In 2022, a review of carbon capture projects across the globe found something stark: 70% of announced projects never materialized. In the electricity sector, the collapse rate was even higher — exceeding 98%. These numbers do not describe a nascent industry finding its footing. They describe a pattern of failure that has persisted for decades.
The technology itself is not new. Oil and gas companies began capturing carbon dioxide in the mid-20th century, using it to purify natural gas and to force more crude out of aging oil fields. That second application, enhanced oil recovery (EOR), still dominates today. Roughly 80% of all captured CO2 is injected into partially depleted reservoirs to extract more oil. The majority of that gas stays underground, but the primary purpose remains production, not storage.
This dual identity — carbon capture, utilization, and storage, or CCUS — has muddied the public conversation. Proponents argue that any CO2 kept out of the atmosphere, regardless of the method, is a net gain. Critics counter that the “U” in CCUS often amounts to a subsidy for fossil fuel extraction, not a serious climate solution. Both sides can point to the same data: 44 operational CCS plants as of 2024. That is a real number, but it is also a small one, given that the first large-scale projects were proposed in the 1980s.
Why do so many announced projects fail? The report from 2022 offers no single answer, but the pattern is clear. High capital costs, uncertain revenue streams, and the sheer complexity of building pipelines and injection wells have sunk hundreds of plans. The electricity sector, where the failure rate topped 98%, is a particular graveyard. Utilities have struggled to make the economics work without massive government subsidies or a high carbon price — neither of which has been reliably available.
The natural gas processing sector tells a different story. Here, CCS is more established. The CO2 must be stripped out anyway to sell the gas, and injection into nearby geological formations is often cheaper than venting. These are the projects that survive. They are not experiments. They are industrial processes with a clear business case.
What does this mean for the future? The gap between ambition and execution is wide. Every year, governments and companies announce new CCS targets. Every year, a fraction of those targets become physical plants. The 2022 review suggests that the real constraint is not technical. The engineering exists. The constraint is economic and political. A project needs a buyer for the captured CO2 — either an oil company paying for EOR or a government paying for permanent storage. Without that buyer, the project dies.
This dynamic is unlikely to change quickly. The 44 operational plants represent decades of incremental progress. Scaling up to the hundreds or thousands of plants that climate models call for would require a fundamental shift in how the technology is financed and regulated. It would require treating carbon storage as a public utility, not a market add-on.
That has not happened yet. The 70% failure rate is not a bug. It is the system working as designed. Announcing a project is cheap. Building one is not. Until the economics align, the graveyard of canceled CCS projects will keep growing.
