CIEL says 531 attendees at COP30 in Belém were linked to carbon capture promotion, including major oil firms and unexpected backers like Amazon. The NGO argues this shows heavy industry lobbying to position CCS as a way to continue using fossil fuels. The IPCC recognises CCS as one mitigation option for hard-to-abate sectors, but the technology is costly and limited in current scale. Campaigners warn that CCS advocacy should not become an excuse to delay fossil-fuel phase-out.
NGO: 531 CCS-Linked Delegates at COP30 in Belém as Fossil-Fuel Backers Push Carbon Capture
CIEL says 531 attendees at COP30 in Belém were linked to carbon capture promotion, including major oil firms and unexpected backers like Amazon. The NGO argues this shows heavy industry lobbying to position CCS as a way to continue using fossil fuels. The IPCC recognises CCS as one mitigation option for hard-to-abate sectors, but the technology is costly and limited in current scale. Campaigners warn that CCS advocacy should not become an excuse to delay fossil-fuel phase-out.
07:42 PM, 11/17/2025Environment
More than 500 carbon-capture supporters attended COP30, NGO says
Companies and organisations that promote carbon capture and storage (CCS) sent a substantial presence to COP30 in Belém, Brazil, according to an inventory compiled by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) and shared exclusively with AFP. CIEL identified 531 attendees it classified as "lobbyists" for groups or firms backing CCS.
The roster includes oil and gas majors such as ExxonMobil, Shell and BP, as well as state-owned producers like Petrobras (Brazil) and China National Petroleum Corp. The list also names less obvious backers, from tech giant Amazon to the Port of Antwerp-Bruges and Canadian timber firm West Fraser, alongside specialist organisations such as the Global CCS Institute.
Why it matters
CIEL says the large number of CCS-aligned attendees reflects industry efforts to position carbon capture as a way to continue using fossil fuels by capturing emissions after combustion. The NGO noted that 475 CCS lobbyists were registered at COP28 in Dubai and 480 at COP29 in Baku — both earlier conferences with higher overall attendance than Belém.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) lists carbon capture among options for cutting emissions, particularly in hard-to-decarbonise sectors such as cement and steel. CCS systems either capture CO2 at the source — for example, at power plants or industrial sites — or remove it directly from the air, with the captured CO2 then stored in deep underground rock formations.
However, CCS remains expensive and technically complex to deploy at scale and currently plays only a limited role in global emissions reduction, experts say.
"We need carbon capture because we will overshoot (the goal of limiting warming to 1.5C)," US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse told AFP in Belém. "It just can't be the excuse for polluting more."
CIEL warned that some oil companies are citing rising energy demand from the booming artificial intelligence sector as justification for continued drilling. Lili Fuhr, CIEL's director for the fossil economy, stated bluntly: "CCS cannot make fossil fuels 'clean' — it just keeps them burning. The world doesn't need fossil-fueled tech-fantasies justifying business as usual for big polluters and Silicon Valley billionaires."
A separate analysis by campaign group Kick Big Polluters Out found that more than 1,600 attendees at COP30 were linked to companies or organisations with ties to the fossil fuel industry.
CIEL's methodology and caveats
CIEL said it classified an organisation as a CCS lobbyist if the entity is involved in a CCS project, has a history of lobbying for the technology, or states that promoting CCS is part of its purpose. The NGO verified names using company websites, the International Energy Agency's CCS project database, news reports and lobbying registers, among other sources.
More than 40 people CIEL labelled as "CCS lobbyists" were registered as part of national delegations at COP30, including representatives from Russia, several Gulf states and Brazil. Barnaby Pace, a senior researcher at CIEL, acknowledged the group cannot always be certain whether an individual attended COP30 specifically to discuss CCS, but said CCS advocacy is likely to be part of the agenda for many of the listed organisations.
Context: The findings add to ongoing debate about the role of CCS in climate strategy — while it can contribute in some sectors, critics warn it is being promoted as a permit to continue fossil fuel extraction rather than to phase it out.