The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and engineering consultancy Arup have published a joint report, "Informing the Deployment of Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage," aimed at correcting what the authors call persistent myths and misconceptions that risk undermining decision-making and investment in CCUS.

The report addresses three fronts. First, it offers clear, science-backed responses to misconceptions about the safety, cost, and effectiveness of carbon capture, utilization, and storage — the three objections that most frequently stall project approvals and financing. Second, it reviews existing CCUS policy mechanisms and assesses the affordability of the technology today, alongside the key cost reduction variables that could improve its competitiveness against alternative decarbonization routes. Third, it identifies practical focus areas intended to enable commercially self-sustaining CCUS projects within the next decade.

That ten-year horizon is the report's operative commitment. WBCSD and Arup frame commercially self-sustaining projects — those that stand without subsidy dependence — as the benchmark the industry must reach, and the report positions itself as a roadmap for getting there.

The material case

CCUS captures carbon dioxide emissions from industrial processes and stores them safely and permanently, preventing greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change recognizes it as a critical technology for a low-carbon future. The report's central argument is that CCUS complements decarbonization through electrification and renewable deployment rather than competing with them: it offers solutions for industrial applications where those alternatives are not fit for purpose or are not cost competitive.

That framing matters for hard-to-abate sectors — cement, steel, chemicals and other process industries where CO2 arises from the chemistry of production itself, not merely from energy inputs. For these material streams, capture and storage is one of the few routes to deep emissions cuts, and the report draws on evidence from current deployments, regulatory frameworks, and technological advances to demonstrate CCUS as a materially significant contributor to decarbonization in these sectors.

Who it is for

WBCSD identifies the resource's audience as industry leaders, investors, policymakers, and NGOs seeking clarity on CCUS's role in achieving net zero. The coalition-backed nature of the publication is deliberate: the authors argue that addressing climate change globally requires a range of solutions to tackle a complex, interconnected challenge, and that CCUS offers a viable and practical pathway among them.

The choice of Arup as co-author also signals the engineering and infrastructure-planning perspective the report brings. Rather than modeling hypothetical scenarios, the document grounds its case in current deployments and the regulatory frameworks that govern them — the existing plant-level and jurisdictional record rather than projections alone.

Cost as the contested variable

Among the misconceptions the report confronts, cost is likely the most consequential for the investment community. CCUS has long carried a reputation as an expensive option that only advances with heavy public support. The report's review of affordability today, paired with its identification of cost reduction variables, is an attempt to shift that perception with evidence — and to give investors a framework for judging which projects are positioned on the right side of the cost curve.

The policy mechanism review serves the same purpose from the regulatory side. Governments have deployed a mix of tax credits, contracts-for-difference schemes, and storage permitting regimes to de-risk early CCUS projects. The report's assessment of these mechanisms gives policymakers a comparative view of what is working, and gives project developers a map of where the regulatory architecture best supports deployment.

The decade ahead

The report's closing emphasis on practical focus areas for the next decade sets a trackable deadline. By the mid-2030s, WBCSD and Arup argue, CCUS projects should be able to stand on commercial footing without the policy scaffolding that currently supports them. Whether that milestone is met will depend on the cost reduction variables the report identifies, on the durability of the policy mechanisms it reviews, and on whether the science-backed rebuttals to safety and effectiveness objections hold sway in permitting processes and investment committees.

For the hard-to-abate sectors watching from the sidelines, the report arrives as both a tool and a test: the evidence base for CCUS viability is now assembled and peer-facing — the question is whether deployments over the next decade validate it.