Carbon Loop #018
Show me more money and less spam
A newsletter by the CCUSNA dedicated to highlighting the Australian carbon capture, utilisation and storage industry.
📫 A Quick Note on Spam
Last week’s issue was the most activity we’ve had in a while, with lots of subscribes and unsubscribes and likes and comments. I suspect Gorgon had something to do with it. But it has also raised a question I’ve been grappling with.
The CCUSNA as a group, and myself personally, meet with lots of different people to talk about CCUS topics. After those meetings, business cards go into a pile and email addresses go onto this list. Mostly it works fine. Every so often, for reasons entirely unrelated to the quality of my writing, people unsubscribe. And that’s fine and that’s great and the system works as it’s supposed to.
In the past I’ve kept a rough mental note: If someone has unsubscribed, don’t add them back. Simple enough when the list is small. But it’s becoming less simple as the CCUSNA and this newsletter grows. The events are getting bigger and I’m no longer confident that people added to the list haven’t already quietly (and incorrectly) decided it isn’t for them. That feels bad. I don’t want to send this to people that have already elected not to receive it. But I don’t have a clean solution.
So … uh …. help?
If you work in marketing and can think of a better way for a group to grow a distribution list without annoying the people on it, please reply to this email and educate me.
In the meantime, if you’ve been re-added after previously unsubscribing: I’m sorry. It wasn’t intentional. It’s not that I want to annoy you, it’s just that I’m too dumb to figure out how not to. This is, admittedly, something of a recurring theme in my career.
As always, you can unsubscribe to this list by clicking this link or by clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ button at the very bottom. And I will do my best not to add you back soon thereafter.
🤝 CCUSNA WA Multi-User Hub Workshop
In February 2026, CCUSNA hosted an invitation-only workshop exploring the opportunities and challenges associated with developing a multi-user CCUS hub in Western Australia, spanning the Kwinana, Mid-West and Pilbara regions.
Here’s a blurb from CCUSNA Chair, Rosie Johnstone:
WA CCUS Hubs Workshop – Next Steps
On 19-20 Feb 2026 CCUSNA hosted the WA CCUS Hubs Workshop. Around 100 attendees from across industry, government and research met to discuss our convening theme “What are the opportunities and challenges in developing a multi-user CCUS hub in WA (Kwinana, Mid West, Pilbara).
The agenda for the workshop was self-generated in real time by participants, and various themes emerged and evolved over the two days.
CCUSNA is now collating the notes captured by each discussion group and will issue a Book of Proceedings to all workshop attendees. This will be followed by a final report summarising the key themes that emerged and outlining practical next steps based on the options discussed. The final report will be made publicly available, and CCUSNA will present the outcomes at an upcoming Technical Talk (date to be confirmed).
Before the workshop, we anticipated that some groups would form around the practical aspects of developing multi‑user CCUS hubs. While there was a strong level of technical discussion, the most well‑attended conversations focused on the coordination challenges and the respective roles of government and industry. These insights reflect a need for clarity on governance, sequencing, and shared infrastructure pathways.
We look forward to bringing these outcomes together over the coming weeks so we can provide clear, practical recommendations.
Feedback from attendees was overwhelmingly positive:
RDA Pilbara · Philip Hassett · Nils Hay · Karlene Bylund · Ross Weiter
Personally, I thought Rosie did a wonderful job putting this event together. We didn’t solve all the world’s CCUS problems but we made excellent progress. The pre-workshop webinars especially were filled with valuable content and are available to watch from the CCUSNA Website. I’d encourage you to check them out!
CO2CRC CCS Symposium 2026
The CO2CRC CCS Symposium returned to Melbourne last week, with Resources Minister Madeleine King delivering the keynote. The Minister was unambiguous: “To achieve net zero by 2050, we will need to draw on every tool at our disposal. Carbon capture and storage will play a very big part in achieving that goal.”
Hard to argue with that. Where I’d push back is on the framing. The Commonwealth Government is still positioning CCS as something wedded to gas as a transitional fuel. I reckon that argument has run its course. What I’d rather see is CCUS championed as building a platform for decarbonised industrial manufacturing. A future made in Australia needs a reliable CCUS industry. Not as something of a footnote to our fossil fuel past but as critical infrastructure for the future.
And the elephant in the room continues to parade about. Regulatory reform is coming. It’s welcome. That’s great. But the same people who let the elephant out now need to show us the money. Every CCS project deployed at scale globally has been underpinned by either enhanced oil recovery or significant public funding. Please don’t speak to me about enhanced oil recovery. I’m too tired. That leaves one option, and it was conspicuously absent from the Minister’s remarks.
With that said, I don’t want to seem ungrateful. It is genuinely encouraging to hear a senior minister reaffirm that our net zero commitments are simply unachievable without CCUS. And the technology can deliver. Permanently. I often forget, and am very happy to be reminded, that when we talk CCS we are talking timescales in the millions of years. Permanent the way dinosaurs intended it.
🌏 Global CCUS momentum ..
🇦🇺 Australia & Asia-Pacific
🌏 GHGT-18 confirmed for Perth, October 2026 — The premier international greenhouse gas control technologies conference will be held in Perth, marking a significant moment for the Australian CCUS sector. (Read more)
📋 Australia’s Carbon Leakage Review recommends border carbon adjustment — The government’s final review, led by Professor Frank Jotzo, finds existing Safeguard Mechanism settings effective in the short term but recommends a border carbon adjustment for high-risk commodities, initially covering cement and clinker. Recommendations will feed into the 2026-27 Safeguard Mechanism review. (Read more)
🇪🇺 Europe
🏗️ Northern Lights reaches FID on Phase 2 expansion — The joint venture will expand capacity from 1.5 to at least 5 Mt/year CO₂, with operations from the second half of 2028. A 15-year commercial agreement with Stockholm Exergi anchors the expansion. (Read more)
🏭 France commits €2B to industrial decarbonisation via CCUS — Four cement and aluminium projects selected under France’s 2030 strategy, supported by 15-year carbon contracts for difference. Combined potential capture exceeds 3 Mt/year. (Read more)
🇩🇰 Denmark’s Greensand Future: a North Sea oilfield repurposed for CO₂ storage — Led by INEOS, the Greensand project is converting a depleted North Sea reservoir into what is expected to become the EU’s first fully operational offshore CO₂ storage site, with commercial operations targeted for mid-2026. Initial capacity of 400,000 tonnes per year is planned to scale to 8 Mt/year by 2030. (Read more)
🇪🇺 CCSA warns EU risks climate failure and deindustrialisation without urgent CCUS scale-up — A new CCSA/Deloitte report finds the EU needs to capture 280 Mt/year of CO₂ by 2040, against current operational storage capacity of just 0.185 Mt/year. First-mover projects need to reach FID this year — or the EU risks missing both its 2030 and 2040 targets. (Read more)
🏛️ EU Energy Commissioner makes the case for CCUS as a decarbonisation cornerstone — Writing in The European Files, Commissioner Dan Jørgensen frames CCUS as essential to Europe’s industrial future, citing Innovation Fund support for projects targeting 23 Mt/year capture capacity and calling for urgent scale-up across hard-to-abate sectors. (Read more)
🌐 Global industry & tech ..
🇮🇳 India allocates $2.2bn to CCUS for the next five years — India’s Union Budget 2026-27 makes the country’s first major ring-fenced CCUS commitment, targeting power, steel, cement, refining and chemicals. Partly driven by CBAM exposure. (Read more)
🪨 Lapis Carbon Solutions files Class VI permit for Illinois ethanol CCS — Lapis and Big River Resources are seeking permits to sequester 725,000+ tonnes of CO₂ per year at a Galva, Illinois ethanol facility, following confirmation of favourable geology. (Read more)
✈️ MHI demonstrates integrated liquid synthetic fuel production from CO₂ — Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has demonstrated an end-to-end pathway from CO₂ and water to SAF-suitable liquid fuels, combining solid oxide electrolysis and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis at its Nagasaki research centre. (Read more)
🚢 Ship-to-ship CO₂ offloading: LCA finds significant emissions savings potential — DNV-verified assessment of the world’s first ship-to-ship CO₂ offloading operation finds 7.9% GHG savings at a 10.7% capture rate, with carbon mineralisation outperforming geological storage. (Read more)
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