Canada's Scotford leads on large scale CCS deployment in refining

The Scotford Quest CCS facility, located at Shell’s bitumen upgrader, is one of the few large-scale CCS operations in North America that has been commercially active since 2015 - without relying on enhanced oil recovery (EOR) to support its economics. The commercial success of Quest has underpinned Shell’s Final Investment Decision (FID) on Polaris CCS, an expansion of CCS at Scotford targeting the co-located refinery, with operations expected to begin by 2028. This insight offers an in-depth look at long-term techno-economic modelling for Scotford Polaris and examines the strategic role of government policies and funding frameworks. It also explores why Canada has emerged as a global leader in CCS deployment—outpacing many of its European counterparts.