3 min readNew DelhiFeb 1, 2026 10:52 PM IST
In its strongest-ever push to develop technologies that would help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from some critical carbon-intensive industry sectors, the government on Sunday announced it had earmarked Rs 20,000 crore for development and deployment of CCUS (Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage) solutions.
CCUS refers to a suite of different technologies and approaches that capture carbon dioxide being emitted from industrial processes and either store them safely somewhere over long-term, like in some geological formations, or convert it into some other compound that can be utilised in other processes. The main goal of these technologies is to prevent the emitted carbon dioxide, as much as possible, from entering the atmosphere, and causing further global warming.
These technologies are particularly relevant for industries like steel or cement in which carbon dioxide is not just the result of burning of fossil fuels, but is a by-product of the very process that makes steel or cement. Switching to renewable sources of energy — even that is challenging because of a variety of reasons — does not get rid of carbon dioxide emissions in these sectors.
There is no current pathway in which India’s goal of achieving net-zero emissions status 2070 can be reached without reliance on CCUS technologies to capture or reduce emissions.
CCUS technologies, though available for several years, have had extremely modest impact till now, even globally, because of difficulties in scaling them up, and escalations in costs. In India, several groups have been working on these technologies, a few of which are claimed to be ready for deployment. However, the investment required to scale up the laboratory-demonstrated technology to a industry-ready product has not happened.
It is this gap that Rs 20,000 crore announced in the budget is supposed to fill. The outlay is for five years, and meant for finding end-use applications for five industrial sectors – power, steel, cement, refineries and chemicals.
“There is a lot of active research happening in India in this area, and several potential technologies have been developed. But most of these are at TRL 3 or TRL 4 levels. Patents have been filed in many cases, but the translation into a full-fledged deployable product has not happened,” Vivek Polshettiwar, a professor of chemistry at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, who himself works on CCUS technologies, told The Indian Express.
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Technology Readiness Levels range from 1 to 9. TRL-3 and 4 mean technology has been demonstrated in laboratory conditions. TRL-9 is commercial deployment. The budget announcement said the Rs 20,000 crore was meant to achieve “higher readiness levels” in technology development, meaning stages beyond TRL-4.
“Rs 20,000 crore is a significant amount of money. It addresses the problem of risk averseness in the industry. The main obstacle to trying out lab-ready technologies has been the lack of funding. Because of this, a meaningful interaction between the academia and industry over commercialisation of these technologies has not happened. I think this is a very bold and welcome move from the government, and hopefully, within the next few years, we will have some solutions getting deployed,” Polshettiwar said.