Carbon capture is a two-step safety valve for the climate. First, engineers bolt equipment onto a chimney—or place it in open air—that grabs carbon dioxide molecules either from a concentrated exhaust stream (power plants, cement kilns, steel mills) or directly from the atmosphere itself. These approaches are called point-source capture and direct-air capture (DAC), respectively. Second, the CO₂ is compressed into a supercritical fluid and piped deep underground, where it reacts with rock or sits beneath impermeable layers for thousands of years; some of it is also reused in products such as concrete and synthetic fuel. About 45 commercial facilities already do this, removing roughly 50 million metric tons of CO₂ each year—equivalent to parking more than ten million cars indefinitely.
In this report, we highlight the top carbon capture stocks to watch, curated for pure-play exposure to CO₂ removal, industrial capture, and carbon storage infrastructure.
Why carbon capture, why now?
- The carbon budget is almost gone. Scientists estimate that the planet has only ~130 billion tons of headroom left before the 1.5 °C warming limit is broken—just three years at current emission rates. Heavy industries and aviation cannot electrify fast enough, so any credible net-zero pathway needs a backstop that physically removes CO₂. The International Energy Agency says the world must capture about 1 gigaton a year by 2030 and 5 gigatons by 2050—at least a 20-fold scale-up in five years.
- Policies now pay for it. In the United States, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act lifted the 45Q tax credit to $85 per metric ton for industrial capture and $180 for DAC, large enough to close the cost gap for many projects. Europe is rolling out its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, which will impose a carbon price on imported cement, steel, aluminum, and more from 2026, rewarding low-emission supply chains worldwide.
- Capital is mobilizing. More than 700 capture, transport, and storage projects are now in development, enough to lift annual capacity to roughly 435 million metric tons by 2030 if they materialize. This pipeline spans oil majors, industrial gas giants, specialized startups, and infrastructure funds, giving investors multiple entry points along the value chain.
In short, carbon capture is crossing over from pilot plants to critical infrastructure because the climate clock is ticking, some sectors simply cannot decarbonize without it, and governments are underwriting the early economics. For investors, that combination creates a once-a-century buildout: the chance to own the pipes, porous rock, and technology that will let the rest of the economy keep operating in a carbon-constrained world.
Pure-Play Carbon Capture Stocks
Pure-play carbon capture stocks give investors the straightest shot at the theme: all their value rides on turning CO₂ into profit or a regulated waste service. The market is early, fragmented, and high-beta; revenues are small, but policy tailwinds and rising carbon prices create operating leverage once the first plants switch on. Think of them as venture capital in public-equity clothing—small caps that can triple on a permit win or halve on a cost overrun almost overnight.
NET Power Inc. (NYSE: NPWR)
HQ: USA; Zero-emission power company using CO₂-based gas turbines.
NET Power’s aim is simple: keep the convenience of natural-gas power and drop the emissions to nearly zero. Its patented Allam-Fetvedt Cycle burns gas in pure oxygen and drives a turbine with supercritical CO₂; the same CO₂ exits at pipeline pressure, ready for storage, while nitrogen, sulfur, and particulate pollution all but disappear. A 50 MW pilot in La Porte put zero-emission electricity on the Texas grid in 2021.
Commercial proof now rests on “Project Permian,” a 300 MW unit near Odessa backed by Occidental, Constellation, Baker Hughes, and 8 Rivers. Since its announcement in 2022, cost inflation has pushed the budget to as much as $2 billion and first power to “no earlier than 2029,” yet the design still targets roughly 97% CO₂ capture. Once running, it becomes the template for Serial Number One in a standardized product line.
Scale is already lined up. A memorandum with California Resources Corporation points to deploying up to 1 GW of NET Power modules next to CRC’s Carbon TerraVault storage hubs. If that beachhead materializes, management sees a global market for hundreds of similar trains—compact, modular, and situated where gas, grid demand, and storage geology intersect. NET Power intends to license rather than own most plants, enabling capital-light royalties once the design is proven.
Capsol Technologies ASA (OSE: CAPSL)
HQ: Norway; Capture tech provider for industrial flue gas systems.
Capsol builds bolt-on capture units for the smokestacks that heavy industry already owns. Its post-combustion system uses a hot-potassium-carbonate solvent and an integrated heat-recovery loop that recycles flue-gas heat, cutting the energy penalty normally associated with capture. With 19,000+ operating hours behind it, the technology is deemed ready for cement, biomass, energy-from-waste, and gas-turbine plants.
Demand is accelerating. By Q1 2025, the “mature project” pipeline had topped 22 million tons per year of prospective CO₂ capture—more than 70% higher than a year earlier. In June 2025, the company added two U.S. engineering studies (gas power and biomass with storage) that could capture a combined 0.9 million tons per year.
The business model is intentionally light. Capsol licenses the design, sells engineering packages, then collects royalties over plant life. Mobile “CapsolGo” units let clients trial the process on their own flue gas, speeding decisions. Partnerships with Siemens Energy, GE Vernova, and Storegga extend reach without bloating the balance sheet. Management expects the first large projects to reach final investment decision in 2026, positioning CAPSL to earn recurring fees just as carbon pricing regimes tighten.
CO2 Energy Transition Corp. (NASDAQ: NOEMU)
HQ: USA; SPAC focused on acquiring carbon capture and storage assets.
NOEMU is a special-purpose acquisition company—a publicly listed cash shell—formed to buy its way into carbon capture. In November 2024, it raised $60 million by selling 6 million units at $10 each; an over-allotment lifted proceeds to about $69 million, and the shares, warrants, and rights began trading separately in January 2025.
The prospectus targets businesses in carbon capture, utilization, and storage with enterprise values of $150-$250 million—big enough for real assets, small enough to need scale capital. Industry press calls NOEMU the first SPAC created specifically for CCUS, marking the sector’s graduation to mainstream finance.
Management says nothing in the value chain is off-limits: capture-technology vendors, CO₂-pipeline developers, sequestration-well operators, even landowners holding pore-space rights that qualify for the 45Q tax credit. NOEMU has roughly two years from IPO—extendable with shareholder approval—to announce and close a deal. Until then, the cash sits in a Treasury-backed trust and can be redeemed if investors dislike the transaction. Because of that structure, downside is largely limited to Treasury yield, while upside rides on whichever private CCUS company ultimately gets rolled in—making NOEMU a time-boxed, asymmetric bet on consolidation across the carbon-capture ecosystem.
See the Private Companies to Watch section for notable names to keep an eye on.
Diversified Carbon Capture Stocks
Diversified carbon capture stocks give investors ballast. They own profitable core businesses—oil, energy services, industrial gases—that throw off cash while funding capture projects. That means you’re not betting the farm on a single filter or tax credit; you’re buying optionality. If carbon markets soar, their pipelines, DAC plants, and blue hydrogen hubs could add high-margin growth. If not, hydrocarbons and oxygen cylinders still pay the dividend. Think of them as climate hedges embedded in blue-chip wrappers.
Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY)
HQ: USA; Oil and gas major scaling DAC and storage via 1PointFive.
Occidental is transforming from a traditional oil-and-gas major into what CEO Vicki Hollub calls a “carbon-management company.” The pivot began with the $1.1 billion purchase of Carbon Engineering in 2023, giving Oxy full control of a proven direct-air-capture (DAC) process. Its first commercial plant, Stratos, is rising in Ector County, Texas. Designed to remove up to 500,000 metric tons of CO₂ per year—and expandable to a full megaton—it secured the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s first Class VI storage permits for a DAC project in April 2025, clearing the last regulatory hurdle before commissioning. Market demand is materializing: JPMorgan Chase signed a 50,000 metric ton, 10-year offtake in June 2025, paying for high-quality removals instead of low-price offsets.
Stratos is step one of a much larger plan. Occidental’s 1PointFive unit aims to build roughly 70 DAC plants worldwide by 2035, many co-located with legacy Permian oil fields where the firm already injects CO₂ for enhanced recovery—an infrastructure advantage few rivals can match. The company expects each plant to generate two cash streams: federal 45Q tax credits that now pay up to $180 per metric ton for securely stored CO₂, and long-term carbon-removal contracts with airlines, tech firms, and heavy industry seeking credible net-zero pathways.
For investors, the appeal is a new, toll-road-style business that is largely uncorrelated with oil prices yet leverages Occidental’s subsurface expertise and balance sheet. If the firm meets its sub-$400 per metric ton cost target, carbon-management margins could rival its upstream profits later this decade—offering downside protection against future carbon taxes and upside exposure to a fast-growing removal market.
SLB (NYSE: SLB)
HQ: USA; Energy services leader with end-to-end carbon capture solutions.
Formerly Schlumberger, SLB is the world’s largest oil-field-services group, but today more than a quarter of new orders come from its “New Energy” division. Carbon capture is the centerpiece. SLB’s Sequestri platform draws on lessons from more than 150 CCS projects to offer a cradle-to-grave toolkit—site appraisal, well design, monitoring, and digital twin optimization—aimed at de-risking storage so financiers can green-light final investment decisions.
Technology is paired with execution. In June 2025, the company’s Capturi™ modular capture units went live at Europe’s two headline projects: Heidelberg Materials’ Brevik cement plant and Twence’s waste-to-energy facility. Together they’ll trap roughly 500,000 tons of CO₂ a year and feed the Longship/Northern Lights storage system under the North Sea. Capturi’s skid-mounted design shortens on-site work, a crucial cost lever for hard-to-abate industries.
SLB is also taking equity stakes—20 percent of the planned 9 Mt CO₂ per year Jubail hub in Saudi Arabia, alongside Aramco and Linde—turning project knowledge into annuity-like transport-and-storage revenues. For investors, SLB offers diversified exposure: equipment sales, digital subscriptions, and infrastructure cash flow, all backed by decades of reservoir know-how and an existing global service footprint.
Linde (NASDAQ: LIN)
HQ: Ireland; Industrial gases giant integrating capture into hydrogen and ammonia.
Linde is the world’s largest industrial gases company, famous for supplying oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen wherever heavy industry sets up shop. That network is now being repurposed for carbon capture. The engineering arm’s HISORP® CC system—an electrically driven, pressure-swing adsorption plus cryogenic process—captures CO₂ at >99 percent purity without the steam penalty of amine solvents, making it attractive for blue hydrogen and sour-gas projects. The technology was selected in October 2024 for ADNOC’s Hail & Ghasha field, which targets 1.5 Mt CO₂ per year.
Linde also partners at the asset level. It holds 20 percent of the forthcoming Jubail CCS hub with Aramco and SLB; Phase 1 alone will store 9 Mt CO₂ annually from 2027. On the U.S. Gulf Coast, Linde is investing more than $400 million in a new air-separation unit to feed Blue Point Number One, a 1.4 Mt low-carbon-ammonia plant in Louisiana scheduled for 2029.
Because Linde owns and operates most of its plants under long-term “take-or-pay” contracts, carbon-capture projects lock in predictable cash flows once they reach mechanical completion. The company’s blend of proprietary equipment, project equity, and gas-supply agreements lets it monetize the full value chain—from CO₂ capture hardware to the hydrogen or ammonia made with it—without betting the balance sheet on commodity prices.
Air Products & Chemicals (NYSE: APD)
HQ: USA; Hydrogen supplier with early CCS operations and paused megaproject.
Air Products pioneered industrial carbon capture. Since 2013, its Port Arthur, Texas facility has stripped about one million metric tons of CO₂ each year from two steam-methane reformers—still one of the longest-running CCS plants in the world. The company planned to scale that experience with a $4.5 billion “Louisiana Clean Energy Complex” designed to produce blue hydrogen and capture 5 Mt CO₂ per year.
Reality intervened. In May 2025, new CEO Eduardo Menezes paused all discretionary spending on the project, citing cost inflation, uncertain demand, and political headwinds; management is now looking to sell the sequestration and ammonia portions while retaining a core hydrogen business. Even so, the project still has Class VI permits under review and could proceed if offtake and subsidy conditions improve.
What does that mean for investors? First, Air Products’ existing asset base—including Port Arthur and a smaller CCS unit in Alberta—already earns 45Q tax credits and sells CO₂ for enhanced oil recovery, generating stable EBITDA. Second, the Louisiana reset underscores the execution risk tied to mega-scale blue hydrogen projects—a reminder that policy incentives alone do not guarantee bankable returns. Finally, Air Products’ core business remains the world’s biggest supplier of merchant hydrogen, giving it strategic optionality: the company can wait for clearer economics before deploying more capital while still participating in carbon-capture growth through smaller, brownfield upgrades to its 700-mile Gulf Coast hydrogen pipeline.
Private Companies to Watch
Today’s most intriguing climate moonshots remain private, but they set the pace for tomorrow’s carbon capture stocks. The leading private players already run demo plants, sign multi-year offtakes, and attract nine-figure rounds from corporates and sovereign funds. Their tech ranges from direct-air fans to CO₂-to-jet-fuel electrolysers to roll-to-roll filter factories—each attacking a different choke point in the value chain. Investors can enter through late-stage ventures or wait for IPOs that may price like software once risks de-risk at massive scale.
Climeworks (Private)
HQ: Switzerland; Direct-air capture company with modular, permanent storage tech.
Climeworks is the Swiss pioneer that turned “carbon removal” from a research paper into a product ordinary customers can buy online. Founded in 2009 by two ETH Zurich engineers, it commercialized direct-air-capture (DAC) with modular collector boxes: fans draw ambient air over a solid sorbent, low-grade renewable heat releases pure CO₂, and storage partner Carbfix mineralizes it in Icelandic basalt. Pre-sold removal subscriptions to Microsoft, Swiss Re, and thousands of firms helped fund the buildout.
Scale is now center stage. Orca (2021) proved a 4-kiloton concept; Mammoth, energized in May 2024, is ten times larger and ramping toward its 36 kt annual nameplate. Field data feed Climeworks’ Generation-3 filter, validated in June 2024, which doubles throughput and halves energy, aiming at $250–$350 per ton by 2030. The first megaton-scale installation will anchor the DOE-backed Project Cypress hub in Louisiana, breaking ground in 2026.
Momentum, however, is lumpy. An Icelandic investigation reported Mammoth captured only 750 tons in its first ten months; days later Climeworks announced a 10% headcount reduction, citing slower climate-tech markets. Management argues these growing pains are typical of frontier infrastructure and says upgrades are boosting uptime. If the Gen-3 cost curve proves out, Climeworks could license its DAC “cubes” much like solar panels—capital-light, repeatable, and global. For investors, the upside is royalties from every gigafactory-scale plant the world needs to hit net-zero; the risk is that cheaper chemistries or policy backsliding slow demand.
Twelve (Private)
HQ: USA; Electrofuels startup converting CO₂ into jet fuel and chemicals.
Twelve, founded in 2015 from Stanford research and now a California benefit corporation, sees carbon not as a liability but as feedstock. Its electrocatalytic reactor splits water and converts captured CO₂ into syngas, the starting point for fuels and chemicals, powered entirely by renewable electricity. Outputs already include E-Jet® sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) for Alaska Airlines, polypropylene-like plastics for Coca-Cola, and detergent precursors for Procter & Gamble. Early pilots have surpassed 10,000 operating hours without catalyst decay issues.
The first commercial proof is AirPlant One in Moses Lake, Washington. A $25 million construction loan from Fundamental Renewables underwrote the build; when operations begin in 2026, it will turn biogenic CO₂ and green power into roughly 15 million liters of SAF a year—enough for forty transatlantic flights. Long-term offtakes with Microsoft and Shopify, among others, de-risk early volumes while airline-blending mandates create growing demand.
Capital keeps flowing. A $645 million Series C in late 2024, plus an extra $85 million in March 2025, rank Twelve among the best-funded private climate-tech plays. The strategy is to prove cost and uptime at AirPlant, then replicate via joint ventures or license sales. Because the feedstock is biomass-derived CO₂, each gallon carries negative lifecycle emissions and qualifies for U.S. 45Q credits. For investors, Twelve is a leveraged bet on the “carbon-to-value” thesis: margins track commodity markets yet benefit from green-premium contracts and policy incentives. The chief risk is whether electrolyzers can reach the durability and capex targets needed to out-compete fossil refineries at scale.
Svante (Private)
HQ: Canada; Filter-based capture developer targeting heavy industry.
Canada’s Svante designs hardware that lets heavy industry capture CO₂ like dust. A rotary contactor wheel holds metal-organic-framework filters; flue gas crosses one side, low-pressure steam regenerates the other, finishing a capture-release cycle every 60 seconds—much faster than solvent towers.
On May 13, 2025, Svante commissioned “Redwood,” a 141,000-sq-ft gigafactory in Burnaby, British Columbia, capable of making filters to abate 10 million tons of CO₂ a year—equivalent to 27 million cars. Annual output positions Svante as the largest supplier of solid-sorbent media, removing a bottleneck that has slowed many planned capture hubs. A second U.S. gigafactory is undergoing site selection. Redwood’s roll-to-roll line operates 24/7 with robotics, pushing unit filter cost below $50 and paving a path to $10 capture by 2030. The facility also hosts a pilot contractor lab for prototyping.
Svante focuses on cement, steel, pulp, and ethanol sites where carbon prices and product premiums exist today. Pilots at Chevron’s Kern River and Lafarge’s Project CO₂MENT have already demonstrated >95% CO₂ purity at industrial scale. Strategic investors—Chevron, GE Vernova, Samsung E&A, United Airlines, and more—poured $318 million into a Series E round, arming Svante to co-develop projects rather than merely sell equipment.
The model is modular: bolt a contactor skid and compressor to existing stacks, pipe captured gas to storage or fuel partners, and charge per-ton fees aiming for single-digit variable costs by 2030. For investors, Svante is a pick-and-shovel play on the carbon-capture buildout—diversified across industries, geographies, and even DAC, yet light on downstream commodity risk.