Global underground CO2 storage reached 43.6 million tons in 2024

Global underground CO2 storage reached an annual record 43.6 million metric tons in 2024, according to The London Register of Subsurface CO2 Storage, lifting cumulative storage to 421.7 million tons over the past three decades.

The Register’s 2026 Annual Report, produced by researchers at Imperial College London with an international academic and industry consortium, expanded its scope to 70 operational projects across 17 countries. The body attributes a more-than-doubling of annual reported storage since 2016 to expanded industrial point-source capture and early-stage atmospheric removals.

The growth reflects two CO2 supply streams entering subsurface injection: emissions captured at industrial point sources and CO2 removed from the atmosphere at an early stage. The report includes both within its geological-storage accounting.

Which jurisdictions led storage in 2024?

The United States holds the largest concentration by project count. Its 23 facilities stored 20.2 million tons in 2024. Brazil’s Petrobras Santos Basin Pre-Salt Oil Field remained the world’s largest single operational project, with 14.2 million tons, approximately one-third of the global annual total.

China recorded 1.7 million tons in 2024, anchored by the Shengli oilfield and the newly added Daqing Aonan oilfield. Australia reported the same 1.7 million tons after the Register integrated the Moomba CCS facility. These totals count operating projects; the report provides no separate announced-project capacity.

What did the accounting revisions change?

The 2026 edition revised storage history by 2.7%. Cumulative storage through 2023 fell from 351.4 million tons to 342.0 million tons, while the 2023 annual total fell from 45.2 million tons to 41.7 million tons.

Imperial College researchers said the changes addressed recycled gas volumes and reporting overlaps. They resolved a double-counting overlap between company-level and project-level filings, adjusted recycled CO2 volumes at the North Burbank Unit and integrated updated national inventory figures for Norway’s Sleipner project.

The revisions make the historical denominator more consistent, but they also expose how reporting structures can inflate a cumulative total when the same injected volume appears in corporate and project accounts. The North Burbank adjustment addresses recycle loops, while the Sleipner change brings the Norwegian national inventory into the Register’s series.

Dr. Xiaowei Gao, executive director of the Register, said: “These revisions reflect the latest evidence, and we have been explicit in the report about where the accounting for reported storage remains uncertain. That transparency matters if geological CO2 storage is to earn the confidence of policymakers and investors.”

How complete is the storage accounting?

The report classifies 82.3% of historical cumulative storage as Geological Storage with Oil Recovery. Within that category, approximately 32.4%, representing 112.5 million tons, was injected without explicit adjustments for gas brought back to the surface and reinjected.

The report says this omission highlights the need for standardized global MRV accounting as annual storage targets approach 1 billion tons per year by 2050. The report separately says the 2026 edition has been explicit about uncertainty in reported storage.

It therefore presents both a larger operating-project count and lower revised historical totals, so physical scale and measurement changes cannot be read as the same signal.

Partial data from 29 reporting projects already indicate 36.2 million tons stored in 2025. Petrobras increased its reported annual volume to 19.6 million tons. Because coverage remains incomplete, the 36.2 million tons does not represent a final global total and cannot establish the full year’s trajectory.

The next milestone is completion of 2025 reporting and adoption of standardized global MRV accounting, including consistent treatment of recycled and reinjected CO2. Those steps will determine whether policymakers and investors accept reported storage at the scale required by annual targets approaching 1 billion tons per year by 2050.