At the start of the year, carbon capture felt like a comeback story. Discussions around global data-centre growth intensified, with Energy Considered’s 5,000 tracked Key Opinion Leaders (KOL) weighing in on policy, energy efficiency, and sustainability. Within that wider debate, CCUS gained fresh momentum. In Q1 ’25, CCUS drew 222 mentions across our KOL community, many spotlighting lab-to-field gains: smarter solvents, faster membranes, and modular capture units pushing costs down. Flagship approvals from Canada’s $16.5bn Pathways Alliance network to the UK’s Liverpool Bay project suggested scale might finally meet affordability.
By Q2’25, the volume grew louder, 361 mentions, but the mood sobered. The questions shifted from “Can we build it cheaper?” to ”Can we trust what’s claimed?” Capture rates, permanence, and lifecycle emissions moved to the front of the stage. Tracked energy law scholar James W. Coleman underscored the stakes: “Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is … the key technology on which the world’s transition to net zero depends.” (Professor of Law, University of Minnesota).
Yet trust hinges on rules that match the rhetoric. Tracked KOL, Elizabeth J. Wilson has long warned that deployment without clear liability and MRV invites trouble: “There has been insufficient attention paid to how to structure legal liability for the short-term or long-term risks associated with the geologic sequestration of CO₂.” (Professor of Environmental Studies, Dartmouth). Her work foreshadowed today’s clamp-down: Canada’s anti-greenwashing push (Bill C-59) and the EU’s standardization drive that bakes additionality, permanence, and lifecycle integrity into CCUS frameworks.
