consumption than power plants without CCS technology (IPCC 2022, AR6, WG3, Chapter 6.7.7). By contrast, photovoltaic and wind power plants consume practically no water during operation.
The fact that so much water is required when using CCS is due to the higher energy consumption and the fact that the plants need to be cooled. Building CCS facilities in very dry areas (such as the south-west of the USA or south-east Asia) or on rivers with an increasing risk of low water levels, could lead to power plants having to be throttled back or shut down completely in summer. However, the problem could be minimised if water were used more efficiently or recycled more effectively.
How and whether CCS can be used safely on a large scale is still being investigated in many research projects. However, it is clear that measures such as the underground storage of CO2 are not as easy to reverse if problems arise as, for example, reforestation, which is a nature-based solution of sequestering carbon dioxide (IPCC 2022, AR6, WG3, Summary for Policymakers, C.11.3).
10. Does it make sense to use CCS?
In this question, the different variants of the technology must be considered separately – namely CCS on the one hand and BECCS and DACCS on the other (see section 1 for a distinction). In principle, however, all three technologies are needed to mitigate climate change; all paths considered by the IPCC to limit the global temperature rise to below two degrees or 1.5 degrees Celsius include various forms of CCS (IPCC 2022, AR6, WG3, Technical Summary 4.2).
Firstly, BECCS and DACCS, which can remove CO2 from the atmosphere. This could also be achieved through nature-based solutions, such as large-scale reforestation. However, new forests do not store carbon dioxide very reliably. Climate change increases the risk of forest fires sharply, throwing the potential of forests to reliably sequester carbon into question. In addition, forestry or agricultural measures require huge areas of land, so their potential is limited. Technological methods that act as carbon sinks, especially bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and direct air capture and carbon storage (DACCS), are therefore essential, according to the IPCC.
Due to the high costs and the great effort involved, the use of these forms of CCS is only possible to a limited extent and cannot replace the reduction of emissions by other means. Volume 3 of the Sixth IPCC Assessment Report generally refers to carbon dioxide removal (CDR):
"Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) is necessary to achieve net zero CO2 and GHG emissions both globally and nationally, counterbalancing ‘hard-to-abate’ residual emissions [...] As part of ambitious mitigation strategies at global or national levels, gross CDR can fulfil three different roles in complementing emissions abatement:
(i) lowering net CO2 or GHG emissions in the near term;
(ii) counterbalancing ‘hard-to-abate’ residual emissions such as CO2 from industrial activities and long-distance transport, or CH4 and nitrous oxide from agriculture, in order to help reach net zero CO2 or GHG emissions in the mid-term
(iii) achieving net negative CO2 or GHG emissions in the long term if deployed at levels exceeding annual residual emissions” (IPCC 2022, AR6, WG3, Box TS.10, Technical Summary)
The variants of CCS that are also considered carbon sinks (BECCS and DACCS) should therefore definitely be expanded in the view of the IPCC.
There is also broad consensus among researchers that conventional CCS will also be necessary in certain industrial processes in the medium and long term in order to achieve climate mitigation targets, as these cannot be made climate-neutral in any other way or only with great difficulty. In cement production, for example, there is no alternative to the use of CCS in the foreseeable future if the necessary emission reductions are to be achieved, according to the IPCC (IPCC 2022, AR6, Volume 3, Chapter 11). Particularly in the long term, CCS and the material use of CO2 (CCU) play a decisive role in the IPCC scenarios for the decarbonisation of industry, but only in conjunction with, for example, the switch to emission-free energy, greater energy efficiency and the transition to a circular economy.
However, research and development into CCS is currently still proceeding too slowly to meaningfully slow global warming to the necessary extent in time. In the summary of the report for political decision-making, the IPCC writes:
"Implementation of CCS currently faces technological, economic, institutional, ecological-environmental and socio-cultural barriers. Currently, global rates of CCS deployment are far below those in modelled pathways limiting global warming to 1.5°C or 2°C. Enabling conditions such as policy instruments, greater public support and technological innovation could reduce these barriers.” (IPCC 2022, AR6, WG3, Summary for Policymakers, C.4.6)
11. Does CCS make sense in fossil fuel power plants?
For countries such as Germany, Austria and Switzerland, CCS plays virtually no role in scientific debates on the energy sector. Occasionally, the question is still raised around whether CO2 capture could be an option for gas-fired power plants or whether it could be used in the production of blue hydrogen from natural gas. For coal-fired power plants, on the other hand, CCS is no longer being seriously discussed in research (unlike in the 2000s). This is mainly due to the high costs of the technology (see section 8) and the poorly developed infrastructure. The expansion of renewable energy is currently considerably cheaper and less complex. And the decision to phase out coal-fired power generation has rendered the topic obsolete.
In some countries, however, the IPCC believes that CCS can facilitate the transition to a more climate-friendly energy supply, especially in countries where renewable energy is not easily available (IPCC 2022, AR6, WG3, Chapter 6, FAQ 6.1). At the same time, the storage options available could also make methods such as bioenergy with capture and storage (BECCS) more attractive and ultimately accelerate the phase-out of fossil fuels (IPCC 2022, AR6, WG3, Chapter 6.7.4).
12. What is the EU’s stance on CCS/CCU?
CCS is making a comeback in the EU as the bloc strives for climate neutrality. The European Commission has underscored the critical role of carbon capture and storage (CCS) in achieving the bloc's climate targets. In February 2024, it unveiled its proposal for a European industrial carbon management strategy, outlining guidelines for capturing, transporting, trading, permanently storing, and utilizing carbon as a cornerstone of its path to climate neutrality by 2050. The Commission is aiming to establish "a European single market for industrial carbon management," with the goal of scaling up over the coming decades to ensure that residual greenhouse gas emissions can be captured and stored or balanced through CO₂ removals by mid-century.
As part of its ambitious proposal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90 percent by 2040, the European Commission has advocated for large-scale CCS deployment, with a steadily rising carbon price in the Emissions Trading System (ETS) serving as a key incentive. The strategy envisions capturing 450 million tonnes of CO₂ annually by 2050, with 250 million tonnes destined for underground storage.
The remaining captured CO₂ would be recycled into the production of synthetic fuels (e-fuels) for sectors like aviation, as well as chemicals and plastics, gradually replacing fossil fuel-based carbon and creating sustainable carbon cycles. The 2040 impact assessment says approximately 150 million tonnes of CO₂ is expected to be used for e-fuels and a further 60 million tonnes for synthetic materials by mid-century, although much of this carbon will eventually be released back into the atmosphere.
Momentum for CCS continues to build across Europe. As of late 2023, 119 projects were in various stages of development, construction, or operation, according to the Global CCS Institute. Currently, four projects are operational in the EU, Norway, and Iceland. Countries like Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Norway are leading the charge, with advanced projects that could be coordinated with each other, according to Germany’s economy ministry.
North Sea sites remain the preferred locations for CO₂ storage in the EU, although Denmark and Poland are also considering onshore storage. Other countries, such as Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, and Belgium, have ruled out land storage.
Despite this progress, the EU's active storage capacities are still negligible, with only pilot tests conducted so far. For instance, the Danish "Greensand" project demonstrated CO₂ injection in a depleted well in spring 2023, with plans to store up to 1.5 million tonnes per year by 2025-2026, increasing to up to 8 million tonnes per year by 2030, a spokesperson told Clean Energy Wire.
13. Is CCS banned in Germany?
CCS is partly banned in Germany, but the government is working to adapt its legal framework to facilitate the application of CCS and CCU technologies within the country. Currently, the regulatory landscape is fragmented, with separate rules governing the capture, storage, and transport of CO₂.
Capture: There have been CCS pilot projects in Germany, such as the “Schwarze Pumpe” (black pump) capture demonstration plant in the German state of Brandenburg. Although there are currently no carbon capture plants in operation in Germany, it would already be possible to obtain the necessary approval under the Federal Emission Control Act.
Storage: It is not currently possible to open a CO₂ storage project in Germany. The country’s CO₂ storage law from 2012, which implemented EU minimum requirements for CO₂ capture, transport and storage, theoretically allowed limited research and pilot projects. However, many federal states imposed regional bans, and no project applications were submitted before the law’s 2016 deadline.
Transport: The lack of a dedicated pipeline infrastructure currently hinders large-scale CO2 transport in Germany, and requires the use of trains, lorries, and ships. The government acknowledges that outdated regulations and legal uncertainties have stalled the development of such infrastructure, and has promised reforms. CO2 transport is regulated under the storage law and additionally under hazardous goods legislation.
The government has already classified the technology as mature and safe. A draft carbon management strategy by the former government focusses on industries with hard-to-abate emissions, such as cement, lime, basic chemicals, and waste incineration, as well as applications where "electrification or switch to hydrogen is not possible in a cost-efficient manner in the foreseeable future." CCS/CCU on gas-fired power plants would also be allowed but will receive no state support. The former government also planned to enable CO2 storage on an industrial scale, both under the seabed or abroad, but not onshore.
The new government has said it aims to continue efforts to make CCS/CCU possible in Germany and is expected to largely base its work on the legislative drafts of the former German leadership, which must now be re-introduced in parliament.
Five CCS/CCU projects in Germany are poised to become operational before 2030, provided supportive policies and financial frameworks are in place (as of March 2025), according to the CCS lobby organisation Zero Emissions Platform (ZEP). Two projects include CCS in industry, while another is researching and piloting a CO2 pipeline infrastructure.
The German economy ministry emphasised that the use of CCS/CCU must be in line with greenhouse gas reduction targets and 2045 climate neutrality. In a Q&A, it says that a ramp-up by 2030 seems realistic if legislative amendments come into force quickly.
For additional information on CCS in Germany and the EU, see this factsheet.
14. Why does this text reflect the "scientific consensus"?
Scientists have accumulated a surprising amount of specific knowledge about how effective various technologies can be. Their findings can be found, for example, in the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, which runs to more than 2000 pages.
To highlight that the selection of sources is central to this project, we have deviated from our usual editorial guidelines in this Q&A, and inserted sources in academic style - to remind readers that these texts represent the scientific consensus as accurately as possible.
With this aim in mind, we ranked sources in the following order, which values relevance much more than a very recent publication date:
1) Wherever possible, the texts rely on the IPCC, which provides highly reliable summaries and assessments of the state of research.
2) A second-best are thorough meta-studies (studies that evaluate many other studies), as well as synthesis reports from large research consortia or organisations, where a broad circle of participants and intensive review processes are common.
3) Only in third place, we used individual studies - limited to publications in recognised research journals that guarantee a peer review process, meaning each publication is checked by competent specialist colleagues.
This Q&A and others in this series are based on texts published by our German-language sister project Klimafakten, which were written by expert journalists, and double checked by relevant experts. Two foundations supported this editorial project, which was overseen by our colleague Toralf Staudt: the Marga und Kurt Möllgaard-Stiftung and the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt.
