The most comprehensive record yet of carbon dioxide stored underground through Geological Carbon Dioxide Storage has been published today, revealing that 43.6 million tonnes were sequestered in 2024 alone – a new annual record – and that 421.7 million tonnes have now been stored in the past three decades.
The 2026 Annual Report from The London Register of Subsurface CO₂ Storage , led by researchers from Imperial College London, tracks the annual rates of CO₂ stored by operational projects worldwide. This year's edition expands the Register to 70 projects across 17 countries on six continents.
"Our latest report shows that geological CO2 storage has become a global enterprise, with annual reported storage more than doubling between 2016 and 2024, and the Register itself now covering 69 individual projects around the world," said Professor Samuel Krevor , Director of the Register from the Department of Earth Science and Engineering ( ESE ) at Imperial.
"The consistency of these operations, and the fact that new countries and projects continue to join the Register, shows that geological storage is demonstrated as a large-scale mitigation technology."
The consortium behind the Register brings together more than 30 international experts from academia, industry and government, including the Department of Energy Science & Engineering at Stanford, MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering, the Global CCS Institute, the Carbon Capture & Storage Association, IEAGHG and CSIRO.
Record year driven by Brazil and the US
Geological CO2 storage is a process where CO2 captured from industrial sources and power production, or directly from the atmosphere, is injected it into rocks deep underground, allowing this greenhouse gas to be safely stored for potentially thousands of years.
The London Register of Subsurface CO2 Storage is focused on tracking geological storage – "Where the sources of CO2 today are dominated by industrial capture, removals from the atmosphere are projected to emerge as the leading technology using geological storage by mid-century", said Professor Krevor.
