IEA CCS – An examination of how carbon capture and storage is modeled in international scenarios runs headlong into a basic problem: the International Energy Agency says its long-term pathways are not meant to forecast real-world deployment. The dispute turns on what pr
For years, CCS—carbon capture and storage—has been sold as a plausible way to keep industrial emissions from climbing unchecked. But the promise begins to wobble once you ask a harder question: what do the models behind those promises actually predict?
The “solution” case often leans on modeled pathways for carbon capture and storage deployment drawn from the International Energy Agency’s Energy Technology Perspectives and World Energy Outlook reports. and from correspondence with the IEA. The figures being used include 2008 and 2010 projections from the IEA’s Blue Map scenario. a second 2010 projection from the Net Zero by 2050 scenario. and 2018 projections from the Sustainable Development scenario. For 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024, the projections come from the Announced Pledges, Stated Policies and Net Zero by 2050 scenarios. Some of these scenario pathways are designed to hit a specific temperature goal or CO2 concentration limit. Others are built around what is possible given existing policies or pledges.
There’s a crucial caveat in the IEA’s own description of the work. In response to emailed questions. an IEA spokesperson said: “The IEA’s long-term modelling and scenarios are not designed to predict future deployment of technologies; the different scenarios we produce are intended to explore the potential implications and trade-offs of different policy. technology and investment choices.”.
The spokesperson also pointed to why solar took off in the real world while CCS has not. Solar power has succeeded “in part because of successful policy support for it. especially in China. ” the spokesperson said. while CCS has lagged due to “a lack of similar support.” The IEA added that CCS remains part of the solution portfolio for industries that may otherwise be hard to decarbonize—and noted that “a record number of CCS projects are under construction.”.
On paper, the distinction sounds technical. In practice, it is everything.
The gap between scenario pathways and actual outcomes is grounded in different data sources. For actual CCS capacity, the figures come from the IEA’s CCUS Projects Database. Large-scale projects are defined there as those with estimated capacity to store at least 500,000 metric tons of CO2 annually. The database includes only projects that have been completed and that permanently store CO2. excluding projects that use captured carbon for enhanced recovery of oil and gas or other uses. because those applications can create more carbon than they store—or have looser monitoring requirements.
Across completed CCS injection projects, 12 have been recorded. Of those, 11 remain operational and one has been decommissioned. But the annual total for carbon stored assumes the projects operated at their stated capacity each year since launch—an assumption the data itself flags as something that few projects have actually managed. That matters when projections are compared against what has really happened.
Solar adds another layer. The projections for solar power production come from IEA World Energy Outlook reports. using data from the Announced Pledges. Current Policies. New Policies. Net Zero by 2050. Reference. Sustainable Development. and Stated Policies scenarios. To make the chart less cluttered, the projection data was limited to projections from IEA reports from every other year.
Actual deployment data for solar energy comes from IEA World Energy Outlook and Energy Technology Perspectives reports. The initial comparison of projected and deployed carbon storage versus solar energy was compiled by researchers Rory French and Lindsey Gulden.
The sharpest claim in the debate centers on scale—especially a widely cited target tied to warming limits. The figure of 6 billion tons comes from a 2024 paper titled “The feasibility of reaching gigatonne scale CO2 storage by mid-century.” It reflects the median quantity of subsurface carbon storage among scenarios in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report scenario database that have a greater than 67% chance of limiting warming to 2°C.
But the IPCC, too, draws a line around what its scenarios are for. The IPCC said it does not develop or run the models that create the scenarios in its database. It also noted that the Assessment Report includes information contextualizing and questioning the models’ assumptions around solar and CCS deployment.
That questioning extends to the practical land requirement behind bioenergy scenarios. One estimate in the material being reviewed says 768. 000 square miles of land would be needed to grow biomass. drawn from the Sixth Assessment Report’s Technical Summary. which states the cropland area needed to keep warming below 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot is around 199 million hectares in 2050.
Infrastructure demands are part of the argument, too. An estimate of 68,000 miles of pipeline is sourced from the 2021 Net-Zero America report.
Then comes the arithmetic of storage reservoirs—where the assumptions start to feel less like climate math and more like an engineering wish list. To calculate how many large-scale CCS reservoirs would be required to meet the 6 billion metric tons target. the analysis assumed projects would bury as much as the largest carbon storage project has in its largest year. That benchmark is the Gorgon Carbon Dioxide Injection Project in Australia, which injected 2.7 million tons in 2019. The 2.7 million-ton figure came from the 2025 annual report from the London Register of Subsurface CO2 Storage. produced by Imperial College London.
Cost calculations land in the same zone of assumptions. To estimate the total annual cost for CCS projects by 2050, the analysis multiplied the $85-per-ton subsidy in the U.S. 45Q tax credit by 6 billion tons.
And while the debate is climate-centered, the materials being used don’t stay inside that lane. China’s 2025 military budget is sourced from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The U.N.’s humanitarian and development aid budget for 2024 comes from the U.N. Systems Chief Executives Board for Coordination’s expenses factsheet.
The central relationship between these facts is stark: the IEA’s own spokesman says its long-term scenarios are meant to explore trade-offs. not to predict real deployment—yet the scale and cost calculations used in the CCS “solution” case depend on treating those scenarios and targets as if they were actionable roadmaps. When the analysis shifts to completed CCS projects. it has to acknowledge that 11 of 12 completed injection projects remain operational. one has been decommissioned. and annual storage totals assume capacity utilization that “few have done.” Meanwhile. solar’s deployment story is tied explicitly to policy support. “especially in China. ” and CCS’s delay is described as tied to “a lack of similar support.”.
That is where the tension lives. The IEA says CCS belongs in a solution portfolio, and that record numbers of projects are under construction. Critics pressing these numbers focus instead on what happens when models are read like forecasts—particularly when storage capacity. land for biomass. pipeline mileage. reservoir counts. and cost projections hinge on assumptions that may not translate into the real-world pace and conditions needed.
As the debate moves from targets to timelines, the question stops being whether CCS can exist at scale. It becomes whether the promises people make with scenario language can survive contact with deployment realities—and whether the policy support that propelled solar will ever arrive in the same intensity for CCS.
United States politics CCS carbon capture and storage IEA World Energy Outlook Energy Technology Perspectives 45Q tax credit climate policy IPCC solar deployment