The International Energy Agency (IEA) has published Financing CCUS at Scale, examining how CCUS projects reach financing. More than 30 projects have reached final investment decision (FID) in the past two years, yet around 90% of projects announced for 2035 has not.
The report identifies five risks that shape whether a project is financeable:
- Storage risk – limited knowledge of geological storage resources can restrict deployment, particularly where characterisation is costly.
- Interface risk – poor coordination between capture, transport and storage creates cross-chain exposure.
- Volume risk – long-term contracts and capacity booking can fix how much CO₂ a project will handle.
- Construction risk – non-recourse project finance, which raised over $15 billion for CCUS in two years, isolates construction risk within the project.
- Long-term stewardship – monitoring and post-closure liability have limited precedent and largely remain with the public sector.
RMRI notes that risk allocation is a precondition for financing a CCUS project: each material risk must sit with a party able to manage it. A practical test, for developers and financiers alike, is whether every risk has a named owner.
Ref: ‘Financing CCUS at Scale’ at iea.org