Germany’s lower house of parliament has approved legislation to advance carbon capture and storage (CCS) infrastructure, marking a significant step in the country’s strategy to achieve climate neutrality by 2045.
The bill outlines provisions for developing commercial-scale CO2 storage sites and enables planning for a future pipeline network to transport captured CO2 from industrial emitters.
Supporters argue that CCS will be necessary to decarbonize sectors such as cement, lime and aluminium, where process emissions are difficult to eliminate.
Several European countries, including Denmark and Norway, have already begun operating offshore CO2 storage projects, providing early models for deployment.
The legislation has drawn strong criticism from environmental organizations. Groups including Greenpeace Germany and BUND argue that CCS remains expensive, limited in scale, and risks prolonging reliance on fossil fuels.
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They also raised concerns over safety, costs and whether public and private financing might be diverted from other climate solutions.
The draft law stipulates that coal-fired power plants will be effectively excluded from using CCS technologies. However, the allowance of carbon capture for gas-fired power plants remains a point of contention among critics, who say it undermines efforts to transition fully away from fossil fuels.
The bill now moves to the Bundesrat, Germany’s upper chamber, for further approval.
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