Driving CCUS Commercialization in India: Policy Innovations and Pathways to Successful Implementation

ABSTRACT Realizing India’s commitment to achieving net-zero emissions by 2070 requires the development and commercialization of Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) technologies. CCUS is important to decarbonizing hard-to-abate sectors like the oil and gas, cement, steel and chemicals. While CCUS in India is still in the early stages, there have been promising pilot and demonstration projects. Notably, the Indian Oil Corporation operates Koyali refinery through which the facility could capture more than 5000 tons of CO2 daily as part of Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) efforts, which establishes this installation as India’s leading CCUS venture. The Jamshedpur plant of Tata Steel enables daily capture of 5 tons of CO2, while NTPC operates a CO2-to-methanol project at their site in Madhya Pradesh. Despite these advancements, the main obstacles to CCUS commercialization are high costs, lack of policy support and technological limitations. The current CCUS initiatives in India are explored and strategic policy innovations to accelerate CCUS deployment are presented in this paper. A phased implementation framework using financial incentives, regulatory changes as well as public private partnerships that help build a robust CCUS ecosystem is the proposed study. Furthermore, international collaboration and knowledge transfer are identified as being important for advancement of technological readiness levels in India and for successful commercialization of CCUS. The study underscored the need for a unified policy framework and multi stakeholder engagement to help ensure the longevity of CCUS in India. To tap on such a huge potential of CCUS in India, it is important to address barriers and align itself with global best practices, as CCUS will greatly help in meeting the country’s climate goals as well as industrial sustainability.