Carbon Capture and Storage: DOA

There is still no credible evidence that carbon capture and storage (CCS) can ever deliver on its lofty promises. After decades of hype, billions in subsidies, and endless political speeches, CCS has not once been proven at scale, nor has it produced net negative emissions in any meaningful way. What it has produced is excuses. An endlessly convenient narrative that lets fossil fuel companies and politicians pretend they can keep burning hydrocarbons while still “meeting” climate targets. The reality on the ground is damning. The vast majority of CCS projects today are either small pilots or schemes tied to enhanced oil recovery, a process that actually results in more net carbon emissions because the captured CO₂ is used to pump even more oil out of the ground.

Capture rates are far below advertised targets, storage permanence is uncertain, and the infrastructure required to operate CCS at the gigaton scale is nowhere in sight. After 20 years of promises, the world has less than 50 million tonnes of actual storage capacity. A rounding error compared to the tens of billions of tonnes of emissions released annually. And now comes a new blow to the “S” part of CCS.

A paper published in Nature on September 4, 2025 (“A prudent planetary limit for geologic carbon storage” by Matthew J. Gidden, Siddharth Joshi, John J. Armitage, and colleagues) sets a clear planetary limit on how much carbon dioxide can actually be stored underground once risks and realities are accounted for. Instead of the tens of thousands of gigatons of storage capacity that industry likes to tout, the authors argue the prudent global limit is just 1,460 gigatons, about one-tenth of prior optimistic estimates. That may sound like a lot, but in practice it is not. If every drop of that storage capacity were reserved solely for removing carbon from the atmosphere (i.e. not for prolonging fossil fuel use) it could only reduce global temperatures by about 0.7 °C at most.

That’s not enough to undo overshoot. It’s not even close. Worse still, current climate models that rely on CCS routinely assume double or more of that amount will be needed by the end of the century. Which means the math simply doesn’t add up: if policymakers build plans around CCS, they are counting on a fantasy. The study also makes clear that the more carbon we try to store underground, the greater the risks. Fault lines, seismic activity, leakage into aquifers, and proximity to human populations sharply reduce the areas where storage is feasible.

Carbon storage is, at best, a marginal tool. At worst, it is a dangerous distraction. The industry knows this. Politicians know this. Yet both cling to CCS as a lifeline, because it provides cover to keep doing exactly what they’ve always done—extract, burn, and profit. By supporting CCS, they sell the illusion of climate action while ensuring emissions continue. The prison of physics remains, and the only way out is to stop digging ourselves deeper into the carbon hole.

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