With only a handful of CCS projects being operational or under construction, there is an urgent need to ensure that CCS becomes a reality in Europe, and as of today, no CO2 at all is being captured for permanent storage within the EU.

Despite the EC publishing its Industrial Carbon Management Strategy February 2024, identifying carbon capture and storage technologies as an indispensable technology to achieve the EU’s net neutrality climate objectives by 2050, the slow rate of progress has been highlighted by CCS Europe. The advocacy organisation, that includes GE Vernova, Baker Hughes and Open Grid Europe as its members, is calling for a rapid deployment of carbon capture technologies to curb CO2 emissions from industry and other hard-to-abate sources.

The organisation has released its Action Plan for Carbon Capture, identifying three central priorities for the upcoming European political mandate to ensure that CCS goes beyond policy promises and leads to concrete action: Securing political support for CCS deployment in Member States, including the creation of a "CCS Envoy" and the introduction of carbon capture targets in National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs), addressing the funding gap for CCS and streamlining existing EU funding, and developing a regulatory framework to support CCS deployment including accelerating permitting procedures for capture plants, transport infrastructure, and CO2 storage sites.

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