How fast will carbon capture capacity grow, and what constraints remain for projects?

Operating carbon capture capacity would rise 82% to above 100 million tonnes of CO2 per year once projects under construction enter service, a report said Tuesday. The same report cautions that policy and financing remain key constraints. The growth figure applies to projects already being built, so it describes a near term pipeline rather than a forecast of new announcements.

The 100 million tonne threshold is a useful marker for companies that count on capture technology in their transition plans. Many corporate decarbonisation roadmaps for hard to abate sectors assume that capture will contribute at some point. A rise of 82% from today's operating base shows that physical capacity is being added, but the report's emphasis on policy and financing indicates that the build out is not guaranteed to continue at the same pace.

For ESG and finance teams, the distinction between capacity under construction and capacity operating matters. Transition plans that rely on capture should be tested against what is actually operating, not what is announced. Where a company's targets depend on third party storage or transport infrastructure, the status of that infrastructure becomes a dependency worth disclosing and monitoring, including in the assumptions behind any climate related financial disclosures.

The constraints named in the report also bear on risk assessment. Policy uncertainty can change the economics of a project quickly, and financing gaps can delay or cancel capacity that is otherwise technically ready. Investors reviewing transition plans will reasonably ask how much weight a company places on capture, and what the fallback is if capacity arrives later than expected.

What to watch next is whether the policy and financing conditions identified in the report change. Professionals should track which projects reach operation on schedule, and how that compares with the 100 million tonne figure. For now, the sensible reading is that capture is scaling from a real base, while the constraints flagged by the report argue for conservative treatment in any plan that leans heavily on it.