India’s Carbon Storage Roadmap: A Net Zero CCUS Strategy

The Structural Decarbonisation Problem That Renewables Cannot Solve Alone

Every major energy transition in history has been shaped not just by the technologies that emerged, but by the stubborn persistence of the systems they were meant to replace. Coal did not vanish when natural gas arrived. Oil did not disappear when nuclear power scaled up. Today, as India accelerates its renewable energy in mining buildout with impressive momentum, a parallel reality demands equal strategic attention: a class of industrial emissions exists that no wind turbine or solar panel can eliminate.

This is the foundational logic behind India's carbon storage roadmap, a framework that positions Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) not as a fallback position, but as a structurally necessary component of the country's path to net zero by 2070.

Why Hard-to-Abate Sectors Define India's Emissions Challenge

India's greenhouse gas profile is not primarily a story about passenger vehicles or household electricity. It is dominated by industrial processes where carbon dioxide is an unavoidable chemical byproduct, not simply a fuel combustion output.

Consider the chemistry involved:

• In cement production, CO₂ is released during the calcination of limestone, a reaction where calcium carbonate is converted into calcium oxide. This process accounts for roughly 60% of a cement plant's total emissions, and it occurs regardless of whether the kiln is powered by coal, gas, or even renewable electricity.
• In blast furnace steelmaking, coke functions as a chemical reducing agent that strips oxygen from iron ore. There is no electrical substitute for this reaction in conventional integrated steel production. Furthermore, hydrogen iron ore reduction technologies are emerging as a potential long-term alternative, though deployment at scale remains years away.
• Coal-fired power generation continues to serve India's baseload energy demand, creating an emissions floor that intermittent renewable sources cannot immediately displace.

Together, steel, cement, power generation, oil refining, and chemicals account for more than half of India's total greenhouse gas output. Both the IEA's Net Zero Emissions scenario and the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report classify CCUS as a non-substitutable tool for decarbonising these sectors. There is no credible modelling pathway to global net zero that excludes geological carbon storage at scale.

India's Climate Reality Is Already Arriving

The urgency behind the India carbon storage roadmap is not purely theoretical. In 2025, extreme weather events occurred on more than 99% of days across the country. Flooding displaced approximately 5.4 million people. India recorded its first ever winter heatwave in February of that year, a meteorological event with no historical precedent in the country's recorded climate data.

Agricultural systems supporting over one billion people face compounding stress from erratic monsoon patterns and accelerating groundwater depletion. These are not distant projections; they are operational disruptions affecting food systems, supply chains, and infrastructure in the present tense.

The National CCUS Roadmap: Structure, Timeline, and Budget

India's Department of Science and Technology launched the country's first national R&D Roadmap for CCUS on 2 December 2025. This document is functionally distinct from earlier policy signals in one critical respect: it is oriented toward deployment, not merely research orientation.

The Union Budget 2026-27 reinforced this direction with an allocation of ₹20,000 crore toward CCUS, directly aligned with India's Net Zero by 2070 national commitment. The roadmap is structured across three distinct phases:

Earlier assessments, including work conducted by NITI Aayog, acknowledged India's theoretical CO₂ storage potential but stopped short of providing actionable site-level guidance. The 2025 roadmap moves beyond this by mandating site-specific validation, monitoring protocol development, and investment-grade geological assessment as explicit deliverables.

How Large Is India's Geological Storage Potential?

Research conducted at IIT Bombay estimates India's total theoretical CO₂ storage capacity at approximately 400 to 600 gigatonnes, distributed across four primary geological storage pathways:

• Deep saline aquifers: The largest volumetric opportunity by far, though also the least characterised
• Depleted oil and gas reservoirs: Structurally well-understood due to decades of hydrocarbon exploration data
• Deccan Trap basalt formations: Offer a pathway to permanent mineralisation storage, where CO₂ reacts chemically with rock to form stable carbonate minerals, effectively locking carbon away indefinitely
• Enhanced coalbed methane (ECBM) recovery: A dual-benefit mechanism where injected CO₂ displaces methane from coal seams, generating a revenue stream while achieving geological storage

On a purely arithmetic basis, 400 to 600 gigatonnes represents centuries of storage capacity relative to current Indian emission rates. However, this figure carries a critical caveat that is frequently misunderstood in policy discussions.

Theoretical storage estimates and investment-grade storage capacity are fundamentally different quantities. The former describes what the geology might contain under idealised conditions. The latter describes what can be safely, economically, and verifiably injected under real-world project conditions, accounting for injectivity rates, caprock integrity, fault networks, and long-term containment risk.

India currently possesses the former. What it urgently needs is the latter.

What Investment-Grade Storage Data Actually Requires

Bridging the gap between theoretical estimates and commercially deployable storage sites requires a specific set of subsurface data that goes well beyond regional capacity estimates. A project-ready storage site assessment must include:

1. Formation-level injectivity and permeability data confirming CO₂ can be injected at viable rates
2. Caprock integrity assessments verifying the overlying seal will prevent upward CO₂ migration
3. Detailed fault and fracture network mapping to identify potential leakage pathways
4. Baseline groundwater and seismic monitoring data to establish pre-injection conditions
5. Site-specific effective storage capacity estimates, not theoretical maximums
6. Long-term containment risk modelling covering decadal and centennial timescales

Without this data package, no commercial CCS project can progress to a final investment decision. Financiers, insurers, and regulators all require it. This is precisely why a National Storage Atlas, generated through a coordinated national subsurface mapping mission, represents the single most important technical precondition for commercial CCUS deployment in India.

The analogue is instructive: just as the Geological Survey of India systematically mapped the country's mineral endowment over decades to underpin a mining industry, a parallel programme targeting carbon storage formations would provide the foundational data layer for every future CCS project the country attempts to build.

Global Models That India Can Adapt

Each of these programmes required sustained public investment over multiple years before private capital was willing to commit to storage projects. India's roadmap acknowledges this sequencing requirement.

India's Existing CCUS Infrastructure: Further Along Than Most Realise

A commonly overlooked aspect of the India carbon storage roadmap discussion is how much foundational work has already been completed. India is not beginning from a blank slate.

On the capture side, NTPC's Vindhyachal plant represents the country's first industrial-scale carbon capture installation in the power sector, converting CO₂ extracted from flue gas into methanol. This demonstrates that capture technology in India has already reached a high technology readiness level. The bottleneck is storage and transport infrastructure, not capture capability.

On the storage side, several parallel workstreams have produced tangible outputs:

• India's first dedicated CO₂ storage test well was drilled at the Pakri Barwadih coal mine in Jharkhand, through collaboration between NTPC's R&D division (NETRA) and IIT Bombay's DST-funded National Centre of Excellence in CCUS (NCoE-CCUS)
• This collaboration also produced India's first geological storage atlas covering select major coalfields
• ONGC is advancing India's first full-scale CCS pilot at the Gandhar oil field in Gujarat, where CO₂ sourced from industrial units in the Dahej area and the Hazira gas processing facility will be injected into depleted onshore reservoirs, representing the first integrated source-to-storage CCS chain in India
• The Directorate General of Hydrocarbons has formalised a partnership with IIT Bombay to develop site-specific CO₂ storage studies and CCS regulatory frameworks
• The Geological Survey of India has partnered with IIT Bombay to assess the mineral carbonation potential of the Deccan Traps, a potentially vast permanent storage mechanism through geochemical mineralisation

Most recently, IIT Bombay launched India's first Integrated CCUS Field Laboratory under Bharat Innovates 2026, dedicated to the nation by Union Education Minister Shri Dharmendra Pradhan. The facility demonstrates indigenous CO₂ capture and conversion technology at up to 3 tonnes per day, alongside geological storage drilling and the development of indigenous monitoring and verification protocols.

The Economics of CCUS and Why the Hub-and-Cluster Model Changes Everything

Even with storage sites identified and certified, CCS faces a significant economic challenge at the individual plant level. The all-in cost of capturing, compressing, transporting, and monitoring CO₂ from a single industrial facility ranges from approximately ₹8,000 to ₹13,000 per tonne or more, depending on flue gas CO₂ concentration and the distance to the nearest storage site. Consequently, the mining decarbonisation economics case for shared infrastructure becomes compelling.

This creates what practitioners call the "green premium," the additional cost burden that makes CCUS commercially unviable for individual facilities without sustained external support. The solution lies in fundamentally restructuring the cost architecture through shared infrastructure.

How the hub-and-cluster model works:

1. Multiple industrial emitters within a defined geographic corridor are identified and grouped
2. A shared CO₂ collection and compression network aggregates emissions from multiple sources
3. A common pipeline transports the combined CO₂ volume to a centralised storage hub
4. Fixed infrastructure costs are distributed across a much larger total CO₂ volume
5. Per-tonne transport and storage costs fall substantially for every participating emitter

By distributing fixed pipeline and storage costs across aggregated CO₂ volumes from multiple sources, the hub-and-cluster model can potentially reduce per-tonne infrastructure costs to a level where CCUS becomes commercially viable without requiring permanent subsidy dependence. This is the economic logic that underpins every successful CCS cluster project globally.

India's Identified Source-Sink Corridors

Research on CO₂ source-sink matching across India's industrial geography has identified two priority corridors with strong economic fundamentals:

Western Industrial Corridor:

• Industrial emission clusters across Gujarat and Maharashtra provide dense, proximate CO₂ sources
• Depleted oil and gas reservoirs in the Mumbai Offshore Basin and Cambay Basin offer structurally characterised storage options with existing subsurface data from decades of hydrocarbon production
• Proximity of existing oil and gas infrastructure to active industrial zones reduces greenfield capital requirements

Eastern Industrial Corridor:

• Major steel production clusters across Odisha, Jharkhand, and West Bengal generate concentrated CO₂ streams
• CO₂-enhanced coalbed methane recovery in the Damodar Valley coalfields provides a dual economic benefit: geological CO₂ storage combined with methane production revenue that partially offsets storage costs
• This dual-revenue structure materially improves project economics compared to pure storage plays

Norway's Northern Lights project and the United Kingdom's East Coast Cluster have both demonstrated that shared CO₂ transport and storage infrastructure is technically and commercially feasible when underpinned by subsurface certainty, regulatory clarity, and initial public co-investment. Both required viability gap funding during their early commercial phases, a policy instrument directly relevant to India's planning horizon.

The Policy Architecture Required for CCUS to Succeed

Technical readiness and geological potential are necessary but not sufficient conditions for commercial CCUS deployment. Five regulatory and policy enablers must be developed in parallel:

1. Viability gap funding mechanisms to bridge the commercial gap during early project phases before economies of scale are established
2. Streamlined geological and environmental permitting to reduce approval timelines without compromising safety and monitoring standards
3. Open access rules for CO₂ pipelines to prevent monopolistic control of shared transport infrastructure and ensure third-party access
4. Long-term storage liability frameworks clearly defining responsibility for stored CO₂ over decades and centuries, a fundamental prerequisite for investor confidence and insurance market participation
5. CO₂ measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) standards establishing the accounting infrastructure required for carbon markets and regulatory compliance

Integration of CCUS credits into India's emerging domestic carbon market framework would create an additional revenue stream that meaningfully improves project economics. International partnerships with countries that have advanced CCS regulatory frameworks, particularly the United States, United Kingdom, Norway, and Australia, can accelerate India's own regulatory learning curve by decades. In addition, critical minerals and energy security considerations are increasingly shaping how India frames its broader industrial decarbonisation strategy.

Frequently Asked Questions: India's Carbon Storage Roadmap

What is India's total CO₂ storage potential?

IIT Bombay's national mapping estimates India's theoretical CO₂ storage potential at 400 to 600 gigatonnes across deep saline aquifers, depleted oil and gas fields, Deccan Trap basalt formations, and coalbed methane reservoirs. According to techno-economic and policy analysis, these figures require site-specific field validation before underpinning commercial projects.

When was India's national CCUS roadmap launched?

India's Department of Science and Technology launched the country's first national R&D Roadmap for CCUS on 2 December 2025.

How much has India budgeted for CCUS?

The Union Budget 2026-27 allocated ₹20,000 crore toward CCUS development, aligned with India's Net Zero by 2070 commitment.

Where is India's first full-scale CCS pilot project?

ONGC is developing India's first full-scale CCS pilot at the Gandhar oil field in Gujarat, utilising CO₂ sourced from industrial facilities in the Dahej area and the Hazira gas processing facility.

Which sectors will CCUS target first in India?

Power generation, steel, cement, oil refining, and chemicals are the primary target sectors, specifically because their process-embedded emissions cannot be eliminated through electrification or fuel switching alone.

What makes Deccan Trap basalts uniquely valuable for carbon storage?

Basalt formations facilitate permanent mineralisation storage, where injected CO₂ reacts with calcium and magnesium-rich rock to form stable carbonate minerals within years to decades, rather than remaining as a supercritical fluid that requires perpetual containment monitoring.

The Road Ahead: From Roadmap to Commercial Reality

The India carbon storage roadmap establishes an ambitious but technically coherent trajectory. Translating it into operational infrastructure requires sequenced execution across three time horizons. Furthermore, the global steel outlook underscores just how critical industrial decarbonisation timelines are to broader emissions targets.

Near-term priorities (2025–2030):

• Commissioning a nationally coordinated subsurface mapping programme to produce a certified National Storage Atlas
• Advancing the Gandhar CCS pilot to full injection operations with publicly accessible learnings
• Establishing the regulatory and long-term liability framework for geological CO₂ storage
• Pre-qualifying two to three hub-and-cluster corridors for early infrastructure investment

Medium-term milestones (2030–2038):

• Operationalising the first commercial hub-and-cluster CO₂ transport and storage network in either the Western or Eastern industrial corridor
• Integrating CCUS into India's domestic carbon pricing and credit framework
• Scaling indigenous monitoring, reporting, and verification technology developed through IIT Bombay's field laboratory programme

Long-term vision (2038–2045 and beyond):

• Achieving large-scale commercial CCUS deployment across multiple industrial clusters simultaneously
• Positioning India as a regional centre of CCUS technology development and geological storage expertise
• Demonstrating that industrial growth, energy security, and deep emissions reduction are simultaneously achievable strategic objectives

The combination of a National Storage Atlas, hub-and-cluster shared infrastructure, and a coherent regulatory framework represents the minimum viable architecture for making CCUS a genuine pillar of India's Net Zero pathway. The geological endowment exists. The pilot infrastructure is being established. What the next five years must deliver is the systematic data collection and policy architecture that converts potential into operational carbon storage at industrial scale.

This article draws on publicly available research and policy documents. Projections, cost estimates, and capacity figures involve inherent uncertainties and should not be construed as investment advice. Readers are encouraged to consult primary sources for the most current data.

Want to Identify the Next Major Mineral Discovery Before the Broader Market Does?

Discovery Alert's proprietary Discovery IQ model delivers real-time alerts on significant ASX mineral discoveries — instantly translating complex data across more than 30 commodities into actionable investment insights for both short-term traders and long-term investors. Explore historic discoveries and their exceptional returns, then begin your 14-day free trial to position yourself ahead of the market.