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Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) projects have been flourishing in the past five years due to increasing commitments to reduce carbon emissions in broad alignment with the Paris Agreement, which have led to the introduction and ramp up of carbon pricing globally. The Global CCS Institute reported that there are 41 CCS facilities in operation with a capture capacity up to 49 Mtpa in 2023. There are potentially 351 facilities with a capture facility of 312 Mtpa in the pipeline at various development stages encompassing a variety of value propositions. The reported installed and future CCS projects will only be able to capture less than 1% of the 2022 global emission of nearly 57,400 Mtpa of CO2. Hence, more future CCS projects are required globally.

With the increase in CCS projects both domestically and globally, how will operators, investors, stake holders and regulators speak the same language in relation to storable quantities, project maturity and Measurement, Monitoring and Verification (MMV)?

In view of these challenges, we highlight two different but complementary guidelines that have been gaining acceptance within industries – the CO2 Storage Resources Management System (SRMS) and ISO 27914:2017. Both guidelines were published in 2017 and have since been adopted in real CCS projects. The former focuses on clear definitions of storable quantities, with project-based classification according to accessibility, discovery status and commerciality. The latter focuses on safety, with detailed instructions on the work required to demonstrate safe storage of CO2. In this paper, we provide further discussion on the importance of these guidelines’ key aspects.