Why Carbon Capture Projects Are Stalling at the Point of Finance Close

The EU's Net Zero Industry Act, which entered into force in mid-2025, established a binding CO2 injection capacity target of 50 million tonnes per year across the European Union by 2030. The European Commission's own impact assessment identified at least eight member states as necessary hosts for new storage infrastructure to meet that target. The EU's Innovation Fund allocated €13 billion to large-scale CCS projects across the current programming period.

The policy architecture is in place. The capital is being committed. The projects are not closing at the rate the targets require.

A recurring factor in the delays is an engineering workforce problem that project developers are encountering too late in the development process to resolve without cost and schedule consequence.

What the CCS Directive Requires

The EU's CCS Directive imposes long-term storage liability on operators for a minimum of 20 years post-closure, during which the operator must demonstrate through a structured monitoring and reporting programme that stored CO2 is behaving as modelled and that no unintended migration is occurring.

Before a storage permit is granted, the operator must submit a corrective measures plan demonstrating the technical capability to detect, assess and respond to any deviation from the approved storage behaviour. Articles 17 and 18 of the Directive set out the competent authority review requirements in detail.

These are not documents that can be prepared by general process or environmental engineers working from guidance notes. They require specific technical knowledge of subsurface behaviour, regulatory submission practice and the evidence standards that national competent authorities apply. That combination is rare, and the projects that discover it is missing at the permitting stage are the ones that stall.

The Engineering Gap That Stops Projects Progressing

Northern Lights, the joint venture of Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies that commenced CO2 injection in 2025 as Europe's first commercial storage facility, represents one of the only completed reference programmes from which the relevant engineering experience can have been drawn.

The handful of earlier European CCS demonstration projects, including Sleipner in Norway which has operated since 1996, constitute the near-entirety of the operational experience base. Engineers who have worked on those programmes carry credentials in reservoir monitoring, post-closure documentation and competent authority interface that are not available from any other source.

The population holding those credentials is, by definition, small. When multiple new projects require them simultaneously, which is exactly the position the sector is now in, the constraint becomes binding across the entire pipeline.

How the Finance Close Connection Works

Project finance for CCS infrastructure requires technical due diligence by an independent engineer appointed by the lending syndicate. The independent engineer assesses whether the project team holds the technical capability to deliver the monitoring and corrective measures obligations that the storage permit will impose over its operational and post-closure life.

A project team that cannot demonstrate a credentialled liability engineering function at that review stage faces either a conditioned finance close, with capability development as a covenant, or a delayed close while the gap is remedied.

The Innovation Fund grant tranches are structured around milestone completion. A delayed finance close therefore risks not only financing cost escalation but the loss or deferral of grant funding that may have been critical to project viability. This is not a theoretical risk. It is the mechanism by which an engineering recruitment gap becomes a commercial project failure.

What the Discipline Actually Covers

The engineering function relevant to this problem spans long-term monitoring plan design, leakage risk quantification, corrective measures planning, site characterisation validation for post-closure scenarios and sustained interface management with national competent authorities through the permitting and operational phases.

Engineers performing this function credibly hold backgrounds in reservoir engineering, geomechanics or subsurface environmental engineering, built through direct exposure to regulated geological disposal or storage programmes.

The distinction that matters for recruiters is between engineers who understand the technical concepts and engineers who have prepared and defended regulatory submissions to a competent authority standard. The latter group resolves the finance close problem. The former does not, and the difference is not visible on a standard curriculum vitae.

The Recruiter's Role in Project Viability

Organisations developing CCS projects need to treat the liability engineering appointment as a programme gate that precedes the permitting submission, not a role to be filled once permits are granted and finance is closing.

The lead time for sourcing engineers with the specific regulatory submission experience from the small international pool, which is concentrated in Norway, the Netherlands and the UK, runs to twelve months or more when notice periods, relocation and any professional recognition requirements are included.

Recruiters working in this sector who understand the finance close dynamic and can articulate the programme consequence of a late appointment are providing a commercially material service. Those who treat it as a standard energy sector hire will consistently deliver candidates who do not resolve the problem the project actually faces.