The CCUS project pipeline is growing more robustly than ever, according to the 2021 status report from the Global CCS Institute. It identifies 27 commercial CCUS facilities operating around the world as of September 2021, with a total capture capacity of about 40 million tonnes of CO2 per year. Capacity in the pipeline, however, has risen by 46% in the first nine months of 2021 and now totals 111 million tonnes per year.
According to the IEA, more than 100 new CCUS facilities were announced in 2021. There are CCUS projects or planned developments in 25 countries around the world, with three-quarters in the US and Europe.
Global capacity under development declined in the early 2010s, in part owing to the financial crisis, but it rebounded in 2018. Growth is accelerating as governments and companies focus on how to implement net zero targets, interest in low carbon hydrogen grows and CCUS hubs open up scalable options for industrial decarbonization.
There are currently around 40 CCUS hubs in development around the world. Over half of these – and the most advanced – are in Europe, where a combination of rising carbon prices and net zero commitments are driving the search for large-scale industrial decarbonization. There is a growing tendency for consolidation and collaboration among these emerging hubs.
In North America, the model has tended to be different, with single source-to-sink projects set up with overcapacity in transport and storage, so that other emitters can feed in later. The 45Q tax credit and low fuel standards in the USA are incentivizing many single point source CCUS projects and these could provide a basis for more hubs in future. A number of Asian countries are looking closely at CCUS hub options, with China planning three new hubs, following the example of the China North West hub.
The graphic below shows 24 publicly announced emerging hubs with OGCI member company involvement, as of January 2022.