Can carbon capture clean India's air?

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced an allocation of Rs 20,000 crore in the Union Budget 2026 towards technologies designed to control and remove carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from industrial pollution and help mitigate climate change.

The announcement carries hope in light of persistent pollution in India, especially in the north and Indo-Gangetic plains, as they remain trapped under toxic haze for months during winters. Air quality index (AQI) levels during this time are almost always in the “poor”, “very poor”, “severe”, or “hazardous” category and pose a proven health risk to crores of Indians.

Even so, the focus on Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) has failed to generate much enthusiasm among climate experts.

Despite existing for decades, CCUS has struggled to demonstrate that it can reduce emissions at scale, raising doubts whether this ambitious budgetary push will translate into meaningful relief for India’s worsening air pollution and climate challenges, with the eventual goal to meet the 2070 net-zero target.

HOW DOES THE TECH WORK?

CCUS aims at reducing emissions at the source, mainly in heavy industries like steel, cement, and power, where reducing CO2 emissions is exceptionally challenging. The captured CO2 is then converted to be used in suitable products like carbonation of beverages, plastics, or fuels, or stored deep in geological formations.

According to Sitharaman, the Rs 20,000 crore allocation aligns with India’s R&D roadmap to enable net-zero targets through CCUS, launched in December 2025.

There are three parts to this technology: capture, use, and storage.

It starts with removing CO2 emissions at source. This is usually done by passing the flue gas (byproduct from combustion) through a chemical which separates CO2. Some forms of the technology used to remove CO2 from flue gas can be added to existing facilities.

Once CO2 is captured, it is compressed and transferred through pipelines to other industries to be used as a raw material, or injected deep into geological formations.

CCUS is a type of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technology.

Approaches or practices that remove carbon dioxide from our atmosphere through intentional human actions constitute CDR. It also involves creating durable storage for the removed CO2. Natural removal of the gas, like in natural forests, is not a type of CDR technology.

A recent study, led by researchers at the University of Oxford, UK, found that over-reliance on CDR technologies could jeopardise net-zero targets by making governments focus more on novel, high-risk technologies.

DOES CCUS REALLY WORK?

CCUS is often touted as a potential technology to remove emissions in hard-to-abate sectors, which rely on fossil fuels for their intense power requirements.

But, CCUS technology is capital and power-intensive, has risks related to leakage of gas, and has overall shown limited return-on-investment as a credible technology for controlling global warming. Injecting the captured CO2 deep into sea beds or geological formations also carries a risk of triggering earthquakes.

“The world's top climate scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have labelled CCUS as one of the most expensive and least effective ways to cut emissions,” Rachel Kennerly, senior international carbon capture campaigner at the Center for International Environmental Law, Switzerland, said.

“IPCC’s, and other research too, has found that carbon capture storage is likely to be too complex, too expensive, and too late to actually help with genuine emission reductions on the timescale we need them,” she added.

“A key insight from recent research is that while CCUS is often discussed as a large-scale solution, the amount of CO2 that can be safely and responsibly stored underground is likely much smaller than many earlier estimates suggest,” Shonali Pachauri, principal research scholar and research group lead in the Energy, Climate, and Environment Program at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria, said.

However, Pachauri also added that CCUS makes “the most sense” in hard-to-abate sectors. “This does not mean CCUS has no role, but it does mean that it should be used carefully and selectively,” she said.

DOES IT SOLVE INDIA’S POLLUTION PROBLEM?

The short answer is no.

Air pollution in north India is mainly caused by vehicular emissions, illegal stubble burning, and coal power emissions. “Fixing the air pollution problem requires implementing known solutions rather than innovations,” Sugandha Srivastav, lecturer of environmental economics, Smith School at the University of Oxford, UK, said.

CCUS is not a new technology; it has been around for decades. The limited scaling proves that it is still not at a point where it can be used as a reliable option to reduce emissions.

The technology alone does not solve India’s, particularly north India’s, pollution problem.

“Air pollution in north India is a different problem. The main nuisance is particulate matter, not carbon emissions, which CCUS mainly captures,” Goutham Radhakrishnan, researcher at the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai, said.

“There are better ways to remove particulate matter. Do we want to invest in technology which is in a nascent stage or in something proven to work at scale for particulate matter?” he added.

CCUS is also primarily a climate mitigation technology, not an air pollution solution. “Capturing CO2 does not automatically reduce emissions of particulate matter, sulphur dioxide, or nitrogen oxides, or other pollutants that drive India's severe air quality problems,” Pachauri said.

“In some cases, CCUS could even increase local pollution if it prolongs the operation of coal-based infrastructure without stringent controls on conventional air pollutants,” she added.

Kennerly echoes this view. “Carbon cuts from storage don’t really help with air pollution, which is obviously a massive issue with coal and heavy industries,” she said.

“Some research also shows that CCUS can increase certain types of air pollution, so there is a real risk that we may miss an opportunity to deal with the health impacts of fossil fuels by getting distracted by CCUS,” Kennerly added.

IS INDIA’S INVESTMENT JUSTIFIED?

A 2025 report published by a Public Accounts Committee in the UK concluded that carbon capture is a high-risk technology. “There are no examples of CCUS technology operating at scale in the UK. The PAC’s inquiry heard that CCUS may not capture as much carbon as expected, with international examples showing that government’s expectations for its performance are far from guaranteed,” the report said.

In 2021, the UK government had added an ambition to set up four CCUS clusters capturing 20-30 million tonnes of carbon per annum by 2030, to its net-zeroc strategy.

However, Hemant Mallya, fellow at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, New Delhi, said that CCUS is essential for our legacy industries to meet India’s climate goals. “CCUS can fully leverage the imminent Free Trade Agreements with the European Union and the US, where low carbon intensity of products is increasingly an essential attribute,” he said. The EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is a climate policy which makes it expensive to export carbon-intensive goods to the bloc.

“Some level of investment in CCUS makes sense to hedge risk and avoid catastrophic warming scenarios, but this should be a complement to reducing emissions, not a substitute,” Srivastav said.

Kennerly pointed out that there is a huge gap between the real-world effectiveness of what CCUS can deliver and what it is currently capable of, and what countries like India are hoping it can deliver.

“The emissions reductions it can achieve have so far shown to be incredibly minimal, and it’s also wildly expensive. CCUS reliance could be incredibly economically damaging for a country,” she said.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) also says that CCUS development is “not on track”. Currently, CCUS facilities capture a little more than 50 million tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) annually. India alone emits around 8% of the world’s CO2 emissions from combustible fuels, which were over 2,763 MtCO2 in 2023.

CCUS is currently not economically viable or functional at scale. “There is a long history of failed investment in CCUS from the US, Canada, etc. When India invests, it must critically evaluate this history and not repeat past mistakes,” Srivastav said.

“CCUS relies on huge public subsidies, and taking taxpayers’ money to support it isn’t very viable,” Kennerly said. “In Europe, CCUS is being used as a justification to either keep fossil fuel plants running, or build new ones, creating more air pollution and prolonging the lifeline of deeply-polluting, climate-changing emissions,” she added.