Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage: the Rs 20,000 crore scheme and India's two national centres

Background

Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage captures carbon dioxide from industrial sources before it reaches the atmosphere, then uses it or stores it underground, and is treated as a complement to renewable energy for hard-to-abate sectors on the way to India's net-zero target for 2070. The Union Budget 2026-27 announced a CCUS scheme with Rs 20,000 crore over five years for power, steel, cement, refinery and chemicals. National CCUS Centres were set up in 2022 at IIT Bombay and JNCASR Bengaluru with support from the Department of Science and Technology, and NITI Aayog's CCUS Policy Framework and Deployment Mechanism of November 2022 proposed a hub-and-cluster model. The Department of Science and Technology's CCUS Research and Development Roadmap identifies the Gujarat coast, the Odisha-Jharkhand belt and north-east India as potential cluster regions. Emissions from hard-to-abate sectors and thermal power are estimated to reach about 2,300 million tonnes a year by 2030.