Coupled Geophysical and Technoeconomic Industrial Growth Constraints on Geological Carbon Storage Scale-Up: Application to UK Offshore Resources

Abstract Geological carbon dioxide storage is central to meeting many national climate change commitments, but large-scale deployment may be limited by both techno-economic rates of growth and physics-based processes imposed by subsurface geology. We develop a modeling framework for the assessment of feasible CO2 storage scale-up trajectories that unifies constraints arising from industrial rates of growth, dynamic injection rate limits from reservoir pressurization, and static maximum cumulative storage resource. We employ logistic and Gompertz models to represent policy-compliant deployment trajectories, parametrized by the total cumulative storage resource. We then use a simplified physics model to estimate the resulting regional subsurface pressurization along these trajectories. Growth curves where reservoir pressurization exceeds safe limits are updated by reducing the static storage resource until residing in the safe deployment range. The result is both a growth trajectory and static storage resource achievable subject to injectivity limits. Applying the framework to the United Kingdom (UK), we find that offshore storage resources are sufficient to accommodate all government midcentury deployment rate scenarios up to 175 Mt yr–1. Cumulative storage of up to 78 Gt, representing a reference estimate of the UK storage resource base used in national planning, can be achieved under Gompertz growth trajectories. The more aggressive logistic trajectories are constrained by reservoir pressure, limiting the achievable resource base to 69 Gt. The framework is transferable to other regions to assess the feasibility of policy-driven CO2 storage pathways under coupled industrial growth and geophysical constraints, informing national decarbonization planning and global integrated assessment models.