This month, we bring to you two keynote articles about carbon capture and storage (CCS) pipelines. DNV presents Skylark on p. 8: a three year JIP designed to strengthen confidence in the safety of CO2 pipeline transport as CCS is built out globally. The project brings together partners including the UK HSE Science Division, the University of Arkansas, NCAS and DESNZ to generate high-quality empirical data on dense-phase CO2 behaviour. Through large-scale release testing at Spadeadam in the UK, dispersion modelling, terrain and weather studies, emergency response simulations, and research into impurities and monitoring technologies, Skylark aims to validate safety models, inform regulation, and support robust CCS safety guidelines. Ultimately, it seeks to provide the scientific foundation, training, and collaboration needed to enable safe, large-scale CO2 transport infrastructure worldwide.
Black & Veatch weighs in on CCS too (p. 13), outlining how, as demand for carbon removal and CCS accelerates, industries such as power generation, cement, pulp and paper, and ethanol are increasingly capturing CO2 not only to cut emissions but to create new revenue streams through utilisation, sequestration, and voluntary carbon markets. However, as Algert Prifti, CCUS Solutions Portfolio Manager at Black & Veatch, points out: limited pipeline infrastructure risks stranding otherwise viable projects.
To bridge this gap, liquid CO2 (LCO2) transport by truck or rail is emerging as a flexible alternative, to connect dispersed emitters to centralised storage or utilisation hubs. By capturing, liquefying, transporting, and then recompressing CO2 for pipeline injection or direct sequestration, operators are finding they can monetise emissions while overcoming current infrastructure constraints.
Yet while interim logistics solutions are valuable, large-scale decarbonisation ultimately depends on dedicated, well-planned pipeline networks. Transport infrastructure is the backbone of any CCS system: it links capture to storage, underpins investor confidence, and determines whether projects move beyond pilot stage. Without sufficient pipeline capacity – and the regulatory clarity and public confidence that must accompany it – the pace of deployment will inevitably slow.
Around the world, the most hard-to-abate sectors, including steel, cement, aviation, shipping and chemicals, need a clear, commercially viable path to decarbonisation. Wood Mackenzie forecasts that while absolute emissions from hard-to-abate sectors will fall through to 2050, they will do so more slowly than other sectors, and their combined share of global carbon emissions will rise from 21% today to 27% by 2050.1 In a recent blog post – ‘Is there still life in decarbonising hard-to-abate sectors?’ – Wood Mackenzie writes that: “Low-carbon fuels – including biofuels (aviation), hydrogen or electrification (steel), or calcined clays (cement) – are one option. Carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) bolted onto legacy fossil fuel-based operations (steel, cement) is another. High costs, however, remain the major hurdle to commercialisation and industrial scalability. Policy shifts, not least in the US after 2025’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, have also dampened the industry’s appetite for investment.”1
The message is clear: ambition alone does not carry CCS. Delivering it properly requires integrated transport systems designed for growth, resilience, and long-term safety. The endeavour requires collaboration with pipeline stakeholders, and it requires confidence: in the data, in the safety case, and in the commercial model.
These themes will sit at the heart of the upcoming World Pipelines CCS Forum, where we will bring together operators, engineers, decision-makers and technology providers to examine what it really takes to build out CO2 pipeline networks nationally in the UK.2 From materials selection and fracture control to routing, regulation and phased capacity expansion, the focus will be firmly on execution. If CCS is to move from policy aspiration to industrial reality, pipelines must move with it.
