From Innovation to Integration: The Evolving Role of Carbon Capture and Storage in Global Decarbonization

ABSTRACT Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has evolved from a conceptual mitigation option into a cornerstone of global decarbonization strategies. This review provides a comprehensive synthesis of CCS’s technological, intellectual, and institutional evolution, emphasizing its transition from isolated engineering applications to system‐wide integration. Drawing on a bibliometric analysis of more than 19,000 publications (2001–2025) from the Web of Science Core Collection visualized through CiteSpace, we map the global research landscape and reveal the field’s thematic shift from capture and sequestration processes toward integrated approaches that couple CCS with hydrogen, bioenergy, and digital optimization frameworks. Technologically, CCS has advanced through three primary pathways—post‐combustion, pre‐combustion, and oxy–fuel combustion—each with distinct capture mechanisms, energy penalties, and retrofit potentials. At the deployment level, CCS expansion remains geographically uneven: industrialized economies such as China, the United States, and the United Kingdom dominate operational capacity, whereas emerging and developing economies face barriers related to infrastructure, financing, and governance. By integrating bibliometric, technological, and comparative analyses, this review develops a multidimensional framework encompassing policy design, institutional capacity, and deployment structure. The findings highlight that CCS’s future effectiveness depends not only on technological efficiency but also on coordinated governance, cross‐border storage networks, and its alignment with broader innovation ecosystems driving the global net‐zero transition.