Commercialising carbon capture and storage – how much does regulatory certainty truly matter?

With carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) technology advancement reaching a point of scalability, there is a desperate need for global regulatory and legislative frameworks to support large-scale commercialisation. With various economies at differing stages of updating their policy and regulatory frameworks, the impact on investment into large-scale CCUS projects is an area worth interrogating to understand whether regulatory certainty has material impact on viability of a CCUS project, or whether the bulk of the project economics are still driven by traditional cost components. This paper seeks to undertake a literature review of current regulatory and policy frameworks such as the US Inflation Reduction Act 2022 and Australia’s Safeguard Mechanism to undertake a relative comparison of the two leading regulatory policies on large-scale carbon capture and storage. This paper will also undertake a comparison of a theoretical large-scale carbon capture and storage project subject to each type of regulatory condition to estimate the potential impact on project viability in each scenario. The aim of the paper is to understand the magnitude of impact that regulatory policies can have on commercialisation of a large-scale CCUS project.