Feasibility Concern|Carbon Capture and Storage

Why this criterion? This criterion flags scenarios that assume a deployment of CCS technologies that is inconsistent with near-term projections (2030) or long-term feasibility constraints (2035–2040).

Near-term (2030): near-term upper and lower capacity projections can be derived from existing capacities and from current project announcements and known project lead times. Robust upper projections can be made because projects take at least 5 years to plan and construct and therefore will not be operational by 2030 if not yet announced by today. Robust lower projections can be made based on existing capacities and because retirement rates can reasonably be assumed to be low.

Long-term (2035–2040): CCS involves capturing CO₂ from flue gases and storing it geologically. The required technologies for these activities are highly non-modular and application-specific. Additionally, CCS depends on infrastructure like CO₂ pipeline networks, which still have to be built. Therefore it will likely grow more slowly than modular technologies with some degree of existing infrastructure, such as solar, wind, and batteries.

Why this threshold? Near-term (2030): CCUS projects are tracked and published annually in a database by the IEA (2026).

The projects in the CCUS database are assigned one of the following statuses:
• Operational: in operation in 2024
• Construction: under construction in 2024
• Planned: announced but without final investment decision in 2024. Projects that were decommissioned or suspended are not counted.

Based on the CCUS database, we assume the following global thresholds for 2030:
• Lower threshold, high concern: 0.0 Mt CO₂/yr to account for the fact that CCUS is an immature technology.
• Lower threshold, medium concern: 10% less than capacities operational in 2026, as reported by the CCUS database (IEA, 2026).
• Upper threshold, medium concern: 5% more than capacities operational or under construction, plus 21% of planned projects (without final investment decision) in 2026, as reported by the CCUS database (IEA, 2026).
• Upper threshold, high concern: 10% more than all projects operational, under construction, or announced, as reported by the CCUS database (IEA, 2026).

Moreover, we assume the following regional thresholds for 2030:
• Lower, medium concern: 40% less than capacities operational in 2026 plus 30% of the projects under construction, as reported by the CCUS database (IEA, 2026).
• Upper, medium concern: 40% more than capacities operational or under construction, plus 28% of planned projects (without final investment decision) in 2026, as reported by the CCUS database (IEA, 2026).

Long-term (2035–2040): Kazlou (2024) derive an upper bound for feasible CCS capacity deployment in 2030 of 370 Mt CO₂/yr and 2040 of 4,300 Mt CO₂/yr (see Table 2 in the work by Kazlou (2024)), which assumes a doubling of existing plans and a 45% failure rate.

Based on this work, we assume the following global thresholds:
• Upper, medium concern in 2035: 1,300 Mt CO₂/yr, which is the geometric-mean (constant-growth-rate) interpolation between the reported upper bounds for 2030 (370 Mt CO₂/yr) and 2040 (4,300 Mt CO₂/yr) derived by Kazlou (2024).
• Upper, medium concern in 2040: 4,300 Mt CO₂/yr, which is the reported upper bound derived by Kazlou (2024).

These threshold values all refer to CCS and are applied to the variable Carbon Capture|Geological Storage. However this variable is often underreported, especially in older scenarios. Therefore, the variable Carbon Capture is also assessed using the same threshold values. Note that this may lead to precautious flagging scenarios with more granular reporting of carbon capture. In these scenarios, additional categories such as CO₂ leakage or CO₂ utilization contribute to total carbon capture, which as a result may exceed the corresponding threshold even when geological storage remains below its threshold.

WorldGeneric regionsModel-native regions

Loading ITables v2.8.1 from the internet... (need help?)

R5R9R10

Loading ITables v2.8.1 from the internet... (need help?)

AIM 3.0C3IAM 3.0CGEM-ESM 1.0COFFEE 1.6GCAM 9.1GEM-E3 V2026IMACLIM 2.0IMAGE 3.4MEESA v1.4MESSAGEix-GLOBIOM 2.1-R12MINES 0.1.0OPEN-PROM 2.2POLES 2.4REMIND-MAgPIE 3.7-4.14WITCH 6.0

Loading ITables v2.8.1 from the internet... (need help?)

Reference data

Dataset	Source	Description
`IEA-CCUS-2026-high-proj`	IEA (2026)	Custom projections based on IEA (2026) with details documented in the description of the `Feasibility Concern\|Carbon Capture and Storage` criterion.
`IEA-CCUS-2026-low-proj`	IEA (2026)	Custom projections based on IEA (2026) with details documented in the description of the `Feasibility Concern\|Carbon Capture and Storage` criterion.

Sources

Identifier	Bibliographic information	Links
`Kazlou-2024`	Tsimafei Kazlou, Aleh Cherp, and Jessica Jewell. Feasible deployment of carbon capture and storage and the requirements of climate targets. Nature Climate Change, 14(10):1047–1055, September 2024.	DOI PDF
`IEA-CCUS-2026`	IEA. CCUS Projects Database. International Energy Agency, Paris, France, mar 2026.	URL