Exploration on the Key Factors to the Successful Implementation of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Projects Based on a CCS Project Inventory

Climate change has been a key global challenge in recent years. Carbon capture and storage (CCS), a quickly evolving technology crucial to the climate transition, by far still have a lot of limitations and therefore not put in large-scale use. Some CCS projects have failed eventually. In this study, I used the carbon capture, utilization, and storage global database provided by the International Energy Agency (IEA, 2023) to study the progress of development of CCS projects worldwide, aiming to understand the main factors to these failures. Specifically, I analyzed key features of CCS projects of more than 400 CCS projects in existence, finding only a few projects entered the later phase of development. The small portion of completed CCS projects have an average cost dramatically lower than the average cost of active, hold, potential, and terminated phase project. Among active and potential CCS projects, costs diverge significantly. I also found that a rise in the scale of capture and storage of CCS projects by 1% requires 3% more costs, indicating intense requirement for capital. By far, CCS projects in active phase appear to have the highest capture amount. This further underscore the importance of capital in future development of CCS projects. Finally, I studied reasons of failed CCS projects and concluded that financial stress, permission and legislation challenges, and unclear political support have been the three main reasons of the project failure. These understanding of success and failure of CCS projects can be considered for the implementation and development of CCS projects in the future.