The London Register of Subsurface CO₂ Storage: A Record of Global Geological CO2 Sequestration

     A new international consortium of scientists and industrial partners, including the Norwegian University of Science & Technology (NTNU), has created the first audited account of global CO2 storage via subsurface sequestration in geological reservoirs. This is the London Register of Subsurface CO2 Storage, which has released its first annual report. Right now, the website just has data and graphs, but the full report is expected to be posted in December, although there is an annual report that can be downloaded from the website. The report notes that:

“…over 383 million tons of carbon dioxide had been stored since 1996—the equivalent of 81,044,946 gasoline-powered cars driven for one year.”

     The U. S., China, Brazil, Australia, and the Middle East have led CO2 sequestration efforts.

"There has been much speculation about CCS over the last decades—but here we document the actual progress," said Philip Ringrose, Professor in Energy Transition Geoscience at NTNU, and a member of the consortium. "Global carbon storage has seen a 17% annual growth rate since 1996 and by 2023 the storage rate was 45 million tons per annum."

     The first major CCS project, the pioneering Sleipner project by Equinor that began in 1996, is now complete in its injection phase and is in a monitoring phase. It should perhaps be noted that Sleipner, along with several other CO2 storage projects, stores excess CO2 that is produced along with natural gas-producing projects, rather than receiving CO2 from combustion or industrial sources. CCS offers the best means of decarbonizing industrial sectors that are difficult to decarbonize with renewables, such as the steel and cement industries.

     Although CCS is devalued by some as an inadequate response to climate change, most scientists, including those at the IPCC, think it will be essential in reducing emissions. The new registry gives an official record of CO2 stored geologically. It also shows that CCS works. It is working and continues to work as a means to decarbonize, even though these projects are expensive, requiring both high upfront costs and significant O&M costs. As noted, I do think we should distinguish between capture and storage of industrial and combustion CO2 from CO2 produced as a byproduct of natural gas production. The Sleipner project, as well as projects in Brazil, Wyoming, and other places, are of the latter type.  

     As noted in the report and the quote below, the researchers divided the history of global CO2 sequestration into three phases: the pioneering phase (1996-2007), the North American expansion (2008-2015), and global scaling  (2016-2023).

1. Pioneering Phase (1996–2007, 3 Projects): Annual storage amounts were less than 3 million tonnes of CO2 per year, driven by the Sleipner project in Norway, which began in 1996 at a rate of about 0.8 million tonnes per year, and the Weyburn-Midale project in Canada, operational from 2000 at a rate of about 1.6 million tonnes per year. China’s Zhongyuan oilfield began operations in 2006 with a rate of about 0.3 million tonnes per year, marking an early expansion beyond North America and Europe. The annual average growth rate of injection during this period was 21.6%, albeit with most of the growth taking place in the first year. 

2. North American Expansion (2008–2015, 18 Projects): New projects boosted annual amounts to the range of 7–15 million tonnes of CO2 per year. This corresponds with an annual average growth in injection rate of 6.2 % over this period. The total injection rate increase was dominated by projects in North America, and this also brought the prominence of geological storage combined with oil recovery. The Santos Basin Pre-Salt oilfield in Brazil joined the - 1 - Zhongyuan project in China in marking the initiation of a broader international deployment of CO2 storage.

3. Global Scaling (2016–2023, 36 Projects): Large-scale deployments and new market entrants increased injection rates to 45.2 million tonnes per year with an annual average growth in injection rate of 9.8 % during this period. This phase featured a large increase in project numbers and a marked global spread, with activity ramping up in China and new large-scale projects launching in Australia, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. The growing deployment in Asia, the Middle East, and South America represented an international expansion of industrial scale CO₂ storage.

  

 

References:

 

First complete record of global underground CO2 storage released. Norwegian University of Science and Technology. edited by Gaby Clark, reviewed by Robert Egan. Phys.org. November 17, 2025. First complete record of global underground CO₂ storage released

The London Register of Subsurface CO₂ Storage. The London Register of Subsurface CO2 Storage

The London Register of Subsurface CO₂ Storage. Annual Report 2025. Imperial. Royal Academy of Engineering. AnnualReport2025.pdf