The US Environmental Protection Agency is facing a growing backlog of Class VI permits for carbon capture and sequestration projects. At the US CO2 Summit, Alexandra Hamilton from Hunton Andrews Kurth reported that 142 applications are currently pending, while only 19 permits have been issued since the program began. The sharp increase in applications since 2020 has not been matched by EPA staffing or processing capacity. This bottleneck is delaying commercial CCS deployment across the country. Projects that need to inject CO2 underground for enhanced oil recovery or dedicated storage are waiting years for approval. The gap between applications and permits suggests the EPA is under-resourced for the scale of projects being proposed. Without faster permitting, CCS will struggle to meet the pace needed for decarbonization goals.
