Defossilizing Industry Scaling-up CCU 2025

Images: Getty Images, Shutterstock Disclaimer This document is published by the World Economic Forum as a contribution to a project, insight area or interaction. The findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed herein are a result of a collaborative process facilitated and endorsed by the World Economic Forum but whose results do not necessarily represent the views of the World Economic Forum, nor the entirety of its Members, Partners or other stakeholders. © 2025 World Economic Forum. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system.Contents Foreword 3 Executive summary 4 1 State of play 5 1.1 The role of carbon capture and utilization 5 1.2 The current CCU project pipeline 8 1.3 Utilization pathways 9 1.4 World Economic Forum Uplink start-ups 11 2 Policy barriers 13 2.1 The state of CCU policy 13 2.2 How policy could support CCU 16 2.3 Considerations for addressing policy barriers 19 3 Financial barriers 21 3.1 Investment trends in CCU 21 3.2 Financial barriers and enablers along the innovation curve 23 3.3 Considerations for addressing financial barriers 26 4 Cross-sectoral collaboration 28 4.1 Leveraging collaboration to realize growth 28 4.2 The role of multi-stakeholder collaborations 30 4.3 Considerations for cross-sectoral collaboration 32 5 Ways forward 33 5.1 Building credible and durable market signals 33 5.2 Driving deployment in an immature market 34 5.3 Collaboration and governance 35 Conclusion 37 Glossary 38 Contributors 39 Endnotes 42 Defossilizing Industry: Considerations for Scaling-up Carbon Capture and Utilization Pathways 2