CCS Under Fire, Energy Storage Stuck in Queue – Weekly Roundup

01 · CO2 Capture

CCS back under fire despite EU investment

In Sluiskil, the Netherlands, Europe's largest commercial CCS plant has come online – a facility owned by Yara, launched with support from the European Commission. It is designed to capture 800,000 tonnes of CO2 per year, with the gas then shipped to Norway, where it is stored beneath the seabed [1]. It's a symbolic moment for a technology that has long been touted as one of the key paths to decarbonizing heavy industry – cement plants, steel mills, and chemical facilities, where cutting emissions through electrification or renewables alone is difficult or impossible.

Euronews notes, however, that enthusiasm for CCS is far from universal today. Climate organizations openly call the technology a "delay tactic" rather than a genuine solution for cutting emissions. The arguments are concrete and hard to dismiss: 75 CCS facilities are currently operating worldwide, and their combined capture capacity amounts to just 0.2% of global CO2 emissions. Add to that an uncomfortable historical fact – three-quarters of all CO2 captured to date has gone toward enhanced oil recovery, which undermines the purely climate-focused rationale behind investments in the technology so far [1].

For the energy and heavy industry sector, this is a signal that EU funding for CCS is only the beginning of the road, not the end of it. The scale needs to grow far faster than it has so far if the technology is to genuinely play a role in industrial decarbonization, rather than remain a costly showcase for a handful of prestige projects.