Operating CCS Capacity to Pass 100 Mtpa as Market Shifts to Hubs

Global operating carbon capture and storage capacity will surpass 100 million tons per annum once projects now under construction enter service, according to the Global CCS Institute's Global Status of CCS 2026 report, published ahead of COP31.

That threshold matters for practitioners on both sides of the CO2 stream. It marks the point where CCS stops being a collection of demonstration assets and starts behaving like bulk commodity infrastructure — with the tonnage, route networks and financing structures to match.

The count of commercial CCS facilities operating worldwide has more than quadrupled since 2021, reaching 113 projects across clean hydrogen, ammonia, cement, natural gas processing and LNG. Cumulative historical CO2 injection has passed 400 million tons globally, thirty years after Sleipner, the world's first major geological storage project, started up offshore Norway.

Put the 100 Mtpa figure in frame: that is roughly the annual CO2 output of a mid-sized cluster of European cement and steel plants — enough captured volume to make transport and storage a logistics business rather than a bespoke engineering exercise.

Where is the buildout concentrated?

Europe is the operational testbed. The region hosts 15 operational commercial projects and 21 under construction, with a total development pipeline of 141 Mtpa, per the report.

The structural shift the Institute tracks is the move away from dedicated single-emitter projects toward open-access, cross-border transport and storage networks:

• Northern Lights in Norway began commercial injection into the Aurora reservoir in August 2025 and is executing its Phase 2 expansion.
• Greensand in Denmark is operating as part of the shared-storage model.
• Yara's fertilizer plant in the Netherlands is shipping captured CO2 to Norway for subsea storage — carbon management sold as a third-party service.

That last point is the one to watch for contract structures. When an emitter in the Netherlands buys storage capacity offshore Norway, the commercial precedent is set for every landlocked industrial hub in Europe.

What holds the cross-border system together?

Governments have signed a series of bilateral frameworks that establish legal and accounting mechanisms for moving CO2 across borders. The list includes Finland–Norway, Finland–Denmark, Switzerland–Denmark, Belgium–Norway and Belgium–UK.

The physical layer is following. Approximately 9,000 kilometers (5,600 miles) of CO2 pipelines are planned under the EU's Projects of Common and Mutual Interest (PMI/PCI) framework. That is a network comparable in length to Europe's existing natural gas interconnectors — but built for a fluid flowing the other direction.

The pipeline push is also widening the storage map beyond northern maritime basins into the Mediterranean, with Greece's Prinos storage project and Italy's Ravenna CCS development anchoring the southern end.

Who is financing it?

Private capital participation is deepening, and in a specific way: non-recourse project finance, the structure that built LNG terminals and offshore wind. Eni CCUS Holding raised £500 million ($669 million) from a syndicate of 13 international commercial lenders. Commercial networks including Northern Lights and Porthos are increasingly attracting the same treatment.

For project developers, that is the signal that lenders now underwrite CO2 offtake and storage contracts as bankable — not as technology risk.

Why the geography drives the model

"Industrial emissions are often concentrated in regions with limited storage resources, while other countries have substantial geological capacity but fewer emissions sources," said Dr. Richard Leese, Head of Europe at the Global CCS Institute.

"Europe's task is to connect the two. This is no longer simply a series of individual CCS projects; the foundations of a connected European carbon management system are starting to emerge."

The implication for emitters: storage access is becoming a siting and procurement question, not a geology question. Watch whether the bilateral frameworks and PMI/PCI pipeline designations convert into final investment decisions on schedule.

The milestone that decides what happens next: whether the 21 European projects under construction deliver on time and push operating capacity past 100 Mtpa — the number that turns the hub model from thesis to throughput.