The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently developed a scenario to show what technologies must be deployed to reach net zero emissions from the energy sector. It sees carbon capture reaching 1.6 billion tonnes (gigatonnes) per year by 2030, and 7.6 gigatonnes per year by 2050. To put that into perspective, stand-alone CCUS facilities can currently capture around 1-2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. CCUS hubs will be able to store 5-10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year by 2030, so around two hubs a month would need to be built every year until 2030 to meet the IEA scenario.
In the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, nearly all of the 90 scenarios include CCS in some form. Across all scenarios, the average volume of CCUS in 2050 is 10 gigatonnes per year.
Learn more: CCUS: Barriers, enabling frameworks and prospects for climate change mitigation, The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies (January 2022)