Capture the Future: India’s ₹20,000 Crore Bet on CCUS

The Union Budget 2026 signalled a renewed push towards decarbonisation, with the government committing ₹20,000 crore over the next five years to scale up carbon capture, utilisation, and storage (CCUS) technologies.

Addressing Parliament, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the government plans to advance CCUS readiness across five key industrial sectors—power, steel, cement, refineries, and chemicals. Globally, investments in CCUS are gaining momentum as countries look for effective ways to curb industrial emissions. The technology captures carbon dioxide from power plants and industrial facilities before it is released into the atmosphere, either storing it permanently or repurposing it to produce synthetic fuels, fertilisers, construction materials, and industrial gases.

While renewable energy remains central to India’s climate strategy, the government is increasingly turning to CCUS to address emissions from hard-to-abate sectors, particularly power generation, which continues to rely heavily on coal and other fossil fuels. Although CCUS technologies are still at an early stage in India, the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) have initiated pilot projects to test and deploy these solutions in real-world industrial settings.

News by Rahul Yelligetti.