By Vatche Kourkejian

This report highlights the importance of Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) as a critical component in achieving net zero by 2050 by capturing unavoidable and previously released emissions. CCUS is key to meaningfully address emissions across heavily polluting industries that are hard and slow to decarbonize.

To reach the ambitious decarbonization targets, the scale up of CCUS needs to accelerate and we already see growing momentum with over 300 CCUS initiatives announced globally.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has a head start in CCUS, with several operational facilities launched in Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar, accounting for over 8% of known global capture capacity, and with multiple projects announced across the region, expected to become operational in the second part of the decade.

Looking ahead, GCC countries are embedding CCUS as a key component to achieve their decarbonization objectives, with significant scale-up potential in major polluting sectors such as power, heavy industries, and oil and gas, in addition to focusing on a hub approach to scale CCUS, which will enable stakeholders to scale, share infrastructure, and build new ecosystems around the carbon economy.

The GCC region has immense potential to deploy CCUS at scale, with first steps already taken, the region can accelerate CCUS deployment to be positioned as global front-runner.

The report outlines a roadmap for accelerating CCUS deployment in the GCC and emphasizes the need to establish critical enablers, such as supportive regulatory, financial, and infrastructural frameworks to facilitate carbon capture growth and ultimately meet net zero targets.