Bengaluru: On February 1, India’s finance minister said that the government would allocate huge funds — Rs. 20,000 crores — over the next five years to deploy technologies to capture carbon at source, utilise the carbon to produce other products, or store them so that the carbon is not released into the atmosphere. Such Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (or CCUS) technologies, as they’re called, are considered important for countries to attain their climate targets under the Paris Agreement. However, they also come with several risks — including higher consumption of power and water, among others. Moreover, there is a possibility that countries can continue to rely on fossil fuels with the rationale that they are using carbon dioxide removal strategies. A recent study identified a range of guardrails — or protective measures — and included transparency as one of the many crucial aspects to ensure while deploying these technologies in the first place. CCUS technologies are important for India’s transition, energy scientists told The Wire. However, such technologies should not be seen as replacements for improving energy efficiency measures or adding more renewable energy systems, they said. And while achieving net zero may be impossible without the use of carbon removal technologies to some extent, it is crucial that India apply it only for truly hard-to-abate sectors such as the steel and cement industries, one of them told The Wire. What is CCUS, why is it in the news?Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) refers to technologies that help collect carbon at the source of industrial plants such as steel and cement factories. The captured carbon can then be used to create other products (such as methanol which is used in the transportation industry; and even animal feed).The captured carbon can also be locked away for good by sealing it underground — in geological formations, or even under the ocean. Here’s an example: India’s state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) announced on January 4 that it would implement its first ever Carbon Capture Storage project at Gujarat’s Gandhar oilfield. Per the PTI news report, ONGC will collect carbon dioxide from industrial plants in the Dahej area, and from its Hazira plant (which processes natural gas), and inject this carbon dioxide into two abandoned and depleted oil wells. According to officials, the pilot project will help sequester 100 tonnes of carbon dioxide per day into the oil wells. “Such mechanisms offer solutions to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and from point sources in hard-to-abate sectors, such as the energy sector, thereby supporting decarbonisation,” Suresh N.S., Senior Research Scientist leading the Strategic Initiatives group at the Center for Study of Science, Technology & Policy (CSTEP), a research-based think tank in Delhi, told The Wire.In India, CCUS is now in the news after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced on February 1, as she presented the 2026-27 union budget, that the union government would allocate Rs. 20,000 crores to deploy more such technologies in India:“Aligning with the roadmap launched in December 2025, CCUS technologies at scale will achieve higher readiness levels in end-use applications across five industrial sectors, including, power, steel, cement, refineries and chemicals. An outlay of ₹20,000 crore is proposed over the next 5 years,” she said.The roadmap she referred to was the “R&D Roadmap to Enable India’s Net Zero Targets through Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS)” — prepared by the Department of Science and Technology and launched by Ajay Kumar Sood, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, on December 2. Among other things, the Roadmap “provides strategic guidance on thematic priorities and funding pathways needed to accelerate CCUS development”, a government press release said. Risks and challengesHowever, despite their role in climate change mitigation, CCUS technologies come with risks and challenges. Studies estimate that currently, most carbon capture storage technologies can absorb 85-95% of a power plant’s carbon emissions. However, the carbon dioxide emitted from these plants need to not only be captured but also compressed for storage – an activity that is highly energy-intensive. Per some estimates, energy use in current power plants will increase by 10-40% if carbon capture storage technologies are being pressed into action. Another concern is cost. The need for advanced raw materials, significant energy inputs, and the development of specialised, extensive infrastructure mean that the cost of capturing carbon dioxide from power plants can range from USD50-100 per ton of carbon dioxide. For this reason, some consider it to be “economically unviable”.Scientists have also raised concerns about the risks of storing compressed carbon over the long-term. Leaks are a worry: if carbon dioxide leaks into groundwater, it can increase water acidity, which can in turn release hazardous elements such as lead and arsenic which can contaminate water sources for people and biodiversity.“Some technical challenges regarding carbon capture technologies include retrofitting them into existing industrial facilities that were not originally designed to integrate CO2 separation technologies. Capture processes are also energy-intensive, with absorption-based technologies requiring 1–5 gigajoules of regeneration energy per tonne of CO2 captured, reducing overall plant efficiency. Post capturing, CO2 must either be stored or utilised,” Suresh said. “While utilisation pathways are emerging in India, geological storage systems are still at an early stage of development.” The field is still developing; a news report in 2018 said that CCUS still remains a “trial technology”. “Research and development are still ongoing, so despite advancements, the field is constantly changing,” noted a study published in June last year, which reviewed research on CCUS across the world. It called for more investment in R&D on the technologies. According to the International Energy Agency, as of 2023, there were only 45 commercial CCUS plants across the world. There’s also a legitimate worry that countries could end up relying more heavily on carbon dioxide removal techniques (including tree planting drives for carbon sequestration and CCUS) versus reducing carbon emissions — due to the rationale that they are using carbon dioxide removal strategies.Following guardrails is a mustA study published on February 3 noted this, and that recent reviews of countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (which are a list of steps that nations voluntarily take up to reduce carbon emissions to fight climate change under the Paris Agreement of 2015) and long-term strategies revealed a heavy reliance on carbon dioxide removal. It also noted a lack of transparency regarding the extent of this reliance or how it will be achieved. The study therefore identified several guardrails – or protective measures – to keep in mind while deploying carbon dioxide removal methods. One is that countries have to prioritise emissions reductions over removals, as the Paris Agreement of 2015 necessitates. Another is that countries must pursue “feasible and coherent strategies” for both emissions reductions and removals. “First, States should ensure their CDR [carbon dioxide removal] plans become achievable. This cautions against relying on novel CDR options such as BECCS [Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage] or DACCS [Direct Air Capture with Carbon Storage] without actively enabling their deployment through technological development, the construction of CO2 transport infrastructure, and the identification of suitable storage sites,” it noted. The study recommends that nations make a clear distinction between emissions reductions and removals within their climate targets, and specify the methodologies and assumptions underlying these strategies. At the core of this is the need for transparency while deploying such technologies. “In an uncertain world, some states are gambling on the future deployment of CDR techniques to meet their climate targets in place of more ambitious near-term mitigation measures. This approach risks overshooting the Paris temperature goal and causing serious, pervasive and irreversible climate harms. Our findings emphasise that near-term emissions reductions and feasible CDR strategies are not only ethical imperatives – they are legal requirements,” commented Lavanya Rajamani, a scientist at Oxford’s Faculty of Law, one of the authors of the study. While states increasingly plan to meet their climate targets through large-scale removals, many of these plans rest on unclear assumptions and technologies that may not materialise, said co-author Rupert Stuart-Smith, of the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme and the University’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, in a statement. “Legal guardrails are essential to avoid passing climate risks on to future generations and to ensure that CDR does not substitute for the emissions reductions urgently needed now.”What does India need?Energy scientists told The Wire that CCUS would be important in the country’s arsenal to fight climate change.What India needs is a mix of all kinds of strategies – reducing emissions through decreases in fossil fuel use, while also implementing carbon dioxide removal and carbon capture methods including CCUS, said Sandeep Pai, Senior Lead, International Energy Transitions, at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment And Sustainability.“We need an all-the-above approach so I really welcome this budget in that sense,” Pai told The Wire. “We have to try everything. Because greening the hard-to-abate [industries] like steel or cement are also still at pilot stages, very much like CCUS…The big picture is that we need carbon removal, capture capture, carbon utilisation technologies even with all the ambitious climate and clean energy targets globally…There is no way to reach net zero without some level of carbon removal and carbon capture technology.”Suresh too agreed that the announcement of an outlay of Rs. 20,000 crores for CCUS in the Union Budget 2026–27 was “an opportunity to develop pilots using different technology options” and that “any new technology with early-stage pilots plays a critical role in identifying gaps and improving designs prior to large-scale deployment.”There is substantial demand for products (such as cement, steel, fuels, electricity, and chemicals) from hard-to-abate sectors in the country, making it difficult to remove emissions in the near term without CDR/CCUS technologies, he said. “Therefore, achieving net-zero requires a mixed bag of energy solutions, including CDR/CCUS,” he said. “Our targets under the Nationally Determined Contributions [under the Paris Agreement] include reducing emissions intensity by 45% by 2030, achieving 50% of electricity from non-fossil sources, and developing a carbon sink of 3 billion tonnes of CO2. CDR and CCUS align with the first goal of the NDC, and the budget outlay has also been carefully planned only through 2030.” However, X also cautioned that these technologies should not be seen as replacements for improving energy efficiency measures, adding more renewable energy systems, and integrating emerging technologies into India’s energy basket during the transition towards net zero.Pai concurs. Moreover, it is imperative that CCUS technologies be implemented only for truly hard-to-abate sectors such as steel, and cement — and not in sectors such as electricity where alternative and cleaner energy sources such as solar and wind power have already scaled and are cheaper than fossil fuels, he told The Wire. And there also has to be high levels of transparency and accountability about how CCUS technologies are being deployed, he said — because of the probable impacts it could have on local resources.Conflicting policies, delayed reportsHowever, as per Sitharaman’s comment, the Rs. 20,000 outlay for CCUS will include the power sector as well.And even if carbon capture is applied to coal-powered fire plants, one of the first steps of capturing carbon from emissions is to treat the flue gas that these plants emit. Companies that provide carbon capture technologies worldwide such as this one recommend flue gas desulphurisation (installing technology to remove sulphur from flue gas), among others, before running the gas through a carbon dioxide absorber for carbon capture. This, they say, is to prevent acid gases from degrading the solvents used in a carbon capture system.Ironically, the union government in July last year exempted almost 80% of the country’s coal-fired power plants from installing flue gas desulphurisation technology — even as most plants were already in the process of doing so, with many even having awarded tenders for desulphurisation units, as The Wire reported. Moreover, India’s track record when it comes to transparency has already raised questions. Take the case of India’s Biennial Transparency Report (BTR), for instance. Per the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, BTRs include information on national inventory reports, progress towards NDCs, policies and measures, climate change impacts and adaptation, levels of financial, technology development and transfer and capacity-building support, capacity-building needs and areas of improvement. Countries signatory to the Paris Agreement have to submit BTRs every two years.India hasn’t submitted one yet. The deadline for countries to submit their first BTRs passed on December 31, 2024.Though union environment minister Bhupender Yadav said on November 17 last year at the UNFCCC’s 30th Conference of Parties that India would submit its first ever Biennial Transparency Report as well as declare its revised, third NDC for targets till 2035, he did not specify when, as The Wire reported. Though some reports claimed that India said it would submit these by the end of December 2025, the date has come and passed. And India’s BTR has still not seen the light of day.India’s delayed BTR “exposes deep structural and institutional gaps in its climate data systems, raising concerns about its readiness to meet global transparency standards”, per an article published by ORF.