Letter on carbon: Capturing Europe’s elusive CCS potential
Europe urgently needs to bring more projects to FID, as CCS investors warn they might divert capital to faster-growing regions
Commissioning of the world-leading Northern Lights project in Norway, and a commitment by its backers to fund a large second-phase expansion, undoubtedly boosted sentiment across the European CCS sector in 2025. However, the mood in early 2026 is less upbeat. The overall pace of investment remains far too slow to hit the near-term capacity targets set by the region’s policymakers, according to two recent analyses of the sector’s development, both of which were published prior to the energy and economic shocks inflicted by the US-Iran conflict. The UK, which is keen to exploit the North Sea’s vast carbon storage potential to become a major regional CCS hub, has ambitions to capture and store
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