The EU is on course to fall short of its legally mandated carbon capture and storage target by at least 17.5 million tonnes per annum, according to Wood Mackenzie’s latest analysis, even if every project in advanced development proceeds as planned.
The finding comes from an independent study commissioned by ExxonMobil, OMV Petrom, Shell and TotalEnergies.
Wood Mackenzie’s analysis measures storage capacity that is fully operational by end 2030, the standard against which the Net Zero Industry Act injection target is assessed.
On that basis, the EU faces a position 35% below the 50 million tonnes per annum threshold, and the gap widens further once project delays and shortfalls across the broader capture and transport value chain are factored in.
This is the second Wood Mackenzie report for the four companies. Where the October 2025 study focused on storage feasibility, this analysis examines capture, transport and storage as a connected system.
“The issues with meeting the NZIA target reflect the challenges of developing a functioning large-scale, cross-border CCS ecosystem from a standing start,” the report states.
The NZIA was designed to break the classic chicken-and-egg deadlock in CCS by mandating storage capacity before demand is confirmed. The analysis finds that this has produced a different problem: an inconsistent approach across sectors. No single element of the value chain can advance without progress across the others. Less than 6% of the targeted NZIA storage capacity is operational or under construction, and reaching 50 mtpa would require a fivefold increase in final investment decisions for storage between 2026 and 2028, against a base of just 4 mtpa of EU capture capacity that has taken FID and is contractually linked to EU storage.
“Storage developers across Europe are not failing to act, they are being asked to commit capital to projects without the contracted volumes or transport connections that any rational investment decision requires,” said Lisa Gillespie, Director, Energy Consulting at Wood Mackenzie. “The policy has mandated one part of an integrated system while leaving the others to develop at their own pace and through different frameworks. That is the core of the problem. Resolving it requires policy design that addresses the full value chain, not just the storage end of it.”
Value-chain fragmentation leads the list. The hub-based model splits ownership across multiple parties and no component can advance without guarantees from the others. The EU policy framework treats capture, transport and storage as discrete activities rather than interdependent parts of a single system.
The second barrier is insufficient capture supply. The EU capture pipeline totals 36.5 mtpa and planned storage capacity stands at 32.5 mtpa, both short of target. Of the 26 mtpa lacking a confirmed storage solution, 11 mtpa is assessed as potentially stranded, with no proximity to planned pipeline or existing CO2 infrastructure.
Persistent delay is the third factor. Average overruns across EU storage projects stand at 1.5 years and the trend is worsening.
The fourth barrier is capture economics. Wood Mackenzie’s modelling shows the EU Emissions Trading System price will remain below the levelised cost of CCS for projects approaching FID. The ETS delivers avoided compliance cost rather than concrete revenue, and prices carry both price and political risk.
The report also identifies a mismatch in how obligations and public funding are distributed. NZIA obligations are based on oil and gas production rather than industrial emissions. Some obligated countries have no pre-2031 storage capacity in development and limited EU Innovation Funding. Sweden and Spain received substantial EU Innovation Funding despite holding neither NZIA obligations nor pre-2031 storage capacity. Capture and transport developers face limited regulatory pressure to meet NZIA milestones. Storage operators face legal obligations without the contracted volumes or infrastructure commitments the investment case requires.
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