Delay tactic or genuine solution? Carbon capture under fire again as EU invests in ‘unproven’ technology

Carbon capture and storage has been found to be “technically uncertain and very high cost”. CO2 emitted by a fertiliser factory in the Netherlands will be stored underneath the seabed in Norway, in what the owners are calling the “largest commercial carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in Europe”. At an opening ceremony this week, the ammonia and fertiliser plant announced that it will capture 800,000 tonnes of CO2 a year then liquefy it to be sent by ship to Norway. Having funded the project, the European Commission was keen to promote its investment – with the Commissioner for Climate, Net Zero and Clean Growth attending the inauguration alongside the Prime Ministers of both countries. While the Commission says the Sluiskil plant, run by Norwegian chemical company Yara, is a “strategic investment”, opponents say it is “risking billions in taxpayers’ money to fund a dangerous distraction that delays climate action”. As one of the most divisive topics in climate action, we look into the facts about carbon capture and how the EU came to be funding this experimental technology. What is carbon capture and storage? Carbon capture and storage (CCS) refers to technologies designed to prevent CO2 from entering the atmosphere in the first place and/or to remove it after it has been emitted. As is done at the Sluiskil plant, most projects use a liquid to chemically remove the CO2 emitted from the production process, where it is then compressed into a liquid-like state and transported typically through a pipeline to a storage site. At that point, it’s either stored deep underground or is transformed into things like building materials or synthetic fuel. In the case of the latter, this technology is referred to as CCUS, where the ‘U’ stands for utilisation. As of February 2026, there were 75 operational CCS projects around the world, according to climate change publication Carbon Brief. Almost all of them are at fossil-fuel extraction and processing sites, according to the IEA’s database. Together, these projects capture 62.5 million tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) each year. This is equivalent to 0.2 per cent of total global emissions in 2025. While Yara’s chief executive, Svein Tore Holsether, said in a statement, “The carbon capture facility in Sluiskil proves that large-scale industrial decarbonisation is possible today”, the cumulative emissions saved are a very, very tiny drop in the ocean. US non-profit the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) has conducted in-depth research into CCS. Their Energy Finance Analyst, Andrew Reid, says: “Despite the political and financial support that has been pointed to CCS over the past three to four years, it remains technically uncertain, very high cost, and reliant upon huge subsidies to move from feasibility to construction and operation.” CCS: To help the fossil fuel industry to extract and sell more oil and gas To understand its uses, it’s important to understand where carbon technology originates from. According to Carbon Brief, it “was originally rolled out at US and Canadian oil wells in the early 1970s as a way to achieve “enhanced oil recovery”. This involves injecting captured CO2 into depleted wells – a process that stores the gas, but also helps to extract more oil.” This is by far the most significant use for carbon capture worldwide, with three-quarters of it used for this purpose. This means that “the majority of CO2 that is both captured and used today helps the fossil-fuel industry to extract and sell more oil and gas,” according to Carbon Brief. How did the EU end up funding carbon capture and storage? One of the arguments against CCS, which campaigners have been making for years, is that it is a way for polluters to keep polluting, rather than emitting less of the gases which are heating up the planet at alarming rates. “All capture and storage projects suffer from the same problem: they distract attention and resources from cutting emissions at source and give polluting industries like fertiliser production a pass to keep on polluting,” says Rachel Kennerley, Senior International Carbon Capture Campaigner at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). Belén Balanyá, researcher and campaigner at Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), has been tracking the lobbying efforts of the fossil fuel industry for 25 years. She has recently focussed on lobbying by the CCS industry. The outcomes of annual COP climate talks are known to be influenced by lobbyists representing industry. Balanyá found that around 500 CCS lobbyists were at COP29 in 2024. A year earlier, at COP28, CCS proponents (largely tied to fossil fuel industries) scored a significant win with the endorsement of “abatement and removal technologies” in the agreement. Referring to fossil fuel industries, Balanyá says, “You look at what’s on the agenda and it’s always escape hatches to stay in business,” she tells Euronews Green. “It’s where they move when they’ve been forced to – when there’s more knowledge and more acceptance about climate change and their role and that they have to decarbonise.” CCS being endorsed in a COP agreement may have contributed to its legitimacy in political circles within the EU. The CCUS Forum (now the Industrial Carbon Management (ICM) Forum), set up by the European Commission in 2021, is an annual event with working groups that feed directly into EU policymaking. CEO found that every group has been co-chaired by the fossil fuel industry or associated organisations. A newly released report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) details the risks of overshooting 1.5°C of warming and how we can limit them. It assessed what it called Carbon Dioxide Removal and found that many issues remain with the technology, such as whether it can scale sustainably (due to costs, land and energy use), whether it would actually keep CO2 out of the atmosphere permanently and who’s responsible for regulation and leaks. CCS: Good or bad? Wherever commentators stand on CCS, there is some agreement that for some industries, the technology can be useful. Yara’s project targets emissions from ammonia production which “provides a relatively concentrated CO2 stream, making this one of the more straightforward industrial applications of carbon capture rather than an example of the very hardest emissions to abate,” according to Domien Vangenechten, Programme Lead in Clean Economy at E3G. “The lesson should therefore not be that Europe needs CCS everywhere, but that we should pragmatically deploy it where it can cut substantial emissions today.”