CCSA Names Ten Winners in Inaugural International CCUS Awards 2026

The Carbon Capture & Storage Association honored ten winners across the carbon management value chain at its inaugural International CCUS Awards ceremony in London on October 13, 2026. More than 150 policymakers, corporate executives and technical specialists attended the event, sponsored by Team Norway, which ran alongside the CCSA's annual industry conference.

The awards separated built infrastructure from innovation and finance, and the winners anchor the list in operating or advanced projects rather than concepts.

Which projects took the infrastructure categories?

The CCUS Infrastructure Project award went to Porthos in the Netherlands, recognized for developing one of the European Union's first commercial-scale offshore CO2 transport and subsea storage hubs. The Dutch project has long served as the reference case for depleted gas field storage in the North Sea system.

Net Zero Teesside Power (NZT Power) took the CCUS Capture Project award for advancing what the CCSA describes as the world's first commercial gas-fired power station integrated with full-chain carbon capture. The Northern Endurance Partnership won the Cross-Chain Integration category for establishing the offshore CO2 transport and storage network serving the UK's East Coast Cluster.

Canada's Deep Sky secured the Carbon Removals or Utilization Project award for deploying Deep Sky Alpha, North America's first integrated direct air capture-to-storage carbon removal infrastructure.

Who won on technology and finance?

The remaining categories recognized hardware, capital and research:

• CCUS Innovation: Carbon Clean (UK), for its modular CycloneCC technology designed to cut capital costs and physical installation footprints.
• Finance & Insurance Innovator: Société Générale, for structuring first-of-a-kind debt financing and advisory mandates across North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.
• Skills & Supply Chain Leadership: UK CCS Research Community Network, for more than two decades of technical research, workforce development and academic-industry knowledge transfer.
• Thought Leadership: Progressive Energy (UK), for project leadership, research and policy engagement advancing regional net-zero strategy.
• CCUS Lifetime Achievement: Philip Loldrup Fosbøl of the Technical University of Denmark, for nearly two decades of pilot-scale solvent capture research and cement sector decarbonization work.
• Rising Star: Dr. Sulafa Abdalmageed Saadaldeen Mohammed of Aalborg University, for research in direct air capture and carbon utilization methodologies.

What does this change for the sector's pipeline?

The ceremony doubled as a policy checkpoint. UK Minister for Local Energy and Jobs Martin McCluskey MP reaffirmed government support for industrial CCUS hubs while acknowledging broader public fiscal constraints — a tension that now defines the UK and EU project pipeline.

CCSA Chief Executive Olivia Powis said sustaining regulatory momentum and capital support across the UK and European Union remains vital to preventing project delays and securing long-term supply chain investments. Her remarks echoed warnings the association issued earlier this year that policy delays threaten a £26 billion CCUS investment pipeline in the UK alone.

Industry leaders at the accompanying conference repeated calls for long-term policy certainty and capital protection as government budgets tighten in key European markets. The message carried weight precisely because the winning projects — Porthos, NZT Power, Northern Endurance and Deep Sky Alpha — all depend on continued state-backed frameworks for transport, storage and capture contracts.

The next signal comes from the UK and EU budget cycles, which will decide whether the awarded projects move from recognition to final investment decisions.