The delivery of operational clean energy projects at scales is essential for addressing climate change. Carbon capture and sequestration (CCUS) is among the most important clean technology, however, most CCUS projects initiated in the past three decades have failed. This study statistically evaluates the reasons for this unfavourable outcome by estimating a hazard model for 263 CCUS projects undertaken between 1995 and 2018. The results indicate that larger plant sizes increase the risk of CCUS projects being terminated or put on hold; increasing capacity by 1 Mt CO₂/y increases the risk of failure by nearly 50%. We also examined the impact of technology push and market pull policies and found that existing support mechanisms have not been sufficient in mitigating the risks associated with project upscaling. CCUS deployment at the gigaton scale depends on substantially reducing project risk while increasing expectations of financial returns. Gradual upscaling, increased policy support, particularly for demonstrations of the viability of CCUS, while also building a market through carbon pricing would help remedy the current imbalance between risk and return. Increasing the expected payoffs for CCUS so that hundreds of real projects are brought on-line will require the co-evolution of technology innovation, institutions, investment, and deployment strategy for CCUS technology.

大规模交付可操作的清洁能源项目对于应对气候变化至关重要。碳捕集与封存 (CCUS) 是最重要的清洁技术之一，然而，过去 30 年发起的大多数 CCUS 项目都以失败告终。本研究通过对 1995 年至 2018 年间开展的 263 个 CCUS 项目的风险模型进行估计，对造成这种不利结果的原因进行了统计评估。结果表明，较大的工厂规模会增加 CCUS 项目被终止或搁置的风险；增加 1 Mt CO _{2 的}容量/y 将失败的风险增加近 50%。我们还研究了技术推动和市场拉动政策的影响，发现现有的支持机制不足以减轻与项目升级相关的风险。十亿吨级的 CCUS 部署取决于大幅降低项目风险，同时提高对财务回报的预期。逐步扩大规模、增加政策支持，特别是对 CCUS 可行性的示范，同时通过碳定价建立市场将有助于纠正当前风险与回报之间的不平衡。增加 CCUS 的预期收益，从而使数百个实际项目上线，需要 CCUS 技术的技术创新、机构、投资和部署策略的共同进化。