Climate Neutrality: What is next for Carbon Capture in Europe?

Europe is redefining carbon capture as a strategic building block for its 2050 climate neutrality goals, particularly for hard-to-abate sectors like cement and steel. While the region is shifting toward an infrastructure hub model to achieve economies of scale—with projects like Northern Lights in Norway and Porthos in the Netherlands—deployment remains slow. The author contends that current funding instruments and the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) are insufficient on their own, calling for bold, per-ton deployment subsidies similar to those used for renewables or the US 45Q tax credit to accelerate commercial scale-up.

• Carbon capture is viewed as essential for decarbonizing hard-to-abate industries such as steel and cement production where few alternatives exist, and its use is expected to reduce the overall cost of the energy transition. The European Commission's scenarios project that up to 600 million tons of CO2 will be captured and stored by 2050, a significant increase from the 40 million tons per year currently captured by 21 global facilities.
• Europe is adopting a strategy of building infrastructure hubs to couple multiple industrial and power facilities, allowing them to share CO2 transport and storage infrastructure to achieve economies of scale and better risk allocation. Currently, about a dozen projects are in planning with a combined capacity of 30 mtpa, including the Northern Lights project in Norway, the Porthos project in the Netherlands, and the Zero Carbon Humber Cluster in the UK.

APA

Beck, L. (n.d.). Climate Neutrality: What is next for Carbon Capture in Europe? Clean Air Task Force. https://cdn.catf.us/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/21092801/Climate_Neutrality.pdf

Chicago

Beck, Lee. Climate Neutrality: What is next for Carbon Capture in Europe? Clean Air Task Force, n.d. https://cdn.catf.us/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/21092801/Climate_Neutrality.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Beck |first1=Lee |title=Climate Neutrality: What is next for Carbon Capture in Europe? |publisher=Clean Air Task Force |url=https://cdn.catf.us/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/21092801/Climate_Neutrality.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{beckndclimate, author = {Beck, Lee}, title = {{Climate Neutrality: What is next for Carbon Capture in Europe?}}, institution = {Clean Air Task Force}, url = {https://cdn.catf.us/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/21092801/Climate_Neutrality.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }