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# Onboard Carbon Capture Gets Its First Real Compliance Value Under the EU ETS
- URL: https://review.iffw.sg/onboard-carbon-capture-gets-its-first-real-compliance-value-under-the-eu-ets/
- Published: 2026-07-23T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-13T13:58:52.000Z
- Description: Project CAPTURED secured two milestones for onboard carbon capture: EU ETS recognition deducting captured CO2 from a vessel's allowance surrender, and IMO in-principle support for carbon mineralization as permanent storage. The pilot achieved a 7.9% net GHG reduction.
- Author: Editor
- Tags: News, Maritime, Europe

Project CAPTURED, a Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation (GCMD) initiative, has secured two regulatory milestones for onboard carbon capture and storage (OCCS): formal recognition under the EU Emissions Trading System allowing verified onboard-captured CO2 to be deducted from a vessel's EU Allowance surrender requirement, and in-principle support from the International Maritime Organization for recognizing carbon mineralization, converting captured CO2 into stable industrial materials, as a form of permanent CO2 storage. Both milestones build on a pilot completed in June 2025 that demonstrated CO2 captured onboard a vessel could be offloaded ship-to-ship, transported overland, and permanently bound through mineralization.

### **Why EU ETS Recognition Is the Commercially Consequential Piece** 

Regulatory acceptance of a compliance pathway is different from technical feasibility, and this is the first time onboard-captured CO2 has been given an explicit deduction mechanism against a real compliance obligation. To qualify, the CO2 has to be chemically bound permanently in eligible products, a bar Project CAPTURED demonstrated its mineralization pathway can clear. That gives captured CO2 tradeable compliance value under the EU ETS specifically, rather than remaining a technology proof-of-concept with no defined route to counting against a shipowner's actual carbon costs.

### **What the IMO's In-Principle Support Adds** 

The IMO already accepts geological sequestration as permanent CO2 storage; this proposal, submitted to the organization's Marine Environment Protection Committee, extends that recognition to carbon mineralization as a second accepted pathway. That matters because it gives captured CO2 an additional destination beyond storage. Mineralization allows captured CO2 to become a feedstock for industrial products, extending its use beyond the shipping value chain itself, rather than requiring every tonne captured onboard to be sequestered underground.

### **The Actual Numbers Behind the Pilot** 

GCMD's life cycle assessment found the pilot achieved a 7.9% net greenhouse gas reduction at a 10.7% gross onboard capture rate, with an optimized value chain at the same capture rate projected to deliver 17.8% GHG savings. CO2 purity was maintained above 99.95% by volume at all custody-transfer points, a technical detail relevant to why regulators were willing to treat the captured CO2 as a verifiable, tradeable quantity rather than an estimate. The pilot involved 11 partners across maritime and industrial sectors, including SMDERI-QET, Evergreen Marine Corp, Zhoushan Dejin Shipping and Greenore/Baorong.

### **Why This Sits Differently From Fuel-Switching Approaches** 

Most of the maritime decarbonization stories in this series, methanol bunkering, marine biofuel blend limits, ammonia-ready vessels, address emissions by changing what ships burn. OCCS addresses emissions after combustion, on vessels that continue running on conventional fuel, which makes it a complementary rather than competing pathway: a way to cut emissions from the large share of the existing fleet that will keep running on conventional fuels for years before fuel-switching reaches scale, rather than a replacement for the fuel transition itself.

*Source:* [*Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation*](https://gcformd.org/project-captured-advances-regulatory-pathways-for-onboard-captured-co2/?ref=review.iffw.sg)*, 22 July 2026.*