What carbon capture costs
Carbon capture and storage, carbon removal and direct air capture appear on about 34 recent papers, mostly in economics, while governments now pay large subsidies for them. How much does a tonne captured actually cost in the projects that run, and which uses are worth the subsidy?
What prompted this#
Since October 2025, about 34 papers carry a carbon-capture, carbon-removal or direct-air-capture keyword (25 in economics journals): "carbon capture and storage" on 19, "carbon capture utilization and storage" on 8, "carbon dioxide removal" on 6, "direct air capture" on 2. Subsidies such as the US 45Q credit and the first commercial storage hubs in Europe have turned capture from a modelling assumption into a set of real projects with costs.
Questions#
- In operating projects, how much CO2 is captured relative to design capacity, and what is the realized cost per tonne stored?
- Which sources (ethanol plants, gas processing, cement, power) capture most cheaply, and does the subsidy go mostly to the cheapest, which might have been captured anyway?
- How do the climate models that assume large-scale capture by 2050 compare with the build-out actually under way?
Data that could help#
Project capacity and injection reports (regulatory filings, the Global CCS Institute database), subsidy claims, and cost disclosures from operators.
Next step#
Compile design and reported capture rates for every operating capture project and compare realized costs per tonne with the assumptions in widely used climate scenarios.