Carbon Capture and Storage: A Comprehensive Review on Current Trends, Techniques, and Future Prospects in North America

Climate-change mitigation in North America demands rapid, deep cuts in carbon-dioxide emissions from hard-toabate industrial, power-generation and transport sectors. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is one of the few technological routes that can decouple continued use of fossil-derived energy and materials from their climate externalities. Yet deployment across the US and Canada still trails the scale implied by regional net-zero pledges. This review addresses that gap by synthesizing technical, economic, policy, and social dimensions of CCS, and complements global syntheses with a granular assessment of North America’s unique emission profile, infrastructure advantages, and regulatory frameworks. Methodologically, the review disaggregates the CCS chain into six pillars: (i) current emission baselines; (ii) capture systems, icluding post-, pre-, and oxy-combustion, chemical-looping combustion (CLC), and direct air capture (DAC); (iii) capture technologies (e.g., absorption, adsorption, membrane, cryogenic, and hybrid processes); (iv) storage pathways (geological, oceanic, and emerging biological or mineral options); (v) cross-cutting economic, policy, and social factors; and (vi) deployment status plus future outlook. Post-combustion capture remains the most retrofit-ready option for the region’s ageing coal and gas fleet, yet solvent regeneration still imposes energy penalties of 8–10 percentagepoints. Pre-combustion and oxy-fuel routes offer thermodynamic advantages for new-build plants but require high-capex gasifiers or cryogenic air separation units, slowing adoption. Emerging CLC and DAC concepts could unlock low-carbon fuels and negative emissions, respectively, but remain costly and pre-commercial. No single technology meets all performance criteria, making hybrid configurations—such as membrane–cryogenic or membrane–amine schemes—particularly promising. North America’s subsurface offers multi-teratonne theoretical storage capacity in saline formations, depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs and CO2-EOR sites, suggesting physical room is not the bottleneck. Instead, economics dominate: levelized capture costs today range from around $15/tCO2 in natural-gas processing to over $120/t in power and cement, and long-distance pipeline networks are sparse outside existing enhanced oil recovery (EOR) corridors. Recent federal incentives can shift project economics decisively, yet policy volatility and permitting hurdles still threaten investment certainty. Societal acceptance emerges as another critical lever. Surveys reveal generally favorable attitudes toward CCS in principle, but heightened opposition to local storage projects. Transparent monitoring–verification frameworks, benefit-sharing mechanisms and durable bipartisan policies are therefore essential to secure a “social licence” for large-scale CO2 injection. This review concludes that widescale CCS in North America is technically feasible and increasingly cost-competitive when paired with robust incentives, abundant storage capacity and existing pipeline know-how. Realizing its full mitigation potential will hinge on coordinated build-out of transport networks, harmonized federal–provincial regulations, continued R&D into low-energy capture materials, and integrated assessments that weigh CCS alongside renewables, efficiency, and negative-emission strategies. The roadmap presented herein provides stakeholders with actionable insights to accelerate that transition, positioning North America as both a proving ground and a global exemplar for scalable, responsibly governed CCS.