The ambition to avert the worst impacts of climate change hinges on rapidly decarbonizing global economies. While renewable energy and efficiency gains are paramount, carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) technologies are often presented as essential for addressing hard-to-abate industrial emissions and achieving net-zero goals. However, despite decades of development and significant investment, CCUS has yet to deliver on its promise, increasingly revealing itself as a critical bottleneck in the broader climate tech landscape. The reasons are multifaceted, spanning economic, technical, logistical, and societal hurdles that collectively slow its widespread deployment and impact.
The Staggering Costs of Carbon Capture
One of the most significant barriers to the widespread adoption of carbon capture is its persistently high cost. Developing, building, and operating CCUS facilities is incredibly expensive, presenting substantial financial hurdles for industries. The capital costs for capture, transportation, and storage infrastructure are considerable, often making companies hesitant to invest due to concerns about economic viability.
For instance, capturing a ton of CO2 can cost between $40 and $80, with direct air capture (DAC) being even more expensive, ranging from $200 to $600 per ton. These figures stand in stark contrast to the rapidly falling costs of renewable energy technologies like solar and wind, which have seen significant reductions over recent years. While some governments offer incentives, many companies argue that additional tax credits or subsidies are needed to make CCUS projects commercially attractive. The economic viability of carbon capture for the oil and gas sector, in particular, continues to rely heavily on ongoing government financial support, unlike renewables that typically require subsidies only in initial development phases.
The Energy Penalty: An Efficiency Dilemma
Carbon capture processes are notoriously energy-intensive, creating an “energy penalty” that significantly impacts the overall efficiency of industrial facilities and power plants. Many current methods demand substantial energy for the capture, separation, and compression of CO2.
For a typical coal-fired power plant, installing post-combustion carbon capture can reduce net electrical output by 20-30%, while gas-fired plants experience a reduction of 10-15%. This increased energy demand means that a plant equipped with CCUS might need to burn 13-44% more fuel to produce the same amount of power, or for a coal plant, potentially 14-40% more coal. If this additional energy is sourced from fossil fuels, it can partially or entirely offset the climate benefits of capturing CO2, raising questions about the technology’s net environmental impact. Compressing the captured CO2 for pipeline transport and storage is particularly energy-intensive, often accounting for a significant portion of the overall parasitic load.
Scalability and Deployment Challenges
Despite being discussed as a climate solution for decades, the deployment of carbon capture technologies remains far below what climate models indicate is necessary to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. As of 2024, only 44 plants worldwide were operating with CCS, collectively capturing approximately 0.1% of global emissions—around 50 million metric tons of CO2. Climate scenarios from the IPCC and IEA suggest CCUS needs to capture billions of tons by 2050.
One reason for this slow progress is that CCUS systems often cannot be mass-produced; they are specifically designed to match the facility capturing the CO2. Scaling up to gigaton levels presents monumental increases in storage capacity and deployment rates, which are currently hampered by slow investment and development. Furthermore, suitable geological sequestration sites are not universally available, and when they are, they can be far from capture sites, necessitating costly and potentially publicly resisted CO2 transportation infrastructure.
Technological Maturity and Performance Gaps
While carbon capture has been utilized in the U.S. since the 1970s, primarily for natural gas processing and enhanced oil recovery, its broader application for emissions reduction has faced technical hurdles. Many CCUS technologies are still in developmental or pilot stages and have not been proven at scale. There is no single “winning” technology, and the industry is still evolving to deliver effective, affordable, and easily implementable solutions.
Existing systems do not capture 100% of emissions, with most designed for around 90%, though reported capture rates can be lower. The tradeoff between efficient capture and efficient release of CO2 also presents a technical bottleneck, requiring ongoing innovation to improve overall system efficiency and reliability.
Public Perception and Social License
Public acceptance is another critical, yet often underestimated, bottleneck for carbon capture projects. Public awareness of CCS technology is generally low, and there is often confusion about its purpose. Concerns about safety (e.g., leakage, groundwater contamination), effectiveness, and potential environmental justice issues can lead to local resistance and opposition to facility development.
Furthermore, many environmental groups and stakeholders view CCUS with skepticism, arguing that it creates a “moral hazard” by enabling the continued use of fossil fuels rather than promoting a fundamental shift to renewable energy sources. This perception can detract from efforts to reduce emissions through more direct means like renewable energy and improved energy efficiency.
Regulatory and Policy Uncertainty
A robust and consistent regulatory framework is crucial for incentivizing and guiding the deployment of CCUS. However, regulatory challenges, insufficient policy support, and uncertainty around long-term liabilities pose significant barriers. The absence or inadequacy of carbon pricing mechanisms, tax incentives, and clear permitting processes can deter investment and hinder the economic viability of projects.
Diverting Resources from Proven Solutions
A significant debate surrounding carbon capture is whether it diverts crucial financial and political resources from more immediate and effective climate solutions. Critics argue that the substantial investments required for CCUS could be more effectively allocated to the rapid expansion of renewable energy, energy efficiency improvements, and nature-based climate solutions like reforestation and regenerative agriculture.
While CCUS may play a role in hard-to-decarbonize sectors where alternatives are not yet fully developed (e.g., cement and steel), prioritizing it over proven emission reduction strategies can be seen as delaying the necessary transition to a truly sustainable energy system. In many cases, reducing oil and gas emissions with carbon capture can be up to ten times more expensive than achieving the same reductions using wind and solar.
Conclusion: A Complex Path Forward
Carbon capture technology faces a formidable array of challenges—economic, technological, logistical, and societal—that collectively make it a significant bottleneck in climate tech. While some experts believe it remains an unavoidable mechanism for achieving net-zero emissions, particularly for heavy industries, overcoming these hurdles requires sustained innovation, clear policy frameworks, and a critical reassessment of its role alongside, and not instead of, aggressive decarbonization efforts. Until these bottlenecks are adequately addressed, the promise of carbon capture will likely continue to outstrip its real-world impact.
