Is CCUS Helping Big Companies Avoid Cutting their Emissions?

Carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) is regarded as one of many innovations that will aid the energy transition.

The acronym is a catch-all for a suite of technologies designed to capture carbon dioxide from industrial sources or directly from the atmosphere. Once captured, it is then either reused in products or permanently stored underground in geological formations.

The process can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from sectors including cement, steel, power and chemicals, which are hard to decarbonise through electrification alone.

The problem of under-utilisation

Globally, there is a yawning gap between the potential and the operational capacity of CCUS.

Only a fraction of potential CCUS capacity is operational today: approximately 50 million tonnes of CO₂ capture and storage capacity in early 2025.

The capacity is increasing slowly, with advocates hoping capture capacity under development could rise to 430 Mt CO₂/year by 2030 if projects in early stages progress. Global CCUS deployment remains concentrated in a small number of countries and projects:

• The US leads with an expected 244.8 Mtpa of CCUS capacity across 266 projects by 2030
• The UK ranks second, with planned capacity of 107.9 Mtpa across 75 projects by 2030
• Canada, Norway and China also have significant pipelines.

Political landscape and policy debates

The political environment surrounding CCUS is sometimes contentious. Governments including the UK have committed substantial public funds to support deployment and industrial clusters, signalling belief in CCUS as critical for net-zero goals and local economic development.

However, critics argue that subsidies and policy support risk propping up fossil fuel use and may deliver limited climate benefit if not tightly regulated. The heart of the argument is that, rather than being forced to decarbonise their activities, high-polluting industries can instead offload their emissions to CCUS operators.

Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy, has publicly questioned the value of CCUS for power systems, warning that it can subsidise continued fossil fuel extraction and detract from investment in renewables.

He says: “The technology has been a gift to the oil and gas industry to carry on what they’re doing and carry on the fiction that somehow enormous amounts of public money should enable them to keep doing it.”

Shell, Equinor and TotalEnergies

Northern Lights is a joint venture between Shell, Equinor, TotalEnergies and Northern Lights. It is the world’s first cross-border carbon transport and storage facility. The first volumes of CO2 were transported through the 100km pipeline and injected into the Aurora reservoir below the seabed of the Norwegian North Sea in summer 2025.

The first phase has a storage capacity of 1.5 Mt of CO2 per year. A market is being established, with the first phase fully booked by companies including Heidelberg Materials, Yara and Hafslund Celsio.

The phase two expansion, planned to operate by the second half of 2028, will take capacity to 5 Mt per year. It will include nine onshore storage tanks, larger pumps, a new jetty and two new injection wells.

Injected into empty gas field

Eni and joint venture partner Snam started phase one of Ravenna CCS in September 2024. It is the first location in Italy with a capture capacity of 0.25 Mt per year.

Carbon captured at Eni’s Casalborsetti natural gas treatment plant is being injected and permanently stored in the depleted Porto Corsini Mare Ovest gas field in the Adriatic Sea. Eni says: “The initiative is already cutting the plant’s CO2 emissions by up to 96% during peaks.”

Phase two of the project, to start by 2030, will enable capacity of up to 4 Mt of CO2. Eni says: “A significant portion of this is expected to be used by hard-to-abate such as cement, steel, fertiliser and chemicals in the Ravenna industrial zone as well as power plants.”

Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi says: “CCUS is a mature and safe technological process and is one of the key levers for the energy transition, being an efficient and effective tool to support hard-to-abate industries in reducing their emissions.“

A carbon neutral barrel of oil?

STRATOS, Occidental’s first direct air capture facility, is planned to start commercial operations this year. The Texas, US facility is projected to remove up to 0.5 Mt of atmospheric CO2 per year. STRATOS is expected to be fully operational in mid 2026.

Microsoft, Amazon, Airbus and others have agreed to buy CDR credits from STRATOS, with the captured CO2 stored in saline reservoirs.

Occidental says its ability to use captured CO2 can create a carbon neutral barrel of oil. It says: “The volume of CO2 injected to produce that barrel of oil is equal to the emissions it creates over the lifecycle from production to refining to use.”

Occidental is also working on the South Texas DAC Hub, which has the potential to store up to three billion tonnes of CO2.