Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage Market worth $13.53 billion by 2031 - Exclusive Report by MarketsandMarkets™

MarketsandMarkets projects the global carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) market will grow from $5.67 billion in 2026 to $13.53 billion by 2031, a 19.0% CAGR, driven by decarbonization mandates, carbon pricing and industrial net-zero commitments. Europe is expected to be the fastest-growing region at a 19.5% CAGR, supported by EU climate policy, North Sea storage hubs and cross-border CO2 transport infrastructure. Recent sector investment includes $714 million for Northern Lights expansion to 5 million tonnes of annual CO2 storage capacity, while CCUS consolidation continues through deals including Baker Hughes' approximately $13.6 billion Chart Industries acquisition.

Analysis

This is not a near-term earnings catalyst; it is a validation of a capital-cycle theme whose returns accrue unevenly. The economic bottleneck is moving from capture equipment toward permitted transport, injection wells, pore-space rights, and contracted storage capacity. XOM and EQNR have the most defensible scarcity value through vertically integrated U.S. Gulf Coast and North Sea storage ecosystems; their advantage is the ability to monetize a network, rather than sell project-specific equipment. That model also creates an option on future industrial customer aggregation, where utilization and take-or-pay contracts matter more than announced capture capacity.

GTLS is the clearest higher-beta public expression because cryogenic, liquefaction and heat-exchange content can scale with each new hub, but the stock needs order conversion and margin evidence rather than market-growth forecasts. BKR's Chart acquisition raises the probability that project developers consolidate vendor packages, potentially pressuring standalone EPC pricing at FLR while improving BKR cross-sell and aftermarket capture. LIN benefits where captured CO2 becomes a handled, purified and transported industrial gas, although its valuation leaves less room for speculative multiple expansion than GTLS or BKR.

The consensus overweights policy-driven project announcements and underweights financing, power-load, and liability risks. Capture projects are capital intensive and frequently uneconomic without durable carbon-price support, tax-credit transferability, and storage-permit certainty; a delay in permits or a widening in project-finance spreads can defer equipment revenue by 12-24 months. Conversely, signed multi-year transport/storage contracts, not MOUs, would justify rerating XOM/EQNR and identify the first credible equipment backlog inflection.

Near term, treat the release as low-information promotional research rather than a reason to chase broad CCUS exposure. Over 6-18 months, European hub build-outs could favor EQNR, SHEL and TTE, but EU industrial weakness is a meaningful volume risk: plant curtailments reduce both emissions to capture and customers able to fund retrofits. The most important falsifier for the network thesis is sustained project slippage, lower-than-expected contracted storage utilization, or a material retreat in carbon-price/incentive support.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Maintain a 6-18 month overweight in XOM versus an integrated-oil basket (SHEL/TTE): its transport-and-storage asset base provides a differentiated fee-like decarbonization option, while conventional upstream cash flow limits downside. Reassess if disclosed CCS contract volumes/utilization fail to rise through the next two reporting cycles.
• Accumulate BKR on pullbacks for a 12-24 month horizon; the risk/reward depends on demonstrating Chart-related carbon-management bookings and accretive margins. Do not add on narrative alone—use the next two quarterly backlog disclosures as the trigger; exit if acquisition integration drives margin dilution beyond management's framework.
• Keep GTLS on a watchlist rather than initiate solely on sector forecasts. Upgrade to a tactical long only after orders/backlog identify funded CCUS or industrial-gas projects and gross-margin conversion; it offers greater upside torque than LIN but carries materially higher execution and project-delay risk.
• Avoid a broad long FLR as a CCUS proxy: EPC revenue can grow while fixed-price execution, labor inflation and customer financing delays erode returns. A relative hedge for any equipment long is short FLR versus long BKR/GTLS if EPC backlog converts without margin improvement.
• Set alerts for storage-permit decisions, finalized take-or-pay transport/storage contracts, EU ETS pricing, and U.S. tax-credit transfer-market liquidity. These are the investable catalysts; additional market-size reports and nonbinding project announcements are not.