Abstract

This article analyses the revival of Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) law in Europe through a focussed case study on Germany. It combines doctrinal legal analysis with benchmarking of the changing legal landscape against core environmental law principles (precaution, prevention and polluter pays). It traces the shift from the largely prohibitive KSpG 2012 - with CCS confined to pilot projects in Germany - to the more permissive KSpTG 2025 that (inter alia) creates a unified regulatory regime for Co2 pipelines and enables offshore storage, while keeping onshore storage subject to the individual 'opt-in' of German states. It excludes coal CCS but allows capture from some gas and biomass sources. The paper finds that this legislative turn mirrors a substantive move in regulatory framing from precaution towards prevention, yet exposes gaps in monitoring, risk-assessments and cost-allocation, consistent with the prevention and the polluter pays principles.

Against this background the article offers targeted recommendations: strengthen comprehensive, likelihood-sensitive risk management and long-term monitoring; revisit the formulation and weight of CCUS in Germany as `overriding public interest' in permitting; constrain initial deployment to genuinely unavoidable emissions; and explicitly align CCUS law with a negative emissions strategy and clearer polluter-pays arrangements. These measures, the paper argues, are necessary both to secure storage safety and to inform the EU´s forthcoming CCS regulatory overhaul so that scaling CCUS proceeds without undermining environmental protection or equitable cost-allocation.