After two weeks of climate negotiations riven by arguments over finance and science, the UN climate chief expressed disappointment and denounced governments for “cherry-picking” commitments they have already made and waiting for others to move first.
In their final hours on Thursday evening, the talks tried – and failed – to reach a deal that would have balanced developing countries’ demands for reassurance on finance to help them adapt to climate impacts with richer nations’ desire to move forward with work on speeding up emissions reductions in line with science.
Simon Stiell, the head of the UN climate body, released a statement as the Bonn talks wound up, saying that “in some negotiating rooms, we’ve heard a familiar tendency towards you-first-ism – groups refusing to deliver commitments or allow the process to move forward unless others go first”.
“This is a recipe for gridlock when we need all negotiating tracks to be moving in the fast lane,” he added.
Gridlock is where the talks ended, with countries unable to agree conclusions on at least three major areas of climate action, including adaptation and mitigation, invoking “Rule 16”. That means they will be taken up again at COP31 in Türkiye in November.
Bonn Bulletin: Finance row threatens to scupper work on adaptation goal
On the emissions reduction (mitigation) work programme, pushback – primarily from fossil-fuel producing nations – has prevented any meaningful progress since its creation at COP27, as countries have been unable to come up with a united vision for its scope and purpose.
Despite many countries expressing disappointment at the end of Bonn, China argued that some common ground had been found that could serve as positive elements to build on at COP31, including that “no one is against mitigation implementation and ambition”.
Adaptation “salt in our wounds”
Small island states and developing nations spoke bitterly of the lack of progress on the global goal on adaptation, which had been expected to launch technical work on putting into practice indicators agreed at COP30 in Brazil, and said it had destroyed trust between countries.
Fiji’s delegate described the need to adapt to evolving climate risk as a “daily burden”, which he said is a question of water and food security and, in some cases, forcing people to face relocation on the Pacific islands.
“Some of us will now travel more than 30 hours home to report that one of the most fundamental issues we sought progress on here for vulnerable countries has stalled at a time when we need guidance and outcomes the most. In light of overshoot [of 1.5C of warming] and attacks on the science, this is simply further salt in our wounds,” he told the closing plenary as the clock ticked towards midnight local time.
On Wednesday, a coalition of European and climate-vulnerable developing countries accused fossil fuel interests and the “usual suspects” of mounting ”coordinated attacks” on science, as arguments erupted over the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C warming limit and its overshoot and when the next UN climate science reports should be published.
Science ‘under attack’ from fossil fuel interests at UN climate talks
Stiell urged the Turkish and Australian COP31 co-presidencies to get ministers working “as soon as possible” on the “thorniest issues” in the UN climate process so that negotiations can move into the “fast lane”. The presidencies are under pressure to appoint pairs of ministers to resolve these issues earlier than usual, so that they are well-briefed and know their counterparts ahead of COP31.
Alden Meyer, senior associate for climate diplomacy and geopolitics with E3G, lamented the “limited progress in most of the negotiating rooms” over the past fortnight. “As people across the world suffer the twin crises of mounting climate impacts as well as the sharply higher energy and food prices resulting from the war in the… Gulf, there was no sense of urgency at the Bonn climate talks.”
Electrification bright spot
Meyer and others observers did, however, welcome a new goal on electrification proposed by COP31 host Turkiye outside of the formal talks under the Global Climate Action Agenda, which also brings in the private sector and cities.
The electrification target would strive to ramp up the share of final energy consumption provided by electricity to 35% by 2035 from about 20% today by accelerating the switch to technologies such as heat pumps, electric vehicles (EVs) and electric cookers.
COP31 leaders unveil global targets, with spotlight on electrification
Nonetheless, some analysts said such goals lack significance without a global plan to transition away from fossil fuels. Brazil is now working on one, with inputs from countries and civil society, but it is unclear how this will be incorporated into the UN climate process, if at all.
Jasper Inventor, deputy programme director at Greenpeace International, said the stalled talks around climate finance for developing countries and a repeated deadlock on mitigation “took some of the shine off the emergence of a coalition of countries supporting a transition away from fossil fuels at a time where the climate and energy crisis is set to be supercharged” by an emerging El Niño pattern.
Bonn paves way for new just transition mechanism
One key topic that advanced more calmly at the Bonn talks and even achieved some promising consensus was just transition – how to achieve a green economic and social shift that is fair from the global to the local level. Countries approved the terms of reference under which the just transition work programme (JTWP), which began in 2023, will be reviewed.
And following up on a COP30 decision to develop a mechanism to guide and enable support for just transition initiatives, which was hailed by civil society as a big win, countries in Bonn provided a first set of options on its structure and other elements of how it will operate, with a view to it being launched at COP31.
Comment: The UN climate process was built for negotiation – now it must support implementation
Anabella Rosemberg, senior advisor on just transition at Climate Action Network International, which represents hundreds of green groups, noted that “it will require a bit of work between now and COP31 to have an agreement”. Informal discussions could take place, for example, during Regional Climate Week in Baku in October, or at the invitation of the COP31 presidency in Australia, she added.
Key considerations for the new mechanism are to include ways to provide the resources for just transition, to provide technical support, and include communities and workers, she said.
“Civil society is going to continue working. This is the legitimate space to bring the fight for just transition,” she told journalists in Bonn on Thursday.
The post Bonn climate talks end in “gridlock” on adaptation and emissions-cutting appeared first on Climate Home News.
Bonn climate talks end in “gridlock” on adaptation and emissions-cutting
When carbon dioxide (CO2) is released from a factory or power plant, the gas can be captured and permanently stored underground, preventing it from driving climate change.
This is the idea underpinning carbon capture and storage (CCS), a technology that is at the heart of many nations’ net-zero plans.
Influential organisations, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), describe CCS as “critical” for cutting emissions from key sectors – and for helping to avoid dangerous global warming.
In particular, capturing CO2 is seen as one of the only viable options for decarbonising some of the world’s highest-emitting industries, such as cement production.
The UK, for example, has committed to investing as much as £21.7bn over the coming decades in its nascent CCS industry, as part of the nation’s net-zero strategy.
Yet, in the UK and elsewhere, there has been a backlash against plans for CCS.
Citing high costs, ties to the fossil-fuel industry and a “history of poor performance”, critics describe CCS as a “dangerous distraction” or a “false climate solution”.
Time and again, the outlook for the roll-out of CCS has been scaled back, as the technology has failed to deliver as quickly as expected – and as policy support has wavered.
Furthermore, critics state that the technology remains “unproven” on the scale required to make a meaningful impact on global emissions.
In this Q&A, Carbon Brief explores the role CCS is expected to play in achieving net-zero, its record to date and the reasons it has been criticised, using the UK as an example.
What is CCS?
CCS involves capturing CO2 emissions released from a large source, such as a gas power plant or a cement factory.
The CO2 is separated from the facility’s exhaust stream, generally using a chemical solvent, before being compressed into a liquid and transported via pipeline or vehicle. The CO2 is then stored by injecting it into underground reservoirs, such as depleted oil fields or saline aquifers.
The term “CCUS” is sometimes also used, referring to the “utilisation” of CO2 to make products, including fertilisers, fuels or building materials. Such uses do not necessarily lead to permanent emissions cuts, as the CO2 can end up later being released back into the atmosphere.
(“CCS” is used in this Q&A, unless quoting another organisation that specifically refers to “CCUS”.)
The infographic below shows the stages of capturing CO2 and transporting it to be either stored or used in other applications.
Carbon capture technology was originally rolled out at US and Canadian oil wells in the early 1970s as a way to achieve “enhanced oil recovery”. This involves injecting captured CO2 into depleted wells – a process that stores CO2, but also helps to extract more oil.
This remains, by far, the most significant end use for captured CO2 worldwide, with around three-quarters of it used for this purpose.
Moreover, most of the CO2 currently captured is a by-product of gas purification – the process by which fossil fuels such as methane are separated from other, unwanted substances. Selling this CO2 can make such gas projects more economically viable.
Therefore, as shown in the chart below, which is based on International Energy Agency (IEA) data, the majority of CO2 that is both captured and used today helps the fossil-fuel industry to extract and sell more oil and gas.
CCS was first proposed as a way to deal with CO2 emissions in a 1976 academic article, which imagined injecting the captured gas into the ocean.
It is only since the early 2000s that CCS has gained traction as a proposed climate solution, with a 2005 “special report” by the IPCC exploring the topic. At that time, the authors note there were just three small-scale projects trying to capture and permanently store CO2.
Installing CCS at factories or power plants and permanently storing the CO2 would mean that, in theory, such facilities could continue using fossil fuels without contributing to climate change.
Such applications are often mentioned alongside two related technologies, both of which could be used to “suck” CO2 out of the atmosphere and, thus, deliver “negative emissions”.
One is bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). Crops absorb CO2 as they grow and BECCS involves a power plant burning these crops, then storing the resulting CO2.
The other technology is direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS).
These technologies are classed as “CO2 removal”, as they involve absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere using plants or machines and then storing it permanently.
By contrast, CCS installed at a factory is considered a way to avoid CO2 emitted by that specific facility from entering the atmosphere. This Q&A focuses on such applications, which account for the vast majority of existing and planned CCS.
How much CCS capacity has been built so far?
As of February 2026, there were a total of 75 operational CCS projects around the world. As noted above, almost all of them are at fossil-fuel extraction and processing sites, according to the IEA’s database.
Together, these projects capture 62.5m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) each year. This is equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of Ecuador.
(This compares with the 22 CCS projects, promising to capture 40MtCO2 annually, that were operational or under construction as of 2014.)
As the chart below shows, the amount of CO2 currently being captured and stored is a tiny fraction of the total emissions from fossil-fuel use.
In a 2020 report, the IEA explained that the “story of CCUS has largely been one of unmet expectations: its potential to mitigate climate change has been recognised for decades, but deployment has been slow”.
A wave of interest in CCS in the 2000s, largely from countries in Europe and North America, focused on enabling coal power plants to continue operating with lower emissions.
This interest largely petered out, as plummeting renewable energy costs weakened the case for coal plants with CCS. Today, there are only seven operating CCS-coal plants worldwide – five in China, one in the US and one in Canada.
Yet the Paris Agreement in 2015 – and the national net-zero targets that followed – highlighted the need for deep emissions cuts in sectors that previously expected to continue emitting for decades. This, once again, has fuelled interest in the use of CCS.
In recent years, there has also been growing interest in producing low-carbon “blue” hydrogen from gas with CCS.
Hydrogen is widely seen as key for decarbonising certain sectors – particularly in industry – but analyses suggest that it may be difficult to make sufficient “green” hydrogen using renewable power on the timescales required.
As the map below shows, most CCS capacity is based in the US and Canada, with other major fossil-fuel producers such as Norway, Brazil and the Gulf states also contributing.
A surge of projects have entered the global CCS pipeline in recent years. According to the IEA, 93.7MtCO2 of capture or storage capacity is under construction as of February 2026 and another 1,279.6MtCO2 is in the “planning” stages.
“Planned” projects include any initiative at early concept, feasibility or engineering study stages and the industry has a long history of projects being cancelled or delayed.
Nevertheless, this pipeline of projects could lead to a large expansion of facilities dedicated to permanent CO2 storage that does not involve extracting more oil.
The planned projects – if they are realised – would also include significant growth in sectors where CCS is virtually non-existent, such as steel, hydrogen and cement production, as shown in the chart below.
What role is CCS expected to play in reaching net-zero?
It will be impossible to stop dangerous climate change unless the world reaches net-zero emissions, according to the IPCC. The amount of global warming – and whether the Paris Agreement temperature target can be met – depends on when net-zero is reached.
Many global pathways that have been set out for achieving net-zero, including a majority of the IPCC-assessed pathways where global warming is limited to 1.5C, rely on the use of CCS at fossil-fuel plants and industrial sites.
“These models have been quite instrumental in bringing CCS back onto the agenda,” Lina Lefstad, an ecological economist at Lund University, tells Carbon Brief.
Influential organisations relying on CCS in their net-zero scenarios range from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) through to the oil company Shell. The IEA has stated that net-zero would be “virtually impossible” without CCS.
These scenarios often include 10s to 100s of times more CCS capacity being built in the coming decades. The IEA includes 1.7GtCO2 being captured by 2035 in its net-zero scenario – nearly 30 times more than is captured today.
(Some of the much higher numbers in scenarios assessed by the IPCC have been dismissed by experts as implausible, especially given the slow rollout of CCS to date.)
When considering CCS for both emissions cuts and removals, Dr Jennifer Roberts, a researcher at the University of Strathclyde and deputy director at the UK Carbon Capture and Storage Research Centre (UKCCSRC), tells Carbon Brief the situation is clear:
“From an IPCC climate modelling perspective…reaching net-zero without CCS is far more expensive, disruptive and potentially out of reach.”
This does not mean that it would be impossible to reach net-zero without using CCS. However, net-zero scenarios that use little or no CCS rely on dramatic changes elsewhere, such as much lower global energy demand.
Net-zero scenarios often include a crucial role for CCS in “hard-to-abate” sectors, referring to activities that lack available, low-cost options to fully decarbonise. In particular, CCS is widely seen as vital for decarbonising parts of heavy industry.
The IPCC sixth assessment report (AR6) summary for policymakers calls CCS a “critical mitigation option” for some sectors, including cement and chemicals. The technical summary of the AR6 Working Group III report says that “CCS will be required to mitigate remaining CO2” in industrial sectors.
The IEA describes CCS as “virtually the only technology” that can significantly cut cement emissions, which account for around 7% of the global total. (Much of this CO2 comes from chemical processes, meaning it would still be released if the industry was electrified.)
Yet, the understanding of “hard-to-abate” emissions is changing, as alternatives to CCS become cheaper and increasingly available. As a result, CCS has become a less attractive option in some sectors, as well as being seen as less vital in some others.
Carbon Brief analysis shows that the IEA has reduced its outlook for CCS in the power sector by a third, compared to its expectations in 2021, as the chart below shows.
This reflects both slow progress in deploying CCS and rapid cost reductions in renewables, which make running gas or coal power plants less attractive.